Spicer checks WH staffers' phones for leaks, vows more searches coming

Spicer checks WH staffers' phones for leaks, vows more searches coming.


Ahh, but the strawberries that's... that's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... geometric logic... that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I'd have produced that key if they hadn't of pulled the Caine out of action. I, I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officers...

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0031055/quotes

Funny, that is not what you said last time....

Kellyanne Conway is currently the Counselor to President Trump.  I find it hard to cry too much for her lately.  She is decrying the media as being biased, liers and out to get the President.  Hmmmm.

In his first appearance before the press, Sean Spicer criticized the "media" for reporting that the bust of Martin Luther King had been removed from the Oval Office.  He used this as proof that the "media" was out to get him.  Here are the facts:

7:21 Zeke Miller tweets that the Churchill bust is back in the Oval Office
7:33 another reporter tweets that the MLK bust is gone, sourced from another reporter - not Miller (there seems to be no "Tweets" from Miller, but he might have said that in a press pool report.)
8:14 Miller tweets that the MLK bust is still there
8:41 Miller tweets that he has confirmed with White house aide that the MLK bust is in the Oval Office.

Now Miller claimed the bust was obscured by a door and a secret service agent.  I did not believe that until I saw this:

Can you see either? 

MLK bust is on the left - Churchill is on the right.  (actually, this might have been taken earlier and the bust on the right might be Lincoln.  The picture above MLK sometimes shows the Statue of Liberty.)

Now this is sloppy reporting if they noticed that the  Churchill bust was there and did not ask the aide if the MLK bust had been replaced.  But if Miller thought he saw it with his own eyes, then he would not have asked.  So let's assume he was looking for a gotcha moment and screwed up, then apologized.

Let's compare this to:

On Wednesday November 2, 2016, FOX News anchor Bret Baier announced that according to unnamed sources, the FBI was investigating Hillary Clinton which “will continue to likely an indictment.”

This was picked up by then Candidate Trump and blasted out over many conservative websites.

This was amplified on November 3, even while other news outlets were debunking the claim.  Even Baier himself walked back the claim on Thursday but that did not stop people on Friday from repeating the claim, 48 hours later.

Baier even apologized. - even though he did not fully back down.

How does this relate to Ms Conway?

“The damage is done to Hillary Clinton,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told MSNBC’s Brian Williams on Friday.  (11/3)

Funny, this was 24 hours, not 2 before a correction was made.  There was no apology to Ms Clinton by Brett Baier as was demanded by Sean Spicer from Zeke Miller to Donald Trump.  In fact Ms Conway doubled down and stood by the report even after it had been walked back.  There was no backing down by candidate Trump, he doubled down also.

For President Trump, Ms Conway or Sean Spicer, to express outrage at bad reporting is the ultimate in hypocrisy, seeing as "Alternative Facts" such as the FOX News report, helped him win the election - but they saw nothing wrong with it.

1/30/2017


Sources:
http://www.snopes.com/mlk-bust-oval-office/
http://morninganswerchicago.com/2017/01/21/reporters-jump-chance-report-fake-news-mlk-bust-removed-oval-office/
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/11/03/bret-baier-serving-mouthpiece-unknown-sources-fbi-stories/214269
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-claims-evidence-fbis-clinton-foundation-probe-impressive/story?id=43282736
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/conway-on-fox-clinton-indictment-story-the-damage-is-done.html
http://www.msnbc.com/11th-hour-with-Brian-Williams (

The True - False Fallacy

I propose there is a theory that we subscribe to that if something is not true, it has to be false.

Now you say of course if A=1 and B=2 then A+B cannot equal 5.

But if I said that A is between 1 and 5 and B is between -3 and +3,  then A + B could be anywhere from -2 to +8 and still be correct.

So if we take two statements:

1. All people unemployed and on welfare are lazy.

2. Businesses eliminate jobs due to government regulation.

At first you may say that they are unrelated and you can hold that each statement may be true or that each statement may be false.

The problem is that in saying that a statement is either true or false, you then limit yourself to possibilities between the two.

For example, there might be reasons other than government regulations, why companies lay people off.  Automation, cost cutting, lack of sales, etc.  These people who are laid off are not lazy if they lost the job not due to anything they did or did not due.  The skills that they had may not be valuable anymore in the workplace. Therefore there are people who are unemployed and on welfare who are not lazy, just do not have the skills to ind a job.

In this case one of the solutions is better education and retraining.  However, either one of the statements by themselves will not lead to this conclusion; only by assuming they are not strictly true or false.

Now there are people who are on welfare and are lazy, and some people might lose jobs due to regulation.  If these cases are the majority of instances, you deal with them differently than if they are a small subset. If most people on welfare are lazy, then you look for ways to tie welfare into motivation, rather than education.

For example, let us look at the statement "If you car burns oil, the engine is defective".
If your car burns a quart of oil every 3000 miles, you tend to just add oil and accept that.  On the other hand, if you car uses a quart of oil every 50 miles, you rebuild the engine or buy another car. The solution is different depending on the degree of the problem.

Ford got into trouble with the Pinto, because they calculated that the design of the car could result in fatalities, but that the cost of the fix would be more than the cost of the lawsuits.  On the other hand, some people said that even one death was too much.  So if you had to design the car so that nobody ever, could get killed in the car, the price would be so high that nobody could afford it.  Neither solution is reasonable.  Ford should have spent built the car to a higher standard. and not just calculated a cost, once they were aware of an issue.

So instead of looking at a statement that it is EITHER True or False, accept that there may be cases where the statement contains a degree of truth and make decision related to the degree.

1/29/2017

How do I get through to people?

Trump expresses his great financial ability and knowledge.

He "lost" $916 million in 1995.

The money is not lost, It is not around here waiting to be found.

The crazy thing about this is that are winners and losers in this deal.

The winners are the guys who got paid.  These people may feel that they were taken care of.  Someday favors may be called in.

The losers are the people who did not get paid and will not get paid.
The losers are the people who no longer have jobs, but cannot claim their lack of income as"losses".
The losers include the government who does not get the tax income for the next years.

And remember, Trump was able to take this business deduction because people like him made donations to the politicians, who wrote the tax laws.  The average person does not have the ability to change the tax laws, so cannot deduct the excess medical bills, the damage to his house not covered by insurance, or the loss in his 401K due to manipulation of the stock market.

These deductions go to people who say, without them they would not take risks.  Except the game is rigged to prevent the risks from being risks at all.

Don't send a Thank you e-mail.

I get enough e-mails that I don't need a seperate one just to say thank you.

Include it in you next e-mail to me.

2 Years And What Has Changed

A quote from the May 2015 issue of  "Fast Company":

Stow your iPhone
"I try to hide, go dark.  It's a great ritual to unplug for three hours and delete five apps on my phone-so I can stop.  Phones are designed to be addictive."

John Maeda, Design partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufiled & Byers

Brain Strain

A local pastor forgets the menu at a church event he set up.  A radio DJ says Labor Day when he means Memorial Day.  A TV weather man says July instead of June.  A National News show gives the wrong winner of a NASCAR race.  Isolated incidents?  Normally I would say yes, but I wonder if something bigger is afoot.  Electronics are rewiring our brains.  Smart phones, tablets, instant messaging, e-mails, web pages, blogs (even this one?) and videos are affecting the way we think.  For example, we don't know how to spell anymore, we wait for the computer to correct our spelling.  We don't remember phone numbers, we rely on the look up in our smartphones. (Of course we have so many more to keep track of, how could we remember them all.)  We zone out to an overload of videos, rather that letting out brains relax and rebuild after a long day.  We make more mistakes, waste more time, get less sleep.

How do we fix this?  We need to step away from the electronic devices and let our brains recover.  We need to find other ways of work that help our brains, not tax them.  As I come up with more ideas I will publish them, but for now I need to go for a bike ride...

ChrisZ

Surprise, Surprise, Suprise

"Due to doping allegations at the time, SCA initially refused to pay Armstrong $5 million in bonus money that Tailwind Sports, the owner of Armstrong's U.S. Postal team, had promised him if he won a sixth Tour title in 2004. Tailwind Sports took out insurance coverage with SCA."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/07/us-usa-armstrong-lawsuit-idUSBRE91615Y20130207

Okay - let me get this right - One company waives 5 million dollars in front of someone and then is surprised that this person may have cheated to win.  Hmmmmm.

ChrisZ

Timing is everything

For some reason there is a push to reinstate the draft.  While it might be a good idea, it has missed its mark.  The time to do that was while we were in the middle of two wars in the early 2000's.  Right now, with fiscal problems and winding down the existing war, there is no money or time to train extra recruits.

One thing it would do is to spread the load of the military around and by that get more families involved.  Right now the military is almost an exclusive club, with may people not even knowing someone serving.  Out of sight, our of mind means most people do not care what is happening around the world.

My question is would the draft provide the best talent we need?  The job of the military has changed from quantity to quality and the training is more intense and costly today, would a draft provide us with better people as we tap into those who might not consider a military career?

My bottom line is if you want to put together a youth service program - great - just make sure you can pay for it.  But to re institute the draft at this time does not make any sense.

ChrisZ

Real Job Killing Policy

The real elephant in the room:

Help no longer wanted - Republican American 2/1/2013

The Republicans and Democrats can argue till they are blue in the face about whose policies are killing jobs, but the real answer is in the article - Technology.

In recent history, we have had a similar change in our society, during the Industrial Revolution, when people left farming to go work in the factories.  The problem this time is that there is no alternative for people whose jobs disappear as the new jobs are for robots!

Short term, both the Republicans and the Democrats know that increased taxes and government spending will ease the transition, but the question still is "What work will the majority of people do that creates value?"

This is the question we need to be asking - this will also be what drives government health care (even if run by private companies with will be highly regulated) or will we decide to accept 10+ unemployment as normal  and just keep paying people who cannot find work?  NOT!

Chris Z

We are wealthy

Standing on a street corner - watching cars go by, I realized we are a wealthy country.  The age, quality and condition of our cars shows that.  For the most part we have very new cars in very good condition.  The "rust buckets" and smoking junk I remember in my youth have pretty much been replaced by very efficient safe transportation.  But at what cost?  One of the reasons we are in the predicament we are in today is that most of these nice cars are on credit, borrowed against a future that is not materializing.    30 years ago, you borrowed for a new car, gambling in a sense that inflation would increase the value of your house, the wages your were paid, while making the dollars you paid to your bank cheaper.  However, with inflation at a standstill, wages frozen or dropping and house values plummeting, this system is no longer working.  My feeling is that the cars will start to fall apart, the air conditioners will stop working, cell phones sales will slow down... or maybe we are so addicted to these items that we will stop investing in the future to pay for the present.

ChrisZ

Achievement

Pros and Cons

Pro - You can be anything in life you want to be

Con - You cannot be everything in life you want to be

ChrisZ

Were's Woodward

40 years since Watergate - where are the investigative journalists?  Fast and Furious - surely someone in the press can work on finding out the truth.  Wall Street meltdown?  Why are we not flooded with stories from the inside.  Health care law - by now someone could have read it and told us what is in it.

People are lazy - why do I have to do all the work for them?

ChrisZ


PS - Here is one that is getting alot of flack: http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/

Health Care Debate

I am watching a debate on health care and want to give you two things to think about.  When thinking about then remember virtually all health care is arranged through your work and private instance (like when you buy auto insurance) is virtually non-existent).

Preexisting conditions - this show compared preexisting conditions to a rickety old house vs a new house.  The proper analogy is you loose your house and the insurance company for your new employer refuses to cover you because you have high blood pressure or are overweight.  This would be like the auto insurance companies only deciding that you cannot have coverage after having an accident, whether it was your fault or not.  Having more people in the insurance pool is the purpose of spreading the risk around.

Keeping kids on insurance until they are 26.   The reason for this is not to soak insurance companies, but rather to insure a group that is not in the job place.  Right now, these people get thrown of their parents policy at 21 and unless they are able to get student insurance, often work part time or minimum wage jobs were they cannot get insurance.  Both of my children are are under 26 but have found a way to be insured, but if they were unemployed then how would they get coverage?  This is not free, the parents have to have them on a family policy and and pay extra.  Since young people have lower claims for the most part this is where insurance companies may be making more money - money that can balance out the older population.

So think twice when you here people talking about health care reform and how some of these changes are detrimental the people they are trying to help.

BTW: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/business/14health.html?_r=1

ChrisZ

Who volunteers?

Now that I am on the road working, it has given me a new perspective on who volunteers. When I was a Cub Scout leader, Little League coach, Religious Education teacher, I was always frustrated in getting more volunteers. I think I have the answer. In the 50's and 60's most people workedm either in factories or offices. They worked normal 9 - 5 jobs and were home for dinner. This was the peak time for volunteers. People worked 40 hour weeks and had spare time. Today, with downsizing and technology, people are working odd hours and are always reachable. People cannot dedicate the time to volunteering when they don't know when they will have free time. We are either going to have to change our expectations on traditional volunteer jobs, or change our economic system to accommodate them. Ironically, it was predicted that by this time we would all be working less than 40 hours and flex time would allow us to participate more in activities serving our communities. Stop and think about when you were growing up and will your children and grand children have the same experiences. Chris Z

Why there is more oil drilling

Times Article:

"And not just here. Across the country, the oil and gas industry is vastly increasing production, reversing two decades of decline. Using new technology and spurred by rising oil prices since the mid-2000s, the industry is extracting millions of barrels more a week, from the deepest waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the prairies of North Dakota."


"At the same time, Americans are pumping significantly less gasoline. While that is partly a result of the recession and higher gasoline prices, people are also driving fewer miles and replacing older cars with more fuel-efficient vehicles at a greater clip, federal data show."


"How the country made this turnabout is a story of industry-friendly policies started by President Bush and largely continued by President Obama — many over the objections of environmental advocates — as well as technological advances that have allowed the extraction of oil and gas once considered too difficult and too expensive to reach. But mainly it is a story of the complex economics of energy, which sometimes seems to operate by its own rules of supply and demand."


The higher the price of oil, and the more stable that price is, the more technology and investments will go find that oil that was either abandoned or perceived too expensive to recover.


ChrisZ

Peak oil or Peak Economy

After reviewing the statistics on oil reserves and prices, I want to put forth the the following observation:

If US oil production peaked in the 70's, that probably meant that our control over oil ended shortly after that - probably after the fall of the Shah of Iran.  With the loss of control over the price of oil, came the world economic competition we find ourselves in now.  Thus the US "Golden Age" might have passed with this event.

"But we are not out of oil - what about all the oil that is still in the ground?"  There is more oil in the ground, and technology will allow us to recover more and more of that - the question is at what price.  With many other countries having greater known reserves of conventional oil, it is hard to justify spending the money to drill or extract our own oil, unless there was a strategic reason like a world war or embargo (this is the reason for the Strategic Oil Reserve).

Right now energy costs are taking a greater toll of the middle class budget.  Energy cost affect everything from food, to transportation to wages.  The upper class has seen wages and other income climb faster than energy costs so they have not been as affected.  So you can add energy costs to the problems today, along with the decline in unions, technology changes and international competition.  All are related and inseparable.

We will of course attain a sense of balance.  That balance will be a new reality of what makes someone prosperous and economically comfortable.   The struggle will be between forces trying to decide if this balance is natural or has to be legislated.

ChrisZ

The lost art of communication

As technology gives us more ways to talk to each other, I wonder if it is having just the opposite. Instant messaging, e-mails, texting, Facebook - maybe the only technology that actually enhances communication is face to face conversation like Skype and Facetime.

Consider the other forms of communication - words with no sound, no meaning, no inflection.  No reading of the other person's facial expression or body language. How much misinterpretation comes from reading an e-mail and assuming you understand the person's intentions.

As we text and twitter, we are in such a hurry to get our message out, that we don't spend the time to choose the correct words, or write in complete sentences so that we can properly communicate.

How are you using the new tools to communicate?  Are they having the intended effect?

Trip to Chicago Auto Show

Things I learned from my trip to the Chicago Auto Show:
1. Metra stations - you do pay for parking - $1.50 a day - remember your parking number
2. Train stations are not open on weekends for the most part so you end up buying tickets on the train (weekend pass is $7.00 in 2012)
3. Buses are tough to understand - Chicago streets are no like NYC - I looked for the AutoShow shuttle and followed the crowd - $2.25 (exact change for the bus unless you get a transit card. NOW I find out the CTA machine was in the Metra Ticket area in Union Station. You can order on line - just need to order 10 days in advance.
4. After show, the shuttle is at one of the gates underneath - don't go outside and try to find the bus.
5. The ride home on the train - get there early to get a seat down in the lower level.

D$@&/:?(:/

Curse words are nothing new. The problem today is that they are used so commonly that they lose their meaning and just become obnoxious.

During the 60's and 70's certain words had an enhanced effect. When they were used, you realized the seriousness of their use. Now, these 4 letter words are thrown out like salt on the ice, random and more than is probably needed.

As words losse their meaning, something else has to take it's place. I am not sure the physical violence is directly related, but once at a loss for words,
Maybe the only thing left is physical.