Month: July 2018

Do You Want Some Cheese with That Whine?

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Sarah Palin has called Sacha Baron Cohen “evil, exploitative and sick” after revealing that the satirist had “duped” her into an interview for an upcoming series by posing as a wounded military veteran.

On Monday it was revealed that Baron Cohen had spent a year undercover filming a new project for the Showtime channel. The series, Who Is America?, explores a range of figures “across the political and cultural spectrum” and is reported to feature interviews with Bernie Sanders, Dick Cheney – and Palin. A teaser released for the show features a clip of Cheney being asked to sign a “waterboarding kit”.

“Yup – we were duped. Ya’ got me, Sacha. Feel better now? I join a long list of American public personalities who have fallen victim to the evil, exploitive, sick ‘humor’ of the British ‘comedian’”, Palin wrote in a Facebook post addressing the incident. The former governor of Alaska said she had travelled to Washington DC with one of her daughters for the interview, which she believed was for a “legit” historical documentary on Showtime. She said that Baron Cohen had “heavily disguised himself as a disabled US veteran, fake wheelchair and all” for the interview.

(emphasis mine)

Cohen has been doing this for decades.

So has The Daily Show, and for that matter.

I’ve not followed Cohen’s comedy closely, I am not a big fan of punking, but this should be interesting, though it might very well be significantly less embarrassing to Palin than her for-real interviews.

Oh Dear Lord, This Is Not The Onion!

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The Washington Post just published this OP/Ed:

I Don’t Know Kavanaugh the Judge. But Kavanaugh the Carpool Dad Is One Great Guy.

First, let me say that the misuse of periods in the headline are from the original, though I corrected capitalization.

Second, this is some random mom in the DC suburbs raving about the job that he does coaching a 6th grade girls’ basketball team.

I’ve done a quick Google, and I haven’t found any Republican connections.

She appears to be a designer (web and interior design) and a neighbor of the nominee, and honestly, I don’t see anything wrong with her “article”.

It’s a completely run-of-the-mill letter to the editor by a friend.

On the other hand, the fact that the failed middle school science project that is Fred Hiatt’s editorial board published this as a full blown editorial is truly, and thoroughly, screwed up.

Freddy ……… You really need to spend more time with your family.

So, it’s Kavanaugh

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He leaked grand jury testimony while working for Ken Starr, he believes that everything the President does is inherently legal, but he’s a Yalie, so it’s all cool:

Brett M. Kavanaugh, the federal judge nominated by President Trump on Monday to the Supreme Court, has endorsed robust views of the powers of the president, consistently siding with arguments in favor of broad executive authority during his 12 years on the bench in Washington.

He has called for restructuring the government’s consumer watchdog agency so the president could remove the director and has been a leading defender of the government’s position when it comes to using military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects.

Kavanaugh is “an unrelenting, unapologetic defender of presidential power” who believes courts can and should actively seek to rein in “large swaths of the current administrative state,” said University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck, who closely follows the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

I’m with Dan Froomkin, who suggests that if Kavanaugh leaked secret grand jury information, and this appears to be an open secret in Washington, DC, then the reporters should burn him.

If smoking some weed in college derailed Douglas Ginsburg’s nomination in 1987, then Kavanaugh is a clear and present danger to the court.

Tweet Stream of the Day

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Comparison of Silicon Valley and the the Soviet Union is genius:

Things that happen in Silicon Valley and also the Soviet Union:

– waiting years to receive a car you ordered, to find that it’s of poor workmanship and quality

– promises of colonizing the solar system while you toil in drudgery day in, day out

— Anton Troynikov (@atroyn) July 5, 2018

– living five adults to a two room apartment

– being told you are constructing utopia while the system crumbles around you

— Anton Troynikov (@atroyn) July 5, 2018

– ‘totally not illegal taxi’ taxis by private citizens moonlighting to make ends meet

– everything slaved to the needs of the military-industrial complex

— Anton Troynikov (@atroyn) July 5, 2018

– mandatory workplace political education

– productivity largely falsified to satisfy appearance of sponsoring elites

— Anton Troynikov (@atroyn) July 5, 2018

It goes on, but it is well worth the read.

Because, the Cartoon

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Normally, I don’t read political articles for the cartoons, though (like everyone) I read the New Yorker for the cartoons, but this article, which argues that today’s “socialists” are more standard New Dealers than he is a doctrinaire Socialists, I read because of the artwork.

It’s a pretty anodyne survey of the new “Millennial Socialists” out there, but the art is really great, at least if you recognize the meme.

Maryland Too

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It appears that a number of prominent Democrats in the state house lost primaries to socialists last week:

Thomas V. Mike Miller has been president of the Maryland Senate since 1987. Come January, he’ll have to rebuild his leadership team essentially from scratch.

Three of Miller’s top lieutenants went down in Democratic primaries on Tuesday. Thanks to other losses and retirements, most committees will have new chairs next year. Among those ousted were Nathaniel McFadden, the Senate president pro tem; Joan Carter Conway, who chairs the Education, Health and Environmental Committee; and Judiciary Committee Chair Joseph Vallario.

“Mike Miller’s going to go to Annapolis in January faced with a decimated leadership team and a far more progressive Senate than he’s faced before,” says Todd Eberly, a political scientist at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. “It may be a Senate that isn’t comfortable with him as a leader.”

Voters in Maryland were willing ousted veteran members they considered an impediment to progressive issues like criminal justice reform and a $15 minimum wage.

“The folks who are energized, the folks who are engaged, these are folks for whom progressive legislation is very important,” says Christopher Honey, communications director for SEIU Local 500, a labor union that targeted Miller and his allies. “It’s no surprise that this happened in a blue state like Maryland.”

I was too busy following the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — Joe Crowley race, and I missed that there was kind of a (VERY WELL DESERVED) blood bath in the Maryland state Senate among Mike Miller’s cronies.

I think that state Senate president Mike Miller, and state House speaker Michael Busch are, and will continue to be, a part of the problem in Maryland politics, but, for this session at least, their positions are secure, though less secure than they were a few months ago.

Maybe next session.

Linkage

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This is an amazing phony trailer for Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

Another Novichuk Attack near Porton Down

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It appears that this time, a random British couple was exposed, and a woman has died:

A woman who was exposed to the nerve agent novichok in Amesbury, Wiltshire, has died in hospital.

The Metropolitan police have launched a murder investigation after Dawn Sturgess, 44, from Durrington, died on Sunday after handling an item contaminated with the nerve agent on 30 June.

Her partner Charlie Rowley, 45, who was also taken ill after being exposed to the nerve agent, remains in a critical condition in hospital.

The investigation into the poisonings is being led by detectives from the Counter Terrorism Policing Network, and about 100 detectives are working alongside officers from Wiltshire police.

Investigators are still trying to determine how the couple were exposed to the nerve agent after emergency services were called to a residential address in Amesbury eight days ago after Sturgess collapsed.

………

Counter-terrorism officers are still investigating the attempted murders of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, who were poisoned in March.

………

Prior to the news of the death, home secretary Sajid Javid had said there were no plans to impose fresh sanctions on Russia following the latest nerve agent poisoning.

During a visit to Salisbury on Sunday to meet residents caught up in the nerve agent poisoning, he said: “We don’t want to jump to conclusions. Clearly, what we have already determined, what our expert scientists have determined, is that the nerve agent in this incident is the exact same nerve agent as was used back in March.

“We know back in March that it was the Russians. We know it was a barbaric, inhuman act by the Russian state. Again, for this particular incident, we need to learn more and let the police do their work.”

You don’t want people to, “Jump to conclusions,” because the obvious conclusion is that thea, “Barbaric, inhuman act by the Russian state,” is anything but that.

Now, it’s beginning to sound like someone more like the 2001 anthrax attacks, which were likely the action of someone from inside the US bioweapons establishment.

If Javid has not locked down the Porton Down chemical weapons facility, he is dangerously incompetent.

A Brief Respite of Copyright Sanity

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This is not a common thing, but the rules proposed were awful, requiring fees to be paid for linking, and prohibiting the use of snippets:

A controversial overhaul of the EU’s copyright law that sparked a fierce debate between internet giants and content creators has been rejected.

The proposed rules would have put more responsibility on websites to check for copyright infringements, and forced platforms to pay for linking to news.

A slew of high-profile music stars had backed the change, arguing that websites had exploited their content.

These sites cannot use their content without permission from the designated license holders for this content, in this case the record labels, who, as always, have screwed the artists.

That is not a problem with Spotify, that is a problem with your agents.

But opponents said the rules would stifle internet freedom and creativity.

The move was intended to bring the EU’s copyright laws in line with the digital age, but led to protests from websites and much debate before it was rejected by a margin of 318-278 in the European Parliament on Thursday.

What were they voting for?

The proposed legislation – known as the Copyright Directive – was an attempt by the EU to modernise its copyright laws, but it contained two highly-contested parts.

The first of these, Article 11, was intended to protect newspapers and other outlets from internet giants like Google and Facebook using their material without payment.

But it was branded a “link tax” by opponents who feared it could lead to problems with sentence fragments being used to link to other news outlets (like this).

Article 13 was the other controversial part. It put a greater responsibility on websites to enforce copyright laws, and would have meant that any online platform that allowed users to post text, images, sounds or code would need a way to assess and filter content.

The most common way to do this is by using an automated copyright system, but they are expensive. The one YouTube uses cost $60m (£53m), so critics were worried that similar filters would need to be introduced to every website if Article 13 became law.

There were also concerns that these copyright filters could effectively ban things like memes and remixes which use some copyrighted material.

There will be another bite at the apple on this in a few months though.

I expect them to move a few commas, and lobby the sh%$ out of MEPs to switch their votes.

This law is bad, and not just on its own merit.

This law is bad because these sort of expansions of IP are misused and abused to extract even greater rents.

If you were to have told a Congressman in 1998 that the law would be used to prevent people from refilling ink cartridges, or using universal garage door openers, they would have laughed in your face, but both of those things happened within 2 years of adoption of the law.

Whatever form this law takes, its will be worse than its most ardent opponents predict, because that is where the money is.

The Meaning of Scott Pruitt

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As everyone knows by now, Scott Pruitt was fired by Trump after a spate of really cheesy scandals.

There is a precedent, the tenure of Anne Gorsuch Burford, head of the EPA from 1981 to 1983.

What happened then, and what is happening now is very similar:  You have a very public, and not particularly competent, bête noire, who has people screaming, and the press covering their misdeeds obsessively, but this is largely a diversion.

While we have been looking at Pruitt’s cone of silence, his sweetheart deal with his landlord, his using staff for personal errands, etc., Trump and his Evil Minions™ were forcing out senior career civil servants and replacing then with “burrows” who are implacably opposed to the mission of the EPA, demoralizing the whole staff, and shredding the organization.

His tenure was as long as it was because it was sufficient to achieve the underlying goals.

Once that was done, he was expendible.

Tweet of the Day

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liberals in 2016: sanders is doing well, but socialism only appeals to white workers, he lost because it doesn’t have appeal to black and brown voters
liberals in 2018: AOC is doing well, but socialism only appeals to brown workers, it wont work with white voters

— 🚩🇯🇴 would you like to buy a socialist newspaper (@mike_hugs) July 1, 2018

It appears that hapless centrism can never fail, it can only be failed.

At Least, There is Symmetry

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It turns out that after his tenure as Treasury Secretary, where he spent his time screwing ordinary people for the benefit of big banks, and now he’s doing that in the private sector:

Sorry if you had anyone else winning in your Most Hideous Career After Leaving the Obama Administration bracket, because Tim Geithner just blew the competition out the water. The Washington Post has a detailed and devastating report, published Sunday evening, about the predatory lending activities of Mariner Finance, a company “owned and managed by a $11.2 billion private equity fund controlled by Warburg Pincus,” of which Geithner is president. Cool job, Tim!

So what does Mariner Finance do? It mails checks to poor people, hoping they’ll cash them without reading the fine print—which reveal sky-high interest rates and a clause forcing the lendee to pay the company’s legal fees should it be forced to sue them for their debts. It’s a neat little scam that works in tandem with the other revolting ways America extracts money from its poor. Per the Post:

………

These loans are very similar to payday loans but aren’t as closely regulated, according to the National Consumer Law Center. As the paper explains, “consumer installment” lenders “offer slightly larger loans—from about $1,000 to more than $25,000—for longer periods of time.” They’re like payday loans, but for bigger amounts and a name that doesn’t immediately reveal how predatory they are.

Is Geithner’s firm ashamed of its investment in and management of this vile business? Of course not. Warburg Pincus told the Post that “Mariner Finance delivers a valuable service to hundreds of thousands of Americans who have limited access to consumer credit.” Worse still, Mariner representatives described the company as fulfilling a “social need.”

Tim Geitner is really an entitled and evil bastard.

I really hope that karma catches up with him.

They are Just Trolling Us

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Donald Trump has a plan to ditch the WTO and return to tariffs.

Not a surprise, it was something that he has campaigned on, but it is called the Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act, or FART act.

Seriously, they aren’t even trying any more:

A report that Donald Trump is looking to walk away from the World Trade Organisation and instead adopt a United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act, or Fart Act, has been greeted with loud amusement on Twitter.

Axios reported that it had received a leaked early draft of a bill ordered by the president, that would see America take the unlikely step of abandoning WTO rules, allowing Trump to raise tariffs without the consent of Congress.

The bill – the existence of which has not been independently confirmed – would be a dramatic shift in trade policy with wide-reaching impacts, but it was the name of the proposed bill that caught people’s attention.

In 2021, I fear that our President will be Pauley Shore.

I am not joking.

The Weasel will be the next President of the United States of America.

The Problem is Not that it is Excessive, But that it is insufficient

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The Danes, no doubt in response to political pressure from the racist Dansk Folkeparti (DF, also called DPP) in parliament, have adopted a law mandating that families on public assistance Muslim ghettos must place their children in government run preschools.

It’s supposed to teach them the language, and inculcate them in Danish culture.

The problem here is not that they are requiring this of Muslims on the dole, it’s that they are not requiring every child whose family needs public aren’t in these schools together, in integrated classrooms, learning that their backwards bigoted parents on both sides of this religious divide are wrong:

When Rokhaia Naassan gives birth in the coming days, she and her baby boy will enter a new category in the eyes of Danish law. Because she lives in a low-income immigrant neighborhood described by the government as a “ghetto,” Rokhaia will be what the Danish newspapers call a “ghetto parent” and he will be a “ghetto child.”

Starting at the age of 1, “ghetto children” must be separated from their families for at least 25 hours a week, not including nap time, for mandatory instruction in “Danish values,” including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish language. Noncompliance could result in a stoppage of welfare payments. Other Danish citizens are free to choose whether to enroll children in preschool up to the age of six.

Denmark’s government is introducing a new set of laws to regulate life in 25 low-income and heavily Muslim enclaves, saying that if families there do not willingly merge into the country’s mainstream, they should be compelled.

For decades, integrating immigrants has posed a thorny challenge to the Danish model, intended to serve a small, homogeneous population. Leaders are focusing their ire on urban neighborhoods where immigrants, some of them placed there by the government, live in dense concentrations with high rates of unemployment and gang violence.

Politicians’ description of the ghettos has become increasingly sinister. In his annual New Year’s speech, Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen warned that ghettos could “reach out their tentacles onto the streets” by spreading violence, and that because of ghettos, “cracks have appeared on the map of Denmark.” Politicians who once used the word “integration” now call frankly for “assimilation.”

That tough approach is embodied in the “ghetto package.” Of 22 proposals presented by the government in early March, most have been agreed upon by a parliamentary majority, and more will be subject to a vote in the fall.

Let’s be clear, there are additional parts of these statutes are really horrible, things like arbitrary increases in penalties in Muslim ghettos, but the bulk of outrage is directed at tying preschool to welfare payments.

Not only would this be applied across Denmark, it should be applied across the United States.

It’s called mandatory schooling, and universal Pre-K.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

Linkage

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I just want to note that while he was a good Doctor Who, that was not Peter Capaldi’s finest role. Rather it was his marvelous profane Malcomb Tucker in the In the Loop.