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Shifty Schiff

10/21/2019

Congressman Adam Schiff is possibly the most corrupt politician of those currently on The Hill, which is saying a lot. His blatant lies to the American people has led to an impeachment inquiry of him by the Republican Party. Their goal is to get him removed from being the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee. They don't do this lightly but the evidence is so blatant that he's lying that they've reached a point of extreme anger over him misleading the public in his attempt to impeach President Trump. By the way, Republicans know he'll be replaced by another Democrat as they control the House, so it's just a matter of Schiff's lack of integrity.

It would be one thing if he had legitimate evidence but he's constantly manufacturing it. He uses behind closed door meetings and then comes out and states as facts, the things he allegedly heard. Why doesn't he allow us to hear what's being said in the meetings or at the very least, in the hearing? If anything should be transparent, the possible impeachment of a President, should be on the list.

Schiff doesn't allow people to testify who could negate his stories as no one on Trump's side is allowed to testify in the hearing. He isn't allowing the Republican Party to view the transcripts of the hearing nor his behind closed door meetings. He said he doesn't need to because it's an informal process. He certainly doesn't treat it as informal as he makes it sound like a formal process is taking place by giving a press statement everyday talking about how bad things look for President Trump. Keep in mind, he gives a press statement he doesn't have a press conference where reporters can ask questions.

Time and time again, the word gets out that he fabricated the outrageous stories he tells. The lies he told during his pursuit of Russian collusion are legendary yet he just moved on and acted like he did nothing wrong. To so easily be able to do this, shows an immense lack of moral character.

As I've stated before, the private sector (which often gets demonized by liberal politicians), couldn't operate the way these politicians do. An employee who gets caught lying is generally fired. An employee who isn't productive gets fired. An employee who intentionally causes division among employees in his or her department, gets fired. It's disgusting that the people who are supposed to be representing us, are actually some of the worst among us. They'd be fired for their behavior if they worked in the private sector yet it is the way they go about their business in D.C.

There's really only one way we can change this and that is to fire our representatives and give others a chance. Since they won't vote for term limits we can make it happen at the polls through not voting in incumbents. Then if the new representatives become corrupt and fail to work with the other Party to get things done, we fire them at the polls. Eventually, these politicians will realize what it takes to keep their jobs. As it is now, they're being rewarded for behavior that only serves to hurt the rest of us. It would be insane to allow this to continue.

Nathaniel Fillbrick

10/20/2019

Fillbrook is a great historical author and won a National Book Award in 2000 for his book called: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. Did you know the book Moby Dick, which was written in 1851, was based on the true story of what happened to Essex and its crew?

Essex was an American whaler from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. It had the reputation of being a lucky ship as the hauls were some of the best in the industry. In 1819, it left for a two-and-a-half-year voyage to the southern Pacific Ocean which had a bountiful supply of whales which provided a lot of oil, thus heat, for those living in New England and the various ports they'd reach to sell their product.

It was a very small whaler at 88 feet in length but with only 21 sailors and storage under the deck, the ship could handle a large payload. It was under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., who was 29 years old. His executive officer was only 23 and the youngest sailor on board was Thomas Nickerson who was just 14.

While harpooning whales, one of the whales (later called Moby Dick), went into an attack mode and ended up destroying the ship. Twenty survivors boarded three whaleboats (about the size of lifeboats), and they salvaged the ship’s wreckage for two days looking for food and water. They knew it was their best chance of making it to land although they weren’t too hopeful because they were a few thousand miles off the coast of South America.

Around a month after the attack, the men spotted land and were celebrating but when they landed on the beach, they found that it was uninhabited. Fortunately, they found some food and water but after a week, they realized the island couldn’t sustain all of them, so they loaded supplies and left. Three sailors stayed on the island thinking it would be better to die there than at sea. The amazing thing is that around a year later, they were rescued by a ship investigating the island and the men ended up in Australia.

After another month at sea, men were dying of dehydration and starvation. At first the survivors ate the men who died but then it wasn't enough, and they drew lots to see who would be killed so that the others could live. A total of seven crewmembers were cannibalized. During this time, the whaleboats had become separated because of winds and currents.

After more than three months at sea, one of the whaleboats was spotted by a ship and it had three survivors on it which included the Executive Officer of Essex and the young boy, Thomas Nickerson. Eventually they were transferred to the famous Navy warship the USS Constellation, so they could get home. Then Captain Pollard's whaleboat was spotted by coincidentally, another ship from Nantucket. He and only one other person was alive on the boat. Three more men were saved later from their whaleboat for a total of eight survivors.

Captain Pollard didn’t let the experience stop him and he was given command of another whaleship, but a storm caused the ship to wreck near Hawaii. Then he joined a merchant vessel and it too wrecked. He survived each time but at that point he was considered cursed, they called him Johah, and no one would hire him. He became a night watchman in Nantucket and died in 1870 at the age of 78.

In no way could I do this story justice through my post as it’s truly amazing. I strongly recommend reading Nathaniel Philbrick’s book about the Essex as it’s extraordinary. His 2006 book titled: “Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War,” was also on the New York Time’s Best Seller List for several weeks.

Cold Cases

10/20/2019

There are approximately 120,000 cold case files across the U.S. and from a statistical perspective, they anticipate solving 1% of these.

Tatum O'Neil

10/20/2019

I can't think of a single actor whose career crashed and burned as quickly as Tatum O'Neil's. She's still the youngest actress to have won an Academy Award at the age of 10. She won the award for her role in the movie: Paper Moon, where she starred alongside her father, Ryan O'Neil.

She participated in 21 more movies but pretty much the best one was: The Bad News Bears, which isn't saying a lot. One of her films was so bad they never released it. She dated Michael Jackson at one point but her biggest relationship was to John McEnroe who she married in 1986 and divorced in 1994. They have three children. She never remarried.

Due to Tatum's drug problems including crack cocaine and heroine, she lost custody of her children. She's been in and out of rehab several times and was arrested in 2008 for purchasing drugs outside her Manhattan apartment building.

She has had a bit of a resurgence and performed in the Christian movie last year called: God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness. She was also on an episode of Criminal Minds.

At the age of 55, she's finally had some stability in her life. Drugs and broken relationships is fairly common among child actors. Not only did she have the usual pressures that this type job brings, but she was also in the limelight constantly because of her famous father. She has a great story to tell of overcoming so many obstacles, I can only hope she uses it to help others who are travelling the same addictive path.

It's Why It's Called Fake News

10/18/2019

Some perfect examples of how the newsmedia now works. This is from NBC news today: "How the Trump administration 'capitulated' to Turkey. The Trump administration's deal with Turkey is being framed in foreign policy circles as a capitulation to Ankara and a further gift for Damascus and Moscow."

The word "capitulate," is associated with the word "surrender." Trump didn't surrender to Turkey's policies. Not unlike previous Administrations, the Middle-East is a moving target thus there are very few treaties ever signed. He and his team make judgements on the fly based on the current circumstances. Trump has already made a few moves, even with Syria, that Democrats have pushed for in the past but all of a sudden the moves are weak because Trump made them. Not only are Democrats saying this, because that's to be expected with politics, but the mainstream media is demonstrating their bias by pushing the same narrative.

Then NBC, who is supposed to be a news agency, states that "Foreign policy circles say what Trump did was a gift to Moscow." In the past, news agencies would've said: "In some foreign policy circles," but not anymore. Also, isn't it interesting that they brought up Russia. Exactly what foreign policy circles are they talking about? Foreign policy experts are like economic experts, they crash and burn all the time. It's extremely difficult getting a consensus on anything, yet NBC makes it sound like there is.

Then I watched ABC Nightly News tonight and they spent time, as usual, trashing Trump and his foreign policies. They sent a reporter to interview some displaced Kurds who were living in a refugee camp. Of course they found a man who blamed the U.S. for their situation. First of all, a decision Trump just made didn't lead to this man and his family being moved to a refugee camp. These people weren't displaced in just one day. How could anyone with any common sense believe that Trump's decision in just one day leads to an immediate crisis the next day? It is so disgusting that ABC tried to create a story that is an outright lie.

Then there's the fact that we don't make or break the Middle-East. We are one country. What we do is just a cog in the wheel. Britain, France, and Germany are heavily engaged in the Middle-East, yet anytime something bad happens, it's the U.S.'s fault. More specifically, it's Trump's fault. What about all the bad things that happened in the Middle-East when Obama was President? There were a lot. Of course Democrats and the mainstream media didn't hold his Administration accountable for anything when it came to foreign policies. Let me repeat, anything.

Once again, this is an example of how corrupt the media has become. They have become propaganda machines when it comes to politics. The heads of these networks are all heavily engaged in the Democratic Party. Instead of allowing their news divisions to do their jobs, they direct their coverage. Jeff Zucker, who is the President of CNN, just got caught on a conference call telling his people to stay focused on negative stories about Trump. One of the reporters for CNN was caught on camera saying that he's very disillusioned about his industry. He thought that he'd be able to cover stories in an unbiased matter, like he was taught in college, but said he's told what to cover and how to cover it.

The media gets so mad at being called fake news but they earn the title every day. Being a news junkie it is almost depressing to know that when it comes to political news, I can't trust what I watch or what I read anymore. Walter Cronkite would be so ashamed of what the newsmedia has become.

Democratic Presidential Debate

10/16/2019

These are all just my opinions as I'm not a political guru.

Presidential debates are entertaining because they're forced to attack their own. Several of the candidates tried to get Elizabeth Warren to come clean on where the money is going to come from for her Medicare for All. They begged her to answer a simple "yes" or "no," on whether she'd raise taxes on the middle-class and she fumbled around a bit as usual when approached regarding the topic. As far as I know, she's never identified who she considers the middle-class are as far as an income bracket is concerned. A strategic move on her part? In no way has she clearly stated how she can legitimately pay for it.

Warren taxing the Top 1% was shot down by many economists. The bottom line is that there aren't enough rich people to pay for her program. When reports began coming out that her multi-trillion dollar program couldn't be paid for unless the middle-class were hit hard with tax increases, she's avoided responding to the research. It's both embarrassing and fun, to watch her squirm.

They laid off Bernie pretty much which was probably due to not wanting to get a blackeye for going after him so soon after his heart attack, but the fact is, he doesn't have a chance. Too many candidates have the same message and they're younger, and as the last several decades have taught us, age matters. Young people were fine with Bernie the first time around because he was the only one preaching components of socialism, now he's not.

I don't believe Biden said one thing that was new from a policy position. He's going to ride the Obama Administration out which at this point is probably the best route to take as pretty much every other candidate appears to have gone off the reservation. Not enough Americans believe our country needs to be transformed or that border walls are immoral and racists.

If Biden doesn't win their nomination, Trump, or President Pence if Trump gets impeached, will have absolutely no worries. If Biden does win, he provides the stability that wavering Democrats and some Independents will consider. I still believe Republicans will win in 2020 across the board, but it would be a much closer race if Biden got their nomination.

Alan Turing (1912 - 1954)

10/15/2019

This post will take just about five minutes to read but I hope you'll take the time. Turing is one of the greatest heroes in history but most people knew nothing about him until long after he died. Quite frankly, he deserves for you to read this. Thanks.

Unless you’ve watched the movie: The Imitation Game you’re probably not familiar with Turing. He was a genius and could do many things. He was a college professor and taught advanced mathematics in his 20’s. He was by most accounts the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. But, the most important thing he became for the history of the world, is a cryptanalyst during WWII.

By some estimations, what Turing did for Britain and their allies is save the lives of approximately 14 million civilians and military personnel through shortening the war by and estimated two years. The reason we didn’t know about this extraordinary man until more recently is for two primary reasons.

One, is that Britain had what is called an “Official Secrets Act,” which prevents the disclosing of all top-secret projects. In the U.S., we typically disclose these types of operations 25 years after they are completed. This is only if the disclosure wouldn’t negatively impact the lives of those who participated in the operation nor impact any current operations. In his case, it was shocking that Britain was able to keep it a secret for so long.

Secondly, and very sadly, after the war Turing was arrested for being a homosexual. It was mandated by their courts to either send him to prison for 18 months or he could go through chemical castration. The thought of being cooped up in prison frightened him to the point where he was willing to take the medications. The medications ended up making him terribly sick to where he couldn’t do the things he liked to do intellectually. Sadly he couldn’t take it anymore and at the age of 41, Turing committed suicide via Cyanide. He could no longer deal with the chemicals he was taking and for being ostracized for his homosexuality. He was a war hero, but his country was treating him like a hardened criminal. This is why he’s a hero:

Germany developed encryption technology called Enigma, that they used to direct military operations on land and on sea. It was extremely effective and with this communication device they were able to move military divisions around to where they’d know when and where to attack. Their U-Boats would receive communications about when various supply ships were headed towards Britain and they’d sink them.

No one could figure out the code and millions of lives were being lost. Winston Churchill and top military personnel decided to create a top-secret program and bring in some of the most brilliant minds in Britain to see if they could crack the Enigma's system. The group they assembled kept failing mostly because it took too long to process the data before Germany would reset the machine each night. After midnight a whole new encryption began causing the team to have to start over again and again.

If you’ve watched Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory, Turing was a bit like him. He wasn’t a team player and didn’t quite understand human emotions. His mind was, in so many words, way beyond other peoples’ and he didn’t want anyone to slow him down, so he worked alone.

While everyone went through their daily calculations in trying to break the code, Turing decided to build a machine that could compute millions of times faster than they were currently doing. The problem was that no one had really heard of a computer before and the costs was going to be outrageous; but he received the funding and went to work on it. Keep in mind that no one could help him build this massive computer because it had never existed before. Turing envisioned it and no one else could comprehend it.

The computer began working but it wasn’t providing any decoding from the encryption of the Enigma. Months went by and nothing happened even though the machine kept running. The military decided to cut off funding for Turing's project. He decided to take it all the way up to Churchill and got his approval to continue working on the machine.

Then one day Turing thought about something and that is the computer didn’t have any form of baseline for its calculations. It in so many words, didn’t have a clue what its job was; it didn’t know what it was working on. The humans working on the project knew what they were shooting for, but the computer didn’t. So, he fed it information where they did have success regarding a few past messages. Now the computer knew what was considered a problem and what type of solutions they were looking for. The computer took the new data that came in at midnight from Enigma signals and was able to crack the entire code. Can you imagine the excitement when the computer sent a printout of its decipher? They had their hands on where Germany was sending its military and submarines. When they changed their encryption at midnight, the computer immediately began working out the new codes and turned it into actionable data.

At this point, a problem presented itself that was unexpected to everyone but Turing, and it was upsetting. He told the military liaison to the top-secret project that they couldn’t just give the computer’s findings to the military when the computer decoded the encrypted messages. Needless to say, the room was in shock.

Turing explained to them if they began outsmarting the Germans again and again, they’d eventually figure out the Enigma had been cracked and Britain would no longer have insight into Germany’s strategies and tactics. The best way to use the computer was to pick and choose when to use the information knowing full well that some people on the short-term would die, but in the long run they could save more lives by choosing the best situations to use the computer’s insight yet not show their hand to Germany.

Turing and his team created statistical models to help decide when the data should be used. This to me is mind-blowing that the military would allow them to make these decisions. Their faith and respect of these individuals, especially, Turing, is amazing.

Very few people knew that Turing had decrypted the Enigma and decades later most still didn’t know that the use of it was intermittent, meaning some people could’ve definitely been saved but their lives were sacrificed for the greater good so that the Germans didn’t know they’d been hacked.

Turing was an amazing man who saved millions of lives but few people knew, Winston Churchill did. Having been ostracized for years it wasn’t until 2009 that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for "the appalling way he was treated". Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a posthumous pardon in 2013. The Alan Turing law is now an informal term for a 2017 law in the United Kingdom that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts. In July of 2019, the Bank of England announced that Turing would be depicted on the United Kingdom's new £50 note.

Over 50 years after his death, Turing received the hero status he deserves. And even though I didn’t include the other members of the team assigned to crack the Enigma, they’re heroes too. Could you imagine being one of them and going back to their previous jobs after the war and not being able to share their accomplishments? As far as anyone knew, they were factory workers for the military. The soldiers who made it home were treated to great fanfare, but the team who worked on the Enigma project could only watch the parades from the sidelines. I don’t have a clue how I would’ve handled this situation. They were astonishing people.

James Cameron

10/13/2019

In my opinion, James Cameron is the best director/filmmaker/screenwriter there has ever been. He started off working in special effects at the age of 23 then at the age of 30, he directed and wrote The Terminator in 1984. He was immediately on the map at this point.

He followed up two years later with writing and directing the film Aliens. In 1989, he did the same with The Abyss which is an amazing movie that didn’t get as much press. He received a lot of praise for his special effects in the movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). His film True Lies came out in 1994 (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Paxton, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Tom Arnold), and I loved it. Not only did it have action, it was extremely funny especially the rolls of Arnold and Paxton.

Three years later, he crushed it with the biggest film of all time: Titanic. He won Academy Awards for this film as Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Film Editing.
It took him ten years to produce the amazing 3D film: Avatar (2009). To this day, it is the greatest grossing 3D movie that has ever been created. It won several awards, but people were shocked that he didn’t win Best Director and instead his ex-wife won for her movie The Hurt Locker. It was a strange moment at the Academy Awards since Avatar had grossed significantly more revenues than her movie. The total gross revenues from his films have reached $8 billion dollars worldwide. Avatar and Titanic are two of the greatest performing movies in history.

Cameron took a break from producing Big Box Office films and worked on some other projects such as documentaries. He helped develop new technology called the Digital 3D Fusion Camera System. He loves the ocean and did several documentaries on the topic. He improved filming technology underwater along with remote vehicle technologies for underwater submersibles; basically, remote controlled mini-subs. Then in 2012, he became the first person to reach the Mariana Trench using a submersible called the Deepsea Challenger. The trench is 36,000 feet deep which is amazing to me since the submarine I was assigned to could only go 1,000 feet deep. Only two other people have made it to the Trench after Cameron did.

On a personal level, Cameron’s love life hasn’t been as successful as his film career. He’s been married five times (once to Linda Hamilton), and has four children. He was extremely intelligent growing up and loved all things technical (his dad was an electrical engineer), but he couldn’t really find where he fit. He was a truck driver in Canada when he saw the movie: Star Wars in 1977, and he decided to head for Hollywood to get in the film business. He was 23 years old at the time and he worked behind the scenes learning everything he could about the business. Seven years later he was directing and writing the movie The Terminator.

A biographer wrote that Cameron was an artist and scientist and that he used these abilities to become one of, if not the, greatest director in history.

The United States

10/13/2019

Before the U.S. declared war on Germany, Germany had already declared war on us. Many citizens in Britain were starving and the U.S. was trying to send 200 million pounds of food to them every week. Germany took the stance that we were an active ally to Britain in the war and began sinking supply ships via U-Boats. It was their attacks on our ships that were trying to provide food to British citizens, which included children and the elderly, that helped push us into the war.

Even though the U.S. gets a hard time from not only other countries but also its own citizens, we are an awesome, caring, country. Some liberals don't believe this, thus the problems we're now facing in many parts of our country. They focus on the problems without counting their blessings about the positives of living in our country. This is what leads to political discord and rioting. No country is perfect, but I thank God I was born in the U.S.

Warning

10/13/2019

I just watched a movie that had the usual warnings such as brief nudity and violence but now I've seen a new one. It actually had listed as a warning that the movie had historical smoking. OMG! Is our country becoming this fragile?!

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Author: John Mann

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