R.I.P. Don Rickles

When I about 12 I watched Don Rickles appear on the Tonight Show. I never stopped laughing and could hardly catch my breath. It was the single funnies performance I had ever seen. For those who don't understand the art of stand up comedy it is difficult to understand just how good he was.

Standup comedy is hard and Mr. Rickles was in a class of his own with no competitors. There have been many silly standup comedians, think Steve Martin or other site gag comedians like Carrot Top or Gallagher. There have been many observational comics like Richard Pryor or Carlin or Seinfeld. There have been outrageous comedians like Sam Kinison or Andrew Dice Clay. There has never been another Rickles, he worked without an outline or even a joke, he had complete confidence in an industry where everyone dies on stage eventually.

In an industry where comedians are known for stealing from one another, nobody could ever accuse Rickles of stealing from anyone and he couldn't be stolen from. His genius was in his delivery and speed. You cannot just learn that.

As a person Mr. Rickles was incredibly respected by other comedians. That will be shown in the coming days. With over 60 years in standup he managed to impress other comedians with his warmth and humor in person.

My prayers and wishes go out to his family and friends.

Unmasking, Surveillance and Crimes

There is a lot of news about former National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, had requested documents to be "unmasked". Some of you are wondering what this means.

Let me start with the most basic. EVERYTHING transmitted electronically is copied by the federal government. While Snowden and Manning provided evidence that this is true, it is not new and has been going on for decades, not years, decades. I personally have been writing about it for 8 years on this blog. Everything that has ever been transmitted on the internet has been recorded and that includes e-mails. For those who do not know, the Pimpernel was one of the first million people on the internet. Heck, the internet was created and is controlled by the federal government. If you don't understand that, you need to look it up.

The internet has a backup. If the internet went down tomorrow it could be rebooted along with all of the information on it. To understand this you need two pieces of information.

Gizmodo - Seven People Have Been Entrusted With The Keys To The Internet.  Gizmodo is a tech site. The article is from 2010. Seven people have the ability to restart the internet. ICANN determines who gets the keys. In fact, the reboot would be done from US military bases. The internet was started by the US military and was originally called ARPNET.

The second thing you need to know is that all of the information that travels on the internet and over cell phones is collected and stored by the US government. This is what we learned from Manning and Snowden.

This is an amazing amount of information that is collected on a daily basis. Now for any paranoids out there, nobody cares about your personal information. Well, the government doesn't care about whether or not your cheating on your wife or smoking weed. You just aren't that interesting to the NSA until you are. Think about it this way, with all the surveillance cameras in the United States and Britain, do you really believe people are assigned to review every second of film? Of course not, it is reviewed only when there is a reason to, like after a bombing. Same thing with internet communications.

In order to protect your privacy, rules have been put in place to determine when the government can look at collected information. If the government wants to look at John Doe's communications, it must have a reason if he is an American. They don't really need much of a reason to look at communications between foreign individuals although I am quite sure there are rules for that too.

What has come to light is that the former National Security Advisor received communications that had been made by Russians and unknown Americans. They were unknown, as required by law, until she requested that they be "unmasked".  That means that transcripts which originally said "American number 1" were changed to show the Americans actual name.

Unmasking occurs more frequently than we might like; but, the actual name of Americans who are unmasked is to be limited in distribution to people with a need to know who are validly investigating with authority a subject. This is the purpose of the FISA courts. Rice requested that Americans names be provided for a series of communications and it included people such as General Flynn. How do we know this, it was reported by the New York Times and others. In fact, they reported that they had seen the transcripts showing Flynn's name. This unmasking occurred after the communications.

Now, these transcripts should have gone directly from the collecting agency to the requestor, in this case Rice; but, somehow they were mysteriously distributed to others in the intelligence community and Obama administration. That is the first problem as it shows that the rules were not followed. Once that information was made public there should have been an immediate investigation into who had access to it and when and why they were given access to it. From what we know now, that did not happen under the Obama administration. Why not? You don't ask what you don't want to know. Just as importantly, what was the justification for the unmasking? We haven't been told that and the corporate media doesn't even want to ask the question. At least CNN doesn't.

The standard questions for reporters to ask are who was given this information, why were they given the information, when were they given the information,, what information were they given and how was the information given to them and where was this information distributed. That is reporting 101. Well, we know where some of this information was distributed. It was distributed to members of the corporate media who then reported on it. Reporting it was not a crime; but, providing it to the press is.

After the WikiLeaks release of the Podesta emails, the corporate media refused to report on it and some went so far as to claim that it was illegal for anyone to look at it other than the corporate media.

YouTube - CNN says it's ILLEGAL for you to read the Wikileaks/Hillary Clinton emails. 

Somehow these same rules did not apply to General Flynn. The same corporate media that was offended by the release of Podesta's emails was thrilled to release Flynn's private communications.

YouTube - CNN - Don Lemon: Won't aid and abet Trump's diversion... 

Mr. Lemon, aside from refusing to be a real reporter, ignores the basic fact. Flynn's communications were released to the press. Flynn's conversations were recorded and transcripts were made. Those transcripts were unmasked. Those are the facts. To refuse to investigate these facts or ask basic questions is dishonest and predictable. While the corporate media should be addressing privacy issues in a world of universal surveillance, they instead chose to ignore it because they don't like the answers.

More on Pastor Daniels and the Grand Jury.

Oklahoma News - The Morning Brew: Anadarko cold case under grand jury scrutiny. 

newson6 - Multi-County Grand Jury Involved In Anadarko Cold Case. 

Drones and robots don't have conscience.

They don't and you cannot program them to have one. You can program responses, calculations; but, you cannot program regret or feelings. You cannot program emotions into machines. That is the nature of consciousness and you cannot create in a machine, you cannot even fake it.

You cannot program feelings into a robot and people are not thoughts, they are a collection of emotions. Helen Keller proves that by discussing what it meant to not have words or a way to categorize or express what she was feeling because even without words she still had feelings and preferences.

Without emotions, true intelligence cannot be achieved in machines. A drone feels nothing, it learns nothing from who it kills other than how to kill them better. It never considers if what it is doing is right or will result in pain. Drones feel no pain so they cannot understand it, pain is an emotion. Computers cannot judge people, they can only follow their program and weigh what they are told can be weighed the way they are programed to judge things. You have to tell them what is right and wrong and we cannot agree on that and there is no objective answer. In fact, if there is no God then there can be no absolute right and wrong.

Chairs, Lies and a Corrupt and Stupid Corporate Media.

fox5atlanta - $200K bond, arson charged for I-85 bridge collapse suspect.  Three homeless people have been arrested for this crime. It is claimed they set fire to a chair on top of shopping cart, or at least one report said so. Unless they had dynamite I want to know how a fire takes down a concrete and steal overpass. Turns out there were materials stored under the bridge by the state DOT; but, they have claimed that these materials were not combustible. Huh? Either they were combustable or a chair catching fire can take down a whole freeway in which case we better rethink how bridges are built or begin worrying about terrorists buying chairs.

Yahoo - Vibe - Three Suspects Believed To Be Homeless Arrested For Atlanta I-85 Bridge Fire. 

These people are being charged with intentionally setting this fire. This must be the three smartest homeless people in the world that they figured out how to take down a freeway with a chair and construction material that doesn't catch fire. Clearly they set a fire, how cold was it. Homeless people frequently set fires in metal trash cans when it is cold out. Shopping carts will work to as they are metal and the fire doesn't spread far. It shouldn't spread at all under a bridge.

I have fires jump bridges. I have seen fires burn across freeways. I have seen fires burn under freeways. I have never seen a fire take down a concrete freeway till now. I want you to think about this. Highways are built to stand fires. Cars and trucks catch on fire. Trucks carrying gasoline catch on fire; but, they don't take down concrete overpasses.

We are being lied to. A chair set on fire did not take down that freeway. At least not by itself. The things stored under that freeway made a much bigger, hotter and longer lasting fire. Here is a line from the vibe story, "Georgia Department of Transportation Commissioner Russell R. McMurry explained that the materials under the bridge were designated for cabling and fire optics, but aren’t flammable." If the materials that were stored there are not flammable then they must still be there. Right? Here is another line from the article, "Eleby left before the fire started but suggested it wasn’t close to the construction materials that helped spread the fire. He was additionally charged with arson and given a $20,000 bond." How stupid is the person that wrote this article? How could the materials helped spread the fire when they aren't flammable?

Lets try this, how could this be prevented from happening again. Can we really be sure that homeless people will never try and warm themselves with fire again? Can we make sure that there is never a fire on a highway or under one again? My guess to these answers is NO. Can we not store stuff under highways that could spread fire? That we can do, at least we can get DOTs to not store such things under highways they own. 

Who is at fault? The state DOT.  You know why they did it? To save money. It is called a staging area. Sometimes DOT's even rent out space below the freeways and sometimes those areas are used for storage facilities. Sometimes they are used for private storage facilities. Maybe we should look into that and what is stored in those facilities, it may include chairs.

Fake News and Real News

Truepublica - Will Britain Be Handing Over Its Nuclear Deterrent As Part Of The Brexit Deal with the EU?  So I don't know this publication's political perspective and I don't really care, the issue remains.  There are only two European Union (EU)countries that have nuclear bombs, France and Britain. Britain voted to leave the EU while the EU was having conversations over creating their own military. I wrote about that a couple of years ago because Nigel Farage talked about it at the European Council. The issue this article addresses is whether or not Britain might trade joining the European Military while getting out of the political union. I have a better question, if Britain leaves the EU and remains in NATO, will Europe leave NATO to just participate in the European Union Army? This is real news and things we should hear discussed.

AXIOS - GE's Jeff Immelt: Robots won't kill human jobs.  What would you expect someone to say that is automating their work? When the largest job in 29 states disappears, truck driving, do you expect the trucking companies to just come out and say their excited that they are firing 3.1 million people? The article is garbage presented as simple statements of fact. That is news; but, it is not good news. It is horrible attempting to pass as reporting. We are not shown other sides. The "reporter" is just a repeater.

New York Times - Should we care that Mike Pence won’t eat dinner with a woman who is not his wife?  This is the question the corporate media has been asking for the past couple of days. Vice President Pence has a rule that he won't go to dinner alone a woman other than his wife. There are plenty of women who wished Bill Cosby had followed this rule. The corporate media is seriously attacking Vice President Pence for not taking women to dinner with him by himself. I guess I am to be equally hated, I was careful about the exact same thing. When you are married you should be concerned about what your spouse may hear. I had many women that I worked close with and my primary confidants were mainly women that worked for me. Some of them knew what I went through when my wife left me for another man. She would meet up with him and not tell me, he was her hiking partner and that started as part of a group.

I heard a preacher talk about adultery once. He said that he had had many people come to him and admit they had cheated on their spouses. He said the stories all had certain things in common. They usually began simply enough with a lunch or such and the spouse did not tell them about it. It starts with a little secret. I cannot condemn Pence for being respectful of his wife or cautious; but, even if I could, this is fake news. This is not a real news story, this has no effect on how the government is run or if Pence is a good or bad Vice President. Go back and read what I wrote about Pence when Trump chose him. I said he is a fricking globalist. I don't like him. I didn't like Hillary, Kane or Pence. They are all globalists and don't care about us.. That is what should be in the "news". Why are they making up controversies that are meaningless? That's right, to distract you from the real news.

Pastor Carol Daniels Update 4/1/2017

KFOR - Grand jury looking into brutal unsolved murder of Anadarko pastor.

Someone was kind enough to send me the above link to a story about Pastor Daniels.  According to the report a grand jury is investigating a drug dealer that may have been involved in her killing.  The article links to this article:

NewsOK - The Oklahoman - Grand jury looks into brutal 2009 slaying of pastor at Anadarko church.

As much as I would like the truth to come out, I don't buy the story and I will explain why.

Supposedly there was a lady that sold methamphetamine in Anadarko to undercover agents on TWO occasions. This women died in February of this year and now they are holding a grand jury to judge whether or not she killed Pastor Daniels. How does that make any sense? You do not try a dead meth dealer for ever selling meth because they are dead. The dead women that is supposedly being investigate cannot be charged with a crime, again because she is dead. If she had given a deathbed announcement that she had killed Pastor Daniels, you would not need a grand jury, you would just announce that you have been given a deathbed confession.

I fear that some wish to put an end to this cold case by blaming Pastor Daniel's death on a dead drug dealer so that it is no longer treated as an active case. The NewsOK article states, "The main suspect, Denise Kay Cooper, 55, of Anadarko, died of cancer Feb. 21." That is a lie. I have read so much about this case and people have been kind enough to send me a notice everytime something new comes out. The police did NOT have a main suspect and have followed any lead they did get. When did Ms. Cooper become the main suspect? Was it before or after they investigated the heavy metal rockers that they called Satanists or before or after they sent investigators to Chicago?

I hate to say this; but, I think this is more about a small town DA trying to close a case or make a name for himself. Now, my opinion might change if they could show that the dead suspect lived within a block of Pastor Daniels.

The facts we know do not change. Pastor Daniels was killed by repeated knife slashes in a church on a Sunday during service hours, a block away from the police station. While the women being investigated was clearly stupid, getting arrested selling to cops in a town of about 6,000 people, dumb crooks stay away from cops especially when they are known commodities.

They wish to blame Ms. Cooper and close the case. They will tell themselves that they are closing the case so the family can have closure. They have given up on solving this case and just want to close it. Or at least that is a possibility. Here are the questions to be asked, the ones I started my first article about Pastor Daniels with.

1. We know the killer entered through the back door, which the police kept. Why didn't the neighbors hear or hear her screams? Why didn't anyone see the person enter the back door as it was easily seen by the houses behind the church and by people at the gas station a block away?

2. How did the person know that Pastor Daniels would be alone in the church?

3. If the person parked behind the church in the empty lot, why did nobody see the car?

4. Pastor Daniels murder resulted in lots of blood, it would have sprayed the attacker, how did they leave covered in blood and not be seen?

To the family I say, "Do not let them close out Pastor Daniels case unless they can prove that Ms. Cooper killed her, innuendo and guesses should not close this case. Don't let it be closed based on secret testimony that you will never be told. Don't trust them to tell you the truth without evidence. Where is the DNA evidence, where are the pictures, where was Ms. Cooper for the rest of the day and before?