Got it allright.

Many years ago I moved to the States with my eye on the progress of my family back home. Here is the young child, now a young man living in Germany working as a computer programmer for the past few years. Ready to take the next big step with our love and blessing.

Here is a song "I choose you".

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooiLP_zqnFs

AT&T-The DEA.

Every Google search performed is stored on the search giant's servers. Data is cross-linked to your search data from YouTube, Google Maps and any other Google services you use.  Google can tell where you live, your hobbies, age, health problems, religion and more.

AT&T maintains an enormous database of phone metadata records [New York Times] stretches back for the past 27 years.  This includes call time and length, who calls who and location data of cell phone users.

The phone company has been helping the DEA’s “Hemisphere Project” by providing easy access to its massive database. Many drug dealers got caught though changing the cell phone frequently.

Personal information is collected, stored and available by many mega companies. The questions is what is the proper usage of it. Advertisement, drug enforcement, fighting terrorists or what?
This must be cleared.

Just a thought

Carrie Mae Weems...

Carrie Mae Weems is an American artist who works with text, fabric, audio, digital images, and installation video but is best known for her work in the field of photography. More recently however, she expressed that “Black experience is not really the main point; rather, complex, dimensional, human experience and social inclusion . . . is the real point.”

Collected...!

Terrorists are a different type of enemy.  They could be anyone, anywhere in the world. To find them, the NSA has to look for individual bad actors swimming in a sea of innocent people. This is why the NSA turned to broad surveillance of populations, both in the United States and internationally.

NSA access information collected from the servers of nine major American internet companies: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple, as well as mass-intercepting data from the fiber-optic cables.

The surveillance program opened our eyes to how our privacy been reduced by the daily gadgets we use.   NSA is putting all these information collected together, and  create organized loss of privacy.

The crucial thing is what are we using this information for? Now if the government release/Use information not related to terrorism, that is a violation of privacy.

Terrorist will do any thing once they get the chance or find a weak point. It is happening around the globe. If not caught/punished immediately, the loss would be beyond privacy, but life itself.

Just a [private] thought.

Contrast...!

He is a German impostor, moved to U.S and lived under a succession of aliases moving repeatedly from one location to another. Claiming to be an art collector, a physicist, a ship's captain, a negotiator of international debt agreements, and an English aristocrat. He was quite plausible, and at one point was hired to work in a brokerage firm.

In 1995, using the name "Clark Rockefeller,"  he married Sandra Boss, a high-earning McKinsey senior executive who had graduated from Stanford University and Harvard Business School, in a Quaker ceremony that had no legal status. Boss "he was charming and she believed the stories he told her at the beginning of their relationship".  Boss earned all of the family income, while he had complete control of the family's finances and other aspects of her day-to-day life for 12 years.

Boss hired a private investigator, who found that "Clark" was not who he claimed to be. She changed her child's surname because he refused to provide proof of his identity. 

What makes a successful woman believed his stories?    Something is missing here.   Just a thought.

Knight's Art-

 

 

Daniel Ridgway Knight's works represent so many aspects of Nineteenth Century painting, including history, genre, landscape, portrait, and floral themes. In each work, all that is aesthetic is recorded with fine detail and skill.  Born on March 15,1839 in Pennsylvania. He studied and exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He was a classmate of Mary Cassatt and Thomas Eakins. 
Here is a link.
http://www.rehs.com/virtexdrk.htm 

The Man...*!

Pres. Theodore Roosevelt

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.      Just a thought

Benghazi....a new opinion !!!

Libyan rebels asked EU for "military assistance without direct military intervention,"  and to impose a no-fly zone over Libya to empower people fighting.

The rebellion began with poorly trained young men drive pick-up trucks, mounted with jerry-rigged heavy weapons.

But with time, and foreign training, the rebels became a reasonably effective military force.

NATO, along with its Qatari partners, began bombing Libya, coordinating operations with fighters on the ground.

The regime collapsed as a result of the assistance of US and EU which without it the rebels would be defeated.

The same request came from Syria. The rebels requested the same, assistance, no fly zone, weapons, training, etc.

Many of  US Senators [Republicans] had the same talk to repeat what happened in Libya. Desired US to give weapons, support to the rebels, meet with representatives, make their cause a reasonable cause.

Now they are back and forth on Benghazi, just in case to make Hilary's position weak for the coming presidential election.      Not going to happen.

Just a thought.

Ridley Howard-Artistic view

In paintings ranging from jewel-like to large-scale, abstract to figurative, Ridley Howard explores the nuances of color, shape, and composition with exquisite sensitivity. All of his works—whether precisely composed geometric abstractions, land- and cityscapes, portraits of individuals, or scenes of couples making love—are, at their core, color studies. Howard strips his subjects down, forgoing narrative and visual details, transforming them into pristine, velvety planes of pigment and collections of shapes

https://www.google.com/search?q=who+is+ridley+howard&newwindow=1&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=p1lsU-jaL5OVyASKyYGQDg&ved=0CDMQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=673

Oil cost/price.

GDP component

Personal Consumption Expenditures  [$11.501 trillion].

Durable goods, [autos-furniture], financial and health care services.

Business investment includes purchases to produce consumer goods and business equipment.

New Construction in Real estate. 

Government spending added $3.125 trillion to the economy in 2013.

U.S. imports a lot of petroleum,   International trade deficit subtracted $569 billion from GDP. 

The indirect economic impact of foreign oil includes major U.S. Defense Depart. spending on troops, ships, weapons and equipment deployed around the globe to protect the free flow of oil.

When  $330 million [was $700millions in 2007] exits the U.S. economy each year, that’s equivalent to roughly three million jobs lost. Paying for gasoline at the pump serves as a regressive tax on lower-income families,  especially the 40% of Americans at or near the poverty line.

An increase in US oil and gas production, and reduction of consumption will create a boom in the economy, less inflation and less international problems.

Prices of oil will collapse by 2017.  OPEC will reduce quota of production of oil and reduce prices in order to make US production cost more than buying for $35/Barrel.

Just a thought