When Bad People Do Good Things

I know that these actions are driven by a hatred of brown people, but the H-1B and L-1A programs are rife with abuse and serve to depress wages in the United States, so the recent actions by the Trump administration cracking down on the program leave me with mixed emotions.  (Archive.is link)

The Trump administration accused Microsoft Corp., Adobe Inc. and a half-dozen other companies of abusing a US worker visa program and suspended them indefinitely from a longstanding immigration initiative that’s served as a crucial talent pipeline for Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

The suspensions, announced Thursday by Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, also targeted information technology services giants Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., Infosys Ltd. Tata, Wipro Ltd., HCL Technologies Ltd. and Capgemini SE. Those firms, either based in India or with large operations there, are often called outsourcers for their role offering contract IT work to other businesses.

At a briefing in Washington, Sonderling said there were multiple federal investigations under way into the use of a system that allows US employers to sponsor foreign workers for permanent residency. Vance singled out Microsoft, the world’s third most-valuable company, for what he characterized as exploitation of the program.

Yeah, right, the Trump administration is cracking down on corporate malfeasance.

And I'm the direct descendant of Genghis Khan and I am destined to rule the world. 

………

Silicon Valley’s reliance on foreign workers has long been a flashpoint in the debate over immigration. Since Trump’s return to office last year, the administration has seized on those concerns and pressed tech giants to do more to train and hire US workers.

As part of that effort, Trump has moved to make it harder for companies to use H-1B visas to attract foreign talent, targeting a major source of workers for the industry. The changes have included proposals for $100,000 filing fees for most candidates and tightening the rules of how the H-1B visas are awarded in an annual lottery, giving priority to companies offering the highest salaries.  

………

The moves announced by Vance and Sonderling take aim at the Permanent Labor Certification Program, or PERM, which allows companies to sponsor a foreigner who has been working the US under the H-1B and other visa holders to become a legal permanent resident, the first step to becoming a US citizen. 

This is really about keeping people like Usha Vance from becoming permanent residents. 

The H-1B program is a deeply flawed and deeply corrupt program, but the only members of our polity interested in addressing it are doing so for the basest of reasons. 

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And once again, it appears that the low-hire/how-fire job market is continuing.

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, pointing to continued labor market stability despite a sharp slowdown in job growth in September.
Weekly jobless claims have now remained near 57-year lows for four ​straight weeks, the report from the Labor Department showed on Thursday, amid historically low layoffs.

………

"It's still a 'low-hire, low-fire' job market," said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. "That's great for anyone who has a job and wants to keep it, but it's ​tough for job seekers."

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 197,000 for the week ended October 3, the Labor Department said. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast ​200,000 claims for the latest week.

Claims have held below the 200,000 mark since the second week of September. California and Illinois were the only states to report ⁠an increase in unadjusted applications in excess of 1,000. The four-week moving average of claims, viewed as a better gauge of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 2,500 to 198,000 last ​week, the lowest level since early October 2022.

Stocks on Wall Street were trading lower. The dollar slipped against a basket of currencies.

Low initial claims make rate hikes more likely, so the stock market sees a not so bad unemployment report as bad news for stocks. 

………

The claims report showed the number of people receiving unemployment ‌benefits after ⁠an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, increased 17,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.716 million during the week ended September 26. The so-called continued claims had dropped to a 3-1/2-year low in the prior week.

Some economists argued that the still-low level of continued claims was masking a gradual labor market weakening as a group of unemployed people, including recent college graduates, were ineligible for benefits because of limited or no work history.

Some long-term unemployed people may have exhausted their eligibility, which is limited to 26 weeks in most states.

The median duration of unemployment was 11.5 weeks in September, near a 4-1/2-year high. The unemployment rate was at ​4.2% last month.

I'm not sure where this is going, but I'm a pessimist about all of this. 

This Explains a Lot

I've always wondered why modern architecture is so profoundly ugly, whether it be anything by Frank Gehry or things like the Edinburgh Poop Emoji building. 

It turns out that they are trained to admire ugliness.

Hoocoodanod?

There is a strange thing about modern architecture that becomes obvious the moment you ask ordinary people what they actually like.

Show people an old street in Paris beside a new development and many will choose the old one. Ask tourists where they want to spend an afternoon and they crowd into the historic centers of Rome or Prague; meanwhile some of the buildings celebrated most enthusiastically by architects struggle to inspire anything like the same affection.

You can dismiss this as nostalgia.

The problem is that researchers have actually tested it.

A 2026 study involving almost 3,000 people in Norway and Greece showed participants pairs of traditional and contemporary buildings. Traditional buildings were preferred across every comparison and the result was statistically significant in seven of the eight national tests; even contemporary buildings that won or received nominations for architectural awards lost to their traditional counterparts.

This is not a surprise.  The culture of architecture is a Petri dish for toxic narcissists.

………

Leon Battista Alberti, writing in the fifteenth century, tried to name what people keep recognizing even when they lack the vocabulary of a critic:

Beauty is that reasoned harmony of all the parts within a body, so that nothing may be added, taken away, or altered, but for the worse. It is a great and holy matter. All which we desire to add unto any thing, to make it more beautiful, is called ornament. Beauty is some inherent property, to be suffused all through the body of that which may be called beautiful; whereas ornament, rather than being inherent, has the character of something attached or additional.

That is not a demand for palaces. It is a demand for wholeness. People walking a street are often judging whether a building feels complete, not whether it is historically “correct.”

When one masturbates in public, it is generally not perceived as completeness.

………

Researchers in 1989 compared the reactions of architects and non-architects to residential architecture. The two groups responded differently to architectural styles while the study also found differences between the physical characteristics associated with professional “high” architecture and more popular residential design.

That makes intuitive sense.

Spend years studying architecture and you learn to look for things most people never think about. An architect may become interested in novelty or construction while somebody walking past the building might simply ask whether it looks beautiful.

Neither person is pretending.

They have learned to see different things.

The problem begins when one of those groups gets much more influence over what everybody else has to look at. 

The term is, "Inmates running the asylum." 

Deep Thought

I wish I lived in a place where you get a pre-filled out tax form every year, like Sweden.

Hell, I'd go jogging naked in December in Stockholm to make that work. 

Filling out taxes is a f%$ing drag, 

I Am Amused

It appears that Fox News has canceled Karl Rove for his criticism of Trump and MAGA.

So, the rat-f%$#er of his generation has been rat-f%$#ed by his descendants.

Good. 

Fox News political analyst Karl Rove has not appeared on his network’s weekday programming for the last three weeks, even as the midterm elections loom. Rove’s absence coincides with his newsmaking public statements warning about extremism within the Republican Party — and his denunciation by President Donald Trump.

While Rove appeared alongside Fox senior political analyst Juan Williams on the October 4 edition of Fox News Sunday (which airs on Fox broadcast stations and reairs later in the day on Fox News), he last appeared on a Fox weekday program on September 14, when anchor Martha MacCallum interviewed him on The Story.

Rove’s absence at a time when his analysis would theoretically be most useful is notable. He averaged seven weekday Fox appearances per month from March through August, and that interview on The Story was his 5th of September, according to a Media Matters review of our database.

………

Rove’s disappearance from Fox's weekday airwaves overlaps with his increasingly strident criticism of extremist elements in the GOP, which has drawn attention from other news outlets.

Two days after Rove’s most recent Fox weekday appearance, The Wall Street Journal published a column in which the veteran Republican strategist and former top aide to President George W. Bush called out the “raw, uncut bigotry” of Texas GOP candidate Bo French, vowed to “vote for only the second Democrat in my life” rather than support French’s campaign, and warned that “the GOP has a growing number of Bo Frenches—and not only in Texas.”

Rove doubled down during a September 26 appearance at the Texas Tribune Festival and drew more headlines for his lament that the Republican Party is “being infiltrated by people like Bo French” and the white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes, who he described as “a Nazi.”

Rove has been using racism as a political tool his entire career.

I have no sympathy for him. 

History Rhyming

And this does not include the Commercial Real Estate clusterf%$# Just as people, particularly those who tried to make their fortune through Airbnb, started to move back to adjustable rate mortgages, we see that home prices are falling in major real estate markets across the US.

Not a fan of remakes, particularly when the original, the 2008-10 real estate crash sucked to begin with.

Listing prices are would-be-nice-to-get asking prices that sellers put on their wish-list but might not get. When sellers cut the price, the new price becomes the listing price. When sellers pull the home off the market because it didn’t sell, that price vanishes from the listing prices. When they put it back on the market at a lower price, that new price becomes the listing price. So listing prices show what sellers are struggling with. Those listing prices have been sinking in Florida, Texas, and California for the past few years. Transaction prices have also fallen or plunged in many markets in these states. But listing prices are now suddenly sinking in New York, where transaction prices had held up.

In Florida, the statewide median listing price in September has dropped by 13% from the peak for September in 2022, and by 3.5% year-over-year, to $409,950, the lowest since November 2021 (red in the chart).

………

Actual transaction prices of single-family homes in many markets in Florida have dropped sharply from the peaks in 2022 or 2024, including in: Lee County (Cape Coral, Fort Myers) -18%, Sarasota County -17%, Collier County (Naples) -12%, St. Petersburg -10%, Tampa -6%, Jacksonville & Orlando -5%.

Transaction prices of condos in many markets in Florida have plunged from their peaks in prior years, including in Cape Coral -34%, St. Petersburg -30%, Fort Myers -27%, Sarasota County -24%, Tampa -22%, Jacksonville -21%, Orlando -18%, etc. – and in four of them, transaction prices have plunged below their 2006 Housing Bubble peaks.

In California, the median listing price in September has declined by 6% from the peak for September in 2024, and by 3.1% year-over-year, to $725,000, the lowest September since, and the same as, September 2022 (red in the chart).

………

In Texas, the median listing price in September has declined by 9% from the September high in 2022, and by 2.5% year-over-year, to $355,765, the lowest September since 2021 (red in the chart).

On a square-foot basis, the median listing price has dropped by 4% from September 2022, and by 2.1% year-over-year, to $181 per square foot.

………

In New York State, the median listing price suddenly plunged in recent months, and by 6.8% year-over-year, to $605,000, the lowest September since 2023, after having flatlined at record levels over the prior two years.

Home prices in the big markets in New York had risen at a modest pace in recent years, while prices in many markets in Florida, Texas, California, and many other states had been falling. New York State was one of the forces that propped up the national median price and other national price indices, and kept them rising in the 1% to 2% range year-over-year. The entire Chicago area was another big factor. Those are huge housing markets that move the needle.

Not this sh%$ again.

Pedophile Hypocrite Dies at 84

Dennis "Denny" Hastert. 

I imagine that he is sitting next to Jim Bakker at the current orientation and training session in Hell.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

I, too, think we should invent books.

— David Moscrop (@David_Moscrop) October 5, 2026

Truer than taxes is this.

Alternatives to Google

Link is here.

The list, absent the usual suspects:

• Marginalia, a web site and crawler that focuses on text heavy and hand written web sites.
• Million Short, allows you to search the nth search results, whether this be 10, 100, or 100,000.
• BASE, the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine, geared toward academic research. 

Go read the full list. 

People Really Hate AI

Even Apple fanboi are desperate to get AI off of their iPhone.

Apple’s attempt to integrate AI into its various operating systems hasn’t been entirely well received, nor has the decision to make Apple Intelligence increasingly difficult to disable completely. Thankfully, the open source community has come to the rescue.

A recently released open source tool called RemoveMacAI does pretty much exactly what it says on the GitHub-hosted tin: Aggressively rips Apple Intelligence out of macOS, disabling most of its AI features and removing downloaded models following the launch of macOS 27 last month.

Siri AI? Gone. ChatGPT and other AI extensions? Eliminated. Genmoji, random boxes offering to jazz up your writing, summaries of notifications and app content, and automatic photo clean-up? Never to be seen again.

More importantly, RemoveMacAI can claw back the storage occupied by Apple’s AI models - potentially over 12 GB, depending on the Mac. You might just get confused and think it’s 2025 again.

The impetus for RemoveMacAI, its creator Om Lahorey said in a LinkedIn post, is the fact that Apple made it practically impossible to remove Apple Intelligence features in macOS 27.

“The settings are spread across about a dozen places, some of them only under Screen Time,” Lahorey wrote over the weekend. “Even with every one turned off, the models stay on disk. I wanted it gone in one step, so I wrote RemoveMacAI.”

Unsurprisingly, Lahorey’s tool blew up on Hacker News, with plenty of people happy for an easy way to get rid of Apple AI tools. As of writing, the repo has over 1,500 stars, so it's clearly struck a nerve with frustrated macOS users.

They hate it, they really hate it!

Spucky Spagnolo?

For those of you who don't know, Spucky was a Revere boy who achieved significant success in the Patriarca crime family, at one point being the active head of that organization.

Anthony “Spucky” Spagnolo has died at age 84, a rather significant accomplishment for someone in his line of work.

Normally, I would not make note of this, but a mobster making it to age 84 is impressive, and his name.

Spucky Spagnolo is a truly epic name. 

 

Oswald Mosley and Adolph Hitler are Fighting

My bad, I mean Jacob Rees-Mogg and Tucker Carlson.

To quote Declan Patrick MacManus, "I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.

The former Tory minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has found himself defending Britain’s decision to fight against Adolf Hitler after inviting the US rightwinger and Vladimir Putin sympathiser Tucker Carlson into his home for an interview.

During the encounter, Carlson repeatedly suggested the west was to blame for inviting aggression from Russia and said of the prospect that Britain could have lost to Hitler: “Who cares?”

Rees-Mogg, who lost his parliamentary seat in 2024, appears to have agreed to host Carlson’s podcast show after carving out a post-politics career as a commentator.

………

During the interview, Rees-Mogg said he was very surprised that Carlson was “verging on defending Hitler”, adding: “I think this is not really what you want to be doing.”

Carlson replied: “Yeah, I guess I’m just a secret Nazi. I’m actually not a secret Nazi … and hardly a public Nazi.”

………

The interview has raised eyebrows in the US as well as Britain, with the Republican Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, posting on X: “When it seemed impossible for Toxic Tucker to descend deeper into the sewer here he goes opining that UK should have let Nazis take over. Forget that Hitler murdered 11 million people? I thought Tucker was against killing? He needs help. Serious help.” 

 When Mike f%$#ing Huckabee has the moral high ground, something is amiss.

Also, Reese-Mogg is Mosley.

It's a Runoff in Brazil

Bolsonaro 47.03% — da Silva 45.16%, so I am not particularly sanguine about the prospect of sanity when the runoff happens in 3 weeks.

I also wonder how much the US State Security Apparatus is rat-f%$#ing the vote.

Bombs Away

Blue Owl Capital is restricting redemptions on 2 of its private credit funds.

They are seeing increased requests for investors to get their money back.

Blue Owl has the money to accommodate these requests, but it would require them to sell off some of their loan portfolio at under 100¢ on the dollar, both because of increasing concerns about the business future (or lack thereof) of AI companies to whom they have lent money and because the loans carry interest rates far lower than what is available now, because of the Fed rate hikes.

The anodyne term for this is, "Price discovery," and that is antithetical to the, "Extend and pretend," game that they are currently playing.

It's beginning to look a lot like 2008.

Redemption requests for two of Blue Owl Capital’s private-credit funds remained well above the typical 5% cap, even as requests on one of the funds fell for the second quarter in a row.

Blue Owl Credit Income Corp. said it saw estimated third-quarter redemption requests representing 16.8% of shares, or $3.1 billion. That compares with 18.8% in the second quarter and 21.9% in the first quarter.

The tech-focused fund, Blue Owl Technology Income Corp., saw estimated redemption requests represent 39% of shares, or $1.1 billion, up from 38.1% in the second quarter but down from 40.4% in the first quarter.

………

Private-credit funds like Blue Owl’s have seen a rise in redemption requests over the past year, as investors grew concerned about credit health and the funds’ exposure to software.

Both the Blue Owl funds said they would redeem only 5% of the redemption requests, the standard across the industry.

Yeah, right, "Standard across the industry."

A Toxic Mix

What do you get when you define healthcare, the Trump administration, and artificial intelligence?

You get a clusterf%$# of ineluctable evil.

In January, the Trump administration rolled out a pilot program that uses artificial intelligence to authorize or deny certain types of care for patients with Medicare—a federal healthcare program for seniors that previously hasn’t required doctors to get any such pre-approval, called prior authorization.

Not long after, media outlets began relaying the disastrous outcomes: technical difficulties, long delays in decisions and care, puzzling denials, frustrated doctors, and patients suffering in pain. Those reports were largely confirmed earlier this month when the Electronic Frontier Foundation released a tranche of federal documents about the program, called WISeR, that the group obtained amid litigation. The documents included feedback from healthcare providers, including one who called the program “a disgrace to the human race” and reported seeing patients crying in pain as they waited for care.

Amid the worrying reports, lawmakers have been trying to get answers and shut the program down. Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office determined in May that Trump officials did not follow proper procedure in setting up the program, calling its legality into question. Still, it appears to be moving ahead unabated, with plans to expand in the years to come.

I'm thinking that this is not sabotage.  I think that it is a deliberate attempt to sabotage the most popular government healthcare system in the United States to scare people off of alternatives like single payer,

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

We have the 6th commercial bank failure of the year. Nano Bancof Irvine, CA, following years long allegations of misconduct.

Here is the  Full FDIC list. 

Yes, I'm a week (+1 day) late on this.

Oh the Poor Delicate Snowflakes

The AP has issued an update to their stylebook saying that Reporters clarifying that artificial intelligence should not be described as having feelings or consciousness, and the AI chuds are having major butt-hurt over this.

In the midst of heated discussions on AI safety and consciousness, the Associated Press Stylebook has reminded everyone of where it stands on the whole “anthropomorphism” debate.

“Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics,” it wrote Wednesday in a post on X. “This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects.”

This didn’t go over well in the world of AI experts and adherents, whose nerves, shall we say, were collectively struck by what they characterized as a “completely insane” declaration.

One of the arguments presented by the tech bros is that, "An AP movie review can tell us Optimus Prime mourns and loves, but readers need protecting from the computer understands."

They are both morally and intellectually bankrupt. 

Crap! Cue the Fanbois.

NASA has pulled their former research SR-71A from display with the intent of reactivating the aircraft.

While I am sure that something interesting is happening here, I expect to be inundated by endless social media posts and videos from uninformed aviation geeks.

Mike Relja, a retiree in his late 70s, received an unexpected job offer from NASA about a month ago.

The assignment: Help put a former NASA-operated Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird back in the air after a nearly 27-year hiatus.

Relja, an ex-U.S. Air Force and NASA test engineer for the SR-71A, could not believe his ears. David Ash, a former U.S. Navy and Joby test pilot who was hired in June as a special projects director for NASA, asked Relja to provide his expertise for a secret effort to return a long-retired and neglected Blackbird to flight.

“I told the guy, ‘You know, I’m too old to be doing this,’” Relja recalls to Aviation Week. “‘I wish you well. I’d like to see you make it. It would be interesting. But I just don’t think you can get there from here.’”

It appears NASA is going to try.

At some point early this year—certainly before May 17 and perhaps even before April, according to commercial satellite imagery acquired by Aviation Week—agency employees removed the SR-71A with Tail No. 844 from a display pole near the corners of Lilly and Walker Avenues at the Armstrong Flight Research Center on Edwards AFB, California.

I appreciate that NASA might have a need for the aircraft, my guess is launching of scramjet test vehicles, why couldn't they have they kept it a secret?

 

Remember When Flock Promised That It Would Not Add Facial Recognition?

Not so much.

A third party firm is offering facial recognition from Flock data.

I have no doubt that they are paying a kick-back to Flock for access to their data.

As Flock continues to be the center of a nationwide conversation about automatic license plate reading cameras, the company has said that it doesn’t, and won’t, do facial recognition: “We will not add facial recognition to our devices,” Flock CEO Garrett Langley said in a recent video. But other, third-party companies are telling cops that they are willing to add facial recognition to data gathered by Flock cameras in order to “close that gap.”

A company called VIDIZMO is advertising the capability to export footage from FlockOS to its own platforms that do facial recognition, behavior prediction, and racial and gender analysis on live camera feeds. VIDIZMO is a several decades-old video analysis and database company that has started offering facial recognition technology to cops within the last six months. In a May email to Johnson City, Tennessee, deputy police chief Michael Adams, a salesperson from VIDIZMO wrote that the company’s product could do facial recognition on both Flock and Axon data in “one searchable platform.”

“Flock Safety generates plate reads and clips continuously. Your investigators use that data on active cases. But that Flock data does not connect automatically to your Axon evidence system,” the salesperson wrote. “VIDIZMO Intelligence Hub closes that gap. It brings Flock Safety data, Axon body worn camera footage, and any other evidence source into one searchable platform. Investigators search across all of it simultaneously — by face, vehicle, or object in seconds.” The email was obtained using a public records request by DeFlock Johnson City and was shared with 404 Media. The Johnson City PD told 404 Media in a statement that it did not take a call with the company.

Gee, Flock lied.  What a surprise? 

First Friday of the Month

Unemployment rate

And the monthly jobs report is not great. 

Non farm payroll rose well under then natural growth rate of the workforce, and the unemployment rate rose by 0.1% to 4.2% while workforce participation rose marginally. 

The U.S. added just 29,000 jobs in September, a sign that the labor market may not be able to deliver the sizable gains that it did in the past—but doesn’t need to in order to keep the unemployment rate low.

The numbers

The jobs number, reported Friday by the Labor Department, fell far short of analysts’ expectations for an increase of 84,000 jobs. The unemployment rate edged up to 4.2%. That was higher than 4.1% the previous month but still at a historically low level that indicates the labor market remains generally healthy.

Monthly employment numbers can be volatile, so investors and policymakers tend to focus on the unemployment rate. 

Low hire, low fire

The 29,000 number will seem low to anyone who remembers the job gains that routinely topped 200,000 in the years before the pandemic—much less the massive job gains that came when the economy reopened from Covid-19.

But the economy doesn’t need to generate as many jobs as it used to just to keep the labor market steady. The population is aging, and an immigration clampdown has reduced growth in the supply of workers. 

In a positive sign, what is called the labor-force participation rate—the share of people working or looking for work—inched up slightly. “That all speaks to continued strength in the labor market,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide.

The job market remains in a low-hire, low-fire era that provides stability but can be frustrating for Americans used to more opportunity. That dynamic has made it harder for newcomers to break into the job market, or for those who have been laid off or seeking new jobs to find new roles.

And some of the other bits.

………

Stock investors cheered the report, with stocks up across a broad range of sectors. Investors also dialed back their expectations for a rate increase this month.

Still, the report lands amid a broad selloff in the bond market, and Treasury yields rose. They hit their highest level in 24 years earlier this week before retreating, while mortgage rates have surged above 7%. 

So, a bad jobs report is good news at the big casino on Wall Street.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

……… 

Jobs numbers for both July and August were revised down. Employers shed 10,000 jobs in July, down from a previous estimate of a gain of 21,000. August’s job gain was revised to 133,000, from 162,000. Combined, revisions trimmed 60,000 jobs from the previously estimated tally for July and August.

 So the numbers are even worse than they initially appear.

Headline of the Day

Pete Hegseth’s Big Speech Was Weirdest Village People Cover We’ve Ever Heard 

—Wonkette

I got nothing to add to this.

Support Your Local Police

A news organization has gotten a $2.5 million dollar bill from the Eugene, Oregon police department for a copy of records of just one rogue cop.

Can you say, "Blatantly illegal attempt to subvert the state Freedom of Information Act?

Good, I knew you could.

How much does it cost to get more information about a cop who punched someone in the face?

If you guessed anything lower than $2.5 million, you’d be wrong — at least according to the city of Eugene, Oregon.

In August, the local news outlet Double Sided Media filed a public records request for records about police officer Justin Peckels, which focused on potential misconduct between 2018 and 2026. Peckels has been the subject of community complaints, including for punching a resident in the face during a traffic stop, making the records vital for oversight and their release clearly in the public interest.

The city’s response is beyond belief. In its response to the request on Monday, the Eugene Police Department claimed searching for records and processing the request would take at least 44,816 hours of staff time and cost approximately $2,484,599.04. (A separate request by the outlet for similar records concerning a former police officer, Eric Klinko, was met with a comparatively modest estimate of $195,869.52, for a grand total of nearly $2.7 million for both requests.)

Needless to say, the Eugene PD needs to be given a metaphorical anti-corruption proctology exam with a metaphorical telephone pole.

He Never Fails to Disappoint

Once again, we have Gavin Newsom doing something reprehensible.

This time, it is vetoing a bill making secretly taping people with "pervert glasses" a crime.

I guess he wants campaign donations from Mark Zuckerberg for his Presidential campaign.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has used his veto authority to send a bill passed by the state’s legislature back to lawmakers, which would have made it unlawful to secretly record people with wearable recording devices.

Newsom said in a letter to lawmakers on Wednesday that he declined to sign the draft law, California Senate Bill 1130, on grounds that it defines wearable recording devices as “too broadly or imprecisely” and that this could lead to confusion and unintended consequences. Newsom added that the proposed bill also includes protections that already exist in California’s law.

The bill would have made California the first state to regulate the use of smart glasses, as countries like Norway seek to potentially ban the technology. Had California’s law passed, violators could face fines or prison time, while wearable makers that did not comply with the rules would have also faced fines.

They Are Re-Litigating This?

Seriously, why is the Trump administration attempting to rehabilitate Richard M. Nixon?

We live in the worst timeline ever.

For nearly two years, the Justice Department has made it a priority to investigate people who previously investigated President Trump. Now it is reaching back in history to consider whether prosecutors mistreated an earlier Republican president: Richard Nixon.

The department is reviewing whether the special prosecutor’s office that investigated the famed Watergate break-in committed misconduct, according to people familiar with the matter, more than half a century after that scandal led to Nixon’s resignation.

Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide turned Watergate historian and revisionist, recently gave a two-hour presentation at Justice Department headquarters that laid out his theory that the deep state took Nixon down. The title of his 78-page slide deck: “Watergate As Lawfare.”

The review comes at a moment of renewed interest in the Nixon legacy. Republicans see in the combative former president, who was loathed by the press and besieged by investigations, a historical analogue for Trump. During remarks at the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., this summer, Vice President JD Vance made the comparison explicit.

F%$# Gerald Ford for pardoning that Cox Sacker Nixon. 

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, both initial and continuing unemployment claims fell, with initial claims hitting a 3 month low of 197,000.

New applications for US unemployment benefits drifted close to 57-year lows last week and layoffs decreased in September, suggesting labor market stability persisted even as employers remained cautious about boosting hiring.

The report from the Labor Department on Thursday joined a raft ​of other data, including robust consumer spending in August, in painting a rosy picture of the economy despite rising headwinds from the US-Israeli war with Iran, which has driven diesel prices to record ‌highs. Economists said robust corporate profits growth and resilient domestic demand were shielding workers from layoffs, for now.

………

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 197,000 for the week ended September 26, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 200,000 claims for the latest week.

Claims have held ​below the 200,000 level for three straight weeks and are near levels last seen in 1969. Some economists said historically low layoffs, if sustained, could raise questions about the labor market overheating, with monetary policy implications.

………

A separate report from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed layoffs announced by US-based employers dropped 18% to 43,281 in September. They were down 20% from a year ago ​and fell 43% in the third quarter. Employers are, however, in no rush to increase headcount.

Hiring plans increased by 90,787 last month. While that was sharply up from 12,325 in August, hiring intentions were down 23% from a year ago, and ​the tally was the lowest for any September since 2011. Challenger, Gray & Christmas said a surge in seasonal hiring typically seen starting in September was absent, adding that "companies are in a wait-and-see period."

………

But August's market-friendly inflation readings are unlikely to be sustained. An Institute for Supply Management survey on Thursday showed ​inflation pressures building up at the factory gate in September, with no commodities reported to have seen price declines. The survey's measure of input prices jumped to 77.9 last month from 71.1 in August.

Meanwhile, inflation and interest rate data are not looking good. 

US stocks recovered from early losses to close slightly higher on Thursday, with the ​S&P 500 bouncing from a two-week low as a global bond selloff reversed course after sending US Treasury yields to multi-decade highs.

Stocks were under pressure in ‌early trading as economic data kept pointing to a solid economy with persistent price pressures that stoked fears that inflation could ultimately force the Federal Reserve to become more aggressive with rate hikes. 

………

Treasury yields extended gains, and the benchmark 10-year Treasury note hit a 24-year high, after closing out September ​with its biggest quarterly gain since 1994, and pushed equities lower after the Institute for Supply Management said its manufacturing PMI dipped ⁠to 54.5 last month from 54.6 in August and showed a jump in input prices, raising inflation worries.

………

But yields turned lower as buyers stepped in, ​and further declined after Fed Vice Chair Philip Jefferson suggested the central bank may be patient before hiking rates again, following a 25 basis point hike in September.

The two-year US ​Treasury yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations for the Fed, dropped about 10 basis points and was poised for its biggest daily drop since August 2025.

………

Oil prices also kept stoking inflation worries. Brent crude settled up more than $4 a barrel after China suspended fuel exports, threatening to further tighten markets. The jump in crude prices helped boost the S&P 500 energy index, opens new tab 1.9% as the best performing of the 11 major S&P sectors. 

Damned if I know what the hell is going on here.

Self-Regulation is to Regulation as Self-Importance is to Importance

That's pretty much all that needs to be said about the voluntary AI self regulation "Accord" that was signed in the White House today.

OK, maybe one more thing, said accord misspelled  the words, :"United States." as, "UniteS States."

D'oh!

The agreement means nothing. 

 

Not Good

The consumer confidence number is out, and it has hit a 12 year low.

The rising cost of living has manifested itself in higher prices at the pump and supermarket as well as mortgage rates. Diesel prices are at a record high. Economists say the war has created an uncertain business environment and hindered employers' ability to hire more workers.

"The economy is stagnant for the typical American household, which has been caused by the erratic public policy environment that makes it tough for businesses and households to plan for the future," said Kyle Moore, chief economist at The Century Foundation.

The Conference Board said its ​consumer confidence index plummeted 6.7 points this month to 81.9, the lowest level since April 2014. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index at 89.2. The deterioration in confidence was across political party affiliation, age and income ​groups.

The consumer confidence index fell by 6.7 points to 81.9, much weaker than economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast. Consumers’ also had a tepid assessment of current labor market conditions and said they were worried about higher interest rates in the year ahead.

Obviously, one month does not a trend make, but this is not good news. 

FAIL

Sarah Huckabee Sanders ran an ad about how taxpayers should not be funding lazy assholes who spend their days gaming and eating junk food.

The ad is controversial among the MAGAts, because the leeches are white guys in the campaign spot.

The usual suspect snowflakes are offended, because as we all know, white guys are never welfare queens. 

AmIright? 

The MAGA world is turning on one of its own.

Pro-Trump, far-right influencers attacked Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, who served as President Trump’s press secretary from 2017 to 2019, after she posted a campaign ad promoting her state’s work requirements for many Medicaid recipients.

In the ad, which Ms. Sanders posted on social media on Monday morning, an unkempt, young white man named Brad mashes the buttons of his video game controller. He throws cheese balls and potato chips into his mouth, often missing.

“Brad has turned relaxing into a full-time profession,” Ms. Sanders tells the camera. “But you, you actually work hard. You pay taxes to cover welfare for guys like Brad, who just choose not to work. That’s why I launched a welfare-to-work requirement.”

I know, this seems a totally anodyne Republican political commercial, but there is much butt-hurt.

………

The ad instantly drew blowback from the kinds of once-fringe figures that the Republican Party brought into the fold under Mr. Trump. Critics almost exclusively expressed anger that the protagonist was a white man. Several of them demanded that Ms. Sanders take down the ad, issue an apology and fire the staff members who helped produce the TV spot, accusing her of engaging in “anti-white racism.”

Jack Posobiec, a right-wing commentator best known for fueling the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory about a child abuse ring at a Washington restaurant, called the ad “Antiwhite” and criticized Ms. Sanders for airing it in the run-up to the midterm election, suggesting it would alienate white voters.

………

Will Chamberlain, a conservative lawyer and influencer who worked on Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, accused Ms. Sanders of “anti-white racism.” In a video posted on social media on Monday, he said the ad was “how you end a national political career before it even begins.”

Also joining in the criticism were Matt Walsh, a right-wing podcaster and prominent Trump supporter; Mike Cernovich, a Trump defender and far-right commentator; and Caleb Pascoe, a lobbyist for the American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group.

Won't someone think of the children?

Bookies Have Always Been Used for Money Laundering

This applies to bookies masquerading as futures as well.

Case in point, Polymarket and Kalshi being to facilitate things like credit card fraud. 

Criminal solidarity, I guess.

Gambling addicts aren’t the only ones being taken for a ride by prediction markets.

As gambling platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi become have more popular than ever before, financial criminals are also using prediction markets to unleash fraud and graft on an unprecedented scale.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this phenomenon was identified as far back as February, when a payment processing company contracted by Polymarket flagged a massive rise in bets made with stolen debit cards.

Essentially, fraudsters began by plugging stolen financial information into the prediction market to make wagers. If they won, the perpetrators would then withdraw the funds, syphoning them into alternative payment methods under their control.

As the WSJ reports, criminals tried to make off with at least $10 million using this method — causing the third-party payment processor to reject over 80 percent of its incoming transactions as fraudulent, which is vastly over the industry norm of around 1 percent.

Following what has arguably become the business model of the day, the WSJ revealed that Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan essentially told his horrified compliance team to keep raking in the cash and deal with the consequences when they come — if they ever come at all, that is.

How about frog marching senior management out of their offices in handcuffs?

Headline of the Day

To Keep Drug Prices High, Pharma Has Been Piling up the Patents

—Ars Technica on big Phasrma's recent orgy of rent-seeking.

This is a real-time demonstration that the US IP legal framework is broken.

The cost of healthcare in general is a debilitating, pre-existing condition for Americans. But the high prices of prescription drugs usually stand out as a pain point. While there are many insidious reasons why Americans pay more—often far more—for their medicines than people in peer countries, exploitation of the US patent system is an obvious one.

A study published Monday in JAMA highlights just how much patent exploitation has grown since 1990. In that time, researchers found that the number of patents on small-molecule drugs has more than tripled, going from an average of 2.1 patents per drug approved in 1990 to 6.9 for those approved in 2019.

Most of the growth was in “nonprimary” patents—patents that generally aren’t related to a drug’s active ingredient, but are instead for things like minor tweaks to a drug’s nonactive ingredients, updates to the way the drug is used, or the design of specialty delivery devices, such as auto-injectors. Together, those extra patents on an individual drug can create what’s called a “patent thicket,” which delays the release of affordable generics on the market, keeping drug prices higher for longer without actual clinical advancements.

The study—led by S. Sean Tu, an expert in drug and patent law at the University of Alabama—found that the increase in patents per drug extended the time in which a drug was patented from an average of two years in 1990 to an average of 6.1 years in 2019.

“Because patent protection typically determines how long brand-name firms can charge monopoly prices, the rapid growth of nonprimary patents may contribute to limited price competition that benefits patients and the health care system by helping avoid unnecessary spending,” Tu and colleagues write.

 The money is not in better drugs, it's in gaming the patent system.

Even If the Umpire Is on Your Side, They Do Not like It When You Call Them a C%$#-Sucker

Which is why the the Supreme Court shot down Missouri's 3rd attempt to institute their Gerrymander before the ink was dry. 

As my Great-Grandfather used to say, "I told you once, I told you twice, now גיי געזונטערהייט." (Literally, "Go in good health," metaphorically, "Go f%$# yourself.")

For the third time in less than a month, the Supreme Court on Friday declined to allow Missouri to use a new congressional map, intended to benefit Republicans, in the November 2026 elections. In a five-page, unsigned order, the justices paused a ruling by a federal appeals court in St. Louis that had directed the state to implement the new map.

In Friday’s opinion, which was released to reporters shortly before 6 p.m. EDT, the court emphasized that the federal district and appeals courts “should not enjoin or otherwise prohibit the use of the” map enacted in 2022, which is currently in use in voting already underway, “in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri.” Moreover, the court added, those courts “should not order or otherwise require Missouri to use the” new map “in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri.”

There were no public dissents from the Supreme Court’s opinion.

As much as the seditious six are trying to put their thumb on the scale for Donald Trump, having to hear this 3 times in less than a month has clearly pissed them off.

Why the US Navy Is in Decline

The Seawolf Class Boat USS Connecticut ran into an uncharted underwater mountain in 2021.

It limped back to port, and was supposed to repaired last year, about 4 years, which is a complete mind f%$#.  The initial construction of the boat took 5 years. 

Now it will not return to service until at least 2027.

By way of context, Connecticut is slated for retirement in 2031, so it will have been repair for 6 of its last 10 years of service.

The U.S. Navy’s schedule for getting USS Connecticut, one of its prized Seawolf class nuclear attack submarines, back into service has slipped into next summer. The boat suffered severe damage, especially to its bow, in a collision with an underwater seamount in the South China Sea in 2021. The service had previously hoped that repairs would be finished before the end of this year, and planning is also now underway for the submarine’s retirement in 2031. This would mean it could serve for just four years before being pulled from service once and for all.

“USS Connecticut (SSN 22) is currently undergoing a complex Extended Docking Selected Restricted Availability (EDSRA) at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility. Current work consists of structural and systems restoration and required lifecycle maintenance,” a Navy official told TWZ today. “The Navy’s target completion date for the availability is the summer of 2027. PSNS & IMF is dedicated to executing this work with the highest standards of safety, technical accuracy, and craftsmanship to ensure the ship returns to the fleet ready to take its place at the tip of the spear in defense of our nation’s interests.”

I'm guessing that a lot of this delay comes from contractor's rat-f%$#ing the ability of the Navy to conduct repairs in house, but I am cynical that way.

Well, Bless His Heart! (Meant in the Southern Way) ⃰

If you were to tell me that Samuel f%$#ing Alito would recuse himself on a climate change case because of his investments in energy companies, I would have responded with, "Very droll!"

Not this time.  He HAS recused himself from Suncor v. Boulder.

Call me a cynic, but my guess is that he got assurances from the other "Felonious Five," justices that they would vote his way before making this announcement.

I do not believe that Alito has even the vaguest concept of what legal ethics means.

He does not care.  He does not have to. He's a Supreme Court justice. 

Supreme court justice Samuel Alito recused himself on Monday from a major climate-change case after facing calls to step aside due to stock holdings in oil companies.

A letter posted in the case did not specify a reason, but the conservative justice has previously recused himself from other cases involving companies where he holds stock.

………

Alito had so far resisted calls to step aside in the case, which the court agreed to hear in February. He does not own stock in Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil but does have holdings in other oil companies such as ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, according to his disclosures. The group Consumer Watchdog says that means he could indirectly benefit from a decision in the industry’s favor.

The group’s organizing director, Alexandra Nagy, pointed to the court’s recently adopted code of ethics, which says a justice should step aside if they or their families have a “subject matter or controversy”.

Ethics, schmethics.  This is optics, and the fix is in.

^*It means, "Go f%$# yourself!"

Headline of the Day

Iran War Exposes Saudi Arabia's Bad Bet on Trumpism

Foreign Policy, on how Trump has done lasting damage to the House of Saud (Archive.is link)

It has been known for about 50 years that Donald Trump is a sucker bet. 

Saudi Arabia is in serious trouble. Its global influence primarily comes from its leading position as an oil producer and the money resulting from that role, but now the Middle East is on fire. Today, Saudi tankers are blocked in the Persian Gulf and under threat in the Red Sea, and the country’s biggest oil pipeline had to shut down after a drone attack. Yet Saudi Arabia’s biggest long-term problem may be that its longtime security guarantor, the United States, is unable to put out the fire and doesn’t seem especially interested in trying. 

Since World War II and especially since the end of the Cold War, the Middle East has rested on a deal: U.S. military dominance provides relative stability, deterring and countering aggression, ensuring freedom of navigation, containing Iran, organizing air defense, and helping friendly governments to stay in power. In exchange, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf Arab states—Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—host U.S. bases, cooperate on counterterrorism, and maintain the smooth flow of oil. The clearest example of this working was in 1990-91, when a U.S.-led coalition prevented Iraq from taking any Saudi oil fields and pushed Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. 

U.S. President Donald Trump’s attack on Iran broke that arrangement beyond repair, and Saudi Arabia doesn’t have a replacement.

 To quote the movie Animal House, "You f%$#ed up, you trusted us."

Linkage

• Private Schools Are Bad for Society (Hamilton Nolan) A cogent argument that private schools are a major contributor to numerous societal ills.
• Queen Elizabeth I Owned Two Thousand Dresses. Only a Scrap of One Remains (Vanity Fair) (Archive.is link) It's a wonderful piece of embroidery.
• AI: EU Member States plan “digital expropriation” of Europeans in the interest of AI companies Attempting to sell out consumer data protections.
• Volkswagen ejected from European blue-chip index in blow to crisis-hit carmaker (Financial Times) Yeah, Germany is finally suffering what inflicted on other EU members. (Archive.is link)
• Network science reveals the structure and lasting impact of the Roman road system (Nature Communications) An interesting analysis of the Roman road network from the perspective of networks,
• Navy's shipyard revamp could cost more than $200 billion: GAO (Breaking Defense) A 10-fold increase.  And we wonder why the Chinese navy is catching up.
• Scientists Found a Deep-Sea ‘Death Pool’ That Vanished. It May Show How Earth's First Life Survived (Gizmodo) Pre oxygen life on earth is reflected in these oxygen free pools.
• New York Sues Polymarket, Accuses It of Running an "Illegal Gambling" Operation (Futurism) They have already sued Kalshi, so this is welcome but not surprising.
• Los Angeles Has a Flea Problem—and It's Fueling Typhus Outbreaks (Gizmodo) Typhus?  Welcome to the 3rd world.
• The anthropogenic fingerprint on emerging infectious diseases (Nature) Climate change is finding another way to kill us.
• Oracle credit default swaps hit record high as AI debt worries mount (Seeking Alpha) The banksters are now betting against Oracle.  Sweet!
• Private List Warns Woman of "Over a Hundred" Allegedly Predatory Men in Silicon Valley (Futurism) They really are the worst of us.

This is a fascinating look at Kubrick's use of light in Barry Lyndon

Worse than Being Labeled a Pervert?

It appears that a new batch of pervert glasses are burning people's faces, because it appears that basic consumer electronics safety is beyond these mooks.

Smart glasses have been shrouded in controversy for quite some time now.

They’ve earned the moniker of “pervert glasses” for allowing creeps to spy on unsuspecting strangers, while sketchy facial recognition software generates fear of a dystopian surveillance state. Meta’s even been hit with a lawsuit for allowing contracts to see users’ intimate moments.

The smart glasses world just can’t catch a break. Now, gadget maker Inmo had to recall its Air3 smart glasses because the left arm can “overheat during extended use, posing a risk of serious injury or death due to burn hazard,” according to an official notice by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

“Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled product and update the product firmware to version 3.16 before reusing the product,” a separate recall notice by Health Canada warned.

In addition to being morally bankrupt, it appears that the tech bros cannot manage even basic consumer electronics safely. 

Guck Favin

Once again, we find that, despite his stellar social media operation, at his core, Gavin Newsom is a punk.

The California Governor just vetoed a bill that would ban extraditing doctors who provide abortions or gender affirming care.

The reason given?  He thinks that it does not respect the executive power of the Governor.

This is a bullsh%$ reason from a crap politician. 

When Louisiana authorities tried to extradite a California doctor last winter for sending abortion pills to women in their state, Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back—hard. “We will not allow extremist politicians from other states to reach into California and try to punish doctors based on allegations that they provided reproductive health care services,” Newsom declared. “Not today. Not ever.”

Yet nine months after that ringing defense of abortion providers and reproductive freedom, Newsom has blocked Democratic efforts to enshrine the same anti-extradition policy into state law.

The soon-to-be-ex-governor has vetoed a bill that would have prohibited future governors from handing over abortion providers, helpers, and patients to red states for criminal prosecution. The bill also would have barred extraditions involving transgender care. Newsom’s decision was “incredibly disappointing” and “certainly not what we were expecting,” says Pavitra Abraham, director of state campaigns for Reproductive Freedom for All.

The veto of AB 2164—also known as the Care Without Fear Act—has alarmed reproductive rights advocates around the country because of California’s critical role in preserving abortion access since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The state is home to telemedicine providers, mail-order pharmacies, research organizations, and other groups that have helped keep abortion pills flowing even to the most conservative parts of the US.

………

But instead, Newsom vetoed the bill, announcing the move in a Sunday legislative update. In his statement explaining his decision, Newsom pointed to his strong record on reproductive health issues, including privacy. But he said he was “troubled by the precedent that would be set if an outgoing administration agreed with the Legislature to erode the executive authority of an incoming Governor based on their shared policy preferences, regardless of how righteous and well-intentioned those actions may be.”

This is bullsh%$, and Gavin Newsom is bullsh=%$. 

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), So Much Winning

In Michigan Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is leading in the polls against Mike Rogers and Maine’s Troy Jackson is behind Susan Collins.

The difference between these campaigns?  Troy Jackson is following the advice of the mainstream Democratic Party political consultants.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are to winning elections what Ebola is to French kissing.

The New York Times has a new article headlined “Democrats Show Strength in Michigan Senate Race but Trail in Maine, Polls Find.” It highlights the divergent electoral prospects of two Democratic Senate candidates: Michigan’s Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and Maine’s Troy Jackson. Both Michigan and Maine are swing states that have voted statewide for both Democrats and Republicans in recent years, yet polls currently show El-Sayed leading his opponent, Mike Rogers, by five percentage points, while Jackson is trailing Republican Susan Collins by three percent.

We have to regard polls skeptically. In the primary, polls showing El-Sayed far ahead of his rivals turned out to be wildly wrong, and his ultimate victory was very narrow. But the paper’s report also presents some illuminating facts, beyond the raw polling data. They note that:

In Michigan, support for Dr. El-Sayed appears to be fueled by the popularity of his economic message and his vocal support for single-payer health care. He is more trusted to handle the cost of living by nine points, the only Democrat who is more trusted on the issue across the three states. And despite a bitter primary, a whopping 95 percent of Democrats are now supporting his candidacy. Dr. El-Sayed is also winning 8 percent of voters who supported Mr. Trump in the 2024 election, more than either of the other two Democrats in the survey. Abel Kang, a social worker from Grand Rapids, said he knew very little about Mr. Rogers other than his support of Mr. Trump. Mr. Kang said he planned to support Dr. El-Sayed largely because of economic issues and his support of single-payer health care. “He is talking about free health care,” said Mr. Kang, 47, an independent. “Personally, I think that is a necessity. It’s a basic human need.”  

The paper spends less time trying to explain why Troy Jackson is not having as much success during an electoral cycle that is widely assumed to favor Democrats, who hold an 11-point national lead on the “generic” congressional ballot. They note that Susan Collins is seen by “a majority of Maine voters as more likely than Mr. Jackson to be an effective senator and as having better character.” But a recent report in New York magazine adds critical additional context to help us understand why the Jackson campaign isn’t catching fire. In it, Rebecca Traister documents that Jackson’s campaign has been directed in large part by establishment Democratic consultants who are crushing Jackson’s main sources of appeal: his populism, his authenticity, his ability to connect with ordinary people. Traister’s report is full of utterly damning findings:

“These advisers are frustrated by Jackson and his backwoods cadence, his insistence on taking questions, and his unapologetically progressive stances. Jackson, a decent, marble-mouthed logger with a phone belt clip[…] has often deferred to their expertise, angering longtime allies and organizers who have their own thoughts on how he can win. “These people are very convincing… He’s being taken advantage of by people who have a lot of power and influence in this political sphere.” 

[The] effect of the campaign on the 58-year-old Jackson is readily apparent. Typically an impassioned speaker, Jackson has become more tentative, with answers on Israel and ICE getting muddier. His political identity is now undergoing an awkward transformation before voters’ eyes as he struggles to incorporate new, seemingly foreign talking points. Internal campaign documents instruct him to say, when asked about his position that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, “No matter what you’re comfortable calling it, I think we can all agree this is senseless violence.”

“The Jackson campaign’s wariness of in-person events seems to merge with a general suspicion of Mainers and their conviction that they know what’s best for Jackson. A handful of them who work as staffers at this point “are treated like garbage” by the campaign bosses, according to one source[…] “They think it’s going well when Troy is boring AF,” said another person with knowledge of the campaign.” […] “They want to run this campaign through numbers and spreadsheets. And wherever a campaign is connecting with people or doing anything quirky or unique, they’re like, ‘This is bad and weird.’” A lot of this friction comes down to competing theories of how to win elections. The people running Jackson’s campaign are relying on heavy vetting, poll testing, and data that pinpoints exactly who may be persuadable. They focus on ads, the messages neatly sculpted, while the candidate attends fundraisers and does call time, raising more money to pay for more ads. Emphasizing ads over a field operation is more profitable for the companies running that campaign. TKO and McCollister’s firm, Frame, make and sell ads for Jackson.”

Say what you will about Graham Plattner, but he went all over the state, and he listened to and talked to voters.

This was popular and provided a contrast with both with Collins and his primary opponent Mills.

Of course, the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) consultants cannot tolerate this, because campaigning in person and talking to voters does not make them any money. 

Republicans may be the opposition, but the The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is the enemy.

Not Good

It appears that Donald Trump and some of his more unhinged supporters are considering meddling with the upcoming election with a martial law declaration. 

Of all the outside advisers urging President Trump to seize control of federal elections this fall, the attorney Peter Ticktin can claim the deepest ties; the two men went to military school together as teenagers. In 2022, Ticktin helped Trump sue Hillary Clinton. This year, he pushed Trump to secure a pardon for Tina Peters, a former Colorado clerk convicted of charges related to tampering with election equipment.

Which is why it might be worth listening when Ticktin says that Trump could do something soon to take over elections. “He’s the only one that I know for sure has the understanding of the severity of it,” Ticktin told us this month before taking the stage at an election-skeptic conference in Las Vegas. The way Ticktin sees it, there are three possible outcomes this fall. The first—a smooth election—won’t happen in his view because, he claims without evidence, Democrats already cheated in the primaries. The second is that Trump takes action before the election to prevent cheating. The last option is that Trump tries to declare martial law on or around November 3. “Either martial law, or step aside,” he told us about Trump’s choices in the last scenario. When we asked about the prospect of riots if Trump tries to overturn the election results, Ticktin said he was not concerned. “Believe me, our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are,” he said.

………

To head off a crisis, Trump’s White House and Cabinet advisers have been working for months to move Trump’s focus away from baseless theories of election fraud peddled by people like Ticktin, Root, and Peters. At the same time, they have authorized as-yet-unsuccessful efforts to uncover actual evidence that would make the conspiracies more credible: Trump’s advisers gathered once-classified documents that he could share on genuine foreign efforts to influence elections, set up a prime-time address where he again falsely suggested that the 2020 election was stolen, authorized the seizure of Georgia election records, and reviewed voting equipment used in Puerto Rico. None of these efforts has revealed the type of large-scale fraud that Trump has alleged, though they have allowed the president to keep the idea of election theft in the news. Meanwhile, Trump has failed to persuade Senate Republicans to pass legislation, called the SAVE America Act, that would restrict mail-in voting and impose new voter-ID and citizenship checks on ballot access, and the Supreme Court has rejected his effort to restrict voting by mail.

………

But the prospect of Trump deciding to act on the demands of his most fervent election-denying supporters has remained a constant threat, one that even Trump’s inner circle admits remains possible. Such measures are broadly opposed by Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and within Trump’s own administration, not least because they’re considered bad politics. Polling commissioned by Republicans earlier this year found that if the SAVE America Act passed, it was likely to increase Democratic enthusiasm and suppress Republican turnout, particularly in red states, such as Florida, that have long embraced mail-in voting, according to a person who has reviewed the numbers.

We need to make sure that local and state authorities are prepared for this.

We also personally need to be prepared to push back against this personally. 

Speaking of Elon

His car company is arguing in it's fine for the N-word being thrown around the workplace.

I guess you can take the psychopath out of Apartheid, but you cannot take Apartheid out of the psychopath.

Whatever special kind of brain worms have established themselves in Elon Musk’s noggin appear to be spreading throughout his companies.

In the midst of a state trial on behalf of over 6,000 Black workers at Tesla’s flagship factory in Fremont, California, attorneys for Musk’s electric vehicle argued that it’s acceptable to use the n-word in certain situations, insisting that it’s a “term of respect and endearment” in the Black community.

Sure, it’s true that many Black people have reclaimed the word. But the lawsuit is about non-Black Tesla employees and managers abusing Black workers — including allegedly hurling the slur at them in ways that don’t sound like anything resembling gestures of “respect and endearment.”

On top of that, the first witness called to the stand testified to the court that senior counsel for Tesla had tried to mislead him days before the trial, by claiming to represent the state, rather than the EV company, Electrek reported. Prosecutors allege four more potential witnesses were approached by Tesla’s lawyers prior to the case, who have since fallen “off our [the states attorneys’] radar” following possible deals, threats, or persuasion by the company’s counsel.

The jaw dropping gaffes emerged the first day of a major bench trial being prosecuted by the state of California, over an alleged pattern of rampant racism and negligence in Tesla’s massive production facility. Previously, Electrek reported that Black Tesla workers at the facility were subjected to racial prejudice by way of wage discrimination, segregation, and racial slurs.

Why Elon Musk has achieved success is beyond me.