Just Unbelievable

The Absolute Far-Frozen Limit

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Unaccustomed as I am now, or have any need to casually or professionally involved in the sewer that broadcast television has become in the last decade or two, I still manage to find out about some of the most egregious and offensive violations of good taste, good sense, and good manners, thanks to the internet like Stephen Colbert’s tasteless and degrading monologue regarding President Trump more than a week ago. There are plenty of viewers and listeners who, like me, are of a conservative-slash-libertarian inclination, and unlike me do still watch mainstream broadcast news and entertainment. They do take note of these offenses, and post, tweet and comment about them. Since the election of Donald Trump against all expectations to the high office of president, an astonishingly large number of public personalities have gone and continue to go stark raving nuts.

People in the entertainment business seem to be worse-affected, although a couple of Democratic Party politicians like Maxine Waters come close. While Maxine Waters’ unhinged blatherings should only be a matter of concern for those fools in her district who repeatedly return her to national office … the equally unhinged blatherings of figures who for some reason have a pulpit in the world of popular entertainment are somewhat more worrisome. Like the aforementioned Colbert, who is alleged to be a comedian. Honestly, I can’t judge whether he is or not a comedian, since I haven’t watched an episode of the Late Show in a dog’s age but his unsavory blast of commentary which has ruffled feathers in my conservo-libertarian corner of the blogosphere has left the commetariant decidedly unamused.

So Steven Colbert’s monologue has drawn some comment here and there. No, I don’t think that he will be fired for it; a slap on the wrist from the FCC may be about the most penalty that he will suffer. He is, after all, one of those anointed and set into a place in the high firmament of big media entertainment, an establishment which will roll over and go hard-left, rather than admit that … oh, hey -they have insulted, alienated, and pissed off at least half of their audience, the consumers of their product. Obviously, it must be more important to entertainers like Colbert to go along with the popular crowd in demonstrations of contempt for Trump and those who voted for him. Which brings me to the aspect of this which I find to be the most depressing the motivation for these displays of contempt … no, not only contempt, but outright hatred. The anger and frustration, boiling over. Those of us who voted Trump (often with reluctance and reservation) did not obey the instructions of the elite, and this willful disobedience on our part has maddened them beyond all normal conventions of civility and rational thought. They are choking on their rage and hatred. And so it spills out in a tidal wave like Colbert’s infamous monologue.

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The state of state surveillance technology

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All the discussion of the Trump “wiretapping” seems to assume that there are targets of surveillance. I thought that had passed away years ago and that NSA was simply capturing all transmissions in the ether, converting them from voice to text and storing both in a searchable data base. While additional land lines may be intercepted, the vast majority of signals are now airborne at some point so the NSA has access to virtually all electronic communication, foreign and domestic. Likewise, they do not, except in extraordinary circumstances, have acres of analysts sitting in cubes listening to conversations in real time. Instead, software constantly crawls the text database for terms of interest or manually input searches, such as the names of everyone on the Trump transition team. This is how team 0bama got the dirt that has been leaked to the press.

Politics is now under the influence of those at NSA with search authorization much more than the Kremlin, except to the extent they have comparable capabilities. I suspect the Kremlin has comparable intellectual capabilities but less access to transmissions and even less processing bandwidth. Given the acceptance of the loss of privacy by the facebook generation, this can only expand. And to think that only 80 years ago a Secretary of State could opine that “Gentlemen do not read each others mail.” Things have changed, and once again, not for the better.

Got that off my chest. Now if only the tin foil would stop irritating my scalp.

Outrageous But Not Surprising

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If it serves the cause it can’t be illegal.
 

So Don’t Turn Your Back On It …

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For a moment, as the saying used to go, when I was in. The first part of that truism was, “The military will take care of you.” This bitter wisdom is now being discovered anew by a number California National Guard troops, who when they were offered bonuses for re-upping ten years ago, accepted the bonus, reupped and served … and ooops, now it turns out that they weren’t qualified or eligible for said bonus, and the Big Green Military Machine wants the money back. With interest and penalties, it would appear. The Big Military Administrative Machine writes and enforces the rules to suit the needs of the machine a thing which is screamingly obvious to anyone who ever signed a contract of any sort with the Big Military Administrative Machine. (It was always a point of bitter observation to us overseas, that as the dollar-to-local-currency exchange rate rose or dropped, the military paymaster’s adjustment for that exchange rate lagged or sped up in a manner which invariably screwed the military member living on the local economy. The Big Military Administrative Machine will have their pound of flesh, regardless… And it will not favor the individual military member.)

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Her’s on First!

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The latest updates to his Twitter account comes after the star spoke out in defense of his wife Kim Kardashian’s stepfather Caitlyn – after the transgender star was attacked following her appearance at Ye’s listening party on Friday.

(source)