The future of TV is arriving faster than anyone predicted

By Larry Downes April 25 

The cord cutters guide to when you should ditch cable

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With more streaming TV options like the Apple TV arriving, it may be time to cancel your cable service. But which streaming services offer which channels, and how do you know if you'll save money in the long run? (Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post)

Late last week, Comcast announced a new program that allows makers of smart TVs and other Internet-based video services to have full access to your cable programming without the need for a set-top box.  Instead, the content will flow directly to the third-party device as an app, including all the channels and program guide.

The Xfinity TV Partner Program will initially be offered on new smart TVs from Samsung, as well as Roku streaming boxes.  But the program, built on open Internet-based standards including HTML5, is now open to other device manufacturers to adopt.

As video services move from hardware to software, the future of the traditional set-top box looks increasingly grim. With this announcement, Comcast customers may soon eliminate the need for an extra device,potentially saving hundreds of dollars in fees.

[Comcast’s bid to kill the cable box is good for consumers]

Many in the industry have long predicted eventual death for the box, driven in part by a rapid migration by pay TV providers (including fiber and satellite-based companies) to Internet standards for both video content and services, and by the enthusiastic response of consumers to a growing number of Internet-based alternatives. These include Roku, as well as Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, SlingTV, Sony, HBO and many others.

Consumers, especially younger ones, are interested in defining their own video experience, mixing traditional and self-produced content and enjoying it not just on televisions but on every connected device, including tablets, smartphones and other mobile gadgets.

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it was clear that list would soon grow to include other nontraditional viewing platforms such as cars, refrigerators and game consoles.

Comcast’s announcement suggests that future may already be here.

The rapid evolution of video stands in sharp relief to an increasingly embattled FCC proposal from earlier this year, which would force pay TV providers to develop a new, “open” set-top box within a year, and deploy replacement devices to millions of their subscribers within two years.

 

The FCC claims its new technical standards are required to encourage more competitors to produce the boxes, which in turn could reduce fees paid by consumers.  TiVo’s new Bolt DVR, for example, starts at $300 plus a $14.99 monthly fee.

But critics from across the political spectrum are wondering why the agency seems determined to unlock a box when standalone devices of any kind are becoming rapidly obsolete. The FCC’s latest proposal, as Comcast’s announcement underscores, puts the agency once again in the wrong place at the wrong time.  

In a report I filed with the agency, I noted that the new regulations would instead unintentionally extend life-support for standalone boxes for years to come, with no benefit to consumers or anyone else.  Instead, I argued, we should simply let them die of natural causes.

As the details of the plan have become public, it’s also clear that the agency’s timetable is at best unrealistic. The FCC’s plan would take at least five years, by which time, today’s video ecosystem will have become unrecognizable.  

On Capitol Hill last week, Republican and Democratic staffers expressed confusion over the FCC’s sudden urgency in solving a problem that seems to be going away in spite of previous efforts by the agency to enforce video standards, all of which failed.

Meanwhile, the Internet-based video revolution powers ahead, without the need for government intervention.  

Here in Silicon Valley, few technology companies see the need for or the wisdom of a government video standard enforced by a slow-moving federal agency.

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Roku, for example, whose devices stream billions of hours of content over Internet connections to their nine million customers, actually opposes the FCC’s proposal to “unlock” the box, even though the company is seen as a principal beneficiary of the plan.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal Friday, Roku founder Anthony Wood explained why.  The proposal, he said, isn’t actually intended to help consumers, but is rather a Trojan Horse urged by Google and others to give them free access to licensed content from major studios without having to negotiate for rights.

 

The FCC’s proposal is little more than a giveaway to such companies, allowing them, according to Wood, “to do to the TV what it did on the Web — build an interface without the ‘inconvenience’ of licensing content or entering into business agreements with content companies such as ABC, FOX, HBO, or video distributors such as pay TV operators.”

A little south of Silicon Valley, the FCC’s plan is also being viewed skeptically by Hollywood. Content producers worry that unlocking the box will give unregulated new users the ability to reorder channels, substitute paid advertising with targeted ads, and break nearly fifty years of complicated compromises on security, copyright, viewer privacy and usage.  (Ironically, many of those compromises came about in response to the failure of previous interventions by the FCC.)

The FCC’s plan to unlock the set-top box, as it did for Pandora, may do little more than release a lot of powerful demons trapped inside. Meanwhile, as so often happens, innovation in computing and communications technology is crafting its own separate peace, forging a new video ecosystem for consumers in the process.

ESPN - Curt Schilling - FOSpeech

ESPN has fired Curt Schilling. The company said that his speech went against company values because ESPN is “an inclusive company.”

What’s at stake here?

Curt Schilling has a right to say biological men don’t belong in women’s bathrooms in whatever controversial way he wants. And ESPN has a right to give Caitlyn Jenner the “Arthur Ashe Courage Award” for being a men’s sports icon who now publicly identifies as a woman. And whether we agree or disagree with Schilling’s message or ESPN’s isn’t the point.

The bigger issue is that ESPN, like any other company, has a right to control its message, which means it should be generally free to make employment decisions based on its values, not Curt Schilling’s, and certainly not the government’s.

The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation.  We’ll respect your inbox and keep you informed.

>>> For More on This, See Ryan T. Anderson’s New Book, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom.” 

The same is true for religious institutions, only more so. While ESPN is committed to being “inclusive,” it’s a large corporation whose main focus is reporting sports in ways that make money. Religious institutions and some family businesses, on the other hand, have more robust substantive commitments driven by faith, not profits alone.

Jewish, Christian, and Muslim schools, for example, provide comprehensive learning environments that support distinctive beliefs and distinctive worldviews. That’s why parents sacrifice to save their money to send their kids there—to avoid the secular liberal indoctrination of many government-run public schools, and to have their children formed intellectually and spiritually in keeping with their values.

So it seems all the more important that religious schools have at least the same freedom as ESPN to make employment decisions based on their sincere beliefs.

ESPN didn’t want to be associated with Curt Schilling’s message. The same is true for the bakers, florists, and photographers, only more so. They have beliefs about marriage—that it’s the union of husband and wife—and they don’t want to be forced by the government to convey a contrary message.

Whether we agree or disagree with the bakers, florists, and photographers isn’t at issue here. At issue is their beliefs and the messages they send. Taking photographs of a gay wedding ceremony and then creating a visually appealing slide-show and photo album, or arranging altar flowers for same-sex nuptials, or decorating a cake with rainbow frosting and two grooms on top all convey messages these professionals say they can’t send.

And yet, while liberals are cheering ESPN and celebrating its freedoms, they are working to pass laws that would eliminate similar freedoms for religious institutions and wedding professionals. While they celebrate ESPN’s rights, they want to deny similar rights to others.

As I explain in “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” America is in a time of transition. The Supreme Court has redefined marriage, and beliefs about human sexuality are changing. During this time, it is critical to protect the right to disagree and the civil liberties of those who speak and act in accord with what Americans had always believed about marriage—that it is the union of husband and wife.

If you’re cheering ESPN today, remember that freedom needs to be a two-way street. Even if you disagree with the beliefs of religious schools and bakers, protect their freedoms. Respect everyone’s rights—even if, especially if, you disagree with them.

Willful Blindness and Our Saudi ‘Friends’

Willful Blindness and Our Saudi ‘Friends’


  by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY April 16, 2016 4:00 AM 

For many years, I was reluctant to write a memoir of my experience leading the investigation and prosecution of the jihadists against whom we are still at war over 20 years later. For one thing, while an exhilarating experience for a trial lawyer, it was also a very hard time for my family, for obvious reasons. Also, with all the tough judgment calls we had to make, we inevitably made some mistakes — “we” very much including me. A triumphant outcome has a pleasant way of bleaching away any memory of errors; to write honestly about the case would mean revisiting them. Who needed that? 

And about that triumph: I had, and have, a gnawing sense that we failed. Yes, the conviction of the Blind Sheikh and his henchmen was a great law-enforcement success. Throughout the long trial and in the years that followed, though, I came to appreciate that national security is principally about keeping Americans safe, not winning court cases. Sure, winning in this instance meant justice was done and some terrorists were incarcerated. 

How safe, though, had we really kept Americans? For all the effort and expense, the number of jihadists neutralized was negligible compared to the overall threat. 


The attacks kept coming, as one might expect when one side detonates bombs and the other responds with subpoenas. As the years passed, the tally of casualties far outstripped that of convicted terrorists. When 9/11 finally happened, killing nearly 3,000 of our fellow Americans, al-Qaeda credited none other than the Blind Sheikh with issuing the fatwa — the sharia edict — that authorized the attack. We had imprisoned him, but we had not stopped him. That is mainly why I finally wrote the memoir in 2008. I called it Willful Blindness . . . and not just because my infamous defendant was both blind and willful. American counterterrorism, even seven years after 9/11 (and fully 15 years after the jihadists declared war by bombing the World Trade Center), had bored its head ever deeper in the sand. It consciously avoided the central truths driving the terrorist threat against the United States. 

The most significant of these is that violent jihadism is the inexorable result of the vibrance in Islam of sharia supremacism — a scripturally-rooted summons to Muslims to strive for conquest over infidels until Allah’s law (sharia) is established everywhere on earth. Sharia supremacism is, nevertheless, a mainstream interpretation of Islam. This ideology — also referred to as “Islamism,” “Islamic supremacism,” “radical Islam,” “political Islam,” and other descriptors that endeavor to distinguish it from Islam (and to imply that such a distinction should be drawn) — is not the only way of interpreting Islam. Indeed, it is rejected by millions of Muslims. The conquest for which it strives, moreover, is not necessarily to be achieved by violence. Sharia supremacism is, nevertheless, a mainstream interpretation of Islam. 

Inevitably, it leads some believers to carry out jihadist violence, and an even greater number of believers to support the jihadists’ objectives, if not their methods. Since 1993, the bipartisan American ruling class, throughout administrations of both parties, has refused to acknowledge, much less grapple with, this central truth of the threat we face. It has insisted, against fact and reason, that Islam is a monolithic “religion of peace,” and therefore that there can be no causal connection between Islamic doctrine and terrorism committed by Muslims. It has fraudulently maintained that jihadist violence is not jihadist at all — after all, we are to understand jihad (notwithstanding its roots as a belligerent concept, as holy war to establish sharia) to be a noble internal struggle to become a better person, to vanquish corruption, and the like. Terrorist attacks must be airbrushed into “violent extremism,” shorn of any ideological component — as if the killing were wanton, not purposeful. 

The fact that the attacks are so ubiquitously committed by Muslims (who explicitly cite scriptural chapter and verse to justify themselves), is to be ignored — as if all religions and ideologies were equally prone to inspire mass-murder attacks if believed too fervently. This deceit at the core of American counterterrorism efforts has led seamlessly to other frauds. Among the most grievous is this one: Saudi Arabia is a key counterterrorism ally of the United States. This is why it is time — it is long, long past time — for the United States government to come clean with the American people, and with the families of Americans slaughtered on 9/11 by 19 jihadists, 15 of them Saudis. The government must disclose the 28 pages of the 2002 congressional report on the 9/11 attacks that it has shamefully withheld from the public for 14 years. Those pages outline Saudi complicity in the jihad. The Saudis are the world’s chief propagator of sharia supremacism. 

It is nothing short of disgraceful that the Bush and Obama administrations, relying on the president’s constitutional authority over foreign intelligence and the conduct of foreign affairs, have concealed these materials. It is equally disgraceful that Congress has indulged this decision in the context of its own fact-finding exercise. This has been done under the pretense that the Saudi government is a stalwart counterterrorism ally of the United States — an absurd proposition that passes the laugh test only if one accepts the even more absurd premise that Islam has nothing to do with jihadist terrorism. 

The Saudis are the world’s chief propagator of sharia supremacism, sharia being the law of the Sunni kingdom. In Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, a literalist interpretation of Islam rooted in scripture dating back 1,400 years, is the dominant belief system. For decades, the House of Saud has played a double game with the West: 1) feigning moderation while promoting and internally enforcing this repressive fundamentalism, which brutally discriminates against women, non-Muslims, and Muslim minorities; 2) posturing as a staunch counterterrorism ally while exporting their ideology — and, when called on it, rationalizing either that their ideology does not catalyze jihadism, or that, even if it does, exporting it is necessary to ensure that jihadists do not seize control of the kingdom and its oil wealth — an outcome that, we are warned, would be far worse for the West. Several Saudi connections to 9/11, as well as our government’s disturbing appearance of not wanting to know the depth of Saudi culpability, have been reported over the years. 

Let’s look at some of the main ones. SARASOTA, FLA.: ABDULAZZIZ AL-HIJJI In Sarasota, Fla., Abdulazziz al-Hijji, a well-connected Saudi oil executive, abandoned his home with his wife, Arnoud, and their small children in August 2001, just weeks before the attacks. They fled to Saudi Arabia. The departure was obviously abrupt: The family left behind three cars, furniture, jewelry, food, etc. The al-Hijji home on Escondito Circle was owned by Arnoud’s father, an adviser to Saudi Prince Fahd bin Salman, a nephew of then-King Fahd. (King Fahd died in 2005; Prince Fahd died in July 2001.) 

A 2002 report pried from the FBI indicates that a member of the al-Hijji family attended Huffman Aviation, the same Venice, Fla., flight school as the 9/11 hijacker-pilots who attacked the Twin Towers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi. (A third hijacker, Ziad Jarrah, who piloted the plane that heroic passengers forced to crash in Pennsylvania, trained at a flight school a short distance away.) According to published reports, Escondito Circle security records indicate that cars connected to the hijackers were seen at the al-Hijji home. Moreover, Wissam Hammoud, a convicted felon and a friend of Abdulazziz al-Hijji’s, told the FBI that al-Hijji considered Osama bin Laden a hero, knew some of the 9/11 hijackers, and once introduced Hammoud to Adnan Shukrijuma — an al-Qaeda leader and Florida resident from Saudi Arabia who was killed by Pakistani special forces in 2014 (after being suspected by the FBI of planning major attacks in the U.S.). Former Senator Bob Graham (D., Fla.) was co-chairman of the congressional inquiry whose section on Saudi Arabia has been withheld from the public. For years, he has been demanding its release. 

According to Graham, the FBI’s investigation of al-Hijji was not disclosed to either his committee or the 9/11 Commission. A decade after the 9/11 attacks, documents confirming the investigation were finally disclosed to Florida press outlets pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Major sections of the reports were redacted, with the government citing FOIA exemptions that relate to foreign policy, national security, and CIA operational files. SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: FAHAD AL-THUMAIRY, OMAR AL-BAYOUMI, AND ANWAR AL-AWLAKI 

As I explained in my 2010 book The Grand Jihad (and elaborated on in this PJ Media column), there are disturbing Saudi government fingerprints all over the journey Saudi hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar made between arriving in Southern California in early 2000 and plowing American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on 9/11. Upon entering the United States, the pair frequented the King Fahd mosque in Los Angeles, whose sharia supremacist imam, Fahad al-Thumairi, just happened to be an accredited diplomat at the nearby Saudi consulate. As noted in David French’s Corner post earlier this week, telephone records connect Thumairy to Omar al-Bayoumi who, as former Senator Graham has observed, was known by our government to be a Saudi government agent. 

I’ve previously recounted that Bayoumi is a native Saudi who worked for years in the Kingdom’s defense ministry before moving to the U.S. in 1994. The defense ministry continued to pay him a salary while he held a series of no-show jobs in the San Diego area. For over a year prior to 9/11, he also received an extra stipend of approximately $3,000 per month from Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the [daughter of the late Saudi King Faisal and] wife of the [former] Saudi ambassador to the United States, Bandar bin Sultan. [Prince Bandar later became head of Saudi intelligence.] It was during those months that [Bayoumi] provided essential logistical support to Midhar and Hazmi. On February 1, 2000, after briefly visiting the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, Bayoumi met the two eventual hijackers at a restaurant. 

Patently, it appears to have been a prearranged rendezvous — notwithstanding Bayoumi’s counter story: He just happened to drive up from San Diego that day to address a visa issue — with a government that was paying him [and at the consulate where Thumairy worked] — when, completely by chance, he ran into Midhar and Hazmi, struck up a fast friendship with the taciturn duo, and urged them to come live in his neighborhood. The pair obviously needed a support network: they were strangers to the United States and spoke virtually no English. Within three days of meeting Bayoumi, they made it to the Islamic Center of San Diego. There, Bayoumi received them, quickly found them an apartment, co-signed their lease, helped them open a bank account (with money they’d received from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), and facilitated the payment of their deposit to the real estate agent. 

Like Abdulazziz al-Hijji, Bayoumi suddenly left the United States to return to Saudi Arabia in the weeks before the 9/11 attacks. By then, Midhar and Hazmi had moved on to Virginia, where they were in the frequent company of an al-Qaeda operative to whom Bayoumi had introduced them in San Diego, Anwar al-Awlaki. FROM SAN DIEGO TO VIRGINIA TO RIYADH: ANWAR AL-AWLAKI Awlaki was the imam of San Diego’s Rabat mosque (Masjid Al-Ribat al-Islami) when he met Midhar and Hazmi. As Paul Sperry has reported for the New York Post, despite his Yemeni lineage, Awlaki had important Saudi contacts of his own. He worked for the Saudi embassy as a tour guide for Hajj pilgrimages. At the mosque, as they prepared for their role in the suicide-hijackings, Midhar and Hazmi met regularly with Awlaki in a small anteroom on an upper floor. 

As I’ve previously recounted: Awlaki gravitated out of San Diego in mid-2000, finally landing in Virginia in early 2001. Not much is known of his whereabouts in the interim, although a report cited in his Wikipedia biography relates that, by his own account, he “travel[ed] overseas to various countries.” We do know that when he settled in Virginia, he was appointed imam at the Dar al-Hijra mosque in Falls Church — one of the most important Saudi-underwritten Muslim Brotherhood hubs in the United States. The mosque was established in 1991, on real estate purchased by the North American Islamic Trust — a Brotherhood organization cited as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Justice Department’s Hamas terrorism-financing prosecution, the Holy Land Foundation case. The Islamic Affairs Department of the Saudi embassy in Washington chipped in towards the $6 million construction costs of the mosque complex. [I’ve profiled Dar al-Hijra in this National Review column.]  . . .  

Awlaki and Dar al-Hijra were a perfect fit. After he settled in, Hazmi and [9/11 hijacker Hani] Hanjour followed along from Mesa, Arizona — where Hanjour had taken a refresher course in piloting aircraft. With Awlaki’s intercession, the mosque helped the soon-to-be suicide-hijackers find housing. Bank records show that Hanjour had his utility deposit transferred from his former residence to Dar al-Hijra. After the 9/11 atrocities, the mosque’s fax number was found in the Hamburg apartment of Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Along with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Mohamed Atta, bin al-Shibh was among the principal 9/11 plotters. Coincidentally, during these same early months of 2001, while Awlaki was meeting with the 9/11 jihadists, he also struck up a friendship with the eventual Fort Hood jihadist, Nidal Hasan. 

After Awlaki presided over the funeral of Hasan’s mother, the two began a years-long relationship, mainly conducted by email. It turns out that, prior to the Fort Hood massacre, those communications were known to the FBI and the Defense Department. They were dismissed as insignificant, despite mounds of evidence about Awlaki and Hasan’s unabashed allegiance to Islamic supremacism. In August 2001, Awlaki made a quick trip back to San Diego to pick up a few things he’d left behind. He stopped to bid farewell to a former neighbor, Lincoln Higgie. 

As Higgie recalled the encounter for the New York Times, he urged Awlaki, of whom he’d grown fond, to stop by and visit whenever he came to town. Awlaki, however, pregnantly replied, “I don’t think you’ll be seeing me. I won’t be coming back to San Diego again. Later on, you’ll find out why.” After his fellow fundamentalists murdered nearly 3,000 Americans, Awlaki was interrogated by the FBI several times and made patently false statements minimizing his acquaintance with them. 

Yet, he was somehow allowed to leave the United States in March 2002. The investigators who believed he was complicit in the 9/11 plot were overruled by other agents who rationalized that his contacts with the hijackers and other radicals on both coasts were (as the New York Times put it) “random, the inevitable consequence of living in the small world of Islam in America.” Remarkably, the Justice Department intervened to direct that Awlaki be un-arrested and allowed to enter the U.S. freely. Sometime after leaving the country, Awlaki made his way to Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, the Justice Department developed a passport-fraud case against him and an arrest warrant was issued. As I’ve outlined here, Awlaki was thus placed under arrest when he arrived at JFK International Airport in New York on October 10, 2002, on a flight from Riyadh. Remarkably, the Justice Department intervened to direct that he be un-arrested and allowed to enter freely . . . in the company of the Saudi government representative who was conveniently on hand to assist him. 

For years, our government implausibly claimed that the arrest warrant had been vacated because the case was weak. Subsequently, FBI and Justice Department officials fessed up to Congress that the government knew Awlaki was returning to the United States ahead of time, and that the warrant for his arrest had not been vacated when he arrived — the decision was mysteriously made to allow him to go free, in the custody of his Saudi handler. Awlaki was never apprehended in the U.S. again — he was permitted to leave the country and eventually holed up with al-Qaeda in Yemen. Besides egging on Hasan, the Fort Hood jihadist who killed 13 soldiers in November 2009, Awlaki is also believed to have been complicit in the unsuccessful attempt by Umar Abdulmutallab to blow up a plane over Detroit just a month later, on Christmas Day. 

When he was finally killed in Yemen by U.S. forces a decade after 9/11, he was reportedly a suspect in some 29 terrorism cases. VIRGINIA: ABDULLAH AWAD BIN LADEN AND SALEH HUSSAYEN In 1972, in cooperation with the Saudi government, the Muslim Brotherhood established the World Assembly of Muslim Youth in Riyadh. WAMY’s stated purpose was to “arm the Muslim youth with full confidence in the supremacy of the Islamic system over other systems.” It grew into the world’s largest Muslim youth organization, operating in over 60 countries. 


As I outlined in The Grand Jihad, WAMY is intolerant of non-Muslims, supportive of violent jihad, and boldly anti-Semitic. It has been banned in Pakistan, where it shared office space with the Benevolence International Fund, an al-Qaeda charitable front founded by Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. WAMY has also been accused by the governments of India and the Philippines of abetting terrorism. WAMY has always been intimately connected to the Saudi regime. For example, a past WAMY president later became the Saudi Minister of Islamic Affairs. No doubt owing to Saudi pressure, our government has never designated WAMY as a terror facilitator, but the U.S. military considers ties to that organization sufficient reason to continue to detain enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay.

 WAMY’s Virginia office was also raided by the FBI in 2004, though no charges were ever filed. WAMY’s Virginia office was also raided by the FBI in 2004, though no charges were ever filed. That Virginia office of WAMY was founded by none other than Abdullah Awad bin Laden, the nephew of al-Qaeda’s late emir, Osama bin Laden. The office is just three blocks from where hijackers Hanjour and Hazmi were staying in the summer of 2001, while they were meeting frequently at Dar al-Hijra with Alwlaki. On the night before the 9/11 attacks, those two hijackers, joined by a third, Midhar, checked into the Marriott Residence Inn near Dulles Airport. That same day, Saleh Hussayen, a Saudi government official then touring the U.S. offices of WAMY and other Saudi concerns, left a different hotel in which he was staying and, for reasons that have never been explained, checked into the very same Residence Inn. Coincidence? Well, after the three hijackers attacked the Pentagon, the FBI tried to interview Hussayen. 

But, as an FBI agent later testified, Hussayen “feigned a seizure, prompting the agents to take him to a hospital, where the attending physicians found nothing wrong with him.” Though the agent wanted Hussayen to be barred from fleeing the U.S. until she could conduct the interview, higher-ups rebuffed her recommendation. Hussayen was allowed to return to Saudi Arabia. He is not the only one. Abdullah Awad bin Laden and his brother Omar, who shared a Falls Church home, were among several prominent Saudis — including several other bin Laden family members — whom our government permitted to be whisked out of the United States in the hectic days immediately following 9/11. 

At the time they scurried out, before anything resembling a competent investigation of potential terror ties could have been carried out, the skies were still closed to American travelers. Upon returning home, Hussayen was promoted to Saudi government minister overseeing the grand mosques at Mecca and Medina. Meanwhile back in the United States, Hussayen’s nephew, a computer scientist named Sami Omar Hussayen, was indicted for material support to terrorism based on his administration of a website that expressly advocated suicide bombing and the use of planes as weapons. Sami Hussayen was acquitted — while he had clearly lent his skills to the jihadist cyber endeavor, a jury elected not to hold him responsible for the posted content. *          *          * 

Washington’s bipartisan insistence that the Saudi regime is a vital counterterrorism ally of the United States is a delusional byproduct of its willful blindness to sharia supremacism — the ideological driver of violent jihadism and the oil-rich kingdom’s most consequential export. The point of the post-9/11 investigations was to hold every culpable actor and negligent government agency accountable. No American citizen or government official, not even the sitting president, was spared. 

It is time for Washington to stop running interference for the Saudis while the Saudis run interference for the jihadists. At long last, let’s see the 28 pages. — Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior policy fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/434144/9-11-report-28-pages-saudi-arabia-terrorism-connections-should-be-released?target=author&tid=900151

The truth about climate change

[VIDEO] The truth about climate change — and there’s nothing scary about it

APRIL 18, 2016 BY BOOKWORM 0 COMMENTS

It’s five o’clock and I’m only now sitting down at my computer, which is very unusual for me, because I usually hit my computer first thing in the morning. The reason for the endless delay is that I was assisting someone who couldn’t believe that, despite doing all the right things — solar panels, electric cars, a cold house in the winter and a hot one in the summer, and all of the other lifestyle changes necessary to protect the planet — his electricity bill had skyrocketed. PG&E, rather than being grateful for his sacrifices, saw him as a profit-center.

My single thought this whole dreary day was “I cannot believe how stupid [yes, a harsh word, but a true one] the climate change believers are.”

I actually need very little data to prove this. I don’t need to track NOAA’s history of constantly adjusting data, always in a direction that shows increased heat, nor do I need the articles saying that climate change is causing more hurricane activity, unless it’s causing less hurricane activity; that it’s increasing prostitution even as people will have less sex; or that more heat and more cold result from it, just as more rain and more drought do, never mind that heat and cold and rain and drought are following patterns that have been present for centuries.

That kind of intellectual . . . uh, fluidity, for want of a better word when it comes to the *ahem* results of *cough* the dreaded climate change, is consistent, not with science, but with faith. In faith, the deity is infallible and whatever the outcome is, the deity always intended it. Nothing disproves the deity. Instead, everything, no matter how contradictory, confirms him.

As I said, though, I don’t need to get into complicated details to prove that the climate changistas are dead wrong. Instead, I need to cite to only three facts:

[Close it up again]

1. The earth was extremely warm during the Medieval Warming Period — so warm, indeed, that glaciers retreated and Greenland greened, two things that were reversed when the Little Ice Age followed. Both these climate patterns can be tied to solar activity, and there wasn’t a factory or car in sight.

2. Warm periods in earth’s history — whatever the cause — are associated with increased crop production because there’s more water and more atmospheric CO2. Plants like that, plant-eating animals like that, and people who like eating plants and animals like that too. In other words, warming is good for people, not bad.

3. Every single hysterical prediction that the climate changistas have made has proven to be dead wrong. Polar bears are doing fine, glaciers are advancing and retreating as they’ve done for millennia (which is how Norway boasts its beautiful fjords), ice fields grow and shrink in the Arctic and Antarctic, communities are not drowning under extravagantly risen seas, etc. Moreover, whenever there’s a record-breaking hot or cold day anywhere, we’re then told it’s actually the hottest or coldest day since the last hottest or coldest day a few decades ago. In other words, we’re living in the realm of normal for the earth’s cycles.

When it comes to the changistas extravagant claims regarding those hot or cold days, or the hurricanes or lack thereof, or the endlessly advancing and retreating glaciers, I’m always reminded of the way in which babies are thrilled to play peek-a-boo. The reason it’s such an endlessly fascinating game to them is that their cognitive development is so limited. When they can’t see your face, you cease to exist. For that reason, it’s always an exciting surprise when your face suddenly reappears.

Climate changistas function exactly the same way about climate data.  Just as the babies can’t comprehend the existence of things they cannot see, the changistas cannot comprehend climate dynamics that occurred before their computer models and the strategically-placed thermometers need heat vents, ship engines, airplane engines, etc. Whatever happened before the changistas started paying attention does not exist.

And with that introduction,I’m ready to turn my lectern over to someone who really knows what he’s talking about — ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Richard Lindzen, an MIT atmospheric physicist and one of the world’s leading climatologists:

JFarrish 4/18 - Crude sets the early tone… but stocks rally

Crude sets the early tone… but stocks rally

By Jim FarrishApril 18, 2016Jims Notes

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Can we say that stocks and oil prices are officially no longer attached at the hip? Maybe… I know very political answer right? I would have said yes if crude had stayed down 5% as it was in early trading Monday. But, since crude rallied to lose less than one percent on Monday… it would still show some correlation between the two still exists. Despite the fact there was not a deal completed to freeze production or, as many had hoped, no cut in production either. I am sure you have read all the headlines thus I will not repeat the meeting data, but I will leave it with what I stated last week… It hasn’t happened until the check clears the bank or in this case the data confirms that everyone has cut or frozen production levels. Armed with this data the media was quick to point out that oil is headed $30 per barrel quickly… At first it looked as though that might happen today… but, many doubters turned into buyers and the bounce off the lows showed resilience. Therefore, we cannot count oil out nor did stocks show much in terms of selling as it related to the crude oil story. It is a non-event… until the inventory data shifts.

Key items to watch related to the story in crude:

SPDR Energy ETF (XLE) cleared the $62.50 level last week and tested lower to start the day, but closed up 1.8% and at the $64.50 resistance. Not what you would expect and this is one to watch as this unfolds.  XOP, IEO and IEZ are in the same boat to break down the sector further

United States Oil ETF (USO) moved below the $10 support mark and them closed at $10.15… again watching how the oil story unfolds, but the commodity remains in a trading range. Wednesday is the weekly supply data and it will have a baring following the Saudi Arabia news.

Another key sector with questions moving forward is the technology stocks. Earnings are going to make or break them as they start next week. SPDR Technology ETF (XLK) has been stuck at resistance of the November/December highs. There are rumblings about the enterprise stocks struggling as it relates to the global markets and it could be reflected in the earnings data… thus, watching and protecting against the downside reversal is important as we approach next week.

Software (IGV) made a move higher on the day above the $101.40 resistance and could move to $106 on the breakout if earnings support the move.

Networking (IGN) not as pretty with a head and shoulder pattern and $35 neckline or support for the sector. Break lower would be negative for the sector.

Semiconductors. (SOXX) hitting against the $92 resistance and needs a catalyst to push higher. Earnings could be the answer.

Social Media (SOCL) cleared resistance and the 200 DMA last week showing some promise for the sector near term. Watching earnings here as well.

Cyber Security (HACK) trading sideways in range and needs some upside help short term. Earnings… may help.

Putting them all together as it relates to the large caps (NASDAQ 100 index) is even more important for the broader markets. $111.50 level to clear on the upside to add some momentum to the index. Again it is all about the earnings reports if the upside is to gain any near term momentum.