First, Bernie isn't in dire health condition. Bernie has a blockage, and had two stents 'installed'.
Doctors will say that stents are a simple procedure now, and you might walk out of the hospital on the same day of the procedure. Generally, most people then get this lecture by a doctor that they are either eating in a way that is not healthy, smoking, drinking too much, or living a lifestyle with too much stress. It doesn't mean the lecture is BS or worthless....it's just how doctors treat this.
The fact that Bernie is 78 years old? Well....here's the harsh reality. Bernie doesn't smoke, and I would assume that he's mostly a coffee or soda guy. So the suggestion here is that this presidential election stuff is triggering stress that he really doesn't need.
Him retire? Zero chance of that.
The stents simply telling you of a future problem with more chest pains? Maybe.
If he were to have a heart attack and resign or be unable to act as a Senator? The Governor does not have the authority to appoint someone. He has the authority to call an election....within 90 days of the seat being empty. The current Governor? A Republican.
The odds of this scenario playing out? In a normal political year, I'd say less than 10-percent chance. However, the last twelve months have been weird in the US, and it wouldn't shock me if suddenly you had Senator with a heart attack, and some race on to replace the guy.
Friday, 4 October 2019
Thursday, 3 October 2019
Priorities That Changed
Having grown up in the South during the 1960s and 1970s....it's an odd thing to admit today that you never thought much about a defensive posture for your farm or home.
Among my top ten worries in 1975 (being 16)?
1. Snakes
2. Lightning storms causing a tree to fall upon the house
3. Another 1973 gas crisis
4. A hailstorm destroying the crop of soy-beans
5. Ministers going beyond noon on some hyped-up sermon
6. Tornado watches
7. Tornado warnings
8. Wild dogs
9. Mad bulls
10. Brakes going out on the 20-year-old farm truck
Nowhere in that list, do you see a reason for anyone to worry about meth-heads, home break-in's, home invasions, paranoid schizophrenic folks, or physical violence (other than the mad bull thing).
After the 1990s, when I'd come to visit or just look at news reports from the region....you'd notice this unusual event, or this meth-head attacking someone. Murders started to be noted for crazy reasons.
So in this past decade, people evaluate their situation (even in a rural setting) and they go to be armed.
Cops like the AR-15. Private citizens also like the AR-15. Chief reasons? It's light, effective, easily to reload, and doesn't fail. I emphasize the 'doesn't fail' term....because if awakened at 2 AM....if confronted, you just don't want a weapon to fail.
Shotguns? We've gone in the past thirty years way beyond the standard double-barreled shotgun. Eight shotgun rounds in a pump-action shotgun? More than enough.
You look at the crazy story from central Georgia from August....three young gentlemen at 4 AM, on a mission to do a home-invasion routine. All three dead now. The story on helps to sell more weapons.
Whether the political agenda folks grasp it or not....the landscape is simply not the 1960s or 1970s. It's a rough world, and some people are living on the last twenty-four hours of their life, whether they like to admit that or not. If you had a juvenile or two in the house and running a bit on the wild side....you might want to have a last prayer for the kid each morning. Things have changed.
Among my top ten worries in 1975 (being 16)?
1. Snakes
2. Lightning storms causing a tree to fall upon the house
3. Another 1973 gas crisis
4. A hailstorm destroying the crop of soy-beans
5. Ministers going beyond noon on some hyped-up sermon
6. Tornado watches
7. Tornado warnings
8. Wild dogs
9. Mad bulls
10. Brakes going out on the 20-year-old farm truck
Nowhere in that list, do you see a reason for anyone to worry about meth-heads, home break-in's, home invasions, paranoid schizophrenic folks, or physical violence (other than the mad bull thing).
After the 1990s, when I'd come to visit or just look at news reports from the region....you'd notice this unusual event, or this meth-head attacking someone. Murders started to be noted for crazy reasons.
So in this past decade, people evaluate their situation (even in a rural setting) and they go to be armed.
Cops like the AR-15. Private citizens also like the AR-15. Chief reasons? It's light, effective, easily to reload, and doesn't fail. I emphasize the 'doesn't fail' term....because if awakened at 2 AM....if confronted, you just don't want a weapon to fail.
Shotguns? We've gone in the past thirty years way beyond the standard double-barreled shotgun. Eight shotgun rounds in a pump-action shotgun? More than enough.
You look at the crazy story from central Georgia from August....three young gentlemen at 4 AM, on a mission to do a home-invasion routine. All three dead now. The story on helps to sell more weapons.
Whether the political agenda folks grasp it or not....the landscape is simply not the 1960s or 1970s. It's a rough world, and some people are living on the last twenty-four hours of their life, whether they like to admit that or not. If you had a juvenile or two in the house and running a bit on the wild side....you might want to have a last prayer for the kid each morning. Things have changed.
Subtracting Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders From the Race
Based on Bernie's health stuff and Joe Biden's Ukraine problem....I would suggest that both are 'gone'.
We are four months out from the Iowa caucus, which has some impact on the whole race. If you remove those two....it's really a different race. It's mostly all Warren.
Robert Francis (Beto) is spinning his wheels, as is Mayor Pete (forget about blacks voting for him). Booker is running out of money, and Senator Harris hasn't really thrilled that many Democrats.
So what started out in the spring of 2019 with almost 20 candidates....we are basically down to just one single serious candidate? Yeah.
It's bad enough that some strategists are putting the idea out there that former NY mayor Bloomberg....might announce something in November, and suddenly get into the race. The fact that he'll be 78 years old in Feb 2020? Well, that is another minor issue.
Unless something happens to split the vote up....I think by the 3rd of March....Super-Tuesday, it's finished. If Warren wins all of these, there's not much need to get excited or thrilled over the primary season. Fewer voters turning out after 3 March? That's my prediction. This will hurt in states like Ohio and Florida.
We are four months out from the Iowa caucus, which has some impact on the whole race. If you remove those two....it's really a different race. It's mostly all Warren.
Robert Francis (Beto) is spinning his wheels, as is Mayor Pete (forget about blacks voting for him). Booker is running out of money, and Senator Harris hasn't really thrilled that many Democrats.
So what started out in the spring of 2019 with almost 20 candidates....we are basically down to just one single serious candidate? Yeah.
It's bad enough that some strategists are putting the idea out there that former NY mayor Bloomberg....might announce something in November, and suddenly get into the race. The fact that he'll be 78 years old in Feb 2020? Well, that is another minor issue.
Unless something happens to split the vote up....I think by the 3rd of March....Super-Tuesday, it's finished. If Warren wins all of these, there's not much need to get excited or thrilled over the primary season. Fewer voters turning out after 3 March? That's my prediction. This will hurt in states like Ohio and Florida.
Wednesday, 2 October 2019
The Numbers Matter
I like statistics because they often tell a story.
If your neighbor was brutally killed in 2018.....he was five times more likely to die from knife attack, than a rifle bullet.
The FBI put the statistics for 2018 in the last couple of days, and it's an amazing story.
1,515 people died from knives in America....while only 297 died from a rifle round, for all of 2018.
In fact, if you use 2017 data.....almost a quarter of rifle round victims were carved off the 2017 situation compared to 2018.
So here's the real shocker.....more than a hundred more people died by baseball bats/blunt objects in 2018, than by a rifle round.
But let's dig deeper. If you collect data and look purely at metropolitan or urbanized areas....there were 14,428 murders or manslaughter episodes out of the total across the entire US of 16,214. Wanna look at the two other areas (small towns, or rural areas)? 711 murders were in small towns, and 899 in rural areas. So if you live inside the beltway of some urbanized area.....your odds of murder go up.
Murders in Alabama for 2018? Just two qualified for outright murder....both by pistols.
Murders in Idaho total for 2018? 32. But only 16 were by rifle or pistol. Four died by knife, and one by fist or kicking of feet.
From California? 24 died by rifle, but here's the shocker....252 were by knives. Ten times the number as rifles.
So all this anti-gun chatter focused? No.....it lacks focus to a great extent. It'd be more effective to prevent murders in highly urbanized areas by having stop-and-check police blockages, and ask people to step out of the car while we examine the contents. Confiscation of knives in public places? Why not?
Our total focus, based on the numbers....ought to anti-murder.
If your neighbor was brutally killed in 2018.....he was five times more likely to die from knife attack, than a rifle bullet.
The FBI put the statistics for 2018 in the last couple of days, and it's an amazing story.
1,515 people died from knives in America....while only 297 died from a rifle round, for all of 2018.
In fact, if you use 2017 data.....almost a quarter of rifle round victims were carved off the 2017 situation compared to 2018.
So here's the real shocker.....more than a hundred more people died by baseball bats/blunt objects in 2018, than by a rifle round.
But let's dig deeper. If you collect data and look purely at metropolitan or urbanized areas....there were 14,428 murders or manslaughter episodes out of the total across the entire US of 16,214. Wanna look at the two other areas (small towns, or rural areas)? 711 murders were in small towns, and 899 in rural areas. So if you live inside the beltway of some urbanized area.....your odds of murder go up.
Murders in Alabama for 2018? Just two qualified for outright murder....both by pistols.
Murders in Idaho total for 2018? 32. But only 16 were by rifle or pistol. Four died by knife, and one by fist or kicking of feet.
From California? 24 died by rifle, but here's the shocker....252 were by knives. Ten times the number as rifles.
So all this anti-gun chatter focused? No.....it lacks focus to a great extent. It'd be more effective to prevent murders in highly urbanized areas by having stop-and-check police blockages, and ask people to step out of the car while we examine the contents. Confiscation of knives in public places? Why not?
Our total focus, based on the numbers....ought to anti-murder.
Tuesday, 1 October 2019
The Red Matters
Here's the thing which few journalists ever chat on. Of the 3,007 counties in America....Trump won roughly 95-percent of them in 2016. Hillary, on the county map....less than 5-percent.
So what Trump is basically saying....with RED making the statement...he's not running against Warren, or Sanders, or Joe Biden. He intends to run in 3,007 counties and 435 districts. He's playing the game to take a massive win in the House.
The added issue for Democrats? You see those blue counties? They generally have two unique features.....black and Latino voters.
If Trump were to take 50-percent of black male voters (now possible), and half of Latino votes....half of those counties that went to Hillary.....would flip.
A billion dollars in money, and plenty of impeachment chatter to talk about? He's got a bigger and more bold plan than people imagine.
'James Bond' Brennan
It's an odd five-line story that popped up today. During the Obama period....2016...the CIA chief...John Brennan, goes and travels to the Ukraine.
Normally, it wouldn't really matter.
But he did this with a fake passport....fake name. All provided by the State Department.
Why? Unknown.
Who he met? Unknown.
Reimbursement for the hotel and expenses? Probably so, but if you asked the CIA to dig this up....it's going to be confidential, and under the fake name.
Secret-agent guy? American-style James Bond?
Well, you don't know. This is all reading like some Hunter S. Thompson 'James Bond' epic....written while on a booze and weed period while vacationing in Cuba.
What happens if impeachment occurs, and Brennan gets dragged to the stand under oath. I think he has a story, but what he has to worry about.....it's possible that the Ukraine secret police, or some Russian KGB group....taped his conversation and they've decided to hand the tape to Rudy G, and Rudy has Brennan sitting there and listening after telling his fake story.
You just have to shake your head....a lot of people made decisions that were unwise, and just kept thinking.....no one will ever dig this stuff up. Yet, here we are.
Normally, it wouldn't really matter.
But he did this with a fake passport....fake name. All provided by the State Department.
Why? Unknown.
Who he met? Unknown.
Reimbursement for the hotel and expenses? Probably so, but if you asked the CIA to dig this up....it's going to be confidential, and under the fake name.
Secret-agent guy? American-style James Bond?
Well, you don't know. This is all reading like some Hunter S. Thompson 'James Bond' epic....written while on a booze and weed period while vacationing in Cuba.
What happens if impeachment occurs, and Brennan gets dragged to the stand under oath. I think he has a story, but what he has to worry about.....it's possible that the Ukraine secret police, or some Russian KGB group....taped his conversation and they've decided to hand the tape to Rudy G, and Rudy has Brennan sitting there and listening after telling his fake story.
You just have to shake your head....a lot of people made decisions that were unwise, and just kept thinking.....no one will ever dig this stuff up. Yet, here we are.
The Thing About the Source and Reliability
One of the ten-thousand little things that I gained out of my two decades in the intelligence field....was this reliability scoring of intelligence.
Years ago, some smart guys sat down and surveyed the human intelligence collection business, and they came up with two categories that you had to view....when you wrote a report.
The first category was source. The levels went from A (highly reliable), to E (highly unreliable) and F for source unknown. This meant that you had to have some kind of record with the guy telling you the story. Maybe he was a guy that you'd known for five years.....maybe he was the coffee shop clerk that had told you five stories over the last year, with only one single story being reliable.
The second category was information reliability. The levels here went from 1 (confirmed by other sources), to 5 (improbable, meaning you had other sources who told you something different), and 6 being no valid trust (you could prove anything).
Here's the thing.....you always hoped on having a 'A' or 'B' rating on the source, and a minimum of '3' (possible true) on the information. Things that were 'D4'....were in simple terms....crap. It was worth keeping in a folder because one day....it might lead to a better source and maybe improving this intelligence to B2.
So I look back at this dossier by the CIA guy on Trump. He's basically telling you something that comes from a dozen-odd sources. He fails to validate or assign a score to any of them. Curiously, they all work in the same work environment as him....so you'd think that he'd say they were all 'A' or 'B' on trust. He didn't do that.
So I look at the second part of this....information reliability. He should be able to note this as a minimum of '2' or '3'. But he skips that and hints that it's all a '1'.
Why not score this in some fashion? My gut feeling is that this is some rookie CIA guy....maybe less than seven years in the service, and probably has never scored HUMINT in any way or shape.
Value of the dossier? Well, you'd have to out and assign a number of FBI and CIA folks to score the stories, and how reliable they were. The fact that you were willing to accept second-hand information? Man, that opens up a whole can of worms, and promises to tie down people for a year or two. In the end, most of these dossier items are probably going to be a D3 or D4....meaning they might be useless in a court or impeachment process.
Years ago, some smart guys sat down and surveyed the human intelligence collection business, and they came up with two categories that you had to view....when you wrote a report.
The first category was source. The levels went from A (highly reliable), to E (highly unreliable) and F for source unknown. This meant that you had to have some kind of record with the guy telling you the story. Maybe he was a guy that you'd known for five years.....maybe he was the coffee shop clerk that had told you five stories over the last year, with only one single story being reliable.
The second category was information reliability. The levels here went from 1 (confirmed by other sources), to 5 (improbable, meaning you had other sources who told you something different), and 6 being no valid trust (you could prove anything).
Here's the thing.....you always hoped on having a 'A' or 'B' rating on the source, and a minimum of '3' (possible true) on the information. Things that were 'D4'....were in simple terms....crap. It was worth keeping in a folder because one day....it might lead to a better source and maybe improving this intelligence to B2.
So I look back at this dossier by the CIA guy on Trump. He's basically telling you something that comes from a dozen-odd sources. He fails to validate or assign a score to any of them. Curiously, they all work in the same work environment as him....so you'd think that he'd say they were all 'A' or 'B' on trust. He didn't do that.
So I look at the second part of this....information reliability. He should be able to note this as a minimum of '2' or '3'. But he skips that and hints that it's all a '1'.
Why not score this in some fashion? My gut feeling is that this is some rookie CIA guy....maybe less than seven years in the service, and probably has never scored HUMINT in any way or shape.
Value of the dossier? Well, you'd have to out and assign a number of FBI and CIA folks to score the stories, and how reliable they were. The fact that you were willing to accept second-hand information? Man, that opens up a whole can of worms, and promises to tie down people for a year or two. In the end, most of these dossier items are probably going to be a D3 or D4....meaning they might be useless in a court or impeachment process.
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