--Evan S. Connell in Son of the Morning Star, his biography of George Armstrong Custer. Connell was quoting the recollection of a Seventh Cavalry trooper who recounted Custer's rapid march on the way to the Little Big Horn River, the site of Custer's defeat by the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians. I think of this quote often when realizing how swiftly time passes.
This blog is dedicated to fulfilling the writer's responsibility to try to ensure that the younger generations inherit a country that respects the rights and liberties of all its citizens and residents, provides ample opportunities to make an adequate living for families, and conducts its affairs with other nations with honor and integrity. This will be done by working to preserve what is right about the country, while working to reform what is wrong. This will be done with humor as much as possible, but when it is not possible, the facts will be presented unvarnished. There is not much time left to get it right, so be ready.
Research continues into the handling of the coronavirus outbreak and continuing pandemic. There was a lot I had to research, particularly the Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR), which is the standard test used to determine the presence of the virus inside a person's body. I've had to drill down on the concepts by using on-line Webinars, lectures, interviews, articles, and documents. It's like a crash course in microbiology mostly self-taught. I have found someone on Twitter willing to be a kind of coach/sounding board in testing my understanding on the details of how the testing works, the terminology (which is difficult for a layperson to grasp at times), so that should speed things along as I hope to put up a series about COVID-19 similar to the Election 2016 series, which is also crawling along as new evidence emerges and everything stops until it can be gathered and sifted. You wish it could go faster, but errors can be made when you do. I know because I found some of my own that I will be fixing in that series.
The work goes on. Why do it? Because I don't trust anything that comes out of Washington, DC without testing it myself. In the case of COVID-19 there is just too much at stake. No one can afford to just take dictation from such an unreliable source of information and think everything will just "work out." We've been doing that for a long time and that approach has failed us, regardless of who has been in charge during different disasters. So, I'll update when I can, which I hope will be more frequently, but the work will go on.
I've been busy trying to understand what has been happening without being completely dependent upon what the televison news broadcasts tell us. It's taken about seven weeks, but I did some cramming about virology, epidemiology and something called Polymerase Chain Reaction which is being used for testing people to see if they "have" the virus. "Having" the virus is different from being sick with the virus. That is another thing I have learned. It is interesting, and I"ll be sharing some of it in a separate sub-site to this one.
More documents were declassified in the matter of the 2016 election. They include most of the matters that I have been researching for two years, including a formerly classified transcript from the Congressional testimony of Crowdstrike's head of Incident Response, SHAWN HENRY. One fact Henry's testimony revealed was that Crowdstrike's software could not enable their technicians to see when specific documents were being stolen, nor could they be certain by whom they were stolen. There are testimonies by other notables involved in the election itself, and those involved in trying to prove Russia controlled the outcome of the election. There are 53 of these sessions by the House Select Committee on Intelligence that will have to be read. You no more think you have all the information when more emerges, and there are more due out this very week. It's interesting, but seems to be no closer to being understandable than when I started.
Lots more has happened, and it will eventually be in the pages of the Election section of the Blog.
I like old radio shows like The Shadow, Green Hornet, Archie Andrews, and Our Miss Brooks. In the 1930s and 1940s there were also shows highlighting the music of Big Band leaders like Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, and Tommy Dorsey. This link takes you to about everything that ever was on the radio right up into the 1960s. The Wayback Machine maintains this huge portal into all these radio show links. Did you know Ozzie and Harriet started on radio? Yes, and Ricky Nelson, a very young Ricky Nelson, was in the cast.
Often when someone experiences a landmark date in life, we don't always wonder what other people were doing at the same time. With about nine billion of us on the planet, people are experiencing their own events, some really big, and some not as much. I searched out the date, February 22, 2013, my last day of my nearly 28 years on that job, and found out what some other people were doing worldwide.
It has been much too long since my last post in this blog. A lot of this year was spent running down research for the Election 2016 blog, which has a new post in it today. It took this long to track down the final three postings for the DNC Hack part of the blog, but it was worth it since the entire affair is so much easier to understand. Television only tells the viewer so much and it is never very in depth. When you have facts the media has given out since an incident took place that are not in reconcilement, they must be explained in some way. An example of this was when Crowdstrike, the DNC's cybersecurity contractor, and two DNC executives gave the exclusive story about the hack to Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post. The account given to Ms. Nakashima was of a hack that didn't amount to much, namely, two files of opposition research about Donald Trump stolen. Two days later, the hack becomes something out of Pearl Harbor. Those are the kind of contradictions that must be reconciled, but so far have not been except through deductive reasoning and not any forensic/empirical evidence. We have at least reached a point where a very general understanding of how the data was lost , who is most responsible for that loss, and what those two facts can tell us. I'll get in here more often the rest of this year, but I am satisfied that the time away, long though it was, was very productive.
On February 15, 1989, I loaded up my car, a 1975 Ford Granada, and left Royersford, Pennysylvania for the northwest corner of Pennsylvania, setting up in an apartment in Oil City a few days later. For most of the previous five years, I spent hundreds of miles away. There was a lot to like about Royersford in Montgomery County, but being bit closer to home was worth the move. This makes 1989 memorable, along with some of the music that was popular during that year. I picked a dozen of the Billboard Top 100 from that year. Where did those 30 years go?
A Just Like
Yesterday Production
Many updates ago I posted several popular songs from 1978, a year recalled mostly for disco music, a genre that would peak in 1979, but was actually a pretty eclectic music year. Most of the songs in the Billboard Top 100 of 1978 were not disco tunes. There were some good disco songs, and a couple of them are on this list, but most of the selections are definitely not disco songs. First up is an embedded video from a very popular movie from 1978. After the links to the songs will be two more videos that are Parts 1 and 2 of the final production number of the 1943 musical Girl Crazy, which I watched all the way through for the first time that September. So, here we go.
A Just Like
Yesterday Production
In our travels around the Internet, we encountered the Bit Chute channel called Scammers Revolt in which the channel owner, a tech savvy individual, makes Internet scammers, con men, and grifters sorry they ever tried to vicitmize him. He hacks their computers after they set up a connection to his computer in an attempt to scam him into giving them access to his bank account. In the linked video below, he stops a scammer from bilking a little old lady by destroying his computer with malware. These are the "Microsoft Refund Scammers" who have been mentioned all over the Internet lately. I encountered them, but drove them crazy because I remembered them when they were doing legitimate work for a computer manufacturer. They claimed I had a refund coming for that work, from two years before, but they actually did the work, so I should have paid them. I kept reminding them of this until they gave up and hung up the telephone. I like Scammers Revolt's solution better. It's hilarious. In other videos where he nails these same scammers, the language gets a bit "graphic" as the scammers rage.
This one has taken awhile to put together. A key piece of information, the status of the DNC network's audit and event logs, prompted a Google search, using alternating key words and dates, that finally produced a very thorough article from a December 2016 New York Times. Once that verification of a key point was secured, the article had to be put together and needed much editing and revision prior to uploading. This story that will not die keeps dribbling out more revelations over time. The final word will likely be--"We might never know what really happened or why." Those are words with which we should all be very familiar by now.
The twelve scheduled, and eleven actually presented, concerts in Pipeline Alley are described in an entirely separate page as there was so much in the way of images, videos, links, and description of the performances to place here. A link to the page is below.
The online magazine Zero Hedge recently ran an interview with Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Mr. Assange explores the erosion of privacy and freedom from government and corporate spying and data mining in this discussion. In light of the lack of real debate about government spying capabilities during the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings into the judicial philosophy of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Assange paints a dismal picture of the average American's right to be---left alone.
It certainly has been too long since I was last in here. I've been taking it easy for awhile waiting for my feet to heal from the plantar faciitis while living on a low carbohydrate, little sugar diet. It was a drag. I did make it to every free concert in Pipeline Alley this summer, and there were eleven of them. I'm working on a separate page with a brief description of each concert with some photos and links to information about the musicians and singers, and even some videos of a few of them performing. That will take a while longer to finish. I don't think summer has ever gone by this fast in my entire life, and a lot of people feel the same way. So much for my absence, let's get to Paul McCartney and Wings, with the links to the You Tube videos in the order of my favorite one down to the least of my favorites. I know there are others, but I chose these.
Well, I managed to get Plantar faciitis in my right foot, with a mild touch in the left foot. While resting to let them heel, I decided to try keeping my hand in cardio activity by taking up swimming in the YMCA pool this Monday. I found out that staying on a motorized stair climber for an hour or more, or an eliptical machine for the same amount of time, or walking 10 or 15 miles up and down hills is nothing like swimming. I kept failing to finish my lengths without taking a breather after about halfway across. I was warned with a charley horse in the right foot, but shook it off. Thinking everything was fine, I made it 3/4 of the way down the swimming lane when my right calf got hit with a big charley horse. I had to haul myself out of the pool by hoisting myself over the wall and rolling onto the deck. I limped out of the pool area, finished for the day, realizing I would have been in trouble if I hadn't been swimming next to the left side of the pool.
On my way out, I ran into the swimming supervisor who called out from the open room behind the greeting counter, "I saw you swimming in the pool!" which she had never seen before. I hadn't been swimming since about 1983.
"If that is what you call it," I said back.
She went on to explain that I wasn't in "pool shape," which was certainly true. She cramped up once after not swimming for a week.
"I'm stuck swimming because my feet are bad right now," I admitted. In a good natured tone adding, "I'll kick your pool's ass before the summer is out."
Well, not this week, this is three days later and the charley horse is only now letting go. I limped all week.
The DNC Hack series continues as new evidence about the nature of the emails on the Wikileaks database was discovered. It provides more disturbing facts about how CROWDSTRIKE handled the Incident Response which led to the loss of over 44,000 emails. No one could have stolen the emails without CROWDSTRIKE permitting them to be stolen unless their software is totally unreliable. No emails really needed to be lost. Hopefully this part of the research will soon be over. It is hard to believe, but there is a lot more to be covered and more information being revealed weekly about all of it. Articles about who likely stole the emails and the murder of Seth Rich will eventually end the DNC Hack part of the election series. We will keep trying to add more interesting posts and features here in the meantime as personal obligations slow at the end of this month. Lots to do in May!
It has been longer than I thought since I last posted in here. I have been pretty busy, but not so busy that I couldn't have posted in here once or twice in February and March, but it has been a busy time with Easter, a professional seminar to attend for Continuing Professional Education points, and research into the various controversies surrounding the 2016 election. I thought the part about the alleged DNC hack was finished, but more information was stumbled upon, and two more articles will have to be posted about that, with the most interesting coming from Steven McIntyre's Climate reseach blog, which also digresses into other subjects, including the alleged DNC hack. His analysis on a surge in the daily volume of emails, which occurred during the Incident Reponse engagement by CROWDSTRIKE is very telling. The only way the thieves had anything of value to steal would have been the kind of vast expansion of the number of emails created from May 5 through June 10, 2016. The thing is, the Russians had no control over how many emails the DNC personnel sent and received. Someone had to tell the DNC employees that it would be desirable to write a lot of emails, including very embarrassing ones, as Russian hacker-spies watched them do it while CROWDSTRIKE did nothing to stop those same alleged Russian hackers from stealing all those new, and embarrassing, emails. We haven't been told everything about this, and certainly not through CROWDSTRIKE'S report. The DNC did not have to lose any damaging emails. You will be able to access that article on the Election Index page in a few days, along with an additional article under the Russian Collusion section about East-West trade during the Cold War. This article deals with the construction of factories in Russia for producing military vehicles of all kinds, along with how the Commerce and State Departments manipulate the definition of "Strategic Materials" to permit exports of technology that has both military and civilian uses.
The story about so many Hollywood figures showing up for the Golden Globes dressed in all black to honor the movement of women to have their accusations against sexual harassment in the workplace heard was a big story this morning. I think it will only take this clip from one of Nicolas Cage's movies to express how a lot of the women felt when they decided to take this kind of action. In the meantime, some of the attacks on former powerhouses of Hollywood would never have been done just a few years ago because of the entrenched power in that industry.
Again, I haven't gotten in here as often as in the past to post articles and photos in this blog, including being late with replacing the Autumn photo with a winter photo, and no references to any of the holidays. I was concentrating on working on the 2016 Election Blog and getting ready for Christmas, followed by an injury to my right eye that required laser surgery last week. I can't guarantee multiple postings in here every week with the other parts of this growing site taking up time and resources, but I'll try to get in here more often. I definitely plan more "Jukebox" posts with links to songs up at YouTube, for example.
A few hours ago, I got done participating in the Oil City YMCA's annual "Turkey Trot" 5K race. There were runners and walkers in the race, and I was a runner as my aging feet and ankles don't like a lot of running right now. It poured a cold rain throughout the event. I read the weather reports and knew about the rain, so chose my Desert Storm parka to try to keep out the rain. I tested it early in the morning, and the rain seemed to bead up on it like it was repelling the rain. It didn't. I was soaked through when I crossed the finish line. When the race first started, some experienced speed walkers, those funny looking racers in the Olympics, roared off the starting line and pulled away. At least two of them were older than I. The blacktop surface of the trail caused more impact and some stiffness in my lower back, so I moved onto the dirt road next to the track, which was legal, and began imitating the style of the speed walkers by moving my arms up higher, tucking them closer to my body, and shortening the swinging of the arms. All the changes increased my speed and enabled me to overtake several people who had passed me. Endorphins began to kick in, my lower back loosened, and the words, "I am a leaf on the wind," came in to my mind. I wound up taking second place in my age group, and got a nice medal for it.
Well, it's certainly been awhile since I posted in here the last time. We can look down from here and see it was about six weeks ago. The reason for this is, my project entitled "The Most Bizarre Presidential Election in the History of the United States" is having trouble being completed as new information has been pouring out rather than dribbling out as in the past. It is hard to keep up, and verbal and on-line discussions of the new evidence has taken up a lot of my time. I will set a link below to the main index page of that satellite site as it is being changed today. The first "matter" that commands attention is the subject of alleged Russian interference in the election campaign. That theory has been morphed completely by all the recent revelations, and that will be covered after the completion of the "Pied Piper Candidate Strategy," which will reveal how Donald Trump won the Republican nomination, and a new page dedicated to the night the Mainstream Media announced the death of Hillary Rodham Clinton, as if this campaign, which is still going on, could never get any more bizarre.
During the Cold War, a large faction of this nation urged the American people to be open to building friendly relations with the former Soviet Union, which, in case everyone forgot, we now call "Russia." This faction, and a majority of the Mainstream Media, were consistent advocates for detente and peaceful co-existence with the Soviet Union and the Communist governments of Eastern Europe dominated by the Soviet Union. One aspect of this drive for peaceful co-existence was "East-West Trade." Trade with the former Soviet Union will be an important part of the series on the election as it has been documented that East-West trade was largely responsible for the construction of the Soviet Union's military-industrial complex, which still operates today in Vladimir Putin's Russia. The same faction that advocated the East-West trade, that resulted in US technology building entire industrial plants and complexes in the Soviet Union, now wants us to consider ourselves at war against a nation armed with our own technology. This industrial base, built on our technology, turned out such products as the ZIL line of Soviet Army trucks. The ZIL trucks were used to transport supplies and soldiers that traveled down the Ho Chi Minh trail to enable the North Vietnamese Army to kill our own men in Vietnam. One very recent documentary, hosted by distinguished actor Morgan Freeman, claims we are already at war with Russia, who will fight us with weapons built with our own technology. I want an explanation for why we armed Russia ,when it was the Soviet Union, and why, all of a sudden, detente and peaceful co-existence with Russia are considered far more than undesirable to the very same people who armed Russia as the Soviet (Communist) Union for decades.
I think the people are entitled to know what real collusion with Russia looks like, so I will endeavor to show them by documenting the results of trade with the former Soviet Union, Russian weapon system by Russian weapon system. Some people have a lot of explaining to do, and it isn't just the people involved in Trump's campaign who happened to talk to the Russian Ambassador in some public setting. People in this government, dating back to the 1920s, have a lot of explaining to do about building and maintaining the Russian Military-Industrial Complex, against which we are told we are already at war.
Why document all of this? All I have to see is that long line of pre-schoolers being guided into our YMCA in the morning to see this as a duty. In the meantime, here is an example of the results of providing the technology, and even the technical training to the Russians, for operating and maintaining the Russian Military Industrial Complex. It's time to join reality, unpleasant as it might be. We created our own monsters because we didn't care enough to think about what was going on.
I took this photograph of a doe white-tailed deer from the main doorway of my apartment building. The doe has reclined on that spot before, but I didn't have access to a camera, and could only see the top part of her head when she was there in the summer. I had to look two or three times, and only her ears twitching gave her away as she was so well camouflaged in the brush. I think she might have been with her whole family some weeks before, a fawn and a buck prior to antler season, were browsing on the same spot. I stood on the bridge to the doorway and watched for about ten minutes while they dined on different plants. The deer were only about thirty yards away.
