Year: 2017

F%$# the Mouse

The LA Times published an article describing how much corporate welfare Disney Land is extracting from the city of Anaheim.

The mouse didn’t like this, so they banned LA Times movie reviewers from advance showings of their movies, including things like Marvel and Star Wars movies.

In response many critics from other papers have announced that they will not be participating in advance showings, and a number of critics groups have barred all Disney movies from consideration at their year end awards.

If this were about an Times critic violating an embargo date, I could see some justification, but this is just thuggery.

BTW, Disney just caved.

Good, but someone at the movie studio needs to be fired.

Stopped Clock: Republican Tax Plan Edition

In an otherwise anodyne New York Times article about various sources of opposition to Republican tax plan, and they reveal a good idea buried in their black hearted evil plans. Needless to say, large multinationals hate the proposed excise tax on payment made to a company’s foreign affiliates:

That may be an uphill battle, as key groups begin coming out in opposition to parts of the bill, including a proposed excise tax of 20 percent on payments made by American companies to foreign affiliates. The provision is aimed at preventing American companies from shifting profits abroad through payments, such as royalties, made to subsidiaries or other foreign affiliates.

American multinational corporations are especially concerned about the proposal, which would raise just more than $150 billion over a decade. They say the tax will wind up harming American companies and their consumers.

The American Forest and Paper Association said it was “very troubled” by the provision, which it said “would lead to massive overcollection of tax in the United States.” The provision is also coming under fire from pharmaceutical companies and the small-government advocacy groups spearheaded by the billionaire Republican megadonor brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch, who are trying to generate opposition to the excise tax from other conservative groups.

………

Mr. [Kevin] Brady [House Ways and Means Committee chairman] said lawmakers are working with multinational companies to address their concerns. “But make no mistake,” he said, “we have to have safeguards in place so that companies aren’t encouraged to shift their earnings and their profits offshore and to low-tax havens, and we need strong guardrails to make sure they’re not importing deductions, exclusions and other tax rate issues.”

My heart bleeds borscht for these folks.

They assign their IP to a foreign subsidiary in the Caymans, or the Isle of Mann, or Ireland, and pay “royalties”, and voila, no taxes paid.

Of course, this will be dropped in conference committee, because, of course, tax evading job cutting multinationals are the Republican political base, but this is actually good idea.

Pay attention.  It’s likely to be a long time before the Republicans get an element tax policy right.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen!

Juli Briskman, who shot to fame flipping off Donald Trump’s motorcade, has been fired:

A woman whose picture went viral after she raised her middle finger at Donald Trump as his motorcade passed her on her bicycle has been fired from her job.

A woman whose picture went viral after she raised her middle finger at Donald Trump as his motorcade passed her on her bicycle has been fired from her job.Juli Briskman was cycling in Virginia last month when she offered the gesture in a gut reaction to Trump’s policies, she said.

“He was passing by and my blood just started to boil,” she told the Huffington Post. “I’m thinking, Daca recipients are getting kicked out. He pulled ads for open enrollment in Obamacare. Only one third of Puerto Rico has power. I’m thinking, he’s at the damn golf course again.

“I flipped off the motorcade a number of times.”

A photographer traveling with the presidential motorcade snapped Briskman’s picture and the image quickly spread across news outlets and social media. Many hailed Briskman as a hero, with some saying she should run in the 2020 election. Late-night comedy hosts also picked up the story.

Briskman had been working as a marketing and communications specialist for a Virginia-based federal contractor, Akima, for six months. She thought it best to alert the HR department to the online fuss. Bosses then called her into a meeting, she said.

“They said, ‘We’re separating from you,’” Briskman told the Huffington Post. “‘Basically, you cannot have lewd or obscene things in your social media.’ So they were calling flipping him off obscene.”

You dissed the Dear Leader, of course you were fired

Just be glad that he didn’t send you to Guantánamo.

Not really. 

I just wish that we lived in a first world nation with meaningful job protections.

Thoughts and Prayers

Gunman Kills at Least 26 in Attack on Rural Texas Church

The new normal.

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Linkage

Thor Ragnarok 4D: (May contain some spoilers for the actual movie)

I Do Not Know What to Make of This, but It Seems Significant

There is some sort of seriously f%$#ed up dynastic sh%$ going on inside of the house of Saud:

Saudi Arabia announced the arrest on Saturday night of the prominent billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, plus at least 10 other princes, four ministers and tens of former ministers.

The announcement of the arrests was made over Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned satellite network whose broadcasts are officially approved. Prince Alwaleed’s arrest is sure to send shock waves both through the kingdom and the world’s major financial centers.

He controls the investment firm Kingdom Holding and is one of the world’s richest men, owning or having owned major stakes in 21st Century Fox, Citigroup, Apple, Twitter and many other well-known companies. The prince also controls satellite television networks watched across the Arab world.

The sweeping campaign of arrests appears to be the latest move to consolidate the power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the favorite son and top adviser of King Salman.

At 32, the crown prince is already the dominant voice in Saudi military, foreign, economic and social policies, stirring murmurs of discontent in the royal family that he has amassed too much personal power, and at a remarkably young age.

The king had decreed the creation of a powerful new anti-corruption committee, headed by the crown prince, only hours before the committee ordered the arrests.

The machinations of the House of Saud are a bag full of cats, but I find this behavior unusual, even by the standards of Riyadh.

Normally, when power dynamics shift, you find people quietly removed from their positions, and any arrests or detentions are on the down-low.  Public notice mass detentions of the royals are unprecedented.

Because of this, I do not think that this is coming from a position of strength.

Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) policy initiatives have not gone well, the Yemen operation is a hole sucking resources and diplomatic credibility, and the conflict with Qatar is not turning out as expected, and I think there has been increasing push-back from elements of the royal family against the meteoric rise of MBS.

What this means in the longer term for Saudi Arabia is unclear to me, but I think that there are likely to be some major shifts in the monarchy.

This could be a new path forward, or it could be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

My money is on the the latter, but I’m an optimist.

Read Matt Taibbi: College Loan Edition

I really cannot do justice to Taibbi’s treatment, but it is classic Taibbi.

His basic thesis is encapsulated in this paragraph:

But the separateness of these stories clouds the unifying issue underneath: The education industry as a whole is a con. In fact, since the mortgage business blew up in 2008, education and student debt is probably our reigning unexposed nation-wide scam.

The solution is relatively straightforward:  Change the law that forbids debtors from using bankruptcy to discharge their debts, and change the loan program so that it no longer encourages tuition inflation.

Some Perspective………

Alleged Russian government Facebook ads were marginally more than one-two thousandth of Clinton and Trump ads during the election.

Obviously, we can talk about how a butterfly flapping its wings in Malawi can create a hurricane, but the effects of this “massive” Russian interference

Russian information troll farm the Internet Research Agency spent just 0.05 percent as much on Facebook ads as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s campaigns combined in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, yet still reached a massive audience. While there might have been other Russian disinformation groups, the IRA spent $46,000 on pre-election day Facebook ads compared to $81 million spent by Clinton and Trump together, discluding political action committees who could have spent even more than that on the campaigns’ behalf.

Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch revealed these figures today during the Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing with Facebook, Twitter and Google about Russian election interference.

Without counting PACs, the top campaigns spent 1,760X more on election ads than one group of Russian meddlers puts the situation into context. The IRA ad buy was small by comparison. This aligns with Stretch’s main talking point that Russian propaganda content was a tiny fraction of the content and ads seen on Facebook. This revelation could put more focus on organically posted propaganda.

The Democratic Party is focusing on this stuff, and avoiding a meaningful examination of how it failed and why.

I can understand why they are doing this:  Any search for incompetence will lead to a lot of folks working for the Democratic establishment getting VERY well deserved pink slips.

Absent a meaningful autopsy of the 2016 debacle though, the party will continue to pull defeat from the jaws of victory.

PLONK!!!!!!!!!!*

The day before the California primary, Rachael Maddow, and the rest of the NBC news org, breathlessly and gleefully announcing that they had surveyed the “Super Delegates”, and declared that Hillary Clinton had won the nomination.

I have not watched Maddow since, I saw that it was a descent into hackdom. (though I have referenced online video clips)

Her later non-reveal Trump tax return reveal, parodied by Stephen Colbert, confirmed my opinion.

Well, I just dropped Talking Points Memo from my blogroll, because its founder and editor-in-chief Josh Marshall, just confirmed his descent into hackdom with a truly laughable OP/ED condemning Donna Brazile’s Politico article revealing of the Clinton Campaign’s takeover of the DNC more than a year before the convention.

In order to do this, he had to ignore contemporaneous reports of some of the issues raised in the essay, including reports from Talking Points Memo at the time, as well as insisting that the DNC is moving left while TPM is reporting a purge of progressive members.

There are a number of news orgs whose OP/ED pages contradict what their news section reports, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are legion for this, but they have a wall between opinion and reporting, and Talking Points Memo does not.

Notwithstanding the work done by TPM employees, and the fact that Josh Marshall has assembled a top flight team, this site is, and will probably will always be, Josh Marshall at its core.

He’s jumped the shark, so:  Plonk!!!

*This is a term from the very early (Usenet) days of the internet. the term PLONK is a statement that you have added a user to your killfile, meaning that you will not see their posts.

Epic Troll

On his trip to Asia, Trump had a stop over in Hawaii, where he was greeted with signs from protesters welcoming him to Kenya

Truly inspired trolling:

Donald Trump is heading off from the States to do a two-week tour of Asia, including South Korea, which many believe is a little too close to someone who isn’t exactly a fan of Trump.

However, on the way over, Trump stopped off in Hawaii, making a stop off at Pearl Harbour, and checking in at Trump-branded hotel.

When he landed though, there were hundreds of anti-Trump protestors lined on the streets, with many of those present for their President holding signs that said “Welcome To Kenya”.

Brilliant!

Google News Fail


What Is Wrong with This Picture?


Here is a hint.

I was looking at Google News, and the front page had a story about Corey Feldman and sexual abuse of child actors.

It’s not normally not something that I would read, or even expand the item, but the picture next to the story seemed to be an odd juxtaposition.

Someone or something, likely a computer algorithm, screwed up.

I’m pretty sure that Paul Ryan did not touch Corey Feldman in his “uncomfortable place”.

Paul Ryan is far to busy pimping for the top 1% and f%$#ing the rest of America to do anything to the former child actor.

Linkage

Disturbed cover of Sound of Silence. It might be better than the original:

When I Said that the Clinton Campaign had Strip Mined the Democratic Party, I Had No Idea

Donna Brazile, the consummate Democratic Party insider has detailed Hillary Clinton’s takeover of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was complete before the Presidential primaries began.

What’s more they then proceeded to steal everything that was not nailed down:

Before I called Bernie Sanders, I lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music. I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call.

I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.

So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama’s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.

………

The Saturday morning after the convention in July, I called Gary Gensler, the chief financial officer of Hillary’s campaign. He wasted no words. He told me the Democratic Party was broke and $2 million in debt.

“What?” I screamed. “I am an officer of the party and they’ve been telling us everything is fine and they were raising money with no problems.”

That wasn’t true, he said. Officials from Hillary’s campaign had taken a look at the DNC’s books. Obama left the party $24 million in debt—$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign—and had been paying that off very slowly. Obama’s campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016. Hillary for America (the campaign) and the Hillary Victory Fund (its joint fundraising vehicle with the DNC) had taken care of 80 percent of the remaining debt in 2016, about $10 million, and had placed the party on an allowance.

If I didn’t know about this, I assumed that none of the other officers knew about it, either. That was just Debbie’s [Wasserman-Schultz] way. In my experience she didn’t come to the officers of the DNC for advice and counsel. She seemed to make decisions on her own and let us know at the last minute what she had decided, as she had done when she told us about the hacking only minutes before the Washington Post broke the news.

………

“Gary, how did they do this without me knowing?” I asked. “I don’t know how Debbie relates to the officers,” Gary said. He described the party as fully under the control of Hillary’s campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearinghouse. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party’s national committee.

Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund—that figure represented $10,000 to each of the 32 states’ parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement—$320,000—and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.

“Wait,” I said. “That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?”

Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.

“That was the deal that Robby struck with Debbie,” he explained, referring to campaign manager Robby Mook. “It was to sustain the DNC. We sent the party nearly $20 million from September until the convention, and more to prepare for the election.”

………

Right around the time of the convention, the leaked emails revealed Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races. A Politico story published on May 2, 2016, described the big fund-raising vehicle she had launched through the states the summer before, quoting a vow she had made to rebuild “the party from the ground up … when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”

Yet the states kept less than half of 1 percent of the $82 million they had amassed from the extravagant fund-raisers Hillary’s campaign was holding, just as Gary had described to me when he and I talked in August. When the Politico story described this arrangement as “essentially … money laundering” for the Clinton campaign, Hillary’s people were outraged at being accused of doing something shady. Bernie’s people were angry for their own reasons, saying this was part of a calculated strategy to throw the nomination to Hillary.

I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to disappoint him. I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to show me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money they raised, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the other way.

When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.

The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

I had been wondering why it was that I couldn’t write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.

………

I told Bernie I had found Hillary’s Joint Fundraising Agreement. I explained that the cancer was that she had exerted this control of the party long before she became its nominee. Had I known this, I never would have accepted the interim chair position, but here we were with only weeks before the election.

When Donna Brazile describes the Clinton campaign as a, “Cancer,” it means something.

What’s more, she makes it clear that her campaign contributed to Democratic losses down ticket by starving those races, and the state and local party organizations, of resources.

Not a pretty picture.

Guantánamo is F%$#ed Up and Sh%$

It’s always been clear that the military tribunals have as their primary goal the creation of the illusion of due process.

Most recently, defense attorneys involved in a capital case from withdrew from the case because their attorney-client communications were monitored.

The judge in the case has now sentenced the remaining lawyer for contempt after they refused to order the existing attorneys back to work.

Kangaroo court much?

The military judge presiding over the Guantánamo military commissions prosecution for the 2000 USS Cole attack confined the chief military defense attorney to his quarters for three weeks for disobeying orders, according to The Miami Herald.

The military judge, Air Force Col. Vance Spath, held Marine Brig. Gen. John Baker in contempt for refusing to rescind his decision permitting the three non-military defense attorneys in the death penalty case against Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri to quit for ethical reasons related to secret government eavesdropping on their communications. Baker was also held in contempt for refusing to testify about his decision.

The military judge said that Baker did not have the authority to make the decision and rejected Baker’s effort to explain that the military court has no jurisdiction over him.

“The contempt finding and confinement of General Baker is unlawful and an outrage,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “General Baker was continuing the honorable military defense counsel tradition of trying to act ethically, despite being part of a system rigged against the rule of law. The military judge’s unprecedented contempt ruling against General Baker shows just how difficult that is. The military judge’s decision needs to be reversed and General Baker released immediately.”

The military judge has ordered the three civilian attorneys — Rick Kammen, Rosa Eliades, and Mary Spears — to participate in a hearing on Friday, setting the stage for another legal showdown.

Also today, in Washington, other attorneys for al-Nashiri asked a federal district court to stop the prosecution from going forward without an attorney specially qualified for capital cases, which is required by the rules of the Guantánamo military commissions themselves. The attorneys made two filings in court today, and a hearing is scheduled for tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

“The whole prosecution of Mr. al-Nashiri has again gone off the rails, this time because of ethical violations caused by the government itself,” Shamsi added.

We really need to end this charade.

It servers neither the interests of justice, due or of due process, and it harms US security.

To quote George Clemenceau (Not Groucho Marx as is often erroneously attributed), “It suffices to add “military” to a word for it to lose its meaning. Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.”

Preach It Sister!

Writing in Politico, Elizabeth Warren opens up a well deserved can of whup ass on the Supreme Court’s lack of ethics standards:

A few days before the Supreme Court returned from its summer break, Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court’s newest member, attended a luncheon at the Trump International Hotel, where he was to give the keynote address. The location of the speech attracted the attention of dozens of protesters and a number of ethics watchdogs, who noted the apparent conflict of interest posed by Justice Gorsuch—a Trump nominee—keynoting an event at a hotel whose revenue goes in part to President Trump. That arrangement was bad enough on its own. But there was another potential conflict of interest created by Justice Gorsuch’s speaking engagement—and it highlights the ongoing ethical issues that threaten the credibility of our nation’s highest court.

The same morning that Justice Gorsuch gave his speech, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear Janus v. AFSCME. This is a case that will determine whether public sector unions—which represent teachers, nurses, firefighters and police in states and cities across the country—can collect fees from all employees in the workplaces they represent. Justice Gorsuch is widely expected to deliver the court’s deciding vote to strip unions of this ability. A decision along these lines would seriously undercut workers’ freedom to have a real voice to speak out and fight for higher wages, better benefits and improved working conditions.

Here’s the rub. Justice Gorsuch’s speech at the Trump hotel was hosted by the Fund for American Studies. And who funds the Fund of American Studies? The Charles Koch Foundation and the Bradley Foundation. The Charles Koch Foundation is dedicated to promoting limited government, free markets and weaker unions; and the Bradley Foundation has worked for decades to, in their own words, “reduce the size and power of public sector unions.” In fact, the Bradley Foundation helped pay the litigation expenses for Janus—the case in which Justice Gorsuch is likely to be the deciding vote. Think about that: Just as the ink was drying on the court’s announcement that it would hear Janus, Justice Gorsuch was off to hobnob with some of the biggest supporters for one side of this important case—the side that wants to deny workers the freedom to build a future that doesn’t hang by a thread at the whim of a few billionaires.

This isn’t the first time the Supreme Court has strayed over the ethical line. Take a look, for example, at ABC v. Aereo. The court concluded that Aereo, a small television streaming service, had violated the copyright of broadcasters by capturing signals from television stations and retransmitting programming from those stations to the company’s subscribers. Time Warner—one of the broadcasters who stood to lose if the court allowed the practice—filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the court should side with the broadcaster. At the time, Chief Justice John Roberts owned as much as $500,000 in Time Warner stock. Despite this blatant conflict of interest, Roberts would not recuse himself from the case. Instead, he joined the majority in effectively killing the small streaming service.

There are plenty of other examples of ethical conflicts. According to Fix the Court, a nonpartisan group focused on increasing accountability and transparency on the Supreme Court, Justices Roberts, Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito owned shares in 53 publicly traded companies as of 2016.

The Code of Conduct for United States Judges requires judges to recuse themselves when certain potential conflicts arise, such as in cases in which the judge, the judge’s spouse or the judge’s minor children have a financial interest or in cases in which the judge has a “personal bias or prejudice” against or for any party in the case. But those rules don’t apply to Supreme Court justices.

(Emphasis Mine)

I think that this is a matter that is under the purview of Congress, and changing the law to explicitly apply federal court standards to SCOTUS would be a good thing.

OK, So Bob Mueller has Just Busted Paul Manafort………

This is not particularly surprising.

Manafort was clearly on the hit list (I was hoping that he would take down Roger Stone).

What’s more, Manafort is a longtime professional lobbyist, and therefore dirty.

It just comes with the business.

I think that Mueller is hoping to flip him, or his side kick Rick Gates, to flip.

What I should note here is that the charges have to do with his lobbying practices, and not any alleged coordination with Russia.

Still, it appears that there is some real good over this, because it has put a bipartisan fear of God in lobbyists across the political spectrum, as evidenced by Tony Podesta, John’s uber-lobbyist brother, stepping down from his lobbying firm amid because he was acting as a foreign representative without properer registration.

It appears that DC lobbyists are freaking out, because ignoring foreign registration rules has been the rule for many years, and they are now worried that the worm has turned.

Good.  Turning over the rocks in DC influence peddling is a good thing.

Ironically, Trump’s nemesis might be draining that swamp he kept talking about on the campaign trail.

Tweet of the Day

While they raped my Grandmother,lynched my Uncle,broke up my family to lost history, you find honor & compromise in that, you racist, prick? https://t.co/bOihrwd67N

— Wendell Pierce (@WendellPierce) October 31, 2017

It’s in response to these comments by Trump CoS Kelly:

Kelly says Civil War was caused by 'lack of compromise' https://t.co/0FddNmwxCU pic.twitter.com/zR1PRAqvLO

— POLITICO (@politico) October 31, 2017

Yeah, Confederate lost causers are racist pricks.

Why Not to Trust the Cloud, Again

Google docs is amazing, except when it refuses to all you your own data:

A number of Google Docs users have reported being locked out of their documents today for, according to the message that pops up when they try to access the affected document, violating Google’s terms of service. Users that have tweeted about the issue have said their locked-out pieces were about a range of topics including wildfire crimes, post-socialist eastern Europe and a response to reviewers of an academic journal submission.

………

A Google spokesperson told us, “We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Docs. We will provide more information when appropriate.” The range of subject matters and number of reports suggest it’s probably just a glitch, but the problem is a reminder of what we give up for the convenience and ease offered by cloud-based programs like Docs. Google Docs and others like it allow users to store their work offline, making it easily accessible wherever they happen to be. They also make it easy to share documents between a number of different people. But giving up control over your work comes with risks, as today’s issues make clear. And though they’re fairly rare, they can cause huge problems.

For example, Twitter user @widdowquinn said that while they had been encouraging others to use Google Docs for collaborative work on grants and academic papers, today’s glitch is a deal breaker.

“A dealbreaker?”

Gee, you think?  Google can shut you out from your own documents, because it violates their, “Terms of service,” and because it’s Google, which means that you will never, ever get even remotely close to a human being.

Seriously.