My talking alarm is speaking in a Slavic language.
It does do talking alarms, but normally it speaks ……… Well ……… English.
(on edit)
My bad, I tracked it down to a setting in my alarm app, AlarmDroid, and it wasn’t Russian, it was Polish.
FWIW, it’s actually a pretty good app.
Seen on Facebook.
He has said something on the issue of race that is both profound and a truly original framing:
Yes, that would be an event. Here’s the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.
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So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn’t. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.
He’s right.
What we call racial progress is a really a reduction (NOT an elimination) of the “crazy” of white America.
We now have a report of a person who had a job interview with Uber, and was granted the ability to view the complete travel history of any Uber Customer:
………
Now add that all this location data was not held by a battle-hardened company with tons of lawyers and security experts, such as Google. Instead, this data was held by a start-up that was growing with viral exuberance – and with so few privacy protections that it created a “God View” to display the movements of riders in real-time and at least once projected such information on a screen for entertainment at a company party.
And let’s not forget that individual employees could access historical data on the movements of particular people without their permission, as an Uber executive in New York City reportedly did when he pulled the travel records of a Buzzfeed reporter who was working on a story about the company.
………
Then there are the personal travels of government officials and their families. A person who had a job interview in Uber’s Washington office in 2013 said he got the kind of access enjoyed by actual employees for an entire day, even for several hours after the job interview ended. He happily crawled through the database looking up the records of people he knew – including a family member of a prominent politician – before the seemingly magical power disappeared.
“What an Uber employee would have is everything, complete,” said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the company.
I can see how the employee would fear retribution.
The CEO is an Ayn Rand loving sociopath, and he, almost any employee at the central office, or an enterprising hacker, can pull up your travel history.
How do you know that some tabloid reporter doesn’t have an Uber employee on their payroll?
Ian Welsh makes a number of cogent suggestions, including eliminating forfeiture laws, drug criminalization, RICO laws, etc., but there is one suggestion that stands out and shines like the sun:
If you really want to make the system work, make all private lawyers for criminal charges illegal, and use only public defenders, chosen by lot. I guarantee that the pay and competence of public defenders would soar and their case load would drop as soon as rich people realized that they could be the one being defended by an overworked and underpaid lawyer.
This is f%$#ing brilliant.
Read the rest.
Unfortunately, it’s the New Statesman, a respected but obscure publication, founded by Fabian Socialists and generally affiliated with the Labour Party, which has finally observed that Riyadh is the font from which Islamic terrorism springs:
Although IS is certainly an Islamic movement, it is neither typical nor mired in the distant past, because its roots are in Wahhabism, a form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia that developed only in the 18th century.
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As the so-called Islamic State demolishes nation states set up by the Europeans almost a century ago, IS’s obscene savagery seems to epitomise the violence that many believe to be inherent in religion in general and Islam in particular. It also suggests that the neoconservative ideology that inspired the Iraq war was delusory, since it assumed that the liberal nation state was an inevitable outcome of modernity and that, once Saddam’s dictatorship had gone, Iraq could not fail to become a western-style democracy. Instead, IS, which was born in the Iraq war and is intent on restoring the premodern autocracy of the caliphate, seems to be reverting to barbarism. On 16 November, the militants released a video showing that they had beheaded a fifth western hostage, the American aid worker Peter Kassig, as well as several captured Syrian soldiers. Some will see the group’s ferocious irredentism as proof of Islam’s chronic inability to embrace modern values.
Yet although IS is certainly an Islamic movement, it is neither typical nor mired in the distant past, because its roots are in Wahhabism, a form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia that developed only in the 18th century. In July 2013, the European Parliament identified Wahhabism as the main source of global terrorism, and yet the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, condemning IS in the strongest terms, has insisted that “the ideas of extremism, radicalism and terrorism do not belong to Islam in any way”. Other members of the Saudi ruling class, however, look more kindly on the movement, applauding its staunch opposition to Shiaism and for its Salafi piety, its adherence to the original practices of Islam. This inconsistency is a salutary reminder of the impossibility of making accurate generalisations about any religious tradition. In its short history, Wahhabism has developed at least two distinct forms, each of which has a wholly different take on violence.
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The soaring oil price created by the 1973 embargo – when Arab petroleum producers cut off supplies to the US to protest against the Americans’ military support for Israel – gave the kingdom all the petrodollars it needed to export its idiosyncratic form of Islam. The old military jihad to spread the faith was now replaced by a cultural offensive. The Saudi-based Muslim World League opened offices in every region inhabited by Muslims, and the Saudi ministry of religion printed and distributed Wahhabi translations of the Quran, Wahhabi doctrinal texts and the writings of modern thinkers whom the Saudis found congenial, such as Sayyids Abul-A’la Maududi and Qutb, to Muslim communities throughout the Middle East, Africa, Indonesia, the United States and Europe. In all these places, they funded the building of Saudi-style mosques with Wahhabi preachers and established madrasas that provided free education for the poor, with, of course, a Wahhabi curriculum. At the same time, young men from the poorer Muslim countries, such as Egypt and Pakistan, who had felt compelled to find work in the Gulf to support their families, associated their relative affluence with Wahhabism and brought this faith back home with them, living in new neighbourhoods with Saudi mosques and shopping malls that segregated the sexes. The Saudis demanded religious conformity in return for their munificence, so Wahhabi rejection of all other forms of Islam as well as other faiths would reach as deeply into Bradford, England, and Buffalo, New York, as into Pakistan, Jordan or Syria: everywhere gravely undermining Islam’s traditional pluralism.
It provides a lot of insights into forces like Al Qaeda and ISIS, and makes it clear that the House of Saud, and that regime’s use of religion as a way to exert control and to promulgate a millennia long conflict between Arabs and Persians.
Saudi Arabia cannot be a part of any solution until they are forced to face the fact that they are the source of the problem.
Author H.A. Goodman is suggesting that black men should avail themselves of the right to open carry wherever possible. He gives 2 highly convincing reasons:
I never thought I’d be an open-carry advocate.
However, I’m a firm believer in working within the American political system in order to change the status quo. If the Second Amendment is cherished by millions of Americans, then why not use it to further certain liberal ideals? Protecting African-American lives and alleviating tensions between the black community and law enforcement should be a top priority of all Americans and especially Congress; however, this is not the case. It speaks volumes that African-Americans vote over 90 percent Democrat during national elections, yet our future nominee in 2016 still hasn’t addressed an issue the whole nation is talking about, even after Darren Wilson’s acquittal and the flames that engulfed Ferguson.
He goes on to state that, “I’m not advocating armed insurrection. My name isn’t Cliven Bundy.”
He then gives three very good reasons for blacks to open carry:
1. Openly carrying a gun legally (in an open-carry state) is a public display indicating that an individual does not have a criminal record. This alone undermines the basis behind racial profiling.He’s right, of course.
If you have been convicted of a felony, the federally mandated background check will catch you.
Well it will if you don’t exploit the gun show loophole.
2. The epidemic of disproportionate force utilized against black men in America warrants an alternative, and legal, solution to this problem.
………
There are so many more instances of unarmed black males shot by police that there simply isn’t enough room in this article to continue. Therefore, regardless of your view of gun ownership, the predicament faced by African-Americans warrants a serious look at whether or not openly carrying a weapon will save black lives.
Anything that deflates the sense of impunity that many in law enforcement (aka the Thin Blue Line) will improve the quality of policing int he country.
3. The vast majority of African-American men will never commit a crime, so it’s time America realizes this fact. If openly carrying a gun will help our country overcome centuries of prejudice pertaining to skin color, then it’s an option that should be pursued.
This whole “Carry a gun, and show that you are not a criminal,” thing is trolling.
It’s trolling when the (almost completely caucasian) open carry ammosexuals do it, and it’s trolling when people of color do it.
But the right to troll is fundamental, and it should be available without regard to race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or national origin.
BTW, if anyone wants to organize a gay black open carry parade in Houston or Dallas, TX, I will do what I can to help.
“Get Me Off Your F%$#ing Mailing List” is an actual science paper accepted by a journal
(%$# mine)
It’s actually an interesting story, about how phony scientific journals are proliferating.
Remember AT&T’s threat that it would curtail broadband rollout if network neutrality were implemented?
Well that threat is is now inoperative:
AT&T now says it isn’t really going to halt a huge fiber investment because of net neutrality despite its CEO recently claiming the company would do just that.
Don’t celebrate yet—AT&T is making no promises to build anywhere.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told investors on November 12 that “We can’t go out and invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities not knowing under what rules those investments will be governed.” Stephenson was referring to an April announcement in which AT&T said it would “expand its ultra-fast fiber network to up to 100 candidate cities and municipalities nationwide, including 21 new major metropolitan areas.”
Because of uncertainty about net neutrality rules, Stephenson said at the investor event this month that it would be better to “pause” instead of proceeding with the 100-city investment. Construction in all 100 cities was never guaranteed to begin with, as it was contingent on municipal cooperation with AT&T.
I’m not surprised that they’ve blinked.
Even the FCC wasn’t buying this as a credible threat.
The Obama administration is claiming that US human rights law does not apply to the mercenary rebels that the US is training and arming in Syria:
Buried down in a report about Pentagon plans to train more mercenaries to fight against Syria we find this declaration of intend by the Obama administration to (again) break the law:
The military screening plan came together after the Obama administration determined that the training program for the Syrians would not be subject to what are known as the Leahy laws, which typically govern U.S. security assistance to foreign forces.
Under those laws, a small office at the State Department works with U.S. embassies overseas to ensure that recipients of State or Defense Department security assistance aren’t linked to major human rights abuses.
…
Because the Syrian rebels will not be part of a state-sponsored force, the laws will not apply, U.S. officials said.
Wait a second. The U.S. congress has set aside $500 million to train, equip and pay these fighters. The U.S. military will do the training. And the Obama administration claims that these are not “state-sponsored forces”? Is the U.S. no longer a nation state?
Besides that the Leahy law as codified for the Pentagon in Section 8057 of the 2014 Omnibus bill does not say anything about “state-sponsored forces”:(1) None of the funds made available by this Act may be used for any training, equipment, or other assistance for the members of a unit of a foreign security force if the Secretary of Defense has credible information that the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.
(2) The Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall ensure that prior to a decision to provide any training, equipment, or other assistance to a unit of a foreign security force full consideration is given to any credible information available to the Department of State relating to human rights violations by such unit.
There is nothing about “state-sponsored” in the Pentagon relevant portion of the Leahy law. Will these trained be “foreign”? Yes. Will they be “security forces”? Arguably because they will likely bring more insecurity to Syria than security. But they will have weapons, will be organized in units and will fight. That seems to fit the expression “foreign security force”.
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All the groups the CIA has trained and equipped to fight against Syria have committed major human rights violations. But the Leahy law does not apply to the CIA. Now as the Pentagon takes over the training of such groups the Leahy law becomes relevant. I dare anyone to find a group of Syrian insurgents fighting against the Syrian government that has not indiscriminately shelled civilians and not committed other major human rights abuses. There is none.
The Obama administration wants to avoid the applicability of the Leahy law because applying it would leave the Pentagon without any potential recruits to train as mercenaries against the Syrian government. It decided to break the law by using an interpretation that actually not covered by the laws wording. It has thus decided to break the law.
Barack Obama, who was a critic of the expansive view of the Unitary Executive advanced by the Bush administration, has become one of its biggest fans.
Worst Constitutional law professor ever.
Today, members of the St. Louis Rams football franchise walked out onto the field with their hands up, using the gesture made famous by the Ferguson protesters:
Members of the NFL’s St. Louis Rams came onto their home field on Sunday posing with the ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ gesture associated with the shooting of teenager Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.
The gesture has become part of a movement designed to draw attention to the spate of shootings of young African-American men by police officers across the country.
As player introductions began at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, five players — Stedman Bailey, Tavon Austin, Jared Cook, Chris Givens, and Kenny Britt — came out onto the field first, to the applause of the crowd, before being joined by their teammates.
Rather unsurprisingly, the police officer’s union is calling for disciplinary measures to be taken against these players:
Reacting to five members of the St. Louis Rams coming onto the field for Sunday’s game displaying the ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ gesture, a St. Louis police officers fraternal organization is demanding the team discipline the players, and that the team and league issue a formal apology, reports KSDK.
In a statement released Sunday evening, the St. Louis Police Officers Association condemned the display, calling it “tasteless, offensive and inflammatory.”
Prior to player introductions before Sunday’s game, five players — Stedman Bailey, Tavon Austin, Jared Cook, Chris Givens, and Kenny Britt — came out onto the field first with their hands in the air prior to being joined by their teammates.
Notwithstanding some puffery from the union about the 1st amendment, it’s clear that the St. Louis Police Officers Association has no concept of civil rights.
Or, to put it another way, “Why does the St. Louis Police Officers Association hate America?”
I guess that the Christmas shopping season has finally begun, because I saw this on Facebook:
To quote the Beatles, “If looks could kill, it would have been us instead of him.”
Considering their background, that of an Ayn Rand inspired think tank, I would think that their attitude toward IP, copyright and patents, would be one of absolute support, but here is an article where describes our current regime as regressive rent seeking:
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All three of these critical national problems derive from the same source. We often talk about the last third of a century as an era of deregulation and the expansions of markets. And in certain areas that is certainly true. But the most important market rigidities that have been eliminated have been those that protected those from the middle class on down. In fact, the great paradox of the last third of a century is that we have actually had an explosion of regulation in this “supposedly deregulatory” era — but regulation that has the effect of redistributing, sometimes dramatically, upward.
A few examples will suffice to make the point. Intellectual property protections, especially patents and copyright, have been expanded dramatically over this period, both in time (through patent and copyright extensions for existing IP) and across space (by using trade agreements to push American IP principles into foreign law). While there is an argument that this expansion has actually reduced innovation, there is no doubt that it has allowed existing firms to use the force of law (rather than the market) to enrich themselves by reaching further into the pockets of consumers.
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The article is actually fairly tepid in its conclusions, but considering that this is coming from the Cato institute, it does indicatge that the push-back against the American model of over aggressive IP protections is becoming more broadly accepted across the ideological spectrum.
The Israeli cabinet has rejected a proposal to purchase additional F-35s: (Paid subscription required)
An Israeli cabinet panel has rejected a decision by the defense minister to procure an additional 31 Lockheed Martin F-35A Joint Strike Fighters and has limited the procurement of Israel’s second batch of JSFs to only 13.
It is unprecedented for the ministerial committee on defense procurement to reverse an air force requirement already approved by the defense minister, the former government and the National Security Council. The Israeli air force (IAF), which currently has 19 F-35s on order under a $2.74 billion contract, will have to be satisfied with a total of 32 aircraft in the coming years, and will not be able to complete two full squadrons as planned.
Israel’s decision to cut back on the near-term buy is notable; surrounded by existential threats, the country has been one of the most aggressive buyers of the single-engine, stealthy jet. It was the first F-35 nonpartner nation to sign up for a foreign military sale; Japan and South Korea quickly followed.
In Tel Aviv, Defense Minister Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, who had already concluded the terms of a $4.4 billion contract for an additional 31 F-35s with the Pentagon, is now asking for the same terms for a smaller number of aircraft. The U.S. has agreed to grant Israel $2.4 billion in credit for the deal, as well as to conduct offset procurement totaling $5.3 billion, under the expectation that Israel will acquire a total of 50 F-35s. The JSF procurement is financed through the $3.1 billion annual military aid that the U.S. provides to Israel.
It is unclear, however, if the U.S. will agree to provide Israel with the same terms for the smaller deal. “Minister Ya’alon will try to convince the Pentagon that this is a minor delay and that eventually Israel will procure the 50 aircraft,” a senior defense source told Aviation Week.
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“For maintaining stealthiness, this aircraft has compromised maneuverability, shorter operational range and significantly less payload capability,” a senior Israeli official told Aviation Week. “We shouldn’t be buying so many of them when it is unclear whether the stealth is effective, or there is a countermeasure that would negate it. There are vast gaps in performance between the F-35 and fourth-generation fighters.”
This is a big deal.
Israel’s participation in the F-35 program provides much of the credibility for foreign sales: They were the first non-JSF partner nation to ink orders for the aircraft, and they have provided a lot of credibility to the program.
Even as they are trying to kill it, the A-10 Warthog deployed for combat service in Iraq:
The low- and slow-flying A-10 Warthog jet is back in the Middle East—seven years after the attack planes withdrew.
The prospect of A-10s joining the war against Islamic State was subject to rumors in September, when elements of the Indiana Air National Guard’s 122nd Fighter Wing—which flies the twin-engine A-10—deployed to Southwest Asia.
While it’s not clear whether the Indiana A-10s have carried out any strikes against Islamic State yet … they surely will soon. The Warthogs’ mission is to provide close-air support to Iraqi army and police and Kurdish Peshmerga troops fighting on the ground.
An Air Force spokesman confirmed to Air Force magazine that the A-10s “will only be supporting military requirements in the Gulf region, including but not limited to, Operation Inherent Resolve.”
Inherent Resolve is the Pentagon’s code name for air strikes and other U.S.-led efforts targeting Islamic State.
This is not a surprise.
The demands of the tactical situation on the ground require an aircraft like the A-10, but the Air Force has been indifferent to the tactical situation on the ground since before it was an independent service (Bill Mauldin notes this in his memoir The Brass Ring, which covers his experiences in WWII).
Considering the level of dysfunctionalality in the Pentagon, the fact that the US Air Force is probably the most dysfunctional service truly scary.
Case in point, perhaps the highest profile financial reporter in the United States, the New York Times‘ Andrew Ross Sorkin, who has gotten the vapors over Elizabeth Warren’s opposition to the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street:
Wall Street stenographer Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times complains this morning that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is making it harder for Wall Street veterans to take on government jobs overseeing the financial industry, calling the former Harvard law professor and longtime industry critic “misinformed” in her opposition to investment banker Antonio Weiss’ nomination to a key Treasury Department post.
Weiss, President Barack Obama’s nominee to be under secretary of Treasury for domestic finance, is currently head of global investment banking at Lazard, which advised Burger King on its merger with Canadian coffee and doughnut chain Tim Hortons — a so-called inversion that will help Burger King avoid taxes. Warren cited Lazard’s work on inversions in explaining her opposition to Weiss’ nomination, but Sorkin contends that her concerns are “misplaced.” Sure, tax avoidance may have been “a consideration” in the BK-Tim Hortons deal, Sorkin concedes, but they weren’t the “primary factor.” At any rate, Weiss was “simply as one of several advisers” of the merger — hardly its mastermind.
Sorkin — who has criticized some inversions in the past — apparently finds no fault with the Obama administration seeking to enlist Weiss even as it pledges to crack down on corporate tax avoidance schemes.
While the inversion issue formed the crux of Sorkin’s substantive defense of Weiss, Warren has also pointed to the nominee’s financial industry background as a broad concern in itself.
Sorkin has been thoroughly captured by the financial industry, and he cannot be trusted to report on wrongdoing in the financial industry.
It could be argued that his role never was to reporting on wrongdoing, but instead his job is to document the official actions of the banking sector.
He reports on things like mergers, interviews CEOs, etc.
Of course, if that IS is real role, he is not a journalist. He is a stenographer.
Nothing says like cinema inspired by the work of Charles Addams:
It’s now been twice that the FEC ruling allowing for anonymously funded election ads has been ruled illegal:
A U.S. judge again tossed out a Federal Election Commission rule that allowed nonprofit groups running “issue ads” to keep their donors secret, in a setback for groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Crossroads GPS.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington said today that the rule is “arbitrary, capricious and contrary to law.” Jackson arrived at her decision a second time, after a Washington-based appeals court asked her to reconsider a 2012 order requiring disclosure of donor names.
At issue were FEC regulations adopted in 2007 that let organizations and nonprofit groups keep secret the names of donors who pay for issue ads during an election campaign. In her previous ruling, Jackson said the regulations clashed with requirements of the 2002 campaign-finance law known as McCain-Feingold, a finding she reiterated today.
Congress passed the disclosure rules “to ensure that members of the public would be aware of who was trying to influence their votes just before an election,” Jackson wrote. The FEC’s rule “thwarts that objective by creating an easily exploited loophole that allows the true sponsors of advertisements to hide behind dubious and misleading names,” she said.
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The rules at issue today apply only to what are known as “electioneering communications,” or ads that run before an election and mention a federal candidate without urging a vote for or against the person. So-called independent expenditures, which advocate support for or opposition to a candidate, aren’t affected by the decision.
Seriously.
The Supreme Court specifically allowed for disclosure requirements in their Citizens United ruling, and we the law explicitly calls for disclosure, and we are still litigating this?
Would the federal courts please finish cock punching Karl Rove?
Or, if they don’t want to go back so far, the Chicago parking meter debacle, but history repeats itself, and Chris Christie’s privatization of the New Jersey lottery shows once again that privatizing the collection government revenues, does not produce additional revenue, it just produces waste and corruption:
The state Assembly budget committee chairman is calling for a review of the contract privatizing parts of the state lottery following a news report that the firm hired to manage the system fell short of revenue benchmarks.
Assemblyman Gary Schaer (D-Passaic), reacting to a Bloomberg report Monday that Northstar New Jersey missed its projections by $24 million in the first fiscal year of a 15-year contract, said the shortfall puts programs for seniors, veterans and people with disabilities at risk.
The premise of the lottery contract is increasing lottery revenues according to Northstar’s own projections, Schaer said.
“The administration brought in a company to work on the lottery system, and clearly the results are not what they should be,” he said.
Christie inked the deal with Northstar in July 2013, making New Jersey the third state to hire a private firm to help run its lottery in hopes of boosting lottery sales.
Four months into the arrangement, which began Oct. 1, 2013, Northstar secured a contract amendment reducing its revenue goals, according to Bloomberg. Northstar cited slowed sales from Superstorm Sandy in its request.
These deals never generate more revenue.
At best, what they do is generate a dollar today at the cost of many more dollars tomorrow.
In this case, considering that it is Jabba the Governor, it’s about payback for politically connected friends of Chris.
Hopefully, the media is over their man-crush on Christie, and and will begin to notice the morass of cronyism and self-dealing that is his tenure as Governor.
Yesterdat, I mentione the relative rarity of Federal Grand Juries no-billing to provide context in the Ferguson ruling.
Today, I show you the infographic:
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That data is from a report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and covers October 1, 2009, to September 30, 2010. Over that time period, over 193,000 federal offenses were investigated, about 16 percent of which were declined for prosecution. That leaves just over 162,300 offenses that the government tried to prosecute. And the grand jury decided against doing so 11 times, finding no true bill or a lack of evidence to do so.
Nope. Nothing suspicious here.
Move along.
