Happy Rockhouse New Year - Silas Scarborough Rides the Dragon (video)

If there was any doubt about the purple feathers, the video will settle it.

Happy New Year to you wherever you are.  I figure a fine way to greet the New Year is riding a dragon so here goes.



The reverb is too heavy and all kinds of things are wrong with it but recording feels extremely damn good and it felt especially damn good simply to play at all.  Strength goes up and down for who knows what reason but right now it's up and I'm rolling with it.

Thanks to all have contributed to getting things this way and that goes to every piece from pulling the desk together to pulling myself together to make it happen.  Everything that helped make any of that happen also helped make this happen.  The best way to thank you is to shut up and play so I did and it feels just swell.

Mystery Lady, I hope the outfit lives up to the standard!  (larfs)


The video did catch some twinkling from the Galaxy Guitar and there wasn't a lot but it was still cool to see it.


The second-hand tux and the shirt fit surprisingly well but it would have been better to have another half inch on the neck of the shirt.  I gave up on trying to button it and thanks to Yevette for fighting it into position plus putting my jewel into that position as well.  You can see that precious gem a little bit in the video.


The object wasn't to model the Aging Androgyne with the outfit but rather the Aging Geek Wearing an Outfit Which Doesn't Mean Anything Anymore ... plus I think it looks kind of cool so who cares if it means anything.

I don't know what I could ever do with the purple feather boa after this but I'm kind of partial to the hat.  The RayBans look cool but I couldn't see the keys on the keyboard too much and there were troubles with the Galaxy Guitar that way as well but I could turn to get more light on her.

The lights really sucked since they were infernally bright and they blasted right into my face.  The RayBans were for the affectation but they actually served a purpose as well.  I can drop each light to half intensity so it might be worth a try like that although suiting up each time ain't goin' happen.


The second-hand tux needs another go since you can't really see it too much.  That would be better with available light and playing something more 'tuxish' or some such.


Everybody needs a little dragon riding at least once in a while.

Working on Bringing Some New Years Vibratory Goodness from the Rockhouse

The Silas is not suited up for this as yet but there was a track recorded just now as a test to validate the audio recording aspect since that's separate from the cameras and their recording.  The cameras and the audio later get merged and synced in Final Cut.  The cameras bring their own audio but I ditch that after the tracks are synced so only the audio from the mixer ends up live.

That track recorded well and I tweaked the levels on the mixer just a tad so it's ready for another go.

I tried a green light but the purple hat just turned black.  Now it's making blue and red and that result is much better.  That amplifies the purple whereas my thinking was it would wash the color out.


A bit of camera twiddling is needed for the next bit so I can get things framed as much as possible.  I'm wearing pajama pants with this tux or I will be when I suit up but the camera doesn't need to know that.


(time passes)

I got a second light down from the truss and, remarkably enough, without any additional orthopedic damage to my corpus.  That gives a lot of strong purple in the combination of blue and red so there's plenty of light this time.

There's no plan to suit up until the last millisecond since I don't want to be pushing buttons at that point.


(time passes)

It looks like time to go for it.  Time to suit up and record something.

What's Hot on the Blog 12/31

Entry	Pageviews
"The Lobster" Flew Right Over My Head Dec 31, 2016	40
Putin Stays Cool While Obama Goes Full P.T. Barnum... Dec 31, 2016	38
Specific Ways Russia Today Gives the Only Truthful... Dec 31, 2016	37
Nostalgia of a Mainframe Computer Kind Dec 31, 2016	37
What's Hot on the Blog 12/30 Dec 30, 2016	34
Possible New Years Video in Motion Dec 30, 2016	32
One of Our Top Priorities - Our Revolution Dec 31, 2016	28
Racism Against Muslims is Bad Business Dec 31, 2016	25
"War Dogs" Was Based on a True Story Dec 31, 2016	16
Thanks for the Memories Dec 30, 2016, 2 comments	13

The Lobster - a novel movie and wickedly dark but I had some trouble with the dialog

Putin Stays Cool - he has shown remarkable composure despite continuous provocation

Specific Ways - a review of some of the major stories covered by RT which MSM ignored or covered poorly

Nostalgia - take a look around a 70s computer machine room and some of us spent quite a bit of time hanging around such places

What's Hot

Possible - the bath step is completed but, wtf, it's Saturday anyway and cameras are generally positioned.  There are some more checks to run but things still looked dialed for shooting a video this evening although using available light is out.  I'm thinking green light will make purple go berserk and that's highly desirable.

One - priority from Our Revolution in combatting racism

Racism - it's simply bad business when cooperation makes big bucks

War Dogs - it's a twisted story and something of an expose although highly-stylized

Thanks - this was for the giggle and also to test whether Ithaka links were picking up advertising when they went to Twitter.  The latter is confirmed corrected and thanks to Kannafoot for that.

"War Dogs" Was Based on a True Story

Cadillac Man recommended "War Dogs" and likely part of his interest is because it was based on actual history rather than being entirely a Hollywood fiction.  The play is around two young Jewish boys one of whom is a regular kid and the other is a wise guy.  They had been best friends in school but had drifted apart for regular things and wise guy things.

When the wise guy returned, he introduced the regular kid to arms trafficking and from that you know the outcome is inevitable; they're going to get busted eventually.  The story in between is something of a Hollywood documentary of their descent into progressively more nefarious ways as they landed larger and larger Pentagon orders.

Note:  much of the movie is, in fact, fiction and Hollywood fluff but the foundation of the story about the pair as arms merchants appears to be true.


The story reminded me of "Blow" with Johnny Depp playing the life of George Jung, one of the biggest coke dealers of the 70s / 80s.  He was living so large but was finally busted hard and his life disintegrated.  He was in the penitentiary until 2014 but he was back in the slammer in 2016 for a parole violation which was minor (i.e. he went to San Diego for four hours for a speaking gig but did not have permission of his parole officer).  That strikes as extremely harsh relative to the transgression but so it goes.


The young War Dogs go off on some wild rides during the course of the movie and eventually they get busted hard.  The wise guy gets four years and the regular kid gets house arrest for nine months.

The ending is soft since the Really Big Trafficker shows his gratitude for staying silent about him and gives the Regular Kid maybe a million dollars, a whole lot of money.  Presumably the Regular Kid lived happily ever after since he's the one married to Ana de Armas and leaving her for jail would be about as bleak as life can get.

Have fun in jail, Mister Big.


Cadillac Man was likely recommending the movie for the depiction of the wildly corrupt process of Pentagon procurement.  The Wise Guy and the Regular Kid showed even kids can play it and make enormous sums of money.  We can probably surmise the Pentagon has done nothing about that since the movie was released.  That was only in 2016 but the Pentagon moves so slowly it probably doesn't make any difference.

That the Pentagon does business with private arms traffickers is just about as scandalous as it's possible to get with so-called defense procurement.  There's no editorial to write when they're actively sustaining one of the most evil businesses in the world.

Racism Against Muslims is Bad Business

The title sounds like a simplistic platitude from a bumper sticker but that observation doesn't obviate the truth of it.

There are many humanistic reasons for rejection of racism but they rarely penetrate the business world where the only thing which matters to them is making money.  That's not necessarily a bad thing when Trump's cozying up to the Kremlin makes it far more likely America will do business with Russia rather than mindlessly continuing to provoke Putin into conflict as has been Obama's wont.


That Trump does not demonstrate the same wisdom with regard to Muslims doesn't tell us much about his business dealings but it says volumes about how much his platform is all over the place.  Harassment of Russians is bad business while harassment of Muslims is good business.  That makes no sense whatsoever.


Regardless of whether you voted for him, I doubt any of the regulars feel defensive regarding either of those statements.  There's no need to itemize a list of his positions such that we can review at the end whether he is more likely to be a benefit or a douche as that assessment may be entertaining but it will mean precisely nothing.

As nearly as I can tell with Trump supporters of the Ithaka ilk, the support is based on doing good business and the support isn't so much driven by the secondary positions of legalized morality which have confounded the political process for decades.  Therefore, we don't need to review those types of matters either.


In general, the mantra appears to be 'don't spend more than you make.'  That paradigm is mandatory for personal life or they turn the dogs out but there's all manner of sophisticated economic theory which rationalizes why it's different for the state.  However, none of that sweet sophistry does anything to obviate one reality:  interest payments on twenty trillion in debt.

Therefore, I assume we're generally in agreement that indiscriminate spending only compounds the problem with more of the same of what we see today and twenty trillion in debt can't possibly do anything good.


The national debt went over one trillion for the first time under Reagan and, in thirty-six years since, the debt has climbed another nineteen trillion.  We have heard for all that time of how there was a financial Renaissance as a result of Reagan but all we saw was a Black Friday rush like the Pentagon was buying for a singularly-violent Christmas and that's continued every day since.  We hear almost every day about an insane new weapon and many of them don't even work (e.g. USS Zumwalt, multiple new littoral ships, F-35, etc, etc).

Trump has been mixed on what he will do about that.  He's got an avaricious Chamber of Horrors on his Cabinet and almost all of them are corporate mercs.  Likely they will do business as they always have and that business hasn't done anything good for the people on the bottom in many years.

Ed:  why should it do anything good for the people on the bottom?

The tribe takes care of its own or it's just a mob and America aspires to be more than that.


Repeating a previous disclaimer:  we don't expect the richie riches to give away all their money to poor people but we do expect investment in, for example, Hispanic communities and their businesses because their success is everyone's success.  They pay their taxes, the boat rises, etc, etc.

It's only about doing good business.

One of Our Top Priorities - Our Revolution

Alan -

If Donald Trump had his way, he'd make discrimination the law of the land.

During his campaign he supported banning all Muslims from entering the U.S., and last week he defended his plan to create a national registry of Muslims who live here.

Trump has said he wants to deport millions of undocumented immigrants who call this country home. He plans to reverse President Obama's executive action that provides relief for people like me who were brought to the U.S. as children.

Trump also wants to expand the use of stop-and-frisk, a practice that is essentially an open invitation for police officers to racially profile people of color.

We must do everything we can to protect communities that will be targeted by the racist and xenophobic Trump administration. That's why one of Our Revolution's top priorities in 2017 will be defending the rights of those who will be most vulnerable during Trump's presidency.

Will you make a $36 contribution before tonight's end-of-year fundraising deadline to support Our Revolution's work protecting immigrants, Muslims, and anyone else who becomes a target under Trump?

Our Revolution will be working at the state and local level to implement policies to keep immigrant families together, establish fair policing practices and allow all people to feel safe in their communities.

When Trump tries to divide us and force millions of our sisters and brothers to live in fear, it will be up to us to stand up for and defend the rights of those who will be harmed by the policies of his administration.

Sanctuary cities and states – places that protect undocumented immigrants from deportation – will be a central focus of our work. By working with grassroots organizations, we will ensure the existing protections granted by sanctuaries are kept in place while adopting those same protections in other cities and states across the country.

Will you make a $36 contribution right now, ahead of tonight's end-of-year fundraising deadline, to help Our Revolution form the resistance movement against Trump?

Every contribution we receive will send a powerful message that our movement is prepared to fight back against Trump's destructive plans for our country.

Thank you for adding yours before tonight's midnight deadline.

In solidarity,

Erika Andiola
Political Director
Our Revolution

CONTRIBUTE

Putin Stays Cool While Obama Goes Full P.T. Barnum

Obama's expulsion of thirty-five Russian diplomats based on charges of Russian hacking is just more of his schoolboy theatrics which have nothing to do with reality.

There was more of it today regarding a laptop belonging to a power company which was found to be carrying some malware.  Of course that was blamed on Russian hackers but only by the FBI / DHS and, presumably, the CIA.  (RT:  ‘Russian hackers’ penetrate US power grid with ‘outdated Ukrainian malware’)

Meanwhile, a number of IT specialists that have analyzed the code and other evidence published by the US government are questioning whether it really proves a Russian connection, let alone a connection to the Russian government.  Wordfence, a cybersecurity firm that specializes in protecting websites running WordPress, a PHP-based platform, published a report on the issue on Friday.

Wordfence said they had traced the malware code to a tool available online, which is apparently funded by donations, called P.A.S. that claims to be “made in Ukraine.” The version tested by the FBI/DHS report is 3.1.7, while the most current version available on the tool’s website is 4.1.1b.

“One might reasonably expect Russian intelligence operatives to develop their own tools or at least use current malicious tools from outside sources,” the report says.

- RT

Putin didn't do anything in reaction to Obama and this further clarifies his role as a leader and not just a politician.

Where this gets comical is in seeing Fox News trying to slap Trump down by heavily criticizing Obama's reactions to the so-called hacking because they weren't sufficient.  John McCain even said this fantasy hacking is an act of war.  Tip:  that lunatic seriously needs a muzzle.

Meanwhile, Trump was saying Putin's reaction was very smart since he didn't respond to Obama with theatrics of his own.  I agree with Trump but neither agrees with Fox News.

It looks like the Republican team has a bit of a problem with a sticky wicket.

Ed:  what's a sticky wicket?

It's something to do with cricket and you don't want one.  Beyond that, no idea.

In their own political concert of chaos, the Democrats are trying to paint Obama like Francis of Assisi but they have only shown thus far, that sorry remaining lot of the Democrats, they never read the news in any depth.

The lack of awareness of anything much in the news is being generically relegated, here at the Rockhouse, to the Facebook Effect due to cloistering of people with like beliefs and general filtering of news by the Facebook software.  Facebook gets tagged the most with that since it's where I see it the most.  Twitter and Google+ are much more wide open than that.

The determination to provoke conflict coming from what's left of the Republicans and what's left of the Democrats isn't hard to see but what absurdity prompts it when anyone can see such a war cannot be won.  Even if it could be won, what does anyone hope to gain by it.  Even if all of Russia becomes an American colony, most of the wealth coming from it would still go to the heavy heavies in Russia who run it just as it does now over there and also here in America so what's the difference.

How about throwing in a twist with the Bilderberg Group and that usually comes with a hefty dose of anti-Semitism in talking of domination by the Rothschilds, etc as part of the Great Jewish Conspiracy to take over the world or some such.

Whatever else the Bilderberg Group may be, it's not stupid and deliberately driving toward a war makes no sense.  There's an inconceivable amount of money to be made in peace if we can only demilitarize and it shouldn't be hard to effect demilitarization since relatively few benefit in large riches from it.  The mystery continues hanging of why the arms racing doesn't stop and why hardly anyone suggests it should.

The general cop is the media manipulates the news so much it engenders uncontrollable fear in people and they stop thinking straight.  It's a novel cop and it's even true MSM tries to do that but the majority of people are not stupid or the IQ bell curve means nothing.  Why should they fall for it.

We're extremely glad Putin stays cool.  There's really no other move when everyone else goes full Luna la la.

Nostalgia of a Mainframe Computer Kind

It's been over eight years since touching a mainframe and I do miss some aspects of working with IBM big systems but more for the concepts than the actual tasks.  Mystery Lady is familiar with some of this as well because she was in the nefarious world of mainframes prior to becoming a nurse.  As with me, neither of us really had any business in data processing but, Lennon told us how it goes, you make plans and life happens.

Here's an Amdahl V/6 and this one was a legend back in the days of SWORCC (i.e. SouthWestern Ohio Regional Computing Center) which was a cooperative alliance between the University of Cincinnati and Miami University which was located within about thirty miles in Oxford, Ohio.  This was long before there was any type of Internet connectivity so it received quite a bit of attention at that time.

Mystery Lady may remember the row of windows from the main conference room which overlooked the machine room and gave that great feeling of working in a fish bowl.  There was one situation in which I was in the machine room because the sysfrogs would pour in there when some type of problem arose since then we could hang about looking concerned while we dutifully fixed it.

During the course of that situation, there was a group of the heavy heavies in the conference room and one of them was VP Mark Ullman, the Great God of the Money.  I was summoned from the problem-fixing situation to the conference room where Ullman informed me smoking was not advised in the machine room.

My temptation was to fire back at him, "Well, I tell you what, grandpa.  How about I stay out here to smoke the cigarette while you trundle your ass in there to fix the fucking computer, alright?  How does that work for you, sugar?"

My ol' Dad would have kind of dug it because Ullman was a useless prick but my ol' Dad was the one who got me the job and that would have brought big stink on him if I had said it.  There are moments of discretion in my life, not many but some.

That's the system console and parts of the actual mainframe are behind it.  The floor is raised for air circulation and also for exceptionally-large cables.  The ceiling for the machine room was also suspended for similar reasons but there was no chance the big cables could go up there.

The darker unit on the desk was only used for storing files, etc but the doors to the lighter ones on the right were significant.  If those were open, that meant hardware troubles and big ones.

Note:  the above is not the SWORCC system but rather representative kit from Amdahl.


I'm sure Mystery Lady remembers hours and hours sitting in front of that damnable console where one of the biggest responsibilities was writing on paper labels the details about whatever had been written to a tape.  Such messages came constantly and that was a large part of the life of a mainframe console operator.  It was cool to be running the main console since that made you the shift's Captain Kirk but it also meant writing zillions of those infuriating labels.


In many of the older sci fi movies, old IBM tape drives were shown to demonstrate the computer was 'thinking' and the directors did that because the computers otherwise didn't do anything you can watch.  Sitting there watching tapes spin was the next best thing so hum a few bars.

The comely lass shown is what was often known as a 'tape ape' since her job was to sit by a console to wait for messages to fetch another tape from the library to mount it on the appropriate tape drive.  This would continue without interruption through the entire shift so operators almost always hated being assigned to the tape room.

You see above the tape drives where some tapes are stacked and those are either tapes which have not yet been filed back in the library or they are required based on some job's runbook which was a paper document describing a job's resource requirements.  Those resources could be fetched in advance to try to reduce run time by ensuring the resources were quickly available.  Of course this sounds primitive; it was.

Long hair and bell bottoms were still happening and that's the best girls ever looked.  I'm not biased on this in any way of course.  Her clothes do fit nicely, tho, don't they, Roger Dodger.

Tip:  cool the jets, Rog.  She's retired by now.

A standing joke back then was about getting into data processing to meet girls since, apart from a few rare exceptions, there were none.  I did, tho, and we got married.


There was an early attempt to get away from tapes through CDC's VDAM unit (i.e. Variable Direct Access Method or some such) and the device contained a number of tapes on cartridges which were more or less cylindrical and about five inches long.  A robot arm selected whichever cartridge was required and would then mount it for access by the application.  This was in the early 80s when such automated technology was in its infancy and it had one tiny problem:  it didn't work too well.

Bill Emmons was charged with the responsibility for supporting that horrible beast and he would invariably discover after arriving at work there were cartridges all over the floor of the device where the robot arm had dropped them.  Whoopsie.

His wig flipped into outer space not so long after that and he ended up preaching in West Virginia somewhere.  I swear this is true.  Later he decided playing with hilljacks and snakes really wasn't such a great idea and he came back to data processing.  The business takes all sorts, man (larfs).

Then there was Radar who had a year's supply of socks because he believed it was more efficient to save them up and do one annual sock wash.  The man had a Masters in Mathematics.


Maybe some of you codgers actually remember this time and one aspect sysfrogs loved was wearing hideous ties.  It was required to wear a tie but they didn't say what it had to look like so sysfrogs enjoyed finding real horrors.  Anything which violated any standard of style in fashion was immediately a perfect selection.  We were such rebels, weren't we.

Ed:  sure, real scofflaws


Here's an analogous IBM system from somewhat later but not too much.

This system shows varying levels of sophistication and maybe amusing to you is the device in the center just beyond the console is a card reader.  You would put a physical stack of punched cards into the hopper and it would read them while making a sound somewhat like when a bank money machine counts paper currency.  Welcome to the new age of mainframes, huh?  (larfs)

My early programming was with punched cards and I had the latest program I had written in the pocket of my jacket.  I was already enthusiastic about riding motorcycles back then and, during one glorious corner the cards flew out of my pocket, resulting in an outstanding imitation of a snowstorm.  There wasn't even a point in turning around.  That program was never coming back.


Neither of these systems is a particularly big one and their computer power is laughable relative to even small devices today but they were formidable at that time.  You hear little about IBM mainframe processing but it lives today with z/OS still running strongly.  I hear IBM is not doing as well as it once did but that's just a general vibe and I don't follow news on it.  Elimination of IBM mainframes as a platform seems unlikely to happen altogether due to the staggering volume of software which is written in COBOL for business applications.

Who knows what elicited it but I got curious as to whether FORTRAN survives.  My interest was not in scientific software so I used FORTRAN only long enough to get the hang of writing it and then I moved along to other languages but I was almost delighted to see the language still thrives although it wasn't entirely clear on which platforms.  It looks like it definitely plays in huge ways for supercomputer applications such as weather forecasting but those machines usually aren't IBM although I have no idea what became of Cray, etc.


For today's systems, the entire mainframe is about the size of refrigerator and the operator never touches tape or disks anymore.  The VDAM mentioned above became a device twenty feet across and eight or nine feet tall.  You absolutely had to be outside it before it went online as it was the said the robotic arm(s) could easily kill you.

These days the computer has receded so much most have almost no contact with one.  There are desktop machines which have some fascinating powers but they don't matter much relative to systems which support an entire continent, etc.

There's no need for a then and now contrast since the pictures show you how distant that environment was.  Of course it's changed a lot since then.

It's evolution in action, you know.

"The Lobster" Flew Right Over My Head

"The Lobster" was a recommendation from Cat and all of her recommendations have turned out to be five star but I failed on this one.  The movie may be some of the most twisted cinema you will ever see and the concept is an amusing outrage in review of what happens when long-term human relationships are mandatory.  The story is just about as dark as it's possible to get but it's funny in the pragmatic view of such wicked behavior to enforce the standard.

If our hero does not find a new woman at the camp for people with broken relationships, he can choose the animal he will become and the state will turn him into one.  Our hero chose to become a lobster and comedy ensues although it's definitely not the Abbot and Costello kind.

My problem with the movie was substantial difficulty in understanding English when it's spoken with a strong French accent.  This is not much different from my difficulty understanding English when spoken by someone with an accent from western Scotland and they I can't understand at all.

"The Lobster" may get another go since it's savage with views of human relationships, human sexuality, etc so it's worth the time but I'm mixed as to whether a different result will come.


"War Dogs" is a recommendation from Cadillac Man and this isn't at all what I anticipated since my thought was two old geezer war dogs maybe something like "Second-hand Lions" but that's not the story at all.  The heroes are international arms traffickers and there's a compelling reason to watch since Ana de Armas plays the wife of the junior protege for the trafficking and she's stunningly beautiful.

The movie emphasizes from the top it's based on a true story and just now I have the feeling it may be like "Blow" and our hero is not going to come anything good through his trafficking.

Note:  "Blow" was only a tragedy because Johnny Depp could charm a snake.  That was a fair play for the role since international dealers can charm snakes anyway.

More to come with "War Dogs" and if it were being reviewed solely on the basis of hot babes then it would already have taken the biscuit but that won't do it by itself.

She does look dangerous, tho, doesn't she, cabron.

Specific Ways Russia Today Gives the Only Truthful News

The disparity in coverage between what's become colloquially known as MSM (i.e. Mainstream Media) and Russia Today has various shocking manifestations and, in part, these demonstrate what really jacked the American election and it had nothing to do with Russian hackers.  (RT:  Plight of western Aleppo, Dakota pipeline protests & Flydubaigate: Underreported stories of 2016)


The Plight of Western Aleppo

The way civilians were bombed and slaughtered by airstrikes in Aleppo is one of the prime reasons Obama will burn for his cynicism and his lying.  Obama and Biden / Obama and Clinton are just as culpable for war crimes as Bush and Cheney and there was no significant functional difference between those administrations; there wasn't a shred of morality in either of them.

Obama's aggression in the Middle East has never been more than the international version of a drive-by shooting in which America repeatedly bombs whomever it likes and then kicks back to make up stories about who was killed that time although they almost invariably smoke another 'high-ranking' ISIS or al Qaeda strategist although we notice their strategy has never been significantly affected by it.


What Podesta Emails on WikiLeaks Actually Contained

John Podesta is one of the most notoriously wicked people from the 2016 campaign and that was revealed clearly in his emails which appeared via WIKILeaks.  Part of the deflection of the damage to Clinton's campaign from those emails came from blaming Russian hackers for it even after it was shown, time and again, the leaks actually came from insiders from Clinton's power structure.

One example of that was Podesta's specific suggestion to ‘Slaughter Donald for Putin bromance’: #Podesta15 emails reveal ISIS strategy diversion for Clinton.  Nothing they were saying was true and it was all no more than political expediency to them to say whatever they liked.

There is no regret whatsoever in the Rockhouse regarding Hillary Clinton's necessary defeat.  I am dead meat from privatization of VA and I know it but that was necessary to prevent Clinton from doing even worse by getting us all killed through deliberate and unwarranted provocation of Russia.


What Bernie Sanders Rallies Really Looked Like

There's no surprise to anyone except social network dullards in the way news of Bernie Sanders rallies was blocked from MSM coverage.  This was the single biggest distortion of Election 2016 and it affected the outcome far more than ludicrous fantasies about Russian hacking which were never about anything more than covering Clinton's incompetence and blind ambition.

How Yemen was Devastated by Saudi Coalition Strikes

The slaughter in Yemen of civilians has been yet another of the most vile aspects of Obama's administration and also that of Cameron which was followed by May insofar as they supplied weapons to Saudi Arabia to effect the slaughter and then behaved as if they had nothing to do with it.

That kind of profiteering is something which normally would be prosecuted to preserve America's name and integrity but not with Obama, Clinton, and Biden.

What Caused US Nationwide Prison Strike

This reporting didn't happen at all on MSM and, again, Russia Today was the only one showing any journalistic responsibility.  The horror and corruption of the for-pay prison system is routinely shuffled out of sight so nothing is ever done to remedy that awful situation.

Why Snowden Called New UK Snooping Law ‘Scary’

Coverage of any aspect of the Edward Snowden's story has been a travesty in cynical journalism since he's one of the few honest and really intelligent men who ever had anything to do with Washington and the state did everything possible to slaughter him.  His continuing honesty on such matters is a threat to the cynicism and corruption of the militarized states in America and England where they have reviled him throughout while never changing anything about the illegal behavior which he protested in the first place.

#Flydubaigate: Why Airline Pilots May Fall Asleep Mid-Flight

The point of this story was that Dubai Airlines isn't the only one of the major carriers with abusive procedures regarding employees and it highlights also some things America does right in terms of oversight of flight conditions such that whistleblowers have an avenue to pursue such charges whereas pilots for Dubai and elsewhere do not.

Dishonorable Mention is Also Needed for the Absence of Responsible Coverage of Netanyahu's Behavior

There is an active proposal at this minute to annex the Left Bank in yet another example of Israel's outrageous and illegal imperialism and yet MSM treats Netanyahu like Snow White despite his dispatch of attack helicopters to waste Palestinian civilians which he has done multiple times.

There's plenty more since the scandal of MSM journalism is so pervasive it's like the Payola scandal for music DJs in the Fifties which meant only the artists preferred by the record companies ever had a chance.  Send a check to MSM journalists and they will write whatever you like while pitching oh-so-convincingly that every word of it is true.

The stories above are a significant part of the reason I've largely abandoned Facebook since all of the stories result only in defensiveness from such people and never give evidence of inductive reasoning in them.

Lotho suggested I'm a televangelist and I'm not defensive because it amuses me.  There is a difference between televangelists and I since I'm not trying to convert anyone.  If people are not aware of the items listed above then I'm not prepared to deal with them because their intellectual laziness feeds their own ignorance and that's not anything I can fix.

My favorite was when they were supporting Clinton and also the defense of Standing Rock which left the temptation to ask who do you think let it ever get to this point.  Clinton was strongly in favor of fracking and Big Oil and yet her supporters thought it was possible to boost her as part of the campaign to support the water protectors at Standing Rock.  Ergo, they don't think much and hence the suggestion there is little or no capability toward inductive reasoning in that population.

Did Tinkerbell send the government forces to attack at Standing Rock?  Did the Fairy Godmother do it?

How about Rocket J. Squirrel did it?

So, you know, where's Bullwinkle??