The Last Press Conference Is The President's Worst

Stephanie Miller continues to be concerned about this choosing of a winner of an election by a foreign country.  The word is that Vladimir Putin specifically had a hand in this campaign hacking and that Putin specifically wanted Donald Trump as President and not HIllary.  Suddenly this doesn't concern anybody.  The media had the oppertunity to run with this story prior to the election when it would have done some good, but they didn't do it then.  The Republicans have loudly noted this fact to their own condemnation.  If the Democrats had done what Putin did there would be no hearing of the end of it by the Republican campaign forces with Reinz Previs leading the charge.  I like my spelling better.  President Obama was in the middle of his longest press conference ever when I tuned in Gary and Shannon a little before noon.  The President was just wrapping up his preliminary remarks when I tuned in. The press conference continued till about ten after one, eating up soap opera time.  At least I’m glad they still had “Days”.  The President was wordy and awkward and defensive.  You could edit this conference down a long way and not leave out a significant word with all the awkward pauses removed.  The President appeared to be going out of his way not to say anything offensive to the Trump campaign.   He claims he didn’t want to interfere with the Trump campaign and yet he interfered with it in another allowing James Comey his FBI chief to make those fresh accusations against Hillary.  Below is an album of sorts from Sirius A, which has no scheduled release date at this moment.  The talk now is they are going to do a briefer one CD version of “Below the Radar Screen Part 3” and call it “Even Further Below the Radar Screen.  *this song is not for a Beatles song but a British hit by Billy J Cramer & the Dakotas.  If you’re looking to hear from Ringo, that song can be heard on that short Psychedelic album- - which is one of those in alphabetical order.  It’s also on the “Seventeen” compilation series.  

The word from Sirius A at this point is that Obama secretly wanted Trump to be president and that it was a part of some cinister “Master Plan” of somebody.  The theory goes that the US is more afraid of WW III with the Russians than we are letting on.  President Obama was particularly defensive when speaking of the horrors of Assad and Allepo or wherever where all of that mass door to door slaughter of civilians was carried out.  He kept saying how he didn’t want to offend any of the parties involved, for instance, Russia or Iran.  I’m not sure what Shawn Hannity would make of it.  The media admits that this is the longest news conference ever.  Obama kept referring to how “the process must go forth” and how no rash actions.  Obama has gone out of his way to say that the transition has always gone smoothly.  The editing on this press conference at times is very obvious with hard breaks.  Often there is jumping to the left and to the right when there is a dialog going.  There is even re-verb at times for effect.  ** the so indicated track is that guy who sings "Tie Me Kangeroo Down" that was a hit here in America the previous summer.

FREE BONUS ALBUM

She’s A Woman  (six minute demo jam recording)

You Know What To Do  (George Harrison song)

Cut Me Hair Once A Year (TV live show Austrialian guy) **

I’m In Love With A Beautiful Girl  (1963 John Lennon demo recording) *

I’ll Be Back (early June 1964 recording three-four time portion)

No Reply (early June 1964 recording with Jimmy Nichol on drums)

What You’re Doing (fall 1964 demo recording)

That Means A Lot (from Anthology)

Obama Press Conference (December 16, 2016) edited down to 43:21

This pruning down of a rock compilation that was done January of 2008 and listed on the blog “Karmic Suicide” is not to disparage that compilation.  It’s just a way to milk a little more sales value out of the more marketable songs.  The covers of either of these CD’s is not yet made known to me, but I have it on authority they have been made up already.  “The Dating Game” is an all new song and bumps Jim Morrison live.  This song by the Tijuana Brass was a favorite bumper theme of the Stephanie Miller show till she suddenly dropped it cold without reason. 

FURTHER BELOW THE RADAR SCREEN (REVISED)

The Dating Game Theme (Tijuana Brass)

Acapulco Gold (Rainy Days) (??)

She (Monkees)

Devil with the Blue Dress On (Mitch Ryder)

Beechwood Park (Zonbies)

Twelve Thirty (Mamas and Papas)

I Ain’t Never Loved A Man, the Way- - - (Aritha Franklin)

Six O Clock (Loving Spoonfulls)

Ooogum Boogum (Brenton Woods)

Love Is Strange (Peaches and Herb)

Never My Love (Association)

In My Own Time (Bee Gees)

See Things My Way (The Who)

Connection (Rolling Stones)

My Own Tombstone (Procol Herem)

I’m A Real Straight Shooter (Mamas & Papas)

She’s Got Medals (David Bowie)

I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight (Boyce & Hart)

Valerie (Monkees)

Hoochy Coochy Man (Steppinwolf)

Child of the Moon (Rolling Stones)

It’s All Too Much  (Beatles)  standard fade-out

Trump Officially Picks Rex Tillerson

  Rex Tillerson sounds more like the name of an evangelist rather than a Secretary of State.  This Exxon guy is proud of his company which he brags practices ruthless capitalism.  Decades ago he claims they used to open executive meetings with a prayer.  I guess that will get the Christian vote for that.  This Rex Tillerson guy got some special aware from the Russian government.  I think it’s madness to have a Secretary of State who either has entrenched oil interests or strong ties with Russia.  But Trump is a horse of another color from any other President.  I don’t believe Rex Tillerson has any actual government experience.  Shawn Hannity is still trying to sell this crock of you-know-what to Blacks saying that Trump will be the savior of Blacks and Trump will get poor people high paying jobs.  Trump and Hannity both live in a complete economic fantasy.  Of course if the Republicans do a thumbs down on this massive stimulus and infrastructure bill Trump is contemplating then the run up in stock prices we’ve seen all these weeks will be for naught.  In fact you should finally see that economic crash Tom Hartman has been talking about.  All of these radio ads that say to be wary of the economic markets obviously suspect Trump won’t carry through on his campaign promises.  Shawn is basically Trump’s spokesman and even his guiding light.  Trump has yet to do anything that Rush Limbaugh and Shawn Hannity disapprove of.  Shawn believes that you shouldn’t turn over spending to beaurocrats.  “They will only waste that money”.  Shawn is in love with this guy down in the golden triangle of Mississippi whom Sixty Minutes built up as some kind of an economic genious.  I wouldn’t base my economic strategy on the basis of some TV program I saw once.  But Trump is like the guy in “Being There”.  He likes to watch television.  He gets all his news from television.  Trump still thinks he’s better than the entire CIA.  These patriotic intelligence officers daily risk their lives to see to it that the President gets the best, most reliable intelligence possible.  Trump says “Well the CIA said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction”.  There are TWO things wrong with that statement.  Trump is really all for wars in the Mideast and most indications have Trump favoring the Iraq War while it was going on.  It’s just campaign time that Trump does this Monday morning quarterbacking.  But the other thing is that it wasn’t bad CIA data that led us into war.  It was how this data was twisted and manipulated and deliberately lied about in some cases that led us into war.  Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction.  Donald Trump will have one of the strangest, most unbalanced cabinet of all time.  Each appointment has been a major disaster.  But I remind you that Limbaugh and Trump and seemingly the entire Christian right- - have been in full accord with all of the decisions Trump has made up to now.  I see no reason for this to change.  I find it hard to even imagine what kind of an inauguration speech Trump is going to give. 

(Typed Monday)  This is about ten to three and as usual Shawn Hannity is making no sense at all.  Now he’s saying that Russia actually prefers Republicans in the White House because they are reliable and can be trusted.  He pointed to Carter and the canceling of the Olympics in 1980.  He spouted a bunch of completely irrevelant stuff like this supposed Russian reset we’ve heard twenty times as much about on Shawn Hannity than we ever heard from Hillary.  He calls not only the main stream media but John Mc Cain and Lindsey Graham as traitors, though these are two of the most solid foreign policy conservatives we have.  Shawn’s callers don’t exercise a trace of any sort of independent thinking but tinkle all over Shawn with knee-jerk praise using the same platitudes.  Shawn keeps talking about turning education back to the states which translates as screw poor and minority schools.  He wants to build the Wall and he wants full throttle energy development in this country of fissile fuels. 

Adverse Headwinds

AND THE SHIT JUST KEEPS ON COMING!  Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson is Donald Trump’s choice as secretary of state, NBC reported on Saturday, a move that would hand top diplomatic powers to a man whose ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin go back almost two decades.  The report couldn’t be immediately confirmed. NBC said its sources, people close to the president-elect’s transition, cautioned that nothing is final until the president-elect makes an announcement. Trump has said he’ll announce his decision next week.  Tillerson, who reaches Exxon’s mandatory retirement age of 65 in March, has become the leading candidate for the post of top U.S. diplomat over the past few days, two people familiar with the matter said late Friday. If confirmed by the Senate, Tillerson would be the first oil executive and only the second Texan to lead the State Department.

Do you want some more bad news?  Here it is.  BEIRUT — Islamic State militants fought their way back into the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra on Saturday nine months after they were driven out by Syrian government forces, in a reminder that the group is still a force to be reckoned with despite major losses of territory elsewhere.  The advance into Palmyra seemed set to reverse a year of steady defeats for Islamic State fighters and came three days after a big offensive launched from three directions in the surrounding desert.  I guess is President Elect Trump better get on the stick and do something about this.  He’s good at pulling rabbits out of a hat.  We’ve been told for months now that ISIS was on the run.  Now we hear otherwise.  Palmyra is the site of an ancient Roman complex of temples that is considered one of the world’s archaeological treasures, and work had recently begun on restoring some of the many ruins that were blown up during the Islamic State’s 10-month occupation of the city.  Of course ISIS destroys these sites because they are “idolatry” and all that Sheria crap.   It is also the one place where Russian military intervention had made a significant difference in the fight against the Islamic State. Russian airstrikes facilitated the Syrian government’s recapture of Palmyra in March, and in May the Russian military escorted a planeload of journalists on a victory tour of the city, complete with a performance by a Russian orchestra.   These historic sites are disappearing just like natural resources.  Once they’re gone they can’t be brought back.  If Trump has a way of working with Russia to get the job done on ISIS he’d better do it. 

“I’ve always said -- shouldn’t be there, but if we’re going to get out, take the oil,” Trump said in September. “It used to be, to the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: Take the oil.”

Trump at the Republican convention said he “Is the only person who can get the job done that needs to be done”.  He has touted flying solo.  He thinks he’s too good to get intelligence briefings.  He just listens to his own people.  Donald Trump's insult-laced dismissal of reports that the CIA believes Russia hacked the 2016 election to help him is rattling a spy community already puzzled over how to gain the ear and trust of the incoming president.  Some fear that Trump's highly public rebukes of the U.S. intelligence apparatus will undermine morale in the spy agencies, politicize their work, and damage their standing in a world filled with adversaries. After all, if the U.S. president doesn't believe his own intelligence officials, why should anyone else?  "There is nothing more sacred to intelligence officers than their professionalism, honesty and non-partisanship. Trump's charges strike at the core of their integrity," said John Sipher, a former CIA officer with broad expertise on Russia.  Trump is a guy with no conscience this side of Gordon Gecko in the business world with no national security experience, has long taken positions that have alarmedintelligence officials, such as supporting torture and suggesting that it's OK to kill the family members of terrorists.   Bozos actually voted for this man!  

It’s been some time since Rhapsody in Black did anything from the ‘fifties, and they didn’t today either.  Donald Trump was being interviewed at the Army Navy game.  He’s such a media whore he likes to appear everywhere.  So was I smarter in the fall of 1990 at ROP than I am now?  I used to think there was a time when I could get a computer to translate any base number to any other base number like from a base 10 to base 5 for example.  I must have dreamed that because you can’t do it.  For instance a 6 would become 11 in base five, and I can’t get a computer to do that.  The best it does is giving you the log of any number based on any number base you want.  That’s part of the parameters of the entry.   I got two cups of grape drink from Rico in the courtyard.  It’s increasing overcast out.   Rain may be on its way. 

I had Chris Matthews on some during the morning and he was playing clips of Donald Trump as a man in his late thirties from 1985 and Trump was saying things like Blacks have it easier than whites when it comes to getting a good job.  He also said that women are more sexually aggressive than men.  Does he know this from personal experience?  We were supposed to have turkey for lunch.  It was some kind of mystery meat chunks and potato chunks and carrots.  We had to wait a long time for dessert and we all thought it would be something special but it turned out to be watermelon pieces.  Augustine came by with two refills on the coffee.  The first two cups were black coffee and the third was with cream and sugar.

Bill turned on the Army Navy game on CBS and the TV picture was acting up once more.  If it’s Saturday it must be things missing day.  I have discovered two more things missing from the closet not counting that straw hat I got from Ron Rhodes that was missing a couple of weeks ago.  I had the Leo Le Port program on at noon and he was remarking that today’s computers don’t have DVD players any more.  That really seems strange to me.  It got me to thinking I’d like to see my DVD of the movie “300”, which is some movie Terry gave me.  It was missing.  I looked in that one bag I thought belonged to Bill but it turns out it was a bag of mine I had forgotten about since last summer till now.  Of course the DVD wasn’t in there.  But also missing was the white connecting cord from my Power Shot camera to the computer.  Fortunately the battery charger and the two extra batteries were there.  But there was other stuff in that bag I don’t remember now that’s also missing.  I sought to call Paul but Judy said Paul was at work.  We didn’t have to go shopping now.  Judy says she and Paul weren’t expecting to go Christmas shopping till after the Holidays.  I guess that will cut down on the gift exchange this year.  Judy did say that we were getting together on Friday December 23^rd, but she didn’t say where we would gather.  

President Obama Orders Security Review of Election

Seventeen intelligence agencies tell President Obama they have ‘high confidence” that the US elections were tampered with by Russia.  Now President Obama is ordering a new review of the situation.  Shawn Hannity can’t be happy about that.  Lindsey Graham and other members of congress want a review.   I think this is a needed move by our President. 

President Barack Obama has ordered a "deep dive" into the cyberattacks that plagued this year's election, the White House said Friday.  Obama has asked the intelligence community to deliver its final report before he leaves office.  The review will put the spate of hacks — which officials have blamed on Russia — "in a greater context" by framing them against the "malicious cyber activity" that may have occurred around the edges of the 2008 and 2012 president elections, said White House principal deputy press secretary Eric Schultz at a briefing.

"This will be a review that is broad and deep at the same time," he added.

The announcement follows repeated demands from congressional Democrats for more information about the digital assault that destabilized the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's campaign through much of the election. Schultz insisted the review was "unrelated" to these requests, however. At a Friday morning event, Lisa Monaco, Obama’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, explained that the country had "crossed into a new threshold."

Apparently there was a scene in Ferenheit 911 where eggs and other debris were thrown at President elect’s limacine and the mainstream media blacked out coverage.  I’d heard rumors of something like that happening.  The main stream media doesn’t want to tell the American people what’s going on about anything.  Now there are scheduled protests for President Trump’s inaugural but apparently Trump instructed the commission in charge of these things not to grant permits for the protests.  In fact they are going to rope off vast segments of Washington DC so that they can’t protests anywhere.  Of course when it comes to pro life people protesting Roe verses Wade on January 22^nd just two days later, they have no problem with that.   According to Norman Goldman, “fear of potential violence” is not sufficient grounds to disallow it. 

The mainstream media dismisses populism by pushing two absurdly ignorant narratives:

1. Populism (we’re told) always leads to authoritarian rules and/or fascism (i.e. Nazism).All populist movements are therefore tarred with the Nazism brush: no good could possibly come from Populist movements because they always lead to fascism.

This is convenient for the apologists of the embattled status quo, but it’s utterly false: America’s enormous populist movements have never led to fascism.

2. Since the status quo is wonderful and America’s economy is strong, dissent or populism cannot be home-grown–it must be the work of the Devil, in the guise of “foreign propaganda.”

Notice the classic propaganda ploy being deployed here: since dissent is impossible in a regime as well-managed and prosperous as America’s status quo, populism must be driven and controlled by evil foreign agents.

This is laughably absurd: America’s populist movements, including the present one, have been revolts against the concentrated wealth and power of self-serving status quo elites.

If the mainstream media actually employed well-informed analysts rather than empty-headed politically correct parrots, you might have learned that America has a long and rich history of populism that did not lead to authoritarianism or fascism.

In the realm of statistics and "The four movements of Data" you can beware of certain things.  For instance, not all SKEWED data is biased, but all BIASED data is skewed.  Certain things such as incomes or the prices of houses, things involving money, are by their very mathematical nature, skewed toward the higher end.  But many things such as politically based surveys have examiner produced bias because the questions themselves may be skewed either to the left or the right, throwing off the answers.  There is another form of examiner error that crops up and this has to do with Kurtosis and the Standard Deviation Curve.  For instance on an IQ test, if there are too many questions on the page targeted at either blithering idiots or else geniouses- - and no gradation in the center- - then everybody who takes the test is going to answer correctly about half the questions.  Therefore there will be a big spike in the center of the data and little else.  However the opposite could occur.  Every last question on the test could be targeted at someone with an IQ right around 105.  In this case if your IQ is 98 or something, you are going to miss an alarmingly high percentage of the questions.  On the other hand if your IQ is 112 then you will answer almost all of the questions correctly making it look like you did 'really well" on the test, and you may not have done that well.  Some data by its nature has a much wider "standard deviation curve" than other exams.  These are the two borders around the peak where two thirds of the "response" or data occurs.  You might call it the amplitude of the data.  A chart should be calibrated in such a way so that the "volume" or amplitude of the date isn't too peaky like a high mountain range, or two low, like a really low, distant mountain range.  But let me return to my other point.  If it is a political conservative verses liberal survey, then there will be wild extremes in political data because people by their nature have wide ranging political views.  Then you have something where there are narrow tollerances for variance, like say the level of potassium in the blood.  I'm just using that as an example.  There are areas in the middle with a moderate "width" or standard deviation, such as the height of adult men or adult women.  Just in case you are wondering- - it doesn't matter whether the chart runs from two feet to nine feet, or four feet to seven feet, the Kurtosis at least by the way I calculate it, wouldn't change at all.  Kurtosis is spikiness both at the peak and also the "tails" of the bell curve out at the end.  The "tails" and peak would both be identical because it's the Same data.  It's just depicted differently.   

The Troubling "Concentration Puzzle" picture is Grimly Emerging

The news consists of the Oakland fire, and the more important Smokey Mountains fire in Tennessee, which they now say was caused by teenage arson.  There was other police blotter news and a lot of weather related items.  Trying to get real governmental news is difficult.  They did manage to squeeze in Donald Trump’s appointments of the day, and I’m sure when the Secretary of State is announced, they’ll make a major thing out of it since the Secretary of State is high ranking in terms of Presidential succession. However they don't spend nearly enough time on the nightly news discussing the workings of government, and almost no time at all on foreign affairs.  Even the Mideast coverage has been lacking lately.  

President-elect Donald Trump has touched off his latest feud, sparring with a union chief in Indianapolis as he attempts to demonstrate to the American public how his deal-making prowess saved jobs of union members.  The fight escalated Wednesday night when Trump lashed out on Twitter after the union leader, Chuck Jones, accused the president-elect of lying about how many jobs he was saving at Carrier Air Conditioning's Indiana plants.  "Chuck Jones, who is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing workers. No wonder companies flee country!" Trump tweeted at 7:41 p.m., following up with, "If United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana. Spend more time working-less time talking. Reduce dues."    The preceding remarks were pasted.

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name fast-food executive Andy Puzder as labor secretary, according to people familiar with the decision.  Mr. Puzder, chief executive of CKE Restaurants Holdings Inc., the parent company of the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s burger chains, has been a vocal advocate for cutting back regulations he says have stifled growth in the restaurant industry, which represents 10% of the American workforce.  Mr. Puzder, an adviser and contributor to Mr. Trump’s campaign, has criticized the Affordable Care Act and has argued against raising the federal minimum wage higher than $9 an hour. Democrats have called for raising the federal minimum wage for as high as $15.

Trump campaigned in the rust belt saying ‘I’m on the side of the workers’ but not when he attacks Union officials at first chance.  I didn’t know Trump has already appointed two guys in the FCC who were opposed to net neutrality.   This danger on steroids because if we don’t preserve net neutrality we’re all sunk, meaning those of us who are political types on the left.   Of course yesterday’s announcement of Scott Pruitt for head of the EPA still rings in the ears of a lot of us.  Now Hartman tells us that Hillary Clinton is failing to be in the limelight of political progressivism or the “loyal opposition” leaving others to do that.  Hartman says there is a political tradition of political losers to go off quietly into that long sunset.  In terms of the leader of Carl’s Jr. and Hardy’s being made Secretary of Labor, it fulfills a campaign promise Trump made to the Republican right not to increase minimum wage, and if anything Trump is claimed to have stated the minimum wage at $7.50 is too high already.   This is an accusation roommate Bill has repeated many times.  So the administration is taking shape as the “concentration” puzzle becomes all to obvious now as to what the final picture will say. 

I think I have discovered the need for a new mathematical function.   I could call it the binary exponent function or the addition exponent function.  For instance 2^+3.67 would be 12 and here is how it works.  As you know 2³ is 8 and 2⁴ is 16.  This predictability works out well with only 2.  4 is 8 to the 2/3 power.  Therefore it would be an exponent with a little plus sign before the exponent symbol.  As you know sixteen would be ten thousand in binary numbers and 24 would be 11000 in binary speak.  This in my view would be 2^{+4 3/4} power.  Would there be a use for such a key in calculator for instance?  As you know there is one binary function on Calculator that already covers multiplication in a sense and that’s the LSH or left shift control- - where the thing can be reversed for right shift for dividing by two.   It’s a suggestion.

DONALD TRUMP APPOINTS A DINGO TO HEAD HUMAN SERVICES  There is good news of a sort out there.  Donations of Free Speech TV have woken up.  There is a rich guy out there who is willing to match your donation dollar for dollar up to a level of three hundred thousand dollars.  This is a good sign that rich people have woken up.  The people at Free Speech say that good things are now happening with that network in terms of expanding their influence.  I say it's about TIME. 

You’ve heard of the Fourteen steps toward FACISM put out ten years ago, and how we’re virtually there already.  You more recently from Hartman have heard that Latin phrase of “Know the end from the beginning” and “Resist the beginnings”.  This refers to the onset of Nazi government in 1930’s Germany. Now there are three key “Warning Signs” given off by society to signal the impending democracy.  Public support.  People stop cherishing democracy as a sacred right.  One might say that Trump’s promise to “steal the voting rights of millions of Americans” as an assault on democracy itself. Then there is issue two which is Public openness to non democratic government.  The share of Americans who say Army Rule would be a good thing was 1 in 16 Americans in 1995.  Now that figure is one in six.  See how the odds have improved in twenty short years.  The trend is particularly strong among young people of all things.  .  These are statstics out of a recent study.   Number three is the following question:  Is there a lot of “anti system sentiment out there?   Donald Trump is the epitimy of “anti system sentiment”.  People just no longer believe in the processes of government and would not be that adverse to throwing out our system of Checks and Balances, formerly so cherished by Americans.   They call collapse of democracy as “de-consolidation”.    These are “Early Warning” systems.  But even in technology they disable the red flashing lights that serve as warnings of impending danger.  The same thing is going on with the Media right now because they are failing to warn us of the impending danger.  That danger is very real.  

Donald Trump is Time's "Man of the Year"

Donald Trump is the “Man of the Year” of Time Magazine.  So he is in the same company as Adolph Hitler and Bill Clinton and the Pope and Ghandi.  I wonder what Shawn’s opinion of Ghandi or the Pope is anyhow?  Donald Trump picked Gen John F Kelly, the highest ranking military officer for a the head of Homeland Security today who ever lost a son in the Iraq war.  This is the third retired general to be picked for the Trump cabinet.  It seems like there's been more than that.  Perhaps this is showing some sign of empathy.  Of course in the campaign Trump made critical remarks about top military brass saying he knew more than they did and would override their wishes. Trump is like an invasive salvo unleashed on us the same way Pearl Harbor was unleashed on us 75 years ago today.  My dad was in high school when that happened making him younger than Norman Goldman’s dad.  He knew that the minute he graduated he’d get drafted before you could say “Jack Robinson”.  None of us who were not alive then cannot possibly imagine what is was like to live through that and the traumatic changes it unleashed upon this nation.  Some people are STILL shell-shocked from the news of Trump’s election.  Trump’s favorability figure has jumped seventeen percent since August.  He has “skyrocketed up from 33% to 50%.  Trump is head of “The Divided States of America”.  Shawn didn’t like that headline.   Trump can’t even get along with natural allies now.  He’s attacking Boeing Aircraft because he feels they’re trying to cheat the federal government out of money.  There was a Federation article today sticking up for Boeing Aircraft.  I will say this.  If you’re a blue state after this election you can really be called “true blue”.  Maybe the Pacific Time Zone states will want to secede because now they say Jeff Sessions won’t allow our liberalized marijuana laws to continue.  Trump leads Hillary by 22,000 votes in Pennsylvania, and eleven thousand in Michigan and 44,000 votes in Pennsylvania.  So you have a grand total of 77 thousand votes keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House.  Hillary Clinton’s lead has grown to 2.7 million according to two independent sources.  I don’t know if they’re done with the vote recount.  However in Wayne county Michigan they say they will NEVER be able to count those votes because the provisional ballots were destroyed or something.  Well, you heard it from the horse’s mouth.  Trump said it would be a rigged election.  They say that Hillary Clinton is trailing significantly more in places with voting machine than places with paper ballots.  Also it’s interesting that the margin of votes in the winning states is so slim.  What if this had happened with Hillary?  What would Trump be saying?  Of course Trump’s appointment of the head of the Environmental Protection Agency is a major salvo we’ve had to endure in the news today. 

Ohio has basically decided to rescind Roe verses Wade today.  Their legislature voted to ban all abortions after six weeks.  They say they picked a time when you could detect a fetal heartbeat.  I don’t know you could detect one that soon.  The only thing that remains is for Governor John Kasich to sign the bill.  If he refuses to sign the bill you know he’s going to take a lot of flack from Limbaugh and Hannity.

There was a concert going in in that Oakland warehouse when the fire broke out.  Now they say that the fire was caused by a malfunctioning refrigerator that was shorting out.  The owner of the property is in heap big trouble both from zoning irregularities and from the many lawsuits that will occur.  It seems that this whole building had devolved from an artist's colony living together to just a place to smoke crack.    

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to nominate Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of the oil and gas-intensive state of Oklahoma, to head the Environmental Protection Agency, a move signaling an assault on President Obama’s climate change and environmental legacy.  Pruitt has spent much of his energy as attorney general fighting the very agency he is being nominated to lead.  He is the third of Trump’s appointees who have key philosophical differences with the missions of the agencies they have been tapped to run. Ben Carson, named to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has expressed a deep aversion to the social safety net programs and fair housing initiatives that have been central to that agency’s activities. Betsy DeVos, named education secretary, has a passion for private school vouchers that critics say undercut the public school systems at the core of the government’s mission.  The news about the choice of Pruitt was confirmed by a transition official, who would not speak for attribution before the official announcement.  Pruitt, who has written that the debate on climate change is “far from settled,” joined a coalition of state attorneys general in suing the agency’s Clean Power Plan, the principal Obama-era policy aimed at reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector. He has also sued, with fellow state attorneys general, over the EPA’s recently announced regulations seeking to curtail the emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from the oil and gas sector.  On his Linked In page, Pruitt boasts of being “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.”

[Trump has vowed to kill the Clean Power Plan. Here’s how he might — and might not — succeed]

After he was elected attorney general in 2010, Pruitt established a “Federalism Unit” to “more effectively combat unwarranted regulation and systematic overreach by federal agencies, boards and offices,” according to his online bio.  And he has gone on to challenge the administration not just over the environment but over a host of other areas. He joined other Republican attorneys general in a lawsuit over Obama’s immigration policies. He has also sued the administration over the Affordable Care Act, saying the health-care mandate on religious employers to provide coverage including contraception was unconstitutional. He has sued over the Dodd-Frank financial reform. 

Temporary Victory for Standing Rock Protestors

People are questioning whether Trump is getting briefings from real people in the current Administration, or whether he’s just looking to his own appointees such as Flynn to get briefings from.  He hasn’t had a news conference because Trump lives by the tweet.  He tweets out his news briefings and he gets his information from tweets.  I’ve heard there’s something called the Rush effect where people spend a couple of hours listening to Rush and then they re-tweet all of Rush’s significant remarks of the day only they take credit for the information themselves and leave Rush’s name out of it.  We’ve also been hearing about fake news.  I’ve heard several sources saying that RT or Russian Television is famous for fake news stories.  I wonder how many of these stories wind up in Washington’s blog.  I’m careful about that one.  We don’t know how many other brieches of protocol Trump will commit between now and inauguration day.  

The Obama administration announced today that it instructed the Army Corps of engineers to half that pipeline that goes through Standing Rock Indian reservation.  This is a long sought victor for all the tireless protestors there that have been freezing their buns off and getting shot at and gassed and bombarded with sounds and such.  Norman Goldman thought all of those protestors at Standing Rock should just give up.  Of course Trump takes over in six weeks. It doesn't take much in the way of supposition to figure out that that pipe line is going to be built with no route changes.  That would take too much time.  Speaking of time I've heard the democrats can't defeat certain appointments but they can "slow walk" them creating delay after delay just like the Republicans used to do to us.

I missed a few minutes of “This Week”.   It was Vice President Mike Spence doing his apology tour for Donald Trump explaining away his gaffs like all of the tweets he does about Saturday Night Live.  And Trump called the leader of Tiwhan, which you aren’t supposed to do because China will think you’re recognizing them as a country.  I say tell China to go fuck themselves.  If we haven’t spoken civilly to Tiwhan since 1979 I’d say it’s about time we did.  I don’t see how China can get that upset over one little phone call.  I blogged this morning.  Another major issue was General David Petrayas telling government secrets to his mistress.  I don’t see how Trump can explain his way out of this one because of the big fuss he made about Hillary’s E mail server not being secure and it could be hacked by foreigners, although there is no evidence of that having happened.  After this it was Breakfast with the Beatles.  Last week they did George.  This week they celebrated John Lennon songs without commercial break.  Apparently they played all of John Lennon’s favorite songs.  They concluded with “Happy Christmas” at noon.  

 Dr Ben Carson has been appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.  I thought he ruled himself out saying he wasn’t qualified for any cabinet appointment.  I guess this shouldn't surprise anybody though.

Former Vice President Al Gore met with President Elect Trump and the two talked on the topic of climate change.  That they had a civil conversation at all without ending in a fist fight is a miracle.  I would only hope at least some of Al Gore's comments sunk in.

The office of Secretary of State still has not been filled.  In fact a bunch of new candidates are up for this job including John Huntsman, who was President Obama's former ambassador to China.