Texas Senate: James Talerico has defeated Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic Senate
primary in Texas, and Cornyn and Paxton are headed for a runoff on the
Republican side. (Texas rules require a runoff if a candidate does not
secure an absolute majority of the votes.)
US Congress TX-2: Incumbent Dan Crenshaw, who is definitely nuts, lost the primary to the even nuttier Steve Toth.
US Congress TX-23: Incumbent Tony Gonzales and Gun Tuber Brandon Herrera are almost tied, and are headed to a runoff. What makes this race interesting is that married with 6 children Gonzalez had an affair with one of his staffers, harassed her repeatedly, and she committed suicide by setting herself on fire. Herrera, on the other hand has political positions, particularly with regard to gun laws that are repugnant to me, but he is very entertaining on YouTube.
US Congress NC-4: A very close rematch (Yet to be called) between incumbent Valerie Foushee, and Nida Allam. Of note here is that AIPAC and AI datacenter money was a big factor, and Foushee promised not to take money from them, but received support from a related stealth PACs. (More on that later)
Here's hoping that further developments give the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) some major heartburn.
There are a number of things that I tend not to write about because they never happen, you know, things like carnivorous killer sheep, sentient slime molds,honest Republicans, etc.
One of these things is, "Expansions in the Los Angeles Metro."
It's not good or bad, it's just never gonna happen.
Or so I thought.
It turns out that they have extended some lines, including, so it seems, the "D" line, which will be adding 3 lines later this Spring.
The folks at LA Metro are excited about this. They are so excited that they are selling a T-shirt to commemorate this.
L.A. Metro really wants people to take their soon-to-be-opened rail line extension, and have come up with a wildly popular marketing method to spread the word — a new line of merchandise proudly emblazoned with the phrase, “Ride the D.”
The cheeky shirts, available both in full length and as crop tops, have become a viral sensation, with the initial release selling out in just one day. But those eager to own their own need not despair: The transit system announced shortly before 3 p.m. Friday that a limited batch was back in stock.
“If you neeeeeeeeD it GO NOW,” L.A. Metro wrote in an Instagram post announcing the restock. The T-shirt is on sale for $21 and the crop top for $20. Fans were encouraged to snap them up quickly before they sell out again.
The shirts’ release Thursday coincided with the announcement that the first phase of the Metro D Line subway extension will open May 8, with three new stations connecting downtown Los Angeles to Beverly Hills. The new stations are located at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax, Wilshire/La Cienega and will collectively serve Koreatown, Miracle Mile, Hancock Park, Carthay Circle, the Fairfax District and Beverly Hills.
They [The Beatles] weren't "going" prog, they were inventing it.
User
@jamescox42317 d explaining to producer and composer Isaac Brown what the Beatles really did.
Brown has a series of videos of him reacting to hearing every Beatles album for the first time. (Thank you for making me feel old as f%$#, dude!)
While listening to, "Happiness is a Warm Gun," Brown says, "What the heck is
this, Prog Rock? Hey, The Beatles are going Prog!" (about 27:10 of Part
1 below)
Over the span of less than a decade, the Fab Four literally redefined rock and roll.
Part 1:
Part2:
FWIW, I do agree with Brown's basic thesis, which is that White Album is less an album than it is a collection of songs from 4 amazingly talented dudes.
It is a chaotic magnificent masterpiece, and my favorite Beatles album.
Maybe it's because there is no promise of making the world a better place, but rather a transparent attempt to loot society from narcissistic psychopaths.
Your grandparents heard pretty much the same thing. The creators of a new technology have always sold it as producing a fundamental transformation of human existence. The radio was touted as bringing “perpetual peace on earth.” Television was supposed to arouse so much empathy for different cultures that it would end war. Cable television would educate the masses and lead to widespread enlightenment.
This time, though, the masses have not been won over.
In a YouGov survey last year, more than a third of respondents said they were concerned that A.I. would end human life on earth. Even those with a more hopeful attitude overwhelmingly said in another poll that they would not pay extra to put A.I. on their devices. And in the most recent large survey conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 80 percent of firms reported that A.I. was having no impact on their productivity or employment.
They Silly-Con valley types are promising that you lose your job, that you will work harder, that your electric bill will go up, but it's all good, because they will get rich.
People remember the dot-com bust around 2000, and they remember how criminals in high finance were bailed out rather than arrested, and they see this all happening again.
Americans get it because they have seen it before, and used that information to develop understanding, something which current AI will never be able to do.
These people need to be permanently removed from anything resembling a position of power.
All unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say.
As detainees are frequently moved across state lines quickly, often to red states like Texas, pregnant people are facing challenges accessing reproductive health care in detention centers.
Unaccompanied minors who lack immigration documentation are at high risk for trafficking and other forms of harm, so they fall under the care of the office of refugee resettlement (ORR), which previously had facilities across the country capable of caring for children under the age of 18 who are pregnant.
Since July, more than a dozen pregnant children have been moved to a single facility in the small town of San Benito, along the south Texas border. The children kept in Texas are as young as 13, and about half are pregnant because of rape, according to a joint investigation by the Texas Newsroom and the California Newsroom. In Texas, abortion is banned in nearly all circumstances, including rape and incest.
When the worm turns, the need to be taken down. To quote Robert Graves apocryphal quote of They cannot be reasoned with. To quote Robert Graves apocryphal quote of Germanicus Caesar, "They must be
struck into the dust, struck down again as they rise. Struck again while
they lie groaning, while their wounds still pain them."
Yeah, this sort of bullsh%$ is something that is beyond even the hackery of his most corrupt pet judges, except, perhaps, Aileen Cannon.
The Trump administration on Monday abandoned its defense of the president’s executive orders sanctioning several law firms, punctuating a year of turmoil that rocked the legal industry and forced its leaders to choose between taking on the White House or capitulating.
In a court filing, the Justice Department said it was dropping its appeals of four trial-court rulings that struck down Trump’s actions against law firms Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey. The move came just days before the Justice Department’s opening brief was due in an appeal of the four cases, which were consolidated before a federal court in Washington.
………
The firm added that it viewed the case as a fight not just for itself but “for the people across this country who refuse to back down in the face of an administration that seeks to silence and intimidate them—lawyers and nonlawyers alike.”
Trump issued a string of executive orders last year against several law firms and individual lawyers that would have stripped security clearances, restricted their access to federal buildings and directed agencies to end any federal contracts with the firms and their clients.
………
In targeting the firms, Trump cited their connections to his political rivals and criticized their diversity initiatives and pro bono work advocating for immigrants, transgender rights and voting protections. The White House had singled out these firms for representing clients including Hillary Clinton and George Soros, and for ties to figures such as Robert Mueller, who as special counsel led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election
It does appear that the law firms that prostrated themselves to Trump have found it hard to recruit and keep staff.
Bill Gates Admits to Multiple Affairs in Epstein Fallout (Futurism) We already knew this. It's not that Gates or the other Epstein fellow travelers were pedophiles, they were just people who wanted to demonstrate their wealth and power through transgressing.
Let me be clear, I am not talking about a law enforcement agency, I am talking about a domestic spy agency.
“Florida man seeks to create a state counterintelligence unit and claim sweeping surveillance powers over people whose ‘views’ or ‘opinions’ he dislikes.” It’s not nearly as amusing as the usual “Florida man” headline, and it may lead to a blueprint for lawmakers far beyond Florida.
If Florida enacts House Bill 945, it will create a national first – CIA-style structure at the state level that blurs the traditional line between state law enforcement and intelligence work. It likely wouldn’t remain a local experiment. Red states often borrow aggressively from one another’s policy playbooks, on everything from gerrymandering to anti-abortion laws to transporting immigrants to Democratic-led states. A state-level intelligence office empowered to scrutinize residents based on ideology is precisely the kind of proposal likely to spread once normalized.
The bill would create an operational intelligence office charged with identifying and disrupting threats to Florida and the United States. That alone should raise questions. The federal government already spends enormous sums (by some accounts, trillions of dollars since 11 September 2001) on national security and counterterrorism. Why should states duplicate those functions without demonstrating a clear need, specialized expertise, or meaningful oversight?
………
The bill’s language allows scrutiny based on “views” and “opinions”, a
standard that echoes some of the darkest chapters of American
surveillance history. In the 1960s and 70s, the FBI’s Cointelpro program
infiltrated protest movements, monitored journalists, and targeted
civil rights leaders – not for crimes, but beliefs.
I have no doubt that this would be used as a rat-f%$#ing squad. It's purpose would be to disrupt the activities of the political opposition.
Polymarket has been allowing people to bet on when the
US would strike Iran next. Obviously, now that it’s actually happened and people have died, the
prediction betting market is feeling some pressure. The site has been at the
center of controversy before, including suspicions of insider trading on the
Super Bowl halftime show
and the capture of Venezuelan President
Nicolás Maduro.
In a statement posted on its site, Polymarket defended its
decision to allow betting on the potential start of a war, saying that it
was an “invaluable”
source of news
and answers, before taking shots at traditional media and Elon Musk’s X. The
statement reads:
Ah yes, the betting equivalent of snuff films. Lovely.
On a more significant note, it has been confirmed that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been assassinated by a joint Israeli US operation. Given his position within Shia Islam, where he was
considered one of the most, if not the most, important sources of religious
scholarship and authority, it is highly likely that this will inflame
sentiment throughout areas with significant Shia populations.
There are two problems with Assassinations, they do not work even when the
target is successfully killed, and they legitimize assassination as a tool of
statecraft, and western leaders are far more exposed.
Leading maritime insurers have cancelled war risk cover for vessels
operating in the Gulf as the escalating Iran conflict disrupted shipping and
sent some freight costs surging.
At least 150 vessels including
oil and liquefied natural gas tankers have dropped anchor in the strait of
Hormuz and surrounding waters, and at least three tankers were damaged and
one seafarer killed over the weekend.
The vital shipping route,
through which about
20% of the world’s oil supplies
and 20% of seaborne gas tankers pass, is effectively closed after the US and
Israel began intense airstrikes on Iran on Saturday.
Several
leading mutual marine insurers, including Norway’s Gard and Skuld, the UK’s
NorthStandard and the London P&I Club, and the New York-based American
Club, said they were cancelling war risk cover for ships operating in the
region.
Western shipping companies don't wipe their ass without insurance coverage.
President Donald Trump’s indifference towards U.S. soldiers killed in a war he
started is not sitting well with some Americans.
Trump, 79,
addressed the nation
on Sunday and said that “there will likely be more” U.S. military personnel
killed in the war with Iran that he started on Saturday, saying “that’s the way
it is.”
My guess would be that the volume of Iranian counter-attacks around the Persian Gulf overwhelmed these units, resulting in the shoot-down, though there are a number of other possibilities (sabotage of IFF systems, a strike from Iranian long range SAMs, etc.)
And the United States and Israel are at war with Iran, and allegedly the Ali Khamenei has been assassinated by US air strike.
Trump is claiming that the purpose is regime change.
As near as I can tell, there have been no plans for a large boots on the ground campaign, and the record of air power triggering regime change is extremely thin, so if I were a betting man, I would bet on this conflict ending up a loss for the United States.
This sounds like the (ultimately ineffective) attempts in the 2006-2008 time frame to use similar instruments.
Investors are riding out the “whack-a-mole” software sell-off by loading up on protection against volatility and exploiting the divergence in sectors tipped to be either winners or losers from AI’s advance.
Some of Wall Street’s biggest players are turning to complex options and hedging strategies to navigate a market buffeted by blog posts and headlines that have recently wiped tens of billions of dollars off the value of some of the S&P 500’s largest tech groups.
Yes, adding complexity to an unstable market always work out SO well.
………
Investors are embracing so-called dispersion trades, which involve buying single-stock volatility while selling index volatility to profit from the gap between the S&P 500’s relatively subdued daily moves and large price swings for individual companies.
………
Dispersion trades could come unstuck if markets suffer a broader setback — perhaps sparked by geopolitical risks or an escalation of trade wars — that causes stocks to fall in unison.
In that situation, investors who have bet on dispersion might be forced to buy index-level volatility protection, potentially exacerbating a market-wide sell-off, according to Jasmine Yeo, a fund manager at Ruffer.
Gee, isn't that how CDOs and the like led to the panic in 2008?
Not only was it a blow-out, Labour came in 3rd place,behind the Green and the
Reform Parties.
They won almost entirely disgust with the Conservative Party and the status quo from a profoundly disenchanted electorate.
One only has to look at the turnout. Labour received ½ million fewer votes in
2024 than they had received in 2019 with total turnout falling by 3½ from the prior election.
So Starmer's Tory-Lite policies, particularly when his government appears to be (at best) marginal improvement of Conservative incometence, look to be a recipe for failure.
Labour MPs have said for weeks that the outcome they most feared at the Gorton and Denton byelection was a Green party victory.
On Friday morning, those fears were realised.
The Greens’ convincing win in the Manchester seat gives the leftwing party its best byelection result and its first northern seat. More importantly, however, it gives progressive voters a clear signal that they do not have to vote Labour to beat Reform – a signal that could prove catastrophic for the government in some of its strongest heartlands over the next few years.
“What makes this loss so consequential to Labour is not just the scale of the defeat but the message it sends to voters about future contests,” said the pollster Luke Tryl. “One of Labour’s ace cards had been the hope that, however frustrated or disillusioned progressive voters might be with the Starmer government, the threat of Reform would be enough to bring them back into the fold and reunite the left – a similar approach to President Macron’s re-election against Marine Le Pen [in France].
“But that argument risks collapsing following last night’s result.”
Yes, the, "We're incompetent prats, but have you seen the other guy?"strategy.
That has worked so well for the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) in the United States. Just ask President Kamala Harris
………
But for Starmer, Labour’s distant third place is likely to reignite questions about his leadership and renew the criticism of those on the left of the party that he has not done enough to impress its progressive base. It follows a similar result last year in the Welsh Senedd seat of Caerphilly, where Plaid Cymru topped the ballot, ending more than 100 years of Labour dominance in the region.
The prime minister’s decision to block Andy Burnham from running for the seat is likely to come under renewed scrutiny, given many voters said they would have been more likely to vote Labour if the Greater Manchester mayor had been the candidate.
Starmer kiboshed the Burnham because he is a (marginally) progressive politician and a potential rival to Starmer's position in the party.
Ban Prediction Markets The subhed says it all, "They don’t produce knowledge, they can’t prevent insider trading, and they turn politics, war, and death into a cash-out."
Manhattan prosecutors declined to pursue an assault charge against Gusmane Coulibaly on Thursday night, instead charging him with misdemeanor obstructing government administration and a harassment violation in connection with the viral Washington Square Park snowball fight.
………
In court, prosecutors said that after reviewing the evidence, they were unable to prove that an officer suffered a physical injury caused directly by Coulibaly’s conduct and therefore did not pursue an assault charge. They said the investigation remains ongoing.
About a dozen uniformed officers sat in the courtroom along with union leadership, including Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry.
And the cops proceeded to whine about this, like the entitled babies that they are.
It's just a snowball fight, and if the boys in blue had not attempted to engage in dick swinging, nothing would have happened.
In the wake of the public killings of multiple US citizens, protestors, and legal observers in recent weeks by immigration agents in Minneapolis, January 26, 2025 marked a watershed moment for r/FuckingFascists: they will no longer allow content or roleplay featuring ICE.
The Reddit community r/FuckingFascists is for people with a kink for roleplaying sex with fascists. The subreddit’s description explicitly states that the sub is “about making porn or making fun of authoritarians. REAL FASCISTS, SEXISTS, HOMOPHOBES, TRANSPHOBES AND OTHER BIGOTS ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!,” and “Rule 1: No Fascists”.
On Monday morning, moderator LilyDHM announced a complete ban of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) content in the sub. “No ICE related content will be allowed in kink posts,” the post reads. “We believe that this is the best option to allow people to still post MAGA content without touching this particular aspect of it, as it directly involves current politics and multiple lost lives.”
The Best Time to Leave xAI Is Before Joining. The Next Best Time is Right
Now
—
Gizmodo, commenting on the rapid exit of many of the senior staff at Elon Musk's child porn generator artificial intelligence company.
Having a drug-addled, paranoid, and profoundly stupid boss must suck.
Earlier this week, Elon Musk’s AI firm xAI lost cofounder Tony Wu. A day later, Jimmy Ba joined him in adding ex-xAI to his LinkedIn bio. Ba was the sixth member of the company’s 12-person founding team to ditch the firm, leaving just half of the original crew still on board. They were followed by at least five staffers, according to a report from The Verge, who decided their time was better spent elsewhere. And while few of them had anything negative to say publicly as they collectively headed for the door, it’s all a bit odd, right?
My guess is that they looked at what was going, what with the non-consensual pr0n generation and all, and realized that while the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is too rich to jail, they aren't.
I'm surprised that the "Gray Lady" was willing to publish an opinion that
explains how Wall Street has become a parasitic force in society.
About the only paper less likely to publish this would be the Wall Street Journal.
The author, Oren Cass, one of the authors of the Heritage Foundation's
notorious Project 2025, is not a particularly likely author either.
It’s bonus season on Wall Street, and a record-setting 2025 is yielding bigger paychecks than ever for America’s investment bankers, thanks to their hard work doing, well, what exactly? Answering that question is surprisingly difficult and helps to explain many of the nation’s most serious economic and social problems. It all starts, like so many of life’s puzzles, with Mary Poppins.
If you’ve taken an economics course — or if you at least enjoy classic family movies — you probably remember the scene: Young Jane and Michael Banks have come to visit the bank where their father works. When the bank’s chairman, Mr. Dawes Sr., snatches Michael’s tuppence, the boy shouts: “Give it back! Gimme back my money!” Overhearing the kerfuffle, a customer assumes the institution is refusing to return a customer’s deposit. Next thing you know, the bank run is on.
………
Since Mary Poppins’s day, the financial sector as a whole — investment banks, hedge funds, private equity firms, cryptocurrency platforms and all the rest of it — has exploded as a share of the United States’ gross domestic product. It now claims the highest share of corporate profits and attracts the highest share of top talent from topschools, in part by offering the highest compensation. But actual business investment has declined, to an average of 2.9 percent of G.D.P. over the past decade from 5.2 percent in the 1960s, when the film was released.
Unlike Dawes’s Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, a modern investment bank mostly earns its money in a way that not even the bravest lyricist would set to music: providing advisory services, executing complex financial engineering schemes, trading stocks and bonds, managing other people’s money, issuing credit cards and so on. Assets get bought and sold, divided and packaged, and the bank collects fees at each step.
David Solomon, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, could not sing to young Michael about the many productive uses to which he might put the tuppence because Goldman Sachs rarely invests in anything at all. Fostering economic progress appears to be beside the point.
Less than 10 percent of Goldman’s work in 2024, measured by revenue, was helping businesses raise capital. Loans of Goldman’s own funds to operating businesses accounted for less than 2 percent of its assets. At JPMorgan Chase the figures were 4 and 5 percent; at Morgan Stanley, 7 and 2 percent. Even the efforts at helping to raise capital are misleading, because less than a tenth of it goes toward building anything new. The rest funds debt refinancing, balance sheet restructuring and mergers and acquisitions.
………
Even critics of the financial industry tend to focus on the worst outcomes — the “lootings” that lead to bankruptcy, the irresponsible gambles, the outright frauds. But the problem isn’t the edge case; it’s the very premise.
Financialization is a grift, a rarefied form of bookmaking, of no net value to workers and consumers, the economy, or society as a whole. Let’s treat it accordingly. Economists and the news media can stop using the word “invest” in contexts where no investing occurs. “Speculate” or “bet” will do just fine.
The term is not, "Grift," the term (coined by John Kenneth Galbraith) is, "Bezzle," the interval between money is embezzled and when the victim realizes that they have been taken.
Even if Summers were a co-conspirator with Epstein on trafficking children,
and there is NO evidence that he was, that would be a small percentage of damage that
he has done as an economist and a political figure.
Former Harvard President Larry Summers will resign from his academic and
faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of the academic year,
relinquishing his University Professorship — Harvard’s highest faculty
distinction — and remaining on leave until that time, a Harvard
spokesperson confirmed to The Crimson.
Summers also resigned Wednesday from his role as co-director of the
Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy
School, a position he has held since 2011, according to the spokesperson.
He will not teach or take on new advisees.
The resignation marks an extraordinary unraveling for Summers, long one
of the most influential figures in American economics. His career spanned
prize-winning research, service as United States Treasury Secretary, and
the presidency of Harvard.
………
Summers’ standing began to collapse after a cache of emails disclosed in
November revealed details of a long-standing personal relationship between
Summers and convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein.
The correspondence revealed that Summers
regularly exchanged
messages with Epstein about women, politics, and Harvard-linked projects
over at least seven years — staying in contact as late as July 2019, the
day before Epstein’s final arrest.
Summers was asking Epstein for dating advice, and how to best seduce one of
his subordinates.
Summers is pond scum. He was pond scum when he shot the breeze with Epstein, and he was pond scum when he covered for another protege, Andrei Shleifer, who was stealing money while he was supervising the privatization of the Russian economy following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Say, "Hi," to Henry Kissenger when you get to hell.
Congressmen Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie are attempting to force a War Powers
Act resolution on what looks to be an all out attack on Iran.
The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party
establishment) is doing their level best to sabotage this effort, because heaven forbid that a member of Congress should go on the record on
the matter of war or peace.
Careerist assholes.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats have been working behind the scenes to
try to prevent a vote on Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie’s Iran war powers
resolution – a measure that would require every member of Congress to go on the
record about a potential U.S. war with Iran.
A top Democratic HFAC
staffer, multiple sources with direct knowledge tell me, deliberately inflated
projections of opposition to the bipartisan measure – warning of 20 to 40
Democratic defections – as part of a broader effort to dampen momentum and
prevent the Iran war powers vote from advancing. Khanna and Massie had initially
planned to force a vote on the resolution this week, but Democratic leadership
is now saying they
expect
the vote to be delayed until next week or even later. The postponement comes as
the Trump administration accelerates preparations for unauthorized military
action, overseeing the largest U.S. military buildup in the region in years.
………
A senior Democratic
congressional staffer told me it’s “pretty clear” Democratic leadership is
working to delay “or potentially sideline” the vote on the Khanna-Massie war
powers resolution. “If you’ve been around the Hill, this is a familiar
playbook.”
………
The internal effort to sabotage momentum for the Iran war
powers resolution reflects a broader strategic calculation among Democratic
elites. As a recent Drop Site
report
detailed, many top Democrats privately believe Iran will ultimately have to be
confronted militarily. But they also understand that openly backing another
regime change war in the Middle East would be politically toxic. Poll after poll
show there is little to no appetite for war with Iran, including lukewarm
support among conservatives. The preferred outcome of many AIPAC-aligned Senate
Democrats, according to a senior foreign policy aide to Senate Democratic Leader
Chuck Schumer, is that Trump acts unilaterally, weakening Iran while absorbing
the domestic backlash ahead of the midterms.
………
Unlike the run-up to the Iraq war, when the Bush
administration orchestrated a sustained campaign to sell the public on invasion,
the Trump administration has made little effort to construct a coherent case for
war with Iran. They aren’t bothering to lie convincingly to the public. And top
Democrats, mainstream media outlets, and liberal commentators have been
conspicuously silent.
………
I asked Schumer’s office last week whether he
supports Trump’s potential strikes, and whether escalation into a broader
regional conflict is a risk he considers acceptable. His office did not respond
to my request for comment. Days later, and only after the Drop Site report was
published, Schumer’s office issued a minimal
statement
in support of congressional war powers.
Heaven forbid that Schumer and the rest of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) make anything like a meaning full statement on this.
It's not like Congress has any role in going to war. (Spoiler, only Congress can declare war)
………
Votes to
invoke the War Powers Resolution are historically rare on Capitol Hill – though
they have increased in frequency in recent years – and party leadership in both
chambers has sought to avoid them. Passed over Nixon’s veto, the War Powers
Resolution of 1973 was designed to guarantee that decisions about war reflect
congressional deliberation and, by extension, the will of the American people
before a president pulls the trigger. Forcing members to take a recorded
position on military action carries political risk and can expose internal
divisions, particularly when the White House is pressing for escalation.
………
Even Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a staunch pro-Israel
Democrat from Florida, has flipped on the issue. She supported Trump’s strikes
on Iran in June but is now publicly against unauthorized war with Iran. “Make
the case to the American people. Make the case to Congress,” Wasserman-Schultz
said in an interview on MSNBC. “We have not seen anything about an imminent
threat that would necessitate a significant strike.”
Even Wasserman-Schultz, the poster child for fecklessness among the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) in Congress is willing state a position.
If a Senator or Representative is unwilling to make a statement on this, they are unfit for office.
Tesla is apparently still insisting its “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” labels are acceptable for the advanced driver assistance systems it offers on its vehicles. The automaker is suing the California DMV to reverse a ruling in December that the automaker had engaged in false advertising and could suspend its license to sell vehicles in the state.
As reported by CNBC, Tesla filed a complaint on Feb. 13 that the DMV ruling “wrongfully and baselessly labels Tesla a false advertiser for marketing its industry-leading advanced driver-assistance systems (‘ADAS’) under the brand names ‘Autopilot” and ‘Full-Self Driving Capability.’”
Maybe it's time to deal with this sort of fraud aggressively, and (all together now) frog-march Elon Musk out of his corporate offices in handcuffs.
OK, it's Tuesday, but I have a fair number of links, and if I didn't do this,
I might watch Trump's State of the Union address, and I would have to do so
sober. **shudder**
On Sunday, I reported
that the FBI interviewed a victim who accused President Donald Trump of
sexually and violently assaulting her when she was 13-15 years old. I
also reported that some of the Justice Department’s case files for this
woman — who later sued and reportedly received a settlement from Jeffrey
Epstein’s estate for sexual abuse allegations in the same timeframe —
appear to be missing from the government’s publicly searchable Epstein
database.
However, I have now found DOJ records showing that the FBI did not just
interview this woman once. The FBI interviewed this woman — who claimed
that Trump forced her to give him oral sex when she was in her early
teens, then punched her in the head after she bit his penis and kicked
her out — at least four times.
But the DOJ’s file associated with those records — a document
cataloguing information that the government provided counsel for
convicted Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell during her trial —
has apparently been removed.
This revelation adds to the mounting pile of evidence undermining
statements from Attorney General Pam Bondi and other senior administration
officials assuring the public that the Epstein file release has been
transparent, complete, and bereft of any evidence implicating Trump in
wrongdoing.
But my initial report also raised questions about files associated with the
victim’s case number — 3501.045 — that do not appear to be in the Epstein
database. In other words, the case seems to be incomplete.
This percentage does not come from the number of documents, it
comes from the total size of the documents, which would imply
that there is a lot of video evidence that has not been released.
The Epstein files are here, thanks to the most transparent
President in US history (he wasn’t forced into publishing them), and
therefore, this saga is over. Well, that’s the line from the Trump
administration.
But it’s not over and nor should it be. The
arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor,
the brother of the King, shows just that. For the victims of Jeffrey Epstein,
there is no closure until there is accountability, justice. Andrew, accused of
misconduct in public office, has always denied any wrongdoing
………
Last year, the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a
memo saying that they had conducted an exhaustive review of all files relating
to Jeffrey Epstein and that they had more than 300 GB of data.
We at The FourSight questioned that.
Since then, Congress forced the DOJ to release all the data. That
has totalled around 300 GB.
………
In emails from June 2020, investigators at the FBI and New York District
Attorney’s Office talk about storage devices with a capacity of up to
50 TBs. Five years later, more emails discuss “approximately 14.6
terabytes of archived data” to process. Lower than in 2020, but still
massive compared to the latest release of files.
In fact, if that’s the amount of data they have on Epstein, but have only released 300 GB, that means just two per cent of the actual Epstein data has been released. Epstein survivors have told Channel 4 News that they believe that the Trump administration has failed to meet their request to release all the files.
We managed to find video from the released documents of Epstein in his Palm Beach office. But we haven’t seen any other surveillance footage from around his New York property - and the 2,500 video and audio files we have uncovered from the files only add up to 60 GB in total. Is there more out there?
In fact, if that’s the amount of data they have on Epstein, but have only released 300 GB, that means just two per cent of the actual Epstein data has been released. Epstein survivors have told Channel 4 News that they believe that the Trump administration has failed to meet their request to release all the files.
We managed to find video from the released documents of Epstein in his Palm Beach office. But we haven’t seen any other surveillance footage from around his New York property - and the 2,500 video and audio files we have uncovered from the files only add up to 60 GB in total. Is there more out there?
The U.S. Press Loves To Pretend Widespread Corruption Doesn't Exist
—Karl Bode, describing how our mainstream media studiously ignores rampant corruption
in the United States
Even before Donald Trump and his minions turned up corruption to 11, the
United States was remarkably corrupt by the standards of "First World"
nations.
I just want you to pause and notice something.
The next time you're
reading a news story about a particular area of U.S. dysfunction – whether
it's gun control, health care, or air travel – notice if the reporter
mentions, at literally any point, if corruption and unchecked corporate power
sits squarely and undeniably at the heart of the problem.
Here's an
example. Earlier this month the New York Times, considered by some to
be the pinnacle of U.S. journalism,
wrote this story
about how the Trump-stocked Supreme Court was preparing to neuter the
authority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to battle climate
change (spoiler:
they succeeded).
………
But when the article proceeds toward what we're supposed to do
next, you hit this gargantuan turd in the road:
A more definitive way to address the issue would be for Congress to weigh in.
Democrats could pass legislation that defined greenhouse
gases as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, giving the E.P.A. the
explicit authority to regulate them. Conversely, Republicans could enact
legislation that said the opposite.
But in the half-century since Congress passed the Clean Air Act, it has never
mustered the political will to decide this question. And it seems exceedingly
unlikely to happen at a time when
climate change has become such a polarizing topic.
Why this Congressional gridlock persists is left as an open question for the
reader to puzzle through.
The reason we don't have effective protections for climate change (or
functional gun control, or universal health care, or cheap broadband) is
because the U.S. Congress is often too corrupt to function. Monied
interests have polluted state and federal legislatures to the point they
no longer serve the public interest.
You have to admire one thing about Judge Aileen Cannon down by Florida way. There are sled dogs in the Arctic who don't have this kind of loyalty. From Reuters:
I love Charlie Pierce, but you do not have to admire what she did.
………
You have to go back to the Gilded Age, when the railroads and corporations ran the federal judiciary, to find a federal judge who was as round and complete a hack as Cannon has been in this case. She did everything to stall the proceedings until the unfortunate events of 2024 gave her the opening she needed. That July, she dismissed the documents case on the spurious grounds that Jack Smith's appointment was unconstitutional. An appeals court said that Cannon's handling of the case and her earlier appointment of a special master was "improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction." That is a very polite way of saying, "Get your damn thumb off the scale." By then, the process of burying the report was well underway and, officially, anyway, the last shovel of earth was turned on Monday.
It's time for unofficial solutions. Somebody should leak the daylights of this report. The truth about the Poolshed Papers belongs to all of us.
I think that this is weak tea, but it should go nation wide, if not world wide.
Tesla has complied with an order by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and stopped using the term "Autopilot" in its marketing of electric vehicles, having already modified use of "Full Self-Driving" to clarify that it requires driver supervision.
………
This comes after Tesla was given 60 days from December 16, 2025 to fall in line with the agency's request.
The requirement followed a lengthy case over Tesla's use of the words "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving" in relation to its advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), along with the sentence: "The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long-distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver's seat."
………
The Administrative Law Judge proposed suspending Tesla's manufacturing and dealer licenses for 30 days. However, a later review gave Elon Musk's EV outfit 60 days to stop using the terms.
They should have thrown the book at him.
This has been fraud, and it has been fraud for well over a decade.
The question has never been whether law enforcement will misuse technology to
pursue vendettas and the like, it is only how.
Police in Lenexa, Kansas used automated license plate reader (ALPR)
technology to pursue a man who
wrote a critical op-ed
about the police department, according to reporting by Kansas public radio
station KCUR. This is a rare public example of exactly the kind of abuse
that we’ve long warned against when it comes to
mass-surveillance systems
like
license
plate
readers. It also comes on the heels of reports about apparent misuse of license
plate databases by ICE agents in Minnesota not for legitimate law
enforcement purposes but
to intimidate observers and protesters,
and of a woman who was
falsely accused of theft
based on data from license plate readers.
The
op-ed
published by the Kansas man, Canyen Ashworth, was critical of local ICE
operations and the role of Lenexa police in them. The same day that piece
ran, Lenexa police began to investigate Ashworth, according to internal
emails obtained by KCUR. They quickly tied him to an unidentified suspect
the police were looking for who had several days earlier put four posters
up around town showing a picture of an ICE agent and the words “remember
when we killed fascists.” The police alleged that the unidentified “Paper
Hanger” had violated an unspecified city ordinance, and the posters were
removed.
The Paper Hanger’s arguably aggressive message was nonetheless speech
protected by the First Amendment. And while government officials may
regulate constitutionally protected speech through “time, place, and
manner” restrictions, they can't do so selectively based on the content of
the messages. KCUR reports that in Lenexa, “Posters about lost pets and
community events were generally not removed.”
In fact, the town’s mayor later told KCUR that the town had no formal
policy regarding posters on city property.
City and police officials claimed that they were targeting the Paper
Hanger because the glue he used had the potential to damage city property.
On the basis of this great crime, the police began using license plate
readers to track Ashworth’s movements around town, and several weeks after
his op-ed, the police chief emailed patrol officers to announce that “A
suspect has been developed in the case of the City Center Posters” and
announce a “be on the lookout for” (BOLO) alert for Ashworth.
Perhaps most ominously, when issuing the BOLO the chief declared “This is
MYOC,” meaning “make your own case” — which in turn meant essentially,
“there is no arrest warrant for him so look for any reason to stop him”
and, as the deputy police chief at the time put it, “You need to build
your own probable cause, your own reasonable suspicion.”
As my ACLU colleague and head of the Kansas ACLU Micah Kubic put it,
issuing a BOLO on someone for putting up posters is “both a rejection of
the First Amendment, and a really ridiculous misuse of resources.”
Compared to the blatant targeting of people for their speech and/or
political opposition that we’ve been seeing lately from the Trump
Administration, this case may look small. But it was
scary enough for Ashworth. And it's a particularly clear example of the abusive
dynamic that mass-surveillance systems always end up falling into:
Target someone who the authorities dislike but have no evidence has
done anything wrong.
Fire up powerful surveillance technologies that have been sold to the
public as a way to stop serious, dramatic crimes and keep the public
safe.
Use those technologies to watch the disfavored person in the hopes of
drumming up something that they can be charged with, even to the point
of scraping the bottom of the barrel and going after something like
“damaging glue use.”
We’ve seen plenty of this “show me the man, I’ll find you the crime” kind of abuse at the hands of the Trump Administration. But this story
is a reminder that such abuse can rear its head in towns across the nation
— small, medium, or large. And when it does, license plate reading
programs are a natural tool for the authorities to turn to.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Unless and until politicians are willing to fire police officers and try them criminally for this bullsh%$, it will continue.
Imagine that. A voter fraud conspiracist engaging in voter fraud.
A former leader of the pro-Trump group
Turning Point Action was sentenced on Tuesday to two years of probation
and barred from running for office for five years for forging voters’
signatures on his petitions as part of his 2024 bid for re-election to
the Arizona House.
The former state legislator, Austin Smith, pleaded guilty
in November to two criminal counts and admitted that he had submitted
fraudulent signatures to state election officials, including the name of
a woman who had died.
The outcome was
a striking twist for Mr. Smith, 30, a Republican who represented the
Phoenix suburbs for one term and had repeatedly sought to sow doubt
about the Arizona results in the 2020 election, when President Trump
lost his re-election bid.
………
While trying to qualify for the
Republican primary to run for re-election, Mr. Smith was accused in a
court complaint in April 2024 of forging dozens of signatures on his
nominating petitions. The complaint was filed by one of his
constituents, James Ashurst, a Democrat, who said the signatures
resembled Mr. Smith’s handwriting.
Three days after being named in the complaint, Mr. Smith resigned
from his post as a senior director for Turning Point Action, the
political arm of Turning Point USA, the grass-roots group founded by
Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who was assassinated last
September. Mr. Smith also abandoned his bid for re-election, but denied
any wrongdoing at the time.
Probation and a fine is all he got. It's not enough.
I think that this will be a strategy used by Donald Trump's defense team when
(if) he ends up in the dock.
Jury selection kicked off Thursday in San Francisco federal court in a
trial centered on Elon Musk’s $44 billion buyout of Twitter in 2022.
Musk is set to stand trial in early March in a class action brought by
Twitter investors who claim Musk manipulated Twitter stock leading up to
his multibillion-dollar purchase of the social media platform.
Investors, including lead plaintiffs Steve Garrett, Nancy Price, John
Garrett and Brian Belgrave, sued Musk in October 2022 over claims they
suffered major losses when Musk deliberately made misleading statements
about the presence of spam bot accounts on Twitter to drive down the
company’s stock, in hopes of backing out of the acquisition deal or
renegotiating more favorably for himself.
The investors claim that Musk attempted to artificially lower Twitter’s
stock price after agreeing to acquire the platform, while also failing to
disclose when his Twitter stake exceeded 5% or that he had initially been
invited to join Twitter’s board.
………
More than a third of the initial jury pool indicated they could not serve
impartially and were dismissed by the judge. Others were questioned by the
parties about the answers they provided to the court, indicating a
strongly held negative opinion of Musk.
Stephen Broome of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, an attorney for
Musk, raised concerns with Breyer following jury screening that the court
was “desensitized” to how improper it would be to seat jurors who
expressed extreme dislike for the defendant. He claimed that if Musk was
any other defendant, a juror who said “I hate that guy and he has no moral
compass” would be dismissed.
Breyer pushed back, saying that the case was not like any other because
Musk is a well-known public figure akin to a United States president, and
jurors are allowed to have personal views on public figures.
The judges is right. It is ordinary when people of good will look at Elon Musk, and say, o quote the Dead Kennedys:
If Donald Trump’s administration really wants to find evidence of foreign interference in Georgia’s elections, then they need look no further than the president’s old friend Elon Musk and his shady super PAC.
Members of the Georgia State Elections Board voted Wednesday to issue a formal letter of reprimand to Musk’s America PAC over the billionaire technocrat’s illegal scheme to get Trump elected. Georgia, a key battleground state in 2024, was the target of aggressive campaigning by Trump’s team.
In October 2024, the Georgia secretary of state’s office launched an investigation after receiving numerous reports from residents across several counties saying they’d received partially prefilled absentee ballot applications from Musk’s America PAC, according to John Fervier, the State Elections Board’s chairman.
There was evidence to suggest America PAC had violated a state law that prohibits any person or entity, other than an authorized relative, to send an elector an absentee ballot application prefilled with the elector’s required information, according to Janice Johnston, the SEB’s vice chairman.
America PAC had also failed to display in a conspicuous location that this was not an official government publication, was not provided by the government, and was not a ballot, Johnston added.
Jail, bitch.
Even better than El Paso, we could put him in Epstein's old cell in MDC New York, where he could party like Jeffrey, like he always wanted to.
Senator Mitch McConnell appears to be stalling the voting bill backed by President Trump, and fellow Republicans are not happy.
McConnell, who leads the Senate Rules Committee, is refusing to schedule a vote on the legislation, thus preventing it from moving forward. The bill would create barriers for voting, requiring specific forms of ID in order for Americans to exercise their constitutional right.
………
Last year, McConnell wrote in The Wall Street Journal that such a bill would give a future Democratic president and Congress the ability to “use more sweeping mandates to carry out a complete federal takeover of American elections.”
“The current administration has better ways to spend its time than laying the groundwork for a leftwing election takeover,” McConnell wrote.
Well, I never thought that McConnel was stupid, I just thought that he was evil.
Today, it was Blue Owl Capital, who just made it significantly more difficult for their clients to withdrawing funds from their accounts.
This will not end well.
Shares of Blue Owl Capital, the giant private lender, plunged on Thursday after the company announced that it was changing how investors can get their money out from one of its funds, raising fresh concerns about potential problems lurking in the private credit industry.
Blue Owl said investors would not be able to ask for a set amount of money back every quarter. Going forward, the firm will decide how much it will pay out quarterly.
On a conference call with investors, Blue Owl executives sought to portray the changes favorably, but the announcement had the opposite effect as some investors worried that the moves could lead to obstacles to redemptions.
The company’s stock ended Thursday down 6 percent, after falling as much 10 percent earlier in the day. Other companies with exposure to private credit, including Ares, Apollo and Blackstone, fell more than 5 percent.
This is what companies do when they realize that they living on borrowed time.
Mohamed El-Erian, a Wall Street veteran and former chief executive of PIMCO, wrote on social media that Blue Owl’s change in redemption terms reminded him of the beginnings of the financial crisis when banks sought to contain the damage from the souring mortgage loans on their books.
“Is this a ‘canary-in-the-coalmine’ moment, similar to August 2007?” Mr. El-Erian wrote.
In just a few years, private credit has extended trillions of dollars in loans to business, and Blue Owl, which was founded in 2016, has amassed nearly $300 billion in investor money. But the industry exists outside the traditional, highly regulated banking system, and investors can see only a limited amount of information about private credit borrowers and the terms of their loans.
All of this is going on as the Trump administration is going hell bent for leather to roll back even the meager reforms instituted after the 2008 financial crisis.
The refers, of course, to the (non) evidence that the FBI provided to the
judge to get a search warrant to seize voting records in Fulton county
Georgia.
Will anyone go to jail over this? Probably not.
Should anyone go to jail over this? Certainly.
Earlier this month, the FBI decided it was going to help Donald Trump
steal back the election
he’s claimed for half-a-decade was stolen from him. The state whose Secretary
of State was asked directly by the outgoing president in January 2021 to “find 11,780 votes” was raided by Trump 2.0, who still somehow thinks he can win the election
he lost back in 2020.
It’s not just revenge Trump is seeking. He’s also hoping to find
anything that will allow him to cast doubt on midterm election
results now that it seems entirely possible the GOP might lose its majority in
the legislature.
The FBI walked off with tons of stuff after its raid of the Fulton County
election hub in Georgia. The raid — which was attended by the current DNI
Tulsi Gabbard for no apparent reason — saw the Trump government seize as many
2020 ballots and voter records as possible. The stated reason for this raid
was to collect evidence related to two alleged crimes: not retaining election
records long enough and attempts to “intimidate voters or procure false
votes/false voter registration.”
One of several glaring problems with this raid is the fact that some of the
criminal acts alleged have already surpassed the five-year statute of
limitations. The rest of the glaring problems are far less subtle. Like Trump
using the FBI and DOJ to engage in vindictive prosecution. And the FBI
appearing to have deliberately mislead the magistrate judge to get this search
warrant approved.
This
declaration
[PDF] by Ryan Macias, a project manager for the voting system used in Fulton
County who also served as the Acting Director of the Voting System Program
during the 2020 election, points out multiple flaws in the FBI’s warrant
affidavit — all of which it would be safe to assume were deliberate “errors.”
Trump and his minions are a clear and present danger to the United States of America.
A South Korean court has sentenced the former president Yoon Suk Yeol to life imprisonment with labour over his failed martial law declaration in December 2024, finding him guilty of leading an insurrection and making him the first elected head of state in the country’s democratic era to receive the maximum custodial sentence.
The Seoul central district court found that Yoon’s declaration of martial law on 3 December 2024 constituted insurrection, carried out with the intent to disrupt the constitutional order.
Judge Jee Kui-youn said the purpose was “to send troops to the national assembly to blockade the assembly hall and arrest key figures, including the assembly speaker and party leaders, thereby preventing lawmakers from gathering to deliberate or vote”.
In sentencing Yoon on Thursday, the court pointed to his lack of apology throughout the proceedings, his unjustified refusal to attend hearings, and the massive social costs his actions inflicted on South Korean society.
………
In a historical digression, the judge traced the history of insurrection law and cited the 1649 execution of England’s Charles I, who led troops into parliament, to establish that even heads of state can commit insurrection by attacking the legislature.
………
Under South Korean law, the charge of leading an insurrection carries three possible penalties: death, life imprisonment with labour, or life imprisonment without labour.
Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, arguing that Yoon committed “a grave destruction of constitutional order” by mobilising troops to surround parliament and attempting to arrest political opponents during the six-hour crisis.
Not a fan of the death penalty, but I do approve that he got hard labor.
This blog is a place to put my stream of consciousness thoughts about life, politics, technology, and cats.
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I find that if I wait until year's end I miss stuff from earlier in the year.
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