Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2639 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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Texas Republican Wants State To Leave U.S. Over Obama Wins

A Republican official in Texas called for his state to separate from the United States and the “maggots” who reelected President Barack Obama in a newsletter he sent out this week.

Peter Morrison, who serves as treasurer of the Hardin County Republican Party, wrote in his post-election newsletter that there was a clear solution to the problem of Obama’s re-election.

“We must contest every single inch of ground and delay the baby-murdering, tax-raising socialists at every opportunity,” Morrison wrote. “But in due time, the maggots will have eaten every morsel of flesh off of the rotting corpse of the Republic, and therein lies our opportunity.”

Read full article.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Texas Republican Talks Secession”

2012/11/102012/11/10

Berto Jongman: The most important education technology in 200 years

04 Education, Advanced Cyber/IO

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The most important education technology in 200 years

Kurzweil, November 3, 2012

Education is about to change dramatically, says Anant Agarwal, who heads edX, a $60 million MIT-Harvard effort to stream a college education over the Web, free, with plans to teach a billion students, Technology Review reports.

“Massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, offered by new education ventures like edX, Coursera, and Udacity, to name the most prominent (see “The Crisis in Higher Education”) will affect markets so large that their value is difficult to quantify.

A quarter of the American population, 80 million people, is enrolled in K–12 education, college, or graduate school. Direct expenditures by government exceed $800 billion. Add to that figure private education and corporate training.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: The most important education technology in 200 years”

2012/11/102012/11/10

Marcus Aurelius: Pararescuemen Rule

Ethics, Military

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Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

Pararescuemen walk line between fierce warrior, caring savior

Laura Rauch

Stars and Stripes, 29 October 2012

While their core function is combat rescue and the personnel recovery of downed aircraft, Air Force pararescue teams also fly throughout Afghanistan augmenting the Army medevac mission.

Though medevac and pararescue overlap in terms of pulling the wounded from the battlefield, they are distinctively different. While medevac adheres to the Geneva Conventions by flying in unarmed helicopters marked with red crosses, pararescue flies in unmarked birds equipped with two .50 caliber machine guns. And they carry the guardian angels.

“We are a weapons system, we are armed,” Senior Airman and Pararescueman Jason Sweet said. “We’re shooters, divers, jumpers, technical rescue specialists. We’re ready to rescue anyone, anywhere, anytime.”

While the inception of Air Force combat rescue began in 1947, its legacy has been forged in every conflict since Korea.

The helicopters fly in pairs, one designated as the trail aircraft, and one as lead. Each is capable of landing in the hot zone or providing covering fire from above.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: Peace Jumpers capable of calling in precision parachute drops are a variation of this idea. They too would have guardian angels, but the focus would be on protection from proven rapid delivery of what is needed on the ground in the moment.

2012/11/10

Graphic: Right Wing Map of Left Wing Counties

Graphics, Political

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Marcus Aurelius: Interesting for two reasons. First, the rejection of the traditional color for the GOP, semantically shifting “red” to the Democracts. Second, and more important, what this map does not depict is all of the Constitution, Green, Libertarian, Natural Law, Reform, and Socialist as well as Independent voters, and the huge number of voters that did not vote. As Tom Atlee has noted, dichotomies are inherently fraudulent and misrepresentative.

2012/11/102012/11/10

Review: Independents Rising: Outsider Movements, Third Parties, and the Struggle for a Post-Partisan American

3 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Democracy, Politics

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Jacqueline S. Salit

3.0 out of 5 stars TIRED — Out of Touch with Substance and Reality,November 10, 2012

I've gone through this book, it is a very fast read, in part because there is no real substance here. I list ten better books at the end. If you seek out my summary reviews you can get the gist of all that is not in this book by Jackie Salit.

After years of trying to understand Salit and her ostensible web site for IndependentVoting.org, I finally got it one day as I watched 30 non-profit and advocacy leaders struggle with the concept of transpartisanship.

In that moment I realized that they are all — and certainly including Salit — bound hand and foot to the concept of a two-party tyranny. They are comfortable with the corruption that they understand, and each limits themselves and their group to seeking a foot-hold within that very corrupt system.

Salit and Michael Bloomberg “made” each other, and this properly puts IndependentVoting.org, which does not stand for anything other than “give us a place at the table,” in the Bloomberg/Wall Street circus act that includes NO LABELS, Americans Elect, former Comptroller David Walker with his movie and bus tour, and now the Bloomberg PAC that buys influence on Member at a time. All of this is TIRED.

Salit has had multiple chances — as has Ron Paul and other third party presidents — to break away from trying to do the wrong thing righter, and in each instance has failed to rise to the challenge. A national Electoral Reform Summit concluding with a Statement of Demand and an Occupation of every home office of every federal Senator and Representative, is the WIRED approach to changing the rules of the game.

Continue reading “Review: Independents Rising: Outsider Movements, Third Parties, and the Struggle for a Post-Partisan American”

2012/11/102012/11/10

Jackie Salit: Obama & The Independents — Comment by Robert Steele on Why Independents — and Paulistas and Greens — Remain Irrelevant

Politics

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Obama and Independents: The Micro, the Macro and the Forest

by Jacqueline Salit

The Obama campaign team did everything right. That's the consensus among journalists, consultants, and the political class. I've watched some of them literally swoon over maps of the 50 states showing how the President's campaign surgically identified pockets of “blue voters”, marooned in “red territory” and drew them to the polls in sufficient numbers to carry a battleground state.

An impressive operation, surely, even if it reminds me–in a spooky way–of the satellite imaging that helps our military track terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Amazing technology and our obsession with data, fused with the time-tested political machinery of the political parties, has produced a slice-and-dice culture of campaigning where the “micro” rules and where the geeks are inheriting the earth. Or, at least they're helping the parties maintain control of it.

I am an Obama supporter–one of the independents who voted for him both times. (Our numbers dropped from about 20 million in 2008 to about 16 million in 2012.) I'm very glad he won re-election for many, many reasons. And the methodology of the “micro” surely enabled Obama's political victory. But I worry that the reductionism of micro-targeting–such as making sure that the 200 voting-age Latinos who moved to Broward County in Florida got the right mailer-obscures the political meaning of the macro. In the old days, we used to call this not being able to see the forest for the trees.

In this election, one forest that was missed was the 40 percent of Americans who disalign from the Democrats and Republicans and call themselves independents. Independent voters were an indispensable part of the Obama coalition in 2008. He carried 52 percent of independents nationwide–an 8-point margin over Republican John McCain. That post-partisan coalition provided both the numbers and the heart of the 2008 campaign.

Continue reading “Jackie Salit: Obama & The Independents — Comment by Robert Steele on Why Independents — and Paulistas and Greens — Remain Irrelevant”

2012/11/102012/11/10

Mini-Me: Benghazi — DoD “Timeline” and Reason for Not Dispatching Armed Aircraft (Incomplete Intelligence Picture on the Ground)

Government, Ineptitude, Military

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Huh?

EXTRACT:

“Due to the incomplete intelligence picture on the ground, armed aircraft options were simply not feasible.”

DOD Releases Detailed Timeline for Benghazi Response

Dorian De Wind

The Moderate Voice, 10 November 2012

The Defense Department released a detailed timeline yesterday of the Pentagon’s response to the September attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

The following is the verbatim 10 November news release by the American Forces Press Service:

A senior defense official, speaking on background with Pentagon reporters, emphasized the rapid consultation, planning and troop pre-deployment actions defense leaders undertook in the first hours following the attack.

“With naval, Marine, special operations and air forces either employed or en route to Libya during the attacks, we responded,” the official said. “We mourn the loss of four American heroes in Benghazi.”

The military’s initial response began within minutes of the first incident in Benghazi, the official said: the attack on the U.S. consulate began at 3:42 p.m. EDT [9:42 p.m. Benghazi time], and by 5:10 EDT an unarmed surveillance aircraft was on station over the Benghazi compound.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Benghazi — DoD “Timeline” and Reason for Not Dispatching Armed Aircraft (Incomplete Intelligence Picture on the Ground)”