Thursday, August 29, 2019

The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech By: Kirsten Powers

Trigger warnings, safe spaces, micro aggression, cultural appropriation, white privilege and other moronic views is a huge problem today.  I normally ask people "Where are you from originally", this is considered micro aggression?  Powers, a Liberal, blew the lid off of what Conservatives and independents like myself have seen for years. "Free speech for me, not for thee" and "Tolerance for me but not for thee" is apparently the new new-liberal motto.



Conservatives have been denied speaking at universities because of their beliefs or political affiliation.  In other words, we need to practice exclusion to attain inclusion.  This is insane.  Universities used to be a place were freedom of speech was not only encouraged but many of the battles for the same were fraught. Today it's the complete opposite.

So the illiberal oppose Christianity but support Islam which we know is anti-LGBT and have zero respect for women. I guess enemy of my enemy is my friend.  Selective Outrage much?   The new left has even gone after Bill Maher for not following lockstep with their new illiberalism.  Maher?  He is ultra liberal but it only shows to what level the new left has gone.

In my opinion anyone who requires to have trigger warnings, and are offended by anyone that does not agree with them are not ready to be part of society and honestly require severe mental health help. We have failed our future generations. We have been bad stewards of freedoms and rights. We have been able to unravel what has been a beacon for the world for centuries.  I will address the typical triggered response, I do not want to go back to slavery or Jim Crow. I live by a strict motto; "no groups, no colors, no hyphenations and no labels". ~me.

This book was written during the Obama administration.  Ironically, she writes about how Obama was attacked by negative stories from Fox. Wow. Fast forward to today and Trump, Obama has a honeymoon for 8 years.

I commend Powers for taking on a subject considered a third-rail in her circles. She has laid out a concise, well documented, and honest book sure to rock the snowflakes that have corrupted society and have contaminated the future of this country. I can only hope that a miracle occurs and these drones realize how wrong they are. Not only is it bad for the country but the future of other countries looking at us, will be emboldened to attack us because they will know that the people here would fold like a cheap suite.

If this continues, the new left will live in an echo chamber.  The irony is that just because you use force and intimidation to stifle the speech, you do NOT change the belief. For instance if you have a person that is a racist, you would never know where this person stands. Given the right situation and opportunity, that racist would act on their true feeling. Not only that but the inability to speak your mind and your thoughts as offensive as they may be, I believe multiplies those thoughts.  Those thoughts coupled with ridiculous snowflake antics could be devastating.

Powers decimates the media and whistleblowers. Ironically she is now working for CNN.  She states that Obama's was the most closed WH thertofor.  Probably different today with Trump although not sure. Obama has his own videographer that spins the message. He gave far less interviews than Bush and Clinton.  She is rightfully critical of Obama's narcissism and he lack of transparency. Anyone with a pulse would have seen that.   With regards to whistleblowers, Powers writes about the aggression with the whistleblowers while leaking other information for political gains.

When it comes to climate change, the fact that a media organization is allowed to block opposing talk, letters or articles is such a scary situation. It is a double-edged sword. I was utterly shocked when I read "Kentucky Professor northern pro life.  Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor to how I felt when I saw it" WTH is this crap?  The more I read about these things the more I believe that political party or affiliation should be a protected class. Furthermore if a women's group grossly discriminate against a conservative woman and does not fight for the Conservative woman in the same vigor as a liberal, those groups should lose their tax exemption as should any group purporting to protect a group of general users.  If the women's or Hispanic or black or whatever else is ONLY for a particular party, they should be called out and shutdown as a racist organization. Although that attacks their 1st amendment, I do not see another way.


Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Regnery Publishing; First Edition edition (May 11, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1621573702
ISBN-13: 978-1621573708

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Kochland by Christopher Leonard

The pro-EPA, anti-Capitalist, and anti-Koch position of the author is palpable.  However, with that said, the book is well written and obviously well researched.  Some of his assertions are off though in my opinion.


Leonard writes about how breaking the Labor Unions is tied to the divide between management and the workers.  However if you look at the Union structure, and the salaries of the Labor Union Bosses you will see that they too are off from the standard worker.  There was a time when Labor Unions were necessary and created value for the worker.  However today, with the Government intervention in EVERYTHING we do, the Unions are a thing of the past.  The Left, the ones who support Labor Unions, will tell you that the "Citizen's United' decision should be reversed because it gives corporations the ability to "interfere" in political elections and that the corporations are NOT people and should not be allowed to participate in funding campaigns.  Although I somewhat agree with that stance, I also think that Labor Unions should also NOT be allowed to mingle in elections.  Today, you have Labor Unions that are allowed to pull workers out of their "regular work" to assist in "Labor Union Business" which in many, many cases is electioneering for a pro-union candidate.  Not to mentions the disparate salaries of

2017 Labor Leaders Salaries and Compensation

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 464
(UFCW)
John Niccolai
Salary - $589,439.00
Compensation - $594,193.00

Air Line Pilots Association
Timothy Canoll
Salary - $526,292.00
Compensation - $775,829.00

Laborers International Union of North America
(LiUNA)
Terrence O'Sullivan
Salary - $516,698.00
Compensation - $717,992.00

International Longshoremen's Association
Harold Dagget
Salary - $488,008.00
Compensation - $533,222.00

International Brotherhoos of Trade Unions Local 713
Peter Hasho
Salary - $477,500.00
Compensation - $756,973.00

Source: https://laborpains.org/2017/05/17/union-president-pay-watch-2017/

I am sure that the respective Labor Union members are not pulling in those numbers.  I am sure if you look at the percentage the bosses are making over the standard worker, the number would ALSO be staggering.  And these do not include the really big ones like Teamsters and AFL CIO.


Leonard also writes about the Charles Koch not wanting to take the company public because it would open up the company to scrutiny and shareholders would be able to demand information.  I make one observations, the Labor Union are also NOT public.  And they too, as you saw above, have all kinds of information they do not want revealed.

Charles Koch is a business genius. He has grown his company based on strategies he has devised and lessons learned. Their success was not based on shareholders and wall street or even government intervention. This speaks to the Freemarket and how some win and some lose.  Obviously in this book we see that Koch Industries failed at many points in their time.  They pushed through and were able to protect themselves for the "bad times".  The Kochs were very liberal with their money from a philanthropy perspective.  They gave to multiple causes that should meet the approbation  of the author, however he points out that the 100 Million dollars donated was over 10 years.  I am curious what donations the author supports?

 Democrats "create jobs" by enforcing arduous regulatory efforts that require full time teams to try to comply. This is not organic and cost companies profits that stifle internal growth.  The Democratic policies and regulations coupled with labor unions would destroy this economy. Although not specified in her book, Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged lays out the current Liberal agenda.

I think the best thing to happen to the "climate change" movement was also the worse; arguably, Gore's movie/commercial "Inconvenient Truth".  After Gore states that carbon credit was the path to take, he followed it up by saying his company was the only one that could sell you said credits.   Any racional person could see right through it. I believe there is climate change but I do not believe it is as cataclysmic as some make it out to be.  Nor do I think that we need to regress back to the horse and buggy days while the reset of the world ignores and pushes on.  It is a suicide pact.

Leonard is critical about Koch and the "astroturf" of him funding protest movements and so on.  This is nothing new here.  Soros has been doing this for quite some time.  Leonard also blast Glenn Beck, which I am not a fan of BTW, for peddling in fear.  Yet today you see every media outlet talking about Trump being a Russian Spy, racist, et al.  I am not saying that peddling in fear is good, but for God's sake, look at your team and at least make reference to what is going on around YOU.  You are basically doing the same thing you accuse Beck of doing.

Chase Koch chapters were very interesting. Even if you do not like Koch, you must admit he did some very difficult things with his son.  He instilled good work ethic and although Chase did not assume the "thrown" of Koch Industries, aside from the terrible tragedy he was at fault for, he did pretty good.  I mean, Ted Kennedy did great things arguably after his issues with cars and deaths.

I think the funniest portion of the book is the policies that were thousands of pages long and difficult to follow and undertand.  Take a look at our tax code, our laws, the ACA with over 20,000 pages for just health care.  The author is obviously on the side of big government and more regulation, what does that look like in pages?  It was funny to read that section.



Charles Koch


David Koch


William "Bill" Koch



Hardcover: 704 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd (Aug. 13 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1471186970
ISBN-13: 978-1471186974






Tuesday, August 20, 2019

The Secret Life of Kim Dotcom: Spies, Lies and the War for the Internet by David Fisher, Kim Dotcom

This book covers Kim Dotcom's early life (born Kim Schmitz) in Germany to an alcoholic and abusive father.  He is a good student and is smart for his age.  His mother struggled to purchase young Kim his first computer. He is arrested as a young man which gives him street cred to open a security consulting company. He later starts Megaupload which arguably is the dawn of cloud storage today and becomes incredibly rich.




It's funny because I used to use his Kimble.org (another one of his alias’) site to test Internet speed before the speed test sites started popping up. It was so loaded with Flash and had a countdown when it loaded. Depending on how fast the countdown cycled through, the better the Internet connection was. He was already grossly successful with his MegaYacht, MegaCar and all his pictures and videos of his adventures were posted on this site.  He would post pictures with famous people, parties with 100’s of people on yachts, private jets and cars.  I have to admit, in my early days, I thought of following his security consulting ways, and eventually I did but obviously not to his level of success.

Kim meets and subsequently marries his wife in the Philippines and has 3 kids and twins on the way during his arrest.  In January of 2012, on the day before Kim's birthday, his life gets turned upside down. The New Zealand police, in an unprecedented raid on a geek’s home in the early hours, hit his mansion with a military force raid where they subsequently arrest him on charges of Copyright infringement and even states "terrorism" and "child pornography".   Dotcom would eventually divorce his beautiful wife and mother of five to what is said is the strain with the case.  Many accused her of being interested in his money.  I guess no one will know.

What ensued next was a whirlwind court case where Kim is fighting for his life and his family which you can argue that he loses both. Dotcom challenges the validity of the warrants and those that allowed it. Kim not only challenges the courts to avoid extradition to the US, but also throws his hat into the political arena only to lose to the incumbent John Key, who some call his nemesis.

It is a shame that a person, a visionary, has been silenced.  I understand that US Laws are probably the strictest in the world.  I also realize that the US lobby system and the over-reach of government is pervasive and every day, it seems we the citizens of the US are losing more of our rights not only from government, but from political parties.  We have lost “TRUE” freedom of speech, the 4th amendment is all but gone and a particular group is hard at work to take our 2nd amendment as well.  I am sure Dotcom did some criminal stuff to amass his wealth, but like I used to tell my Scouts when I was a leader, “When you point your finger at someone, you have three fingers pointing back at you”.  We see our government and the politicians constantly use money, power and influence to get out of all sorts of crimes they have committed that regular people would surely go to prison for.

Good book, could have been great but nonetheless a great read especially if you are part of the "scene" and were part of his rise to fame.

Dotcom's Mansion in New Zealand

The Megacar from his kimble.org site

Dotcom's first wife and kids

The NEW Mrs. Dotcom



File Size: 2346 KB
Print Length: 238 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Paul Little Books; 1 edition (November 17, 2013)
Publication Date: November 17, 2013
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0473267152
ISBN-13: 978-0473267155
ASIN: B00GR7AF46

Sunday, August 18, 2019

Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground By: Kevin Poulson

This title had been on my "To Read" book list for at least two years.  This was an excellent book and when juxtaposed with "Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World" which highlights the different paths that many of the "black hat" hackers took, it is a sad tail of Max Ray Vision formally Max Ray Butler, and his downfall.



Paulson, a former black hat hacker himself, did an extraordinary job documenting the life, ascent and subsequent decent of Max Vision.  Max was no stranger to jail. He had already served time in prison way before this final cardermarket.com debacle.

Vision is credited with identifying and subsequently exploiting a serious BIND vulnerability, (most common DNS server used for Domain Name Services).  He "patched" the vulnerable servers but kept a backdoor.  He served 18 months for that incident. While in prison he, much like many other criminals, grew his social circles of other criminals. Upon getting out, it was not long before he got into trouble again. Changing and later dominating the "carder" black market.  He stole over 2 million credit card records.

Sadly, for Vision's sake, he did not follow his instincts when he discovered "Master Splyntr" was an Federal Agent. That was his undoing.

Max Ray Vision, 37, was sentenced to 13 years in prison, was also ordered to pay $27.5 million in restitution, and to serve five years under court supervision following his release, during which time he'll be allowed to use computers only for legitimate employment or education.

It is truly a sad tail to see someone as talented as Mr. Vision was and is, throw his career and life away for what he could have easily made 100x over in the white hat world. I guess for there to be good, there must be evil; where there is light there is also darkeness.

Recently (2013), Vision was accused of using a cell phone in prison to gain access to debit cards and use the proceeds to purchase a drone.  Said drone was used to smuggle contraband into the prison and once again, a snitch outed him.  He was 12 years into his sentence and now is looking at another extended stay in the "Federal Hilton".


Max Vision in his early days


Max Vision today


Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Crown (February 22, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307588688
ISBN-13: 978-0307588685

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World By: Joseph Menn

This was a great book written about a great time in my life. I was part of the culture but not a member of CDC.  I grew up following many of these people.


It was great to read about how these players had a lot to do changing the industry I enjoy today.  Mudge's accomplishments and his insight has threaded the needle regarding companies securing their software and hardware. 

Beto O'Rourke, Presidential Contender In 2019, was also a member of CDC and it is good to see someone from my "world" running for POTUS.  I disagree with his politics and it is sad to see him capitulate his "privilege" and other false flag issues he has apologized for.  I think it goes against the hacker community as it is more like "this is what I believe.  I think one of the most important messages of the book though, is how people were discovering their skills and in some cases, using it for nefarious reasons, there is a lucrative path to "adulthood"; in some cases even the POTUS.

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: PublicAffairs (June 4, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 154176238X
ISBN-13: 978-1541762381

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War

This is a great book. I know the title calls out the "Left", however the book covers a much larger problem. This book covers 81 "Hate Hoax" cases.  Reilly covers some insane, IMHO, notions of White Privilege and Cultural Appropriation.




The notion that somehow people that are white have more chances and more opportunities is a fallacy. What does have "privilege" in this country is wealth. Think about it, who do you think would have more "privilege" John Smith (a fictional white person) or the family of Jay Z and BeyoncĂ©, or the kids of Will and Jeda Smith?  How about the daughter of the CEO of SoSo Def, Jermain Dupree?   These people would have and DO have greater opportunities than any "normal" white person. How about those white people that grew up in the inner city (many do), went to the same schools, had the same friends, of parents in the same socioeconomic circles; these people are equally challenged by their surroundings.  Additionally, look at most of the CEOs of the largest, most successful companies.  Very few are overweight.  Is there a "thin privilege"

In "Cultural Appropriation", this is another insane notion that occurs when normally ONLY a white person appropriates someone's culture. The problem with this is that if you follow it to its logical conclusion, non Mexicans will not be allowed to go to Chili's Bar and Grill, no one would be able to eat Chinese food except for Chinese people, no non-black people would be able to listen to hip hop etc. It's absolutely insane.

What is shocking to me in most of the cases he covered in the book is the continued support of the hoaxer even after they were discovered.  It goes against all logical thought process. Anyone representing a particular group should be appalled by someone hijacking their causes. Furthermore, it diminishes real hate crimes.

Some of the hoaxers said they did it to call attention to something they were fabricating. However that is like me saying I robbed a bank to call attention to the weak security they have. And the organizations that support them are on record saying it does not matter if they lied because they are sure that other crimes are probably happening.

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Regnery Publishing (February 26, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1621577783
ISBN-13: 978-1621577782


Sunday, August 11, 2019

The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot That Brought Nixon Down By: Geoff Shepard

This starts off with a good preview of Nixon's rise to "stardom". It covers his utter failure on the Kennedy debates and of course Watergate.  Author describes the political makeup of the prosecutors and secret meetings the prosecutors were having with judges.  This is extremely disturbing.  I will admit that I am not a Nixon expert so this is my first real attempt to read on the subject. 




This book was an interesting read.  With the current climate and temperature in the D.C. this book is very apropos. Seeing what went on during the Watergate debacle and how the prosecutors and judges were having secret meetings and stacking the deck especially the Dean "sentencing" which was a sham, it cleared up a lot of the strategy being used today.  I recommend this book for noobs to the Watergate / Nixon genre as well as long time readers.  I can say that based on this book and the hatred of Nixon, I can only imagine the pressure on both sides with the Trump White House. Nixxon was a loved POTUS compared to Trump.  I am going to read the following books:

Blind Ambition By: John Dean
All The President's Men By: Bernstein and Woodward
The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It By: John Dean


Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Regnery History; First Edition edition (August 3, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1621573281
ISBN-13: 978-1621573289