“No, I Have Not…..”

In last Sunday’s debate: “You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?” Cooper asked. Trump insisted that wasn’t the case. Cooper asked three times whether Trump denied that he had ever done such a thing. Finally, Trump replied, “No, I have not,” and quickly changed the subject.

Five women have come forward to say that Trump sexually assaulted them..

1) Jessica Leeds told the paper that watching the debate made her want to punch Trump. She said that she was seated next to him during a flight three decades ago, when he began touching her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt. “He was like an octopus,” she said. “His hands were everywhere. It was an assault.”

2) Rachel Crooks introduced herself to Trump at an office in 2002; her company did business with his. She shook his hand, but then he didn’t let go, and then, she said, forcibly kissed her on the mouth. “It was so inappropriate,” she said. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.”

3) Mindy McGillivray told The Palm Beach Post that Trump had groped her while she was assisting a photographer friend at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in January 2003.

4) A Miss USA contestant from Washington state reportedly posted on Facebook that Trump had groped her.

5) Natasha Stoynoff, a former People reporter, wrote for that magazine about an assault that she says occurred while she was writing a story on the first anniversary of Trump’s wedding to Melania Knauss in 2005.

Already we have discovered one more molestee of Trump than he could sit at a table (4) to intimidate Bill Clinton’s wife… So are those stories really so horrible that happened in the 1970’s, and Trumps then must be much worse, OR, if he dismisses his stories as just fun in the sun or feeling friskey a few times, how can he hold much lesser incidents that happened to Hillary’s husband, as something sinister and morally repugnant?

So either all 5 of these stories are not true….. OR… someone lied to the American people BIG TIME in the 2nd debate…

It’s Bill Cosby…. all over again….. The dam is crumbling as we speak… this article may be out of date when you wake up tomorrow….

So….  guess who supports both lying to the American people and sex offending?

Charlie Copeland
Colin Bonini
Hans Reigle
La Mar T. Gunn

State Senate Candidates

• Cathy Cloutier:   District 5
• Anthony Delcollo:  District 7
• Carl Pace:  District 14
• David Lawson:   District 15
• Brian Pettyjohn:  District 19
• Gerald Hocker:  District 20

State House Candidates

Kevin Hensley:  District 9

Judith Travis:  District 10

Jeff Spiegleman:  District 11

Debbie Hudson:  District 12

James Louis DeMartino:  District 14

James R. Startzman, Jr:  District 19

Stephan Smyk:  District 20

Mike Ramone:  District 21

Joesph E. Miro:  District 22

Timothy Conrad:  District 24

Michael Nagorski:  District 25

Janice Gallagher:  District 29

William Outten:  District 30

Jean Dowding: District 31

Patricia Foltz:  District 32

Charles Postles:  District 33

Lyndon Yearick:  District 34

David Wilson:  District 35

Harvey Kenton, Jr:  District 36

Ruth Briggs King:  District 37

Ronald Gray:  District 38

Daniel Short:  District 39

Timothy Dale Dukes:  District 40

Richard Collins:  District 41

——–

Perhaps some of you would like to click on some of their links and ask them to respond to you why they still support someone who brazenly lied and is an unregistered sex offender who has the highest position in their party?

By now, you really must begin to wonder what is wrong with them and whether any of them are really fit, or have the moral fiber necessary to represent real people in the people’s government……

 

Transgenders in Bathrooms, WTF?

For thousands of years, long before America was ever founded. transgendered persons have been using the bathrooms of their choice.

They have been doing so for years under even the moralistic 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 00’s and up to now…

Everyone else thought they were in their right restroom, based of course on all outward appearances.

The only reason our media is trying to make mincemeat now, is to divert us from how they were totally the forces responsible for elevating Trump as the Republican nominee.

Obviously, and it makes sense, that some people care if an obvious man is in the female rest room; this is something new to them, and like anything new, it is unsettling. Likewise, having a female stroll into the mens room is equally provocative to some….

But unbeknownest to you,  they have been doing it for years.  You simply thought they were a man or woman depending in which rest room you were in; you never raised an eyebrow...

If you are in your 40’s and you use a public restroom 3 times a day, then your yearly pee or poop total hits close to 1095.  So by age 45 and if we don’t count your visits from age 0 to age 5,  you have had 40 years of public toilets….

Which means you have publicly peed or pooped 43,830 times….

Sometimes in public rest rooms I’m the only one there… Other times especially on the New Jersey or JFK turnpike, there have been at least 50 people.  So I’ll average it out at five (but we all know this is still a totally randomly selected number.)

Using 5 other people per rest room visit (5 X 43,830), I can say I have now peed and pooped publicly with 219,150 people….. Maybe you were there!  :O  (Yo! You still got that toilet paper stuck to your pants?)

The best estimate which again is probably pulled out of someone’s (male or female) ass, is that transgenders make up 0.3% of our population…

Today at an estimated American population of 325 million, there would be, if this estimate is correct, 975, 000 active transgenders….

So the probability  that any of those you found in your public restroom over your past life was secretly a transgendered person who you naively assumed was of your sex, is 0.3% of those people you shared a public restroom with….

(219,150  X  0.003)  =  657.3 people….

Across your life, age 5 to 45, unbeknownest to you… you have peed or pooped with 657 transgenders in close proximity….

Were you raped?  Were you  propositioned?  Were you uncomfortable that while pooping in your stall someone came in whose feet were gender similar to yours, and competed with you for making the worst smell in a stall?

No. You weren’t.  You are only upset now, because someone is jerking your nose ring with a twenty foot chain made of galvanized steel.

If you are upset now and think transgendering is an outrage, you should probably take the necessary steps and simply put yourself out of your misery…(Tequila is good for that.)  For already by statistics, you’ve experienced it 657 times already….

Now not all of you are 45… So if you want your age appropriate figure to cast around to show Rick Jensen just how smart you are…. take the number 657, divide by 40 years, and then multiply your years post age 5, ..by 16 ……

There you go…

If you really want to do some good in this world… boycott any corporate publication or electronic media, who makes a big deal out of transgenders in bathrooms….Hit their advertisers…

Locally that would mean you should boycott the Boulden Brothers, Horizon, and P. J. Fitzpatrick, then use any another vendor for your HVAC needs… (Those three are Rick Jensen’s biggest advertisers.)

But most likely you won’t care at all… Just like you didn’t the other 657 times you shared a bathroom with a transgender person and didn’t know it…….

 

 

We Told You So; Student Data Is Not Protected

In a very horrifying case involving student data, parents of children who were forced to give private information to an outside private entity in order to  comply with Common Core, now find, their data is up for sale,… to the highest bidder whomever that might be….

It appears that calm assurances of total privacy made by governors and Secretaries of Education, don’t stand up in bankruptcy court.  There,… assets are assets, and must be sold.  Student information, it appears is very valuable……

ConnectEDU filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April, listing between $10 million and $50 million in liabilities against less than $10 million in assets, according to its petition. Last July, the company was awarded a grant worth nearly $500,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to build an innovative technology platform that would empower students to master Common Core standards

Over 20 million student records are at stake.  Although the bankrupt company ConnectEDU made assurances that its data would be destroyed in the event of a corporate takeover, it’s new owner does not agree… North Atlantic Capital, a Portland, Me.-based venture capital fund, is arguing that as in all bankruptcy sales, previous agreements are null and void….  The data is an asset and should now belong to the new owners… 

The FTC is weighing in on the side of protecting the children… It is arguing that every parent receive a letter and that if the parent checks deleting the data, the new owners will delete the data….   The new owners don’t want to do this…. Just think of 20 million stamps being licked in Boston.

Here is where it stands…

The current law, which has been in effect since Alexander Hamilton, says the data now goes to the new owner who can do with it, whatever he wishes….

The FTC is trying to use moral tactics bullying the investors into doing the right thing…

It could go either way.

All I’m saying here…. is we told you so… Once the genie gets out of the box…. there is no putting her back…..  Once your child’s data goes on to the internet, there is no getting it back.

(Red Clay and Wilmington Charter Schools paid $10,550 this year to ConnectEDU…. and $10,060 the previous year)   Those children’s data is now up for sale.

We told you so….

Religion Versus What? The Workplace?….

As you all know, there are several Supreme Court decisions due this term regarding the ability of corporations or personal businesses to express their religiosity in defiance of the law of the land. One is Hobby Lobby which thinks it should not be required to practice something that is against their religion.  The second is today’s “stay” on whether Catholic Organizations have to dispense something their religion completely disavows;  birth control.

On one hand we will hear the drums of how religion is being imposed upon by the government.   On the other hand we will hear how those employed by these employers, have the right to choice just as do their bosses….

Let us look at the first plank:  how religion is being imposed upon by the government.   As is been oft repeated, the Constitution as originally written said rather little about the right to religion.  However, it IS in the Bill of Rights, which because they were a necessary addition added to get the Constitution garnering enough votes, one can loosely say, the original Constitution deals with religion…

And as is oft repeated with every controversy, the First Amendment states as follows:  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.   This means that Congress cannot say:  “This year’s official religion will be Pentecostal.  All other religions are hereby abolished”.  This may sound far fetched to us, but was a real factor in the daily lives of the colonists before the nation was forged.   Quakers were ostracized by Episcopalians. Catholics were beset with punitive laws except in Maryland.  If you needed to go before the state or county courthouse, you had to be of that area’s official religion, before you could get heard…  True, dat.

The second part, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; is where the argument will be directed.  Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor, both have similar arguments which are as follows.

“WE  don’t believe sex should be had for enjoyment.  Our religion is anti-sex.  If we have to dispense or are required to pay for people to commit sex without the consequence of pregnancy or a viral AIDS infection, we are having our free exercise of religion being prohibited….”

More clearly put:  our religion demands that we prohibit sex for enjoyment wherever it “pops” up. If you stop us from prohibiting enjoyable sex, you are interfering with our religion.

In the matter of text, they have a point.  If their religion does indeed demand that they stop everyone from having enjoyable sex, then the government in stepping in to stop them from stopping some amazing sex, is depriving them of their religious rights.  So we should conceive that they have a textual point…..  Before the Obamacare, religion was not impinged.  Now it is.

The next step is to see if that point is relevant with the norms of today’s society.  As an extreme case, allowing a quirky religious sect to burn their babies alive because “it is called for by their religion”  would be a case where the harm done to a citizen of the United States of America against their will, would outweigh in society’s eyes the harm being done to the religiosity of those practicing such a barbarity.  Burning witches at a stake would suffice as an example as well.

There is obvious a gray area then where government must trample on religion and religion finds it must interfere with government.

We can use the extreme case above of burning witches.  One could say that happened in Delaware in 2010. (lol.  Our witch got burned bad.)   Here we have a case where one religion (the witch burning one) interferes with the other religion (the witch one).  When you have two opposite religions, the government has to look at other laws other than religion to determine policy.  In this case, murder.  Correct?

So the correct assessment is that since both religious issues cancel each other out, then the factor of murder by default becomes the deciding one.  The witch-burning religion is in the wrong by existing laws on the books (murder) and therefore it must stop its practice.  Was it’s bizarre form of religion impinged upon by government?  Absolutely.  And for good reason; it was murder.

So we now have precedence of  government making necessary impositions upon any religious practices that harm society. Yet there is still no imposition upon ones beliefs.  You can still “believe” that burning witches is your goal in life, but you just can’t carry it out.  It hurts other people.

So the defense of the law by the government must not focus on the rights of these religious petitioners.  but should solely focus on that harm which if allowed to go forward, that religion will impinge upon all those millions of people who are not in either sect, and who will suffer at the hands of any court decision favoring either sect’s quixotic religious preferences.

They have First Amendment rights too….   such as in having our Government abridging the freedom of speech…  

The courts have long upheld that “expression”  was the founding father’s meaning of “speech”.  Porn doesn’t move it’s lips but is a form of expression protected by the Supreme Court.  Just like that Pat Robertson of the 700 Club doesn’t move his lips, but is also considered a form of expression protected by the Supreme Court.  Art is expression.  Music is expression. Love is expression…

Likewise there are reasonable limits to the right to expression, again, determined by society’s norms.  Going nude in a public school is not good.  There are reasons that is against the law.  Playing music too loud on Newark’s Main Street is not good.  There are reasons that is against the law.  Graffiti in the Bank of America building, not good.  There are reasons that would be against the law.

So the argument made before the court will be two fold;  what is harmful or non harmful to each side, and what society’s norms will dictate, whether one or another is extreme when compared to the norm of society….

Therefore this becomes a moral question, not one of logic.  After all, both sides think logic is on their side.  And I think all will boil down to something said by the last Pope, Pope Benedict….

He stated something along the lines, “that people have to eat; and to eat, they have to work.”  If work is  abundant, perhaps one can leave one employer and go to another which they prefer.  But if work is scarce, they are bound to hang on to that job no matter what external factors line up to batter them.   If there is one job in town, and the boss halves the wages, one has to accept it.  If there is one job in town, and the boss demands sexual favors for one to keep it, one has to acquiesce because there is no other alternative.

So for every religious nun or Hobby Lobby business owner who wishes to buck the current law, there are those countless employees working for them who will get hurt if their employer gets any exception to the current law simply because their religion states “it” is against all enjoyable sex.

Those employees working for these bosses, can’t have enjoyable sex because of the religiosity of their employers…. ” I’m sorry Hon, but because I work for Hobby Lobby, we can’t do it for another 15 days… Just hold it inside, will you?”

Their expression, in the privacy of their home,  is impinged…  While yet…the religious owners expression in the privacy of THEIR homes, is not affected by one bit…

Since one side is negatively affected in private by the consequences of not having contraception reimbursed, and the other side is not, it seems imperative that a thoughtful, logical, non-judgmental court, would decide to protect those who are hurt, at the expense of those who are doing the hurting….

Remember:  it is still the insurance companies who are paying for all these sexual items; not the employers themselves;  there is no harm to the employers if this policy goes forward.  They are not in anyway contributing any harm to themselves. Just like if they burned witches….

Those they are affecting, do get harmed….  Not being allowed to enjoy sex because of your luck at being hired by one employer over another, surely trumps whether that employer feels slightly “miffed” that he is required to insure his employees and that insurance will allow them to enjoy the wonders of sex without getting pregnant or getting viral AIDS.

AIDS kills, like being burned at the stake.  Being allowed to stand around the fire going “tsk, tsk” should not become our nation’s definition of what “religion” is all about……

NSA Recommendation Number 31 (2)

Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate financial systems….

Think back over the past 3 years…. 

Hmmmm.

 

Google Reveals Requests For Censorship

Turkey led the pack with 1,673 requests from the authorities to remove content, nearly a ten-fold increase over the second half of last year; the upshot was directly tied to its protests last summer.

The USA was second with 545 requests for 3,887 items…

Other top nations were Brazil, Russia, and India.

These disclosures do not include any  legal demands for information from the National Security Agency (NSA). Those requests are made through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) court and the companies are legally barred from disclosing them.

The President’s report on the NSA just recommended that these be allowed to be reported.

In the US, most requests were petty. Most were denied.   Among those requests was one from a local law enforcement official to remove a search result linking to a news article about his record as an officer.   Judges have asked us to remove information that’s critical of them, police departments want us to take down videos or blogs that shine a light on their conduct, and local institutions like town councils don’t want people to be able to find information about their decision-making processes,  These officials often cite defamation, privacy and even copyright laws in attempts to remove political speech from our services. In this particular reporting period, we received 93 requests to take down government criticism and removed content in response to less than one third of them. Four of the requests were submitted as copyright claims

Some may remember a local blog was temporarily removed at one point during this time frame.  🙂

From January to June the search giant received 3,846 government requests to remove content from its services – a 68% increase over the second half of 2012.  Turkey’s requests alone amount to nearly a ten-fold increase over the second half of last year.

While the information Google presents in their transparency reports is certainly not a comprehensive view of censorship online, it does demonstrate a worrying upward trend in the number of government requests, and underscores the importance of transparency around the processes governing such requests

 

 

 

Wisdom From Across The Pond

Today the Brits are putting up a motion to curb their end of the spying racket…  The proponent putting up the piece that should get wide spread support, is of course… a liberal democrat….

The bill –  would make sure Britain’s spy agencies could never intercept calls or data without a specific warrant . Furthermore, is sets up a demand that the parliamentary regulatory body which oversees intelligence gathering, be made up not of secret appointees, but be chosen by an open election on the floor of the House of Commons.

“We’re very conscious of the need not to prevent the security services doing their work, but there are certainly gaps in the law. That much is clear.” says the pusher of that bill,  Mr.David Health.

Quotes from the Floor…

“But any surveillance and any clandestine operation in a democracy raises questions, he says. These can’t be answered by the agencies or the executive – but only by the legislature. Such as: where are the boundaries between privacy and legitimate intelligence gathering? What controls are in place to prevent abuse? Where are the limits of secrecy? How does our legislation and capability measure up to the latest technology? How comprehensive is the scrutiny and legal framework?”

“He has received assurances from ministers that the security services are not acting outside the law – but the law cannot keep up with their capabilities,”

“We need to deal not only with direct interception of communications but also collection of communications metadata. That is “an area where the law is silent.  We need to deal with the UK collection and that of allies,”

“The security services cannot police themselves”, he says.  “Their focus is on doing the best possible job – the job of parliament is to set the proper boundaries for their work”, he says.

===

In summary the ideas are sound… One cannot be unbiased when monitoring ones self.  That we ever thought so is madness.  It is therefore paramount that we follow some of the Brits’ ideas over here and make those who are in charge of our intelligence also be voted from the floor of Congress in a public debate as is any law or appointment,  and not be appointed in private by the head of  the legislative body with no accountability…

Furthermore,  having a true court hearing and not a rubber stamp session each time when approving the wiretapping or Constitutionality of data collection, would impact greatly on the credibility of any legitimate act of data extraction performed in the future….

Nominations for Delaware’s Person/Place/or Thing Of The Year

The Golden Flush Award /Click Image for Past Winners

Usually this is an after thought…” Oh, wow, year’s over, let’s get a person of the year”…  And then once we elect one,  we go… “holy crap… we totally forgot so and so….”

So to try to stir up some old simmering coals of memory, both mine and others, and perhaps even to (heaven forbid) get some debate going in the blog sphere, I thought I’d make an initial run on Thanksgiving Week, and then add people into the nominating category as others mention various ones I should kick myself for forgetting.

It will also force me to review the year which is something I rarely do… because face it, as a human being, I am slave of the moment….  If I did this last year, come December 14th the entire world would have been turned upside down and all the old priorities of 2012,  would in one day become trivial….

And so starting early gives me the chance to make the argument for each of those I decide to enroll with your kind recommendations included….

Julius Cephus:  Particularly this one man organized and stopped an end run around the Port of Wilmington.  The Kinder Morgan deal did not go through, and the Wilmington Port is bustling like never before…   Kinder Morgan was to strip the union of power, and drop the rates of pay, further dampening the economy of Wilmington proper.  It was also the first defeat of a Lavine-Markell development project, .. Fisker and Bloom had gone forward without a hitch.  Julius and other’s push back resulted in a General Assembly motion that stated they, not the governor, had final approval. It was the first time we were exposed to the current Governor’s manipulations.  They were to play a significant part across this year’s tapestry.

Steve Newton:  A blogger who has written infrequently, but effectively. His piece on SB 51  is what alerted us to the end run being performed by Dave Sokola on lowering the current standards being used for educating teachers.  It is brilliant.  It took an evening of reading the legislation line by line and cross referencing  it with Steve’s analysis, to understand the huge negative impact this bill would cause.  By the time this was done, the Bill had already passed the Senate unanimously without comment, and with an friendly amendment added that was voted upon without even being read.  Some public outcry was mustered within the House, both in committee and on the floor, but under the Governor’s direction, the Speaker of the House, pushed the bill to the floor before significant outcry could be mustered.  Only 4 House members were not on record for it’s passing.  Our educational schools now have to water down their teaching standards to meet the new law.  Steve also has brought the Highmark story to Delaware.  His research in the increase of medical costs in Western PA as a result of knocking out competition by unfair practices, leads one with a cold chill of what to expect in Delaware’s future.  We are already there.  As an insurer, Highmark is only paying medical claims in its own affiliated clinics.  As the new Blue Cross/Blue Shield owner, that is a huge percentage of Delaware’s residents.  None can go to any other hospital.  He has properly fingered Karen Weldham Stuart for not catching this prior to implementation.  Without Steve, this would have passed unnoticed.  The News Journal still has not once mentioned the takeover of Delaware’s health field under one owner.

Ernest Lopez.  If Kennedy were still writing Profiles of Courage, he should include this man.  Ernest Lopez is a conservative, and voted with Libertarian values to pass the gun legislation recommended by Markell and Biden.  Reflecting the views of his district, instead of taking the threatening message sent to him down from the NRA, he voted for his district.  A very vocal minority, who is always vocal, and always in the minority, swore they would unseat him.  He disregarded their idle threat, and voted both his and his constituents conscious.  A major billboard was put up to call him out.   His vote caused the passage of us now requiring background checks at public gun sales.  Now a certifiably insane person cannot slap cash and get a gun.  It is a no-brainer, and Ernie was the only Republican with brain enough to even know what a no-brainer is….

Cathy Cloutier:  her vote allowed gays to marry.  Again, she is a Republican who said enough is enough… Tired of voting against her conscious just so Sussex County would not flip over to the Democrats, she finally did not toe the line and voted along the lines of her own constituents, all overwhelmingly in favor of gay marriage.  In doing so, she went against the entire grain of her party, who firmly feel that gays are second class citizens, even though most Republicans in office are closeted gays.

Bethany Hall Long:  on the same vote, made a viable personal decision, and also voted for the legalization of gay marriage. Unlike Cathy’s vote, this was accomplished at great personal sacrifice, for all of those in her personal life, were solidly against this policy from taking effect.  In voting for what was morally right, she had to contend against those whose influence she could not escape.  She went with the correct vote, over the easy one.   As a result, Gay marriage is now legal in Delaware.

Paul Baumbach:  gave great ammunition against the fight for SB51, and later against HB 165. Both bills which will damage Delaware’s education for years to come.  He was one of the four who put up a fight on the House floor.  Paul also arranged for the meetings in Newark to discuss the new Power plant that figured in this past week’s election.

John Kowalko:  also was against SB51, HB 165, as well, being against the power plant.  In fact, John was the first person to sound the alarm over how big the power plant would be.  Without his big voice, it may have slid through unnoticed.  The power plant has defined northern Delaware politics since September.

Kim Williams;  responsible for HB 40 which investigates Charter School’s meddling into our educational systems.  She was as an acting state representative, allegedly refused entrance into a committee hearing on education, for fear she might say something damaging to the bill being rushed through….  She brought to the public’s knowledge, that the Charter School bill was drafted illegally without public input, and the charter group constructing it, was also under FOIA, to which the private group denied.  The Attorney General backed up her assertion, that the bill was formulated illegally but their decision was moot, because the bill was passed both houses anyways.  Kim Williams also in the HB 40 task force, led the group to realize that charter schools unlike public schools, do indeed filter those entering charters to weed out those who might lower their test scores….

Mark Murphy, Rodel, Sweeney, Hefferman, and the Fake Educational Reform Establishment:  I almost purposefully did not post this.  Although the first person’s name is usually followed by explicatives whenever mentioned, it is unlike Voldermort’s, still getting mentioned.  Mark Murphy was not put in his position based on his ability. He was placed there for his loyalty to the cause of  corporatizing public education.  Markell pulls the strings, Murphy figures how to get it done…  It is hard to make a puppet the most influential person of the year… So I was going to skip him… But at the last minute, remembered that every time  he or anyone of these make an op-ed, it resonates as gigantic news. The entire community rises up to counteract each op-ed, usually with the word “lies” thrown liberally about…. So, they do exert an influence.  I looped all of them together, as the group of liars in a Greek play, who stand on the stair steps and taunt the protagonists.  Well,… they are part of the play…….

Dan Short:  Sometimes villains get noticed too.  Primarily a single issue candidate, who personally supports the NRA, he actively campaigned and organized to create enough backlash so Markell’s gun laws could not get enough votes…  Without him, there is a possibility that all four of Markell’s gun control pieces of legislation would have passed both houses of Delaware’s legislature. Dan Short should be given the credit for stopping them.

John Sigler: Single handedly by his very brief tenure as the re-elected head of the Republican Party, he pointed out through his pigeon shooting, just how inept the Republican Party was at everything else.  With his leaving, all fissures cracking the Republican bedrock, were impossible to ignore.  Blogs split. The IPOD’s split. Former candidates of the same party just months earlier, now not talking to each other. The Delaware Republican Party is dead; no it is past dead.  More dead than a pigeon shot inside a box by John Sigler, former head of the Delaware Republican Party.

Nancy Willing: Her blog, the Delaware Way, is the go-to site for local information. Whether about Dover, about New Castle County, about any of New Castle County’s associations, Nancy combs all sources and puts them down in aggregate form. Heavily involved in the Power Plant controversy, The Delaware City Rail Yard controversy, Barley Mill controversy, the Woodlawan controversy, the Kinder Morgan controversy, the Charter School Controversy, the Common Core Controversy, Nancy has who is saying “what”, and links to “why”. One can expend less energy by using her blog to follow all the stuff the News Journal neglects, in a few quick empty steps.

Amy Roe:  a head of the Sierra Club, who emerged from nowhere to lead the fight against the power plant, and give quite a run against the establishment candidate.  Becoming the face the anti- power movement could coalase behind, she gave the anti power plant movement both dignity and grace.  Coming up short only 115 votes, she has awakened Newark now politically as never before…  The power plant if it goes forward, now has a strong group of Newarkeans against it.  Hopefully they will be monitoring it regularly and helping authorities keep in in compliance with all local law.

Tom Gorden; although much quieter than his first term in office, Tom Gorden is rapidly rolling back the privileges the previous Clark administration handed over to our state’s top developers. The Barley Mill plaza which had a green light, is now parked at a red. In a big sea change, though handled quietly, community groups are now no longer persona non grata in county government. It is no longer accepted as a matter of course that the Woodlawn Trust will be gobbled up by developers. If enough fight can be mustered, it can be stopped. Furthermore, with Tom there is closer coordination with the City of Wilmington, than we have experienced anytime in our lifetimes. In the county, local policing has been stepped up, particularly in neighborhoods prone to crime…

Dennis Williams: Came in with grand expectations, which looked deliverable for a while. The tide is turning and his relevance on this list, is because every day, the headline reality in Wilmington’s streets, brings his electioneering boasts back to haunt him, like a sizzling hot branding iron.  Time, Dennis, to say “Damn the torpedoes… Their punk asses are going in jail no matter which blowhard on City Council spouts off,before mine gets tossed in jail for impersonating a mayor..”

Alan Levin:  Jack Markell’s second in command, he was instrumental in defending Markell’s position on Kinder Morgan and the port, as well as the new power plant for the data center. He also had a hand in keeping Dole in Delaware, and worked to slip the power plant past a slew of unsuspecting Newark City officials.

Jack Markell: had his hand in everything.  He was behind Kinder Morgan’s takeover.  He was behind SB 51 and HB 165.  He was behind the illegal charter group, requiring HB 40. He also was the driving force for the four rational steps to gun legislation, 2 of which were passed. He was also the driving force behind the passage of gay marriage, signing the bill in the chambers just moments after its passage. He also supported the transgender bill in its travels through the labyrinth of Legislative Hall. He as behind keeping Dole in Delaware. He was behind changing an icon in Millsboro away from pickles, over to poultry. He pushed the bill to curtail Flowers. Despite your opinion over whether these were good or bad, they still showed a ubiquitous and wide reach across the state of Delaware. Seems like nothing got done that didn’t have his fingerprints all over it.

John Young: As head of Christina board, John Young led the board in standing up to Mark Murphy and Jack Markell, by refusing the RTTT funds slated for his district. Although some hired fools, (Jea Street) tried to paint Young into a corner, it served the opposite purpose and gave Young a platform. For the fist time, Common Core was getting publicly bashed. For the first time, many were finding that aligning themselves blindly to this sham of improving standards, was probably going to hurt them politically in the next couple of years. It was the fist salvo back, so the damage estimates were not high, but it did open eyes of many who had been on the sidelines of all educational issues, making them also become vocal in fighting Common Core. His blog Transparent Christina has channelled a lot of detailed information into the Delaware market, and had made Common Core an apprehension, instead of the savior it was supposed to be….

Kilroy: Kilroy has always been haranguing over education. In fact he was doing such a good job I left that issue alone for years, because other issues for me, like the economy and elimination of guns from the hands of the mentally ill, were more important. But as the issue has shifted back into the limelight, Kilroy’s hard hitting is making its mark… Kilroy is blunt, and right now, that is the language that needs to happen. Blunt descriptions of what takes place in the stratosphere of he academic field…. Kilroy often breaks stories before the News Journal, especially ones embarrassing to the Murphy/Markell cartel of education. If you have read Kilroy over the past couple of years, you would already know that Common Core is not the panacea we have been promised. It is a power grab for taxpayer dollars, financed by Wall Street itself…. If you think otherwise, you haven’t been reading a balanced reading list….
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That is what I have so far. In retrospect I am surprised that education has played so much, as even I have only come to that topic lately… But if one looks over the News Journal op eds, education really did dominate the discussion in the 2nd smallest state this year….

I may have forgotten some big ones. To reiterate, that is why I am posting this early, to catch those big mistakes as they get brought to my attention….

Lack Of Educational Privacy, Damages Your Kid For Life

Up until he had this one teacher, he was a good student.  For 10 years in the public school system, he and been in the top 5% of his class.

Then, he was put in a tenth grade government with a Tea Party ideologue as the teacher.  Being a good student, he challenged her assertions:  that climate change was  liberal propaganda; that SNAP was a communist program, that Medicare and Medicaid needed to be eliminated, that the markets were the sole determination of character, that we needed to get rid of every environmental law, that blacks were born dumb and no schooling would rectify that, that Mexicans needed to be gassed in concentration camps because it was too expensive to ship them back… 

This was the first year of inBloom and every teacher was asked to fill out data on each of their students.  There were 400 data fields that needed to  be filled out, including grades, attendance records, academic subjects, course levels, disabilities. Administrators can also upload certain details that students or parents may be comfortable sharing with teachers, but not with unknown technology vendors. InBloom’s data elements, for instance, include family relationships (“foster parent” or “father’s significant other” or “mother’s fourth husband”) and reasons for enrollment changes (“withdrawn due to illness” or “leaving school as a victim of a serious violent incident”)

One privacy lawyer, said she was particularly troubled by the disciplinary details that could be uploaded to inBloom because its system included subjective designations like “perpetrator,” “victim” and “principal watch list.”

And that is what happened to our former good student. He is now in prison.

Did you know that solely because of Common Core, that parents  no longer control their child’s data if it was gathered electronically?   As in the case of this student, they don’t even know what is stored under his name in Amazon’s cloud, and from there, it  can spread now far as the eye can see… Future colleges! Future employers!  Future Advertisers!  Remember all those privacy forms you have to sign?  They are only valid for information on paper.  When it comes to electronics, they simply “Do Not Apply!”

In Delaware, thank Dave Sokola.

 

American Media’s Lost Credibility Upon It’s Reporting Of The Snowden Affair

“Watching you watching me / It’s so easy to see…/ Watching me watching you / It’s so obviously true”  Lyrics by Bill Withers… 

If there is anything one can gather from the Snowden release, it is that American media is severely compromised.

Here is the news we are constantly being given:

• Interest and speculation on what Snowden must feel.
• Speculation on where he might or might not go.
• Speculation on what it must be like to live in an airport.
• Breaking news of what Snowden’s father thinks and feels.
• Reports on who back in Washington, feels he needs or needs not to be punished.
• Accepting without question, the US Government’s case he is a spy, not a whistle blower.

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So here is what is not getting told.

A) Internet freedom is over.  Revelation that the US has the ability to read everything passing through the US, means that this connection is no longer trusted by the Chinese, the Russians, our economically competitive nations, those pirate sympathizers or people like you and me, who don’t want strangers accessing what we like to do when we have stripped off our professional skins and get down to being ourselves.

B) The Chinese have moved to seal off their own system. The Russians will have theirs up and running shortly. There will be soon be private enterprises who will set up secure connections that guarantee that no records will be given out based on the  model of the Swiss system of financial secrecy.

C) What this means, is that we revert back to the library system.  If you want to look up something in China, you will send a query, it will be approved as it leaves the US, it must be approved by the Chinese in order to enter, and it then gets directed to your party.  This requires human oversight, and will slow queries to weeks, instead of nano-seconds.  Same if you wish to find out something in Russia.  Heaven help us if a Chinese satellite breaks off course and drifts towards collision with the International Space station manned by Russians and Americans…  We’d never get the message.

D) We are hoping the US will be one monolithic entity under this, but imagine if it wasn’t.   Imagine if nothing liberal could be searched up in Texas?  Or nothing Conservative in Connecticut?

E) This is being effectively done, right now, and no news service in the US is reporting it.

F) Without Snowden we would not know that the NSA has been able to bend nine US internet companies to its demands for access to their users’ data.

G) Without Snowden we would not know that analysing data was not done by the NSA< but was  turned over to un-vetted private operators, such as employees of Booz Allen Hamilton.  Their employees had access to every email, every phone call,  every facebook account.   We would not know that half a million fellow citizens have high security clearances who shouldn’t.

H) Nor would there be a debate between Europe and the US over where the line between Freedom and security should lie.

i)  Control of the internet is about to get very contentious.  Knowing how the US and its internet corporations abused their control, certainly means the US cannot be counted on to oversea almost all of the junctions upon the net.   Google instead of being world wide, independent of the US government, is now seen as an express arm of that same government.  Yahoo, Verizon, AOL, Time-Warner, Microsoft, Comcast, all certainly cannot be trusted either…

J)  These revelations also damage the Obama administration’s credibility to its core. Proclaiming internet freedom in words, to cover up deeds on this gigantic scale, was an attempt to mislead.  Fully aware of the extent, and arguing for full internet freedom is equivalent of George Bush arguing for gentleness and amnesty towards Iraqi prisoners  to cover the atrocities of Abu Ghraib.

K)  Snowden’s revelations tell us that NO United States- based internet provider can be trusted with your privacy.  Nothing that is stored in their “cloud” services can be guaranteed to be safe from surveillance or from illicit downloading by employees of the consultancies employed by the NSA.  If you are a company thinking of using a US company for servicing your IT needs, you now know that all your trade secrets will be up for sale.

This means the golden years for US internet companies may have come to an end.  If not their end, then at least these companies must now scramble to quickly evolve into different entities if they wish to survive.

Perhaps Swiss law might be tweaked to allow secure servers to set up camp somewhere in the beautiful Alps, who for NO reason, will give out any information….

More jobs going overseas.

Why is this not being mentioned in American media?  Are our reporters really that stupid?  Is our press truly nothing but Luddites who blindly go where authority directs them to go and look for clues?

That could explain why we constantly hear about  speculation about Snowden’s travel plans, asylum requests, state of mind, physical appearance, etc. The “human interest” angle over here, has trumped the real story.

The real story is that the NSA revelations expressly tell us how our networked world actually works and they portend the direction to which it is heading.

I hope you enjoyed your freedom while you had it.  The internet is through,.. Welcome to the Age of Internets…..   That is the real story.

The sub-story is that the NSA lied in March and emphatically said: this program flat-out did not exist.  So when they say they only see phone numbers… ?

cough, cough…