Conspiracy Theories

Lets go DEEP...

So facebook went public. Zuckerberg is now a gagillion, trillion, bajillion-aire. More power to him, I'm a capitalist. However, his company's IPO was valued in a somewhat "odd" way, and now there's been fall out - whispers really. The evaluation was based on the company's ability to increase its value by 47%, next year. A hefty target to say the least. And these sort of whispers are the kind adults had back in 1996 when owners of sites like "shoelaces.com" were becoming billionaires. Facebook was evaluated at a worth of between $100 billion to $116 billion. It settled around $102 billion. That's about $40 billion more than the value of Disney (bare in mind that name encompasses everything from classic movies, to theme parks, to ESPN to ABC, etc, etc). And I found it interesting that this evaluation of facebook was done by the same group (in fact the same guy) that did the GM evaluation for the government (JP Morgan).

Now 3 days later those "whispers" have gotten louder. And they go something on the order of, "what if facebook is overvalued?" You think? Look, I get that 900,000,000 people connect on facebook, I mean there's no better place to go to find out how the kid who sat two desks over from me in Algebra II is gearing up for the weekend, or see cellphone photos of how one of my jr. high girlfriends got wasted celebrating her 35th birthday at Senior Frogs. I mean this is vital, vital stuff people. But at least Disney had hard assets other than Zuckerberg's Ferrari collection.

Now those whispers are noting that, like Leihman Brothers, facebook's over all value to the American economy - both literal and psychological - means its' failure could serve as a Black Friday event for the stock market. It's now "too big to fail." You may scoff at the notion, but consider what we, Americans, build these days. We may not have assembly lines of tanks and TV's, but social networking, that's our bread and butter. THAT is what we innovate now - means of connection.

Side note - I have a gmail account (google email). I sent my sister, who's a third year law student come fall, an email from that account asking her thoughts on the various aspects of the charging document within the Zimmerman/Treyvon criminal case. Murder 2 to be exact. I thought (as does Alan Derschawitz) that second degree murder was a stretch. Google, of course, charges nothing for this account, however you must put up with a side bar (pardon the pun) of ads that run along your inbox. Google also recently had a vast update to their "disclosure" policy. One of those deals where you scroll to the bottom and check "accept" so you can hurry off to wherever you're going. Upon reading her return email, innocuously entitled "RE: sis", I noticed a trend to the ads now appearing on the right side. They were all advertisements for criminal law school and/or criminal law attorneys. Quite an effective ad mechanism, don't you think? Consider Sears-Roebuck of 1960 having access to the details of your private snail mail correspondence.

An additional side note - in the 1940's, and it was enhanced in the 1970's (1948 & 1972 respectively, if I recall correctly) the US congress passed (& it was signed into law) prohibitions on the government's domestic use of propaganda. More recently the US House (controlled by the GOP) joined forces with the Senate to repeal those prohibitions. Cass Sunstein (another Saul Alinsky acolyte & our current "Regulation Czar") must be thrilled, he has long advocated various domestic propaganda initiatives.

Now back to "too big to fail." We've seen the governments propensity (from both parties) to bail out any company deemed with such a status. What a handy tool it would be to control the "messaging" in a marketplace where 900,000,000 people come to connect. After all, if facebook is indeed overvalued, and the economy is facing crisis after "fb's"  failure to hit its' modest 47% value increase, what other choice will our president have than to bail them out? But that's crazy talk ... after all, its not like the President of the United States would order the bail out of a company, divvy up its shares, direct restrictions on its' advertising budget, fire its' CEO and then use his "saving" of the company as a political tool. No, not a chance. In a completely unrelated story, have you seen the new line of GM's? They're awesome.

My new hero...

Hugh Howley wrote 550 pages of serial fiction (compiled in the Wool Omnibus edition) that has propelled him to amazing heights of popularity.  He has sold the movie rights, made a deal for publication in the UK, gotten all his work signed with Random House (a significant name, to say the least)... all through the miracle of self-publication in the age of electronic publishing.

Not only is his science fiction top-notch... his blog is almost as much fun to follow as ours is (less fighting, of course).  Since July of 2011, WOOL has become a sci-fi craze... and Mr. Howley is reaping the rewards.

Tell me again why we aren't at least trying to follow in his footsteps?

$8, how can you go wrong?

Speaking of sons ... my younger comes back from the store the other day with a gift for me. He's gone and spent some of his report card money and bought me a WWII documentary, from Wal Mart. Now for $7.96, I wasn't expecting much - one of those generic deals that hits a few major points. BOY, was I wrong. If you can get past the college kid they have narrating (he's never seen, but sounds a tad nervous), this is an excellent buy. A 21 part 4 disc series, it comes in a 2-pack entitled "The Dawn of War" and "The Fight For Freedom", respectively. It is uber-detailed. And I mean from Hitler's elementary school grades into details of the German attack plans across the Maginot Line ... that were rejected! Then they get to the plan executed. The names and ranks of commanders of individual attack groups; an exhausting account (in a good way) of the RAF defense of England and Goering's various attempts to reformulate bombing strategy; the philosophical sources of the German High Commands military strategy; detailed reading of major aspects of the secret pact between Franco and Hitler ... I mean this is college dissertation level detail. 21+ hours. And again, for 8 bucks!

They have a "Nazi Crimes" 2 pack edition as well, I'm getting that tonight. Look in a separate bin, a display sorta, for Father's Day ideas in an aisle near electronics. There's also WWI, Vietnam, and the Civil War. It's the best type of documentary in my opinion - a hyper detailed, everyone else bails in the room and you're the only one left still watching kind ... hehehe.

My son...

Jacob, my nine-year-old, has a science project due on Monday.  In typical Foster-house fashion, he has put off working on this project until the weekend before it is due.

The premise of his project is to find out what the burn rate of a candle is based on its temperature.  We will freeze two candles, put two in the fridge, and leave two at room temperature.  We will then burn all six to find the average burn rate of each of the variable components.

The reason for my post is that the child is typing like a pro, that he recognizes when words are misspelled or when grammar is lacking, and that he is actually excited about doing the written portion of his work.  It never ceases to amaze me how smart this boy really is... and just how capable he is when he puts his mind to his efforts.

Now if I could only make him behave like a normal human being the other 95% of his life... our life would be complete.

I agree completely ...

My point was not that this (the budget failure) in and of itself makes him a failure. In fact, in terms of what he wanted to change America in to (govt as the end rather than a limited means) he's racking up in the win column. America just seems to not be buying that as a proper (or at least successful) solution anymore beause it's simply not working. Wealth redistributionist central planning doesn't create jobs - who woulda' guessed?

My point is that this president's ideology, as you and I have oft defined it, is so far out of the mainstream, so far off the charts, that every single member - think of that - every single member of his own Party in congress voted against his budget proposal, either out of disagreement or fear (of facing their constituency afterwards). I can't imagine the press George W. Bush or even Clinton would get if this same were true during their terms.

I contend this presidency is now in lame duck session, and furthermore he will lose in Carter-esque fashion come November. He has hidden it in flowery prose and embedded it in "help the poor" legislation, but what has been clear to the Bund from the beginning is now becoming clear to America - this man fundamentally disapproves of our nation as founded and his chosen alternative, his "fundamental transformation", has been a resounding failure. I simply saw his inability to get a single vote from a single member of his own Party as a significant indicator of this reality.

Wow... I can answer this one!

Obama isn't a failure for the simple reason that he ran on the promise of CHANGE.  His goal, from minute ONE was to change the paradigm in Washington DC... to move us away from the more traditional model of a government balanced between revenue and spending, with a tax rate that keep markets growing and citizens spending... and towards a model where government is seen as the END of the MEANS, rather than a MEANS to an END.

This is the goal that the Democratic Party has had in its sights for the last 40 years, at least... maybe all the way back to LBJ.

Guards, Tackles & Defensive Ends

5  years ago when I began coaching football I got a call from my little brother, who - like any little brother would - had a sarcastic question for me. "What the hell do you know about football?" I answered him that while I knew next to nothing (& I still can't keep straight who's in the AFC versus the NFC), there was one area in which I could not be bested - homework.

Now, I don't think mounds of homework or amateur analysis is needed to understand the following record. If you take the field the first game and you lose 97-0, you might want to rethink your strategy. If in the second game you lose 414-0, no one else in the league will take you seriously. If on the third game you lose again, this time 99-0, I think perhaps the team owner is examining your caching contract to see just how the hell he can get rid of you.

As a nation, we haven't had a federal budget in three years. Not ONE. The above "scores" are the voting tallies of President Obama's budget proposals to congress, the latest coming just this week. Those of you who still support this president, please explain to me, on what level is this man not an absolute failure?

Douglas is STILL waiting on that bust of Diolcetian from Lincoln...

That was quick! Funny enough, I went into the wildly convenient 24/7 post office (inside of a mini mart gas station), only to discover that the "meter" (a highly technical term, they didn't care to elaborate) was broken. Hence, they slathered my little box with so many stamps ($5 worth) that it looked to me like something Henry Jones would send to Indy from the lost city of Petra.

At any rate, glad you like it. Just for the record, I have had it displayed with the other busts for some years now (although, admittedly in the rear of the formation). However, it's like having a pet that wants to run and run and here I am in an apartment while Titus has those wide open fields. In other words, I knew you would give it a much better home, and I thought it a fitting tribute to our longest debate to date.

Happy Mother's Day to all our better halves!

Many thanks!

My Bund Brother, F. Ryan, sent me a bust of FDR as a gift.  He compared it to the Resolute Desk, which was a gift from Victoria to Hayes in 1880 to show the goodwill and friendship between the two nations.

The bust (which is actually quite nice... not so big to be a hassle, not too small as to be insignificant) is now displayed on the shelf immediately above my head as I type this.  While I failed to show why I feel he is one of America's "great" Presidents, no one can deny that he is one of the most influential men to ever hold the office, and he is certainly one of the greatest war-time leaders the world has ever seen.  If Ryan can't bring himself to display the bust with the other five in the set... then I will let the man's image stand here instead.

The gift is accepted with grace and thanks, and no hard feelings exist in regards to the debates that have raged in the man's name over the last 10 years.

More thoughts on threats...

Sun Tzu, Jomini, von Clausewitz, B H Liddle Hart... all espoused theories on the strategy and tactics of waging and winning war.  All seem to say the same thing about the nature of threats that the US faces today in the post-Cold War era:

We are creating our own problems through our success.

I'm not becoming some pacifistic loony with delusions of "make love not war"... I'm being quite serious.

Since the early 90s, the US has shown itself completely capable of total victory in almost any conventional military action, in any environment, against any adversary.  Even in our darkest military hours, during actions like the Vietnam War, we won all the battles but failed to win the war because we failed to understand the nature of our enemy's goals.

The victory of the "West" in the Cold War has shown that the strategy of mutually assured destruction was enough to deter an exchange of nuclear weapons on a global scale, while our superiority in conventional methods of warfare far exceeded that of the USSR and her allies.  In 1991, in less than 100 hours, the US-led coalition (mostly US troops and equipment) utterly defeated the third largest standing army on the face of the earth and liberated a small nation from an occupying force in less time than it took that force to invade.  In 2001, the US invaded and defeated a hateful, tyrannical regime in Afghanistan in less than six months, but has fought ever since to keep the extremists from regaining power.  In 2003, the efforts begun in 1991 were completed when we over-threw the Ba'athists in Iraq in less than 28 days.

No nation that could be called an "enemy" today could hope to compete with what we can field in a matter of hours... militarily speaking.  Not North Korea, not Iran... probably not even China or Russia.

Therein lies the root of our problems.  This level of success forces "enemies" to look for means of success outside of the traditional "conventional" means of waging warfare.  Thus, our success is driving the proliferation of nuclear-capable nations like Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

I'm not saying this to promote the strategy of "lose to win"... far from.  I'm saying that history has proven that enemies will find the means to attack a superior force, even if that superior force is capable of defeating the attacker by all conventional means.  Sun Tzu says we must attack first, destroy the potential enemies and their ability to harm us, and thus remove the threat with the least amount of risk or cost to us... but that is not an option for us in this modern world, is it?  Yes, we could nuke or carpet-bomb North Korea and Iran into fused glass, but we'd gain no real or tangible security from the effort because we would make enemies of all other nations in the process.

My point is simply that the threats must be addressed, and cannot be ignored or disregarded.  If the potential exists that a nation like Iran or North Korea could use ONE nuclear device to impede or impair our ability to function as a society rather than destroy a single city, then it must be addressed.  If the means to mitigate damage from an EMP attack exist now, then they should be (at the very least) considered and discussed, if not implemented.  If the means to defend against such attacks by single or limited numbers of missiles exists, then we should explore those means, rather than assume that such defenses will only spur greater antagonism in the future.

A very under-rated threat...

I'm reading a book called 77 Days in September, and it is an eye-opening book.

The premise is that a terrorist enemy (I presume someone like North Korea or a rogue Islamist group bent on destroying the US) launches a 40 kiloton nuclear device 300 miles straight over Kansas, and uses it to generate an EMP effect that cripples the US, Mexico and most of Canada.

The author makes note of a report, last written/updated in 2008 and presented to the Office of the President every year before the SotU Address.  I looked this over and was shocked at just how accurately the author has captured the facts in his work relating to just how unprepared this nation is for such an event.

The effects of an electromagnetic pulse generated by a nuclear detonation have been well known since 1945.  I'm no expert (and the science is tough to read through), but my understanding of the problems associated with the process is that the higher the detonation, the larger the area effected (all line-of-sight) and the larger the detonation's component force, the worse the effects within that area.

The long and short of the issues is this:

37 sovereign nations have the means of producing (or access to) technology that would allow a device of sufficient size to climb more than high enough to shut down America/Canada/Mexico's electrical grids for as long as it would take to replace as much as 50% of all production, distribution and transmission facilities over most of the continent.  Seven nations have the means to produce weapons that are capable of such an attack, and all of those are by no means our "friends"... and (more terrifying, perhaps) not all can adequately account for their nuclear inventories (Russia and Pakistan top that list).

More importantly, we (the US) have no means of preventing this attack once it is initiated.  No adequate, or even functional, missile defense system has been developed that could target a missile launch initiating off the east or west seaboards from as far away as 25 miles and moving almost straight up.  Once launched, the weapon would effect all satellite equipment parked in geosynchronous orbit above the continental US, with either immediate or eventual failure of said equipment as the ultimate result.  All electronic devices, from wrist watches to city-wide electrical and water utility systems, would fail simultaneously.  More than 70% of all vehicles not specifically hardened or sheltered from the effects would cease to function.  All traditional (and now vital) means of communication would fail... cell phones, land lines, radio broadcast facilities, televisions, and the internet would all cease to work.

The crisis doesn't stem so much from the destruction initially felt by the attack, but instead by the fact that repair or replacement of said infrastructure would be a task whose timeline would be measured in decades... not days.  The only aspects of modern technology that have a better-than-average chance of surviving the attack would be those employed by the military... and replacing those items as they are damaged, worn-out or fail will be initially impossible, as well.

In short, the entire USA would be reduced to a nation of people whose entire "world" is reduced to a circle roughly 8 miles across... or the distance one could walk away and back under perfectly normal conditions in one twelve hour period of daylight.

The report linked above is big... but it is worth a glance.  Sobering, to say the least.