Operational Security in a Social Media Age

The Jihadi's are on Facebook, too.

It has been almost three and a half years and I still remember when it happened.  My son was a brand new 2nd Lieutenant and was attending Army Logistics University at Ft. Lee, Virginia.  I was chatting on Facebook with someone and scrolling through my news feed.  I tagged my son in a picture, made a few keystrokes in my chat and then went to my son's page and it didn't exist.  

Gone, completely gone.  Every picture from the past five years and every part or mention of my son was gone.  Panicked, I called his cell phone and he answered.  He informed my that he was erasing his social media foot print for Operational Security (OpSec).  The Army had highly suggested he take this step.

I know mothers of the deployed look for the green dot on Facebook.  The green dot tells the moms that wherever their child is in the world, their child is using social media at that moment.  Of course, I am jealous.  My son suspended is cell phone account and left his phone, actually, I don't know where.  

My son calls every two to three weeks using the steady supply of phone cards that we send him.  My husband and I each talk to him for about an hour.

Back in World War II, OpSec was an important security feature and motivation for the deployed military personnel and the average citizen.  The average U.S. citizen could feel part of the war by participating in Operational Security, tin collection and rationing.  

Today, the average U.S. citizen goes about life blythely unaware that there are even troops deployed in Afghanistan, let alone the many other sensitive duty stations around the globe.

It is up to us then, those of us who are aware, to be even more security conscious about where our loved ones are and what they are doing.  The entire Islamofacist world is on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and what ever app was designed today.  

Let us practice OpSec everyday!

Government Functionaries Train Next Generation of Smarmy Scolds

They know better because they think they are better

In the Sunday, March 23, 2014 edition of the "Knoxville News Sentinel", there is an article titled "Students use body bags to show tobacco's effects".  According to this article, high schoolers volunteered to lay on top of body bags, with a statistic filled tombstone by their heads, on Market Square, as a physical show of the dangers of tobacco. 

  This is a project of the Knox County Youth Health Board.  According to the article, Kathryn Burklund set this up.  She is the public health education coordinator for Tobacco Use Prevention.  

Breaking new:  Use of tobacco products could endanger your health.

These kids are learning a lesson here.  Stupid and pointless gestures get approval from adults and media coverage.  How else would the next generation of smarmy scolds get trained.  These kids are the ones' who will be hectoring us in the future about how to live our lives to suit them.  Don't think, just do as your told.

If you cannot picture what a smarmy scold is, think of the movie "Animal House".  You know the guys in the fraternity Omega Theta Pi.  The fraternity that was not "Animal House"  Yeah, Neidermeyer and Marmalard.

That is who these kids are going to grow up to be.

Remind me to stay away from Market Square.

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March Madness

Shock and Horror in Knoxville

Lady Vols NOT in Obama's Final Four

All of Knoxville is reeling today from an Associated Press Story in the esteemed "Knoxville News Sentinel" that President Obama did not pick the Lady Vols for the Final Four, in his vaunted and highly anticipated March Madness Brackets.

Shock in Knoxville

This will teach you Knoxville.  Our President is notoriously thin-skinned.  He never, ever, ever forgets a slight.  If Knoxville will remember, Obama did not carry Tennessee in either the 2008 or 2012 Presidential elections.  He DID win Connecticut in both the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections.  

With his pick of Connecticut, the President is telling Knoxville and all of Tennessee to go jump in the Tennessee River.  

And, according to the article, when he hosted Connecticut's Lady Huskies (such an unfortunate name) last year, he promised team center Stefanie Dolson a dance-off if Connecticut repeated this year.  Actually, although I am not a basketball fan, I say "Go Lady Vols", if only to prevent another humiliation for our uber-cool (cough, giggle, snort) President.

In other, far less important news, that plane is still missing, Vladimir Putin is still trying to make up for his shortcomings and there will be llama races in Knoxville's World's Fair Park.

From the shadows of the Great Smoky Mountains, that is all for now.

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Not having health insurance is not freeloading. Not paying your bills is freeloading

Not having insurance is not freeloading

Ina Hughes always manages to annoy me.  Ina Hughes writes for the "Knoxville News Sentinel".  She has a rather myopic world view and does not seem to understand the phrase "correlation is not causation".  Miss Hughes also does not seem to understand free will.

Apparently, Miss Hughes spent days in the hospital for tests and a medication update and wrote about it in her column today.  Miss Hughes saw a woman in an SUV (clearly living too large) park and enter the emergency room.  The woman wanted to see a doctor for a cold (clearly an idiot). 

When Ms. Hughes questioned the nurse, the nurse told her these people don't have a doctor, don't have insurance and don't pay.  Ms. Hughes posits that these people are freeloaders because they don't have insurance.  She also posits that they have car payments, eat out and have gym memberships.

The Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare is going to fix this because these "freeloaders"  will be forced to have insurance, in Miss Hughes world.

Big problem.  These people have free will and may choose to pay the fine and still not have insurance.  They may choose to wait until they are ill and then get Affordable Care Act Insurance.  Since we don't (yet) have debtors' prisons or jail sentences for those who do not take Obamacare, what is to stop them.

More importantly, I disagree with Miss Hughes that people who don't have insurance are freeloaders.  People who don't pay their debts are freeloaders.  In my world, people who don't have health insurance are taking a big risk.  In my youth, I turned down company offered health insurance for more vacation time.  When I did see a doctor, and you can see a doctor without insurance, I PAID the bill.

People who don't have insurance are gamblers.  People who don't pay their bills are immoral jerks.

Obamacare, The Edsel and New Coke!

Fourth Edition

It is not about the marketing!

The front page of the Bearden edition of the "Shopper News" has another article about the "Looming" Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare signup deadline.  Writer Betty Bean features a new quote from Mayor Rogero, 

"Faith leaders like you share a vision of a responsibility to care for our nation's sick, our nation's children and the overall health of our community."

Silly Southern Baptist that I am, I thought our "faith leaders" had a vision to get our Souls to God. But then, I am a backsliding Baptist so maybe I missed the Sermons about serving the State by having Health Care.

Ford Edsel

New Coke

More importantly, our Mayor Rogero, President Obama and all of the other Affordable Care Act pitch persons have failed to learn the lesson that companies like Ford and Coca Cola learned.  While the failure of Ford's Edsel and Coca Cola's New Coke are taught in Marketing classes where one would never find organizers/agitators, they are also of recent enough vintage that surely the Mayor and the President had to have heard a little about them

The lesson that Ford and Coca Cola both learned with their failed products is that - no amount of money or slick advertising campaigns will induce the public to buy a product that the public does not want!

You cannot jawbone us into it either.  Force is the only way!

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Knoxville citizens exist to provide money to Church and State

Third Edition

Op-ed vision makes me think of "1984" (the book not the year)

In today's "Knoxville News Sentinel", there is an op-ed by four mayors regarding the Affordable Care Act or ACA or Obamacare.  The mayors of Chattanooga, Memphis, Nashville and our own Mayor Madeline Rogero.  This is a column clearly built by committee.  It is way too long.  I didn't even want to read it.  My husband said I had to because of the funny laugh lines in it.

First of all, the mayors claim 800,000 uninsured Tennesseans exist while the State website claims 683,000 uninsured Tennesseans exist.  Could the cities and the state check with each other?  Is that hard?

Next the mayors claim that "the peace of mind and financial security that come with health insurance was out of reach to many Tennesseans", according to the article.  Now, I am sorry that any one person suffers for any reason, but even the mayors' number 800,000 is only 1.2% of our state's population of 6,500,000.

The part that reminds me of the book "1984" by George Orwell is when the mayors (and I suspect Mayor Rogero wrote this part because it echoes earlier statements, write

"Certainly, getting covered impacts the individuals and families in our communities, but more residents with health insurance also helps our cities at large. It helps our local economy, because preventive care yields fewer people missing work because of illness. And it helps our budgets, because it places less of a burden on our local health systems. Ultimately, more of our residents getting coverage means better quality of life for all of our residents."

How dare you miss work, you drone.  Don't you know that you exist to serve the State during the week and plink coins in the offertory on the weekend.

This drone is signing out.

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Tennessee is really behind in sex, according to local scholar

Edition Two

Publik Edukashun

Gloria Johnson, D., a state representative and teacher led a rally on Market Square of about 100 people (wow), according to an article in today's Knoxville News Sentinel.  I don't understand liberal white peoples' obsession with denying quality education to minority children.  Maybe Gloria Johnson and Bill de Blasio, D., NYC Mayor could get together and explain it to us all.  

The fact that nearly 100 people showed up gives us all hope that opposing vouchers and charter schools is a losing proposition.  Remember the jokes about turning on the lights at Neyland Stadium and 20 thousand people just showing up!

Sex Mascots and Summer Camp

Another elucidating article in the same newspaper today has Haslam Scholar Brianna Rader patiently condescendingly explaining to all of us hicks, who have never lived anywhere else or been educated about anything at all, that penis and vagina mascots running around The University of Tennessee campus for "Sex Week"  is a sign of forward thinking sophistication.

Brianna wants us to know that The University of California-Berkeley had these very same mascot costumes at a middle school, summer sex education camp.  And, the quote in the Knoxville newspaper of record, hand to God, is, "Just as a comparison, that's how behind Tennessee is.", according to Brianna.

Without young sophisticates like Brianna how would we ever know.

Final Thoughts

Brianna Rader is a graduate of Halls High School.  Well done!  Gloria Johnson is a teacher at Richard Yoakley.  O.K.

Separation of Church and State for Thee, but Not for Me.

Edition One

Separation of Church and State the Madeline Rogero Version

According to a March 11, Knoxville News Sentinel article, Knoxville City Mayor Madeline Rogero met with local clergy to enlighten/beg them to preach the gospel of the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare to their faith communities.  

What happened to Separation of Church and State, which although it does not appear in the Constitution, is accepted fact among some in our fair land?  Well, for Madame Rogero, if it suits her purposes, it does not exist.  

While I find this annoying enough, some of her quoted comments are reprehensible.  Such as:

“Healthy people with affordable insurance put more money in the collection plate!”

Spare me, Lord.  If any preacher I ever met started pimping promoting a government program from the pulpit, I would leave.  #shame #MadelineRogero.

Get Fruved

Oh, you read that right.  In today's Knoxville New Sentinel, an article touts the fact that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has authorized a $4,900,000 grant to the University of Tennessee 4-H extension program to combat "childhood obesity".  This is a peer to peer mentoring program.  It has a social media marketing element called "Get Fruved".  I don't kid.  This is a mash up of fruits and vegetables.

Get Fruved!  Get .... Fruved!  Did a ten year old come up this idea.  Did they talk to the Marketing Department.  Get Fruved is memorable and nmemonic. I do kid.  

The University loves the peer to peer programs.  They are creating them all over the place.  Two reasons.  First, they eliminate parental participation.  Second, they absolve the University of any responsibility.

This is $4,900,000 of your money, Knoxville and Tennessee and the United States of America.  For Get Fruved.  That giant sucking sound you hear is $4,900,000 circling the drain.  #toilet

That is all from here in the shadow of the Sunsphere.

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Our First News Edition Comes Later Today

I am ToniKnoxville

For quite some time, the news reporting in the Knoxville News Sentinel has annoyed me to distraction.  So, instead of kvetching to myself, I have decided you should get to enjoy my opinion.  I will say what I think and you can agree or disagree.  

This is the only way I can continue to justify the expense of a daily newspaper subscription.  I started reading a paper everyday when I was little and I can't stop now.  Even though the Knoxville Sentinel is excrement, I am compelled by age to continue to take it.

Truman the Wonder Dog

Truman the Wonder Dog is my faithful sidekick and personal trainer.  He may offer his opinion occasionally.

Walt Williams, my husband

My husband, Walt Williams, is a 1970 Bearden High School Grad, and has his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Tennessee.  He may weigh in on whatever subjects he wishes.

Our son, John

Our son John is deployed and doesn't talk to the media.

Stay tuned