Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran

The "uniparty" isn't true of everything, but it is true of loving war, all war, and only the "crazies" in Congress will complain about bombing the shit out of Iran, aside from meek process arguments. You are supposed to get our permission first, Mr. President, sir!

The process matters, of course, but most Dem opposition is just theater.

What happens after we bomb the shit out of Iran? Everyone loses interest, as they always do.

Zone Of Interest

These fucking people.

Last month, the federal government bought a warehouse next to her cheerleading gym in Surprise, Ariz., which the administration plans to convert into a detention center for up to 1,500 immigrants.

Ms. Bradley, the co-owner of Woodlands Elite Cheer, said she worried that a detainee could escape, or that protests could break out. The children who train at her gym are as young as 3 and could see “people in shackles” next door, she said.

“That’s a scary thing for a little kid to process,” Ms. Bradley said.

His Name Was Prince

Happy birthday to Andy.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, BBC understands

You shouldn't imagine this is some sign of superior British justice. Andrew is a nuke and they have to contain the blast radius, somehow, and they decided this was the only way. Important people only face consequences if it is the only way to prevent other important people - in this case, most of them - from facing consequences.

Also British law on the press and criminal cases is such that once there is an arrest, no one  (the press - but with social media that means everybody) is supposed to talk about it until it goes to court. Arresting him is also a way to shut people up for awhile.

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Theremin Thursday

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Install Your Own Malware

This is a specific example, but I'd be shocked if all the standard Spicy Clippy implementations aren't vacuuming up all kinds of information that is supposed to be - and legally required to be - private.

In a report shared with WIRED, the Valere researchers added that users have to “accept that the bot can be tricked.” For instance, if OpenClaw is set up to summarize a user’s email, a hacker could send a malicious email to the person instructing the AI to share copies of files on the person’s computer.

But Pistone is confident that safeguards can be put in place to make OpenClaw more secure. He has given a team at Valere 60 days to investigate. “If we don’t think we can do it in a reasonable time, we’ll forgo it,” he says. “Whoever figures out how to make it secure for businesses is definitely going to have a winner.”

yah ok.

...and after I first drafted this: M

icrosoft says Office bug exposed customers’ confidential emails to Copilot AI

Microsoft has confirmed that a bug allowed its Copilot AI to summarize customers’ confidential emails for weeks without permission.

The bug, first reported by Bleeping Computer, allowed Copilot Chat to read and outline the contents of emails since January, even if customers had data loss prevention policies to prevent ingesting their sensitive information into Microsoft’s large language model.

Drugged Out Of Their Minds

Who and on what precisely can be answered, but that most of the Trumpers are zonked on pharamceuticals most of the time is certain.

What Are The Best Jobs For Wannabe Serial Killers

Sadly, certain top positions in government and supposed humanitarian organizations.

Shhh Don't Raise The Salience

Americans love masked unaccountable thugs kidnapping people. Do not defund the gestapo!

WASHINGTON, Feb 17 (Reuters) - U.S. public approval of Donald Trump's immigration policies fell to the lowest level since his return to the White House, amid signs he is losing support among American men on the issue, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Some Light In The Horrors

Hopefully not temporary.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia cannot be re-detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, dealing the Trump administration another blow in its effort to keep him locked up while it attempts to deport him again.

He has said he will go to Costa Rica, but they won't let him do that because they want to punish him for making them look bad.

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Woeful Wednesday.

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Don't Let The Door...

Maybe Dean Cain is up for the job.

One of the Trump administration’s most vocal defenders of its aggressive immigration crackdown is leaving as public opinion sours against the hardline approach, according to two DHS officials familiar with the move.

We Do Love The Troops

This is the kind of thing which causes Democrats to moan about media imbalance - fairly! - without (usually) stepping up to play their necessary role. Yes, if a Democrat did this, the howls of rage would reverberate for weeks, with Lindsey Graham on 7 channels simultaneously, and Jake "Troop Defender" Tapper would never stop talking about it. But someone has to be "Lindsey Graham" here.

The tension between some Coast Guard officials and Noem began after a 23-year-old Coast Guardsman went overboard into the Pacific Ocean from the cutter Waesche on Feb. 4 last year, shortly after the Senate confirmed Noem into her role, according to the two U.S. officials, the Coast Guard official and the former Coast Guard official.

The Coast Guard had surged ships and aircraft to the Pacific to find the guardsman. Hours into the search, Noem learned that a Coast Guard C-130 that was supposed to fly detained migrants from California to Texas was among the aircraft over the Pacific looking for the missing guardsman, and she intervened, according to the two U.S. officials and the Coast Guard official.

Noem verbally instructed the acting commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. Kevin Lunday, to pull the plane off the search and rescue mission so it would not miss the immigrant flight as part of the DHS’ so-called Alien Expulsion Operations, according to the two U.S. officials and the Coast Guard official. Lunday notified the National Command Center, which ordered the C-130 to fly to San Diego while other aircraft and ships involved in the search continued, according to one of the U.S. officials and the current Coast Guard official.

This Reminds Me Of The Time A Student Mildly Complained About The Banh Mi In The College Cafeteria

Though much less worrying.

The FCC‘s proposed changes to the equal time rules for TV talk shows is officially taking its toll on late night.

CBS‘ Late Show host Stephen Colbert says that lawyers for the network blocked him from interviewing Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful James Talarico, citing the FCC’s new guidance for political candidates on talk shows.

Colbert opened his show Monday by explaining the situation. “You know who is not one of my guests tonight: That’s Texas State Representative James Talarico. He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert told the audience. “Then I was told in some uncertain terms that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on, and because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.”

One can even be in favor of some version of an Equal Time rule while fully understanding it is not being deployed consistently. Or, I suppose, fully understanding that it is being deployed consistently, just not as one imagines it should be.

The Epstein Class

As much as this has been news, I don't think "we're" really mad enough that there is a vast network of rich people trafficking in children to rape, and vaster network of bootlickers who were perfectly fine with - and in fact groveling and deferential to - those people.

On June 5, 2015, Kathy Ruemmler, then a corporate lawyer for Latham & Watkins but just one year removed from her stint as White House counsel for Barack Obama, emailed her good friend Jeffrey Epstein. Ruemmler, who was once under consideration to become Obama’s attorney general, wrote, “I am working on a PR strategy for MJ White v. Elizabeth Warren.” Epstein responded, “Good[.] mj is good.” And Ruemmler followed on in a response, “Yes, and EW is the worst.”

This is the perfect Jeffrey Epstein email, with as much explanatory power about this man, and more important the world he associated with and cultivated, than anything to do with child sex abuse. It shows that there is in fact an Epstein class, which not only believes in their own personal impunity, but seeks to protect their fellow travelers as well. And that ultimately lines up with a political and economic vision that favors corporate domination over the public interest.

But you have to unravel all the backstory to best understand it.

...

This is the Epstein class in all its glory. It’s an elite that schemes to remain as unaccountable for sexual crimes as it does for corporate crimes. It has its own hierarchy of friends and foes, and it will defend those friends no matter what they do, while the spoils of privilege flow. Its instinct is to protect and preserve money and power, with the concerns of anybody without a corporate jet tangential at best. And once you set those ground rules, once you build a wall around a certain class so they don’t have to pay any price for their actions, it’s inevitable that the actions will get darker and darker.

Click through and read the rest

Whatever Your Politics, I Think We Can All Agree That I'm Correct

I saw someone joke (forget who) that this was Bari's basic worldview.  Similarly, "some people might not love Bari" is almost impossible for her to comprehend.

RIP Jesse Jackson

I went back and read a few things from that era (just a few, I'm a lazy blogger), and I was struck by the regular and casual use of the term "ghettos." I'm old enough to remember that, of course, but it is very jarring now.

A high school friend had a relative who had some important job in state politics, so he scored some tickets and I attended this.

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Totally Tuesday

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