Thirteenth Amendment, Schmirteenth Amendment………

It appears that private prison operators are coercing "voluntary" labor out of immigration detainees, in violation of the 13th amendment, which reads, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Apparently, the Constitution of the United States of America is not something that concerns the Department of Homeland Security:

Officials at a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in rural Georgia locked an immigrant detainee in solitary confinement last November as punishment for encouraging fellow detainees to stop working in a labor program that ICE says is strictly voluntary.

Shoaib Ahmed, a 24-year-old who immigrated to America to escape political persecution in Bangladesh, told The Intercept that the privately run detention center placed him in isolation for 10 days after an officer overheard him simply saying “no work tomorrow.” Ahmed said he was expressing frustration over the detention center — run by prison contractor CoreCivic — having delayed his weekly paycheck of $20 for work in the facility’s kitchen.

Those in ICE custody often work for as little as $1 per day and cannot legally be compelled to work.

Ahmed’s account adds to a growing chorus of ICE detainees who allege that they have been forced to work in for-profit ICE facilities or else risk punishment with solitary confinement — a harsh form of captivity that, if prolonged, can amount to torture. Late last month, ICE detainees at a CoreCivic-run facility in California sued the private prison contractor, alleging that they had been threatened with solitary confinement if they did not work. In October, The Intercept reported that officials had placed another detainee in solitary confinement for 30 days for “encouraging others to participate in a work stoppage” at the same privately run facility where Ahmed was disciplined, the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia.

CoreCivic has said that its practices of segregating detainees in individual cells are humane and has disputed the term “solitary confinement,” arguing that its harsh connotation does not apply to the publicly traded firm’s practices. “Use of the term in your coverage with regard to Stewart would give readers a false impression of the reality of restricted housing at the facility,” CoreCivic spokesperson Jonathan Burns said in an email.

But over the course of two interviews with The Intercept over a fuzzy detention center phone line, Ahmed used rudimentary English to describe being subjected to the isolating conditions of solitary confinement as it is generally understood. “The room is at all times locked,” Ahmed said. “If you talk, the sound does not go outside. And nobody comes to talk with us.”

“Sometimes I think I will be mentally sick,” Ahmed said of his time in isolation. “I feel pain in my head.”

In addition to severe isolation, Ahmed spoke of being subjected to restrictive treatment in segregation that might be more expected for a violent and volatile criminal than for an immigration detainee under punishment for encouraging a work stoppage.

………

In recent years, current and former ICE detainees have filed class-action lawsuits alleging forced labor against private prison contractors in Washington state, California, and Colorado. Across the country, detainees and advocates have said that the ICE contractors used solitary confinement as a cudgel to force work, and allege that the for-profit facility operators are profiting off the bonded labor.

“These big corporations are circumventing the traditional labor market,” said Lydia Wright, an attorney at the Burns Charest law firm who represents current and former ICE detainees suing CoreCivic in California. “If they weren’t requiring detainees to work for $1 per day, they would have to hire cooks and janitors at minimum wage.”

In an October response to a suit from detainees in Colorado, major private prison contractor GEO Group appeared to echo this point. “Were a court to conclude that GEO must pay thousands of detainees a minimum wage, it would significantly affect the prices that GEO would have charge for its services,” stated a GEO Group court filing. The Colorado class-action suit, which demands that detainees be paid minimum wage for their labor, “poses a potentially catastrophic risk to GEO’s ability to honor its contracts with the federal government,” the firm stated in a separate filing.

One obstacle such suits against ICE’s private contractors may face: Many of the immigrant plaintiffs are only fleetingly in the country before often being deported, making it potentially difficult, for instance, to find former detainees who may be entitled to back wages.

How convenient.

Headline of the Day

Biden Trashes Millennials in His Quest to Become Even Less Likable

—VICE

Yeah, pretty much.

Scam Jujitsu, Online Style

Someone has developed a chatbot that screws around with scammers.

If you have some free time, you might want to avail yourself of this:

Chatbots. They’re usually a waste of your time, so why not have them waste someone else’s instead? Better yet: why not have them waste an email scammer’s time.

That’s the premise behind Re:scam, an email chatbot operated by New Zealand cybersecurity firm Netsafe. Next time you get a dodgy email in your inbox, says Netsafe, forward it on to me@rescam.org, and a proxy email address will start replying to the scammer for you, doing its very utmost to waste their time. You can see a few sample dialogues in the video above, or check out a longer back-and-forth below.

 Works for me.

Linkage, In Seattle for Nephew's Bar Mitzvah Edition

• Encryption Lava Lamps – San Francisco, California (Atlas Obscura) Cloud Flare uses a wall of lava lamps and a video camera to generate random numbers for its security services.
• David Brock's rotten political empire (Washington Post) "I would be unfair if I said that David Brock represents everything wrong with politics. So let me say that David Brock represents almost everything wrong with politics."
• Where modern macroeconomics went wrong (Oxford Review of Economic Policy)  Joseph Stiglitz opens up a can of whup ass on modern economics.
• Don’t pirate or we’ll mess with your Nest, warns East Coast ISP (Endgadget) The juxtaposition of the internet of things and the end of net neutrality is not pretty.  You probably want to avoid ISP Armstrong Zoom.
• The Political Gift Economy (emptywheel) Marcy Wheeler's perspective on what I call back loaded bribery.
• ‘It Can’t Be True.’ Inside the Semiconductor Industry’s Meltdown (Bloomberg) The three "W"s of Meltdown and Spectre CPU bugs.
• The pundits were wrong about Assad and the Islamic State. As usual, they're not willing to admit it (LA Times) Always wrong with no meaningful consequences.

I found this hysterically funny, Charlie found it disturbing:

Pray for Me

We are headed to Seattle for my nephew's bar mitzvah.

We are flying Spirit air lines.

(Cue ominous music)

(On edit)
At least it is a direct flight.

Quote of the Day

We might get rid of Trump, eventually, and we’re lucky that he’s an incompetent boob…but we’re still going to have to do something about the christofascist churches and the right-wing thugs who cloak themselves in the new holy trinity of God, guns, and capitalism.

—PZ Myers

I agree, though I think that "Christofascist" should be capitalized.

Car Thief Turned Car Alarm Pitch Man Retiring from Congress

Darryl Issa, southern California right wing s%$# heel, will not be running for reelection.

My guess is that he wanted to get a jump start on a lucrative K Street lobbying gig, because his last election was a fairly near thing.

Don't let the door hit your flabby white ass on the way out.

Can You Get Any More Stereotypical?

Sympathy for Apu Nahasapeemapetilon

It appears that la Migra is targeting a prominent insustry, convenience stores, specifically there has recently an aggressive series of immigration sweeps of 7 Eleven stores:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents blitzed dozens of 7-Eleven stores before dawn Wednesday to interview employees and deliver audit notifications, carrying out what the agency said was the largest operation targeting an employer since President Trump took office.

ICE said its agents showed up at 98 stores and made 21 arrests, describing the operation as a warning to other companies that may have unauthorized workers on their payroll.

“Today’s actions send a strong message to U.S. businesses that hire and employ an illegal workforce: ICE will enforce the law, and if you are found to be breaking the law, you will be held accountable,” said Thomas D. Homan, the agency’s top official, in a statement.

Homan characterized the operation as a new front in the Trump administration’s broader immigration crackdown and its effort to increase deportations. ICE agents have made 40 percent more arrests in the past year.

This is not an immigration cracking down, this is an immigration crackdown for stupid people.

This is theater for people who are upset that a brown person is manning the register when they buy their extra large Slurpee and  chicken taquito, otherwise known as the Neanderthal the Republican base.

Damn, This is Gangstah!

Senator Dianne Feinstein^* just released the transcript of the Senate Intelligence Committee's interview with Fusion GPS CEO Glenn Simpson unilaterally:

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, defied her Republican colleagues on Tuesday to unilaterally make public a much-discussed transcript of the committee’s interview with one of the founders of the firm that produced a salacious and unsubstantiated dossier outlining a Russian effort to aid the Trump campaign.

The interview, with Glenn R. Simpson of Fusion GPS, provided few revelatory details about the firm’s findings on the Russian election effort or on President Trump and his campaign. But both the circumstances of its release and the vivid picture it paints of Mr. Simpson’s operation and his chief Russia investigator, Christopher Steele, provided fresh ammunition to both sides of a growing fight over the dossier.

In his testimony, Mr. Simpson sought to portray himself as an astute researcher well versed in the Russian government and that country’s organized crime. And he said Mr. Steele, the former British spy he hired to investigate the campaign’s ties to Russia, had “a Sterling reputation as a person who doesn’t exaggerate, doesn’t make things up, doesn’t sell baloney.”

Mr. Steele believed that his investigation had unearthed “a security issue about whether a presidential candidate was being blackmailed,” Mr. Simpson told the committee.

Mr. Simpson and Peter Fritsch, the firm’s co-founders, had called for the Judiciary Committee to release the transcript in an Op-Ed essay in The New York Times, arguing that it would show that Republicans were unfairly smearing their work. The request inspired a tart back-and-forth with Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the committee’s Republican chairman, but appeared to be going nowhere until Tuesday, when Ms. Feinstein took the side of Fusion.
………

For Ms. Feinstein and Mr. Grassley, two senior senators who worked closely last summer to initiate a joint Russia investigation, the breach was striking. But it reflects the growing divide between the two parties.

………

The release of the transcript broke what had more or less been a prevailing rule of secrecy around Congress’s various investigations into Russia’s efforts and the Trump campaign. Though pieces of information from witness interviews in the House and the Senate have leaked to the news media, only two complete transcripts — from House Intelligence Committee interviews with Carter Page and Erik Prince — had been publicly released among hundreds.

In a brief interview, Ms. Feinstein left open the possibility of releasing other transcripts from the committee’s investigation.

(emphasis mine)

Regardless of you opinion of the Steele dossier, and I tend to see it as a sink hole for otherwise-useful time and effort, the fact that Feinstein released the transcript without the agreement of Grassley.

This is far more extreme than simply releasing a minority report.  In fact, it is well nigh unprecedented action, particularly within the context of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

^*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers, though we have never met, either in person or electronically.

Oh, You Delicate Snowflakes!

There is a course on the history of white racism at white racists' feelings have been hurt:

When a "White Racism" class meets Tuesday at Florida Gulf Coast University, at least two campus police officers will be on guard as a precaution.

Today marks the start of the spring semester at FGCU, and Tuesday will be the first time the class meets. The course has caused controversy due to its name and garnered national media attention.

"We have prepared for any possible distractions related to Tuesday's first class of the White Racism course, but we are expecting normal campus civility as our students engage in this and other courses at the spring semester's start," Susan Evans, FGCU's spokeswoman and chief of staff, said in an email.

Ted Thornhill, the assistant professor of sociology who will teach the class, said he received some disturbing emails and voicemails after news of the class spread. He also said a couple of students enrolled in the class talked to him about safety concerns.

………

A security plan was put in place after Thornhill, FGCU President Mike Martin and others met in December. Thornhill wouldn't say if the police presence will continue throughout the semester.

………

Thornhill said he started getting the emails and voice messages as word about the class spread through news stories and on social media.

The course will cover everything from ways to challenge white supremacy to the ideologies, laws, policies and practices in this country that have allowed for "white racial domination over those racialized as non-white," according to a course description.

Some of the emails and calls Thornhill received were from people who simply expressed disappointment about FGCU offering the class and challenged the course's validity. Others expressed their views with foul language, called Thornhill a racist and referred to him using the n-word.

………

Thornhill sent FGCU police 46 pages of emails and some voicemails that were left for him regarding the course. Thornhill said he sent the emails and voice messages to police out of an abundance of caution.

Losers.

This is Like Military Statecraft 101

It appears that the military is concerned that the military is concerned that Russia is gathering intelligence on US equipment in Syria:

As Russian pilots leverage the close quarters of the air campaign in Iraq and Syria to gather crucial intelligence on U.S. operations, one U.S. aircraft in particular could be vulnerable to prying eyes—the stealth F-22 Raptor.

The air war against the Islamic State has provided a “treasure trove” of information on U.S. operations and tactics for Russia and other adversaries, said Lt. Gen. VeraLinn Jamieson, U.S. Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), during a Jan. 4 event on Capitol Hill. After more than two years of flying in close proximity with U.S. aircraft in the skies over Syria, Moscow has gained “invaluable insights” about U.S. aircraft and tactics, she stressed.

“Our adversaries are watching us, they are learning from us, and the skies over Iraq and specifically Syria have really just been a treasure trove for them to see how we operate,” Jamieson said.

Although Jamieson did not mention specific aircraft types, it is a fact that the campaign provided Russia its first opportunity to see U.S. fifth-generation aircraft in action. The F-22 made its combat debut in the opening strikes on the Islamic State in Syria in 2014.

No one forced the US Air Force to show off their bling in Syria, where the need for an aircraft like the F-22 is nearly non-existent.

The fact that the Russians are there, with antennas recording everything that they can, was completely foreseeable.

Someone on the inside Is Sabotaging These Prosecutions

It appears that I conflated a 4 month old news story with what happened today.

No acquittal today, the charges against the Malheur terrorists was dismissed because of gross prosecutorial misconduct:

A federal judge in Las Vegas dismissed charges against Cliven Bundy and his sons, Ammon and Ryan, on Monday.

Judge Gloria M. Navarro of Federal District Court, in a ruling from the bench, said that the government’s missteps in withholding evidence against the three Bundy family members and a supporter, Ryan W. Payne, were so grave that the indictment against them would be dismissed.

The decision could be appealed by prosecutors. But they would only be able to bring charges again if they won the appeal and the ruling was reversed — and they then got a new indictment from a new grand jury.

Judge Navarro declared a mistrial last month in the case, stemming from an armed standoff at the Bundy ranch in 2014 that had arisen over land-grazing fees. She said then that prosecutors had erred in failing to turn over important evidence to the defense, including video taken surreptitiously within the ranch during the standoff, and evidence that F.B.I. agents were involved in the incident.

My original thesis stands, "Either the prosecutors are too stupid to cut their own meat, or someone on the inside was sabotaging the prosecution."

Original article after the break.

Headline of the Day

How to Make Economists Fight Like Ferrets in a Sack

—The Spectator

This relates how economists of the Chicago School dealt with the allocation of office space when they moved to a new building.

If only there was something that would help these world renowned figures of academe deal with allocation of scarce resources like corner offices.

If there were only some sort of science of scarcity that they could avail themselves of to resolve this situation.

Good Point

Over at Beat the Press, Dean Baker uses issues with Mexican truck drivers to make a very good point on how free trade works generally:

………

It [The New York Times article] suggests that there is not much at stake in this battle since the Mexican drivers are not allowed to carry goods back from their destination. The prospect of returning with an empty truck would make it uneconomical for most trips even if the Mexican drivers were paid far less than their U.S. counterparts.

This discussion misses the point. If the restrictions on Mexican drivers transporting goods in the United States were eased, then it is virtually inevitable that the NYT and other major news outlets would soon be running pieces on the fact that it is wasteful to prohibit them from picking up goods in the U.S. and instead come back with empty trucks. The likely result would be that this restriction would be removed as well.

Yep.

So long as pharma, finance, insurance, real-estate, and media get their vigorish, it's f%$# the American working man.

Oprah Winfrey Is the Kindest, Bravest, Warmest, Most Wonderful Human Being I've Ever Known in My Life

Guess who's considering a Presidential run in 2020:

Oprah Winfrey is "actively thinking" about running for president, two of her close friends told CNN Monday.

The two friends, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, talked in the wake of Winfrey's extraordinary speech at the Golden Globes Sunday night, which spurred chatter about a 2020 run.

Some of Winfrey's confidants have been privately urging her to run, the sources said. One of the sources said these conversations date back several months. The person emphasized that Winfrey has not made up her mind about running. 

A representative for Winfrey has not responded to requests for comment.

In related news, animal trainers close to Lassie have stated that the famous gender fluid^* Collie is receptive to being Oprah's Vice Presidential pick.

Just kill me.

Seriously, just kill me.

^*FWIW, in all the Lassie movies and TV shows the character was a female dog, but the actor was a male dog, because male Collies are larger and more physically impressive.^†
†I'm unreasonably smug about the fact that I managed to make it through this entire "Lassie" bit without resorting to making some sort of crude pun on the professional term for a female dog.

Why Elon Musk Will Not Solve Our Mass Transit Problems

Because he does not, in any way shape or form, have even the vaguest idea of what mass transit is:

Like many tech entrepreneurs, Elon Musk is trying to reinvent public transit. But his comments at an event last month, as reported by Aarian Marshall in Wired, made many people wonder whether he understands the business he’s trying to disrupt:

“I think public transport is painful. It sucks. Why do you want to get on something with a lot of other people, that doesn’t leave where you want it to leave, doesn’t start where you want it to start, doesn’t end where you want it to end? And it doesn’t go all the time.”

“It’s a pain in the ass,” he continued. “That’s why everyone doesn’t like it. And there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer, OK, great. And so that’s why people like individualized transport, that goes where you want, when you want.”

Musk is a symptom, not a cause.  You find that most "Great Thinkers" in mass transit are PEOPLE WHO WOULD NEVER USE MASS TRANSIT.


It's Robert Moses all over again.

Have You Ever Wondered Why the USPTO Approves So Many Crap Patents?

It's because patent examiners are paid for approving crap patents:

The book Innovation and Its Discontents, by Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner, was first published in 2004. We've cited the book frequently around here, as it did a bang up job describing structural problems with our patent system (and the judicial review of patents). There were a few big points that it made about why our patent system was so fucked up, and a big one was the incentive structure that heavily incentivized approving patents rather than rejecting them.

Specifically, there were two big ideas mentioned in the book about the US Patent & Trademark Office: (1) that because Congress forced the USPTO to fund itself from fees, it had the direct financial incentive to encourage more patent applications, and a good way to do that is to approve a lot more patents and (2) individual examiners were rated and reviewed based on productivity scores on how many patent applications they completed -- and it is much faster and less time consuming to approve a patent, rather than reject one. That's because once you approve a patent it's completed and gone from your desk (and into the productivity metrics as "completed"). But, if you "reject" a patent, it's not done. Even though the USPTO issues what it calls "Final Rejections" there's nothing final about it. The patent applicant can keep going back to the well over and over again, making minor tweaks on the application, requiring the examiner to go through it again. And each time they do, that hurts their productivity ratings. As an additional "bonus" -- the USPTO actually makes significantly more money when it grants a patent, because in addition to application fees, there are also issuance fees and renewal fees.

………

Now there's a new study with even more empirical evidence showing how the Patent Office's entire structure is designed to incentivize the approval of crap patents (first highlighted by Tim Lee over at Ars Technica). The paper is by professors Michael Frakes and Melissa Wasserman, and they used FOIA (yay!) to get data on millions of patent applications between 1983 and 2010. The key point with that date range is that Congress only switch the USPTO over to funding itself off of fees in 1991 -- so the researchers could look at before and after data. It also allowed them to look at different cross sections within the data.

So, for example, the researchers looked at whether or not there was evidence that the USPTO approved more patent applications when there was a big backlog. The answer: hell yes!

Specifically, we compared the Agency’s patent grant rate across different groups of applicants based on the tendency of their associated technologies to file repeat applications; importantly, we performed this across technology comparison for two groups—defined by their average tendency to file repeat applications—before and after periods of budgetary shortfall and increases in application backlog. Our findings suggested that when the Patent Office begins to face mounting backlogs, it appears to act on its incentive to grant patents at higher rates for technologies that are associated with higher rates of repeat application.11 In figure 1, we replicate a figure from Frakes and Wasserman (2015), demonstrating that the Patent Office indeed began to grant at differentially higher rates for high repeat-filing technologies during the mid-1990s, a moment in time when the Patent Office’s application backlog began to increase considerably year-by-year. Again, this analysis is alarming because it suggests that factors other than the underlying quality of applications are affecting the Patent Office’s decision to allow patents.

Then there's a separate question of whether or not the USPTO has a higher approval rate for "profit-maximizing" patents. That is: not all patent fees are the same. Smaller entities get to pay reduced fees. Big companies pay full freight. If the USPTO is being incentivized by fees... then it's likely to approve big company patents faster. And... that's what happened. The study also looked at whether or not the USPTO more readily approved patents in categories where there were higher renewal rates -- meaning a much higher likelihood of generating future fees from renewals. Take a wild guess what they found in both of those studies?

Once again, we see the words of Upton Sinclair in action, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

There Is a Major Computer Not Vulnerable to Spectre or Meltdown

It turns out that, the Raspberry Pi is not subject to these vulnerabilities (From the Raspberry Pi blog) because they chose a processor that did not strive for the last iota of peformance.

The Raspberry Pi single board computer was designed as a low cost single board computer for use in computer education and in the 3^rd world, and so absolute performance is not a priority, which means no predictive execution, and no vulnerabilities to either of these exploits:

Over the last couple of days, there has been a lot of discussion about a pair of security vulnerabilities nicknamed Spectre and Meltdown. These affect all modern Intel processors, and (in the case of Spectre) many AMD processors and ARM cores. Spectre allows an attacker to bypass software checks to read data from arbitrary locations in the current address space; Meltdown allows an attacker to read data from arbitrary locations in the operating system kernel’s address space (which should normally be inaccessible to user programs).

Both vulnerabilities exploit performance features (caching and speculative execution) common to many modern processors to leak data via a so-called side-channel attack. Happily, the Raspberry Pi isn’t susceptible to these vulnerabilities, because of the particular ARM cores that we use.

………

Modern processors go to great lengths to preserve the abstraction that they are in-order scalar machines that access memory directly, while in fact using a host of techniques including caching, instruction reordering, and speculation to deliver much higher performance than a simple processor could hope to achieve. Meltdown and Spectre are examples of what happens when we reason about security in the context of that abstraction, and then encounter minor discrepancies between the abstraction and reality.

The lack of speculation in the ARM1176, Cortex-A7, and Cortex-A53 cores used in Raspberry Pi render us immune to attacks of the sort.

Of course, we need the additional performance because no one writes tight code any more.

Airline Passenger Does to Plane What Airlines do to Passengers

After a passenger let loose in the bathroom in a way that it, "Resembled the sets in The Wild Bunch if the film had been directed by John Waters instead of Sam Peckinpah," United Airlines flight 895 was forced to make an emergency landing:

United Airlines passengers found themselves in a fetid situation when their Chicago-to-Hong Kong flight made an unscheduled landing in Alaska after a man had smeared feces all over some of the plane’s bathrooms, airport officials said.

United Flight 895 was diverted to Anchorage on Thursday night, according to CBS affiliate KTVA, and police officials at Ted Stevens International Airport said the landing was due to a “passenger smearing feces everywhere.”

More specifically, officials said the man had dirtied “a couple” of lavatories on the plane and had also tried to cram his shirt down a toilet.

United said in a statement only that the flight was diverted due to “a disruptive passenger.”

This is some sort of metaphor lived in real life.

What a Surprise

That Jewish lawyer that Kayla Moore invoked to defend her husband, Roy Moore from accusations of anti Semitism is not Jewish:

Kayla Moore, the wife of failed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, has revealed the identity of the Jewish attorney she cited to defend her husband from anti-Semitism charges — and that attorney is a Christian.

The identity of the lawyer was the subject of intense curiosity in the Jewish community ever since Kayla Moore proclaimed at a campaign rally last month, “One of our attorneys is a Jew.”

Moore told local news website AL.com on Thursday that she was referring to Martin Wishnatsky, a staff lawyer at the Foundation for Moral Law, which she runs.

………

Wishnatsky, who got a doctorate in political science from Harvard University in 1975, says that he accepted Jesus Christ as the son of God two years later. He first started exploring Mormonism, but later distanced himself from it; he went on to write a book called “Mormonism: A Latter Day Deception.” He now identifies as a Messianic Jew.

………

After two decades in North Dakota, Wishnatsky went on to graduate from law school at Liberty University before clerking for Roy Moore in the Alabama Supreme Court, then working for the Moores’ foundation, where he writes friend-of-the-court briefs.

Wishnatsky’s personal website includes links to poetry, books and legal briefs he has written, as well as coverage of his exploits in church musical performances, talent show competitions and community theater.

………

Kayla Moore had also said last month that she and her husband “have very close friends that are Jewish and rabbis and we also fellowship with them.” According to Southern Jewish Life magazine, she was referring to leaders at Beth Hallel, a Messianic Jewish congregation in Birmingham.

What a surprise. 

She's either lying through her teeth, or has no conception as to what Judaism is.

How Convenient!

After learning of the vulnerabilities of its processors, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich as much stock as was allowed under the company by-laws:

Brian Krzanich, chief executive officer of Intel, sold millions of dollars' worth of Intel stock—all he could part with under corporate bylaws—after Intel learned of Meltdown and Spectre, two related families of security flaws in Intel processors.

While an Intel spokesperson told CBS Marketwatch reporter Jeremy Owens that the trades were "unrelated" to the security revelations, and Intel financial filings showed that the stock sales were previously scheduled, Krzanich scheduled those sales on October 30. That's a full five months after researchers informed Intel of the vulnerabilities. And Intel has offered no further explanation of why Krzanich abruptly sold off all the stock he was permitted to.

As a result of his stock sale, Krzanich received more than $39 million. Intel stock, as of today, is trading at roughly the same price as Krzanich sold stock at, so he did not yield any significant gain from selling before the vulnerability was announced. But the sale may still bring scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission for a number of reasons.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Yeah, "Possible" Arson

Tina Johnson, who accused Roy Moore of molesting her as a teen, has had her home burnt down, which authorities are investigating at as arson:

Roy Moore accuser Tina Johnson lost her home Wednesday in a fire that is now under investigation by the Etowah County Arson Task Force.

Tina Johnson, who first came to public notice for accusing Senate candidate Roy Moore of grabbing her in his office in the early 1990s, said her home on Lake Mary Louise Road in Gadsden caught fire Tuesday morning.

After neighbors and some utility workers called 911 shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday, the Lookout Mountain Fire Department responded to the scene. By the time the flames were extinguished, Johnson and her family had lost everything they owned.

"I am devastated, just devastated," said Johnson on Friday morning. "We have just the clothes on our backs."

………

"That fire is still under investigation by the Etowah County Arson Task Force," said Natalie Barton, public information officer with the Etowah County Sheriff's Department. "A suspect of interest is being spoken to. But there have been no charges, to my knowledge, related to the fire at this time."

Barton later released a statement, saying, "The ongoing investigation does not lead us to believe that the fire is in any way related to Roy Moore or allegations made against him. More details will be released when warrants are obtained."

Yeah, right.  Nothing to do with Roy Moore allegations, because random arson is a common thing.

FWIW, there is a GoFundMe for her.

Resisintance, Schmesistance, There's Money to Be Made

What a surprise. The People who are running the so called "Resistance" are taking their vig:

When Donald Trump took office in 2017 many people feared the worst. During his campaign, he promised to build a wall to keep out immigrants, discussed creating religious registries, and was recorded making claims of sexual assault on women. A large group of the American population worried that their rights would diminish during a Trump Presidency.

As a reaction to the fears stirred up by Trump in the White House, the Democratic Party responded with the Resistance. In essence, the Resistance is a combination of activists, groups, Democrat Party leaders, and Democrat-leaning celebrities or media personalities. The purpose of the Resistance has been to organize people against the harshest parts of Donald Trump’s platform. Whether through organized marches and protests, or donning pink hats as a way to promote feminism, there have been many forms of resisting Donald Trump.

While the Resistance might boost morale or inspire some people, it has also become an opportunity for others in the media to make thousands of dollars. Enter Scott Dworkin, an MSNBC contributor, who claims to lead the Resistance in his twitter bio. He has regularly appeared on Joy-Ann Reid’s show, AmJoy. During his appearances, Dworkin has pushed theories of a connection between Donald Trump and the Russian government. He hypes this connection as something that will lead to the impeachment of the President. But that is not where Dworkin’s efforts end; in fact, it’s just the beginning.………

………

During the 2017-2018 election cycle, The Democratic Coalition took in a reported $221,847.62 from individual contributors and spent $209,073.96. A closer look at their expenditures revealed something of interest. The Super PAC made multiple payments of $5,000-10,000 dollars to a firm BULLDOG FINANCE GROUP, for “Consultant-Fundraising.” A quick search of Bulldog Finance Group revealed that its founder was none other than Scott Dworkin himself. In total, Dworkin, who sits on the board of The Democratic Coalition, agreed to pay his consultant firm $79,500.

Furthermore, other expenditures made by the Democratic Coalition had ties to someone sitting on their board, Jarad Geldner, who is listed as the Super PAC’s senior adviser. Geldner also founded FWD Communications, a public relations firm. The Democratic Coalition made multiple payments to Geldner’s firm totaling $18,500.
………

Rather, Dworkin’s Super PAC promotes fear through a repeating cycle of Russian-based propaganda, which garners donations, which pay consultants that generate those stories over and over again, garnering yet more donations. As to what purpose his Super PAC actually serves, it appears to be little more than a Möbius strip of self-serving opportunism. The money sent to this Super PAC would be better spent in other ways to help fight back against a Trump administration. Donors could be sending money to candidates or grassroots organizations, rather than to the whims of Scott Dworkin.

Donate to local campaigns. not the party apparatchiks.

Job one for them is lining their own pockets.

Is It Wrong to Push a Crack-Pot Theory Just to F%$# with People?

It appears that a bit of history is false.

The generally accepted fact that Connecticut did not ratify the Bill of Rights until 1939 (it was symbolic) is incorrect.

The reason that this is interesting is that the Bill of Rights sent to the states in the 1790s had 12, not 10, amendments, and Connecticut ratified all 12 at that time, but never properly reported it to Congress.

The first two were not ratified, and were not incorporated into the constitution, though the 2^nd amendment (basically preventing Congressmen from voting in their own pay raises) was ratified later as the 27^th amendment in 1992 (It's actually the same amendment, because it never expired).

If Connecticut did actually approve the whole bill of rights, then the first amendment is technically ratified, and it reads thusly:

After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

Yep, you got it right, it requires that Congressional districts have no more than 50 thousand persons, as opposed to the roughly ¾ million (actually 710,767) currently used.

By way of comparison, the Maryland House of Delegates has roughly 42,000 people for each representative.

This means that, if Connecticut were to notify the US government of the vote, there would be 6175 (you gotta round up) members of the House of Representatives.

I think that some sh%$ stirring is in order by a member of Connecticut's Congressional delegation.

I am under no illusion an appellate court, or (inevitably) the Supreme Court would uphold this, but the ambiguity that it would bring, and in the best case it might result in an increase the number of seats in the lower house of Congress to something more reasonable.

I am not suggesting that they could actually win a court case, but it's a great way to f%$# with the Republicans, because it is a lot harder to Gerrymander 6175 districts than it is to Gerrymander 435.

H/T Naked Capitalism.

I Am Not Sure If This Is "Well Done", or WTF

The US has suspended security assistance to Pakistan because they have been paying footsie with the Taliban and the Haqqani network:

The United States announced Thursday it was suspending security assistance to Pakistan for failing to take “decisive action” against Taliban militants targeting U.S. personnel in neighboring Afghanistan.

The State Department’s declaration signaled growing frustration over Pakistan’s cooperation in fighting terrorist networks, but it was not immediately clear how much money and materiel was being withheld. The vague details suggested the primary goal was to substantiate President Donald Trump’s surprising New Year’s Day tweet that accused Pakistan of playing U.S. leaders for “fools.”

Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the restrictions covered security assistance above and beyond the $255 million for Pakistani purchases of American military equipment that the administration held up in August.

Nauert said details were still being worked out on the additional funds, and referred questions to the Defense Department. Earlier Thursday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the policy on military aid was “still being formulated.”

One of the corner stones of the conventional wisdom that is the foreign policy community some times called, "The Blob," is that Pakistan is a crucial ally in the, "War on Terror."

I remember that Osama bin Laden lived for many years in, and was found, and killed, in the same neighborhood as the Pakistani military academy, as well as their long history of playing footsie with the Taliban, so I am inclined to think that they are a part of the problem.

Crap

The Republican won the random drawing in the Virginia House race, so 'Phants continue their control of that body:

A Virginia elections official reached into an artsy bowl, pulled out a name and named Republican David E. Yan­cey the winner of a House of Delegates race that could determine which political party controls the chamber.

Triumphant Republicans declared that they would be in charge when the legislature reconvenes Wednesday. But Democrat Shelly Simonds did not concede, and she could request a second recount.

With that race in limbo and Democrats suing over another disputed Republican win, the GOP’s hold on a chamber it has dominated since 2000 remains tenuous. In a hearing Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Democrats will ask a judge to order a new election for a Fredericksburg-area House seat because nearly 150 voters were given the wrong ballots.

Thursday’s dramatic and rare election lottery, carried live on CNN, drew national attention as an odd way to decide a highly consequential contest. Simonds and a crowd of about 100 state officials, journalists and politicos crowded into the West Reading Room of the Patrick Henry Building for the event. Yancey was not present, although he sent a representative.

So, no Medicaid expansion then.

On the Crapification of American Life

The author, who shuttles between Europe and the US, notes that the quality of everything here sucks:

Everything I consume in the States is of a vastly, abysmally lower quality. Every single thing. The food, the media, little things like fashion, art, public spaces, the emotional context, the work environment, and life in general make me less sane, happy, alive. I feel a little depressed, insecure, precarious, anxious, worried, angry — just like most Americans do these day. So my quality of life — despite all my privileges — is much worse in America than it is anywhere else in the rich world. Do you feel that I exaggerate unfairly?

I am not sure why, though I think that the myth of American exceptionalism has something to do with it, but the model for American businesses is doing your job as poorly as is humanly possible.

Look at the airlines, or the cable companies, or the insurance companies, or finance, or healthcare, or pharma.

They all suck like 1000 Hoovers all going at once, and every one depends on some sort of information asymmetry, deception, or public subsidy for viability.

Best Simpsons Clip Ever

H/t Down with Tyranny.

Why Am I Not Surprised?

I just found out that in most states, "Hairstylists are Required to Attend Significantly More Training Than Cops."

I guess that a blow drier is more dangerous than a Glock:

Absurdity is a common trait of bureaucracies. But nothing says “we have no clue about the laws we pass” more than state requirements for law enforcement training.

Police are given the trust of the municipalities in which they ‘serve’ to uphold the rule of law. They are given a gun and vehicle and a certain level of autonomy in order to accomplish this task.

They consistently find or place themselves in compromising positions in which they must make life or death decisions; decisions which affect the lives of every person in this country.

………

With all of these particularly intricate responsibilities, one would naturally come to the conclusion that a police officer should be required to attend a significant amount of training to achieve maximum proficiency.

Some would assume that the required training to become a trustee of public safety and carry the vast responsibility of a police officer would require considerably more time than say, the training that it takes to learn how to cut hair.

However, they would assume incorrectly.

In New York, hairstylists need 50% more training than cops, and in California,  it's 140% more.

Something is seriously f%$#ed up.

Good Riddance

Kris Koback weeps, because Donald Trump's bogus vote fraud commission is no more:

President Trump on Wednesday abruptly shut down a White House commission he had charged with investigating voter fraud, ending a brief quest for evidence of election theft that generated lawsuits, outrage and some scholarly testimony, but no real evidence that American elections are at all corrupt.

Mr. Trump did not acknowledge the commission’s inability to find evidence of fraud, but cast the closing as a result of continuing legal challenges.

“Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry,” Mr. Trump said in a White House statement.

“Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action,” he said.

This is a good thing, but not a perfect thing.

A perfect thing would also involve having Kobach frog marched out of the White House in handcuffs.

When a Press Release Becomes a Breathless Headline

There are a whole bunch of headlines screaming that anthropogenic climate change could eliminate chocolate from the world in just 40 years.

I get it:  Climate change has the prospect of causing major disruption in all sorts of agriculture, and coastal cities, and social unrest.

It's real, and the potential harm is high.

That being said, this story is all about someone trying to make their product the next big thing.

Just read this:

Beyond the glittery glass-and-sandstone walls of the University of California’s new biosciences building, rows of tiny green cacao seedlings in refrigerated greenhouses await judgment day.

Under the watchful eye of Myeong-Je Cho, the director of plant genomics at an institute that's working with food and candy company Mars, the plants will be transformed. If all goes well, these tiny seedlings will soon be capable of surviving — and thriving — in the dryer, warmer climate that is sending chills through the spines of farmers across the globe.

It's all thanks to a new technology called CRISPR, which allows for tiny, precise tweaks to DNA that were never possible before. These tweaks are already being used to make crops cheaper and more reliable. But their most important use may be in the developing world, where many of the plants that people rely on to avoid starvation are threatened by the impacts of climate change, including more pests and a lack of water.

What is the first thing that you think?

If it's panic over the potential of a world without chocolate, then you are the victim of what is called a "Hack Journalism".

Some steps:

• Check Snopes.
• Figure out whose pocket is lined.

In this case, Snopes has it pegged as a fraud, and it's clear who is making money from this:  Monsanto and its ilk.

Chocolate is not going away.

It might move a few miles further south, or a few hundred feet higher, but this is a press release for transgenic IP protected agricultural products.

Forcefully Unmap Complete Kernel With Interrupt Trampolines

Yes, Apple crippled older phones, and Intel said, "Here, hold my beer."

Basically the error can allow low level programs to take over the kernel, with a result kind of like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they open up the ark.

There is a fix, but it involves changes to the operating system that causes a significant performance hit, and Linux developers were unamused:

2) Namespace

   Several people including Linus requested to change the KAISER name.

   We came up with a list of technically correct acronyms:

     User Address Space Separation, prefix uass_

     Forcefully Unmap Complete Kernel With Interrupt Trampolines, prefix f%$#wit_

   but we are politically correct people so we settled for

    Kernel Page Table Isolation, prefix kpti_

   Linus, your call :))

As near as I can figure out, Intel's claim that this is, "Not a bug," and this appears to be true.

This appears to be a direct consequence of their attempt to boost processor performance in their competition with AMD, which appears not to be vulnerable to the "KPTI" bug, also called "Meldtown".

However, it does appear that speculative execution in general creates a whole host of potential (though thankfully more difficult) exploits across a much wider range of processors. (This one is called Spectre).

I'm beginning to think that it is time for a major change in CPU architectures.

Protecting Our Purity of Essence

The latest health fad for people is untreated and untested drinking water:

Welcome to 2018, where some things never change. Selling snake oil to those with more money than sense is still a thing, and the newest “health” trend is already upon us.

According to the New York Times, a new “raw water” movement is springing up in the West Coast of America, particularly in affluent areas like Silicon Valley and San Francisco, in an attempt to “get off the water grid”.

We’re sure many of you are scratching your heads and wondering what on Earth “raw” water means, and, taking its literal meaning, why on Earth that would be a good thing. So, let us explain.

“Raw” water (yep, sticking to air quotes) is, according to Live Water – who sell 11-liter (2.5-gallon) bottles for a hefty $37 – unfiltered, unsterilized, untreated spring water, and this is a good thing because unfiltered water has some kind of loosely defined probiotic quality, filtering water removes beneficial minerals and tap water is poisoned by those in charge.

They are literally spending 7 times as much for water as I do for regular unleaded gasoline.

To quote a character from a comic book, "I firmly believe that if you can't fool all of the people all of the time you should start breeding them for stupidity."

Here is some musical accompaniment to this story:

OK, This is F%$#ing Amazing Trolling

This may be the best troll ever done on Twitter:

this is the best pic.twitter.com/VondMhYhgk

— sam glover (@glovelyjubbly) January 1, 2018

When I first saw this, I thought, "People should never quote that overrated hack ……… Ummmm ……… I mean Freidrich Hayek, not Selma Hayek ……… I'm fine with quoting her ……… OMFG! That pack of right wing nut jobs just got completely owned."

Well played, my friend, well played.

You got movement conservatives saying that Freidrich Hyek used his looks to get ahead.

That is brilliant.

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Tweet of the Day

I was not prepared for this. I legit yelled out when I got it. pic.twitter.com/9HMm97yQZJ

— azninsect 🐞 (@azninsect) January 5, 2017

I don't even play the game, and I get this.

Better Judgement or Cowardice?

A couple of weeks back, I went to lunch with my colleagues at work.

We went to Mission BBQ with colleagues.

Mission Barbecue includes a heavy branding on the whole, "Support the Troops," thing.

One of the things that I discovered, when we arrived at noon, was that they play the Star Spangled Banner at noon, as we walked in the door.

Everyone was standing, looking at the flag with their hands on their hearts.

I just stood there, no hand on my heart, but then I thought, "Maybe I should go down on one knee."

Instead, I just stood there.

Should I have kneeled, or perhaps (as a friend suggested) lift my arm in a Black Power Salute, or would that just make me an asshole?

I'm still conflicted.

It's Called a Windshield Wiper

I saw an article talking about how Silicon Valley is a terrible place for testing self driving cars because the weather there is too good.

Of course there is not a whole bunch of snow there, but there are ski resorts about 100 miles away, and mountains, etc.

They also make the point that this is a tremendously difficult problem.

The truth is that it is not a big problem.  The solution is called a windshield wiper.

In fact, I spent nearly a year working on a windshield wiper system for the LIDAR sensor clear on the US Army's now canceled MULE (Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment ) program.

The windshield wiper was complex, because the sensor covered about 200 degrees, and the windows were faceted with sharp edges, and I had to design a linkage to make the wiper follow the profile, and EMI/RFI shielded cabling, and gas tight seals, etc. ………

This is not trivial, but the solutions are straightforward, and California can accommodate pretty much all of the environmental conditions with the exceptions of tropical rain forest and tundra.

The real problem with the self-driving cars being developed in Silicon Valley is that the Silicon Valley ethos simply does not work for things that have to work outside of a computer.

The debacles at Theranos and Juicero are classic examples as to what happens Silicon Valley tries to conquer the real world, it turns to complete sh%$.

There may be self-driving vehicles capable of driving on any road before I die, but they will not come from the minds of Google, or Tesla, or Uber.

It might come from the NSA, it might come from Detroit, but truly autonomous cars are not cute cat GIFs, so I don't expect them to come from the Randian supermen of Silicon Valley.

You Run the Most Incompetent Campaign in History, You Change Nothing, and You Want My Money

The same incompetent people are running the same organizations, and are allowed to continue to be paid without anything even vaguely resembling adult supervision, but they are surprised when it proves difficult to convince people to throw good money after bad:

Democrats aim to win back control of Congress and build up their presence in state capitals during next year’s elections, but they begin this ambitious mission with precious little cash to finance it.

The Democratic National Committee had $6.3 million in the bank on Dec. 1, while the Republican National Committee had six times as much, at $40 million, according to documents the parties filed with the Federal Election Commission. In November, the DNC posted its worst fundraising amount for the month in a decade.

The Democratic Party’s political committees dedicated to House and Senate races show more parity with their Republican counterparts, but not enough of an advantage to outweigh the struggles of the DNC. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ended November with $34.2 million in cash, compared with National Republican Campaign Committee’s $42.3 million, fundraising reports show.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a former DNC chairman who hosted a party fundraiser at his home Dec. 14, is among the Democratic stalwarts stepping in to try to reverse the course. “I have heard a lot of donors say they need to take a break,” said Mr. McAuliffe. “The party’s job is to convince them they can’t.”

The national committee’s lackluster fundraising is at odds with a wave of enthusiasm Democrats have experienced across the country: A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found 50% of respondents want Democrats to lead Congress after next year’s elections and 39% said Republicans—a Democratic lead that has widened since an October poll.

Over the last election cycle, the Democratic establishment in Washington DC:

• Systematically eliminated Hillary Clintons's potential opponents in the primaries. (Not just Sanders, but O'Malley, Biden, etc.)
• Studiously ignored reports from the field.
• Strip mined the state and local parties.
• Lost to an orange haired carnival clown who was caught on tape bragging about assaulting women.
• Spent over a BILLION dollars doing all of the above.

People are not donating because they think that the current "Professionals" running the party will just waste the money on stupid sh%$.

Clean house publicly, and send the current lot back home to flip burgers, and the money will return.

Missile Deal is Signed

Turkey has officially signed a deal with Russia to buy S-400 Triumf surface to air missiles:

Turkey has finalized a deal with Russia to purchase the S-400 Triumph (SA-21 Growler) missile defense system, in a move that is likely to irritate NATO allies. The deal was signed by Ankara on Friday, Dec. 29. ………

NATO in general, and the US military in particular are freaking out over this, because, as I have noted before, the Pentagon sees NATO as a sales vehicle for American weapons.

The Russian system is more capable, and cheaper, and given its origin, it is probably easier to maintain, but none of this matters to NATO leadership, because it doesn't support the western arms manufacturers.

So basically, you have the military industrial complex on one side, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the other.

I'm just hoping that there is a way that they can both lose.

Linkage New Year's Edition

• Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain (Hacker Noon) "After years of tireless effort and billions of dollars invested, nobody has actually come up with a use for the blockchain—besides currency speculation and illegal transactions.:
• Eliminating the Human (MIT Technology Review) Lansdowne High School alum and former Talking Heads front man David Bryne on technology.  Money quote, "I have a theory that much recent tech development and innovation over the last decade or so has an unspoken overarching agenda. It has been about creating the possibility of a world with less human interaction. This tendency is, I suspect, not a bug—it’s a feature."
• Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Identify It's A Wonderful Life as Communist Propaganda (Open Culture) Yes, one more thing to hate that psychopath for, and I don't even like the movie.
• U.S. judge orders oil-spill response plan for Dakota Access Pipeline (Reuters) The Dakota Access pipeline has been put on hold, because they have no oil spill reponse plan.
• Kicking Away Tiny Tim's Crutch Because His Father Voted for Trump (This is So Gay) This is a common, and deplorable phenomenon of the left wing pundits, Eric Alterman in this case.
• Worst headlines bloopers of 2017: The best of Lower Case (Columbia Journalism Review) So funny. Oh Man! Oh God!

Oh Man! Oh God!