Month: February 2020

Guilty, Guilty, Guilty

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Good:

Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of sexual assault in a New York court Monday, the first conviction to emerge from the dozens of misconduct allegations against the once-powerful movie producer.

The jury determined that Weinstein forced oral sex on former production assistant Mimi Haleyi at his apartment in July 2006 and raped former aspiring actress Jessica Mann at a hotel in 2013.

He was found not guilty of the most severe charges, of predatory sexual assault, which would have acknowledged a pattern that included forcing sex on actress Annabella Sciorra in 1993 or 1994.

Weinstein, 67, faces at least five years and up to 25 on the count of first-degree criminal sex act for his assault on Haleyi, and up to four years on a third-degree rape count for the Mann encounter. The judge can consider running the sentences consecutively, for a maximum of 29 years. Sentencing is scheduled for March 11.

Here’s hoping that he never sees the outside of stir again.

Bernie’s Houses

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One of the criticisms of Bernie Sanders is that he has 3 homes, his primary residence, his DC residence, and a vacation home, and that this is excessive for a self-proclaimed socialist.

The three houses combined have a value that is a rounding error for the homes of Obama, Clinton, or Biden, as this TikTok video shows:

Here are the homes of #obama #HillaryClinton and #BernieSanders . One is not like the others… Use this for those pesky rumors. pic.twitter.com/GRDEiLuEJB

— Biden's Hairy Leg 🦵🌹 (@BernieWon2016) January 4, 2020

Fail

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The US Navy publicly wants to expand its fleet to 350 ships, but the Littoral Combat Ship program is such a clusterf%$# that they are looking at retiring the first 4 ships of the class, despite the fact that they are only 6 years old:

The US Navy is looking to retire the first of four littoral combat ships, despite being just over half a decade old.

Despite a push to reach 335 ships by 2030, the Navy is seemingly more than happy to ditch its LCS fleet, even though many of the ships have at least one to two decades of life left in them.

The ships are non-deployable and have been since they were initiated in the early 2000s. Since their inception, they have been plagued with developmental woes and quality control issues.

The Navy is currently looking to retire two LCSs from the Freedom class, as well as two from the Independence. Of these ships, the youngest is the USS Coronado, which is less than six years of age.

While a revolutionary concept surrounding the ability for a “modular” ship to fulfill many missions, the LCS program proved too much to juggle, particularly with expanding roles and design specs that kept changing.

The LCS has always been ill-conceived, undermanned, fragile, and undergunned.

It’s core feature was supposed to be swappable combat modules, but they never worked, and could never have worked overseas because of security issues.

Why a few dozen general officers have not been fired over this is beyond me.

More Boeing Bad News

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This is aircraft manufacturing 101, don’t leave garbage in the aircraft, and Boeing cannot do this:

Boeing Co. has found debris inside the fuel tanks of about two-thirds of undelivered 737 MAX jets inspected so far, according to federal and aviation-industry officials, indicating a bigger production-related problem than the company previously suggested.

………

While Boeing disclosed the debris problem publicly earlier this week, the latest details shed more light on the scale of the issue. Industry officials said Boeing has so far inspected about 50 of roughly 400 MAX planes awaiting delivery once regulators allow the jet back in the air. Materials left behind include tools, rags and boot coverings, according to industry officials familiar with the details.

………

On Friday, the Boeing spokesman said inspections first found the fuel-tank debris in late November and immediately notified the Federal Aviation Administration. He said the manufacturer has added safeguards to prevent workers from leaving materials inside fuel tanks at its 737 factory in Renton, Wash., and beefed up efforts across the company.

………

The inspections have raised red flags, some of the officials said, because Boeing’s commercial-airplane unit traditionally has been recognized as a leader in devising systems to combat such production lapses. All tools used inside aircraft are supposed to be logged and tagged, with employees double-checking each other to verify each piece of equipment is removed. The Boeing spokesman said the company has ramped up such checks to prevent future problems.

Boeing has become a hedge fund that makes aircraft, and hedge funds do not build aircraft well.

Bernie Crushes it in Nevada

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Sanders has been declared the decisive winner of the Nevada caucus, getting nearly half of the caucus votes, and scoring more than double of his nearest competitor, Joe Biden.

Needless to say, someone at MSNBC will call this a potential disaster.

(Performs quick Google)

Yep, Tweety delivers.

Chris Matthews compares the Sanders victory to the Nazi invasion of France.

What the f%$# is wrong with these people?

This is Will Never Save Money

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Will Roper, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, wants to restructure the cost profile of the next US fighters to front load the costs, on the theory that this will save money down the road through Silicon Valley style “Distruption.”

Well, that just pegged my bullsh%$ meter:

The U.S. Air Force’s acquisition chief said Feb. 18 that he expects a congressional backlash over how a recent revamp of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) procurement strategy could drive up the average procurement unit cost (APUC) of a sixth-generation fighter.

But the Air Force remains committed to an acquisition strategy for an F-22 replacement that accepts higher upfront costs in order to save money during the sustainment phase of the program, said Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force, speaking during an “Ask Me Anything” webinar for the service’s acquisition workforce. The Pentagon calculates APUC by dividing total procurement costs, including recurring and nonrecurring bills, by the number of units purchased.

………

But Roper, who was appointed in 2017, said in early 2019 that the strategy had changed. The details of the highly secretive NGAD program are murky, but Roper has compared the new acquisition strategy to the business model for the Apple iPhone. Apple does not sustain the iPhone beyond a few years, so it makes profits by charging a premium on the design at the point of sale. Although the upfront cost is higher, Apple’s business model incentivizes an external community of software developers to create applications for the iPhone at little to no cost.

Roper wants to apply a similar philosophy to the development of the next generation of combat aircraft. He wants traditional defense prime contractors to transition away from a sustainment model for profits and incentivize them to focus on design by offering them a premium.

An iPhone has a life of about 3 years., and with the exception of electricity to keep it charged, it has a sustainment cost of $0.00.

A fighter aircraft is a completely different life cycle.

This is a particularly disastrous form of bullsh%$ bingo.

Not Just Brooklyn, the Bronx Too

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The latest diss of Bernie Sanders is that he shouts too much.

This is complete bullsh%$.

He is just talking like a New York Jew:

Sen. Bernie Sanders opened Tuesday night’s debate with an impassioned response to a question about one of his signature policy planks: Medicare for all.

“Right now we have a dysfunctional healthcare system [with] 500,000 Americans every year going bankrupt,” he said, his voice growing louder with each word. Sanders spoke emphatically of the injustice in forcing patients to face both their health issues and outrageous hospital bills.

After the debate, a pattern emerged: The Brooklyn-born candidate was too angry, too loud, too passionate. CNN’s S.E. Cupp tweeted, “How is Bernie Sanders already this angry, and it’s just his opening statement.” Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney also mocked Sanders for being “angry.” And, shortly after the debate—during which Democratic candidate Rep. Tim Ryan quipped to Sanders, “You don’t have to yell” during a fossil fuel debate—his campaign started selling stickers that read, “You don’t have to yell. Tim Ryan 2020.”

As the pundits weighed in, some Jewish Americans pointed out that the way Sanders speaks is just how a lot of Jewish people, particularly those from Brooklyn, speak. Some said that perceiving his speech patterns as inherently angry or abrasive was ignorant at best and anti-Semitic at worst. Following the debate, many American Jews voiced their disappointment over critiques against Sanders’s speech patterns: 

Yeah pretty much.

On my mom’s side, from the Bronx, a lot of them talk like Bernie.

On my dad’s side, Los Angeles and San Francisco, not so much.

It’s Not the Money Asymmetry, It’s the Power Asymmetry

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez notes what should be obvious, that the problem with inequality in our society is not the money, it’s the power:

On Monday morning, Jeff Bezos announced the creation of a new $10 billion environmental foundation, the Bezos Earth Fund. This is on top of the $2 billion he already committed to the Bezos Family Foundation to build preschools and fight homelessness.

The combined sum might be a fraction of his net worth, and Bezos might have a history of standing in the way of political efforts to address some of the same problems he seeks to address with his charity. Even so, many would argue that his efforts are still praiseworthy.

In a Martin Luther King Jr Day discussion with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued for a very different perspective. If Jeff Bezos “wants to be a good person,” she said, he should “turn Amazon into a worker cooperative.” She argued that our primary message to billionaires shouldn’t be that we want to redistribute their money. Instead, it should be that “we want their power.”

In making this distinction, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez was giving voice to an idea with deep roots in socialist thought — that the unequal distribution of wealth is just a symptom of the deeper problem of the unequal distribution of economic power.

Inequality is a self-reinforcing phenomenon.

As inequality increases, the powerful are increasingly in the position of stacking the deck in their own favor.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

And the Supreme Court Will Probably Buy this Bullsh%$

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The right wingers at the Supreme Court have for years used the first amendment to shut down common sense regulation of predatory businesses.

My prediction is that they will do this again, and say that the first amendment protects ISP’s rights to resell your browser history:

The US state of Maine is violating internet broadband providers’ free speech by forcing them to ask for their customers’ permission to sell their browser history, according to a new lawsuit.

………

ACA Connects, CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom are collectively suing [PDF] Maine’s attorney general Aaron Frey, and the chair and commissioners of Maine’s Public Utilities Commission claiming that the statute, passed in June 2019, “imposes unprecedented and unduly burdensome restrictions on ISPs’, and only ISPs’, protected speech.”

How so? Because it includes “restrictions on how ISPs communicate with their own customers that are not remotely tailored to protecting consumer privacy.” The lawsuit even explains that there is a “proper way to protect consumer privacy” – and that’s the way the FCC does it, through “technology-neutral, uniform regulation.” Although that regulation is actually the lack of regulation.

If you’re still having a hard time understanding how requiring companies to get their customers’ permission before they sell their personal data infringes the First Amendment, the lawsuit has more details.

It “(1) requires ISPs to secure ‘opt-in’ consent from their customers before using information that is not sensitive in nature or even personally identifying; (2) imposes an opt-out consent obligation on using data that are by definition not customer personal information; (3) limits ISPs from advertising or marketing non-communications-related services to their customers; and (4) prohibits ISPs from offering price discounts, rewards in loyalty programs, or other cost saving benefits in exchange for a customer’s consent to use their personal information.”

All of this results in an “excessive burden” on ISPs, they claim, especially because not everyone else had to do the same. The new statute includes “no restrictions at all on the use, disclosure, or sale of customer personal information, whether sensitive or not, by the many other entities in the Internet ecosystem or traditional brick-and-mortar retailers,” the lawsuit complains.

Listen, I think that we should get some stakes, honey, and a few anthills of REALLY pissed off ants, and have a heart to heart with the senior executives of ACA Connects, CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom.

Perhaps we should bring in their lawyers for a consult as well.

Oh the Huge Manatee!

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The EU is going to black the Cayman Islands as a money laundering nation.

This will be a big problem for the folks working in the City of London, since a big part of their business is tax evasion and money laundering through former British colonies:

The Cayman Islands, a British overseas territory, is to be put on an EU blacklist of tax havens, less than two weeks after the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc.

………

The EU’s blacklist is an attempt to clamp down on the estimated £506bn lost to aggressive tax avoidance every year but member states are not “screened” in the process of drawing up the blacklist.

Territories linked to member states have also avoided the blacklist and the UK had heavily lobbied to protect its overseas territories from such scrutiny in the past.

On Wednesday, EU ambassadors judged that the islands in the western Caribbean Sea are not effectively cooperating with Brussels on financial transparency, the Financial Times reported.

The Cayman Islands will join Fiji, Oman, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Vanuatu and the three US territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands, on the “non-cooperative” list.

For the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, think of the poor bankers, who will have to find productive work.

The horror ………

A Feature, Not a Bug

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We are now seeing indications that the 2020 census, which will go digital and online, is likely to crash and burn like the Iowa caucuses or the roll out of Obamacare.

I would argue that the failure of the census will not be a cluster-f%$# (incompetence) but a rat-f%$# (deliberate sabotage).

If the process descends into failure, it gives corrupt individuals the opportunity to manipulate the date for partisan political advantage.

The Republicans have been trying rat-f%$# the census for decades:

The stakes are high when a major civic exercise involves a large population, new technology that has not been thoroughly tested and an entire country waiting on the results.

Just ask the organizers of the Iowa caucuses, which offered a cautionary tale on the technological woes that could befall a big political event. Some observers worry that this year’s census carries the same potential for mayhem — except on an infinitely larger scale.

The U.S. Census Bureau plans to try out a lot of new technology. It’s the first once-a-decade census in which most people are being encouraged to answer questions via the internet. Later in the process, census workers who knock on the doors of homes that have not responded will use smartphones and a new mobile app to relay answers.

A government watchdog agency, the Census Bureau’s inspector general and some lawmakers have grown concerned about whether the systems are ready for prime time. Most U.S. residents can start answering the questionnaire in March.

“I must tell you, the Iowa (caucus) debacle comes to mind when I think of the census going digital,” Eleanor Holmes Norton, the congressional delegate for the District of Columbia, said this week at a hearing on the census.

Cybersecurity is another worry. Experts consider the census to be an attractive target for anyone seeking to sow chaos and undermine confidence in the U.S. government, as Russia did in the 2016 presidential election.

In a worst-case scenario, vital records could be deleted or polluted with junk data. Even a lesser assault that interfered with online data collection could erode public confidence. In 2016, a denial-of-service attack knocked Australia’s online census offline, flooding it with junk data.

Why am I thinking that there might be a Republican operative who is thinking about passing access codes to the GRU?

About F%$#ing Time

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Kickstarter employees have voted to unionize.

You know, foosball tables and good food in the cafeteria does not excuse management from treating people badly.

Unionization is the only logical response:

Kickstarter employees voted to form a union with the Office and Professional Employees International Union, which represents more than 100,000 white collar workers. The final vote was 46 for the union, 37 against, a historic win for unionization efforts at tech companies.

 Kickstarter workers are now the first white collar workers at a major tech company to successfully unionize in the United States, sending a message to other tech workers.

………

 “I feel like the most important issues [for us] are around creating clearer policies and support for reporting workplace issues and creating clearer mechanisms for hiring and firing employees,” said RV Dougherty, a former trust and safety analyst and core organizer for Kickstarter United who quit in early February. “Right now so much depends on what team you’re on and if you have a good relationship with your manager… We also have a lot of pay disparity and folks who are doing incredible jobs but have been kept from getting promoted because they spoke their mind, which is not how Kickstarter should work.”

 In the days leading up to Kickstarter vote count, Motherboard revealed that Kickstarter hired Duane Morris, a Philadelphia law firm that specializes in labor management relations and “maintaining a union-free workplace.” Kickstarter confirmed to Motherboard that it first retained the services of Duane Morris in 2018 before it knew about union organizing at the company, but would not go into detail about whether the firm had advised the company on how to defeat the union and denied any union-busting activity.

 ………

 But in 2018, a heated disagreement broke out between employees and management about whether to leave a project called “Always Punch Nazis” on the platform, according to reporting in Slate. When Breitbart said the project violated Kickstarter’s terms of service by inciting violence, management initially planned to remove the project, but then reversed its decision after protest from employees.

Following the controversy, employees announced their intentions to unionize with OPEIU Local 153 in March 2019. And the company made it clear that it did not believe a union was right for Kickstarter.

In a letter to creators, Kickstarter’s CEO Aziz Hasan wrote in September that “The union framework is inherently adversarial.”

Yes, it;s inherently adversarial for there to be checks and balances on your behavior, Azis.

How about you have a nice cup of ……… Well, you know.

It’s Called Playing the Refs

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The Washington Post has an article describing how right-wingers have taken control of Facebook’s anti-fake news efforts.

Basically, it’s the same game plan that they have been doing for years with the old press.

  • Claim bias.
  • Coordinate claims.
  • Get Republican politicians to threaten the media organizations.

Rinse, lather, repeat:

Facebook created “Project P” — for propaganda — in the hectic weeks after the 2016 presidential election and quickly found dozens of pages that had peddled false news reports ahead of Donald Trump’s surprise victory. Nearly all were based overseas, had financial motives and displayed a clear rightward bent.

In a world of perfect neutrality, which Facebook espouses as its goal, the political tilt of the pages shouldn’t have mattered. But in a videoconference between Facebook’s Washington office and its Silicon Valley headquarters in December 2016, the company’s most senior Republican, Joel Kaplan, voiced concerns that would become familiar to those within the company.

“We can’t remove all of it because it will disproportionately affect conservatives,” said Kaplan, a former George W. Bush White House official and now the head of Facebook’s Washington office, according to people familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect professional relationships.

………

The debate over “Project P,” which resulted in a few of the worst pages quickly being removed while most others remained on the platform, exemplified the political dynamics that have reigned within Facebook since Trump emerged as the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee to the White House in 2016. A company led mainly by Democrats in the liberal bastion of Northern California repeatedly has tilted rightward to deliver policies, hiring decisions and public gestures sought by Republicans, according to current and former employees and others who have worked closely with the company.

It’s easy to define media frauds, and because, as Stephen Colbert so eloquently noted, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias,” it means that conservative favored stories are more likely to be false.
Republicans are arguing against impartial standards because they are demanding equality of outcomes, which, unsurprisingly is one of their main complaints about liberals.
F%$# them with Cheney’s dick.

Dr. Evil Would Get This

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Roll Tape!

Facebook has now announced that Russian provocateurs spent as much as $100,000.00 on political ads in 2016.
Seriously?  In a campaign where both sides spent billions, this is beneath the level of chump change:

Providing new evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Facebook disclosed on Wednesday that it had identified more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on hot-button issues purchased by a shadowy Russian company linked to the Kremlin.

Most of the 3,000 ads did not refer to particular candidates but instead focused on divisive social issues such as race, gay rights, gun control and immigration, according to a post on Facebook by Alex Stamos, the company’s chief security officer. The ads, which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, were linked to some 470 fake accounts and pages the company said it had shut down.

Facebook officials said the fake accounts were created by a Russian company called the Internet Research Agency, which is known for using “troll” accounts to post on social media and comment on news websites.

The disclosure adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign, which American intelligence agencies concluded was designed to damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald J. Trump during the election. Multiple investigations of the Russian meddling, and the possibility that the Trump campaign somehow colluded with Russia, have cast a shadow over the first eight months of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

I’m wondering if the incompetent Hillary Clinton campaign might have played a bigger role in this clusterf%$# than any potential foreign interference.

Of course, that conclusion would mean that any number of incompetent political consultants would have to find honest work, and as we know, the motto of the Democratic party is, “We gotta protect our phony baloney jobs.”

Drunk/Live Blogging the Democratic Debates

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11:00 On to the Daily Show. (Or not, it appears that they are running reruns of of South Park)
10:57 Sanders goes back to being Sanders in his closing statement. Sanders implacable positions are his strong point. Even of they disagree, voters liek consistency.

10:57 Someone is heckling Joe Biden. I cannot understand what they are saying.

10:53 We have the candidates recite memorized statements. Meh.

10:52 Closing statements.

10:49 Advertisement break. I am completely sh%$ faced.

10:48 Chuck Todd asks about brokered convention. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? MRDA.

10:46 Klobuchar is pissed off at Buttigieg. So am I.

10:43 Buttigieg notes that Klubuchar was the Democrat most likely to support Trump judges. That will leave a mark.

10:42 Klobuchar invokes 99 year old Hispanic veteran. Pander much?

10:40 This is clearly the most contentious debate so far.

10:33 Another ad break.

10:29 Warren may have had the line of the night, “We cannot be friends with Mitch McConnell.” It is a winning line.

10:29 Biden has clearly decided to go after Bloomberg’s wealth. It’s a good tactic,

10:27 Sanders is accused of being a socialist. Take a drink. Sanders notes that the rich get plenty of socialism.

10:22 I am completely sh%$ faced.

10:21 Buttigieg invokes that he is not a millionaire. AGAIN Take a drink.

10:21 The fact that the candidates have to f%$#ing raise their f%$#ing hands to get recognized if f%$#ed up and sh%$.

10:18 Bernie Sanders notes that Billionaires pay less in taxes than their secretaries, and Bloomberg takes umbrage, despite the fact that his lobbying led to this.

10:14 Vanessa Hauc asks about how rolling back Trump’s give away to mega corps and billionaires will somehow or other hamper small businesses. What the f%$# is wrong with you?

10:11 Mayor Mayo is claiming that the problem is the two most polarizing people on the state (Sanders and Bloomberg). This is the least inspiring chant of Kumbaya ever.

10:09 Biden calls for prosecuting polluting executives. I don’t believe him, but this is a good talking point.

10:04 Sanders is challenged on his call for a fracking ban, and he comes right back to the questioner, saying that anthropogenic climate change is a moral issue and a crisis, and there can be no compromise. This is actually playing to Sanders’ strength, because he gets to show how he is not going to kowtow to lobbyist.

10:02 Warren is challenged about her call to end drilling and mining on public lands.

10:00 Bloomberg calls for rejoining the Paris agreement.

9:59 Climate change is the next subject. Biden is asked first, and his response is largely word salad. Take a drink.

9:57 Captain Morgan’s rum is like drinking perfume.

9:56 No insurance funded anti-M4A ads. I am surprised.

9:53 Ad break, and I am drunk.

9:52 Biden is now begging to have some questions thrown his way. Take a drink.

9:50 Klobuchar calls Buttigieg a loser. (His disastrous Indiana Secretary of State campaign) Hah!!!! Drink.

9:48 Calling out Klobuchar not being able to recall the President of Mexico is bullshit, and I HATE Klobuchar.

9:47 Sanders notes that Bloomberg wanted to cut social security and ACTIVELY CAMPAIGNED for Bush in 2004. Good point.

9:45 Biden notes that Bloomberg could release them this moment. Nice hit.

9:42 Oh, snap. Warren’s response, “Bloomberg’s defense is that I’ve been nice to SOME women.” Calls for Bloomberg to release the women from the non disclosure agreement. Blood drawn, and Bloomberg is sounding awfully snippy.

9:39 Bloomberg is challenged on his refusal to release his tax returns. His response is, “We’re working on it, but it will take a while, until after most of the delegates are allocated.” Asshole. Take a drink.

9:35 The shot at Bernie on his health status. What Sanders has released is a detailed description of health status.

9:33 Klobuchar is confronted on her refusal to investigate police misconduct and the case of of a highly dubious conviction. She shucked and jived on this.

9:31 Warren notes that “Stop and Frisk” was intended to terrorize peoples of color, and that Bloomberg’s apology was profoundly insincere/

9:29 Bloomberg is still defending, “Stop and Frisk.” He claims that he stopped it when it got out of hand. HE DID NOT. As Biden notes, Bloomberg was FORCED to abandon the policy, he fought dropping the policy tooth and nail. Point Biden.

9:26 Biden notes that Bloomberg called Obamacare a “Disgrace”. Good point, but Biden is largely invisible.

9:26 Warren went after Klobuchar’s plan, and notes that it constitutes only 2 paragraphs.

9:24 Sanders notes that we are the only industrialized nation that does not have public health system. Drink.

9:22 Klobuchar’s claiming Post-It Notes for Spain Minnesota is kind of amusing.

9:19 Warren (IMHO correctly) accuses of Buttigieg and Klobuchar of having phony healthcare plans, sand makes the point that take the wins and move forward. (Not unreasonable) I like her description of Klobuchar’s plan as a “Post-It Note”.

9:16 Amy Klobuchar claims that nominating a woman will end misogyny on the internet, because that worked so well in 2016. That level of stupid is worth a double.

9:14 Buttigieg accuses Bernie of fomenting nastiness on the internet. Seriously? Twitter is a f%$#ing cesspool, and the “Bernie Bros” is a fraud.

9:11 Colloquy between Sanders and Buttigieg, and Buttigieg restates Bloomberg’s republican talking
points about Medicare for All.  Take a drink.

9:09: Buttigieg makes the point that Bloomberg is not a a real Democrat.  Touche.

9:07: Biden says that he polls best, so he should be the nominee.  Meh.

9:05: Klobuchar piles on too, goes with her, “I’m the only heartland-American here,” schtick.  Drink.

9:02: First question, to Sanders, “Why won’t Bloomberg be the moderate who can beat Trump?

Sanders response, “You need turnout, and Mayor Stop and Frisk won’t drive turnout.”

Bloomberg, “Medicare for all, is taking people’s insurance away.”  Bullsh%$.”

Warren unloads a can of whup ass, and notes that Boomberg has said a lot of Trumpesque misogynist sh%$.  Take a drink.

9:00: Introductions. 

8:59:  I am doing rum (Captain Morgan’s) and coke.

I am liveblogging/drunkblogging the debates again, and this time,I will be using a slightly modified version of Matt Taibbi’s drinking game.

End Stage Capitalism

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Aside from pockets of overt racism, one of the more weirdly unpleasant corners of Twitter comes from its “promoted” content. What ostensibly started as a tool for big-name brands to drive the “reach” and “impact” of whatever message they might be promoting, it’s since devolved into another kind of marketing tool that’s just kind of…. weird. Not weird in the tracking-you-everywhere-you-go kind of way, but weird, in the just plain weird way.

Not unlike the bonkers hallucinations reported by patients on death’s door, the spammy, click-baity, and sometimes downright disturbing promoted tweets cropping up onto people’s feeds are symptomatic of Twitter’s own ad platform rotting from the inside out.

Here’s a recent example: This week, freelance journalist Tyler Coates apparently had a grisly promo for an organ-buying service crop up onto his feed.

— Tyler Coates (@tylercoates) February 12, 2020


There is something profoundly broken in our economic system.