Eliminating Belly Fat

A few years back when I was still wearing suits every day to work, I found it harder and harder to get my pants buttoned and zipped up.  When I noticed my weight had risen to 205 lbs (for the previous 20 years I had been at about 180 lbs), I decided to do something about it.  I should mention that in college I wasn't above 145 lbs; but after I got married the weight went up to about 172-180 lbs.

A friend had tried the South Beach Diet and said it worked well.  So I bought the books and went on the diet.  The core of that diet seemed to be eating low glycemic index foods, essentially foods that don't cause big insulin swings.  So potatoes, breads and sweets were out.  And the diet worked for me.  I rather easily got back down to my 180 lb weight.

But I have a sweet tooth; I love chocolate, shakes, and pastries.  And my wife and I don't cook much.  We both work, and eat too much fast food.  A year or so later, I was back up to 195 lbs.  I don't know how I heard about it, but I looked into the Paleo diet.  It seemed to be a 'stricter' version of the South Beach diet; with a lot more dietary logic explaining what foods to avoid.

So I went on the Paleo diet.  But complying with that diet is very difficult with a spouse that seems to hate everything the diet stands for.  I bought organic, grass-fed, unpasteurized, etc.  She chewed me out for every extra dime spent.  I avoided grains, beans/legumes, pasta etc.  So I didn't go to the restaurants she liked; and I heard about it forever. 

But the diet worked wonders.  I bought an Aria Fitbit scale, which tells me both my weight and body fat, and watched the weight and fat melt off.  The diet worked so good, I got a bit worried.  My weight dropped to about 157 lbs, and didn't seem to be leveling off.  My body fat got down to about 17.5%.  I started thinking about doing the Appalachian Trail (AT), and I did a couple of week long backpacking trips.

I started adding more carbs back into my diet, and got back up to about 175 lbs before I tried the AT in 2015.  I still lost quite a bit in my month on the trail that year.  But when I got back, I wasn't doing the Paleo diet, and I wasn't fighting my wife's viewpoint on restaurants and food.

When I checked my weight a month and a half out from my 2016 try of the AT, I was back up to 190 lbs.  That meant I had to start the trail in large pants instead of the medium I had worn the year before.  I restarted a 'weak' Paleo diet, for a few weeks and got down to under 180 lbs.  While on the AT in 2016, I shifted down to medium pants, and lost quite a bit of weight again.

But this time when I returned, in addition to not being on the Paleo diet, I had picked up a frequent snacking habit.  And I couldn't quit.  Well I could, but it took me to the end of the year.  In the meantime, I had been doing some more reading.  I had found the book Protein Power by Dr. Eades.

The central tenet of this approach was to make sure you get enough protein at each meal to prevent lean muscle loss when losing weight.  According to the book, I had not been getting enough protein.  The rest of the Protein Power diet appears to be a weakly worded Paleo diet.

Before I quit my frequent snacking, I was back up to 190 pounds.  And what really bothered me was the belly fat and concern for future metabolic syndrome issues.  This time, the weight loss has been slower.  But I'm down to 155 lbs and 19% body fat.  I don't buy grass-fed beef and only some organic vegetables.  I've figured out how to eat at most of my wife's favorite restaurants--though I'm still not able to figure out a good meal at a pizza restaurant.

She doesn't seem to be as unhappy with my behavior as in the past, and I notice she's not eating as much bread at the restaurants as she used to.

Hopefully, I'll be able to transition to a dietary lifestyle that avoids the yo-yo weight of the past.

Modeling Climate Change

This will be another long blog.  I’m going to tell you why I’m extremely skeptical about any predicted climate results from existing models and simulations.  But first my qualifications.  I am not a climate scientist and have no expertise in climate or weather predictions.  I have not seen or reviewed existing climate models.  My background is in physics, electrical engineering, and most pertinent here, modeling and simulation.  I’ll start with some of my experiences, then get to my conclusions.

In the late 70’s, I was working at McDonnell-Douglas Astronautics.  The company was developing and trying to sell the cruise missile guidance set as well as the missiles themselves.  At the time that was the Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) and the Harpoon.  The company was just about to start a government sponsored fly-off of the ALCM with their competitor.  I had been documenting some assembly language modules of the flight software, and was recently moved to the programming group.  My task was to take the code for the six-degree of freedom flight software (a complete simulation of all flight parameters) and produce a model for the ground control simulators that represented the missile’s terminal guidance maneuver.  That was the part of the flight where the missile pops up and then comes down and hits its target.

The company had tested the systems and was just about to start the fly-off.  I assumed the six-degree of freedom code was good.  I extracted the relevant equations and system behavior and produced my FORTRAN model.  I also plotted the flight in two dimensions to see how it behaved.  I launched my simulated missile and watched it fly towards the target—it missed!  Surely I had made a mistake.  I went over my code and the six-degree of freedom flight software multiple times.  I couldn’t find anything wrong.  Since I couldn’t deliver software that couldn’t hit a target, I added fudge factors and was able to hit the target.  Of course, I discussed this with my supervisor.  He suggested I talk to the flight programmers.  We were by then in the fly-off, and bothering them was not something I wanted to do without being sure of an issue.

So I went over to the programmers and brought up my concern.  That is, that their six-degree of freedom code—and our cruise missiles in the fly-off--could not hit the target.  They told me they were aware of the discrepancy and were working to find the problem; they had seen the error in the fly-off testing.  My conclusion here is that their simulation had significant problems, yet it was a relatively closed and simple (compared to an earth geosphere) physical system.  And they had previous test flights to collect data that could have pointed out the problem.

My next example is the simulation I created for my Ph.D. research.  I modeled the physics involved in shining a moving image on a small crystal called a PRIZ.  Only the moving part of the image came out the other side.  The crystal was essentially a moving target indicator.  For example, say you had a video of a cruise missile flying low against the cluttered ground, taken from a high-altitude aircraft.  You run the video through the crystal and see only the moving missile on the other side.  This is an idealized representation of the potential for the crystal.  Of course, laboratory testing didn’t do anything that complicated.  Previous graduate students had done a lot of lab testing.  The Russians did some really eloquent mathematical modeling, but only in one dimension.  We needed a two dimensional computer simulation to figure out how the device worked, and to make new predictions.

You start with a doped crystal.  Photons (light) impact the crystal, excite electrons, which later lose their energy and create new photons.  The crystal is non-linear, so there are some complex optical properties involved.  For this crystal, we also apply a voltage across two faces.  I had to model the electro-magnetics within the crystal as well as the optical behavior.  It was a very large and complicated simulation.  We had laboratory test results, and my simulation had to produce similar results.  When I got to the point where I could run the simulation and expected to get good results, I didn’t.  The behavior was not as expected.

For about three months I went over and over the code, refining and making changes.  I was starting to get worried.  The Air Force gives you a certain amount of time at school, then sends you back to the job, whether you have your degree or not.  Finally, I modified the boundary conditions; i.e., the constraints on behavior near the edges of the crystal.  And that change worked!  I was getting good results.  Now I just had to run enough predictive simulations, and write a dissertation, to make my doctoral committee happy.

The take-away here is that even with a small, closed system, there are a lot of variables that make it very difficult to create a realistic simulation.  In my case, I thought I had all of the significant physics represented, and it wasn’t working!  The physics at the boundary was my major problem.

Before getting to climate, I want to touch on weather modeling.  We all get the forecasts for the weather for today and the next few days.  Any news show will have it as well as online weather sites.  When there is a big storm barreling down on your location, they will usually get it right a day or even a few days out.  But they get the amount of precipitation wrong.  When it’s not a big storm, but light or mixed precipitation, they almost always get it significantly wrong.  There’s just too many variables.  My wife tells me there are only two major simulations being used so most forecasters agree or are close.  But their simulations are lousy, despite the fact they have weather data collection stations everywhere.

Now let’s move to a hypothetical model of the earth’s climate.  Here we aren’t just talking regional variability and a few days in time.  We are talking the entire globe, for years and decades.  Do you think this crew of programmers and scientists is any better than others?  As the number of variables grow, the size and complexity of the simulation grows tremendously.  You have the problems of debugging, correct physics, and being sure to include all significant variables.  I don’t know how any programmer or group of programmers could honestly say they have a high fidelity, realistic model of the earth’s environment (including solar irradiation) that would accurately predict climate going out years or decades--let alone minutes or microseconds.

The only way to even produce a simulation would be to greatly simplify land masses, bodies of water, currents, heat flows, reflection and conductance, atmospheric complexities, plate tectonics, core heating and solar irradiation.  You would have to throw out most variables and interactions, claiming they were insignificant, and hoping you were right.  Your boundary conditions would be the initial climate condition (worldwide) at some time in the past.  And then you would want to run simulations over time to see if they agreed with the historical record.

But just look at the disagreements on today’s (e.g., this year’s) temperatures.  They continuously adjust the collected raw data to account for variables they believe affect the sensors.  Maybe they are right, maybe not.  But if you can’t agree on today’s data.  What about that of the past centuries?  How are they confirming the fidelity and accuracy of their climate models when they are being run against suspect data?

From all the variables, interactions, and physics that affect our world, there are going to be climate changes.  Just like there are weather changes.  The effects we have on our environment are going to be a part of that change.  Locally, and in relatively short time frames, the effect we have can be significant.  For example, overpopulation in an area can overuse ground water reserves.  We can over hunt or fish areas and threaten other species.  We can change the atmospheric interactions by removing ground cover.  What I cannot predict is whether such changes will accumulate over time or be significant enough to override natural variables, interactions and physics.  Or even whether the resulting changes from human impact will be good or bad.

Obviously, I am not part of the consensus that believes we have to immediately stop using fossil fuels and shut down any manufacturing or personal emissions to save the planet.  I suspect most scientists that support such a consensus have thrown their professional integrity out the window and let themselves be governed by their emotions.  There may be a few that have sufficient data, expertise and wisdom to believe their confidence in the simulations is reasonable, but I don’t understand it from a physics or modeling and simulation point of view.

On the other hand, I love the outdoors, and believe in preserving it wherever possible.  I support reasonable conservation efforts.  And I also support research and development into new technologies and power sources that minimize our impact upon the environment.  What I don’t support is shutting down industries that put people out of work, mandating unrealistic and costly environmental regulations that have no significant effect on our environment, or shutting down our regional power plants.

You will note that I haven’t said anything directly about politicians or activists (non-scientists) who support the supposed “climate change consensus.”  Obviously, I believe they don’t have the background to technically agree or disagree.  I do not approve of governmental action that is not founded on good data, an understanding of that data, and confidence in the results of proposed actions.  None of those factors are present today in the climate change ‘consensus.’

Democrats’ Last Election Gasp -- Maybe

This presidential election has been the weirdest I have ever observed.  First, we had one candidate that only campaigned by attacking her opponent and his voters.  The other candidate buried his positions by making numerous public comments that allowed the mainstream media to twist his words and paint him as a racist, bigot and misogynist.  The media and polls expected a Hillary Clinton blow-out, and the country was surprised by a near-landslide in the Electoral College for her opponent.  Then the party that denounced Donald Trump for qualifying his support for election results, goes out and protests nationwide against the new president-elect.  And if that’s not enough, the Democrats’ Green Party surrogate, Jill Stein, tries to get vote recounts in three Electoral College swing states—just enough states to swing the election to Hillary Clinton.  When that doesn’t work, we finally hear from anonymous sources in the CIA (via the Washington Post and the New York Times), that Russia’s hacking was intended to swing the election for Donald Trump.  Now ten members of the Electoral College want a briefing from the CIA.  This last event was just one straw too many, and I cannot resist posting a blog in response.

First of all, let’s be realistic.  The Russian hacking had minimal impact on the election.  Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, and not as a basic truth, that the DNC and Podesta hacks, as well as the WikiLeaks releases on Hillary Clinton and her team, were all carried out by Russian government agents with the intent to get Donald Trump elected president.  The revealed emails allowed readers to draw several conclusions:  1) the DNC actively worked to get Hillary Clinton on the ticket as opposed to Bernie Sanders, 2) democratic party operatives (e.g., Podesta), are not very nice people—they gossip, cheat, and hate people that are not like them, and 3) some of the democratic party operatives had a very poor opinion of Hillary Clinton and her judgment.

Now I don’t know about you, but none of that surprised me.  Unfortunately, it’s typical behavior for quite a few people.  But how many of you would vote against the candidate espousing your beliefs and policies if you knew about such behavior by their team?  I doubt it changed any significant number of votes; especially with the low key release it obtained in the media.  The DNC in-the-tank for Hillary is slightly different.  Releasing that info would tend to bolster Bernie Sanders' chances.  It’s arguable that Donald Trump would have performed better against Bernie than he did Hillary.  But Bernie wasn’t the Democrats’ candidate.  So the Russians, if that was their intent, failed with their Bernie push.

So, we see hacking that was interesting to Republicans and embarrassing to Democrats, but we don’t see any significant effect on the election results.  Even if I’m wrong on this, there is still no proof that the hacking and releases were an orchestrated Russian attack with the intent to elect Donald Trump.

The evidence we have is that anonymous senior sources at the CIA released the supposed results of a classified analysis to the media.  My belief is that those sources must be the senior political appointees (Democrats), if not the Director, of the agency.  Anyone else would get caught, fired, and potentially imprisoned after their next polygraph test.  Political appointees will be leaving in January.

Since the analysis is classified, the appointees can say whatever they want to the media and cannot be proven wrong.  Claims of consensus by analysts or CIA employees is hogwash.  If a report isn’t authored by a single analyst, it will have sections written by multiple analysts and merged by the assigned editor.  The report will be reviewed up the chain of supervisors, and is usually changed at the supervisor’s request before he/she signs off and sends it further up.  With political appointees at the top of each chain, they will have the final word on what is approved or rejected.

Now, it is likely any report signed off by the agency Director or his delegate is reviewed as a staff package by his two-letter managers (these are heads of sub-organizations within the agency) and his chief of staff.  That could be the ‘consensus’ referred to in the media.  But that isn’t like taking a poll of 100 climate scientists, and then saying that 57 in agreement constitutes a consensus.  Theoretically, anyone ‘disapproving’ on a staff package can theoretically prevent a consensus, and stop release of a report.  In reality, those who disagree push changes they think they can get away with politically, then fold and ‘approve’ the staff package.  The bottom line is that the Director will get what he wants.  And the director in this case is an Obama appointee.

It appears to me, that the release of the CIA conclusions, followed within hours by a letter from Democrats on the Electoral College requesting a CIA briefing, followed again within hours by Podesta endorsing such a briefing, has but one purpose.  That is to swing 36 electors from voting for Donald Trump to voting for Hillary Clinton, giving Hillary Clinton the presidency.

Of course, you are free to think whatever you like about these events.  My words are just speculation.  But I suggest you give some thought to how the millions of Trump voters will react if 36 electors, in a 538 member Electoral College, switch their allegiance and vote for Hillary Clinton when their states went for Donald Trump.  Our constitution and voting laws prescribe a legitimate process for electing our President.  Letting innuendo and anonymous analysis override valid election results is preposterous and dangerous to the republic.

Presidential Voting Analysis

I thought about writing this post right after the election.  But there was enough speculation out there which I enjoyed reading, and figured my ideas were probably unimportant.  But I haven’t really seen anything that changed my mind.

I’m still surprised about the extent of the red (Republican) counties and the large margins that were achieved in most of those states.  By looking at the map, you could definitely see where (illegal) immigration had a significant effect (blue regions along the border not near large cities).  Obviously, most recent immigrants seemed to have been offended or simply disagreed with Trump’s position on border control.  While I did not expect Trump to do anything drastic--such as begin a mass deportation effort—I would not be surprised that recent immigrants might fear such an action.

But back to my main point.  First, I must say that anyone that was not a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat would have been likely to consider Trump’s policies in a favorable light.  That is, if they ever had a chance to learn about his actual policies.  Surprisingly (to me), a LOT of people must have heard about Trump policies that they liked, and voted for him.  The alternative, which is possible, is that many Republican and independent voters really hated the Obama and Hillary Clinton policies and approach.

What I expected was that the mainstream media’s war against Trump would have turned off a lot of potential Trump votes.  That is, it would have been equivalent to a strong voter suppression effort against Republicans.  If the articles I’ve read were correct, Trump got a few less votes than Romney.  If so, the media’s voter suppression effort was at least partially successful against Trump.

Now to the Hillary Clinton and traditional Democrat voters.  What they heard was how horrible Trump was and how horrible were those who would vote for him.  Many Trump voters in Democrat majority areas were so intimidated they didn’t expose their views to the public.  Many on social media likewise withheld their support for Trump to avoid the hate backlash.  Then, and this is what I think was critical, the polls showed Hillary Clinton with a nearly insurmountable lead.  The polls and pollsters that thought Trump had a chance were denigrated and ridiculed.

If you were a Democratic voter or Hillary supporter, why would you bother to get out and vote?  She had an insurmountable lead, and your vote would just be 1 out of 150,000,000.  You only listen, read and/or watch the mainstream media, which agree with your views, and they say Hillary is a lock.

And so Hillary Clinton did not get as many votes as Obama did.  In addition to suppressing the Republican vote, the mainstream media and clueless pollsters inadvertently suppressed the Democratic vote!

Of course, that is just my big-picture guess. If you look at the overwhelming majorities Hillary Clinton received in the big cities and blue states, it doesn’t really look like, relatively speaking, there was much of a voter suppression effect on Democratic voters. Maybe there really is a strong voter divide between red and blue country. People just tuned out the media and the pollsters, and voted their belief systems?

Michigan and New Hampshire Still Not Called by the AP and Media

I didn't expect to actually do any blogs on the election after it was over.  But there's too much of interest still happening.  One thing that bothers me is the AP, and the media in general, have not yet called the presidential race in Michigan and New Hampshire.  I'm a numbers person, so I went and looked at the statistics to see why not.  Admittedly, I relied on the media's numbers.  I looked at every county in Michigan to see where the votes weren't reported yet.  EVERY county had 100% of their votes reported.  Yet Fox, and presumably the AP, only show a total of 96% on their Michigan vote results page.  A similar situation was found for New Hampshire; every county had 100% of their votes reported.  What’s going on?

Michigan's margin for Trump was 11,837 votes, and Michigan is worth 16 electoral college votes.  New Hampshire's margin for Clinton was 2,528 votes, and New Hampshire is worth 4 electoral college votes.  Those are using the current Fox News tallies.

In an article from Heavy.com the AP is quoted as saying “The responsibility for calling races rests with experienced journalists in each state. They are armed with on-the-ground knowledge of their territory that no other national news organization can match.” In addition, says the AP, “On election night, race callers in each state are assisted by experts in AP’s Washington bureau who examine exit poll numbers and votes as they are counted.”

There's lots more worth reading in the Heavy.com article.  You find out the AP claims they won't call a race while there is the possibility of a recount.  That Michigan won't automatically do a recount when the margin is over 2,000 votes.  That Michigan is not required to certify the vote for 14 days.  And that Michigan officials believe no recounts will be requested until certification is made.

So in any state with a possibility of a recount, the AP won't call a race?  Sure, no chance of recounts in any of the other 48.

Here's a point from my own perspective.  Calling Michigan for Trump, and New Hampshire for Clinton would make the electoral vote predictions 306 for Trump to 232 for Clinton.  To me, the 306 looks a lot more impressive than 290, when only 270 are required for a win.

Another point, "experienced [AP] journalists" do the calling on the ground.  Was the AP biased for Hillary like all of the main stream media during the campaign?  I think it was obvious they were.  What's the chances the AP journalists in a state or two are like the Trump protesters in the big Hillary voting cities that say "Not My President"?

You can make up your own mind.  To me, making the call in those two states is straightforward.  If later recounts change the results, you then change your predictions.  It looks to me like the electoral college count is now 306 for Trump and only 232 for Clinton.

UCLA Crazies and Our Future

I’m going to take a few words to get to my primary point.  So to avoid losing you ahead of time, I want to touch on my ending.  Yesterday, while trying to enjoy Trump’s victory, I saw a video shot of UCLA students walking through a long hall.  There seemed to be hundreds of students.  They were all marching to a slow, continuously repeated chant of “F*** Trump”.  And it seemed like most, if not all were staring down at their phones.  It made me think of what a Nazi Youth march might have looked like, only with a different target and no phones.  It also made it hard to get to sleep.

I’m obviously a Trump supporter.  I really believed that the polls couldn’t be far enough off to support a Trump victory.  All the media, including a good portion of Fox News commentators and Wall Street Journal columnists, seemed to support Hillary Clinton and continuously criticize Trump.  Extreme, over-the-top criticism.  The few advertisements we saw here in Texas, most of which were focused on electing congressmen, were nearly content-free slander.  They took a few seconds of video of their opponent, out-of-context, and made them look like the great Satan out to destroy the good things in America.  I have always assumed most people, busy with their hectic lives working or studying 60 hours or more a week, do not have the time or energy to get past the information on the Main Stream Media and understand the policies and potential impacts of the candidates’ actual positions.  Everything Trump said was taken out of context or distorted to sound like racism, bigotry and misogyny--24/7.  Hillary got a light drubbing on honesty and misjudgments, but the media still depicted her as the nice, dependable, experienced candidate—without ever criticizing or describing her policies.  There were a few on Fox and at the Wall Street Journal that were honest.  But they seemed to be offset, maybe by an editorial policy, that there had to be 50% democratic talking heads on every show.  In written articles, anything criticizing Hillary had to be offset by at least a paragraph also pointing out Trump’s deficiencies.  I won’t be renewing my Wall Street Journal subscription again.

 

Anyway, on election night, I watched a movie and went to bed early.  I had watched McCain and Romney lose on election night TV coverage, and thought maybe I could avoid the heart-ache of a repeat.  I was unhappy with the nice-guy approach of those two.  They never seemed to fight back.  Trump fights back, and I’m actually a lot happier with his policies.  So I thought maybe I could limit my disappointment to a few minutes on Wednesday morning.  Of course, my wife watched the returns and couldn’t resist giving me a few results:  Texas went red (expected, but the media seemed to think it was in doubt), Evan Bayh lost in Indiana (I grew up with Birch Bayh and was really disappointed with his and Evan’s time in office), she said the media seemed to be going crazy (?), and she thought Florida was going to go red.  Avoiding the returns didn’t help, I couldn’t go to sleep worried about a Clinton future.

I woke up Wednesday morning, turned on my computer, and brought up FoxNews.com.  There was a big picture of Trump.  I thought, if Hillary won, why would they have a picture of Trump?  I scrolled down and saw the headlines of a Trump victory.  I have to say, I got a bit emotional, and a strong feeling of relief.

I turned on the TV and watched Fox News for most of the morning.  The criticism of Trump was over, though they still had a few of the bitter Democratic partisans on their programs.

I was especially affected by the scene at the Democratic headquarters earlier that morning, when Podesta came on and said Hillary would not show.  Her fans were crying.  And I felt empathy for their loss. 

I was a bit taken aback by Hillary not showing up to say anything.  Had she been so affected by the loss that she had some kind of medical problem?  Was she just so upset and bitter that she couldn’t maintain her composure on stage?  All those people showed up and stayed through 2:30 am with all the bad news, and she couldn’t even make an appearance?  Since then, I’m leaning towards a simpler explanation, she didn’t have any concession remarks or speech prepared, and she can no longer speak without a teleprompter or memorized lines.  Whatever the reason, her lack of appearance seemed to just emphasize my belief in her lack of character.

So I went through the day, feeling pretty good.  And I decided to watch Fox News from Bret Bair through O’Reilly, plus a little bit of Kelly.  I’m not sure when I saw it, but one of them showed a video of the UCLA students marching through a hall chanting “F*** Trump”, again and again and again…  And this morning I see marches in most big cities where worse rants were going on against Trump.

What gives?  The Left criticized Trump when he said he might contest an election.  The election took place, it wasn’t close, and now the Left, at least some of them, seem to think it was illegitimate?  Way too many people seem to be hypocrites.

But more worrisome is the behavior of the UCLA students.  Supposedly, these students are representative of the future of our country.  Did your parents let you curse in public or even in private?  Sure, no one is allowed to physically discipline their children any more.  But you figure most parents are still going to try to instill a sense of decorum and courteous behavior in their children.  They want their children to know right from wrong, how to think about what’s going on around them, and understand it so they can get ahead in life.  They want their children’s schools to teach them how to behave in society as well as imparting the knowledge necessary to live life prosperously in our country.

How did these students get to this point?  Did their parents fail them?  Did their schools?  Did the media or Hollywood lead them off course?  I know the latter two groups have had an obvious slant towards approving this type of behavior.  Schools have been tending towards nonsensical behavior for years.  Some parents may have been bad influences, but I cannot believe most did not want better for their kids and work to make that happen.

Maybe there were other hundreds or thousands of students at UCLA who disapproved of this behavior, whether they vote left or right.  Maybe that’s true on most campuses.  Maybe you don’t see the people with good manners, and that have the ability to think, because they don’t make spectacles of themselves in their schools’ halls and in the streets.

The problem is, you see the mainstream media throwing mud continuously.  You rarely see a new movie that doesn’t push liberal culture and morals.  You almost never hear of colleges promoting free speech and open debate.  You see riots and protests that take place without any apparent regard for the rule of law.  You see politicians pushing to abolish and ignore the Constitution of the United States.  You see people unwilling to admit that most terrorism is Islamic terrorism.  You see a complete political party that seems to want open borders as a way to get more voters for their positions.

All that is worrisome enough.  Then you see hundreds of UCLA students marching to and chanting “F*** Trump”, our new president elect.  Yeah, maybe this election will help us retain our rights and liberties under our Constitution for a few more years.  But the media, our colleges, our entertainment industry and half of our citizens are pushing a different direction.  If our young people move that way too, where is our future?

Protecting Classified Information and Hillary Clinton's Emails

I’ve noticed that a lot of the folks commenting on the Clinton e-mail investigation do not seem to understand how classified information comes about and is protected.  So I thought I would put together a short primer.

Information can be generated, received or collected. If its disclosure to the wrong party could cause damage to the national security, the information is classified at the confidential level.  If disclosure could cause serious damage, the information is classified at the secret level.  If disclosure would cause exceptionally grave damage, it is classified top secret.  If the protections required for those three classification levels are not considered sufficient, the information will be placed in a ‘compartment’ where access is limited and additional security measures are applied.  Reportedly, some of the classified information sent through Hillary Clinton’s non-secure ‘home’ server was at the compartmented level.

Information becomes classified when an Original Classification Authority (OCA) designates it as such.  Usually OCA’s are heads of agencies or departments, though the ability to classify information at the lower security levels is sometimes delegated to organization commanders or directors.

Usually, the OCA will approve a security classification guide.  Sometimes at agency and department levels, there will be a security instruction (regulation).  And you can even get guidance at the Presidential level via Executive Orders.  What you find in these guides, instructions, or orders is a description of what information is and is not classified, what is sensitive but unclassified, and what security classification level is to be applied when the information is classified.  Usually, there is a table in the guidance where the first column is a list of categories or types of information.  Each row in the table describes the classification level and related information.

So, you might have a security classification guide on the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM).  It would tell government employees working with the JDAM what information is classified and what is not.  Usually, you don’t get extreme detail.  As an example, the performance characteristics of the JDAM might be classified at the secret level.  The existence of the JDAM, and its general uses, might be unclassified.  Keep in mind, this is a hypothetical case for me, I have no knowledge of the JDAM other than what I’ve read in newspapers.

And I have absolutely no information, beyond what I’ve read in newspapers, about classification guidance for State Department information.

What I do know is that a government employee, when documenting something or communicating about something in their area of expertise, is expected to be aware of the applicable classification guidance.  They are expected to mark titles, headers, and paragraph portions with the appropriate classification markings when they generate a document.  They also apply a document classification header indicating the source for the classifications:  either the OCA, the classification guidance reference, or the derivative classification source from which they have obtained the classification markings.  If you create a document based on OCA guidance, your new document can become a derivative classification source for other ‘authors’.

Everyone is briefed on the protections required of classified information before they are given access.  And they are given periodic refresher training.  They sign forms indicating they have completed the training, and most of those forms indicate the criminal penalties for mishandling or disclosure of classified information to unauthorized individuals.

And here is a key point.  Once the classification guidance is issued, whether or not classified information is properly marked, it is still classified.  And the guidance generally is written to cover categories of information, not specific bits of info.  It is possible that some info could retroactively be classified.  If, for example, the categories in the guidance were not all inclusive.  In my, admittedly limited experience, I’ve never seen that happen.

Another part of security training is that publication of classified information does not change the classification level to unclassified.  Properly cleared government employees are still required to protect that information as classified.  In general, they are not allowed to comment on any public information or disclosure.  And everyone is told to refer any questions to the Public Affairs office at their organization or agency.

A final training point is that everyone is told to transmit information only on approved, secured networks and devices that are authorized to handle the appropriate classification level.  There are specific networks for secret and higher levels of classification.  Everyone knows that it is a security violation to transmit classified information on an unsecured network such as the Internet.

So, with Clinton having upwards of 2,000 classified messages on an unsecured system, it is extremely unlikely that more than a minute fraction were not classified at the time.  Any government employee, with a clearance, knows that transmitting classified information on the Internet, or giving it to unauthorized individuals will cost you your clearance, your job, and probably your freedom for a number of years. 

On the subject of work emails and unclassified networks.  Over the years, the availability of unclassified .gov and .mil email accounts on government desktops has become wide spread, at least in government buildings and installations.  As the cyber threat has grown, guidance has gone out to use only your .mil or .gov email account for government work.  For the last few years, most organizations have provided government Blackberries or iPhones to those senior employees that need to work away from the office or during travel.  They are configured to use the .mil or .gov email accounts and are secured as much as possible against intrusions.  In most cases, you cannot access your .mil or .gov accounts from your personal devices.  To my knowledge, US government systems do not permit automatic forwarding of emails from .mil or .gov accounts.  The only way to get an email off the unclassified .mil or .gov network is to forward an individual email to an Internet account. 

Also, it is supposed to be impossible to transmit an email from a secure, classified network to an unclassified network or the Internet.

For 2,000+ classified emails to be on Clinton’s home server, somebody or several somebodies had to have been at least criminally negligent about protecting classified information.  Someone had to type that information into an email, knowing it was classified.  And that had to have been done 2,000+ times.  Mr. Comey’s claim that there was no evidence of intent is simply hogwash.