The 41st Vote

This article is cross-posted at Redstate.

Ever since the election, I have been writing, here, in comments and on my blog. I started my blog right after the election in November. I have not been real active on my blog of late, I have been deeply involved in some political activities in other venues.

Tonight, I was looking at the logs on my server and I ran across an entry for a visit and it had an address I could trace back so I decided to check this one entry out. It sent a chill down my spine until I remembered who we are dealing with (Janet Napolitano).

I visited the site at riverglass.com. Their description of their business model is thus:

RiverGlass is a software-based solution for government and business that finds and delivers information culled from expansive and diverse sources, wherever it exists — from internal communications via company Intranets and among diverse agencies, to news feeds, subscription services, websites and Internet user groups. Additionally, RiverGlass data analytics get smarter over time, refining search parameters according to positive results, thereby continuously delivering crucial, relevant data specific to your unique criteria.

Certainly Interested, I visited the “Products” page. Here, they clarify:

Governmental agencies and businesses face three major challenges in acquiring information: extensive, irrelevant information in search results; impossibility of knowing the best places to look for information; and an infinite need for new information and insights. RiverGlass technology continuously scours the Internet or enterprise intranet to discover new information relevant to your needs:

In other words they find and create interesting threads for government analysts to ponder. Further down the page, they expound:

Threat Mitigation: monitoring activities of groups intending harm to corporate or public assets and keeping abreast of socio-political happenings in locales of strategic importance

How do they deliver value? By assisting analysts in assessing the meaning of the text.

…any particular analyst or knowledge worker has not just one but perhaps hundreds of persistent information needs and many of these information needs cannot be simply characterized by some small number of keywords.

Further, they have a proprietary method of statistically analyzing text to extract Points of meaning :

complex meaning extraction, the statistical approach has some limitations — it essentially treats natural language texts as sequences of words, but doesn’t have a knowledge model of what these words actually mean. These statistical tricks can be effective, but at their core they are tricks to approximate the extraction of meaning, and are subject to some fundamental limitations relating to polysemy (words can have multiple different word senses) and to the variety of ways in which natural language can express meaning. Some hybrid approaches employ the syntax of sentences, which can provide some contextual clues, but syntax is not semantics — and there is no attempt to get at the actual meaning expressed in such natural language texts.

More elaboration:

The thesis of OntoSem is that interpreting the meanings of textual units is really feasible only in the presence of a detailed world model whose elements are triggered (directly or indirectly, individually or in combinations) by the appearance in the input text of various textual units whose lexicon entries contain pointers to certain ontological concepts.

Enthralled now, I investigated further and found how they serve government specifically by spying on U.S. citizens:

The most critical issue facing intelligence operations is keeping pace with the continuous generation of new, disparate and obscure data. Tools that continuously analyze and automatically connect incoming data to open investigations are a necessity for intelligence-led security and policing.

It gets even better:

RiverGlass and the Statewide Terrorism Intelligence Center (STIC) of the Illinois State Police (those ones from Dear Leaders Homestate) have jointly developed a suite of tools tailored to the specific needs of analysts working in a fusion center environment.

In case the term “fusion center ” strikes a chord, let me refresh your memory, the Fusion Center in Missouri (MIAC) was the source of the infamous memo casting disgruntled ex-military, anti-abortion activists, and “anti-immigration activists” and angry white republicans in general as “potential” homegrown terrorists.

To encapsulate the purpose, in their own words:

Automatically seek out and monitor websites that relate to criminal investigations or other intel needs. Information posted to the internet from diverse sources like CNN, MSNBC, Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and Department of Justice, as well as sites that post threatening or criminal content is critical to effective data analysis.

So, after a thoroughly entertaining hour reading up on them, I went back through all my logs in the last year. Yep, they visit every month. I have also had somoe visits from Centcom (Miami & Iraq) and visits from some other military posts whom I assumed came to look at at a salutory post I made to all our warriors and to one specific fallen warrior who happened to be a friend of one of the regular contributors her.

So all the mea cupla’s from Janet Napolitano aside, DHS is still hot on the trail of me, and I sure a great many of you here at Redstate. I have only two hopes:

• That most of their math genius’s are not late of the Wall Street derivatives market.
• That their programmers are not late of Phil Jones office at HADCRU.

Oh, and they were not the only one, see this link .

In case you are wondering what is so interesting to them, see my blog: The41stVote .

I do have a sense of irony though, for you geeks out there, look at the source for this page and note the “alt text” tags i put on the links in here. That should give you a Chuckle. I would also encourage all of you here that run a blog on you server to look for these guys. They will show up as and entyr such as:

r99.riverglass.com

Happy hunting.

Cross posted at the41stvote.

At a recent conference on Global Warming (caused by you of course), Lord Monckton, the British Lord and esteemed Scientist made a presentation that thoroughly destroyed the premise than man is responsible for any changes to the earth’s climate. Then he said this: Continued

The legions that voted for Barack Obama were many times swayed by rhetoric like “social justice”, “spread the wealth” “fairness” and “hope and change”.  None of this is new.  It is just the tired, discredited rhetoric of all the failed Socialist/Fascist/Communist movements of the last 150 years.

All of these movments have one thing in common, they have only brought shared misery in place of prosperity that many times wended their way down to those classes that seem most vulnerable to such sophistic verbiage.  Continued

Rep. Joe Wilson (R, SC)

On Wednesday night, Obama was caught in another lie, only on the brave outburst of Representative Joe Wilson (D, SC).

At a point in the speech when Obama was denigrating those that were spreading “mis-information” and “falsehoods” about his and Nancy Pelosi’s government run health care scheme, he specifically said this:

“There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This too is false. The reforms — the reforms I am proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

To which Joe Wilson shouted:  “You Lie” Continued

On Wednesday of this week, President Obama held a Blog Talk Radio confab sponsored by a large group of Socialist Ministers that decided to make a flashy infomercial out of the event. It included every device you might imagine, sad stories about parishoners who suffered for lack of coverage.  Like the story of Ron and Carla, who spoke of her families loss of Medicaid because her families income was $ 6.00 a month over the limit to qualify.  What happened, are the SEIU thugs not getting the message out?

It was a really disgusting display of dis-ingenousness.  It was also  a shocking display of creating demons on the part of so-called “People of Faith”.  Continued

Some Democrats still have a moral standard that the state should not promote the forced destruction of innocent life in the interests of “privacy”.  For that reason, the Democrats have been having a devil of a time reporting the Obamacare measure from all the committees charged with vetting and marking up the bill.

The original version of HR 3200, contained language that would have forced ALL health insurance plans, either “public” or private to offer abortion on demand, paid for at taxpayer expense (depending on income).  As we are beneficent people, some Democrats feel women, who make a mistake, should not be “punished with a baby”.

Continued

Sarah Palin Visits A Wounded Soldier

Sarah Palin’s shocking announcement today that she would not seek re-election as Governor and that she would be stepping down effective July 26th will trigger a firestorm of speculation and attacks, it already has.  Her stated reasons for leaving the Governorship early, to “pass the ball for victory” seems somewhat hollow given her popularity in Alaska.  Already, liberal pundit, Larry Sabato has announced on Fox, that the move is “political suicide” and that the GOP would not dare nominate her as they might risk a “landslide” loss in 2012.

Liberals have attacked her as dense and shallow since her nomination as the GOP candidate for Vice President.  GOP operatives, many former associates of Mitt Romney have attacked her ( in a cowardly, anonymous fashion) many speculate, to diminish her standing in the GOP at large.  If anything, it has steeled her supporters against these sorts of attacks and increased the public empathy that attaches to her. Continued

Cap & Traitors Rule The Day – For Just A Day

HR 2454 passed tonight on a close vote of 219 – 212. The Democrats needed 8 RINO crossovers to pass the bill as 44 Democrats defected to preserve their integrity and  vote against a bill clearly detrimental to their constituents.

The bill is clearly detrimental to all constituents, but the bribes were flying hot and heavy, even being negotiated on the floor, on live TV between Henry  Waxman and assorted extortionists each eager to sell out their constituents for some certain pieces of silver or another. One of the most egregious of these was Alan Grayson (D, FL) who hit Waxman up for $ 50.0 million dollars on live TV.  The shocking thing was Waxman gave it to him.

Continued

HR 2454, The Waxman-Markey “American Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009″ was passed out of the Commerce Committee on Thursday night.  This bill institutes “Cap & Trade”, which is the Governments version of the Enron ponzi scheme revolving around the trading of “credits” to “offset” the production of earth destroying carbon dioxide. You know, that stuff you exhale and trees and plants need to make food to thrive and which they transform inot oxygen , yeah that gas you would die without.

What the bill actually does is that it institutes a MASSIVE STEALTH TAX ON GLOBAL WARMING already stated funds from Cap & Trade will be his foundation for Health Care Reform aka Obama’s SOCIALIZED MEDICINE.  Obama is counting on the $634.0 billion annual taxes raised under the Waxman-Markey-Pelosi_Reid-Obama ponzi scheme meant to prevent the failure of the Roosevelt ponzi scheme called Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.  Remember, it is just to big to fail.  So we will have full blown government control over 80% of the Banks in the country, Full control over General Motors (except for the disproportionate share of ownership he is trying to give to the UAW at the expense of the debt holders and stockholders contrary to law), then complete government control over the gas you exhale by taxing the production of CO2.

The Heritage Foundation, who has been researching the bill since it was introduced in February, has this to say about the  MASSIVE STEALTH TAX ON GLOBAL WARMING :

The cap-and-trade tax proposed by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) is disguised as environmental legislation when it would have little impact on global temperatures. In fact, it is a massive energy tax that promises soaring household energy bills, major job losses, income cuts, and a sharp left turn toward big government.

Their view can be summarized with these 10 points:

1. Cap and Trade Is a Massive Energy Tax
2. It Will Not Make a Substantive Impact on the Environment
3. It Will Kill Jobs
4. It Will Cause Electricity Bills and Gas Prices to Sharply Increase
5. It Will Outsource Manufacturing Jobs and Hurt Free Trade
6. It Will Make You Choose Between Energy, Groceries, Clothing, and Haircuts
7. It Will Be Highly Susceptible to Fraud and Corruption
8. It Will Hurt Senior Citizens, the Poor, and the Unemployed the Worst
9. It Will Cost American Families Over $3,000 a Year
10. President Obama Admitted “Electricity Rates Would Necessarily Skyrocket” Under a Cap-and-Trade Program (January 2008)

Just to  emphasize Obama’s view on this:

The bill was assigned to sub-committee in February.  Conservative Democrats and Republicans were slowly killing it becasue they understood how dangerous and destructive to the U.S. economy and American households the bill really is.  Two weeks ago, Waxman pulled this bill from sub-committee and reassigned this bill to the Commerce Committee which he Chairs so he could ramrod the bill through.

Now they want to press for a vote on the floor of the House as soon as possible because they see their window of opportunity shrinking.  Democrat members from energy sensitive states  (South Dakota, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Texas, Louisiana…et al) are beginning to seriously push back  Blue Dog Democrats wary of the deficits the restructured bill will accrete to an already swelling National Debt are also beginning to raise doubts.

The history of Cap & Trade goes back several years now. Nancy Pelosi had to remove John Dingell (D, MI) from the commerce committee chairmanship that ad responsibility for this bill due to his opposition, she replaced him with Waxman.  Here is what Dingell had to say:

This is what Charles Rangle (D, NY) had to say:

“Whether you call it a tax, everyone agrees that it’s going to increase the cost to the consumer,” said Rangel. “At the end of the day … if there’s nothing there to repay [consumers] for their financial expenditures, it might be difficult to fight Republicans who call this a tax.”

The bill will impose a MASSIVE STEALTH TAX ON GLOBAL WARMING of $ 3,900.00 annually on every American household. Of course, this is just the continuing abrogation of Obama’s promise to not raise taxes on households earning under $ 250,000 annually.  Everyone pays this tax -- every time -- you turn on a light switch or buy any product that was made with electricity made from carbon fuels.  If you cannot afford to pay this tax, you must take action.  Here are a few things you can do.

Visit the Americans for Tax Reform action center on the Globa Warming Tax and use the tool there to send a letter to your representatives.

Sign the petition to Stop the Massive Global Warming Tax.

Use this widget below to follow the bill.  Please register here and add your comments and subscribe to the thread on this.  I will be posting additional updates and other locations to take action.

Visit the Fight HR 2454 -- Global Warming Tax page and the Downloads page to get contact information for Senators and Representatives that you should focus on to stop this massive tax.

FINALLY, READ THIS AND RETWEET IT WITH THE BUTTON ABOVE.