I was listening to the NPR show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, and the revealed to me that there is actually a tea being marketed as 50 Shades of Earl Grey.
It’s actually a thing: We do not deserve to exist as a species.
Month: June 2018
I Swear, this Forum Software Update is Going to Kill Me
Spent most of today, with a short break to mow the front lawn, trying to get this working.
Still no luck.
Just shoot me.
Making Sure that A Democratic Victory Will Have No Meaning
I get it, they want to wear their bib-boy pants, and this makes them feel like the adults in the room.
Unfortunately, it means that Democrats will do nothing for ordinary people if they gain power.
What’s more, “Pay-Go” is, and always has been, little more than an attempt to justify hurting poor people, Bill Clinton’s “Welfare Reform” being a classic example.
n 2006 and 2008, by allowing themselves to be reluctantly dragged into opposing a stupid and unpopular war, the Democrats ran the table.
They got their “Shellacking” in 2010 because they did nothing with that power.
Also note that this effectively makes single-payer impossible, particularly since it has to be run through a Congressional Budget Office whose staff has been packed with Neanderthals for the past 10 years.
Also add to this the fact that the other side never ever does this when they are in power.
Why to Endorse Nixon*
The Nation has endorsed Cynthia Nixon for Governor of New York.
I agree with their sentiment, but I disagree with their reasoning.
Andrew Cuomo is a politically powerful incumbent, and I think that going against him requires more than ideological differences, even if they are major differences.
Why I support Ms. Nixon, and why I think that all Democrats, regardless of ideology, should support her is slightly different: (Apologies to the unknown author of Dayenu)
- I think that one can support a conservative Democrat.
- I think that one can support a conservative Democrat who swims in a sea of corruption as a fish swims in the ocean. (Absent an indictment)
- I think that one can support a conservative Democrat who swims in a sea of corruption as a fish swims in the ocean, and embraces pay-to-play politics and opposes campaign finance reform.
- I think that one can support a conservative Democrat who swims in a sea of corruption as a fish swims in the ocean, and embraces pay-to-play politics and opposes campaign finance reform, who balances the budget on the backs of the poor and school children.
- I think that one can support a conservative Democrat who swims in a sea of corruption as a fish swims in the ocean, and embraces pay-to-play politics and opposes campaign finance reform who balances the budget on the backs of the poor and school children, while he starves the city and mass transit to cut taxes for rich people.
I don’t think that one should vote for him, but it is (barely) possible to justify supporting him.
Andrew Cuomo crosses a line though: He is not just a conservative Democrat, he is a DISLOYAL Democrat.
In order to avoid having to weigh in on progressive legislative proposals, he has aggressively worked to keep the state Senate in Republican hands, and this should cross a line even for the contemptible greed-heads who would otherwise support his policies. (I’m talking to you Chuck Schumer)
Call it the Joe Lieberman rule, and make it stick.
* It’s a different Nixon, but it still makes me feel queasy.
This Is Throwing Some Serious Shade
If you have been following politics at all, you know that Bernie Sanders has been doing a lot of campaigning for a lot of progressive candidates.
One that he hasn’t campaigned for is his son, Levi, who is running for Congress in New Hampshire.
Admittedly, it’s a remarkably lackluster campaign, but when asked about this, Bernie said the following:
Levi has spent his life in service to low income and working families, and I am very proud of all that he has done,” he said. “In our family, however, We Do Not Believe In Dynastic Politics.”
(emphasis mine)
Hmm ………I wonder who THAT comment referred to?
Why I’ve Not Been Posting Much Lately
In addition to my job, I administer a BBS, and I’ve been working through an upgrade over the past few weeks.
I am now at the point where the errors are just minor translation errors, so posting should pick up.
This has not been caused by any dearth of idiocy in the world.
Rule Number One of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg is a lying bastard.
Rule number two of Facebook is: See Rule One.
Case in point, WhatsApp, where the founders have walked away from Facebook to a personal cost of over a billion dollars after determining that Mark Zuckerberg had lied to them about preserving user privacy:
The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell story on Tuesday about what reporters Kirsten Grind and Deepa Seetharaman call “the messy, expensive split between Facebook and WhatsApp’s founders.” The dishy piece makes for great reading. (Do the multibillionaire founders of global communications platforms make time to grouse at each other about who gets to pick out office chairs? Yes. Yes, they do.) Behind the dishiness, however, is a very important story that pretty much clears up any doubt as to whether Mark Zuckerberg is a trustworthy man who keeps his promises—or a profit-obsessed machine who’s much stronger on greed than he is on morals.
By the time you’ve finished the WSJ piece, only two options seem possible: Either Zuckerberg is a liar, or he’s a liar with absolutely no concept of the sunk-cost fallacy. ………
………
WhatsApp wasn’t an easy acquisition for Zuckerberg, because the two apps have very different founding principles. Koum, who grew up in Ukraine, believes deeply in privacy; Zuckerberg thinks that the more open and connected we are, the happier we all become. And so in order to acquire WhatsApp, Zuckerberg not only had to pay a lot of money and give up a board seat to Koum; he also had to make a lot of promises. Some of those promises were even enshrined in the acquisition agreement: If Facebook imposed “monetization initiatives” like advertising onto WhatsApp, its founders’ shares would vest immediately, and they could leave without suffering any kind of financial penalty.
Thus did WhatsApp retain exactly the independence that it had been promised—until it didn’t.
Today, it seems inevitable not only that advertising will make it onto WhatsApp, but also that the advertising in question will be targeted—which is to say that when you use the app, Facebook will know exactly who you are, where you live, and what kind of products you might be interested in buying. It’s a complete repudiation of WhatsApp’s founding principles, and makes a mockery of its end-to-end encryption.
What’s more, WhatsApp’s two founders both left hundreds of millions of dollars on the table, so keen were they to leave Facebook’s ad-friendly walls. (It turns out that their contractual right to being paid out in full would require them to sue for the money, and, according to the Journal, neither of them had the appetite for that.) Brian Acton resigned in September; Koum stayed on until the end of April. In leaving before November of this year, Acton gave up some $900 million; Koum gave up about $400 million. You need to be really unhappy at work if you’re willing to quit a job that’s effectively paying you some $60 million per month, and from which you basically can’t be fired.………
The only real question is: Did Zuckerberg know that he would break his promise as the words were coming out of his mouth, or was he talked into breaking his promise by Sandberg and other executives looking covetously at WhatsApp’s unmonetized user base? Either way, he has clearly failed a key leadership test. One more reason for him to go.
Felix Salmon, the author, is being far too charitable: Mark Zuckerberg is a liar, and he has been since his Harvard days.
No other founder of a similarly successful tech company has been as frequently sued or as frequently accused of dishonest and deceptive business practices, and no CEO has been caught out in a lie, and had to apologize as frequently.
This is not something that was driven by, “Sandberg and other executives.”
As the saying goes, a fish rots from the head.
As for his assertion that this is a reason for Facebook to dump him, the truth is that his lack of morals, when juxtaposed with is programmer bro affect, is actually his super power.
Tonight is Primary Night
And Democrats are nervous, not just because there are a lot of folks running who won’t be sucking up to Wall Street, there is also the peculiarities of California’s “Jungle” primary, where the top two vote getters, regardless of party, end up on the general election ballot.
Obviously, the local Democratic party should try to change their primary system through initiative petition route, but the problem is also symptomatic of a larger, and broader problem with the national party.
You see, the DCCC, DNC and their consultant Evil Minions™ have been aggressively recruiting self-funding political neophytes, because if you are a political consultant, candidates wasting money make you more money, because you get a portion of their advertising buys as your fee.
We are seeing a lot more people running than normal this year, because, at least on the Democratic Party side, a lot of politically experienced people have determined that this is a good year to run.
When you add to this all the rich dentists, lawyers, and random lottery winners who have been prompted to run because they have been feted and flattered by political fundraisers for years, and now the Beltway grifters convinced them that this is their time.
It goes without saying that I think that the current professional staff, both the consultants and the party establishment, they seem to go through that revolving door every 2 or 3 years, need to be turfed out.
Election results, at least for California, won’t be coming out for a few hours, and I will be a sleep.
I Have a Weird Metabolism
I am not referring to my inclination toward stoutness, that is pretty ordinary.
About a week ago, I hurt my shoulder, and after about a week progress was slow despite my loading up on Naproxen Sodium and Ibuprofen, , so I went and got some aspirin.
Within 12 hours I was essentially pain free.
I’m not sure why, but it appears that willow leaf juice is particularly effective on yours truly.
I think that it may have something to do with aspirin’s ability to chelate calcium.
I am Surprised at the Narrowness of this Ruling
The Supreme Court ruled for the bigoted baker, but only in extremely narrow terms, basically saying that the Colorado Civil Rights commission was actively hostile throughout the proceedings, and they did not make a broader ruling:
The Supreme Court ruled today in favor of Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker who refused to make a custom cake for a same-sex couple because he believed that doing so would violate his religious beliefs. This was one of the most anticipated decisions of the term, and it was relatively narrow: Although Phillips prevailed today, the opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy rested largely on the majority’s conclusion that the Colorado administrative agency that ruled against Phillips treated him unfairly by being too hostile to his sincere religious beliefs. The opinion seemed to leave open the possibility that, in a future case, a service provider’s sincere religious beliefs might have to yield to the state’s interest in protecting the rights of same-sex couples, and the majority did not rule at all on one of the central arguments in the case – whether compelling Phillips to bake a cake for a same-sex couple would violate his right to freedom of speech.
The dispute that led to today’s ruling began back in 2012, when Charlie Craig and David Mullins went to Masterpiece Cakeshop, a bakery outside Denver, to order a cake to celebrate their upcoming wedding. But Jack Phillips, the owner of the bakery and a devout Christian, refused the couple’s request because he is not willing to design custom cakes that conflict with his religious beliefs. A Colorado civil-rights agency ruled that Phillips had violated the state’s antidiscrimination laws and told him that, if he wanted to make cakes for opposite-sex weddings, he would have to do the same for same-sex weddings. After a Colorado court upheld that ruling, Phillips went to the U.S. Supreme Court last year.………
Here, Kennedy wrote, Phillips “was entitled to a neutral decisionmaker who would give full and fair consideration to his religious objection as he sought to assert it in all of the circumstances in which this case was presented, considered, and decided.” Because he did not have such a proceeding, the court concluded, the commission’s order – which, among other things, required Phillips to sell same-sex couples wedding cakes or anything else that he would sell to opposite-sex couples and mandated remedial training and compliance reports – “must be set aside.”
It’s kind of a weird decision,
Served, and Hopefully Jailed
Not a member of the Trump administration, but rather Maine Governor, and human bowling jacket,* Paul LePage, who just got spanked by the court for refusing to turn in Medicaid expansion paperwork to the federal government:
Gov. Paul LePage’s administration must file paperwork by next week to the federal government to adopt Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in Maine, a state Superior Court judge said Monday in a decision rebuking the defiant Republican governor.
Obamacare supporters in April sued the LePage administration to force it to comply with the results of a November ballot initiative ordering the state to expand coverage to tens of thousands of low-income adults under the 2010 health care law. But LePage has insisted he won’t adopt Medicaid expansion unless state lawmakers meet his conditions for funding the program.
Under the Maine ballot initiative, roughly 80,000 low-income adults are supposed to qualify for Medicaid benefits starting July 2. The LePage administration ignored an early April deadline to formally notify the federal government it would expand, prompting the lawsuit from advocates who spearheaded the ballot measure.
………
Monday’s court decision requires the LePage administration to file paperwork to HHS by June 11. A LePage spokesperson said the administration is reviewing the decision and declined to say whether it would appeal the ruling.
Your honor, if he does not file the paperwork by June 11, can you throw his ass in jail on June 12?
It would make my day.
*Not my bon mot, it comes from Charlie Pierce.
Snark of the Day
Security Stingray phone stalker tech used near White House, SS7 abused to steal US citizens’ data – just Friday things
Second worst stingray in history
(RIP Steve Irwin)
There is a certain class of joke where you laugh, and at the same time, make you feel ashamed for laughing.
This is just such a joke.
Tweet of the Day
you know it’s bad when Microsoft is less than the worst possible outcome.— Grand Moff Joseph (@GrandMoffJoseph) June 5, 2018
The alternatives were Oracle and Facebook, so yes this is a pretty dystopian present.
What a Whiny Bitch
It appears that the man with a merkin on his head is too much of a crybaby to deal with the fact that some football players disagree with him:
President Trump abruptly called off the White House celebration honoring the Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles after nearly all of the players and coaches said they would boycott the visit after the president’s demands that players stand during the national anthem at games.
White House officials said that fewer than 10 members of the team were planning to attend the celebration on Tuesday afternoon on the South Lawn despite weeks of planning for the event, which is usually a nonpolitical celebration of a football victory.
Instead, this year’s event to honor the Eagles has become a bitter reflection of the deep divisions in the United States over race, patriotism and Mr. Trump himself. When it became clear that most members of the team would not attend, Mr. Trump issued a blistering statement disinviting them.
“The Philadelphia Eagles are unable to come to the White House with their full team to be celebrated tomorrow,” Mr. Trump said in a statement released Monday evening. “They disagree with their president because he insists that they proudly stand for the national anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country.”
Yeah, this is the guy to protect us from the would be terrorists.
When he’s not playing golf, he is cowering under his desk.
Reason to Revoke Tenure
When a college professor conspired to dig up embarrassing personal information on a student because they do not like their views, they are no longer an academic, they are just a thug.
I am talking, of course, about Niall Ferguson, who has, of course, never really been an academic. He’s just been a white power worshiping thug, and one who does sloppy research at that:
Campus arguments over diversity and free speech are causing some distinguished academics to do extremely strange things. Ferguson, a historian affiliated with both Oxford and Stanford University and much celebrated for his books on the topics like the First World War and the British Empire, is a prime example. At Stanford, Ferguson had been a member of the Cardinal Conversations program which brought in guest speakers to the university. In that capacity, Ferguson was anxious about student criticism of some speakers such as Charles Murray, the social scientist notorious for his views on race and IQ who spoke at Stanford in February.
As The Stanford Daily reported on Thursday, newly public emails show that Ferguson’s eagerness to fight off what he saw as encroaching political correctness led the historian to some bizarre extracurricular activity. Ferguson teamed up with a group of student Republicans, led by John Rice-Cameron, to wage a covert political battle against Michael Ocon, a student they viewed as excessively left-wing. In the e-mails they refer to Ocon as “Mr. O” and talk about ways to discredit him. “Some opposition research on Mr. O might also be worthwhile,” Ferguson wrote. Ferguson’s research assistant Max Minshull was tasked with the job of collecting the dirt on Ocon.………
Ferguson was more than just “rash.” It invites the question: Why does the defense of free speech require a scholar to engage in political dirty tricks?
The answer is pretty obvious: This man is not a scholar, though I am sure that he fancies himself one, he just plays one of Fox News.
This is Just Flat Out Racist
Not a surprise, given that the Netanyahu government has made appeals to bigotry central to their politics, but the latest ruling refusing to recognize Ugandan Jews is particularly reprehensible:
After years of deliberations, the Israeli Interior Ministry has resolved not to grant recognition to the Jewish community of Uganda, Haaretz has learned.
Its decision was revealed in a response to the first and only request thus far by a member of the 2,000-strong Ugandan Abayudaya community, who sought to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return.
The response, obtained by Haaretz, notes that the applicant’s “conversion is not recognized for the purpose of receiving status in Israel” and that, therefore, he must leave the country by June 14 or risk deportation.
When Haaretz asked the ministry about its decision, a spokesperson said, “This is a matter of principle regarding conversions in this community – it is not about one specific applicant.”
………
The application was submitted by Kibita Yosef, who has been living on Ketura – a kibbutz affiliated with the Conservative movement – over the past year.
The response said that Yosef is entitled to challenge the decision in the High Court of Justice.
Converts are eligible to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return, regardless of what movement they are affiliated with, provided they come from recognized Jewish communities. But through its response, the ministry clarified that it does not regard the Abayudaya as a recognized Jewish community.
The Abayudaya began practicing Judaism about 100 years ago, but were only officially converted in recent years. The Jewish Agency considers them to be a recognized Jewish community, but the Interior Ministry has the final say on such matters.
………
Last December, a member of the community, who had been accepted into a program at the Conservative yeshiva in Jerusalem, was detained upon arrival at the airport and deported the following morning. The incident sparked international rage and accusations of racism.
Yet another reason why I want that corrupt hate-monger (Netanyahu) out of Israeli politics forever.
A Well Deserved Defenestration
Mariano Rajoy is now the former Spanish prime Minister, having been done in by scandals and corruption in his Francoist People’s Party.
This may actually be good for Spanish unity, as Rajoy’s abusive policies toward Catalan separatists tended to drive moderates into the arms of the more extreme secessionists:
Mariano Rajoy, once viewed as the great survivor of Spanish politics, has been ousted as prime minister in a vote of no confidence after several former members of his party were convicted of corruption in a case that proved a scandal too far.
He will be replaced by Pedro Sánchez, the leader of Spain’s opposition socialist PSOE party, which tabled the motion to unseat him.
It cements a remarkable comeback for Sánchez, who regained his leadership a year ago after a PSOE coup saw him deposed over his steadfast refusal to let Rajoy back into office following two inconclusive general elections.
The socialist motion won the support of 180 MPs – four more than the 176 needed in the 350-seat parliament. There was one abstention and 169 MPs opposed it.
Sánchez vowed to address the “pressing social needs” of Spaniards after years of austerity under Rajoy’s conservative government, adding that he was “aware of the responsibility and the complex political moment of our country”.
After the vote, Rajoy went over to Sánchez in the chamber and shook the incoming leader’s hand.
“It has been an honour to be the prime minister of Spain,” Rajoy told parliament shortly before the vote. “It has been an honour to leave a better Spain than the one I found. I hope that my successor will be able to say the same when his time comes.”
He said he believed he had done his duty as prime minister, adding: “My thanks to the Spanish people for lending me their support and understanding. And good luck to everyone for the good of Spain.”
Rajoy, who served as premier for seven years, had managed to weather a string of corruption scandals within his People’s party (PP) but was unable to withstand political anger after Spain’s highest criminal court found the party had benefited from an enormous and illegal kickbacks-for-contracts scheme, known as the Gürtel case.
The 63-year-old’s fate was sealed on Thursday afternoon when the Basque Nationalist party (PNV) joined the anti-austerity Podemos party and the two biggest Catalan pro-independence parties in backing the PSOE motion.
………
Sánchez, 46, has promised to call elections but has said his minority government will spend a few months focusing on social and educational reforms before taking Spain to the polls.
His time in office is unlikely to yield profound changes and he will have to heed the demands of the parties who backed his motion. He successfully wooed the PNV by promising to stick to Rajoy’s recently approved budget, which includes increased investment in the Basque country.
The PSOE leader also held out his hand to the Catalan independence parties, saying he was willing to engage in dialogue over the long-running territorial and political crisis.
This is literally the first no-confidence vote in the history of the modern Spanish democracy, so it is a big deal.
I rather do hope that this is the end of Rajoy’s political career.
Headline of the Day
Experts build AI joke machine that’s about as funny as an Adam Sandler movie (that bad)
They do have a knack for truly inspired heds, and while I concede that at some point in his life, Adam Sandler might be in a movie that does not suck, it is a delightfully evocative way to describe a failure.
Did Someone Pay to Suppress This Essay?
American Conservative just published, and then apparently unpublished, an essay on how Amazon is one of the most egregious mooches on the government teat.
Luckily, you can still find it at The Internet Archive.
It could be just a computer glitch, but my money is on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, or someone close to him, noting that AmCon was risking donor money:
………
Indeed, contra the libertarian ethos that Amazon and its leader purport to embody, the company has not emerged as one of history’s preeminent corporate juggernauts through thrift and elbow grease alone. Although the company’s harshest critics must concede that Amazon is the world’s most consistently competent corporation—replete with innovation and ingenuity—the company’s unprecedented growth would not be possible without two key ingredients: corporate welfare and tax avoidance.
Amazon has long benefitted from the procurement of taxpayer-funded subsidies, emerging in recent years as the leading recipient of corporate welfare. According to Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C., organization dedicated to corporate and government accountability, Amazon has, since 2000, received more than $1.39 billion in state and local tax breaks and subsidies for construction of its vast network of warehouses and data centers.
………
Amazon’s pursuit of public tithes and offerings is matched by its relentless obsession with avoiding taxes. Employing a legion of accountants and lawyers, the company has become a master at navigating the tax code and exploiting every loophole. Illegality is not the issue here but rather a tax system that allows mammoth corporations to operate with huge tax advantages not available to mom-and-pop shops on Main Street.
Of course Amazon isn’t unique in its desire to avoid the taxman. It is, however, unrivaled in its ability to do so. Last fall’s debate concerning the merits of lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent was, for Amazon, a moot point. In the five years from 2012 to 2016, Amazon paid an effective federal income tax rate of only 11.4 percent.
The company fared even better in 2017. Despite posting a $5.6 billion profit, Amazon didn’t pay a single cent in federal taxes, according to a recent report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. What’s more, Amazon projects it will receive an additional $789 million in kickbacks from last year’s tax reform bill.
Even by the standards of mammoth corporations, this is impressive. By way of comparison, Walmart—no stranger to corporate welfare and tax avoidance—has paid $64 billion in corporate income tax since 2008. Amazon? Just $1.4 billion.
Amazon’s tax-avoidance success can be attributed to two things: avoiding the collection of sales taxes and stashing profits in overseas tax havens. The IRS estimates that Amazon has dodged more than $1.5 billion in taxes by funneling the patents of its intellectual property behind the walls of its European headquarters city, Luxembourg—a widely used corporate tax haven. Again, nothing illegal here, but there’s something wrong with a tax system that allows it.
From day one, Amazon’s business model involved legally avoiding any obligation to collect sales taxes, and then using the subsequent pricing advantage to gain market share. It did this by first locating its warehouses in very few states, most of which did not have a sales tax. It then shipped its goods to customers that resided in other states that did have sales tax. This game plan allowed Amazon to avoid what is known as “nexus” in sales-tax states, meaning that those states could not compel it to collect the tax—a two to 10 percent competitive advantage over its brick-and-mortar counterparts.
………
It is difficult to overstate how instrumental tax breaks and tax avoidance have been in Amazon’s unprecedented growth. As Bezos made clear in his first letter to shareholders in 1997, Amazon’s business plan is predicated on amassing long-term market share in lieu of short-term profits. As a result, the company operates on razor-thin margins in some retail categories, while actually taking losses in others.
………
In fact, Amazon’s ascent and tactics have led an increasing number of public policy experts to call for a renewed enforcement of America’s antitrust laws. The concern is that Amazon has used its market power to crush smaller competitors with a swath of anti-competitive practices, including predatory pricing and market power advantages stemming from Amazon Marketplace—Amazon’s vast sales platform for third-party retailers.
Given the amount of pathetic whining we see from the uber*-rich when anyone fact checks what they say (see Musk, Elon), it would be not at all unusual for someone in Bezos’ orbit to take offense and threaten the publishers at what is a fairly obscure (circulation in the mid 4 figures) hetrodox conservative publication.
It’s also petty and stupid, but that is what these guys are. (See Musk, Elon)
*Pun not intended.