Over at the Washington Post, Elizabeth Bruenig wonders, “Young voters have Buttigieg and Beto. So why do they prefer old socialists?“

Young voters are not looking for someone like them, they a looking for someone who does the right thing, and all the speaking multiple languages and skateboarding doesn’t matter.

They are going for old farts not named Biden because they are actually addressing long term problems rather than trying to convince people how awesome they are.

This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.

The drug company decided not to pursue further studies because its patent on the drug is about to expire:

A team of researchers inside Pfizer made a startling find in 2015: The company’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis therapy Enbrel, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug, appeared to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 64 percent.

The results were from an analysis of hundreds of thousands of insurance claims. Verifying that the drug would actually have that effect in people would require a costly clinical trial — and after several years of internal discussion, Pfizer opted against further investigation and chose not to make the data public, the company confirmed.

Researchers in the company’s division of inflammation and immunology urged Pfizer to conduct a clinical trial on thousands of patients, which they estimated would cost $80 million, to see if the signal contained in the data was real, according to an internal company document obtained by The Washington Post.

………

The company told The Post that it decided during its three years of internal reviews that Enbrel did not show promise for Alzheimer’s prevention because the drug does not directly reach brain tissue. It deemed the likelihood of a successful clinical trial to be low. A synopsis of its statistical findings prepared for outside publication, it says, did not meet its “rigorous scientific standards.’’

………

Some outside scientists disagree with Pfizer’s assessment that studying Enbrel’s potential in Alzheimer’s prevention is a scientific dead end. Rather, they say, it could hold important clues to combating the disease and slowing cognitive decline in its earliest stages.

Some outside scientists disagree with Pfizer’s assessment that studying Enbrel’s potential in Alzheimer’s prevention is a scientific dead end. Rather, they say, it could hold important clues to combating the disease and slowing cognitive decline in its earliest stages.

………

Meanwhile, Enbrel has reached the end of its patent life. Profits are dwindling as generic competition emerges, diminishing financial incentives for further research into Enbrel and other drugs in its class.

Capitalism, you gotta love it.

They followed the North Miami Beach Police sniper team and discovered that the cops had been using mugshots of black men for target practice, including a phtograph of one of the guardsmen’s brothers:

A South Florida family is outraged at North Miami Beach Police after mug shots of African American men were used as targets at a shooting range for police training.

It was an ordinary Saturday morning last month when Sgt. Valerie Deant arrived at the shooting range in Medley, or so she thought.

Deant, who plays clarinet with the Florida Army National Guard’s 13th Army Band, and her fellow soldiers were at the shooting range for their annual weapons qualifications training.

What the soldiers discovered when they entered the range made them angry: mug shots of African American men apparently used as targets by North Miami Beach Police snipers, who had used the range before the Guardsmen. Even more startling for Deant, one of the images was her brother. It was Woody Deant’s mug shot that taken 15 years ago, after he was arrested in connection to a drag race in 2000 that left two people dead. His mug shot was among the pictures of five minorities used as targets by North Miami Beach police, all of them riddled by bullets.

“I was like ‘why is my brother being used for target practice?’” Deant asked.

Your brother is being used for target practice because he is black, and because the North Miami Beach Police sniper team is a sociopathic and racist organization.

The degree to which racism and brutality are unthinkingly incorporated into law enforcement culture in the United States truly deplorable.

It looks like Oliver North has been fired as president of the NRA amid claims that he attempted to force Wayne LaPierre’s resignation by threatening to reveal his self dealing:

National Rifle Association President Oliver North has been ousted after an alleged extortion scheme within the group’s highest-ranking officials came to light on Friday. In a statement, North told the organization he was “informed” he would not be nominated for reelection. North’s term ends Monday.

The NRA’s chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, wrote a letter to the board Thursday accusing North of plotting to remove him from the group by threatening to release to the board “damaging” information about LaPierre. He claimed North, a former Marine Corps lieutenant colonel perhaps best known for his role in the Iran-contra affair, was pressuring him to resign over alleged financial transgressions.

“Delivered by a member of our Board on behalf of his employer, the exhortation was simple: resign or there will be destructive allegations made against me and the NRA,” LaPierre wrote in the letter, which was published Friday by the Wall Street Journal.

………

On Saturday, at the NRA’s annual meeting in Indianapolis, Richard Childress, a vice president at the NRA, read what amounted to a resignation letter from North that announced and explained his departure.

………

North continued his resignation letter by saying he believes the NRA should establish a committee to review the organization’s finances, which he said constitute a “clear crisis” that “needs to be dealt with” if the NRA wants to continue to be a viable organization.

The NRA’s board, comprising 76 members, is scheduled to meet Monday.

………

The Wall Street Journal reported that North, who became NRA president last year, defended himself in a letter to the board Thursday, indicating his actions were “for the good of the NRA.” North previously wrote a longer letter to the board’s executive committee, alleging LaPierre had made more than $200,000 of wardrobe purchases and charged them to a vendor.

………

The back-and-forth is apparently fueled by a growing rift in a decades-long relationship between the NRA and the advertising agency Ackerman McQueen, according to the Journal. The NRA filed a lawsuit against Ackerman McQueen this month in Virginia alleging the firm had not been transparent in justifying its billings. In a statement to the Journal, Ackerman McQueen argued it was complying and called the lawsuit “frivolous, inaccurate and intended to cause harm to the reputation of our company.”

The suit specifically mentions a contract between Ackerman McQueen and North, the Journal reports, who was hired by the agency last year to host an NRATV documentary program, which LaPierre says nets him “millions of dollars annually.”

LaPierre detailed a phone call between one of his staff members and North that took place Wednesday, in which North allegedly suggested Ackerman McQueen was prepared to release an “allegedly damaging letter to the entire NRA board.”

“The letter would contain a devastating account for our financial status, sexual harassment charges against a staff member, accusations of wardrobe expenses and excessive staff travel expenses,” LaPierre wrote. “But then, Col. North explained the letter would not be sent — if I were to promptly resign as your Executive Vice President. And, if I supported Col. North’s continued tenure as president, he stated he could ‘negotiate’ an ‘excellent retirement’ for me.”

I am very amused.

The timing, of course, was part of the intent. A gunman with a semiautomatic rifle walked into the Chabad of Poway synagogue during services Saturday morning and opened fire. It was the last day of Passover. At least one person was killed and three were wounded, while uncounted others have again been seared with mortal fear, all in the name of hate.

This is the second deadly synagogue attack in the United States in six months, following the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in October. That was the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history, leaving 11 people dead.

How can this be happening? What kind of shocking step backward is this?

For a while it was possible to look at anti-Semitic incidents — the swastikas painted on walls, the vile anti-Jewish rhetoric found on social media, the street attacks — as aberrational, as strange anachronistic bumps on the generally straight path forward for Jews in society.

But it is becoming clear that anti-Semitism is on the rise, both here and in Europe. France reported a 74% increase in anti-Jewish offenses in 2018, and in Germany, violent anti-Semitic attacks surged by more than 60%. In the U.S., the Anti-Defamation League has documented an alarming rise in hate incidents against Jews. According to the organization, anti-Semitic incidents jumped 57% in 2017 over the previous year. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned in January that “we must rise up against rising anti-Semitism.”

We still have more to learn about the Poway attack, but a 19-year-old suspect has been arrested, and local officials are calling this a hate crime.

Seriously, fuck them, and fuck Trump, and fuck anyone whose cowardice leads them not to speak up.

Yes, I know that this is snark, but I guarantee you that someone will pitch something like this to the French as a 21^st century update for Notre Dame de Paris:

Restoration of Notre Dame should be mindful of its past while revealing its unique potential as an urban mixed-use development. Here at Pick Rogarth + Baumsnatch, we believe… pic.twitter.com/7XkTyPppo7

— C:temp (@BryceElder) April 16, 2019

I know, it’s a joke, but that the joker is going to hell for this, because this is WAY too close to reality.

As I noted earlier, my Mother-in-Law is in hospital for infections, so instead of flying down to Memphis to spend Passover with my Sister-in-Laws family, we had our Seder in her hospital room.

It was cramped, and odd.

I’m sure that there other people have had odder Seders, but these 2, Friday and Saturday, were odd, with Marilyn in her hospital bed, and the rest of us around a card table.

Cramped, but we made it work.

Much to his chagrin, she has enthusiastically accepted, and now Representative Barr is desperately trying to find a way to revoke his invitation:

Last month, a clip of New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went predictably viral after she forcefully responded to one of her colleagues on the House Financial Services Committee when he called climate change an “elitist” concern. “Wanting clean air and water is not elitist,” she said.

In response, Kentucky Republican congressman Andy Barr invited Ocasio-Cortez to come meet coal miners in his state “who will tell you what the Green New Deal would mean for their families, their paychecks.” His concern, he said, is that the Green New Deal would phase out U.S. reliance on coal and fossil fuel, which would wreak havoc on the lives of people who work in those industries. Ocasio-Cortez accepted, saying she’d be “happy” to go, adding that the Green New Deal was written to fund coal-miner pensions. “We want a just transition to make sure we are investing in jobs across those swaths of the country,” she said.

All in all, it seemed like an uncharacteristically cordial exchange for two members of Congress. And not even a month later, that cordiality is out the window: Barr attached a rather inhospitable and obnoxious demand to his invitation, writing in a letter posted to Twitter that she should “apologize to [Texas representative Dan Crenshaw] prior to coming to visit Kentucky,” for a completely unrelated event before meeting with miners. The public scolding over purported incivility, along with the random call for an apology to a colleague from a completely different state, leaves the impression that the Barr might not want her to come to Kentucky after all.

Crenshaw was one of the first and most vociferous critics to pile on to Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar for out-of-context comments about 9/11. Strangely enough, Barr didn’t seem to think that Crenshaw directing an Islamaphobic attack towards Omar, culminating in an increase in death threats, demonstrated “a lack of civility.” When Crenshaw shared a tweet that falsely claimed Omar said the 9/11 attacks weren’t terrorism, Ocasio-Cortez pointed out: “You refuse to co-sponsor the 9/11 Victim’s Compensation Fund, yet have the audacity to drum resentment towards Ilhan w/completely out-of-context quotes. In 2018, right-wing extremists were behind almost ALL US domestic terrorist killings. Why don’t you go do something about that?”

………

Uninviting Ocasio-Cortez is probably a smart move on Barr’s part in the long run. For one thing, there aren’t any active coal mines in Barr’s district. And James Comer, another Republican representative from Kentucky, told local news that he didn’t “see any upside” to having her come to Kentucky. “I think a lot of Republicans are making a mistake picking on her. I think we need to be very prepared when we debate her on issues that we’re having a hard time with.”

(emphasis mine)

So, once Barr realized that:

• Ocasio-Cortez was eager to talk to coal miners and
• She’d probably have him for lunch.

He decided to require that she apologize for calling out another Republican who was actively trying to encourage some random nut job to ASSASSINATE one of her colleagues.

Really classy.

Here is another one: anytime Facebook claims that it violated user privacy unintentionally:

Facebook harvested the email contacts of 1.5 million users without their knowledge or consent when they opened their accounts.

Since May 2016, the social-networking company has collected the contact lists of 1.5 million users new to the social network, Business Insider can reveal. The Silicon Valley company said the contact data was “unintentionally uploaded to Facebook,” and it is now deleting them.

The revelation comes after pseudononymous security researcher e-sushi noticed that Facebook was asking some users to enter their email passwords when they signed up for new accounts to verify their identities, a move widely condemned by security experts. Business Insider then discovered that if you entered your email password, a message popped up saying it was “importing” your contacts without asking for permission first.

At the time, it wasn’t clear what was happening — but on Wednesday, Facebook disclosed to Business Insider that 1.5 million people’s contacts were collected this way and fed into Facebook’s systems, where they were used to improve Facebook’s ad targeting, build Facebook’s web of social connections, and recommend friends to add.

Yeah, “Unintentionally,” right.

Every time such an error is revealed, and it seems to be about every 6 months, it always is something that makes Facebook more money.

To quote Richard Dreyfuss, “This was no boating accident.”

Maybe Rich Liberals Don’t Hate Sanders Because They Fear He Can’t Win, But Because They’re Rich

—Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

Takes on the assumption that the New York Times makes in their article, you know, the, “From canapé-filled fund-raisers on the coasts,” one, that rich donors are acting for the good of the party, as opposed to their own personal interests:

Why does the New York Times take rich liberals at their word that their concern with Bernie Sanders is that he would lose to Trump, rather than the obvious, glaring fact that his election would run counter to their interests?

………

That a network of multi-millionaire and billionaire donors would dislike a candidate who not only rejects their funding, but is actively trying to tax them at rates not seen since 1960, would surely be enough reason to explain why these wealthy elites would want to “stop” his nomination. But not to the credulous New York Times, which takes at face value rich donors’ claim to oppose Sanders because they believe he simply can’t defeat Trump:

………

Because it would be unseemly to suggest a group of super-rich hedge fund managers, Hollywood producers and CEOs would dislike a candidate who has made a career out of promising to expropriate the bulk of their wealth, we get a faux pragmatism argument. But polls show Sanders defeating Trump with numbers comparable to any other declared candidate—a fact the New York Times never bothers to mention, letting the idea go unchallenged that “socialist” (!!) Sanders is an electoral liability. The simpler, less altruistic motive is simply never entertained.

It’s a variation on the Inexplicable Republican Best Friend trope FAIR previously documented (2/26/19): Instead of assuming that lifelong conservatives may just prefer more conservative politicians, progressive-bashing GOP pundits are propped up as neutral observers simply looking out for the Democratic Party. Just the same, super-wealthy Democratic donors can’t oppose Sanders because they simply prefer more centrist, pro-Wall Street candidates; they must have a sincere, pragmatic concern he would lose the general election.

They are voting with their bloated wallets.

Normally, this would be thought less serious than, for example, the ruling against China’s claims to the South China sea, except that one of the islands is the US mega-base at Diego Garcia.

The British government expelled all every resident of the island to accommodate the US military, so this could get ugly.

If the British blink, I would expect the Pentagon to continue squatting on the island:

The UK has been ordered to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius “as rapidly as possible” after the United Nations’ highest court ruled that continued British occupation of the remote Indian Ocean archipelago is illegal.

Although the majority decision by the international court of justice in The Hague is only advisory, the unambiguous clarity of the judges’ pronouncement is a humiliating blow to Britain’s prestige on the world stage.

The case was referred to the court, which hears legal submissions over international boundary disputes, after an overwhelming vote in 2017 in the UN assembly in the face of fierce opposition from a largely isolated UK.

Delivering judgment, the president of the ICJ, Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, said the detachment of the Chagos archipelago in 1965 from Mauritius had not been based on a “free and genuine expression of the people concerned”.

“This continued administration constitutes a wrongful act,” he added. “The UK has an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos archipelago as rapidly as possible and that all member states must co-operate with the United Nations to complete the decolonization of Mauritius.”

………

The judgment represents a significant defeat for the UK on virtually every point it contested in the hearing last September.

By a majority of 13 to one, the court found that the decolonisation of Mauritius had not been lawfully completed and that it must be completed “as rapidly as possible”. The only judge dissenting from the main opinion was an American.

Of course the only judge dissenting was American.  We want that airbase.

That British deported the entire population of the island chain to facilitate this.

It was an immoral theft of these people’s homeland.

This video shows Elliot Abrams, a man who supported and justified the murder of civilians, genocide, and the rape and murder of nuns in the 1980s, expressing shock and outrage that he was confronted on his record of psychopathic mayhem. (And his record of lying to Congress, but that’s a pretty minor mark on his ledger by comparison)

The very serious people in Washington are shocked that freshman Representative Ilhan Omar actually confronted him about this.

F%$# those delicate snowflakes, and f%$# them for rehabilitating a f%$#ing genocidal maniac.

May their names be obliterated as well. (that is what יש”ו stands for)

This week started with a terrifying bang, when German and French negotiators announced a deal to revive the worst parts of the new EU Copyright Directive though a compromise on “Article 13,” which requires copyright filters for any online service that allows the public to communicate.

The Franco-German “compromise” was truly awful: German politicians, worried about a backlash at home, had insisted on some cosmetic, useless exemptions for small businesses; French negotiators were unwilling to consider even these symbolic nods towards fairness and consideration for free speech, competition, and privacy.

The deal they brokered narrowed the proposed German exemptions to such a degree that they’d be virtually impossible to use, meaning that every EU-based forum for online communications would have to find millions and millions to pay for filters — and subject their users to arbitrary algorithmic censorship as well as censorship through deliberate abuse of the system — or go out of business.

Now that a few days have passed, European individuals, businesses, lobby groups and governments have weighed in on the proposal and everyone hates it.

(emphasis original)
A partial list of people who hate the deal:

• Bertelsmann, the largest publisher in the world.
• The people of Portugal.
• The recording industry.  (Not a typo)
• The government of Italy.

Article 13 is shaping up to be a “Douglas Adams” level of legislative insanity, where at each stage, it is replaced by something even more bizarrely  inexplicable.

^*In an earlier post, I suggested that I was too pessimistic about the progress of the EU’s disastrous, “Article 13,” proposals.  It appears that my pessimism might have been justified.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) stated in a filing Wednesday that full compliance with a wildfire prevention court order would cost between $75 billion and $150 billion.

The US District Court for the Northern District of California proposed on January 9 to require PG&E to re-inspect all of its electrical grid and remove or trim any trees that could fall on the lines and fix all conductors that may push together. These changes were required to be completed before the 2019 wildfire season, which starts June 21, 2019.

The court declared in a preliminary finding last week that based on evidence presented, that uninsulated power conductors are often pushed together due to fallen trees or limbs. This then caused sparks to fall on the vegetation below which pose an “extreme danger” of starting a wildfire. The equipment was called a common cause of California wildfires in 2017 and 2018 that have been attributed to PG&E.

………

PG&E is accused of starting wildfires through reckless operation or maintenance of its power lines. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has not concluded investigations into the 2018 Camp Fire or other 2018 wildfires, but the law suit states that the organization found evidence of state law violations in eleven 2017 wildfires. 

Screw them.

They have been doing this for years, and have never got anything more than bailouts from the California legislature.

They need to be “Arthur Andersoned” with extreme prejudice.

The corporation should be executed in the public square as a warning to others.

Two politicians from Amazon.com Inc.’s hometown traveled across the country to New York to deliver a cautionary message about the company’s expansion in the city.

Members of the Seattle City Council, Lisa Herbold and Teresa Mosqueda, are urging elected officials in New York to pass legislation now that will address potential housing and transportation issues that will inevitably follow in the wake of Amazon’s decision to build a major new campus in Queens. Both are speaking Monday at an event hosted by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which has been backing efforts to organize workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island.

“I hope they can learn from Seattle’s experiences and create a set of new expectations for corporate responsibility that can benefit the working poor who work for Amazon and other people priced out of housing in high cost cities everywhere,” Herbold said in an emailed statement ahead of the event.

………

Members of the Seattle City Council, Lisa Herbold and Teresa Mosqueda, are urging elected officials in New York to pass legislation now that will address potential housing and transportation issues that will inevitably follow in the wake of Amazon’s decision to build a major new campus in Queens. Both are speaking Monday at an event hosted by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which has been backing efforts to organize workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island.

“I hope they can learn from Seattle’s experiences and create a set of new expectations for corporate responsibility that can benefit the working poor who work for Amazon and other people priced out of housing in high cost cities everywhere,” Herbold said in an emailed statement ahead of the event.

It really remarkable when politicians cross the country to tell people that the largest employer in their city is a contemptible greed head.

You know the Russian meddling in the Senate election where Doug Jones defeated Roy “10 Commandments” Moore?

It not turns out that it was a false flag operation by a Democratic Party consultant: (I’m sure that he was well remunerated)

Reid Hoffman, the tech billionaire whose money was spent on Russian-style social media deception in a Senate race last year, apologized on Wednesday, saying in a statement that he had not approved the operation and did not support such tactics in American politics.

Why am I thinking that Mr. Hoffman is lying through his teeth, and that he either knew what was going on, or was willfully blind?

Mr. Hoffman said he had no idea that political operatives whose work he had financed had used fakery on Facebook and Twitter in the special Senate election a year ago in Alabama. But he had an obligation to track how his money was spent, he said, and he promised to exercise more care in the future.

………

The New York Times and The Washington Post reported last week that $100,000 from Mr. Hoffman was spent on a deceptive social media campaign to aid Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate, who barely defeated the Republican, Roy Moore.

………

They also used thousands of Twitter accounts to make it appear as if automated Russian bot accounts were following and supporting Mr. Moore, according to an internal report on the project. The apparent Russian support for Mr. Moore drew broad news media coverage.

(emphasis mine)

It really remarkable just how facile the Democratic Party political consultant community has in stepping on their own penises.

Yet another example of how the Dems snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

We really need to fire the whole lot of them.

Trump should build his Wall out of Hillary’s Emails since no one can seem to get over them.

I have no clue as to the source, it was related to me 3^rd hand, but it is f%$#ing brilliant.

Yeah, I should have gone to their offices and thrown shoes at them

The Weekly Standard was just shut down:

The Weekly Standard, the conservative political and cultural magazine, will shut down after its last issue appears on Monday, the chief executive of its parent company said Friday.

The Washington-based magazine’s 35-member editorial staff will be laid off as a result, said Ryan McKibben, the head of Clarity Media Group, the Colorado company that owns the Standard and its sister publication, the Washington Examiner newspaper.

“This was a business decision,” McKibben said. “As we looked at all of our options, we saw we were facing a steady decline in revenues and circulation. That drove us to our decision to close this week. . . . It was a tough decision.”

Staffers who were told of the closure by McKibben at a morning meeting on Friday were skeptical of the business rationale, saying Clarity has invested heavily in the Washington Examiner, with far greater losses than those produced by the Weekly Standard.

Several noted the timing of the closure announcement, calling it “the Christmas massacre.”

The Standard was founded in 1995 by three journalists — Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes and John Podhoretz — with funding from conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch sold his interest to billionaire Philip Anschutz in 2009.

Anyone who calls Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes, or John Podhoretz “Journalists” has a twisted view of the Fourth Estate.

Employees have been told they will receive severance pay in exchange for signing a nondisclosure and nondisparagement agreement.

How utterly proper.

Don’t worry about their employees though, I’m sure that wingnut welfare will take care of them.

With all the gloom and doom about the upcoming trade war with China, the fact that China has cut tariffs on US autos.

This does seem to be a bit of a climb-down on their side.

Progress toward easing the steep tariffs China imposed on U.S. vehicle imports this year lifted carmaker stocks across the globe, as investors wagered on a thawing of tensions that have damaged the world’s biggest automotive market.

Toyota Motor Corp. and Hyundai Motor Co. tracked earlier gains for Daimler AG, General Motors Co. and Tesla Inc. after Bloomberg News reported that a proposal to eliminate the 25 percent surcharge slapped onto U.S.-made cars this year has been submitted to China’s cabinet. The plan would be reviewed in coming days, people familiar with the matter said.

The levy forms the backbone of China’s response to a trade war instigated by President Donald Trump as he seeks to reset trade relations and spur manufacturing in the U.S. Car sales in China have fallen for six straight months after decades of almost uninterrupted growth, and while there are other factors, the tit-for-tat jabs between the world’s biggest economies have played a role.

As Yves Smith observes, “Um, this does not look like Trump is losing the trade war.”

When It Comes to American Jobs, the US Could Learn from Its Largest Sex-Furniture Manufacturer

—Quartz

It’s more than just occupying a niche.

It’s local sourcing,  a skilled and well remunerated (and hence stable) workforce, a deserved reputation for quality, and good communication with customers.