Category: Government

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I’m considering…

Back on Dec 14th I was pretty angry. If only I’d know that Jan 6th would bring white hot rage, I’d have waited.

Given the way Jan 7th has gone with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and many others silencing the Sitting President of the United States I don’t believe I can be true to myself or my core beliefs by silencing this blog…

I’m going to chew on it for a few more days and depending on how much risk I’m willing to take, I may restore all the previous posts. I’m considering opening the blog to other vetted authors as well. I’ll see about that in due time.

The other half is playing a prayer service to ask for peace and healing, tonight.

That got me thinking. The congregation is Jewish and while I applaud the basic tenet of praying for peace and healing the decidedly liberal bent of the congregation made the following questions pop to mind.

These questions I think can rightfully be asked of many congregations, regardless of their faith, holding similar prayer services tonight.

Where were you when for four solid years conservatives were canceled, harassed, called names, treated as some disease?

Where were your prayers as unthinkable hate was directed at The President and anyone associated with him?

How can you in good conscience be praying for healing and peace while you sat idly by, silently watching as people on the so called “Left” engaged in hurtful rhetoric that caused anyone not firmly with the left to duck and self censor out of fear of losing their jobs, or their homes, or sadly, in some cases their lives.

The time to have spoken out was when you saw this vile hatred spewed at people who had dissenting opinions. Your speaking out then wouldn’t have been in favor of opinions that you disagreed with, your voices would have been raised against the fundamental wrong of allowing people to be hated, hounded, and continuously wounded, because they dared question any established narrative.

The time for you to have raised your voices was when you saw rioting and looting in the name of justice and equality. Many of you did speak out to the protesters saying that the violence must stop. But few of you addressed those on the “Left” whose reporting and rhetoric continued to fan the flames of unrest.

You didn’t speak out about the suppression of free speech until your churches, synagogs, temples and mosques were closed. Even then you only spoke about how this affected your worship, you failed to look at the bigger picture.

In the case of the Jewish community, the lack of response is particularly troubling. Some of the reports I’ve seen today should be sending you to pray. Politicians & Pundits calling for trials and in some cases executions of Trump supporters.

Your elders have seen this before. Perhaps you should heed the bitter lessons they have to teach.

Look at the vengeance Nancy Pelosi is attempting to mete out. If she can’t get Trump removed via the 25th amendment, she’s going to impeach him… In the last 14 days of his presidency? What is that, except petty vengeance?

America watched as citizens entered the capital building. The news media and congress is aghast that such a thing could happen. But let me point out some very interesting points.

The building was only minimally damaged. It wasn’t burnt to the ground, or even set on fire. Pelosi’s office was a photo opportunity but again no real damage.

The left has engendered and fed the kind of anger displayed in average law-abiding Americans who just want answers to legitimate questions, of our courts, and our representatives. (It’s entirely reasonable to ask if voter fraud occurred.)

This is the first time Mail in voting has been used in our country on such a massive scale. It’s legitimate to at least question any irregularities.

Due to the dismissive attitude and childish name calling, shown to people who had legitimate concerns, I’d have expected for Pelosi’s office to have all the furniture thrown out the window, and the office itself burned. Yet that didn’t happen.

Contrast Washington D.C. yesterday with Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis over the Summer. State houses, Police Precincts, and Federal Buildings, were breached and firebombed. Oh and just to drive the point home, acts of violence in those cities were committed by the liberal left.

Then we have the young woman who was shot and died in the building and the 3 others who died during the protest. After almost a solid year of the police standing down and standing by while much worse transgressions were being committed, why would an unarmed protestor think they’d suddenly be met with deadly force?

The FBI is requesting any photos or video footage of the protestors so that they can be brought to swift and severe justice. Really? Now the FBI is going to prosecute? After literally doing nothing to protestors in Oregon who permanently blinded officers defending the Federal Building, this is a fair and just response?

One can only hope that those officers kissed their children as they slept and can remember those innocent faces in the darkness they’ll live in for the rest of their days.

Kyle Rittenhouse, Joe Biggs, several members of Proud Boys, other faith based groups, and many other “Average Citizens” face charges because they defended their lives, but the people that they defended themselves against, face no charges. How is it that all 3 of the men that Rittenhouse shot had criminal records? Doesn’t that speak to a disparity in the system? If the innocent cannot defend themselves without being arrested then there is no justice system.

That’s what so much of this is about. Justice is supposed to be blind, yet we’re seeing that it is not. Justice exists for the rich, the powerful, the criminal, But for average people, for victims, for those who just go about their daily lives… Not so much.

Churches, Synagogs, Mosques, and Temples, you go ahead and pray for peace and healing. But remember many of you have inflicted the hurt and pain, you’ve ignored the obvious until it arrived at your door.

I submit that you’re as culpable, as you believe Donald Trump, who you hate so much, is for the violence and rage.

It’s going to take a very long time for healing. It’s probably time we won’t have.

Just FYI, I didn’t vote for Trump OR Clinton in 2016. But I came to respect Trump because he is exactly what’s written on the tin. I’d much rather have a politician who is the same in office as they are on the campaign trail.

Can you say the same of Biden/Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, AOC, Omar, Talib, or any of our so called leaders?

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In theory I should be writing a blog today

IMG 1325Trouble is that I’ve become so disgusted by the news I can’t even look at it without going all rage monster.

So I’m not looking at it.

As far as what’s going on around here just a little yard work. 

I pruned the heck out of my apple tree. It responded by doing this.

I’m hoping that I’ll have normal sized apples this fall. Last year I have a ton of mini apples that turned into great apple butter & apple sauce. They weren’t all that good to eat due to the size.

The yard work has been good for my sense of wellbeing. 

I haven’t been able to plant anything though. Usually by this time of year the hardware store has nice plants that I incorporate into the landscape for the season.

This year due to the lockdown those plants aren’t available. So the yard may look a little more like the surface of the moon.

I’m also hesitant to plant anything because last year the County decided that a plant that had been in my yard since 1992 absolutely had to be removed. Suddenly this plant was the worst thing on the planet and they were threatening fines if I kept it.

I had to pay to have it removed.

But I noticed that other neighbors didn’t remove their versions of this plant, and they weren’t fined or asked to remove them.

The funny part of this is that the plant in my yard was no larger the 3ft by 3 feet and was at the outer edge of the yard bounded by the driveway and the street. It was also maintained to be no larger than 3”x3”. Ironically for that plant being such a fire hazard, when the house burned in 2008, all the plants survived!

I find that I’m losing interest in maintaining my yard and have considered just killing everything out front.

Every year, some bozo from the county comes around and bitches about something and start imposing fines. They claim it’s for fire control.

What pisses me off about it is that I’ve got more than the recommended defensive space around the house.

I moved here 70 miles outside LA, because I didn’t want anyone telling me what I could and couldn’t do on my own property. While I don’t have an HOA, I do have county busybodies telling me what I can do.

I’m considering putting a sign up in the yard this year. Something that says;

“Hey County, you’ve fucked up our street, your flood control project made things worse, you’re spending yet more money to build a higher bridge, (Which we told you to do 10 years ago, instead of your plan to build a sluice,) So fuck off! Leave me alone, don’t set foot on my property, and fuck your fines if you don’t like the plants in my yard!“

What burns me about this so much is that I worked and continue to work really hard to plant native plants in the yard. With just a few exceptions everything is drought resistant and native to this area.  I try to have something blooming year round. Natives can be very pretty and easy to care for.

But having to deal with annoying letters and threats of fines year after year and explaining what each plant in the yard is year after year is getting tiresome.

Which is why I’m considering a lunar surface model, at least in the front.

If I go that route, the sign in the front will read; “Dear neighbors, This Lunar surface representation courtesy of the County. I got tired of the threats.“

I could move a lot of the plants to the back, then install a wooden fence to prevent the county from seeing anything from the street. God forbid some bozo would actually have to get out of their car and look.

Maybe I’m just reacting to the lockdown, Nope! I’m reacting the constant erosion of my rights by power mad jackasses who decide arbitrarily what is for my own good.

I’m really thinking it’s time for me to leave kommifornia. The way the news and politics are going here in the USA, maybe it’s time to ask about becoming a citizen of another country entirely.

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Bwhahahahah! There are some things that tickle the hell out of me!

CNN: Wanted: People who know a half century-old computer language so states can process unemployment claims.

willcodeforfood.jpegI saw this and just about laughed myself stupid.

I thought, “New Jersey is going to have to check homeless camps, ask old bartenders, check with real estate agents, lawyers, and gas station attendants.”

That’s where most of the old COBOL or FORTRAN programmers ended up, all of whom were laid off in favor of H1B1s. Yep, a lot of those programmers were tossed aside like yesterday’s trash by businesses, and government back in the 80’s.

manonbench.jpegA lot of them moved on to other things and I know several that built lucrative businesses in other fields. For a while I had an Eye doctor that had been a COBOL programmer. He was making way better money as an eye doctor than he ever made as a programmer and the hours were better too.

He didn’t regret getting out of programming at all. Like most of us old school tech people, he’d gone through lay off, after lay off, and had “trained” his replacements at too many companies.

homelesstents.jpegHe went back to school after his last layoff, graduated and started his own practice. To do this, he lived in a leaky teardrop trailer for two years after cashing out everything he owned to pay for school. He wasn’t eligible for student loans because he’d made too much in his previous positions.

I know some real estate agents and a couple of patent attorneys as well. They were all great programmers and they were treated like shit.

Iusedtobeyourneighbor.jpegThey wouldn’t touch a programming job now. It brings back bitter memories for them to even talk about programming.

See, they loved what they were doing, they had their joy crushed and were considered disposable in favor of “cheap” labor. Many of them simply walked off the job rather than “train” their foreign replacements.

I say “train” because more often than not the foreign replacements weren’t up to snuff to begin with. Many of these folks couldn’t follow the code, so training was a pointless exercise.

Then I remembered Y2K and thought it’s been 20 years. Couldn’t these government entities be bothered to update the equipment and programs? 

Some of the COBOL guys did come back to rework Y2K systems and they charged frankly obscene amounts to do it. I’d heard that several paid off houses and cars loans with the money they earned from Y2K contracts.

Then I thought, “Who’s gonna test it?”

I went back to laughing.

I’m sorry that the people in need of unemployment benefits aren’t going to be helped it’s not fair to them. However, this brings into sharp relief, other problems “leaders” in business and government have been sweeping under the carpet for decades.

The chickens are coming home to roost.

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What? Wait…

IowaCaucus.jpgI was reading about the Iowa Caucus.

The acting DHS secretary Mr. Wolf said that the application issue appeared to be a “Load” issue. By “Load” he means that the servers were unable to keep up with the number of requests.

Okay I’ll buy that is a possibility, if everyone in a state was voting at the same time. But as the number of voters decreased, the server would catch up and post each transaction in turn. If this was the problem then it’s pretty obvious whoever tested the software didn’t do any load testing and quite possibly didn’t do much testing at all.

Lets face it, we’re all familiar with online opinion polls, and I’d imagine the servers handling those are dealing with millions of votes a minute. Seems to me that Shadow (The company that apparently spent 3 years building the software,) would have looked to other examples of voting systems, during their development process.

For god’s sake, there are PORN sites that handle votes for performers without crashing. Given the prevalence of Porn Sites I’d guess they process something on the order of MILLIONS of votes per Second.

Then I read that the application was only for the 170 – 190 precinct captains. So the paper votes were cast, then counted, and the captains were to use an application to input those numbers?

You’re telling me that with 3 YEARS of development no-one ever tested with a measly 200 simultaneous users?

WTF?

As I sit reading more about this, I’m astounded.

I have Apple Time Capsules here in my home that can handle 50 simultaneous users on WiFi.

A low end Dell server purchased from Best Buy could probably handle 250 users from the moment it was plugged in, possibly more if all the server had to do was tally incoming data for ONE Single application.

I have to point out that I’m kinda talking out of my hat here because I don’t have all the facts. So take what I’m saying here with a salt lick.

My point is, that with something as important as votes, if I could put a system together with commercial of the shelf (COTS) equipment for less than 10K in hardware and a little web programming there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for the debacle we saw in Iowa.

Much less so when you factor 3 YEARS of development time.

Hell, with 3 years of development time, I could give you Web and Phone based access, Live updates, and auditing of figures entered by precinct, candidate, and user. Complete with state of the art security. I’d have also taken the DHS up on testing the system too. The DHS has an entire division dedicated to Cybersecurity. 

I’d probably have requested that the FBI and NSA take a look too, if they were willing.

WHY?

Because the product would have to be rock fucking solid and more eyes looking at a system are more likely to find flaws that can be corrected before its debut.

Especially given that over the last four years we’ve heard about nothing but Russian influence in our election process. I’d be wanting to make something that was so secure that there’d never be any question about the veracity of the product or its results.

Make no mistake, this is (or was) a product.

Shadow would have been in a prime position to resell the product to all 50 states and would have been reaping the benefits for decades with maintenance and upgrade contracts.

Now Shadow will fade into the morning light like a bad dream, having made millions (I’m guessing) for its principals and casting everyone below executive level to the unemployment line.

Oh, and they’ll have an added lovely parting gift of FAILED project on their resumes.

As I said, we don’t yet have all the facts and likely, we never will.

Online voting could be a reality. But only if we commit to doing it right. 

Don’t you find it interesting that we have more security in place online and over the phone to deal with our banking needs than we do when dealing with the direction of our country as a whole?