Hot on my slight revision to my profanity policy:
Hey @realDonaldTrump I oppose civil asset forfeiture too! Why don’t you try to destroy my career you fascist, loofa-faced, shit-gibbon!— Daylin Leach (@daylinleach) February 7, 2017
It’s just too good not to post.
I am not completely in favor of this Tweet, I think that the use of “Weasel” is more effective, and more pleasing to the reader, than “Gibbon,” but I want this guy to run for US Congress.
As you are no doubt aware, there are certain profanities that I block out when I am posting to my blog, F%$#, Sh%$, C%$#, C%$#, C%$sucker, Motherf%$#er, etc.
I did use f%$# when quoting Joe Biden’s famous/infamous comment on the passage of the ACA, but generally, I will obscure obscenities in quotes.
However, I have come across the issue that when embedding tweets, I cannot obscure the profanities when preserving the tweet.
Therefore, I shall be embedding those unexpurgated.
That is all.
It appears that after decades of organizing disruption at Democratic Congressmen’s town halls, Republicans are worried that people are angry with them for attempting to destroy their health insurance:
House Republicans during a closed-door meeting Tuesday discussed how to protect themselves and their staffs from protesters storming town halls and offices in opposition to repealing Obamacare, sources in the room told Politico.
House GOP Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers invited Rep. David Reichert, a former county sheriff, to present lawmakers with protective measures they should have in place. Among the suggestions: having a physical exit strategy at town halls, or a backdoor in congressional offices to slip out of, in case demonstrations turn violent; having local police monitor town halls; replacing any glass office-door entrances with heavy doors and deadbolts; and setting up intercoms to ensure those entering congressional offices are there for appointments, not to cause chaos.
“The message was: One, be careful for security purposes. Watch your back. And two, be receptive. Honor the First Amendment, engage, be friendly, be nice,” said Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.). “Because it is toxic out there right now. Even some of the guys who have been around here a lot longer than I have, have never seen it to this level.”
………
Democrats, meanwhile, dismissed Republicans’ security ramp-up as an attempt to shield themselves from criticism.
“I think what you’re seeing is Republicans trying to use security to try to hide themselves from their constituents because they have no plan for a replacement and very little support from Donald Trump,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). “They’re going to use so-called security to keep people away.”
Bingo, Representative Gallego.
I love this quote, “Many of these lawmakers in safe districts have never dealt with such severe blowback.”
To quote Finley Peter Dunne, “Politics ain’t beanbag.”
I read the Guardian (Aka the Grauniad*) online, and I find it useful, though, as always with the British press, you need to understand that it comes with a very definite political position. (Left of Tony Blair, but right of Jeremy Corbyn)
They also publish OP/EDs from any number of people, some of whom you would not expect to get space in the paper.
Today, they published someone who should NEVER have gotten space in the paper writing about the election, former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, who, in an orgy of self absolving twaddle, Is given a platform to scream, “The Russians are Coming“.
I get that Mr. Mook had to deal with the fact that he had a sh%$ candidate, but he ran an amazingly sh%$ty campaign.
Dude, your next job should involve asking people if they want fries with that.
That won’t happen. Failure is never punished in Washington, DC, regardless of party, but just admit that you screwed the pooch, and move on, preferably to a research outpost in Antarctica.
*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”
DJI did a firmware update on a drone… while mid-flight 😬 pic.twitter.com/YDexjEViFc— Internet of 💩 (@internetofshit) February 8, 2017
Of course, who cares about a lightweight relatively cheap drone.
Then again, what if this was a self driving car, or even the car that you are driving now? While you are driving it?
Tesla has already done over the air (OTA) updates on their cars, and while you may trust them, (I don’t) would you trust the creators of the Chevy Vega?
H/t Naked Capitalism
Still dealing with a horrible cold.
I’m not even checking out the news.
I would appreciate it if no-one made any news over the next 24 hours.
The point is to stop pretending that religion (and in the US we mean good Christian religion) necessarily steers people away from horrible moral and political beliefs, because all that does it give people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are. Religion might be wonderful for individuals but it doesn’t elevate the morals of one group over another. I think this should be somewhat obvious by now.
The point that Black is trying to make is that the religious right is right first, and religious second, and that the suggestions by some that appealing to God/Jesus/Allah/Vishnu/The Flying Spaghetti Monster/Etc. is a lost cause.
The religious right’s answer to “What would God/Jesus/Allah/Vishnu/The Flying Spaghetti Monster/Etc. do?” is that he/they/his noodley goodness would kick the crap out of those hippies who want to keep lazy black and brown children from starving.
This is how they worship, and it is what it is.
To suggest, as the liberal religious pundits suggest, that we can dictate how they worship is patronizing and wrong.
More particularly, I need to go back to the noted theologian The Right Reverend Shelby Spong, who asked, “Has religion in general and Christianity in particular degenerated to the level that it has become little more than a veil under which anger can be legitimatized?”
I would add bigotry and hatred to the retired Bishop’s list.
I did not watch the Super Bowl, I was in bed, dealing with a nasty cold, and I really did not care who won the game.
I don’t have a problem with his looks, or his wealth, or his celebrity.
I hate him because he can make Sharon,* a Patriots fan since before the Drew Bledsoe era, scream loudly in ecstasy.
That is MY job, dammit!
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Something that is making the rounds in the right wing press and the wingnutosphere is the claim made by a former NOAA employee that the recent study on anthropogenic climate change was a political work of dubious science.
A closer examination reveals that the former employee question would not be in a position to observe fraud, and the nature of the study makes it next to impossible to fake the data, since the data was publicly available and peer reviewed:
On Sunday, the UK tabloid Mail on Sunday alleged a seemingly juicy (if unoriginal) climate science scandal. At its core, though, it’s not much more substantial than claiming the Apollo 11 astronauts failed to file some paperwork and pretending this casts doubt on the veracity of the Moon landing.
The story’s author, David Rose, has published a great many sensational articles over the years, falsely claiming to present evidence undermining the threat of climate change or the human cause behind it. But this latest article is noteworthy in that it appears to reveal the supposed “whistleblower” who has been cited by the US House Science Committee in its ongoing clash with climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The committee’s Twitter account, as well as the account of Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-Texas), has gone hog-wild tweeting about the story. For example, the committee account tweeted, “@NOAA obstructed the committee’s oversight at every turn. Now we know what they were hiding.”
………
The paper concluded that there was no evidence of a slowdown in global warming over the last decade or so, an idea that had been a focus of people who reject the seriousness of human-caused climate change.
………
Rep. Smith claimed that a whistleblower at NOAA had provided his office with information proving that the study had been inappropriately rushed for political reasons. The Mail on Sunday claims the same thing and presents NOAA scientist John Bates as a whistleblower.
………
In a blog post, Maynooth University research Peter Thorne—who worked on both the land and sea databases underlying the Karl paper but not the Karl paper itself—disputed many of Bates’ claims. First off, Thorne notes that Bates was not personally involved in the research at any stage. And while Bates claims that Karl made a series of choices to exaggerate the apparent warming trend, Thorne points out that this would be difficult for Karl to do since he didn’t contribute to the underlying databases. Karl’s paper simply ran those updated databases through the same algorithm NOAA was already using.
Ars talked with Thomas Peterson, a co-author on the Karl paper who has since retired. Peterson provided some useful context for understanding Bates’ allegations. The satellites that Bates worked with were expensive hardware that couldn’t be fixed if anything went wrong after they were launched. The engineering of the software running those satellites sensibly involved testing and re-testing and re-testing again to ensure no surprises would pop up once it was too late.
………
There may also be something beyond simple “engineers vs. scientists” tension behind Bates’ decision to go public with his allegations. Two former NOAA staffers confirmed to Ars that Tom Karl essentially demoted John Bates in 2012, when Karl was Director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. Bates had held the title of Supervisory Meteorologist and Chief of the Remote Sensing Applications Division, but Karl removed him from that position partly due to a failure to maintain professionalism with colleagues, assigning him to a position in which he would no longer supervise other staff. It was apparently no secret that the demotion did not sit well with Bates.
Office politics aside, the claims in the Mail on Sunday article that the Karl paper exaggerated the warming trend fall down when you examine any of the other surface temperature datasets. In a paper we recently covered, a team led by Berkeley researcher Zeke Hausfather compared the updated sea surface temperature dataset to shorter but simpler and independent sets of measurements made by satellites and automated floats. That analysis confirmed that the updated dataset is more accurate than its predecessor.
In a post for Carbon Brief, Hausfather noted that NOAA’s updated dataset doesn’t cause it to show more warming than the datasets run by NASA, the Berkeley team, and the UK Met Office. Instead, the update caused NOAA to stop showing less warming than everyone else.
(Bold smallcap emphasis mine, all other emphasis original)
Needless to say, the folks who are terrified that Al Gore was right about this will not listen to reason, so expect a few weeks (months?) of flying monkey style stupidity about this.
I would also add that over the next few months, I would expect Bates to get a lucrative book deal from Regnrey or its ilk, along with some 5-figure speaking gigs, because that is how wingnut welfare works.
So I am taking it easy for tne next few days.
Light posting for me.
It started hitting me last night, hence my lack of posting on Saturday.
This is some seriously bent sh%$.
If you click through, you have been warned.
H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
In the annals of the truly disturbing, it always seems that reality of the human condition outpaces the most inventive imaginations that fiction has to offer.
Case in point, The Furred Reich, AKA Nazi Furries:
“It’s just a piece of cloth, that’s really what it is.”
Foxler Nightfire is calling me from his home in Fort Collins, Colorado. Over the last few days, the 29-year-old has faced a torrent of online abuse after posting a picture of himself dressed as a fox on the social network Twitter.
Though furries – people who dress up as animals, occasionally for sexual purposes – often face criticism, it is something other than Foxler’s fur-suit (known as a “fursona” – fur persona) that has drawn the internet’s ire. The problem? On his left arm he is wearing a red armband, emblazoned with a white circle, in which sits a black symbol.
The accessory looks like a Nazi armband.
Nazi furries exist and I never been more ready to knock someone the f%$# out https://t.co/5AJs3hmLMc— XVX La Flare (@powerxslave) January 31, 2017
Always be yourself and never let anyone change you, forever and always furry. Thanks to everyone and the #AltFurry for the support pic.twitter.com/WyaHAf9gNZ— Foxler Nightfire (@starfoxACEFOX) January 27, 2017
“It’s obviously not a swastika,” claims Foxler – who also insists his furry name is a portmanteau of “Fox” and his real surname, “Miller”, not “Hitler”, as many online argue. Foxler says he first began wearing the armband – which features a paw print in place of a swastika – after he dropped out of high school and started playing the online role-playing game Second Life, in which the band was available as a character accessory.
“I didn’t take any consideration because of my lack of World War Two knowledge,” he says. “I don’t think I could ever take it off at this point, it’s so ingrained into my character, my fursona.”
………
Foxler’s story sounds very convenient, and I searched his name on Twitter along with the word “Jew” to see if he had made hateful comments. Although I initially found nothing, some other furries – who are against Nazi furries – message me some screenshots of comments they claim Foxler has made on YouTube, in which he says “I hate black people” and “I stand by Hitler”.
Foxler admits he made these comments but tells me he was just “trolling”.
………
But just because Foxler claims not to identify as a “Nazi furry”, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. In 2005, a LiveJournal page was created for those who were both furries and fetishised Nazi uniforms. Since then the group has spread, with illustrations and roleplays across the internet. There is now even an erotic novel, The Furred Reich, available to buy on Amazon.
Make it stop.
For the love of God, make it stop.
Proposals from Trump and in the Congress to reform the thoroughly dysfunctional H-1B immigration program are making the outsourcing firms in India sh%$ themselves. It could not happen to a more deserving group of ratf%$#s:
A new bill introduced in the US House of Representatives proposes to limit the entry of highly-skilled workers into the country to stop companies “replacing” American workers.
Indian media organisations have described the move as a big setback to the IT industry and the Indian government has conveyed its concerns to the US administration.
………
Several bills and a draft executive order are attempting changes to – or curbs on – the H-1B programme.
The High-Skilled Integrity and Fairness Act of 2017, introduced last week in the House of Representatives by California lawmaker Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat, calls for replacing the lottery system with a preference for companies that can pay the highest salaries.
It suggests raising the effective minimum wage for an H-1B visa holder to over $130,000, more than double the current $60,000 level established in 1989. Exemptions, though allowed, are rare.
The bill says the visa programme “has allowed replacement of American workers by outsourcing companies with cheaper H-1B workers” and aims to end the “abuse” of the programme.
“My legislation refocuses the H-1B programme to its original intent – to seek out and find the best and brightest from around the world, and to supplement the US workforce with talented, highly paid, and highly skilled workers who help create jobs here in America, not replace them,” Rep Lofgren said on her website.
………
The proposed new legislation mainly targets companies not based in the US that bring in foreign employees on the visa quota.
The doubling of the minimum wage applies to “visa dependent employers” or companies with more than 15% of US employees on H-1B visas.
It excludes American firms such as IBM, allowing them to bring in H-1B holders at the older minimum wage, because they would have less than 15% of US employees on H-1B visas.
This effectively targets Indian outsourcing firms and the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) has described it as “discriminatory”.
The “Visa Dependent Employers” are using regulatory arbitrage and salutary neglect to extract rents at the expense of US workers and their own employees.
They can go Cheney themselves.
With the new bill targeting “visa dependant employers”, it is primarily Indian firms such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro which will be affected.
On Tuesday, stocks of Indian software exporters plunged – TCS’s shares fell 4.47%, Infosys’s declined 2% and Wipro’s 1.62%.
Good. Their business model is a parasitic one.
This needs to end.
It looks like the Trump Administration is considering switching from U-3 to U-5 as its official unemployment rate.
This will serve to give a more accurate read on real unemployment in the US:
If President Donald Trump gets his way, the U.S. unemployment rate could jump to 5.7% from 4.7% overnight.
No, it’s not because the president plans to throw a bunch of people out of work. The White House reportedly might designate a different unemployment rate as the official one instead of the figure that’s been in use since World War Two. [Actually, this is not true: The military was added to the labor force in the Reagan recession to keep the number below 10%] That’s according to a report in the Washington Examiner.
Switching to a different and higher unemployment rate would suggest the labor market is not as sound as it appears, ostensibly putting more pressure on Washington to take action to improve job creation. At least that’s the theory.
Such a change would not be hard technically. The Labor Department already calculates six unemployment rates, known by the designations U1 through U6.
We have been understating the unemployment rate for years, and it’s one of the reason that European figures are higher.
If implemented, this would be a welcome change.
While in high school, it appears that Neil Gorsuch founded a club called “Fascism Forever”.
Seriously, what more do we need, a video of this nut job barbecuing a puppies on his Weber grill?
No. Just no.
That goes for cloture as well.
You know the tale, a reactionary Congressman from the mountain west proposes selling off the national parks and national forests for a couple of magic beans, and then in the face of a freakout from hunters, sport fishermen, and outdoors enthusiasts, backs down.
It ain’t just the green crowd that gets a benefit from public lands:
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) withdrew legislation Thursday that would have transferred 3 million acres of land from federal to state ownership, citing objections from constituents who complained that the move would limit access to public hunting and fishing grounds.
The Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act, which would have shifted federal holdings to state governments in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Wyoming, prompted an outcry among hunters and anglers’ groups. Introduced three weeks after House Republicans enacted a rule change to make it easier to sell off federal land, the measure prompted two separate rallies in Santa Fe, N.M., and Helena, Mont., this week that drew hundreds of people opposed to the measure.
“I am sensitive to the perceptions this bill creates in the current environment,” Chaffetz wrote in his letter to House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah). “As a proud gun owner, hunter and public lands enthusiast, I want to be responsive to my constituents who enjoy these lands. I look forward to continuing to work with stakeholders in the broader public lands discussion in a collaborative manner.”
BTW, what that last statment means is that he’ll try again during a lame duck after he announces his retirement.
They will be back to steal our land.
Have you heard about the latest patent?
It’s literally for discussing song lyrics:
Have you ever talked about the lyrics of a much-loved song with a friend? Perhaps the discussion took place online? It might surprise you to discover that you’ve gotten pretty darn close to infringing a US patent.
This month, EFF’s Stupid Patent of the Month feature has singled out Patent No. 9,401,941, owned by CBS Interactive, which has claimed its monopoly to “processing user interactions with song lyrics.” The patent’s big reveal is a “computer-implemented system” for “processing interactions with song lyrics.” Supposedly, this adds to existing technology by allowing a user to select particular parts of songs, view a menu, and then write an interpretation of a selected line.
Of course, even if such an idea were patent-worthy, there were already websites offering that feature before the patent’s priority date of 2011. The most notable is perhaps Rap Genius, a website founded in 2009 that is now simply called Genius.
The patent examiner actually pointed out Rap Genius to the applicant, compelling CBS lawyers to narrow their claims. They added a clause saying that their technology would suggest comments to users based on what type of comments have been written in the past. That narrower definition is unlikely to be infringed by many lyrics sites, but even the narrower definition should not have resulted in a patent grant, argues EFF lawyer Daniel Nazer, who wrote the blog post.
………
Faced with the prospect of a never-ending search for an exact list of features proposed by the applicant, the examiner eventually gives up and grants the patent. That may be what happened here.
Even aside from older technology, the patent, which was filed in 2015, should have been rejected under the Supreme Court’s Alice precedent, argues Nazer. It’s a series of routine Web development decisions, and that’s exactly the type of “generic” computer technology the 2014 Alice decision should have rendered unpatentable.
The Alice in question is Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, where the Supreme Court ruled that just because you add “With a computer” to an unpatentable idea does not make the idea a patentable one.
We seriously need to fix our patent review process.
GOP Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME Maine) and Lisa Murkowski R-AK) have announced that they will vote against Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education:
GOP Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski in back-to-back speeches on the Senate floor announced Wednesday that they would oppose Betsy DeVos’s nomination to be Education secretary.
They are the first two Republicans to break with Trump on any of his Cabinet picks, and the votes could make it difficult for DeVos to win confirmation.
If all of the Senate’s Democrats vote against DeVos, she would have 50 votes if the remaining Republicans backed her — with Vice President Mike Pence potentially breaking the tie. No Democrats have backed DeVos.
“I come to the floor to announce a very difficult decision that I have made, and that is to vote against the confirmation of Betsy DeVos to be our nation’s next secretary of Education,” Collins said from the Senate floor.
Collins specifically pointed to DeVos’s “lack of familiarly” with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, saying she was “troubled and surprised.”
Murkowski, speaking after Collins, said she had too many concerns to back DeVos.
“I have serious concerns about a nominee to be secretary of Education … who has been so immersed in the discussion of vouchers,” Murkowski said.
It’s clear that all that Betsy DeVos brings to the table are her not-inconsiderable Amway fortune, profligate campaign donations, and a desire to fund religious schools.
Beyond that, she knows as much about education as I do about Russian Poetry of the 1800s.*
*Originally, I was going to say high fashion, but I actually know more about that than DeVos does about education.†
†Specifically, I understand some of the underlying anthropological principles of fashion and cosmetics,‡ while DeVos lacks even these basics, not understanding the differences between growth and proficiency in education.
‡Fashion and cosmetics mimic the biological cues for arousal. High heels make a woman look like she is ready to be mounted, the use of Belladona to dilate the pupils in the middle ages, blush mimics the flush of arousal, etc.