Good Riddance to a Bad Cop

I am referring, of course, to the Marion, Kansas police chief, who got a warrant to raid a newspaper because they had acquired public information.

He was suspended by the mayor, and now he has resigned.

His initial decision was based on bad facts and a misunderstanding on the law.  The Magistrate Judge who gave him his warrant, Laura Viar is also ignored the facts and the law, and is being investigated.  (She also has at leadt 2 DUI's under her belt, but I digress.)

The police chief of Marion, Kansas, who had ordered raids on the office of a local newspaper and the home of its publisher in August resigned on Monday, an official said, after facing mounting questions over his officers’ aggressive actions against the news organization.

The mayor of Marion, David Mayfield, told the city council on Monday night that the former chief, Gideon Cody, resigned “effective immediately,” according to Zach Collett, a council member.

………

The raids on Aug. 11 prompted criticism, particularly from First Amendment advocates who viewed the actions of the officers and two Marion County Sheriff’s Office deputies as dangerous and unnecessary.

Why are all these journalists complaining about a bunch of jack-booted thugs raiding a newspaper, and reporters' homes in an obvious attempt to intimidate them?  Wimps.

………

City leaders had faced questions about Mr. Cody’s hiring in the aftermath of the raids and after The Kansas City Star reported that the chief had left his previous job at the Kansas City Police Department following accusations that he had made sexist and insulting comments.

It really is remarkable how bad cops never leave law enforcement, they just move down the food chain.

Hopefully the former chief leaves law enforcement now, or rolls on whoever told him to do this, or both.

I Hate Reruns

The House Republican Caucus has picked the next speaker, Steve Scalize, but they do not have the votes to get him confirmed on the floor of the house, so they are holding off on the vote.

There is a twist this time though, South Carolina MAGAt Nancy Mace has announced that she cannot vote for Scalize, because he spoke at a white supremacist gathering and compared himself to David Duke:

“I’ve been very vocal about this over the last couple of days: I personally cannot, in good conscience, vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke,” she continued. “I would be doing an enormous disservice to the voters that I represent in South Carolina if I were to do that.”

Mace is both factually correct and morally right here, and I agree with her, and I feel dirty.

The MAGAts are trying to extract some more concessions.

Same as it ever was.

Same as it ever was.

Same as it ever was.

Same as it ever was.

Same as it ever was.

An Update on the War in Israel

Because, of course  First, understand that I am somewhat conflicted over all of this.

This was a major f%$# up, and vast majority of the casualties, and the vast majority of the casualties, will be non-combatant civilians.

It's clear that this has been a complete f%$#-up on both sides.

I think that Hamas did not expect to be so successful, they wanted some ink and some hostages, and Netanyahu has been mismanaging pretty much everything except for maintaining power for years.

One thing that I find bizarrely refreshing is that Israeli media is investigating and holding Netanyahu to task. (See also here, here, and here.)

The most surprising thing that I have learned this far is that US intelligence sources have stated that Iran was completely surprised by the Hamas attacks.

While this news does not surprise me.  The first rule of keeping secrets is not to spread it around, and warning Tehran would be pretty close to shouting their plans from the rooftops.

That being said that someone at Langley or Ft. Meade, or Foggy Bottom, or Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling basically said that the Iranians were not specifically and directly behind this is unusual.  (I am sure that John Bolton is weeping over this one.)

The wisest analysis seen so far is this from Yale historian Timothy Snyder:

I won’t claim to know what Hamas expects from Israel, nor what Israel should do. That would be a matter for people with the languages and expertise to read and analyze the documents and the data. My point is that it is always worth asking, in such situations, whether you are following the terrorist’s script. If what you want to do is what your enemy wants you to do, someone is mistaken. It might be your enemy. But it also might be you.

BTW, I do know who is the worst person in the United States with regard this, and ain't those stupid kids at Harvard who wrote a letter saying it was all Israel's fault.

They are just a bunch of stupid kids.

The worst person in the US, more so than Congressional Republicans (I cannot believe that I just f%$#ing said that), is hedge fund bankster Bill Ackman, who is organizing a blacklist among business leaders to keep students who are in these groups from getting hired.

It turns out that the usual suspects are also doxxing these students, up to, and including driving a truck with their names and faces painted on the side.

What a revolting group of people, and I am not talking about the Harvard idiots.

No Backsies!

After ruling it out, Kevin McCarthy has opened the door to a return as speaker.

How can we miss you IF YOU NEVER LEAVE.

House Republicans are settling in for what many expect to be a drawn-out and contentious fight for the speaker’s gavel this week, with simmering internal conflicts muddying the path forward for the two declared candidates.

Less than a week after an intraparty clash that saw Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) removed as speaker of the House, Republicans returned to the Capitol on Monday under increased pressure to coalesce around a leader so that the House can begin work to provide aid to Israel after Hamas-backed attacks left hundreds dead and prompted Israel to declare war. Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) doesn’t have much authority to do anything besides oversee the election of a new speaker. But some Republicans also have begun back-channel talks with some Democrats to see if both parties could find a way to give McHenry more authority if Republicans cannot coalesce around a speaker this week.

………

McCarthy said Monday that he is willing to resume serving as House speaker if enough of the Republicans who voted in favor of his ouster last week are open to his reinstatement.

“Whatever the conference wants, I will do,” McCarthy said during an interview on Hugh Hewitt’s syndicated radio program when asked about a possible return to the job. He echoed that sentiment hours later at a news conference largely focused on the Israel-Hamas war, deflecting direct questions about whether he thinks the situation abroad makes him best suited to lead House Republicans.

To quote Blazing Saddles, the House Republicans are, "These are people of the land. The common clay ……… You know... morons."

Oh My!

It appears that what the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™ calls micro-targeting has been ruled discriminatory behavior in a California court.

This is a surprise.  As I have stated on a number of occasions, most of this sort of tech is created to ALLOW discrimination. It is a feature, not a bug.

Facebook has done this in job ads for years, and AirBnb, Uber, and, Lyft are structured to allow would-be hoteliers and hack drivers to discriminate.

In the old economy, hotels and taxis cannot discriminate, and they (sometimes) get caught when they do, but a short term rental host or a driver in an app based ecosystem?

At most, that individual, and not the various app companies will face consequences:

Facebook may have to overhaul its entire ad-targeting system after a California court ruled last month that the platform's practice of routinely targeting ads by age, gender, and other protected categories violates a state anti-discrimination law.

The decision came after a 48-year-old Facebook user, Samantha Liapes, fought for years to prove that Facebook had discriminated against her as an older woman using the platform's ad-targeting system to shop for life insurance policies.

………

This, Liapes alleged, caused harm by preventing her from signing up for deals that "often change and may expire"—deals which she said were disproportionately being advertised on Facebook to younger and/or male audiences. As evidence, Liapes pointed to ads that Facebook did not serve to her—allegedly because advertisers used the platform's Audience Selection and Lookalike Audience tools to exclude her—as an older woman:

Liapes identified a life insurance ad that was only sent to males ages 30 to 49 because the advertiser used the Audience Selection tool. In another instance, a life insurance ad was not shown to her because it was only sent to people ages 25 to 45—based on the advertiser’s use of the Audience Selection tool—and because the advertiser wanted to reach people similar to its customers—based on the advertiser’s use of the Lookalike Audience tool.

"As a result, she had a harder time learning about those products or services," Liapes' complaint alleged.

………

"Construing the complaint liberally and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the asserted claims, Liapes has stated an Unruh Civil Rights Act claim," the court ruled. "Facebook qualifies as a business establishment. And it does not dispute women and older people were categorically excluded from receiving various insurance ads—an admitted service of Facebook—on its platform."

This blows an enormous hole in Facebook's business model, perhaps a larger one than when Apple went opt-in on stalker advertising on their iPhones.

Good.

Yawn

RFK, Jr. has left the Democratic Presidential primaries.

The Republicans are freaking out, because bat-sh%$ insane is core Republican branding, and they are afraid that his brand of nuttiness will pull more votes from Republicans.

I alternate between feeling amusement or disinterest:

In a move that could alter the dynamics of the 2024 election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Monday that he would continue his presidential run as an independent candidate, ending his long-shot pursuit of the Democratic nomination against an incumbent president.

Speaking to a crowd of supporters outside the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Mr. Kennedy, a leading vaccine skeptic and purveyor of conspiracy theories, said he represented “a populist movement that defies left-right division.”

“The Democrats are frightened that I’m going to spoil the election for President Biden, and the Republicans are frightened that I’m going to spoil it for Trump,” he said. “The truth is, they’re both right. My intention is to spoil it for both of them.”

………

Shortly after Mr. Kennedy entered the race, some polls showed him with up to 20 percent of Democratic support — which was in large part a measure of the desire among some for an alternative to Mr. Biden. Mr. Kennedy’s numbers have sagged in recent months, though his campaign, which dwells as much on nostalgia for his political lineage as it does on skepticism about the scientific and political establishment — continues to appeal to a particular cross-section of skeptical Democrats, political conservatives and independents.

The Republican National Committee, in a reflection of its own concerns about Mr. Kennedy, sent out an email on Monday titled “23 Reasons to Oppose RFK Jr.,” listing ways in which he has been aligned with Democrats in the past, including his record of opposing fossil fuel extraction.

 He started at 20% because of his last name.

He ceased to be a meaningful opponent in the Democratic primaries when people saw who he was.

Now Republicans are freaking because he appeals to wacko, my parents are first cousins, X-Files wannabe, black helicopter, tinfoil hat wearing, stupid, dim-witted, thinks pro wrestling is real* nut jobs, which is a core Republican demographic.

^*I think that I just channeled the comedian Denis Leary.

23 and Him

Him is George Santos, who, following a superseding indictment, is now facing 23 charges relating to campaign finance, identity theft, lying to investigators, and wire fraud.

This is some definition of a, "Good Republican coat," I was previously unaware of:  (Nixon's Checkers speech, read a book)

A superseding indictment made public Tuesday charges Rep. George Santos with stealing the identities of family members and using donors’ credit cards to spend thousands of dollars, intensifying the legal peril facing the freshman congressman five months after he was charged with a host of other financial crimes.

Santos, 35, faces 10 additional charges, according to the indictment: one count of conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, two counts of wire fraud, two counts of making materially false statements to the Federal Election Commission, two counts of falsifying records submitted to obstruct the FEC, two counts of aggravated identity theft, and one count of access device fraud.

The new charges were filed just days after Nancy Marks, the treasurer for the Santos campaign, pleaded guilty to fraud conspiracy and implicated Santos in a scheme to embellish his campaign finance reports with a fake loan and fake donors.

He really is the gift who keeps giving.

A Much Deserved Defenestration

I don't do much covering of computer gaming because I don't do serious computer gaming. 

That being said, the self-immolation of Unity, the cross platform game tools developer does catch one's attention.

Short version, they sold their tools royalty free, then they reversed themselves and came up with terms of service that would have bankrupted a number of game publishers.

They have partially reversed themselves, but the damage has been done, and any goodwill that they had was gone, and people have continued to move frantically to things like Godot,  Unreal, etc.

Now they have pushed their CEO John Riccitiello, the architect of their disastrous decision, but I think that the problem is more than just him.  

They had to know what they would get when they hired a former CEO for Electronic Arts.

Short sighted stupid greedy bastards is kind of a signature characteristic of managers at most levels of EA:

John Riccitiello, the chief executive of Unity Technologies, abruptly stepped down on Monday, less than a month after a change to the company’s pricing structure infuriated thousands of software developers who rely on the video game company’s tools.

Unity, which makes the underlying software that powers video games, has long imposed an annual licensing fee on developers. But in September, the company said it would begin charging developers additional money each time someone downloaded one of their video games. That meant developers would pay more as their games increased in popularity. Mr. Riccitiello was one of the main proponents of the change.

………

Unity did not give a reason for Mr. Riccitiello’s departure after nine years at the company. He was also the company’s president and the chairman of its board of directors. Unity did not respond to a request for comment and Mr. Riccitiello could not be immediately reached for comment.

His swift exit underscored the precarious position Mr. Riccitiello found himself in after an attempt to fix a corporate balance sheet awash in red ink. But the abrupt shift in the company’s financial model angered many programmers who rely on Unity for their own businesses.

………

Mr. Riccitiello is no stranger to controversy. He spent nearly two decades at the video game giant Electronic Arts, including a stint as chief executive, and gained a reputation for trying to squeeze money out of games in ways that sometimes frustrated players.

He once floated the idea to stockholders that players might be willing to pay a dollar every time they needed to reload their virtual guns while playing Battlefield, a popular first-person shooter game. In 2013, Mr. Riccitiello left E.A., apologizing for the company’s poor financial performance.

This guy should not be closer to managing a gaming related company than assistant manager at a Chuck E. Cheese, and the management at Unity had to have known this when they hired him. 

The damage has clearly been done, the only question is whether Unity will continue as a much diminished company, or simply end up a greasy stain on the floor of some sort of merger deal.

My money is on the latter.

Because She Sold Them Out

California’s New Senator Was a Labor Leader. Why Are Unions Upset With Her?

—The New York Times

After being president of an SEIU local, and president of the California SEIU State Council, Laphonza Butler lobbied for Uber and Lyft, and against their drivers.

Then she went on to lobby for AirBnb.

She sold out, just like Linda Chavez did when she joined the Reagan administration after leaving the American Federation of Teachers, and then cashed in on right wing welfare.

It does not matter what you did before you sell out your people, it only matters that you sold out your people.

I don't expect labor leaders to live like monks, but I also don't expect them to treat they time in organized labor as a cash register:

In the summer of 2019, Uber, Lyft and other companies that use contract drivers faced a crisis in California. The State Legislature was poised to pass a law that would effectively require them to treat their drivers as employees, meaning the gig companies would have to pay drivers a minimum wage, cover their expenses and contribute to state unemployment — all significant new costs.

………

So Uber brought in a team of high-powered consultants, including one whose connections with organized labor were unimpeachable: Laphonza Butler, the former president of California’s largest union, a branch of the Service Employees International Union.

Ms. Butler, working through a prominent California consulting firm, advised Uber on how to deal with unions like the Teamsters and S.E.I.U., and sat in on several face-to-face meetings between the gig companies and union representatives, according to those familiar with the negotiations.

The overture to labor divided union activists, some of whom bristled at negotiating with the companies, and ultimately, it failed. But Ms. Butler’s chapter with Uber proved to be a pivotal moment in her career, moving from labor activism to the world of high-powered political consulting, which also involved a role in advising Vice President Kamala Harris in her 2020 presidential campaign.

………

But the appointment has also drawn ire from labor advocates, who have not forgotten Ms. Butler’s work consulting with Uber, which some saw as an uncomfortable reversal from her history in the labor movement and the values she promoted there.

“The sense was she was betraying her commitment to working people,” said Veena Dubal, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law, who has argued that Uber’s drivers should be classified as employees. “She sold out in a really big way.”

………

Ms. Butler was not involved in the Prop. 22 campaign and left the consulting firm in 2020 to become a director of public policy at Airbnb, the short-term home rental company launched in San Francisco.

Like Uber, Airbnb has faced regulatory heat in Democratic, union-friendly strongholds like New York, where the company was being blamed for pushing up rents for working class residents and hurting hotel jobs. (Airbnb has said many other factors have caused rents to rise in New York and that its business model has helped drive down lodging costs for consumers.) One of the company’s chief adversaries in New York had been the Hotel Trades Council, a powerful union.

I am not surprised that New York Times reporters are surprised about people being angry about someone selling out.

Where ordinary people see hypocrites, these journalists see valued sources.

That's a problem.

A Correction and an Apology

In the links I cited Military Watch Magazine regarding Russian deliveries of S-400 systems to India.

The publication is not credible.  It tends toward the war pr0n/fanboi persuasion.

Youtube and Ecch keep serving them up to me, which probably says something about me, but I ain't going there.

The basic news about S-400 deliveries, has been confirmed by both Reuters and The Hindu.

Again, my apologies.  I did not do proper due diligence, by which I mean a f%$#ing Google search, on a source. (2nd and 4th link right now, for a start)

I put them in the category of, "Confirm with a 3rd party before use," now.

Headline of the Day

When Microsoft says that you're a monopolist things are bad

—The Register

Yea, this level of irony does bugger the mind.

Embrace and extend, boys, embrace and extend.

Linkage

• ‘There’s no tracing Xbox 360 chat,’ claimed Wall Street banker charged with insider trading (The Verge) How do people who are so stupid, get so rich.
• How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet (WIRED) How Google enshittifies its search and is generally evil.
• For 40 years, Big Meat has openly colluded to rig prices (Pluralistic) A consulting firm provides market information, so it is not collusion, right?  This is the same model that RealPage uses with landlords.  It's price fixing being white washed by consultants.
• Being a news avoider  (Stumbling and Mumbling) Why the news media sucks.
• What Happens if the U.S. Stops Aiding Ukraine? (Puck) Author games out the scenario with Russians and Americans, but the Americans need more time to even consider the hypothetical.
• March of the Four–Stars: The Role of Retired Generals and Admirals in the Arms Industry (Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft) The corrupt military industrial complex in all of its glory.
• India to Receive Last Two Russian S-400 Units in 2024: How Is Russia Producing Them So Quickly? (Military Watch Magazine) The S-400 is arguably the most sophisticated and most capable SAM system in the world, but unencumbered by the US military-industrial complex, they crank out more systems than the west in aggregate can.

Have some rice recipes:

I'm Listening to this Podcast

Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong.

It goes into the conflict between phonics (sounding out words) and whole-language (also called whole-word, where you use memorization and cues to read) reading, and where the whole language method came from.

The short version was that it was developed by an educator in New Zealand, who found whole-language effective with kids who could not learn through phonics, and pushed to have it implemented generally.

The problem is that it does not work well for children who can learn through phonics, that the cognitive science does not back it up. (Eye tracking and similar studies show conclusively that competent readers do not use whole word.)

It looks like a replay of the "New Math", which, full disclosure, worked for me, but failed most of the students of the time.

The solution to failure was to double down on failure.  It does not work.

Fire Jonathan Greenblatt

Mr. Greenblatt is currently President of the Anti Defamation League. (ADL)

This sad sack once unironically compared Elon Musk to notorious antisemite Henry Ford as a compliment, has now decide that the ADL will resume advertising on the social network formerly known as Twitter. 

Seriously, why the f%$# have you decided to line the pockets of this antisemite?

Following weeks [actually months, but who's counting?] during which Elon Musk has attacked the Anti-Defamation League and threatened to sue it for billions of dollars, the Jewish civil rights group announced that it would resume advertising on X, the social media platform Musk owns.

In a statement on Wednesday, the ADL said X, along with similar sites, still “has a serious issue with antisemites and other extremists using these platforms to push their hateful ideas and, in some cases, bully Jewish and other users.”

Elon Musk, the owner of the platform actively supports and follows antisemites and other bigots on the site.  This is not a problem that everyone has.  

Elon Musk is a bigot, and a racist, and he glories in promoting bigots and racists.

But the group cited declarations by the leadership of X, which Musk renamed from Twitter, that it would combat antisemitism. Musk has had livestreamed conversations recently with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as a group of largely right-leaning Jewish men in which he spoke out against antisemitism while also emphasizing his commitment to free speech. Also last week, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said the platform is taking steps to counter antisemitism.

And it won't stick, because Elon loves Nazis.

………

Musk and the ADL have been at odds for about a year. Soon after Musk’s takeover of the platform in 2022, the ADL encouraged companies to pause their ad spending on the site in protest of Musk removing guardrails against hate speech, though at one point, the ADL resumed its own paid ads on the platform.

Which it should never have done.

………

In its statement, the ADL repeated points its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, had made previously in recent interviews with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and other outlets — including that it wants to work with platforms to address antisemitism in a meaningful way; that it is committed to opposing hate across the political spectrum; and that it is not the driving force behind X’s significant loss of ad revenue.

Let Elon sue.  You will tear him up in discovery. 

Under Greenblatt's watch, Elon has regularly negotiated with the ADL and not held up his side of the bargain.

He is not credible, and he's a bigot, and he wants Twitter to be a cesspool of antisemitism and bigotry because these people are his Stans now.

Paying him money just reinforces his behavior.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

It's veto season at the California Governor's Mansion, and Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill limiting the price of insulin, and a bill banning Caste discrimination. 

For the first, he claimed that it would raise insurance rates, for the second he made the classic racist argument that existing laws can deal with this, even though these laws have not been dealing with Caste based discrimination.

I guess that he needs donations from big Pharma, and he's decided that high Caste South Asians, who are over-represented in the American diaspora, will be a useful political ally.

Newsom really is a nasty piece of work.

Oh, Horrible News

At least that's what all the "Very Serious People" (VSPs) say when we have a good monthly jobs report, which is what happened in September:

In a sign of continued economic stamina, payrolls grew by 336,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department said on Friday. The increase, almost double economists’ expectations, serves as a confirmation of the labor market’s vitality and the overall hardiness of an economy facing challenges from a variety of forces.

The unemployment rate was 3.8 percent, unchanged from August.

September was the 33rd consecutive month of job growth. Hiring figures for July and August were revised upward, with employers adding 119,000 more jobs to the labor market than previously recorded. But wage gains were cooler than expected, with average hourly earnings rising 0.2 percent from the previous month and 4.2 percent from September 2022.

Federal Reserve policymakers have tried to rein in both wages and prices by pulling up interest rates. Some financial analysts believe that continued resilience in wage gains and job growth could hasten a downturn by prompting the Fed to raise borrowing costs further during its next meeting in early November.

The Federal Reserve is not fighting inflation any more, it is fighting employment.

As I have noted before, its institutional incentives are f%$#ed up and sh%$. 

This time, the Fed might not raise rates, because it is screwing with Wall Street, which, as opposed to the fate of the ordinary worker, they give a damn about:

………

Markets fluctuated sharply on Friday after a fresh report on hiring pointed to a much stronger labor market than economists had expected, intensifying concerns among investors that the Federal Reserve would need to clamp down on the economy more forcefully to bring inflation under control, but also offering some comfort that any additional pressure would be set against a resilient backdrop.

Investors are trying to make sense of conflicting economic data. Wage growth has lagged inflation, despite the hot job growth. “We’re all struggling with what’s happening, so we’re falling back on, ‘Maybe yields are telling us more about the economy than what economic data is saying,’” said Drew Matus, chief market strategist at MetLife Investment Management.

Again, I do not know how the Fed will react to this, but if they continue to tighten, they will be wrong.

Support Your Local Police

As in many other cities, the officers of the Minneapolis police department are engaging in a silent strike in response to demands for greater accountability.

As a result, crime fell.

This says a lot about the relative value of police:

Former officer/current prisoner Derek Chauvin decided to personify endemic police racism by pressing his knee to the neck of an unarmed black man for nearly ten minutes. This display of power continued for three minutes after another officer told Officer Chauvin he could no longer detect a pulse.

This act saw Officer Derek Chauvin join the very short list of law enforcement officers convicted of murder. Before that verdict arrived, Minneapolis exploded. Shortly thereafter, so did the rest of the country.

Minneapolis PD officers responded as cops almost always do when a “bad apple” further turns public sentiment against them: they simply refused to do their job. Officers decided that if people didn’t love the police, they weren’t going to avail themselves of the benefits (whatever they are) of an organized police force. Of course, most officers were unwilling to give up their incomes in exchange for abdicating their responsibilities. They expected to get paid for doing nothing.

Others saw the writing on the likely burning wall: casual abuse of citizens and their rights was no longer being tolerated to the extent it had been previous to Officer Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd. They decided to exit the police business altogether, rather than deal with any minimal increases in transparency and accountability.

And what happened?

………

And, for a relatively brief moment, that simple math held. Crime did go up while the city was still dealing with 24/7 protests and an observable spike in disrespect for police officers and everything they stand for.

But that assertion has since been proven false. Reports flowing in over the last couple of years show cops aren’t all that essential to lowering crime rates. In April of this year, it was reported that crime rate decreases first noted in 2022 weren’t an anomaly.

According to MPD data, carjackings are down 46% year-to-date, robbery has dropped 34%, gunshot wound victims declined nearly 38% and assaults are down 7%.

The city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, credited this drop to a new task force and a renewed focus on subjecting repeat offenders to harsher sentences. Maybe. Maybe not. But it definitely wasn’t related to an increase in officers on patrol, contrary to the predictions of the self-interest groups listed above.

We are spending way too much money on policing.

Gavin Newsom Does it Again

Once again, Gavin Newsom fabricates an an excuse to veto a progressive initiative.

This time, it's a veto of the legalization of psychedelic drugs. 

Newsom is pandering to the right wing because he thinks that this is a stepping stone to higher office.

California will have to put more work into decriminalizing hallucinogens before Governor Gavin Newsom will sign a bill, said a statement from the governor on Saturday, announcing that the bill had been vetoed.

The rejected law, which was anticipated to take effect in 2025, would have done away with criminal penalties for people possessing natural psychedelics for personal use. It also would have required the state to form a group to study and make recommendations about the drugs’ therapeutic use.

Newsom, a Democrat who championed legalizing cannabis in 2016, said in a statement on Saturday that more needed to be done before California decriminalized the hallucinogens.

“California should immediately begin work to set up regulated treatment guidelines – replete with dosing information, therapeutic guidelines, rules to prevent against exploitation during guided treatments, and medical clearance of no underlying psychoses,” Newsom’s statement said. “Unfortunately, this bill would decriminalize possession prior to these guidelines going into place, and I cannot sign it.”

This is not about additional studies, this is about sucking up to conservatives for a future Senate or Presidential run.

I saw this with Clinton in the 1990s, and Obama in the oughts, and I am NOT interested in a refun.

History Rhyming

That was my kid Charlie's comment about the Hamas attack on Israel today.  This was not a barrage of rockets, this a full blown armed incursion.

There were at least 250 Israelis killed, over 1000 wounded, and an unknown number taken by force back to Gaza.

Palestinian appear to be at the same level.

A brief summary of the events of today:

An estimated 250 Israelis were killed and around 1,600 were wounded after hundreds of Palestinian militants infiltrated Israel on Saturday morning by land, by sea and by air in one of the deadliest attacks in the nation’s history.

The army confirmed that a “substantial” number of Israeli soldiers and civilians, captured by Hamas forces, were being held hostage in Gaza. Many others were being held captive in Be’eri, a southern border kibbutz, and in the town of Ofakim.

Soon after crossing into Israel, Palestinians militants took control of numerous agricultural communities on the border, including the town of Sderot. By evening, the military had regained control of most of them, the Israel Defense Forces said, and had killed hundreds of Palestinian militants who had crossed the border or were attempting to do so.

………

The strength, sophistication and timing of the Saturday morning attack shocked Israelis. Hamas fighters used explosives to break through the border fence enclosing the Mediterranean territory, then crossed with motorcycles, pickup trucks, paragliders and speed boats on the coast. 

Motorcycles and paragliders?  It sounds like something out of Mad Max.

………

Associated Press photos showed an abducted elderly Israeli woman being brought back into Gaza on a golf cart by Hamas gunmen and another woman squeezed between two fighters on a motorcycle. Images also showed fighters parading captured Israeli military vehicles through Gaza streets.

Someone f%$#ed up big time in the Israeli security establishment.

It appears that Hamas caught the IDF completely flat-footed.

Thousands of Hamas missiles and rockets rained down on Israel throughout the day, reaching as far north as Jerusalem. After Israel struck two high-rise buildings in Gaza belonging to Hamas, Tel Aviv was bombarded with missiles, and at least one building in the south of the city collapsed.

………

With Israelis in shock and the number of casualties rising, moves were underway to form a national emergency government with parties in the center-left.

This is a complete fiasco, I'm not sure that bailing out Netanyahu is a good thing.

………

The surprise attack, which is being described both as Israel’s “Pearl Harbor” and “9/11,” began at 6:30 A.M. when Palestinian militants, using tractors, destroyed a section of the border fence separating Israel from Gaza and crossed over with what appeared to be little to no resistance. At the same time, Israel’s airspace was infiltrated by Palestinian drones, and boats carrying militants landed on the shore in Israel’s south.

The attack took place 50 years and one day after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, the last time Israel had been caught so completely off guard.

It coincided with the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, which marks the end of the weeklong Sukkot celebrations.

………

Many of the casualties and hostages are believed to have been young Israelis attending an outdoor rave at Re’im, a kibbutz near the border.

It appears that Netanyahu is already being blamed with the failure, which is a good thing, because this is clearly a consequence of the Israeli PM neglecting his duties to pursue his political survival.

Unlike the Yom Kippur war, which occurred 50 years and one day ago, where there were extensive warnings of mobilizations, there appears to have been no intelligence reports  of any sort preceding this event.

שִׂמְחַת תּוֹרָה‎, Or, I'm not as Think as You Drunk

It is Simchat Torah (שִׂמְחַת תּוֹרָה), where Jews celebrate the annual cycle of the Torah.  We go from the last chapter of Torah, Deuteronomy (דְּבָרִים‎), to the first chapter.of Genesis (בְּרֵאשִׁית), and restart the cycle.

It's the kind of the Jewish version of, "Be kind, rewind," (That quote is a boomer thing) only it involves dancing with he Torah scrolls, and a fair amount of drinking.

I am feeling no pain.

I Support the Right to Keep and Arm Bears

Winnie the Pooh, This Time, He Is Loaded ……… for Bear

Sucks to Be Trump

Shortly before he would have had to sit down for discovery Trump dropped his lawsuit against his former lawyer Michael Cohen. 

This is not a surprise.  Cohen knows where the bodies are buried, and would know what questions to ask during that session, and because it is a civil trial, if Trump were to refuse to answer questions, that could be used against him in this trial.  (That refusal could not be used in the criminal cases against him)

Trump blinked:

Donald J. Trump on Thursday dropped a lawsuit he had filed against his former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, abandoning what has been seen as an effort to silence Mr. Cohen, who has become one of the former president’s loudest critics.

The decision to drop the case came just days before Mr. Trump was scheduled to be questioned under oath by Mr. Cohen’s lawyers. It also comes on the verge of Mr. Cohen’s testifying against Mr. Trump in an unrelated civil fraud case brought by the New York attorney general.

Mr. Cohen, a longtime Trump defender turned antagonist, is also a star witness against the former president in a criminal case, and a person familiar with the matter said Mr. Trump had been cognizant of that fact when he filed the suit.

………

Mr. Trump’s lawsuit had accused Mr. Cohen of “spreading falsehoods” about him. It specified Mr. Cohen’s role in the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal case against the former president.

The lawsuit raised concerns about whether Mr. Trump was seeking to intimidate Mr. Cohen into backing down from his testimony. Although legal experts said it did not amount to witness tampering, Mr. Cohen saw it as a threat.

………

Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers were concerned about his giving a deposition in the case while he was facing four criminal indictments in four jurisdictions along the East Coast. They feared he might say something damaging that could be used by prosecutors in those cases, according to the person familiar with the matter.

It's a truly pissant move from a true pissant.

Tweet of the Day

Sam Bankman Fried's greatest accomplishment is exposing Michael Lewis. https://t.co/Zzudq7lvHT

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) October 3, 2023

Yeah, Michael Lewis lost me when he called Michael Oher stupid and mocked him for being on the Old Miss Deans' List.

Michael Lewis has written one book in his career, "Scrappy underdog beats the establishment," and released it about 20 times under 20 different titles.

He writes a story that people want to believe, not one that is necessarily true.

Now We Know

High speed imaging of a cat glottisFollowing over a century of investigation we now know how cats purr, well probably.

The short version is that they took larynzxes of euthanized cats, with owners' permission, and blew air through them at various speeds, and managed to recreate the phenomenon.

We still have no clue as to why cats purr, though.

I loves our furry enigmas:

There are few things more gratifying to cat lovers than a contentedly purring feline. But the precise mechanisms by which kitties produce those pleasant, low-frequency rumblings has been a matter of some debate among scientists. Now a team of Austrian scientists has determined that connective tissues embedded in cats' vocal cords play a crucial role in this ability, according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. The authors argue that their findings call for a reassessment of the current prevailing hypothesis about how cats purr.

Purring is mostly exclusive to cats, although certain other species can produce purr-like sounds, including raccoons, mongooses, kangaroos, badgers, rabbits, and guinea pigs. And cats are usually divided into those that purr (Felinae) and those that roar (Pantherinae); no cat species can do both. The latter category includes lions, tigers, jaguars, and leopards, and scientists have suggested that the roaring capability is due to an incompletely ossified hyoid bone in the larynx. "Purrers," by contrast, have a completely ossified hyoid, although the purring snow leopard is a rare exception.

We know the fundamental frequency at which cats purr—between 20 to 30 vibrations per second, although purrs can go up to about 150 Hz—but that is lower than expected based on vocal cord anatomy. As a general rule, larger animals have longer vocal cords and thus create lower-frequency sounds. But cats are relatively small, typically weighing on the order of a few kilograms, and their vocal cords are also relatively short. Hence the curiosity about how they produce such low-frequency purrs.

There are few things more gratifying to cat lovers than a contentedly purring feline. But the precise mechanisms by which kitties produce those pleasant, low-frequency rumblings has been a matter of some debate among scientists. Now a team of Austrian scientists has determined that connective tissues embedded in cats' vocal cords play a crucial role in this ability, according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. The authors argue that their findings call for a reassessment of the current prevailing hypothesis about how cats purr.

Purring is mostly exclusive to cats, although certain other species can produce purr-like sounds, including raccoons, mongooses, kangaroos, badgers, rabbits, and guinea pigs. And cats are usually divided into those that purr (Felinae) and those that roar (Pantherinae); no cat species can do both. The latter category includes lions, tigers, jaguars, and leopards, and scientists have suggested that the roaring capability is due to an incompletely ossified hyoid bone in the larynx. "Purrers," by contrast, have a completely ossified hyoid, although the purring snow leopard is a rare exception.

We know the fundamental frequency at which cats purr—between 20 to 30 vibrations per second, although purrs can go up to about 150 Hz—but that is lower than expected based on vocal cord anatomy. As a general rule, larger animals have longer vocal cords and thus create lower-frequency sounds. But cats are relatively small, typically weighing on the order of a few kilograms, and their vocal cords are also relatively short. Hence the curiosity about how they produce such low-frequency purrs.

………

The authors successfully produced purring sounds in all eight of the excised larynxes when air was pumped through them, with no need for muscle contractions—given that all the adjacent muscles had been removed when excising the larynxes. So what was driving the purrs? They concluded that it was the presence of connective tissue embedded in the vocal cords, which also served to lower the frequency of the purring sounds. In other words, cats rely on the same MEAD-based mechanisms to purr as other mammals do for their vocalizations.

The prior theory was that cats used specialized muscular contractions to create these sounds, but it appears to be a normal vocalization where the vocal chords are tightened or loosened like a guitar string.

The reason that cats can purr is because of the cartilage in their vocal chords.

It's kind of the difference between between a yew English longbow and a composite Mongol bow, which is made out of a combination of horn, sinew, and bamboo along with glue.

HaHa!

It appears that Ron DeSantis' Presidential campaign is running out of cash. 

I guess spending like a drunken sailor, picking fights with Disney*, establishing his own secret police, extremism, and having the personality of a turnip† have put off his former big dollar donors.

Batsh%$ insane scares off donors:

Ron DeSantis' 2024 presidential campaign continues to be met with financial difficulties, with the Florida Governor forced to rely on a relatively small sum for the remainder of the primary season.

DeSantis, who is trailing GOP primary frontrunner Donald Trump in the polls by massive margins, brought in $15 million in the third quarter fundraising period between his campaign committee and leadership PAC.

However, only $5 million of DeSantis's fundraising attempt is available as cash for the remainder of the primary season. In comparison, Trump's campaign raised more than $45.5 million in the third quarter, with around $36 million of the total cash on hand designated purely for the primary.

The $15 million raised by DeSantis' PACs in the third quarter is also down from $20 million in the first six weeks of the Florida governor's presidential run. A number of key fundraising and campaigning efforts have also been taken over by the pro-DeSantis Super PAC Never Back Down, including pumping millions in advertising and hosting events. 

………

The difficulties for DeSantis' campaign finances could also be seen in the decision to move around a third of its staff out of Florida to Iowa, with the Republican seemingly banking on a positive result from the first-in-the-nation primary caucus in January to kickstart his floundering White House bid.

………

The move to relocate staff to Iowa arrives after some 38 staff members—around one-third of the team—were let go in July as part of drastic cost-cutting measures just two months after DeSantis launched his presidential campaign.

It's fun watching the DeSantis campaign devolve into the clown show.  It's almost as fun as the Freddie Lynn Dalton Clown Show in 2008. but it might end up better.

^*One of the rules that I live by is Do Not F%$# With the Mouse. I also have a rule not to f%$# with corvids, but Disney is a close second. 

^†I apoligize to turnips everywhere, and I also apologize to Baldrick, for this analogy.

Thursday Jobs Dump

So it is another weekly unemployment report, and Initial Claims rose by 2000 to 207,000, basically flat, while continuing claims fell by 1,000 to 1.664 million, also basically flat.  (The less volatile 4-week moving average was flat as well)

Two others indicator fell significantly, though people can differ on whether this is good or bad news on the 2nd one.

The first was that layoffs were down from August, which is good news if you are neither a Chicago School Economist or a psychopath.  (But I repeat myself)

The 2nd one is the trade deficit, which fell by 9.9% to $58.3 billion.  I think that this is an indication of falling demand (bad) but some folks would see a falling trade deficit as an good thing.

Once again: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We ……… Are ……… F%$#ed

The Gulf Stream has slowed down by 4% over the past 4 decades with a 99% certainty.

That is a 25th of total flow, not a minuscule amount.

The Gulf Stream transport of water through the Florida Straits has slowed by 4% over the past four decades, with 99% certainty that this weakening is more than expected from random chance, according to a new study.

The Gulf Stream—which is a major ocean current off the U.S. East Coast and a part of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation—plays an important role in weather and climate, and a weakening could have significant implications.

"We conclude with a high degree of confidence that Gulf Stream transport has indeed slowed by about 4% in the past 40 years, the first conclusive, unambiguous observational evidence that this ocean current has undergone significant change in the recent past," states the journal article, "Robust weakening of the Gulf Stream during the past four decades observed in the Florida Straits," published in Geophysical Research Letters.

The from the article abstract:

We find with virtual certainty (probability P > 99%) that Gulf Stream volume transport through the Florida Straits declined by 1.2 ± 1.0 Sv [Sv stands for Sverdrup, 1 million m3/second] in the past 40 years (95% credible interval). This significant trend has emerged from the data set only over the past ten years, the first unequivocal evidence for a recent multidecadal decline in this climate-relevant component of ocean circulation.

Even assuming the low end, and assuming a 2°C temperature drop (my WAG, probably low) and a 0.2 Sv flow, the energy contained is 200,000,000 kg/second of water x 2°C x 4182 J/kg°C. = 1,672,800,000,000 J/s or 1,672,800 MW of heat not heading north.

By comparison, the US generated 4,243 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2022, and 8760 hours in a year, so the average power output of the United States is 484,361 MW, so the heat not being carried is almost 4 times that of total US power generation.

That is a f%$# tonne of heat, and that is still likely a gross understatement of the ΔQ.

A Different Kind of War

I know that this is from the Torygraph (Telegraph) but this anonymous quote from an anonymous senior military official constitutes a statement against interest.

He said that the UK has run out of weapon stocks to the Ukraine.

This is a kind of war that no one in the West has fought in more than a generation.

Britain has run out of defence equipment to donate to Ukraine and other countries should step in and shoulder more of the burden, a senior military chief has said.

The comments come after Ben Wallace revealed that he asked Rishi Sunak to spend £2.3 billion more on support for Ukraine before he resigned as defence secretary last month.

Mr Wallace warned that the UK had been overtaken by Germany as the biggest European military donor to Ukraine as he called for the 50 per cent increase on funding that the UK has committed so far.

The Western alliance has suffered a series of blows in recent days, with support for Ukraine dropped from a US stop-gap budget bill, election success for a pro-Russian party in Slovakia and rows between Poland and Kyiv over grain supplies.

On Monday, the Kremlin claimed that Western fatigue with the war “will grow”. The White House replied that Vladimir Putin was wrong to think he could outlast the pro-Kyiv alliance.

Last night a senior military source told The Telegraph that the onus should not be on the UK to provide the “billions” Mr Wallace has called for.

“Giving billions more doesn’t mean giving billions of British kit,” they said, adding that the UK had a role to play in “encouraging other nations to give more money and weapons”.

“We’ve given away just about as much as we can afford,” they added.

This is what near peer wars look like, and the US and NATO are completely unprepared for this.

But It's San Francisco!

S.F. mayor London Breed is calling for drug testing for people who are getting social welfare benefits.

Yep, standard reactionary position.

It appears that she is sucking up to the Silly-Con Valley political donors, who want their pot and their abortion, but want the poors kept in their place:

Recipients of public assistance — in a city once known for its embrace of counterculture drugs — would have to submit to tests for substance use under a proposal announced Tuesday by Mayor London Breed as she faces mounting pressure to address San Francisco’s fentanyl epidemic.

Breed, who is running for reelection in 2024, outlined the plan the same day that an heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune launched his own mayoral bid, arguing that his incumbent opponent had let the drug and homelessness crises fester under her watch.

Her proposal — which progressive critics immediately compared to Republican-style welfare mandates — would require all recipients of locally-funded cash assistance participate in a substance abuse treatment program if screening showed drug use.

“No more handouts without accountability,” Breed said at a City Hall news conference. “People are not accepting help. Now, it’s time to make sure that we are cutting off resources that continue to allow this behavior.”

………

Breed has increasingly leaned into tough-on-crime rhetoric in recent months as she faces political headwinds and a growing field of challengers. On Tuesday, she defended her welfare proposal with a Clinton-esque commentary about the need for incentives that make subsidies contingent on personal responsibility.

All the highfalutin words mean nothing when there is no cost for them.

London Breed has just revealed who she really is, and it is not pretty.

Quote of the Day

I know that if the other team, the MAGA Republicans, win, they don’t want to uphold the rule of law.

—Joe Biden in an interview with ProPublica

It's kind of obvious, but it bears noting because the President, and the leader of the Democratic Party, said it. 

It appears that Joe Biden is made of sterner stuff than the Obamas and the Clintons.

Then again, Physalia physalis has more backbone than the those administrations.

Not a Bad Day

It looks like Judge Arthur F. Engoron has  had enough of Donald Trump's bull sh%$ and has issued a gag order on Trump preventing him from threatening his staff.

Here's hoping that Trump blows his lid and ends up in a cell:

The New York judge presiding over Donald J. Trump’s civil fraud trial ordered the former president Tuesday not to attack or even comment on court staff after Mr. Trump posted a message to social media targeting the judge’s law clerk.

Mr. Trump went after the clerk, Allison Greenfield, shortly before noon on his Truth Social site. His post was a picture of Ms. Greenfield with Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader. Mr. Trump mocked Ms. Greenfield as “Schumer’s girlfriend” and said that the case against him should be dismissed.

………

After the break, the judge, Arthur F. Engoron, explained what had happened, though he did not name Ms. Greenfield or Mr. Trump, referring to the former president only as a defendant.

“Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I will not tolerate them under any circumstances,” the judge said.

Justice Engoron said that his statement should be considered a “gag order” forbidding any posts, emails or public remarks about members of his staff. He added that serious sanctions would follow were he to be disobeyed. He did not elaborate, but experts said that if the former president violates the order, the judge could fine Mr. Trump as much as $1,000 — or even hold him in jail for up to 30 days, though the chances of that happening are slim.

You are harshing my mellow, dude.  I want jail.

Dafuq?

House Republicans have removed Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House.

I did not expect this to happen, particularly since it was Matt Gaetz's initiative, and he is widely loathed by the Republican caucus.

The vote was  216-to-210, which means that 11 Republicans voted to get rid of him along with all of the Democrats.

I approve of the decision of the Democratic Congressional Caucus.  When your enemy is drowning, throw him a f%$#ing anvil. (Also, Dems should not vote for a Republican Speaker ever.)

Make no mistake about it McCarthy was the House Democrats enemy.

Also, having a speaker too stupid to count votes is bad for the institution of the House of Representatives:

The House voted on Tuesday to oust Representative Kevin McCarthy from the speakership, a move without precedent that left the chamber without a leader and plunged it into chaos.

After a far-right challenge to Mr. McCarthy’s leadership, eight G.O.P. hard-liners joined Democrats to strip the California Republican of the speaker’s gavel. The 216-to-210 vote reflected the deep polarization in Congress and raised questions about who, if anyone, could muster the support to govern an increasingly unruly House G.O.P. majority.

“The office of speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant,” Representative Steve Womack, Republican of Arkansas, a McCarthy ally who presided over the chamber during the vote, declared after banging the gavel to finalize the result.

Soon after, Mr. McCarthy told Republicans behind closed doors that he would not seek to reclaim the post, ending a tumultuous nine months as speaker. Republicans said they would leave Washington until next week, with no clear path to finding a new speaker of the House.

This was pretty much inevitable once McCarthy cut his deal to become speaker in the first place.

It does look like Republicans are looking at payback for Gaetz, as they are now talking talking aboput a closer inspection of the peccadilloes of Mr. "Close Encounters with the 3rd Grade."

After months of inaction, the the House Ethics Committee is ramping up its investigation of Gaetz for bribery and soliciting underage sex.

You mess with the bull, you get the horns, and I for one approve.

If both McCarthy and Gaetz lose, it's a win for the American people:

Representative Matt Gaetz’s successful push to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy has cemented his status as one of the most reviled members of the House of Representatives — including among many of his fellow Republicans — and drawn attention to a long-running investigation by the House Ethics Committee into Mr. Gaetz’s conduct.

………

Mr. Gaetz, a Florida Republican, has asserted that the more than two-year, wide-ranging inquiry into his conduct is the work of the Mr. McCarthy and his allies, who he argues are bent on smearing him.

………

Since the spring of 2021, Mr. Gaetz has been under investigation over allegations he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use and accepted impermissible gifts under House rules, among other allegations.

The secretive congressional investigation was paused while the Justice Department carried out a related investigation of Mr. Gaetz’s conduct, including allegations involving sex trafficking and sex with a minor. In February, the Justice Department decided not to bring charges against Mr. Gaetz after concluding they could not make a strong enough case in court.

Once the Justice Department inquiry ended, the Ethics Committee resumed its work, according to people familiar with the matter, reaching out to witnesses for interviews. However, a person familiar with the matter said the committee, which is made up of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, has not yet reached out to a key witness at the center of the most serious allegations against Mr. Gaetz.

Yeah, they are going to reach out to that witness NOW.

Clearly, it's time for the pundits to start publishing articles about, "The Democrats in Disarray."

Linkage

• Cardiologist and Covid vaccine critic Dr Aseem Malhotra wins 2023 Rusty Razor award (The Skeptic) The Rusty Razor Award is given for infamous service to pseudoscience.
• Lina Khan vs. Amazon (New York Times) Cory Doctorow talks about the antitrust suits.
• A YEAR OF LYING ABOUT NORD STREAM (Seymour Hersh) Not behind a paywall, and worth a read,
• A MAGA gunman in New Mexico and ‘the end of politics’ in America (Will Bunch) Magats are using explicit threats of violence to suppress political opponents.
• South Africa’s Missing Sharks Have Been Found (Hakai Magazine) The neighborhood got too hot for them, so they relocated.  Orcas are coming for their fatty livers.
• How Kierkegaard Connects Our Surging Anxiety to the Spirit of Our Age  (Mad in America) Existentialism, "Yet, within this darkness, Kierkegaard perceives the potential for hope. When faced candidly, melancholy can pave the way for self-reflection. Such introspection, despite its often somber findings, can lead to a spiritual reawakening, connecting individuals and offering a path to healing."
• Sam Bankman-Fried is not a child (Molly White) He's a grown ass man of 33, and he's worked on Wall Street.  Every cognitive psychologist that I know says that the brain fully matures between 25 and 27.  Portraying his crimes as a youthful indiscretion is an exercise of the elites covering for themselves.

Mickey never came back: (Watch this. It is brilliant.)

Speaking of Gavin Newsom

He just vetoed a bill giving unemployment benefits to strikers.

He also vetoed a bill giving California OSHA jurisdiction for domestic workers.

Gov. Gavin Newsom dealt a blow to California labor by vetoing bills that would have given unemployment checks to striking workers and workplace protections to domestic employees.

The governor on Saturday night vetoed Senate Bill 799, which would have made workers on strike for 14 days eligible for unemployment benefits.

He also vetoed Senate Bill 686, which would have brought domestic workers under the umbrella of Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) protections.

Over the past few weeks, Newsom has vetoed a bill requiring safety drivers for autonomous trucks, a transgender child custody bill which instructed judges to take into account a parent's support for their child's gender identity, a bill regulating jail and prison coordination with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and limitations on the use of solitary confinement. (and that is just this session)

But he's a progressive because ……… He's from San Francisco?

Not a fan.

Interesting

The Supreme Court just told Trump lawyer John Eastman that they would not reverse the ruling that had him turning over his emails to the January 6 committee.

This is not a surprise.  His actions were clearly in support of a crime, which pierces privilege.

It is also why he is being disbarred in California.

What is interesting though is that Clarence Thomas recused himself from the case.

I am stunned.

The optimist in me thinks that Thomas is watching his step because his ethical lapses have been revealed by Pro Publica.

The pessimist in me thinks that Thomas is watching his step ONLY because his ethical lapses have been revealed by Pro Publica.

Given Eastman's close ties to the Thomases, particularly Ginni, and the evidence collected by the J6 committee and possibly Jack Smith put him in a bad position.

The Supreme Court, minus a recused Clarence Thomas, has turned down a bid by attorney John Eastman to erase court rulings that described him as a linchpin in former President Donald Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election.

The high court’s decision Monday essentially enshrines rulings by a federal district judge in California that found Eastman’s emails contained evidence of a likely crime related to Trump’s efforts.

Thomas did not specify a reason for stepping aside from the ruling, but several of the emails, contained in a particularly sensitive batch that was inadvertently made public during a legal fight between Eastman and congressional investigators, showed top Trump advisers describing Thomas as their likeliest ally in an effort to get the Supreme Court to legitimize Trump’s efforts. Eastman also formerly clerked for Thomas and has had some contacts in recent years with his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas.

Notwithstanding their protestations about not discussing their respective businesses, I'm pretty sure that Ginni was heavily involved in this decision.

I Can't Figure the Angle Here

California Governor Gavin Newsom has announced that he will be appointing Laphonza Butler to serve out the next year and a half of Feinstein's Term.

She is a friend of Gavin, and a prodigious fundraiser, as evidenced by her current position as president of Emily's List, but she is also currently registered to vote in the land of Old Bay™, the great state of Maryland.

She is a woman (obviously), and she is lesbian, and she is black, so Newsom has definitely fulfilled his promise about appointing a woman and minority this.

Clearly there are some political machinations going on, because a Senate appointment is a rare and valuable opportunity.  Someone like Newsom does not spend this political capital on a whim.

It could be that he thinks that she won't run in 2024, because she is not a California resident, even if she is frantically arranging for an apartment and moving her voter registration as we speak, and Newsom wants to run himself in 2024.

It could be a way to appeal to big fund raisers and lobbyists Butler is both.  She has also worked as a consultant for lobbyist for Uber and Airbnb, and Newsom has been aggressively in the pocket of the,"Gig Economy."

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Quote of the Day

In a sane world, such massive, sustained incompetence coupled with warning signs a mole rat could see from Mars would have killed Twitter by now, with Musk's rep as a hands-on CEO on a par with Uri Geller's as a metalworker.

—The Register

This is wonderfully evocative bit of The Register's wonderfully snide review of Elon Musk's bad, no horrible, year at Twitter (Ecch).

Tweet (Ecch) of the Day

The broader problem with Democrats is the intra-party conversation is totally broken because no one can publicly acknowledge that Obama was a very bad President with very bad ideas, and that Democrats should not have supported him.

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) October 1, 2023

The Twitter (Ecch) is nominally about Obamacare, but Stoller includes things like letting Live Nation and Ticket Master merge as well.

I do not understand how the Clinton and Obama administrations can be seen as some sort of high point of the Democratic party.  Their politics were awful, they were better for the Republicans than Reagan, and their policies, repealing Glass-Steagall, NATO Expansion, Libya, Dodd Frank, Syria, moribund antitrust and labor enforcement, the privatization of public schools, etc.

It's a long thread, which you can read on the Threadreader App here.

Amazon in a Single Tweet (Ecch)

6. Amazon’s goal isn’t to take over the pizza shop. It’s to be the mob guy that stops by every week and gets handed an envelope with all the profits.

— Stacy Mitchell (@stacyfmitchell) October 1, 2023

You can see more on Twitter/Ecch, or articles on the Institute for Local Self-Reliance website, see here and here.

Amazon's model, one which has been emulated throughout the Silicon Valley venture capital ecosystem, is to use size, or VC funding to achieve a monopoly position, and then to use that position to extract monopoly rents.

We need to start arresting executives again for violating antitrust laws, and that goes double for the firms funding them.

Meanwhile, In Slovakia

It looks like the right left wing Smer party, headed by former PM Robert Fico has won the parliamentary elections.

This bears note because Fico campaigned on eliminating aid to the Ukraine, and as a skeptic of both Brussels and Washington:

Slovakia’s populist former prime minister, Robert Fico, who campaigned on a pledge to end military aid to Ukraine, has said his position “has not changed” after his party’s clear election win made him favourite to lead the country for a fourth time.

Fico told reporters he was waiting for Slovakia’s president to give him a mandate to start forming a government – expected on Monday – after officials said on Sunday that Smer-SD had scored 22.9% in Saturday’s vote with 99.98% of ballots counted.

Fico said he was ready to open talks with other parties on forming a coalition government. “We’re here, we’re ready, we’ve learned something, we’re more experienced,” he said. “We have clear ideas; we have clear plans.”

The 59-year-old, whose pro-Moscow stance has sparked fears Slovakia will join Hungary and its authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán in challenging the EU’s consensus on support for Kyiv, added: “People in Slovakia have bigger problems than Ukraine.”

………

The liberal, pro-western Progressive Slovakia (PS) party finished second on just under 18%, with Hlas – a spin-off from Smer formed after Fico was forced to resign in 2018 amid mass popular protests following the murder of an investigative journalist and his fiancée – third on almost 15%.

The question here will be if Smer and Fico will be able to secure enough coalition partners to secure parliament.

My guess is that there is going to be a full court press from the EU and the United States to prevent this.

(Update)
Note my update on the party.  So part of this is likely a revolt against EU austerity as well.