But they should be.
Even Ingmar Bergman, who is better known for his brooding films directed a very good comedy, Smiles of a Summer Night which I rather liked, even with subtitles.
The humor definitely has been effected by the dark cold winters of Scandanavia, but unlike, for example, Russian humor, which tends to be dark, Swedish humor is more wry and playful.
This Swedish pilot's walk around of the Saab Gripen is very funny.
After an entire career of failing up, and the immiseration of millions of people, it looks like Larry Summers is seeing some incredibly well deserved karma.
First, the American Economic Association has banned Larry Summers for life.
Personally, I hope that this ban continues for its full term, and that the actual length of this sanction will be brief. (If Mr. Summers could dine on excrement while shortening the ban duration it would be sweet)
The American Economic Association (AEA) has accepted Lawrence H. Summers' voluntary resignation from membership and, pursuant to the AEA's Policies, Procedures, and Code of Professional Conduct, has imposed a lifetime ban on his membership. In addition, effective immediately, the AEA has imposed a lifetime prohibition on Mr. Summers' attending, speaking at, or otherwise participating in AEA-sponsored events or activities, including serving in any editorial or refereeing capacity for AEA journals. The AEA condemns Mr. Summers' conduct, as reflected in publicly reported communications, as fundamentally inconsistent with its standards of professional integrity and with the trust placed in mentors within the economics profession. Consistent with longstanding AEA practices and to protect the integrity and confidentiality of AEA processes, the AEA will not comment further on individual matters or the specific considerations underlying this determination.
The AEA is committed to upholding the highest standards of professional conduct and to fostering a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for all members of the economics community. The AEA affirms its expectation that all members adhere to the AEA Code of Professional Conduct and the AEA Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, and Retaliation, and remains dedicated to maintaining professional environments in which economists of all backgrounds can participate fully, and with dignity and respect.
Meanwhile, writing in The Crimson, the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Harvard alumnus states the obvious, that the Cambridge, Massachusetts school activelhy and aggressively covered up its eager involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, particularly the involvement of Summers:
In 2019, Jeffrey E. Epstein was charged with the sex trafficking of minors. That charge triggered a wave of recriminations across the nation, including at some of America’s most elite universities. In the decade since his first arrest in 2006 for soliciting prostitution with a child, Epstein had nurtured close connections with some of the most prominent academics in the country.
Those recriminations also reached Harvard. While Harvard President Drew G. Faust had forbidden the University from directly accepting his money after a 2008 child-sex conviction, between 2010 and 2015, Epstein facilitated over $9 million in donations from associates like Leon Black to support work at Harvard — with the knowledge and encouragement of Harvard development staff.………
Almost a year after that first report, the University concluded its investigation, and took formal action against just one member of the Harvard faculty: Martin A. Nowak. Nowak was “disciplined” for his ongoing professional relationship with Epstein. His Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, funded with the help of Epstein, was shuttered, and he was banned from serving as a principal investigator on any academic research for two years.
………
From 2003 through 2019, Summers had been a central figure in Epstein’s relationship to Harvard. He had attended events hosted by Epstein and planned private meetings. Besides Epstein’s lawyer, and now-professor emeritus, Alan M. Dershowitz, he was by far the most prominent of the Harvard elite at the center of Harvard’s Epstein relationship.
Yet Summers is essentially invisible in the official accounts. A gift to support the work of Summers’s wife was mentioned in a footnote to the 2020 report, though obscurely, since she does not share Summers’s name. And never subsequently has Harvard disclosed anything more about his ongoing relationship with Epstein, which continued, as we’ve now learned through the published Epstein emails, until Epstein’s 2019 arrest.
………
There’s little need to reform Larry Summers. He will, I suspect, pass quickly from Harvard’s orbit. But it is the culture that would have allowed Larry Summers to be protected that must now be called to account. How could Harvard have allowed this production of Hamlet without the Prince? And will it now commit to a practice that will not protect the elite among us, while shaming those not quite elite enough?
No,Mr. Lessig they will not commit to such a practice.
Harvard's entire brand is built on elite privilege.
People want to go to Harvard because it is the closest thing US higher education to being a "Made Man" by the Mafia, only the scope of criminal activity by Harvard alumni is vastly greater than organized crime syndicates could ever dream of.
So the White House is shutting down Elon Musk's DOGE initiative.
I'm stunned that they are doing this, after all the success that Elon has had running twitter, creating autonomous driving for the masses, creating a supersonic underrground transit system, his success in creating home solar energy comoany, creating a non-Nazi artificial intelligence bot, his uncanny asbility to play the video game Diablo IV, graduating with a bachelors degree in physics, his accomplishments as a spouse and father………
I'm shocked that he failed at DOGE as well.
Less than a year after Elon Musk took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, brandishing a bedazzled chainsaw to showcase the Department of Government Efficiency’s cost-cutting spree, the most significant cut was the agency itself.
Donald Trump’s DOGE disbanded eight months earlier than scheduled, Reuters first reported on Sunday.
“That doesn’t exist,” Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told the outlet when asked about DOGE. “There is no target around reductions,” he added.
………
Tens of thousands of federal employees fired under Musk’s leadership were offered their jobs back in September after what amounted to monthslong paid vacations. Millions were reportedly lost in interest and fees after government projects were frozen, and some woefully underqualified DOGE staffers were reportedly pocketing six-figure salaries.
I'm shocked that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ has not been delivering on his promises.
I mean, he's ALWAYS delivered on his promises in the past.
It turns out that the FBI was so busy covering up Donald Trump's role in the Epstein files that they had to stop fighting crime.
Newly released internal emails show the FBI mounting a costly overtime-fueled sprint to analyze the Epstein files as political pressure grew to release them—in a project dubbed the “Special Redaction Project,” Bloomberg reports.
………
A conspiracy theory still thrives among some in Trump’s base that Epstein knew the names of other rich or powerful pedophiles.
Epstein knew, because he was the US oligarchs pimp. There's a pretty good chance that Trump was not just a client, but a partner, as he owned the organization that ran the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA pageants from 1996 until 2015.
Correspondence obtained and detailed by Bloomberg’s FOIA Files lays out how FBI Director Kash Patel sent about 1,000 special agents to the bureau’s Central Records Complex in Winchester, Virginia, for crash-course redaction training on the “Epstein Transparency Project,” also called the “Special Redaction Project.”
That's 1,000 special agents for an agency that has, according to its website, about 38,000 total employees with about ⅓ of those being special agents, so we are talking about 8% of the field agents being pulled in to cover Donald Trump's pale flabby ass.
Good to know that this is where out tax dollars are going.
I just read this essay on the shooting of the two National Guardsmen in Washington, DC, and you should do.
The thesis is that the shooting was not about terrorism, nor was it about immigration.
Rather it was about a kid who was recruited by the CIA into a death squad, and that this came over to the United States with him.
………
The shooter was a 29-year-old Afghan national named Rahmanullah Lakanwal. He worked for us. For a decade. He was part of what the CIA calls a “Zero Unit”—paramilitary forces trained and backed by American intelligence. Human rights groups have another name for these units: death squads.
According to the New York Times, a childhood friend of Lakanwal’s said he “suffered from mental health issues and was disturbed by the casualties his unit had caused.” His family told investigators he has PTSD from the fighting he did on our behalf.
We trained him to kill. We pointed him at targets. We made him part of a unit known for brutality. And then when the war ended and the Taliban took over, we brought him here—and apparently did nothing to address what we’d done to his mind.………
Lakanwal served in a death squad. American veterans were sent to Iraq to kick down doors, raid homes, and kill people’s families. They were sent to Afghanistan to call in drone strikes on wedding parties. They served at checkpoints where the rules of engagement meant shooting first and asking questions never. We ask human beings to do inhuman things, and then we act surprised when they can’t just switch it off.
The evidence is overwhelming: what we make people do in these wars destroys them. And destroyed people do violence. Doesn’t matter if they were born in Kandahar or Kentucky—the damage is the same.
Remember when I said that the obligation of servicemen to refuse illegal orders required that the order be, "Manifestly Illegal?"
The classic example of a war crime, both in US military training materials and in international protocols is machine gunning survivors of a ship sinking, whether floating in the water or on a life boat.
This is manifestly illegal, and Hesketh ordered it, SOCOM commander Admiral Frank Bradley relayed the order to command officers in the area, and everyone in the chain of this command, including whoever pulled the trigger, is guilty of a war crime.
So is anyone who had the opportunity to protest these manifestly illegal orders and did nothing .
This is not up for dispute.
We executed German U-Boat sailors following WWII for doing this.
Officials in Congress and the Pentagon said Monday they are increasingly concerned that the Trump administration intends to scapegoat the military officer who directed U.S. forces to kill two survivors of a targeted strike on suspected drug smugglers in Latin America, as lawmakers made initial moves to investigate whether the attack constituted a war crime.
The Washington Post reported exclusively Friday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken order to kill the entire crew of a vessel thought to be ferrying narcotics in the Caribbean Sea, the first of nearly 20 such strikes directed by the administration since early September.
When two survivors were detected, the military commander overseeing the operation, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, directed another strike to comply with Hegseth’s order that no one be left alive, people with direct knowledge of the matter told The Post. The Trump administration has said 11 people were killed as a result of the operation.
In addition to prosecuting everyone even remotely in the decision chain for this, perhaps breaking up SOCOM, which has had a spate of criminality in its ranks in the past few years would be advisable.
The Guardian is shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover that Donald Trump and his family is aggressively profiteering over his being President.
He started doing this in 2016 before he was inaugurated the first time.
This sh%$ ain't rocket science.
A crusading prosecutor in the Balkans comes under pressure to drop a big case. Vietnamese villagers learn they are to be evicted. A convicted crypto kingpin in the Gulf receives a pardon.
All have one thing in common: they appear to be connected to the Trump family’s campaign to amass riches around the world. Since Donald Trump’s re-election a year ago, warnings that his use of presidential power to advance personal interests is corroding American democracy have grown ever louder. What is less understood – and perhaps even more dangerous – is the damage this is doing everywhere else.
Trump’s eldest sons, Don Jr and Eric, formally the custodians of the family business, are conducting a global dealmaking blitz. They have broken ground on new golf courses, received permission for new skyscrapers, rented out the Trump brand, and in cryptocurrency they have embraced a venture with the capacity to bring in more than everything that has gone before.
They insist, in Eric’s words, that there is a “huge wall” between this moneymaking and their father’s position as the most powerful man alive. “Nothing I do has anything to do with the White House,” Eric told CNN recently.
But Kristofer Harrison, a senior foreign policy official under President George W Bush who now runs an anti-corruption organisation called the Dekleptocracy Project, is among those accusing the Trumps of operating a “pay to play” system that benefits those who do business with the president’s family. Such an approach could be manipulated, he said, especially by rival powers such as China. He said: “Trump has made authoritarians’ wildest dreams come true.”
Despite allegations – denied by the White House – of conflicts of interest, no explicit quid pro quos have been proven. But the Trumps’ business interests are raising questions about convictions that have been quashed, sensitive technologies transferred, tariffs eased, alliances forged. Should any of this give the appearance of abuse of public office for private gain – commonly known as corruption – ethics experts fear it invites other rulers to do the same.
There are no explicit quid pro quos under the pro-corruption rulings of the Supreme Court.
Gee, I wonder why Thomas and Alito and the rest of the corrupt 6 are so dedicated to creating an explicit road map to legal corruption?
It couldn't be that they are corrupt rat-f%$#s too..
In any other line of work, the driving philosophy of tech startups would be better defined as fraud.
As we saw with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, this is basically fraud premised on the idea with a sprinkling of fairy dust (or VC funding) you can actually make something that resembles an ongoing business.
The thing is, when you are dealing with meat space, things like diagnostic tests (Theranos) or military autonomous drones simply do not work.
When defense procurement wonks say that systems should be developed on the Silly-Con Valley model, they miss this.
In this case, I am referring to Anduril, a company that is aggressively selling autonomous autonomous vehicles with little success.
The company founder, Palmer Luckey, made his money by creating VR goggles company Oculus (borrowing tech from another company) and then selling out to Facebook, who wanted the technology for their incredibly abortive foray into the, "Metaverse."
How this makes him qualified for anything beyond technology hype is beyond me, as the string of failures of his company projects show. (Actually, I do know how this makes him qualified, he has been a Donald Trump supporter since at least 2016)
The Navy was attempting to launch and recover more than 30 drone boats from a combat ship off the coast of California in May when more than a dozen of the uncrewed vessels failed to carry out their missions. The boats had rejected their inputs and automatically idled as a fail-safe, making them “dead” in the water.
The botched experiment quickly became a potential hazard to other vessels in the exercise. Military personnel scrambled overnight to clean up the mess, towing the boats to shore until 9 a.m. the next day.
The drone boats were relying on autonomy software called Lattice, made by California-based Anduril Industries. The Navy said the exercise was handled safely, but the incident alarmed Navy personnel, who said in a routine follow-up report that company representatives had misguided the military. In comments that were unusual for such a report, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, four sailors warned of “continuous operational security violations, safety violations, and contracting performer misguidances (Anduril Industries).” If the software configuration wasn’t immediately corrected and vetted, they wrote, there would be “extreme risk to force and potential for loss of life.”
(emphasis mine)
BTW, this behavior is classic, "Fake it till you make it."
Since its founding in 2017, Anduril Industries has become one of the hottest companies in a crowded field of defense-tech startups, promising to deliver hardware and software that will usher in a new era of autonomous warfare and equip the U.S. military with the speed that only a startup can offer. The privately held company was valued at more than $30 billion in its last funding round and has scored an impressive number of military contracts to build prototypes of everything from unmanned jet fighters to mixed-reality headsets to battlefield-management systems.
Yeah, this is gonna end well.
………
The startup’s fast-moving approach comes with its share of setbacks—during closed military exercises, at private drone ranges and even on the battlefield in Ukraine.
In California, a mechanical issue damaged the engine in Anduril’s unmanned jet fighter Fury in a ground test over the summer ahead of a critical first flight for the Air Force. In August, a test involving its Anvil counterdrone system caused a 22-acre fire in Oregon. And in the exercises with unmanned boats over the summer off the coast of California, Anduril’s Lattice software struggled to command and control vessels.
Anduril’s only real battlefield experience—in Ukraine—has been marred by problems as well, including vulnerability to enemy jamming, according to former employees and others familiar with the systems in Ukraine. Some front-line soldiers of Ukraine’s SBU security service, for instance, found that their Altius loitering drones crashed and failed to hit their targets. The drones were so problematic that they stopped using them in 2024 and haven’t fielded them since, according to people familiar with the matter.
That the Ukrainians were unwilling to continue to use the drones is telling. They are grabbing onto any system that works at all, but Andruil's crap was below the level of their desparation.
To quote Richard Feynmann, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
As an FYI, Feynmann's quote comes from the last line of his report on the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. He was commenting on how NASA (and the rest of the investigation board) was choosing public relations over the reality behind the accident.
This one does not involve Trump, at least not directly. Rather I am talking about Benjamin Netanyahu demanding a pardon from Israeli President Isaac Herzog. (It should be noted that the Israeli Presidency is a largely ceremonial position)
Trump is lobbying for Netanyahu's pardon, but I do not think that will have much impact.
More importantly Netanyahu is guilty as hell:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asked its president on Sunday to pardon him in his long-running corruption trial, a request that the president called “extraordinary” and that critics said would run counter to the rule of law.
Mr. Netanyahu’s unusual pre-emptive appeal to President Isaac Herzog, while his trial is still underway, came about two weeks after President Trump sent a letter to Mr. Herzog urging him to pardon the Israeli prime minister.
A statement by the Israeli president’s office said the request would have “significant implications,” and that he would “responsibly and sincerely consider” it after seeking expert opinions.
I really hope that this means, "F^%$ No!" from Herzog, but trying to figure out what an Israeli politician will do is well beyond my meager abilities to predict what people will do.
As to the specifics of the charges, which do not include his having Israeli taxpayers foot a $2,700.00 a year for ice cream, there are 3 basic charges:
Pardoning Netanyahu will have a corrosive effect on Israeli politics, and Israeli politics is not, and has never been, particularly healthy to begin with.
Penguin Random House released an Avatar: The Last Airbender picture book, My Cabbages!
It's intended to be for children aged 4 to 8 years old, but if you know an Avatar fan, they would appreciate it as well.
I am stoked about this.
Please, if there is, "My Cabbages guy," slash fic out there, do not not tell me.
I do not want to know.
Donald Trump has declared that Venezuelan airspace is closed.
Needless to say the government of Venezuela differs:
The Venezuelan government has responded defiantly to the heightened pressure by the US government, including Donald Trump’s recent statements on Saturday that the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela is to be closed in its entirety.
In a statement, the Venezuelan government said Trump’s comments are a “colonialist threat” against their sovereignty and violate international law. The government also said it demanded respect for its airspace and would not accept foreign orders or threats.
Trump on Saturday, in a Truth Social post said: “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”
Due to Trump’s announcement, all migrant deportation flights were “unilaterally suspended”, the Venezuelan government added. Deportation flights to Venezuela have been a significant point of contention for the Trump administration, as it continues to engage in its mass deportation program.
"V" is the first letter of both Venezuela and Vietnam.
This will not end well.
Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons & Dragons to Be Racist—The Atlantic on why Elon Musk completely lost his sh%$ on the current owner of D&D releasing a book that admitted that the early stuff was just a bit racist.
Elon Musk does not object to being called a racist, he objects to people being offended by racism.
Racists don''t just want to be racism to be accepted, they demand that society continues to promulgate racism.The fall of Constantinople wiped the last living Roman civilization from the Earth. The city’s refugees fled west, helping spark the Renaissance; its legacy shaped the religious traditions of millions and the modern map of Europe and the Middle East. The fall also inspired a book, which inspired a game, which inspired the world’s richest man to lash out because his favorite role-playing game wasn’t as racist and sexist as it used to be.
………
Last November, on X, the billionaire tycoon Elon Musk told the toy company Hasbro to “burn in hell.” Hasbro owns the company Wizards of the Coast, which produces the game Dungeons & Dragons. Wizards had just released a book on the making of the game that was critical of some of its creators’ old material. “Nobody, and I mean nobody, gets to trash” the “geniuses who created Dungeons & Dragons,” Musk wrote. The book acknowledged that some earlier iterations of the game relied on racist and sexist stereotypes and included “a virtual catalog of insensitive and derogatory language.” After a designer at Wizards said that the company’s priority now was responding to “progressives and underrepresented groups who justly took offense” at those stereotypes, and not to “the ire of the grognards”—a reference to early fans such as Musk—Musk asked, “How much is Hasbro?,” suggesting that he might buy the company to impose his vision on it, as he’d done with Twitter.
………
D&D wouldn’t exist without J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, fantasy’s seminal 20th-century text, published in 1937. When Tolkien’s German publisher, to comply with Nazi racial laws, tried to determine whether the author was Jewish, Tolkien was outraged. A draft of his response reads: “If I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.” He expressed his disgust to his British publisher: “I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.”
Unfortunately, a “pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine” permeated the era in which The Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings series that followed it, were written, an era in which many Westerners believed that “races” shared particular natures, characteristics, and capabilities. That genetic determinism seeped into the books. Although uncountable readers were inspired by the tales of its diminutive heroes defying stereotypes to save the world, some drew other conclusions. The books, and the ideas embedded in them, would go on to have a magnetic appeal to the political forces Tolkien had rejected.
Today, we can see their influence on right-wing populists in business and politics all over the world.The billionaire Peter Thiel named his software company, Palantir, after the crystal ball in The Lord of the Rings, while his AI company, Anduril, is named for the sword of the human hero Aragorn. Joe Lonsdale, an investor in Anduril and Palantir, founded a crypto-focused bank called Erebor, after the dwarfs’ mountain fortress. Vice President J. D. Vance named his venture-capital firm Narya, after Gandalf’s magic ring. Giorgia Meloni, the far-right prime minister of Italy, and defender of “Italianity” against what she sees as the dilution of immigration, is a Tolkien obsessive who sees in hobbits, dwarfs, and elves the “value of specificity.” When Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning adaptation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out in the 2000s, conservative writers embraced the films as a metaphor for George W. Bush’s war in Iraq.
If your identity was built around being a fan of a marginal pastime, de-geekification meant that suddenly, you weren’t as special anymore. Comic books, video games, fantasy and science fiction, role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons—they were all getting more popular, and trying to appeal to new audiences. Not everyone was happy with the changes that effort inspired.
Those who objected could be divided into two categories: people who found the simpler and more flexible game to be bland; and people who didn’t like the game getting “woke.” This is a slippery term, but it often boils down to things not being quite as racist or sexist as they used to be.
The fact that I see the report of national guardsmen being shot in Washington, DC and my primary concern is that Trump will use this for his Reichstag moment.
Two West Virginia national guardsmen shot near the White House remained in critical condition on Wednesday in an attack that rattled the country’s capital.
The incident comes amid a controversial deployment of troops to Washington DC ordered by the Trump administration. FBI director Kash Patel, Washington mayor Muriel Bowser and other officials confirmed in a press conference that both the guardsmen were in the hospital and described the shooting as “targeted”.
Officials have identified a suspect, who is currently in custody, as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who entered the United States in September 2021 under a Biden-era policy allowing Afghans to enter the country after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security.
We seem to be spiraling into chaos.
The report actually came out yesterday, I thought that it would have been tomorrow.
In summary, initial claims are down, but continuing claims are up, so not much laying off, and even less hiring.
The net is still a downturn in employment:
Applications for US unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week to the lowest since mid-April, remaining relatively subdued amid economic uncertainty.
Initial claims decreased by 6,000 to 216,000 in the week ended Nov. 22. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 225,000 applications.
Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, edged up to 1.96 million in the previous week, according to Labor Department data released Wednesday.
Additionally, this should be viewed in the context of the Trump administration using the government shutdown to suppress bad economic numbers:
Are Americans supposed to think that the Trump administration canceling the release of economics reports is somehow a good sign for the economy?It's pretty clear that the Trump administration
The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced Monday that it had officially canceled releasing the advance estimate on gross domestic product (GDP) for the third quarter of 2025. The Trump administration had previously delayed the release, which was initially slated for October 30, due to the government shutdown—but now it seems to have been abandoned altogether.
Last week, the Labor Department called off releasing its monthly jobs report for October, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics scrapped its own report on inflation.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed the Democrats two weeks ago for such delays, saying the liberal party “may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system.” She hinted at further cancellations, saying that data from October “will be permanently impaired.”
The Trump administration’s decision to get stingy with publishing economic data comes amid concerns that President Donald Trump’s policies aren’t all that good for the economy. Trump’s mass deportation scheme is estimated to reduce the GDP by between 4.2 to 6.8 percent, according to the American Immigration Council. Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs are also expected to place a strain on GDP, according to the Tax Foundation.
If Trump would like to argue against these assertions, then the government may want to start publishing some actual data.
Archaeologists discover how oldest American civilisation survived a climate catastrophe(The Guardian) They relocated in a systematic and organized way.
Makers slam Qualcomm for tightening the clamps on Arduino (The Register) Qualcomm being Qualcomm, which is to say that they are, "A bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Wyden Blasts Kristi Noem for Abusing Subpoena Power to Unmask ICE Watcher (The Intercept) Of course she is. They need to be jailed, all of them.
LLMs can be easily jailbroken using poetry (The Register) What about Vogon poetry?
You are likely to be eaten by the MIT license: Microsoft frees Zork source (The Register) Text based games Zork I, II, and III have been released as open source.
How the FBI Became the Face of Deprofessionalization (Can We Still Govern?) One of the marks of a descent into authoritarianism is when state security forces stop doing their jobs well and focus on pleasing their political masters.
First revealed in spy photos, a Bronze Age city emerges from the steppe (Ars Technica) The 3500 year old Bronze Age city of Semiyarka in Kazakhstan.
As God as My Witness, I Thought Turkeys Could Fly:
It looks like the Department of Defense is planning to kick boy scouts to the curb, because they are too, "Woke."
To quote not-Talleyrand, "This is worse than a crime, it is a mistake."
The century-old partnership between the U.S. military and Scouting could be coming to an end.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is planning for the military to sever all ties with Scouting America, saying the group once known as the Boy Scouts is no longer a meritocracy and has become an organization designed to "attack boy-friendly spaces," according to documents reviewed by NPR.
In a draft memo to Congress, which sources shared with NPR but which has not yet been sent, Hegseth criticizes Scouting for being "genderless" and for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
The military has provided support to the Scouts for more than 100 years, assistance that was formalized in 1937. But in one memo, Hegseth says, "The organization once endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt no longer supports the future of American boys."
The proposal calls for the Pentagon to no longer provide medical and logistical aid to the National Jamboree, which brings in as many as 20,000 scouts to a remote site in West Virginia. It also states that the military will no longer allow Scout troops to meet at military installations in the U.S. and abroad, where many bases have active Scout programs.
I assume that Scouting America will try to teach their kids a lesson from this, because learning from misfortune is one of the things that they do.
My guess as to the lesson, "Don't let alcohol abuse rot your mind."
It's gotten to the point that the US Navy cannot develop ships any larger than a dinghy.
Case in the point the recently canceled Constellation-class Frigate Program.
They took an existing platform, the FREMM, which has over 20 ships in service and almost 60 planned for eventual service, and decided to load it up with every bell and whistle that they could think of, resulting in delays, immature technologies, and ballooning cost and weight.
So only the 2 which have been laid down will be built, and the rest have been canceled.
The Navy is walking away from the Constellation-class frigate program to focus on new classes of warships the service can build faster, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan announced Tuesday on social media.
Under the terms negotiated with shipbuilder Fincantieri Marinette Marine, the Wisconsin shipyard will continue to build Constellation (FFG-62) and Congress (FFG-63) but will cancel the next four planned warships.
“We are reshaping how the Navy builds its fleet. Today, I can announce the first public action is a strategic shift away from the Constellation-class frigate program,” reads the statement from Phelan. “The Navy and our industry partners have reached a comprehensive framework that terminates, for the Navy’s convenience, the last four ships of the class, which have not begun construction.”
………
The Navy awarded the contract to build what would become the Constellation to Marinette in 2020 following about six years of deliberation after the Navy determined it would truncate the two classes of Littoral Combat Ships. Marinette previously built the Freedoms as a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin before competing for the frigate program on its own. The Navy decided that the competitors to base the warship on an existing parent design to speed up the design of the program. The Navy selected the FREMM multi-mission frigate, already operated by the French and Italian navies, as the parent via a Naval Sea Systems Command rapid requirements process.
However, once the complex design work commenced, the Navy and Marinette had to make vast changes to the design in order to meet stricter U.S. survivability standards. The delays resulted in an estimated three-year setback in the delivery of the first ship from 2026 to 2029 at a cost of about $1.5 billion.
The US Military Industrial Complex is a bigger threat to US security than the Soviet Union was at the height of the Cold War.
Remember when I wrote about someone side-swiping my Prius on I-83? (Reminder, neither Nat nor I were injured in any way)
It turns out that it was totaled, needed (at least) replacement of the front bumper, radars, wheel, tire, suspension parts, the steering rack, and the engine sub-frame.
I got a check from my insurer, plus coverage of my deductible because the other driver was uninsured, and got another car.
It was a used 2026 Corolla. (138 miles, long story from salesman)
While I liked everything everything automotive about the Prius, I was still out some bucks for depreciation, and I found the car cramped and claustrophobic. (For all the raving about the new look, it sacrificed a lot in the way of vision and space)
The Corolla is more comfortable, and while it does not get the same mileage as the current Prius, it does get about as much as my old 2004 Prius, with better back seat room, visibility, etc.
It's just more comfortable.
The decision to make the Prius look like a Tesla in 2022 was IMHO the wrong move by Toyota.
The Trump administration is threatening to reactivate Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and prosecute him in a court martial for the video that he and 5 other members of Congress recorded noting that members of military are obligated not to obey illegal orders.
There are 2 problems with this:
It should be noted here that there is a presumption that orders are lawful, and the defense against requires that the order be, "Manifestly illegal," which is a pretty high bar.
Still, if a soldier obeys a manifestly illegal order, they have committed a crime, and anyone who tells them that is committing no crime at all.
When this is all over, IF this is all over, the whole lot of them need to be sent to ADX Florence.
In what is probably the least surprising of the year, Federal Judge Currie of the Eastern District of Virginia has dismissed all charges against James Comey and Letitia James.
Given that appointment of beauty queen/insurance lawyer Lindsey Halligan, as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was a direct violation of the law, her indictments were null and void. (And that's without considering how egregious her conduct was before the grand jury)
A federal judge on Monday tossed out separate criminal charges against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, saying the loyalist prosecutor installed by President Trump to bring the cases was put into her job unlawfully.
The twin rulings, by Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, were the most significant setback yet to the president’s efforts to force the criminal justice system to punish his perceived foes. The case dismissals also served as a rebuke to Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had rushed to carry out Mr. Trump’s orders to appoint the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
This is a bigger deal for Comey, because he was indicted in the last day under the statute of limitations, which should mean that his case should be done.
My take is not particularly well-informed though, I'm an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit! ⃰
The dismissal is without prejudice, so theoretically they can refile against James.
………
Judge Currie’s orders center on Mr. Trump’s unorthodox decision to appoint Ms. Halligan to her prosecutorial position in an interim capacity, replacing his previous pick, who was also serving in a temporary role. Within days after assuming her new post, Ms. Halligan rejected the advice of the career prosecutors in her new office and moved single-handedly to indict both Mr. Comey and Ms. James, two of the president’s most reviled targets.
In her rulings on Monday, Judge Currie said that it was unlawful to appoint two interim prosecutors in succession, and dismissed the charges against Mr. Comey and Ms. James without prejudice.
………
The manner in which the judge dismissed the Comey indictment could now lead to a legal fight over whether the government can try to refile the charges with another grand jury.
Mr. Comey was indicted just days before the five-year statute of limitations was set to run out on any charges stemming from his congressional testimony. His lawyers, and a magistrate judge, have said the statute has now expired, meaning charges could not be refiled.………
Other federal judges have already ruled that Mr. Trump’s Justice Department unlawfully used similar procedural maneuvers to put loyalists in place at three other U.S. attorney’s offices. Those include Alina Habba, who was put in charge of the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey; Sigal Chattah, who was named the acting U.S. attorney for Nevada; and Bilal Essayli, whom Mr. Trump put in the top job at the U.S. attorney’s office in the Central District of California.
I wonder how the corrupt 6 SCOTUS Justices will work around this.
I'm sure that they'll try, though.
*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!
In response to pressure from the Trump administration the US Coast Guard has announced that displaying nooses and swastikas will no longer be considered hate symbols.
Nothing says, "I'm not antisemitic," like being a Nazi:
The U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify the swastika — an emblem of fascism and white supremacy inextricably linked to the murder of millions of Jews and the deaths of more than 400,000 U.S. troops who died fighting in World War II — as a hate symbol, according to a new policy that takes effect next month.
Instead, the Coast Guard will classify the Nazi-era insignia as “potentially divisive” under its new guidelines. The policy, set to take effect Dec. 15, similarly downgrades the classification of nooses and the Confederate flag, though display of the latter remains banned, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
Certain historical displays or artwork where the Confederate flag is a minor element are still permissible, according to the policy.
Though the Coast Guard is not part of the Defense Department, the service has been reworking its policies to align with the Trump administration’s changing tolerances for hazing and harassment within the U.S. military. In September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed a review and overhaul of those policies, calling the military’s existing standards “overly broad” and saying they jeopardize troops’ combat readiness.
Objectively pro-Nazi.
………
A Coast Guard official who had seen the new wording called the policy changes chilling.
“We don’t deserve the trust of the nation if we’re unclear about the divisiveness of swastikas,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal.
Gee, you think?
Rather unsurprisingly, after the Washington Post reported this story, the Coast Guard reversed their reversal of policy in less than 24 hours.
Exposure to the light of day killed the policy change.
To quote P.C. Hodgell, "That Which Can Be Destroyed By the Truth, Should Be."
A lot of axolotls: the amphibian-themed banknote Mexicans don’t want to
spend (The Guardian) Axolotls are so cute that no one wants to let
go do the currency.
Do you remember Tobor The 8 Man? Someone with too much free time does a deep dive on what is arguably the first first cyborg Anime:
More specifically, I support Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, who wants to include an explicit right to repair on all current and future defense procurement contracts for his branch.
On the other side of this dispute are lobbyists for defense contractors, who maintain that allowing solodiers sailors and marines to maintain their own equipment would, "Stifle innovation."
Nope, it's just corrupt rent seeking and does damage to our military:
So we’ve noted repeatedly how there’s a real push afoot to implement statewide “right to repair” laws that try to make it cheaper, easier, and environmentally friendlier for you to repair the technology you own. Unfortunately, while all fifty states have at least flirted with the idea, only Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and Oregon, and Washington have actually passed laws.
And among those states, not one has actually enforced them despite a wide array of ongoing corporate offenses (though to be fair to states there is kind of a lot going on).
Back in June we mentioned how Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll had committed to including right-to-repair requirements in all existing and future Army contracts with manufacturers. Some very light language to this effect was to be included in the latest National Defense Authorization Act by Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Republican Tim Sheehy of Montana.
But despite the bipartisan popularity of right to repair reforms, companies aren’t keen on losing money via a government crackdown on their grift. The various policy and lobbying fronts for America’s defense contractors have been busy this fall trying to frame the modest reforms as an affront on innovation to scuttle the reforms as the House and Senate debate over bill versions:………
Pretty typical military industrial complex graft. Which we could easily fix. If the U.S. wasn’t quite so grotesquely corrupt.
I need to remmeber that term, "Grossly corrupt."
I did not expect to be, but I checked the link anyway.
You can too.
Are you in the Epstein emails?
H/t PZ Meyers.
So after "US Attorney" Lindsey Halligan admitted that she had never showed the full grand jury the indictment for James Comey, Trump's Department of Justice is claiming that they really did, with a full pinky swear.
Sure Jan
The Justice Department reversed course Thursday, alleging a full grand jury did review the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.
The change comes 24 hours after lead prosecutor Lindsey Halligan told a judge that all jurors were not privy to the final revised document displaying his charges.
Federal prosecutors filed a notice “correcting the record” Thursday in an effort to salvage their case against Comey by confirming all jurors reviewed their final revised document, which included two of the three counts jurors voted to uphold in Comey’s indictment.
Asked directly by U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff whether the final indictment is a document that was “never shown” to the entire grand jury, Lemons said he wasn’t there but “yes, that is my understanding.”
"Clerical inconsistency?" Yeah, right.
Donald Trump has been systematically buying bonds from companies just before aid or major contracts from the US government.
Who does he think that he is, Nancy Pelosi?
Trump bought up to $6 million worth of corporate bonds in Boeing, even as the Defense Department has awarded the company multi-billion dollar contracts, new financial disclosures reveal.
According to the documents, Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million worth of Boeing bonds on August 28. On September 19, he bought more Boeing bonds worth between $500,000 and $1 million. In total, Trump appears to have bought at least $185 million worth of corporate and municipal bonds since the start of his presidency.
Kedric Payne, Vice President of the Campaign Legal Center, told RS in a phone interview there is “absolutely” a conflict of interest in Trump’s purchase of Boeing, especially since it is “a government contractor that is connected to military actions that the president controls almost unilaterally.”
Trump also bought between $1 and $5 million worth of Intel bonds in August, a week after the Trump administration took a 10% stake in the company. “I love seeing their stock price go up, making the USA RICHER, AND RICHER,” Trump posted on Truth Social on August 25. Trump purchased Intel bonds on August 29.………
………
Upon entering office, Trump did not move his assets into a blind trust run by an independent trustee that could not be directed by the Trump family. Instead, he opted to hand over his business empire to his sons. The White House did, however, insist that the bond purchases were made by independent financial managers “using programs that replicate recognized indexes when making investments.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has breathed a new life into Boeing. In March, Trump announced that Boeing would receive the coveted $20 billion development contract for the Air Force’s future F-47 fighter jet. The program is sure to be a cash cow for Boeing. Dan Grazier, a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center, told the Associated Press then that the $20 billion price tag is just seed money. “The total costs coming down the road will be hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said.
It seems to me that whoever succeeds Trump should have as their goal impoverishing him and his.
Simply jailing them would not teach the proper lessons.
Ferociously corrupt Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has issued a stay preventing the ruling enjoining Texas' racist redistricting project.
Why am I not surprised?
The Supreme Court on Friday evening temporarily allowed Texas to use its newly redrawn, Republican-friendly congressional voting map for the 2026 midterm elections.
The decision blocked, for now, a lower-court ruling that had said Texas could not use the map. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who is assigned to handle emergency applications from that region of the country, issued the administrative stay, a temporary ruling meant to give the full court time to consider the issue.
The Texas attorney general earlier in the evening had filed an emergency application with the justices, asking them to allow the state to use the new map.
Justice Alito requested that the civil rights groups that had challenged the map respond to the attorney general’s request by Monday at 5 p.m., signaling the court would likely consider the issue speedily.
My guess is that SCOTUS will delay until the upcoming elections makes enforcing the lower court's order.
I did predict this.
Following a series of high profile conflicts with Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced that she will resign from Congress in January,
The exit of a bat-sh%$ insane politician from the public sphere, and the fact that this shaves down the already razor-thin Republican majority in the House.
Win-win.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s abrupt announcement on Friday that she planned to resign, blindsiding the House speaker and shocking Washington, will put a dent in Republicans’ already fragile majority, leaving them with a vacant seat at least into the spring.
But beyond the short-term practical impact, the sudden exit of Ms. Greene, the Georgia Republican who for years was one of the loudest MAGA voices in politics, has highlighted a deep well of discontent among far-right lawmakers at the core of President Trump’s coalition.
That dynamic could make it more difficult for Speaker Mike Johnson to corral his small and unruly conference, and threatens to divide the party going into crucial midterm elections in which the G.O.P. majority is at stake.
“Loyalty should be a two-way street, and we should be able to vote our conscience and represent our district’s interest because our job title is literally, ‘Representative,’” Ms. Greene wrote in a lengthy social media post on Friday.
I think that this is a f%$# you from Greene to Trump.
I cannot object to that.
Venture capitalist and Literal vampire Peter Thiel just dumped all of his Nvidia holdings.
Either he is attempting some sort of stock manipulation ploy, or he has advance knowledge of some sort of improprieties in the AI financial ecosystem that will result in a major sell-off.
In either case, I expect to see a crash, and I expect Peter Thiel to make out like a raped ape:
Peter Thiel’s hedge fund Thiel Macro LLC sold its stake in Nvidia Corp. during the third quarter, marking yet another retreat from investments in the world’s leading provider of artificial intelligence chips.
The fund offloaded its entire position of 537,742 shares in the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker — a holding that would have been worth about $100 million based on the closing price from Sept. 30. The Thiel Macro fund now counts Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and a reduced stake in Tesla Inc. as its main bets, according to a 13F filing.
Thiel’s move comes at a time of rising concerns about the AI exuberance that turned Nvidia into the world’s most valuable company. Hedge fund manager Michael Burry has emerged as perhaps the highest-profile critic, disclosing bearish wagers against both Nvidia and AI-powered software developer Palantir Technologies Inc. A series of circular, multibillion-dollar deals between AI chipmakers, startups, data center operators and others across the tech ecosystem have further stoked concerns that the industry is propping up itself.
Call me a cynic, but I'm inclined to believe that whatever he is doing, it is probably illegal.
The Harvard Crimson has been all over Larry Summers relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and now we know that Summers was asking advice from Epstein on the best way to f%$# one of his subordinates.
The email exchanges between Summers and Epstein is nauseating.
When former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee, he sought guidance from a longtime associate: convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein.This ain't boundary blurring, it is sexual harassment.
In a sequence of texts and emails between November 2018 and July 5, 2019, Summers turned to Epstein for advice on his pursuit of the woman. Epstein was quick to chime in with assurance and suggestions, describing himself in one November 2018 message as Summers’ “wing man.”
………
Together, the messages show Summers — who served as Treasury Secretary under former United States President Bill Clinton — placing an extraordinary degree of trust in Epstein, asking him for help in navigating a relationship that blurred the boundaries of his professional and personal lives.
Summers, who has been married since 2005, told Epstein he thought the woman was reluctant to leave him because she valued his professional connections. Epstein told him in one June 2019 text, “She is doomed to be with you.”
“Think for now I’m going nowhere with her except economics mentor,” Summers wrote in November 2018. “I think I’m right now in the seen very warmly in rear view mirror category.”
………
A spokesperson for Summers said that the woman described in the exchanges was never Summers’ student, but declined to comment further for this article.
So, he had power over professional career, but never was her instructor. I guess that it makes OK, right?
Wrong.
We have 2 more credit union failures, so 8 credit unions this year, and 3 commercial banks.
Here are the credit union failures
Here is the Full NCUA list, and the direct link for this year.
The bank number is the same as all of last year, and credit union failures are 4 times what they were for last year.
I expect to see more of this.
It appears that there is outrage on the right because of the rumor that soon to be New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani will be requiring students in the public schools to learn Arabic Numerals. (Snopes link)
As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."
Who knew that Idiocracy was a documentary?
Humanity is doomed.
Britain is rolling out a new armored fighting vehicle, the Ajax, and in a recent series of tests, noise levels were so loud that some troops participating in the exercise are still unfit for duty because of the noise levels.
British soldiers who tested the new Ajax armoured fighting vehicle in the summer were so badly affected they can no longer be deployed overseas.
Around five soldiers were medically downgraded and at least two of those are still suffering to the extent they can no longer do their job properly, it is understood.
Ajax armoured fighting vehicles, of which there are six variants, are designed to find the enemy from five miles away, before infantry units and other assets deploy behind them. Using a range of cameras and sensors, the all-terrain vehicle is designed so its crew of three do not have to exit, remaining inside for a week if necessary.
Luke Pollard, the defence procurement minister, said last week that issues with the £10 million reconnaissance vehicles were “firmly in the past”. The £5.5 billion Ajax programme, which first began in 2010, has been delayed for years as trials were paused after hundreds of soldiers suffered hearing loss and other injuries.………
The MoD commissioned Clive Sheldon KC to conduct a review into what went wrong with the Ajax programme. He found in 2023 that the failings that led to the programme going wrong were “systemic and institutional”. Warnings about the safety of the vehicle were played down or ignored, Sheldon found.
About ten soldiers who took part in a training exercise on Ajax vehicles in the summer, weeks before the vehicle was declared ready for operations, were sent to hospital for problems including serious headaches, loss of balance, motion issues and tinnitus, a defence source said.
The army refused to disclose whether the problems were ongoing but for at least two individuals health issues have persisted, The Times has been told.
………
When The Times visited General Dynamics last week, a meter on a mobile phone showed a reading of 90 decibels from a few metres away. Long or repeated exposure at sounds above 85 decibels can cause hearing loss, and employers must provide protection if that level is exceeded, according to the Health and Safety Executive.
Just as an FYI, the dB uses a logarithmic scale, so 90 dB is about 3 times the power of 85 dB.
This level of sound is insane.
In an effort to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump, Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa offered to allow a US military base in the Latin American nation.
There was one issue though, the country's constitution forbids foreign bases on its soil.
So, the Noboa held an election to change the Ecuadorian Constitution and campaigned aggressively for the change.
Ecuadoran voters were not buying his bullsh%$:
President Daniel Noboa of Ecuador has spent months courting Washington. He has met with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago; formed an alliance with the Blackwater founder Erik Prince, a Trump supporter; and pressed to allow U.S. military bases in Ecuador.
But voters at home delivered Mr. Noboa a sharp rebuke.
They soundly rejected a national referendum on Sunday that he had backed, aimed at authorizing a foreign miliary presence in Ecuador. With more than 98 percent of ballots counted, 61 percent opposed the measure.
The vote comes as the region has been roiled by the intensifying U.S. military campaign against boats the Trump administration claims are smuggling drugs.
The American military has launched 21 strikes that have killed at least 83 people, though U.S. officials have yet to provide evidence that the boats were ferrying drugs. Many legal experts say the attacks violate international law.
Even if Trump were not assassinating random fishermen.,the history of the US, and US military bases in Latin America, the United States supported a coup in Honduras during the Obama administration, would make sensible people legitimately suspicions such development.
The history of US involvement in Latin America is not a pretty one.
So we are getting economic data again, and the weekly jobless report has returned, with 220,000 initial claims, down 8,000, but
continuing claims rose by 28,000 to 1,974,000, a 4 year high.
We also (finally) have the September jobs report, where we saw decent job growth, but unemployment jumped as well.
On weekly claims data:
Applications for US unemployment benefits fell last week to 220,000, indicating that employers are largely still holding onto current workers despite economic uncertainty.
Initial claims decreased by 8,000 in the week ended Nov. 15. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 227,000 applications.
Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, reached a new four-year high the previous week after increasing over the past month and half, according to Labor Department data released Thursday that included back data for the missed reports during a 43-day shutdown of the federal government.
As to the September data:
US job growth topped expectations in September but the unemployment rate continued its march higher, underscoring the lingering fragility of the labor market.
The Bureau of Statistic’s latest jobs report, long delayed due to the government shutdown, showed nonfarm payrolls rose 119,000 in the month after declining in August. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, rose to its highest level in nearly four years — reflecting both the positive dynamic of more Americans participating in the workforce and the gloomier reality of more people losing their jobs.………
Job gains were narrow, fueled primarily by hiring in health care and leisure and hospitality. Other sectors, like manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, and business services, shed jobs. For many firms, the low-hire, low-fire environment has given way to a rash of layoff announcements, exacerbating Americans’ concerns about their job security.
I'm calling recession.
I tried Elon Musk's Wikipedia clone and boy is it racist
I guess you can take the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ out of South Africa, but you cannot take the South Africa out of the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™.
Alibiing Hitler, Slavery, and (unsurprisingly) Elon Musk? Hoocoodanode?
I am eating a snack that I have not had in decades, peanut butter and Rice Chex. (More specifically the Wegmans brand version of the cereal.)
It brought back memories of my mom, and when we would snack together on this at our kitchen table in Charlottesville, Virginia.
My mom died way too young.
*Marcel Proust, Rememberance of Things Past. He has the cookie as an adult, and it brought back memories of his time with his doeager unt as a child.A 3 judge panel in Texas has ruled that the Texas mid-decade redistricting was driven by race and hence unlawful.
Because of provisions of the Voting Rights Act, this can only be appealed to the Supreme Court, which with a non-corrupt court would mean that the 2026 elections in Texas would have to be held under the old districts, but given the nature of the court, and particularly the nature of Chief Justice John Roberts, (he's made it his life's work to prevent n*****s from voting) I'm not sure if there won't be some sort of highly irregular shadow docket bullsh%$ to ensure Republican political advantage.
Texas cannot use its new congressional map for the 2026 election and will instead need to stick with the lines passed in 2021, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday.
The decision is a major blow for Republicans, in Texas and nationally, who pushed through this unusual mid-decade redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump. They were hoping the new map would yield control of 30 of the state’s 38 congressional districts — up from the 25 they currently hold — and help protect the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House.
“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling striking down the new lines. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”
This is a finding of fact, and (theoretically, at least) any appeal should only make decisions of matters of law.
………
It was not immediately clear if the state still has a legal path to restoring the new map in time for 2026. Unlike most federal lawsuits, which are heard by a single district judge and then appealed to a circuit court, voting rights lawsuits are initially heard by two district judges and one circuit judge, and their ruling can only be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Tuesday’s decision came from a three-judge panel made up of Brown — a former Texas Supreme Court justice who once clerked for Abbott — and U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama, a Barack Obama appointee. Judge Jerry Smith, who was appointed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by Ronald Reagan, cast a dissenting vote and was expected to soon issue his own opinion.The ruling comes 10 days into the monthlong period when candidates can sign up for the March primary.
………
The state had argued that the entire redistricting process was based on a partisan goal, which the U.S. Supreme Court has previously said courts cannot intervene to prevent. But the plaintiffs pointed to a letter sent from the U.S. Department of Justice directing Texas to redraw its maps to eradicate four majority non-white districts, arguing that was the original sin that cast a racially discriminatory pall over the whole process.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Brown said it was difficult to analyze the DOJ letter because it contained “so many factual, legal and typographical errors.” But the fact that state leaders had pointed to that letter repeatedly as the impetus for redistricting was enough, the judges said.
Damn! That is some serious shade that Judge Brown is throwing at the DoJ.
And in response, California redistricted to counter Texas.
Seems like a big loss for Team R.
Former MAGAt Arizona state legislator Austin Smith just pled guilty to election fraud for forging signatures on his election petitions.
Gee, why am I not surprised?
Former Republican state legislator Austin Smith pleaded guilty Monday to what he previously called “ludicrous” charges that he personally forged more than 100 signatures on his petitions for reelection last year.
The Republican from Surprise was a member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, which has a history of spreading false claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election and pushed for election law changes in the state legislature.
“As a part of his guilty plea today, Smith admitted signing the name of a deceased woman on one of his candidate nomination petitions in March of 2024,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement. “He also admitted that he attempted to deceive the Secretary of State’s Office by knowingly filing petitions containing forged signatures of purported supporters of his nomination for the Republican primary for State Representative from LD 29.”
Seriously, how hard is it to get legitimate signatures for a nomination petition? You would have to be a completely unlikable bastard to ……… Oh. Yeah. Right.
Smith pleaded guilty to one count of attempted fraudulent schemes and practices, an undesignated offense, and to one count of illegal signing of an election petition, a misdemeanor.
At the time he was indicted, Smith was strategic director of Turning Point Action, Turning Point USA’s advocacy arm. TPUSA is a far-right organization based in Phoenix that aims to mobilize young conservatives founded by Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed in September while speaking to a group of college students in Utah.
A Maricopa County grand jury indicted Smith on June 2 on four felony counts for presenting documents he knew were forged to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office and 10 misdemeanor counts for personally forging the names of electors on his reelection petitions.
Smith pleaded guilty to the reduced charges as part of a plea agreement that gives him the possibility of avoiding a felony conviction. In Arizona law, when a person without a criminal history is found guilty of a low-level felony, the judge can wait until that person’s probation is finished before designating the crime a felony or misdemeanor. Essentially, that means if Smith completes any probation he’s sentenced to without violations, his conviction could be classified a misdemeanor instead of a felony.
And that’s important, because felons in Arizona can’t vote or hold elected office unless their rights are restored by a judge.
If the judge has any sense, he won't reclassify. This man is an affront to democracy, decency, and the Constitution of the United States of America.
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A member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic party, and a fan of Bernie who thinks Neoliberal (DLC/New Dem) trickle down conomics sucks.Mechanical Engineer with a background in defense, electronics packaging, medical & food equipment, transportation, and manufacturing.
In my spare time (Hah!), I am the developer of the Firefox addon, bbCode for Web Extensions (bbCodeWebEx).
I have two cats, a black cat, and a gray and white long hair cat, who keep me on my toes. (Because he keeps attacking my feet)
I am a Jew and a Zionist, who is married to a woman with exquisitely bad taste in men, and I have two remarkable children with her.
