Holy Sh%$

We now know why the Cole bombing lawyers at Guantánamo resigned, they found a microphone concealed in the room used for lawyer-client conferences, and the court has refused to discuss this. Under these conditions, now only would I have resigned, I'd have seriously considered defecting to Russia and revealing all the crap that they have pulled:

Lawyers for the alleged USS Cole bombing mastermind quit the capital case after discovering a microphone in their special client meeting room and were denied the opportunity to either talk about or investigate it, the Miami Herald has learned.

The narrative, contained in a 15-page prosecution filing obtained by the Herald, is the first authoritative description of the episode that caused three civilian defense attorneys to resign from the death-penalty case of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri on ethical grounds: Rick Kammen, a seasoned death-penalty defender, and Rosa Eliades and Mary Spears. In fact, the prosecution says the listening device that lawyers discovered in an early August inspection of their special meeting room was a legacy of past interrogations — and, across 50 days of ostensibly confidential attorney-client meetings, was never turned on.

The description, an eight-paragraph, declassified version of something the public was not allowed to know until this week, was contained in a prosecution filing at the U.S. Court of Military Commissions Review signed by the chief prosecutor for military commissions, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, and three appellate lawyers on his staff.

It says that, after the three lawyers quit the case in October, prison workers “removed flooring, walls, and fixtures” in an attorney-client meeting site exclusively used by Nashiri and his lawyers and “confirmed that legacy microphones, which were not connected to any audio listening/recording device nor in an operable condition, were removed.”

I don't believe them, and neither do the lawyers who quit:

Kammen, reached by the Herald, called the prosecution account “outrageous” and “really grotesque selective declassification” designed to permit “some portion of the truth to seep out, but only in ways that the government feels will help it.”

At the time of their resignations, Kammen said he was only allowed to say that something had occurred, which he could not describe; that he sought discovery from the judge in order to investigate the episode as well as a hearing, and the requests were denied it. The judge’s denial is classified.

“Our concerns were much greater than what they appear to admit was there,” he said. He added, however, that even the portion the prosecution now permits the public to know “demonstrates that either Colonel Spath was lied to by the government or in many of his statements he was lying to the public, the press and the victims in a way that was absolutely shameful and disgraceful — by casting it as fake news.”

………

War court watchers wondered why the discovery was considered a national security secret in the first place.

“If this really was an innocuous slip-up with unplugged microphones, why has the government apparently tried so hard to cover it up?” Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, told the Herald.

“What else is being kept secret?” Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, said in a tweet.

These military commissions have always been a travesty, as this incident clearly shows.

One down, Nine Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety Nine to Go

Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud.

The obvious follow-up question is, "What about the other guys?"

People like Lloyd Blankfein, Tim Sloan, Jamie Dimon, Brian Moynihan, etc.

A federal judge on Friday sentenced Martin Shkreli, the notorious former hedge fund manager, to seven years in prison for defrauding his investors of $10 million.

In imposing the sentence, U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto roughly split the difference between the 15 years prosecutors asked for and the up to 18 months sought by Shkreli’s defense team. Shkreli, 34, who delivered a tearful speech to Matsumoto apologizing for his conduct and pleading for leniency, did not react to the sentence.

A complicated picture of Shkreli emerged from the trial, said Matsumoto, who said the case had given her a case of insomnia. “It is more than clear that Mr. Shkreli is a gifted individual with a passion for science,” she said. But his crimes are serious and it is important to send a message that such fraud should be not tolerated, she said. “White collar offenders like Mr. Shkreli use their intelligence and acumen to elude detection,” she said.

Shkreli, best known for raising the price of an AIDS drug by 5,000 percent when he was chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, was convicted last August of defrauding the investors in his hedge funds, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare. Shkreli lied to obtain investors’ money and then didn’t tell them when he made a bad stock bet that led to massive losses, prosecutors argued. Instead, they said, he raised more money to pay off other investors, or took money and stock from Retrophin, a drug company he founded.

We need to throw a whole bunch more people in jail, but it ain't gonna happen.

Off to Oregon

Flying into a no longer epicly carpeted Portland International Airport (PDX) and then going to Nescowin to hang with my dad and my brothers.

Some beer will be consumed, and much flatulence is anticipated.

Sorry folks, but that is about as gangsta as the Saroff males get.

The long suffering Saroff females on the other hand………

Jeff Bezos Is Attempting to Upload His Consciousness to a Machine

Let's look at the checklist of scary sh%$ that Alexa does:

• Listens to everything you say.
• Doesn't really care except to sell you more sh%$.
• Doesn't really understand the real you.
• Doesn't care that they don't understand the real you.
• Doesn't give a sh%$ about people generally.

And here is the final bit, unexpected bursts of weird incongruous laughter.

I can only conclude that this is a result of Bezos attempting to upload his consciousness to the cloud:

Over the past few days, users with Alexa-enabled devices have reported hearing strange, unprompted laughter. Amazon responded to the creepiness today in a statement to The Verge, saying, “We’re aware of this and working to fix it.”

………

As noted in media reports and a trending Twitter moment, Alexa seemed to start laughing without being prompted to wake. People on Twitter and Reddit reported that they thought it was an actual person laughing near them, which is certainly scary if you’re home alone. Many responded to the cackling sounds by unplugging their Alexa-enabled devices.

I'm beginning to think that this whole Internet thing was a mistake.

And in the TX-7 Primary

The Democratic side is going to a runoff, with Lizzie Fletcher getting the most votes  with the condemned by the DCCC Laura Moser close behind.

The Emily's List endorsed Fletcher is a union buster lawyer, so even if the DCCC had not released an opposition research dump on Moser, she would have my support.

With the DCCC's war on Moser though, I'm actually interested in what would otherwise be an obscure, Congressional race.

It's highly unlikely that either can win the general:  7% more Republicans turned out than Democrats, and for them, the primary was meaningless, with the incumbent getting 76% of the vote.

Moser's campaign website is here.

Send her money, and tell the Blue Dog loving DCCC to go cheney themselves.

Gee, You Think?

Some days, it's Republicans who stun me with their ability to exceed my lowest expectations.

Some days, it's Donald Trump who stuns me with their ability to exceed my lowest expectations.

Some days, it's Democrats who stun me with their ability to exceed my lowest expectations.

Some days, it's Monsanto who stuns me with their ability to exceed my lowest expectations.

And then, there is Facebook:

Facebook has apologized for sending out a survey to find out how the social network should respond when adult men ask teenaged girls for sexually explicit images.

The survey, which went out to an undisclosed number of users of the social network over the weekend, posed this question:

In thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook's policies, how would you handle the following: a private message in which an adult man asks a 14 year old girl for sexual pictures.

• This content should be allowed on Facebook, and I would not mind seeing it.
• This content should be allowed on Facebook, but I don't want to see it.
• This content should not be allowed on Facebook, and no one should be able to see it.
• I have no preference on this topic.

Missing is any acknowledgement that soliciting sexual imagery from minors is a crime in many countries, including the US and the UK, to say nothing of facilitating the distribution of such content on your website.

How I long for the quiet competence and high moral standards that Microsoft showed (only by comparison) when it ruled the world.

Should I Start a GoFundMe?*

Poster child for backpfeifengesicht, a face that needs to be punched

Pharma bro Martin Shkreli will have to forfeit $7.6 million, including his copy of the Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon A Time in Shaolin as a result.

My heart bleeds borscht:

The disgraced pharmaceutical executive and hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli must forfeit $7.36 million in assets (PDF) to the federal government following his fraud conviction, a judge ruled Monday. The assets set for forfeiture (PDF) include the single copy of the Wu-Tang album Once Upon A Time in Shaolin that Shkreli reportedly bought for $2 million, as well as a painting by Pablo Picasso.

The forfeiture follows Shkreli’s conviction last October on three of eight counts of securities and wire fraud. The federal government had indicted Shkreli in December of 2015 for running a Ponzi-like scheme, alleging he defrauded investors in two hedge funds he managed and siphoned millions from his pharmaceutical company, Retrophin, to cover losses.

Oh, the horror.

^*For the snark impaired, if I do actually start a GoFundMe, it will be done ironically.

Another Stopped Clock Moment

Over at the 2^nd worst OP/ED page in the nation, they are wringing their hands at the demise of the most transparent CIA front in history, the National Endowment for Democracy:

Speaking to the British Parliament in 1982, President Ronald Reagan called on the United States “to foster the infrastructure of democracy” to help ensure that people around the world were empowered to determine their own fates. Now, at this increasingly fraught moment for freedom around the world, the Trump administration wants to dismantle that infrastructure.

Buried in the State Department’s fiscal 2019 budget request is a proposal not only to slash the budget of the National Endowment for Democracy but also to disassemble its relationships with its core institutes, including the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute. For the NED and those institutes, the proposal is an assault not only on their organizations but also on the pro-democracy mission they are dedicated to.

“If implemented, the proposal would gut the program, force crippling layoffs and the symbolic meaning would also be shattering, sending a signal far and wide that the United States is turning its back on supporting brave people who share our values,” said NED President Carl Gershman.

The Trump administration proposal would allow the NED to continue issuing small grants but move funding of its core institutes to the State Department, where the IRI and NDI would have to compete with private contractors. The organizations involved argue that keeping funding decisions at arm’s length from the State Department allows the NED network to do things on the edges of the pro-democracy movement that the U.S. government can’t or won’t, such as supporting Chinese dissidents in ways that upset Beijing.

The NED has been little more than a a front for regime change efforts for our state security apparatus since its founding.

It is a cover for, "A boot stamping on a human face - forever," fomenting civil wars and civil unrest against regimes deemed insufficiently pliant.

This is why, for example, the NED has been largely silent regarding the excesses of the House of Saud.

Good riddance, even if its demise is for the wrong reason.  (We know that it's the wrong reason because it's Trump and his Evil Minions^™ doing this.)

And, Once Again, United Airlines Says, "Here, Hold My Beer."

In the annals of poor management decisions, UAL's decision to replace a performance based bonus program with a lottery takes the cake:

Employees of United Airlines used to get quarterly bonuses if they hit certain performance targets. Now, they’ll all be entered into a lottery, out of which one—and only one—lucky person will win $100,000.

United president Scott Kirby broke the news in a memo on March 2, calling the change “an exciting new rewards program.” He noted that, in addition to the $100,000 award, quarterly prizes would also include luxury vacations, smaller cash awards, and Mercedes-Benz C-Class sedans. Instead of getting individual bonuses each quarter, workers who achieve their performance goals will be all entered into the drawing, from which winners will be chosen at random.

The change is not sitting well with employees themselves. ………

Gee, the employees aren't enthused at getting f%$#ed by the worst airline in the United States.

I think that United will be enjoying its time in the cellar.

This is the very apotheosis of American management culture.

Tweet of the Day

photo of U.S. Congress pic.twitter.com/MlKkgA5kUe

— IL for a People's Party (@MPP_Illinois) February 1, 2018

Yeah, pretty much.

Linkage

• Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) Sea level rise is accelerating; a 66cm (26 in) rise predicted by 2100.
• Diabetes is actually five separate diseases, research suggests (BBC) Could make a big difference in treatments.
• Getting the Inside Dope on Ketamine's Mysterious Ability to Rapidly Relieve Depression (Scientific American) Studies are preliminary, but it looks promising.
• MSNBC’s Big Names Completely Ignore West Virginia Teachers Strike (FAIR) Not surprised.  MSNBC's version of "Liberal Media" is the anti-union Democratic Party orthodoxy.
• Patent Office Puts Allergan's Mohawk Deal Out Of Its Misery (Seeking Alpha) Allergan's attempt to rent sovereign immunity got shut down.

From the '80s:

Meanwhile in Italy

It's still unclear, but it appears that neither major coalition has managed to secure a majority, which means that Italian politics are (once again) highly fluid:

Based on votes counted by 0230 GMT, ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition looks set to win the most seats in the lower house of parliament.

It is tipped to get 248-268 seats - below the 316 needed for a majority.

Forming a government may now take weeks of negotiation and coalition-building.

Alternatively, fresh elections could be held in a bid to produce a more decisive result - though there is no guarantee that would happen.

Vote projection figures put the anti-establishment Five Star Movement in second place. It has made significant gains and could emerge as the largest single party, with 216-236 lower house seats.

A centre-left coalition led by the governing Democratic Party stands in third place, with a projected 107-127 seats - its prospects battered by public anger over unemployment and immigration.

Final confirmed results are not expected for several hours.

The collapse of the center-left is not a surprise.

The core tenet of the center-left in the EU is support for the EU, and the EU is fundamentally a conservative neoliberal institution.

Unqualified support of the EU means that the center-left has already destroyed itself, and the voters are finally recognizing this.

About that Putin Speech

The Russians believe that US hostilities with them never ended, as Putin's recent speech eloquently illustrates:

Russia has developed a new array of nuclear weapons that are invincible, according to President Vladimir Putin.

Mr Putin made the claims as he laid out his key policies for a fourth presidential term, ahead of an election he is expected to win in 17 days' time.

The weapons he boasted of included a cruise missile that he said could "reach anywhere in the world".

He said of the West: "They need to take account of a new reality and understand ... [this]... is not a bluff."

Giving his annual state of the nation speech, Mr Putin used video presentations to showcase the development of two new nuclear delivery systems that he said could evade detection. One video graphic appeared to show missiles raining down on the US state of Florida.

This speech appears directed more toward the Russian electorate, the next Presidential election is about 2 weeks away, but it is a rather unwelcome development.

Most of the weapons shown are unlikely to reach full deployment.  I find the nuclear powered torpedo and drones to be rather fanciful.

On the other hand, I do believe that the R-28 Sarmat (NATO designation SS-X-30 Satan 2) will enter service, as well as the various hypersonic glide reentry vehicles, which should add significant complications to US missile defense systems.

It should be noted that the timing of these announcements does seem to be correspond to development being started when George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM treaty in 2002.

It's All about the Defense Contractors, Isn't It?

Iraq is looking at purchasing the S-400 surface to air missile system from Russia, and the US is threatening sanctions:

Having suffered two decades of US-led bombing campaigns, terrorist insurgency and sectarian violence, Iraq is now trying to protect its airspace. But the US threatens to slap it with sanctions if it buys Russian missile systems.

Baghdad has recently expressed interest in purchasing Russia’s advanced S-400 surface-to-air missile defense systems. However, if Iraq goes forward with the plan, it faces a dilemma: the US could potentially retaliate with sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act of 2017 (CAATSA).

"We want to purchase any weapons that will strengthen the security of Iraq and the country's armed forces. At the same time, we respect regional and international commitments,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim Jaafari told RIA Novosti on Wednesday. “There are a number of obstacles on the path [of buying] S-400 systems. The Iraqi side is still negotiating, and when the final decision is made, it will be considered," Jaafari added.

According to State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert, Iraq has already been warned that purchasing S-400 systems could violate CAATSA, which imposes sanctions on countries which purchase weapons from Moscow.

As confirmed by this official State Department Briefing, it appears that the US foreign policy apparatus has been become little more than a lever to sell US weapons systems.

This Has Got Me Seriously Geeking Out

First unit, with conventional controls


Fluidic controls illustrated

The University of Manchester is demonstrating fluidic controls on its Magma UAV.

Basically, it uses small puffs of air to interfere with the Coanda effect prove out-sized control effects:

A flight-test program this spring will attempt to prove supersonic air bled from an engine can provide directional control equivalent to conventional flying surfaces. The program also is aimed at investigating the potential of using exhaust vectoring to replace vertical tails. Possible applications run the gamut from enabling maneuvering with minimal impact on a radar cross-section, to increasing lift on heavy transport aircraft.

Magma, a project run by the University of Manchester, England, and supported by BAE Systems, attracted attention late in 2017 when its first flight was revealed. The September flights were with conventional control surfaces on the subscale unmanned aircraft, and mainly were concerned with establishing that a new airframe built to test fluidic-control technologies behaved as expected. Further flights, planned for late spring, are intended to demonstrate not just that these technologies work, but could in theory be inserted or removed from platforms quickly and easily.

………

The idea of using pressurized air from the engine to aid aircraft control has been around for some time. The Blackburn Buccaneer strike aircraft’s boundary-layer control system used air blown over the wings to assist carrier landings and increase control at low speeds, but Magma benefits from techniques and technologies that were unavailable during past programs.

………

“The air sticks to that rounded surface,” says Bill Crowther, a reader at the university and the Magma project’s academic lead, “but it also drags in the other air around it. So it acts like a virtual flap, without moving anything.”

Cool.

Poland, Meet Barbara Streisand

Poland's new law which forbids discussion of Polish complicity in the Holocaust has made discussion of Polish complicity in the Holocaust much more more likely.

Poland, meet the Streisand Effect:

The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet. It is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, their motivation to access and spread it is increased.

It appears that the Polish parliament IS a Polish joke:

But an effort to refocus attention on to Polish suffering, and away from the Holocaust, through a change to Poland’s anti-defamation law — which now makes it a crime for anyone, in any part of the world, to accuse “the Polish Nation” of complicity in Nazi war crimes — has backfired spectacularly.

The new law, which took effect this week, prompted widespread criticism from Israeli officials and Jewish groups in the United States — as well as Polish historians, Germany’s foreign minister and the State Department. In an effort to defuse tensions, Poland’s far-right, nationalist government has promised that the law will not be enforced in the coming weeks, until it can be reviewed by the nation’s constitutional court.

But even if the law is never enforced, the debate over the text of the amendment has already profoundly damaged Poland’s past and present reputation.

The clearest impact of the legislation has been to draw fresh attention to recent historical research which makes it plain that Poles rarely opposed and were frequently complicit in the persecution of their Jewish neighbors by the Nazis following the annexation of western Poland to Germany.

D'oh!

This is F%$#ed Up and Sh%$

It appears that Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee leaked communications of Mark Warner, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

The Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee were behind the leak of private text messages between the Senate panel’s top Democrat and a Russian-connected lawyer, according to two congressional officials briefed on the matter.

Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the committee’s Republican chairman, and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat, were so perturbed by the leak that they demanded a rare meeting with Speaker Paul D. Ryan last month to inform him of their findings. They used the meeting with Mr. Ryan to raise broader concerns about the direction of the House Intelligence Committee under its chairman, Representative Devin Nunes of California, the officials said.

To the senators, who are overseeing what is effectively the last bipartisan investigation on Capitol Hill into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the leak was a serious breach of protocol and a partisan attack by one intelligence committee against the other.

………

The messages between Mr. Warner and Adam Waldman, a Washington lawyer, show that the senator tried for weeks to arrange a meeting with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who assembled a dossier of salacious claims about connections between Mr. Trump, his associates and Russia. The Senate committee has had difficulty making contact with Mr. Steele, whom it views as a key witness. And Mr. Waldman, who knew Mr. Steele, presented himself as a willing partner.

………

Fox News published the texts, which were sent via a secure messaging application, in early February. President Trump and other Republicans loyal to him quickly jumped on the report to try to discredit Mr. Warner, suggesting that the senator was acting surreptitiously to try to talk to Mr. Steele.

………

Copies of the messages were originally submitted by Mr. Waldman to the Senate committee. In January, one of Mr. Nunes’s staff members requested that copies be shared with the House committee as well, according to a person familiar with the request who was not authorized to talk about it publicly. Days later, the messages were published by Fox News, the person said. Fox’s report said that it had obtained the documents from a Republican source it did not name.

The documents published by Fox News appear to back up the senators’ accusation. Though they were marked “CONFIDENTIAL: Produced to USSSCI on a Confidential Basis,” suggesting that they had come from the Senate panel, known as the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the person familiar with the congressional requests said that the stamp was misleading and that other markings gave away their actual origin.

Specifically, the copy of the messages shared with the Senate had page numbers, and the one submitted to the House — while preserving the reference to the Senate committee — did not.

A lawyer for Mr. Waldman independently concluded that the House committee had probably shared the document and sent a letter to Mr. Nunes complaining about the leak, according to a person familiar with the letter.

I have my suspicions about who leaked the texts **cough** Nunes **cough**, but regardless of who did, this sort of rat-f%$#ing between the House and Senate is really unprecedented.

About F%$#ing Time

The City of Baltimore has announced that it will not be covering any of the awards against the officers recently convicted of corruption:

Baltimore City Solicitor Andre Davis said Wednesday that city officials do not plan to cover any costs or damages arising out of civil lawsuits filed against convicted police officers who were members of the Gun Trace Task Force.

The corrupt officers, he said, are on their own.

Dozens of state and federal lawsuits are expected against the eight task force members who were convicted of various federal crimes, including racketeering and robbery. Six pleaded guilty, while two were convicted at trial this week.

In one of the first federal lawsuits, filed by Ivan Potts in 2016 against the city and three of the officers, city government lawyers are arguing that taxpayers should not be responsible for potential damages.

“Each and every one of the wrongs ... were committed outside of the scope of the officers’ employment as BPD law enforcement officers and in pursuit of said officers’ private and personal interests,” city government lawyers wrote in a filing last month.

Davis said Wednesday that this is a strategy the city plans to use going forward with other actions, though he said officials would consider each suit to see if there should be an exception. And in some cases, a judge could order the city to pay.

………

While the move could save the city millions of dollars, plaintiffs lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union argued victims could be deprived of much-needed compensation.

“That is a travesty,” said David Rocah, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Maryland. “The city bears significant responsibility for enabling these crimes by its failure to adequately supervise the officers. It can’t now simply wash its hands of the matter.”

Needless to say, the Baltimore police union is freaking out, placing them on the same side as the ACLU, which is a remarkably bizarre development.

As many as nine Baltimore police officers could have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in damages after juries found they acted with “actual malice” in the course of making arrests — a development that prompted a warning from the police union and, in turn, a fiery response from the city’s top lawyer.

The union asserted in a memo Tuesday that forcing officers to pay such damages themselves was a change in the city’s policy. But both City Solicitor Andre Davis and his predecessor said Wednesday the policy has not changed and officers have potentially been on the hook for decades in such cases.

Davis said what has changed is that he has been more transparent about the policy, noting it in materials submitted to the city’s spending board in December. Davis called the memo by a local Fraternal Order of Police leader an attempt to “stir something up.”

I've suggested before that personal liability for police officers, along with a requirement that they carry insurance, can serve as a deterrent to police misconduct, and this is a good first step.

Linkage

• Money Laundering Via Author Impersonation on Amazon? (Krebs on Security) Amazon does nothing to prevent this, because they still get their vigorish.
• North Pole surges above freezing in the dead of winter, stunning scientists (Washington Post) We are f%$#ed.
• A Certain Party’s Gift for Self-Immolation (New York Times) The DCCC f%$#ery against Laura Mosler makes the mainstream media. The Democrats: Seizing defeat from the jaws of victory since ………
• Meet the Community Organizers Fighting Against … Barack Obama (POLITICO) Community organizers are protesting the Community Organizer in Chief because of his refusal to produce a written community benefits agreement for his library.  Because, "Trust me" has worked so well with Obama.
• ICE Is a Terrifying and Faceless Federal Agency. Here’s the Face of the Guy Who Runs the Seattle Office. F%$# Him. (The Stranger)

The news of the past few weeks seems to call for this song:

Good question

My unpopular opinion: I'm unconvinced that the endemic self-dealing of the Trumps and Kushners is substantively worse than the usual policy quids exchanged for post-term corporate-and-foundation gig quos.

— Jacob "Blockchain" Bacharach, LLC (@jakebackpack) March 1, 2018

The problem that many in Washington have with Trump corruption is in the amount of their corruption, but rather how uncouth and blatant their corruption is.

If Kushner wants to do it right, he needs to give 6-figure speeches to Wall Street.

This is like the Trumpest thing ever.

You may have heard that Donald Trump was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Normally, this means that some random person, one without the ability to actually nominate someone for the award.

It appears that some bright fellow, no doubt a graduate of Trump University, added a twist to that process, they engaged in identity theft to make his nomination appear official:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which selects winners of the peace prize, says someone using a stolen identity has nominated President Donald Trump for the award.

The Norwegian news agency NTB quoted committee secretary Olav Njolstad as saying it appears the same person was responsible for forging nominations in 2017, as well.

Njolstad declined to identify the person, adding that Norwegian police had been informed.

We Have Reached Peak Trump.

Tweet of the Day

Lol that's one way to turn things on its head. pic.twitter.com/JMSwnx2Vmg

— Adam Bennett (@AuAnon) March 1, 2018

Replying to Chinese scammers with the Chinese phrase, "June 4th Tienanmen Square Massacre," to arouse the ire of Chinese authorities is brilliant.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!

We just had the 3^rd credit union failure of the year, First Jersey Credit Union of Wayne, NJ, but still no commercial bank failures.

This is just plain weird

Kushner Clearance Downgraded

He has had an interim Top Secret clearance for months, and now it has been reduced to a secret clearance, because, between his lies misstatements on his clearance forms and his extensive debts to a veritable rogues gallery he is a walking security risk.

We've already had reports of multiple foreign governments using his precarious financial situation and closeness to Donald Trump to attempt to derive leverage with the White House, so this was a logical decision to make.

And They Have Lost LeBron

Mr. James has described the NCAA as corrupt and beyond fixing:

In the wake of what appears to be a massive scandal breaking in the world of college basketball, NBA icon LeBron James blasted the organization as "corrupt" and beyond fixing, per ESPN.

"I don't know if there's any fixing the NCAA. I don't think there is," James said Tuesday. "It's what's been going on for many, many, many, many years. I don't know how you can fix it. I don't see how you can fix it."

He went on to say, "I don't know all the rules and regulations about it, but I do know what five-star athletes bring to a campus, both in basketball and football,I know how much these college coaches get paid. I know how much these colleges are gaining off these kids. ... I've always heard the narrative that they get a free education, but you guys are not bringing me on campus to get an education, you guys are bringing me on it to help you get to a Final Four or to a national championship, so it's just a weird thing."

The fiction of the "Student Athletes" is little more than slave labor, and the NCAA itself has used forced prison labor as a justification for its practices in court cases.

It needs to be shut down.

Why There Are Taxi Medallions

While the various internet based taxicab firms are generally dismissive of regulation in their pursuit of "disruption", they have particular contempt to things like medallion systems that limit the number of taxis in cities.

The justification for medallion systems has always been that allowing unlimited taxis would create more traffic congestion, while entities like Uber and Lyft have always maintained that their services would reduce congestion.

Well, the studies have come in, and the justification for medallions has been proved right:

Despite being heralded as services that will reduce congestion on our streets, ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft actually are making traffic problems worse, a new study from Boston’s Northeastern University has revealed.

The study showed that in many cities rather than encouraging commuters to leave their own personal vehicles for shared rides, the apps are instead siphoning ridership from higher-capacity transportation options such as buses and subways. The report also found that riders do not use the apps to connect to existing public transportation lines, as Uber founder Travis Kalanick has suggested, but primarily to travel directly to their final destinations.

This is not at all surprising: A car on the road is a car on the road is a car on the road.

While the Uber and Lyft Gypsy cab services might open up a few parking spaces, they have the effect of increasing the numbers of cars driving at any given time.

I am not necessarily a fan of medallion systems to limit the numbers of taxis on the streets, it converts a permit created for the public good into a negotiable financial instrument, I object to private profit being created through regulatory arbitrage in this manner, but it is clear that cars for hire need to be limited to serve the public good.

Snark of the Day

Conservatives are direct: They just reach into the cookie jar and grab what they want. With Democrats, there’s always a layer of indirection and often a lag: They get their cookies through their foundations, on K Street, or their book deals. Or their Presidential libraries.

—Lambert Strether

(emphasis mine)

This is a truly inspired burn.

It's About Ireland, and Luxembourg, and ………

The EU is moving to tax gross revenue on digital sales based on where the purchaser is located.

If it sounds extreme, it's not. It's a sales tax, much like the VAT, which is universal throughout the European Union.

The above article presents this as something unprecedented, but it is not, and the proximate cause is because any number of countries in the EU, most notoriously Ireland and Luxembourg, compete economically by being tax havens.

This is a simple and elegant solution, and it is in no way protectionist or discriminatory.

Free trade should not be synonymous with tax evasion.

No Blogging Tonight

Between my cold in generally running around, I was so out of it today but I left the restaurant where I had lunch without paying my tab.

I realized this when I left work and looked at my take out. ( Pancakes, I had breakfast for lunch.)

So, I went back to the restaurants, paid my tab, and tipped generously.

In any case, I have concluded that I cannot maintain my usual levels of coherence.  (That sentence positively buggers the mind, doesn't it?)

So, I am taking a not particularly well deserves evening off.

Posted via mobile

I Hate Rhinovirus

Getting over a chest cold.

Stopped Clock, H1B Edition

It appears that any number of abusers of the H1B program, like Tata, Wipro, and Infosys, who make big bank on gaming the H1B visa program, are incensed that they will now have to provide evidence that they are actually bringing people in to fulfill an otherwise unavailable talent:

The United States Department of Homeland Security's Citizenship and Immigration Services has released new and strict rules for H-1B visas, the permit used by many-a-tech-company to bring skilled workers to the USA from abroad.

President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to restrict use of the visas, which he claimed are used to import workers who are paid less than locals and therefore make it harder for US citizens to get a job. Trump was also uncomfortable with outsourcers' use of the visa, saying they displaced American workers. Labour hire agencies also sought the visa, bringing in people and then finding them jobs after they arrived.

The USA's recently cracked down on employers who use the visa, with more inspections to make sure they're not being abused.

Now a new Policy Memorandum (PDF), released late last week, revealed the Trump Administration's plans to make H-1B visas harder to obtain by requiring extensive documentation about exactly what workers will do, why they're needed and where they will work.

Now, if you're familiar with the H1-B program, but have not followed it closely, you are probably asking yourself, "Wait, this is supposed to be for workers who are unavailable inside the US, why weren't they already required to provide, 'Extensive documentation about exactly what workers will do, why they're needed and where they will work,'?"

If you have followed it closely, you know that the program has NEVER really been about finding unique and special talents that cannot be found in America.  It has ALWAYS been about getting cheap labor to keep wages down, particularly in the tech industry.

Applicants will now need to demonstrate they are already an employee of a stateside organisation, while businesses who hire H-1B holders must provide signed "detailed statements of work or work orders" and a letter detailing "… the specialized duties the beneficiary will perform, the qualifications required to perform those duties, the duration of the job, salary or wages paid, hours worked, benefits, a detailed description of who will supervise the beneficiary and the beneficiary's duties, and any other related evidence."

Ummm ……… If you do not already know the duties required and the other details listed above, then your H1-B application is fraudulent.

I understand that this policy likely is more driven by a general hostility to immigration than it is a concern about fair wages for skilled workders, and I expect this to be walked back significantly under pressure from tech lobbyists and the cheap labor crowd, but it's a good start.

Linkage

• Man featured in ads for pro-Trump dating site was convicted of child sex crimes: report (Raw Story) As Zathras would say, at least there is symmetry.
• The Arrest Was a Bust. The Officers Got Overtime Anyway. (New York Times) We are paying officers to make bogus arrests.
• 6 Sickening Details You Won't Read in Billy Graham's Fawning Obituaries (Alternet) I won't speak ill of the dead today, but I will point you to someone who does.
• Why can’t conservatives just admit they were wrong about inflation? (Washington Post) Because economists generally are more afraid of inflation than unemployment?
• The hysteria over Russian bots has reached new levels (The Guardian) Well, duh. Nasty twitter memes is not Pearl Harbor.
• Former Freemason found naked inside pipe organ in Brisbane (Daily Mail Online) I will probably never party that hard.

The song stylings of Kate Micucci and William Macy:

Party Unity for Thee but Not for Me

There are a number of Democratic candidates competing for the nomination in TX-7, a district that appears to be competitive this year.
It appears that they really want a corporate drone in this race, so the that appears to be DCCC has released opposition research against one of the candidates, Laura Moser:

The campaign arm of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives set its sights on a surprising target Thursday: Democratic congressional hopeful Laura Moser.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee posted negative research on Moser, a Houston journalist vying against six other Democrats in the March 6 primary to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. John Culberson. Democrats locally and nationally have worried that Moser is too liberal to carry a race that has emerged in recent months as one of the most competitive in the country.

The DCCC posting, which features the kind of research that is often reserved for Republicans, notes that Moser only recently moved back to her hometown of Houston and that much of her campaign fundraising money has gone to her husband's political consulting firm. It also calls her a "Washington insider."

………

Texas' 7th Congressional District is new offensive territory for Democrats and an ancestral GOP stronghold. But Hillary Clinton carried the district in 2016, and a flood of Democrats soon raced to run for the seat.

Moser's bid has been picking up momentum practically daily. Earlier on Thursday, her campaign announced it had raised nearly $150,000 in the first 45 days of the year. And in recent months she has amassed a massive online following for a first-time Congressional candidate. She is also a favorite interview subject of national publications and women's magazines and has a passionate following among many people who supported U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign in 2016.

This weekend, she is set to host actress and activist Alyssa Milano in the Houston-area district to help get out the vote during early voting.

Seriously, you have a candidate who is raising money and creating enthusiasm, but you are going to push an anti-union lawyer (Emily's list) and a former Goldman Sachs executive (DCCC) because they are releasing f%$#ing opposition research in the f%$#ing primary. (Link)

Seriously, the party apparatus is hopeless.

Important Notice: You Have the Right to Hire a Giant Squirrel to Tell Someone To, "Eat Sh%$"

Employee killing coal magnate Robert Murray was upset when John Oliver hired a man in a giant squirrel suit to tell him to, "Eat Sh%$."

Murray, a notoriously thin skinned and litigious individual, sued Oliver for defamation and emotional distress, and now a judge has thrown out his case.

One hopes that there will be sanctions against both Mr. Murray and his counsel:

West Virginia judge Jeffrey Cramer is dismissing a defamation lawsuit against John Oliver stemming from a segment in which a giant squirrel named “Mr. Nutterbutter” told coal baron Robert Murray to eat shit, according to the Hollywood Reporter. HBO and Partially Important Productions had asked that the suit be dismissed because the facts in Oliver’s segment were based on government reports, and the more insulting statements—like Oliver’s assessment that Murray resembles “a geriatric Dr. Evil”—could not be proven true or false. Judge Cramer agreed, and on Wednesday, informed attorneys by letter that he planned to dismiss the case. The judge’s letter is a lot less funny than the West Virginia ACLU’s amicus brief, but has the advantage of being dispositive.

Lawyers for Murray, whose company lost six miners and three rescue workers in the Crandall Canyon Mine collapse, said in their initial complaint that “nothing has ever stressed him more” than the Last Week Tonight segment, in which a gigantic squirrel named “Mr. Nutterbutter” presented a novelty check for “three acorns and eighteen cents” made out to “Eat Shit, Bob!” (The memo line on the check read “Kiss My Ass,” which does indeed sound stressful, but maybe not “mine collapse with multiple fatalities” stressful.) To be fair, most of the complaint revolved around whether or not Oliver correctly characterized Murray’s handling of the Crandall Canyon Mine collapse, but Mr. Nutterbutter did play a prominent part:

 51. Instead, Defendants continued their ruthless character assassination and attack on Plaintiffs’ business reputations by describing Mr. Murray as someone who “looks like a geriatric Dr. Evil” and arranging for a staff member to dress up in a squirrel costume and deliver the message, “Eat Shit, Bob!” to Mr. Murray.

 52. If that were not enough, after the live taping, Defendant Oliver exclaimed to the audience that having someone in a squirrel costume tell Mr. Murray to “Eat Shit” was a “dream come true.”

I do not know if there is anti-SLAPP legislation in West Virginia, but there should be.

BTW, you can find the ACLU's amicus brief in support of Oliver here, and it is well worth the read.

Here is a selection of their brief for your amusement:

---

⁴It should be noted that the very mean comparison arose from both a striking physical resemblance between the two characters and a statement by Plaintiff’s General Counsel with an uncanny similarity to statements made by a more youthful Dr. Evil. Compare Coal Operator Sues Beacon Journal Over Portrayal of Him in Article, ATHENS NEWS, (Jan. 29, 2001), https://www.athensnews.com/news/local/coal-operator-sues-beacon-journal-over-portrayal-of-himin/ article_24549e9b-de35-5b4c-b3c6-2ad29b33f694.html (Plaintiff’s General Counsel noting that although he could not legally demand one billion dollars, the figure did reflect the potential damages of the article that gave rise to that suit—this can reasonably be interpreted to mean Plaintiff’s General Counsel wanted to demand one billion dollars); with Pierre Pavia, Dr Evil in 1 Million Dollars, YOUTUBE, (Jul 11, 2008), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKKHSAE1gIs (a young . . . er Dr. Evil demanding “one million dollars,” “one hundred billion dollars,” and “one billion gajillion fafillion shabadoodalooyim[inaudible]million yen”).

It's Time to Go………

Dianne Feinstein^* has lost the endorsement at the Democratic Party state convention, which, considering her long tenure as Senator, is rather remarkable:

Despite over a quarter-century representing California in the Senate, Dianne Feinstein in a humiliating setback was denied the endorsement of the California Democratic Party on Saturday, signaling a shift away from moderates at the highest levels of the state political infrastructure.

State Sen. Kevin De León, offering the strongest challenge to Feinstein since her election, garnered 54 percent of the vote of nearly 3,000 delegates gathered here at the state convention, compared to just 37 percent for Feinstein. The state party endorsement gives candidates coveted placement on state party mailers and can raise the profile of candidates who may have a deficit in fundraising. It’s not like Feinstein has a need to raise her profile in the state, and has plenty of money to get her message out. But denying the party endorsement to a sitting U.S. Senator is a remarkable turn of events for a lawmaker who has been a fixture in California politics going back to her days as a San Francisco board supervisor, where she was first elected in the late 1960s.

Had De León hit 60 percent, he would have won the endorsement outright. As it is, neither can claim it.

Obviously, a vote at a state party convention is not a vote in a primary or a general election, but given California's jungle primary, Feinstein and De León will probably face off in the general, and while Feinstein is leading in the polls 46-17, she is polling under 50%, and everyone knows her name, while De León's name recognition is far less.

I think that Feinstein seriously needs to reevaluate her options.

^*Full disclosure, though I have never met her, we are 2nd cousins 1 time removed, though we have never met.

And Now We are at Dueling Memos

Following the Nunes memo, the Schiff memo has been issued in redacted form.

Rather unsurprisingly, it shows that Nunes was a complete tool of the Trump campaign that he is (nominally) investing:

The FBI team investigating the 2016 Trump campaign's contacts with Russians had already opened inquiries into multiple people connected to the campaign when it received a controversial dossier alleging illicit ties between then-candidate Donald Trump and the Kremlin, a Democratic memo released by the House Intelligence Committee revealed Saturday.

The dossier, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, wasn't provided to the FBI's counterintelligence team until mid-September 2016, according to the memo. By then, the counterintelligence investigation into Trump's campaign was seven weeks old. "The FBI had already opened sub-inquiries into ... individuals linked to the Trump campaign," according to the findings of the committee's nine Democrats.

The committee posted the heavily redacted 10-page document Saturday after weeks of wrangling between the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, and Justice Department officials over the contours of classified material he hoped to release.

Much like in Watergate, we are seeing coverups, and much like Watergate, it will be the coverups that can prove Trump and his Evil Minions^™ downfall.

Mixed emotions here, because I do not look forward to President Pence.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!! (On Sunday)

Still no commercial bank failure failures, but on Friday, the 2^nd credit union was closed, the Ukrainian Future Credit Union​ in ​Warren, MI.

Here is the Full NCUA list.

So, no implosion among retail financial institutions yet.

Expect the Fecal Matter Hitting the Rotary Impeller

We now have a date certain for when the US embassy will move to Jerusalem, so I would advise you to avoid travel to Israel in mid May:

The U.S. Embassy in Israel will move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of Israeli independence, the State Department said Friday.

The embassy, initially to be located in the current premises of the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem’s Arnona neighborhood, will expand in and near that site next year but will eventually move to new premises President Trump has said will be constructed, according to a statement issued by State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.

The cost of that building is expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a major Republican donor, has offered to fund an unspecified part of the construction, according to an administration official who confirmed an Associated Press report.

I do believe that Jerusalem is the Israeli capital, though the final boundary between this capital is something to be negotiated between the Israelis and the Palestinians.


So on one level, I see the recognition of Jerusalem as a recognition of reality.


On another level, we know that we are going to see a LOT of unrest and disruption as a result, and I expect a spate of attacks and retaliations.

This will not be pretty.

Your Mainstream Media

This week, the New York Times rightly called so-called firearms expert John Lott a fraud.

Last week, they published an OP/ED on gun control by John Lott:

Remember last week, when the New York Times ran an op-ed from the gun ‘researcher’ John Lott, who has been thoroughly and consistently debunked by basically everyone else who researches gun violence?

Apparently, the Times —yes, the people wot run the bad op-ed in the first place—does not remember! The paper issued an editorial today on criminal justice reform, which included this paragraph dunking on Lott:

Perhaps the most insidious part of the Trump administration’s approach to criminal justice lies in its efforts to link crime to its broader crackdown on immigration. In a speech last month, Mr. Sessions said undocumented immigrants are far more likely than American citizens to commit crimes, a claim he found in a paper by John Lott, the disreputable economist best known for misusing statistics to suit his own ideological ends. In this case, it appears Mr. Lott misread his own data, which came from Arizona and in fact showed the opposite of what he claimed: Undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than citizens, as the vast majority of research on the topic has found.

I would like to note that I also linked to that same Cato Institute debunking of Lott’s racist fake research, which tells me the Times editorial board is reading my posts. Hi!!! You should all resign!!!

 Seriously.  Who does the New York Times think that they are?  The Wall Street Journal?

Cheer the IT Revolution

It turns out that the increasing use of electronic health records saves neither time nor money, but this hasn't stopped a rush by the government and the private healthcare industry from

I thought of working words like “debacle,” “scam,” or “bezzle” into the headline, but today is my day to be kind (and the entire topic really demands that I pull on my yellow waders and write another “Credentialism and Corruption” post, which I might do at a later time). However, the headlines give a sense of what a bombshell this study should be for the EHR industry. On the spectrum from reluctant admissions all the way through to The Bezzle:

1. Electronic health records don’t cut administrative costs Harvard Gazette (February 20, 2018).
2. Electronic Health Records Don’t Reduce Administrative Costs Harvard Business School (February 20, 2018).
3. EHRs fall short in reducing administrative costs Health Data Management (February 21, 2018).
4. Why health IT experts think Apple will succeed where Google failed with medical records Health IT and CIO Review
5. An Introduction to Medicalchain: Blockchain for Electronic Health Records CryptoSlate. (This is from February 8, but I couldn’t resist.)

The complete study (an “Original Investigation”) is here at the Journal of the American Medical Association. Unfortunately, the study is paywalled, and the study material that JAMA exposes muffles the bombshell. From the abtract, the methodology:

IT is going to change the world making unachievable claims based on bad/non-existent evidence, and all we have to do throw money at them.

The Most Contemptible People in the World

That would be the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which is literally arguing that its "student athletes" are slaves:

In the United States, college athletes — particularly those who compete at some of the largest football and basketball programs — generate not millions but billions of dollars for universities, brands, and television networks. In 2015, the top programs made a combined $9.1 billion. The NCAA, for its part, just signed an $8.8 billion dollar deal with CBS to air March Madness, the college basketball championship tournament.

………

That very obvious dynamic undergirds a lawsuit filed by former NCAA athlete Lawrence “Poppy” Livers asserting that scholarship students who play sports are employees and deserve pay. The Livers case argues that student-athletes who get scholarships should at least be paid as work-study students for the time they put in.

What the NCAA did in response to the lawsuit is as vile as anything going on in sports right now. I had to see it for myself before I believed it. At the root of its legal argument, the NCAA is relying on one particular case for why NCAA athletes should not be paid. That case is Vanskike v. Peters.

Only there’s an important detail: Daniel Vanskike was a prisoner at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois, and Howard Peters was the Director of the state Department of Corrections. In 1992, Vanskike and his attorneys argued that as a prisoner he should be paid a federal minimum wage for his work. The court, in its decision, cited the 13th Amendment and rejected the claim.

The 13th Amendment is commonly hailed as the law that finally ended slavery in America. But the amendment has an important carve-out: it kept involuntary service legal for those who have been convicted of a crime. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” the amendment says. It’s that phrase — “except as a punishment for crime” — which allows American prisons to force their inmates to do whatever work they want or need them to do.

The use of the case stems from several other law cases alleging unpaid labor; two of them are previous lawsuits against the NCAA in which the case was cited as precedent, and the NCAA won.

………

In their response to the NCAA’s motion to dismiss, Livers’s lawyers are arguing that the precedent was mistaken for applying the 13th Amendment exception for unpaid prison labor in a case dealing with non-prisoners.

“Defense Counsel’s insistence that Vanskike be applied here is not only legally frivolous, but also deeply offensive to all Scholarship Athletes – and particularly to African-Americans,” Livers’s rebuttal to the NCAA’s motion says. “Comparing athletes to prisoners is contemptible.”

 The NCAA is showing an incorrigible nerve to use this case, Vanskike v. Peters, as one of its justifications for not paying student-athletes. The Vanskike case has been cited in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals 14 times before, but in each of those 14 cases there were prisoners arguing that they should be paid a fair wage for their work.

Yet the NCAA wants to rely on this case and to call on the 13th Amendment. The body that runs college sports wants to use a justification for the slave labor of convicted criminals to justify its outrageous greed.

I have an idea for a sporting event, it would involve senior NCAA officials fighting each other to the death.

We could call it the Hunger Games.

Tweet of the Day

Ronald Reagan was surrounded by Secret Service agents when he was shot.

I guess they just needed a few armed math teachers.

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) February 22, 2018

Word!

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

New York's 19^th Congressional district is allegedly competitive, though it went for Trump in 2016, and John Faso defeated Zephyr Techout about 8 points, so my guess is that it is not as competitive as people would like to think.

Patrick Ryan is running for US Congress in the Democratic primary in ew York's 19^th congressional district.

Patrick Ryan has also made a living spying on progressives for the state security apparatus for about a decade:

Patrick Ryan, a congressional candidate from New York, is leaning on his experience as a small business entrepreneur to establish his readiness for office, but he has curiously failed to mention the business he used to work in: domestic surveillance.

Seven years ago, Ryan, then working at a firm called Berico Technologies, compiled a plan to create a real-time surveillance operation of left-wing groups and labor unions, hoping business lobbyists would pay top dollar to monitor and disrupt the actions of activist groups across the country. At one point, the proposal included the idea to spy on the families of high-profile Democratic activists and plant fake documents with labor unions in a bid to discredit them.

The pitch, a joint venture with a now-defunct company called HBGary Federal and the Peter Thiel-backed company Palantir Technologies, however, crumbled in 2011 after it was exposed in a series of news reports.

Years later, Ryan pivoted to a startup called Dataminr, a data analytics company that provided social media monitoring solutions for law enforcement clients. Dataminr, which received financial support from the CIA’s venture capital arm, produced real-time updates about activists for law enforcement. For example, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of California and reported by The Intercept for the first time, Dataminr helped track social media posts relating to Black Lives Matter.

Ryan is one of several Democrats hoping to challenge freshman Rep. John Faso, R-N.Y., for a seat that is expected to be among the most competitive in the country. The Hudson Valley district contains both staunchly conservative and liberal pockets. Donald Trump won the district by a seven-point margin in 2016, but even when Barack Obama took the district by six points in 2012, Democrats failed to win the congressional seat. Republicans have held the 19th District since it was formed eight years ago. This year, as Democrats anticipate a wave of victories in response to Trump and the GOP’s wildly unpopular agenda, they hope that the 19th District, will finally turn blue.

………

In July 2015, Ryan joined Dataminr, a startup that has worked closely with clients to make sense out of vast amounts of social media data. The company, as The Intercept first reported in 2016, was funded through an investment from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA. The company, formed in consultation with Twitter, maintains access to Twitter’s proprietary “firehose” of user data, giving it an edge in social media data analysis.

The firm amassed law enforcement clients, including the FBI and Joint Regional Intelligence Center, a fusion center used by the government to alert multiple law enforcement departments in the Los Angeles region of potential threats. Documents, uncovered by the ACLU of California through a public records investigation of social media monitoring software, show that Dataminr monitored tweets mentioning Black Lives Matter on behalf of the JRIC. The emails show that Dataminr’s alerts vacuumed up tweets from now-Intercept columnist Shaun King, among other activists, in reports sent to law enforcement.

In another email obtained by the ACLU of California, Dataminr pitched the Los Angeles Police Department to use its tool to track protests, among other events of interest to law enforcement. Dataminr’s social media tracking tools are “highly valued by our clients at FBI CTD, NYPD, DoD and all ‘big five’ intel agencies,” the pitch continued.

In 2016, following a series of news reports on Dataminr’s relationship with law enforcement, Twitter announced Dataminr would no longer service fusion centers, and would restrict the use of its backend Twitter data for its law enforcement and intelligence agency clients.

Four years before he joined Dataminr, Ryan’s work with Berico Technologies was revealed in a hack of its partner firm, HBGary Federal. How his efforts to monitor activists on behalf of business interests were disclosed in an unusual story of spy versus spy.
 
In 2011, HBGary Federal boasted to the Financial Times that it was working on a plan to undermine WikiLeaks, which at the time was threatening to expose documents from Bank of America. In retaliation, a splinter group from the hacktivist collective LulzSec infiltrated network administrator from HBGary Federal, stealing thousands of emails from the firm and posting them onto the web.

The emails revealed that HBGary Federal had not only pitched a plan to Bank of America to track and discredit supporters of WikiLeaks, including The Intercept’s co-founder Glenn Greenwald, but had developed a larger business proposal to sell activist surveillance to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest pro-business lobbying organization in Washington, D.C.

Great.  Peter Thiel in drag.

No.  Just no.

Seriously no.

No.

File Under, "Dystopian"

It appears that the car of the future have all the respect for your privacy that Mark Zuckerberg does, so expect hemorrhoid ads on your multi-function display:

Picture this: You’re driving home from work, contemplating what to make for dinner, and as you idle at a red light near your neighborhood pizzeria, an ad offering $5 off a pepperoni pie pops up on your dashboard screen.

Are you annoyed that your car’s trying to sell you something, or pleasantly persuaded? Telenav Inc., a company developing in-car advertising software, is betting you won’t mind much. Car companies—looking to earn some extra money—hope so, too.

Automakers have been installing wireless connections in vehicles and collecting data for decades. But the sheer volume of software and sensors in new vehicles, combined with artificial intelligence that can sift through data at ever-quickening speeds, means new services and revenue streams are quickly emerging. The big question for automakers now is whether they can profit off all the driver data they’re capable of collecting without alienating consumers or risking backlash from Washington.

“Carmakers recognize they’re fighting a war over customer data,” said Roger Lanctot, who works with automakers on data monetization as a consultant for Strategy Analytics. “Your driving behavior, location, has monetary value, not unlike your search activity.”

I just want an off switch for the car's connectivity features, because, in addition to eschewing the aforementioned advertisements, I don't want some script kiddie turning off my anti-lock brakes.

Be Careful What You Wish for, You Might Get It

For years, the US has been demanding that European allies spend more on their military

Now that they are, they are also setting up European cooperation mechanisms, and so now the Pentagon is upset about baby steps toward European military autonomy:

For years, the US has been complaining that EU countries do not spend enough on their own military capabilities.

“Now we’re trying to do that, and it’s not right either,” Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, told delegates at the Munich Security Conference this weekend.

A high-level annual meeting of US and European politicians, generals and defence experts, the conference was this year dominated by calls from Germany and France for Europe to stand on its own two feet — and US qualms about what that might mean for the transatlantic alliance.

Indeed US misgivings about attempts to forge closer defence ties within the EU could become a significant irritant in relations with the US.

Why would Washington have a problem with this?

For the same reason that they expanded NATO to Russia's border, because they want to ensure that Europe remains a market for US military hardware, and this development implies that Europe is moving toward become a competitor in this whole "Merchants of Death" business:

Washington’s attention is focused on permanent structured co-operation, or Pesco, which is shaping up to be the EU’s most serious attempt yet at forging closer defence ties. Of its 28 member states, 25 have signed up to the scheme that involves 17 projects ranging from improving military mobility to developing a new infantry fighting vehicle.

………

Some Europeans suspect that US reservations are focused less on concerns about Nato than on fears for the US defence industry. “If the EU develops its own fighter aircraft, it won’t need any more Lockheed Martin F-35s,” said one senior MP from Germany’s governing CDU party. “If we really consolidate the European arms industry then it’s that industry that will get the contracts from the EU and that means more competition for US arms exporters.”

(emphasis mine)

Not a surprise, seeing as how the US has basically turned the State Department into the sales arm of the Military Industrial complex.

How it Should Be Done

If you want to run for office as a real liberal, watch Jeremy Corbyn and take copious notes:

Jeremy Corbyn pledged that a Labour government would make it harder for asset strippers to take over U.K. companies while vowing to make finance the “servants of industry not the masters of us all.”

While his full-throttle attacks on bankers have been become familiar to the City of London, his prescription for blocking hostile takeovers is specific and likely to rattle the world of business.

In a speech to the EEF manufacturers’ organisation, he will evoke the case of Melrose Industries Plc’s bid for GKN Plc as an example where action to fend off the turnaround specialist is justified. If elected, Corbyn would broaden the scope of the “public interest test” to allow the government to act.

“Take GKN, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious engineering firms, which employs 6,000 workers across the U.K.,” Corbyn will say on Tuesday. “And yet GKN is currently facing a hostile, allegedly debt-fuelled takeover bid by Melrose, a company with a history of opportunistic asset-stripping.”

“It’s an all too familiar story, like when Kraft took over Cadburys,” Corbyn will tell an audience of manufacturers at their annual conference in London. “A valuable company could be sacrificed so that a few can make a quick buck.”

Understand that it is important to actually have credibility to make such a claim, which means that things like paid speaking gigs at Wall Street or fundraising appeals to that same boulevard tend to eliminate this as a valid tactic.

If you want to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk, as Corbyn has done for decades.

Linkage

• A Girl Scout sold 300 boxes of cookies — near a legal marijuana shop (Vox) She got her Capitalism Merit badge that day.
• Second White House official departs amid abuse allegations, which he denies (Washington Post) So not a surprise. This administration does for sexual abuse what the Eisenhower administration did for golf.
• Hey Muslims, Let’s Join the NRA. We Could Help Solve Gun Violence. (The Intercept) Don't laugh, it worked for the Black Panthers.
• Shareblue Astroturf Analysis A completely legal troll farm run by Hillary and Evil Minions^™. So the complaint appears to be that the Russians trolled better, and for less money.
• Chicken chaos as KFC closes outlets (BBC) The joys of modern business schools, save a few pennies, shut down all the KFC's in the UK.

To my mind, this is the quintessential country music song: (Warning: kind of NSFW)

The New Pennsylvania Map is Out

Following the complete inability of the legislature and the governor to agree on come up with something that meets the requirements of the Pennsylvania constitution, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has drawn the new Congressional map, and it appears to be a far fairer map:

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday imposed a new congressional district map that upends previous boundaries, renumbers districts across the state and gives a potential boost to Democrats in the 2018 House elections.

Under the court's redrawn map, districts more closely align with county lines and only 13 counties are split among two or three districts. By contrast, under the last map, enacted by the state legislature in 2011, more than twice as many counties were split among multiple districts.

In striking down that map last month as unconstitutional, the justices said the new districts should be as compact and contiguous as possible. Their new map, they wrote in an order, is “superior or comparable” to proposals submitted by the participants and interested groups during in the legal challenge that led to the historic ruling.

The reconfigured map prompted a sharp rebuke from top Republican legislators, who said honoring it would create a "constitutional crisis." Extending a political clash that has roiled the state for months, they said they might challenge the map — or the justices' authority to impose it — in federal court as early as Tuesday.

The US Supreme Court has already declined to review this, since the ruling is under the aegis of the Pennsylvania constitution, so I see it as somewhat unlikely that a Federal court overruling this.

The only way that I see an injunction is if the Supreme Court reverses itself and agrees to take the case directly.

They gave the legislature and governor an opportunity (albeit a short time) to come together on this, and they failed, so the court had to draw their own map.