Keys To The Universe

Trump's probably too dumb and too busy watching his Foxy Friends talk to him from inside the teevee box to understand that he has access to the Panopticon, but Jared is slightly smarter than he is.

WASHINGTON — President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.

Oh wow Kelly wrote a contemporaneous internal memo. We are led by such heroes.

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

Run Against That

On a CPAC panel about US debt, Senator Perdue calls it "the greatest threat to national security," after he voted for bills to cut taxes by $1.5 trillion and raise spending by $300 billion.

He says Social Security and Medicare spending must be curtailed.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 28, 2019

The biggest political malpractice of Democrats since Clinton was not making it clear that they were the party of Social Security. Embracing deficit fetishism, flirting with privatization, fearmongering about the Trustees report, Simpson-Bowles wankery, obsession with Grand Bargains. "We must cut benefits so that they don't cut benefits" was the basic mantra even when I was in grad school, the kindest interpretation of which meant that the cuts would be slightly less and fall less on the poorest of seniors.

Also, too, there are no "Grand Bargains." The idea that you cut a deal and take an issue off the table forever (also the fantasy with abortion for a long time) is stupid. Pass something, and they come back the next day for more. Which they should! And, you know, "we" should.

Fart

Jonah Goldberg is setting up an exciting new conservative magazine which everyone will pretend is "journalism" and anything else Jonah Goldberg ever did was "journalism" and then wonder why angry people on twitter (otherwise known as "the readers") sometimes get confused when journalists swing the other way and decide "real journalism" is only like war zone coverage or investigative journalism instead of just farting nonsense into the NPR microphone. (Serious Journalism only happens at the New York Times. Now let me, a New York Times reporter, go degrade my brand by being on a roundtable with other serious journalists Jonah, Diamond, Ben Domenech, and Laura Ingraham.)

Ideological and opinion journalism are real things that can be "journalism" but Jonah Goldberg writing and speaking uninformed nonsense is not but he is regularly called a "journalist" and his new venture will be referred to as "journalism" even though the only journalism it will ever have, and little of that, will be running selective oppo research, James O'Keefe style, verbatim. Also, too, there's a reason O'Keefe genuinely believes what he does is "journalism" when that is what all "conservative journalism" is, on the rare moments it looks like journalism, even if it is not always quite so obvious and brazen.

Morning Thread

Wednesday Night

What'd I miss?

Happy Hour Thread

Get happy.

Pet Peeves

People who obsess about birth rates.  Both the demographic doom (in the racist and supposedly nonracist but actually still racist versions) due to low US  birth rates version and the "I love my grandchildren so much and also other people need to stop breeding" version.

Lunch Thread

enjoy.

Cohen Testimony Thread

Should be fun!

Grades

I'd laugh about Trump's ridiculous vanity but it's also ridiculous that our press corps would make a thing out of a presidential candidates grades and SAT scores. Like any other bit of presidential bio it's fair game to report and to the extent that you boast you are the smartest human ever to walk the planet (as Trump does) it's worthy of a bit of attention, but also who cares how someone did on some dumb test 55 years before they ran for president.

The documents Cohen's apparently going to provide pic.twitter.com/Gqrlx4Xul8

— Alexi McCammond (@alexi) February 27, 2019

Travel Day

Blogging might or might be extra sucky!

Morning, Morning

Gonna be a day.

Tuesday Night

Enjoy

Well Then

Hey @MichaelCohen212 - Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot...

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) February 26, 2019

Florida Man. Of course.

Spreading Out Evenly

If everyone in 48 states (the other two are complicated for obvious reasons) had a house on an individual equally sized plot, we'd all have about 6.5 acres.

I think it's easy to see how that wouldn't be very "green." And no that doesn't mean we all have to live in skyscrapers instead, but...

Afternoon Thread

enjoy.

It Was The Plan

"Let's create a child rape center then adopt the kids out to good white Christian families" is pretty much the Occam's Razor explanation for all of this.

He said that the documents "demonstrate over the past three years, there have been 154 staff on unaccompanied minor, let me repeat that, staff on unaccompanied minor allegations of sexual assault."
"This works out on average to one sexual assault by HHS staff on unaccompanied minor per week," he added.
Axios first reported the documents.
"I am deeply concerned with documents that have been turned over by HHS that record a high number of sexual assaults on unaccompanied children in the custody of the Office of Refugee and Resettlement," Deutch said. "Together, these documents detail an environment of systemic sexual assaults by staff on unaccompanied children."

Sounds Like The Grass Is Illegally Trespassing Then

I love these kinds of claims.

“Shame on you!” the child’s mother, who is black, tells the other woman. As they continue to argue with her, she appears to come up and take a swing in the direction of the camera that was recording the incident — twice. The couple says that the woman had confronted them and told them to stay off the grass on the esplanade.

The area is marked by long-standing tensions between the homeowners association in the neighborhood near Rice University, southwest of downtown, and people who have come to use the esplanade for photo shoots, according to local reports.

The city of Houston maintains that the esplanades are public but has been engaged in a long struggle against the Broadacres Homeowners Association, which has argued that the streets and brick sidewalks are owned by the city but that the grass is owned by the Broadacres Trust, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Opinions About The Menu

There will be approximately 579 Dem candidates for president and some will appeal to some and some will appeal to others and their records will be scrutinized and discussed and some people will express strong and fair opinions about some of them and some will express strong and unfair about some of them and while media biases are real and strong and they matter not every bad story about your favorite candidate will be a grand conspiracy.

Think Locally, Act Globally

The reverse of that was the slogan in some environmentalist circles for decades. Environmentalism is personal virtue. Buy the right products, recycle, minimize your carbon footprint in certain ways, etc. And, you know, I recycle. I pay for composting service that the city doesn't provide (I get a nice big bag of soil every year). I make certain other choices which are environmentally friendly but I mostly just make them because they're choices I would make anyway. I also fly on planes when I need to and do lots of "bad" things. None of it really matters. Sure it's good to good things. We should all recycle (although single stream recycling is currently not working very well). But none of it will save the world.

With climate change, the pointlessness of individual action is especially acute. If you accept the scientific consensus on warming, then you know your personal carbon footprint is a drop in the rising sea. So, why on earth would you feel compelled to lower your quality of life for the sake of cutting carbon emissions by a wholly negligible amount?

Environmentalism-as-personal-virtue was a bad route. It isn't a substitute for collective action. People don't like being told how to live their lives, especially as you don't have to understand this stuff all that well to get that we're almost all big hypocrites. We make some easy choices and ignore the rest. We can make slightly better choices, but there's no solar powered plane to fly me to Europe.

And the virtues of many in the environmental movement are, well, wrong (#notallenvironmentalists). Dense cities are green.* The way to save nature is to stay the hell away from it. Automobile transportation is a huge driver of emissions and that is not compatible with "I want to live in the middle of nowhere with nature because nature is good." Detached homes are more expensive to heat and cool. Large homes are more expensive to heat and cool. The entire country doesn't have to look like Manhattan, but people should get that we'd get a lot closer to saving the world if it did.

*There are environmental issues with cities - local air quality because of the concentration of cars - but otherwise...

Oh, Elon

Never tweet.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk lashed out at the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, one day after the agency asked a judge to hold him in contempt for allegedly violating the terms of a deal made last year.

"Something is broken with SEC oversight," Musk said on Twitter Tuesday morning.

Musk is trying to argue that the tweet he made was actually accurate even though he issue a correction, but that doesn't really even matter. The deal he entered into requires him to get tweets about the company approved by legal before he makes them and that didn't (and apparently doesn't) happen.

Morning Thread

Monday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour Thread

That groundhog promised Spring. WTF.

Afternoon Thread

Between morning and evening. Perfect.

Pragmatic Centrism

It isn't actually pragmatic to devise costly solutions that won't work, and don't even have a better chance of getting through our shitty political sausage maker than ones that will.

By the way, I happen to be at Niskanen's conference on reviving moderation, at which New Democrats co-founder Elaine Kamarck has suggested that we should give up on cap & trade & carbon taxation - not politically "helpful" she said - and focus on CO2 capture & adaptation.

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) February 25, 2019

Tax Advantaged Savings Accounts

We all have our triggers. Thinking major problems are going to be solved by giving more opportunities for people who don't earn no money and therefore pay little in taxes anyway to save that money they don't have for a tax break they won't get in order to spend what is left after financial institution fees at some future date on a pre-approved list of activities is mine.

Bored Now

You know how the press spends 24 months covering an election cycle obsessively, highlighting and amplifying every dumb little thing as if it was a Game Changer and then at 6pm on election day some polls close somewhere and for some reason they can't wait to declare the election over and go home? Not just presidential ones, either. In 2018 our crack team of expert political newscasters seemed to not understand the concept of "mail in votes" and that they needed to be counted and that you couldn't declare the election night a big bummer for democrats just because they lost one race in Georgia or wherever.

Our glorious wars of humanitarian intervention are the same way. They're so exciting until the bombs start falling.

Morning Thread

It's *that* day again.

I Like Movies

My failure to see them in a timely fashion is mostly because getting to movie theaters from my house is ever so slightly more difficult than it should be. One is opening a very easy journey away soon!

Oscars

I saw... um.. Shoplifters. Did that win?

Oh also the Spider-Ham one.

Well Then

“We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.” Benito Mussolini

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) February 24, 2019

It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean that it's right. ... Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife.

-Remarks as prepared, but not delivered by, Senator John Cornyn. Written by Ben Domenech, and by written I mean cribbed from the comments section of Red State.

Lunch Thread

Heading outside for the afternoon. Wish me luck.

Salute To America

DC has a big 4th of July shindig every year, unsurprisingly. Trump's been begging his aides for a big Salute To Trump parade since he got there, and I guess they finally convinced him that what better day than July 4, a day when DC is already filled with people for something which happens every year. Saves them the trouble of actually having to convince anyone to come, and keeps the boss happy for 3 minutes (look at the crowds, boss, they're here for you!) until the brains worms and soul cancer fight back.

Choice Riders

For decades the US mass transit politico-industrial complex has been obsessed with "choice riders." The idea is that there are a bunch of middle class suburbanites who commute by car and if only you could crack the magic code you could somehow coax them into maybe consider taking whatever the latest grand idea for mass transit is. They don't "have" to take public transit. Your goal is to make them choose it! These people will never ride buses, of course, unless maybe we put free wifi on them and, I dunno, make it somehow look like notabus, but maybe they'll ride a train. Only if they can drive to the train, of course, so we can't put the stops in dense neighborhoods where people actually can walk to them. Instead we'll put them places we can integrate 1000 spot garages which always leads to your ridership being limited by... the number of parking spots.

So we do everything we can to try to build whatever we think these people *might* ride (ferries are good, people love a good boat ride*), or at least could see themselves riding, maybe, sometime, but, you know, probably not.

But everyone is a "choice rider." Lots of poor people in urban hellholes buy cars, too, in part because the mass transit system sucks. "Choice riders" as conceived by transit agencies are, if not people who would never ride mass transit, the people who *might* but are the least likely to. Still the whole system is dedicated to trying to lure these people, at least to the extent that we have a system. The resources are heavily constrained.

Essentially, too many people who make these decisions want to cater to "people like me" because that's who is important.

Also, too, every election cycle is the year those moderate Republicans in the suburbs will finally flip blue...


*there are places ferries are good and necessary largely because there are no bridges in appropriate spots, but in most places ferries-as-commuter-transit are just super expensive highly subsidized low capacity vehicles for people who really like them because who doesn't like a boat ride.

Sunday Morning

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

What Does Mitch McConnell Want

He's old and wealthy enough and at some point aren't there better things to do than create misery in the world?

I sorta get Jeff Sessions. Doing racism was his lifelong project. Without that, what is he, really? But Mitch? What's he in it for? I don't get it. He doesn't even seem to be a camera hog like some politicians. You know, the ones who don't exist if they aren't on teevee.

Retire. Sip some wine or whatever.

Better Things Are Not Possible

There are issues about which polls suggest that The American People do not agree with me, the person who is right about everything. I am aware of that. Then there are things which get majority approval even from Republicans which the supposedly centrist press and incumbent politicians label as extreme left or divisive or radical or communism or whatever. The silent majority of Radical Centrists has supposedly been wanting to cut Social Security benefits for as long as I can remember.

Opposition to nice things often does not come from voters.

From The Barcalounger

There are some armchair revolutionaries on the left, too, but they fantasize about raising arms against The Man, not an all out conflict between the people. Revolution, not civil war, in other words. Overthrowing the powers that be, not brother against brother stuff.

Whenever people speak of war - any war - I really just want to sit them down and take a look at a map. Even "tiny" countries are huge and the US is not a tiny country. Nor is Iraq. Or Venezuela. People who think walking two miles is an unfathomable burden think there's going to be some sort of territorial war waged by the gunhumpers against the libs?

I mean, sure, violence can happen and people will die but Arizona isn't going to annex California for some glorious new conservative Republic.

Saturday Morning

Late Night

Rock on.

Friday Evening

Anyone else go to jail?

Afternoon Thread

Is it going to be a bonus fun Friday or just a normal Friday?

37 crazy things happen on a normal day these days anyway.

The Rich Are Just Better Than We Are

What would we do without them.

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, one of the most powerful men in American football, was charged today on two counts of soliciting prostitution in connection to a recent law enforcement bust on massage parlors in Florida that, according to law enforcement, were used for prostitution and human trafficking. The news comes a few weeks after the Patriots won their sixth Super Bowl and days after Kraft appeared at the NBA All-Star game.

John Risely's South African Adventure

This is a great investigative news story over at The Halifax Examiner.  Tim Bousquet lays it all out, from Nova Scotia to South Africa under apartheid, with side trips to Portugal, Saudi Arabia, and England. The big, corporate news outlets aren't doing these stories so it's up to the small independents to pick up the slack. This kind of story costs a lot of money to produce, all of which Tim had to lay out up front with no guarantee the story would see a return or even just pay for itself. It is more than worth the price of a monthly subscription. 

If Only Everything Goes Exactly As Planned

I've probably told this story before, and name withheld because it's from memory and memory is unreliable. But, basically, once upon a time Russia was transitioning from communism to Glorious Capitalism and the powers that be were there to ensure that it transitioned overnight into a glibertarian paradise, I think to prove that while communism had provided some nice gold plated subway stations, only capitalism could put a gold bar in every pot, or something. There was the Russian boom, then the bust, then the inevitable should've-listened-to-the-hippies establishment of a kleptocratic oligarchy. You know, modern capitalism.

An army of economist advisers went around telling everybody what they were supposed to do to usher in this new paradise. Writing books and getting paid quite well by various international institutions and corporations. Consulting is a good racket, and an underdiscussed thing is which "outside activities" universities are totally cool with as condition of continued employment and which they aren't. Side gigs for some, not for others. Some of them engaged in behavior that should've gotten them jailed, but friends of Larry Summers are good people, by definition, so that didn't happen.

One such person had written a book touting the genius of it all before it all went to hell. When asked what went wrong, he basically said "I told them to do 5 things but they only did 4 of them and if they had done all 5 things it would have worked out perfectly."

And this is how The Quiet Americans (though I think this specific example was a Brit) approach every bit of international meddling, including the ones with the Air Force involved. Create chaos, then blame the local inferiors for their imperfect implementation when it all goes to hell. Even if the "just gotta do these 5 things" advice is correct, you have to incorporate the very real possibility that only 4 of them will happen into your forecasting model. If that last thing is necessary to prevent catastrophe, perhaps your advice isn't very, well, advisable.

Someone gets rich either way, so who cares I guess.

Ideological Bubbles

I've long found this to be the weirdest obsession of elites, especially as related to the internet. The internet is not actually made of cats. It's made of arguing and shitposting. The idea that ONE SIDE is not exposed to OTHER SIDES *especially* on the internet is just ridiculous. There's a lot of bullshit on the internet, of course, but that isn't the same thing.

The only people who really live in an ideological bubble are the ones whose only information comes from Fox News. Really. That's it. About a quarter of Congress is in that group at this point.

Why I Pay Attention

I'm perfectly happy for our robot cars to work perfectly well, but they won't, and when they don't they'll be trying to get all the nuisances (pedestrians) out of the way. I don't why people think cities without pedestrians are desirable. That's what mall-ville is for. But they do.

Using $500,000 from the Volkswagen emissions scandal settlement and $300,000 in federal research funds, the DOT has hired Michigan-based May Mobility to run the “Little Roady” self-driving shuttles. Passenger service along the dozen-stop route is slated to begin in April or May.

Not sure why federal research funds should be spent on this shit either, but ok... and then there it is.

Although the shuttles seat six, one of the seats will be filled with a human driver during the pilot program, who can take control in the event of emergency.

In addition to giving people a new option to get around, the autonomous pilot program is designed to give public policymakers a better sense of what changes to the law, public safety procedures and infrastructure might be required if self-driving vehicles ever hit the mainstream.

Morning Thread

Late Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour Thread

enjoy

How Many People Are Scared To Pull Open This Curtain

Sadly I think it's a lot.

A judge ruled Thursday that federal prosecutors — among them, U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta — broke federal law when they signed a plea agreement with a wealthy, politically connected sex trafficker and concealed it from more than 30 of his underage victims.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra, in a 33-page opinion, said that the evidence he reviewed showed that Jeffrey Epstein had been operating an international sex operation in which he and others recruited underage girls — not only in Florida — but from overseas, in violation of federal law.

“Epstein used paid employees to find and bring minor girls to him.,’’ wrote Marra, who is based in Palm Beach County. “Epstein worked in concert with others to obtain minors not only for his own sexual gratification, but also for the sexual gratification of others.’’

Others.

How'd That Happen

In our our weird modern era of social media, I have mixed feelings about potential employers dumpster diving through your web presence to see what you do on your off time, but I think an exception can be made for the social media of the person you're hiring to do your social media.

The Old White Duke

1971. You know, before some of us thought white supremacy was bad.

SHH Don't Tell Anyone About The Nazi Terrorist

As far as I can tell, Seamus Hughes unearthed these court filings but otherwise the Justice Department has been quiet about this.

A Tuesday court filing in a Maryland district court alleges that a U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant had ties to white supremacist contacts, a weapons stockpile, and a hit list of political and media figures ranging from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough to Nancy Pelosi to the Democratic Socialists of America.

The lieutenant, Christopher Paul Hassan, was assigned to Coast Guard headquarters in D.C. when he was arrested last week in Silver Spring, MD. But in making the case that he should be held until his trial, U.S. attorneys alleged Hassan had written a draft letter to a well-known neo-Nazi leader weeks after the attack in Charlottesville and another draft in which he wrote, “I am dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on the earth.”

Actually Going To Websites Is An Unpleasant Experience

And after years of that, I don't do it very much. Of course #notallwebsites, but most of the big ones. Even the ones that don't bombard you with browser choking text covering ads take forever to load, and since they are larded up with javascript etc., it isn't like the "old days" when you could scroll through a website as it was loading. If you don't wait the 30 seconds or more for it to load fully, it's going to be jumping around all over the place as you try to read it.

The Kids Today aren't even going to know what a browser is soon, or it'll be like "that thing that lets me read wikipedia," because everyone is trying to kill off "the internet" as it once was.

The Halifax Examiner Does It Again!

How an arms deal went wrong. Said deal involved South Africa still under apartheid, Portugal, France, and Nova Scotia in Canada. Oh my! My first thought on reading this in-depth investigative report was: Why is it up to a tiny publication in Halifax to investigate and report on an international, high stakes arms deal? My second thought: Thank goodness we have someone like Tim Bousquet willing and able to do so. We need more of this kind of investigative journalism and if the big, corporate news outfits won't do it, then it is up to us to support the independent news outlets that do. Please consider subscribing to Tim's newsletter, The Halifax Examiner  so that this kind of reporting can continue.

Morning Thread

America's Worst Editorial Board

The New York Times.

Though this is a pretty common way of operating for big city editorial board past and present. Pretend to be on the side of the hippies, unless the hippies might actually win, and then find a way to disagree with and distance themselves from the hippies.

Happy Hour Thread

Get happy.

Oh, Elon

Never tweet.

In the past 24 hours, Tesla has treated us to more of the same. Yesterday afternoon, Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla would produce 500,000 cars in 2019, which would have been a significant increase in forecast from the 400,000 deliveries mentioned by Musk on January 30th in the company’s fourth quarter shareholder letter. Musk quickly clarified that he “meant to say” Tesla would be producing at an annualized rate of 500,000 cars per year by the end of 2019, which is a huge difference, obviously amounting to 100,000 cars.

This morning, the market received the news that Tesla's general counsel, Dane Butswinkas, would be leaving the company after only two months on the job.

If I Gotta Go, The Planet's Gonna Go With Me

I certainly don't think all people think this way, but it's enough of a trope that a scary number of people might.

America's Worst Newspaper

The New York Times.

Nice Things

We're a rich country and we can afford a lot of them. We just choose not to. There isn't actually a tradeoff. There is no deal such that we can choose "free public college" OR universal pre-K/daycare. Neither are actually that expensive relative to the amount going through the money bazookas to things like combat planes that can't fly in the rain and welfare for rich people. Butwhatboutthis is a dumb game to play. We can afford it all, and if the #3 priority looks like it is going to make it across the finish line before the #1 priority, probably best not to try to kneecap #3.

Republicans Aren't Supergeniuses

One sad thing is that many Democrats really believe they are. Even when Karl Rove ran the show, they weren't. John Kerry almost won, which is a fact everyone forgets and pretty amazing given everything, including campaign coverage, that was going on in 2004. And really they're just getting stupider. They've gone from thinking Rush Limbaugh was good to keep the rubes riled up, to being the rubes that listened to Rush Limbaugh, to thinking that Jim Hoft, the stupidest man on the internet, is their intellectual leader. Sure the right has a lot of advantages - money, various aspects of the media (including a general worship of money), etc. - but they still really are just a bunch of idiots.

A lot of this is because I am too online, but back in the early days of the Trump administration, even liberals treated Bannon like he was some sort of master strategist. IGNORE THIS TWEET!!! THAT TWEET IS THE IMPORTANT ONE THEY ARE TRYING TO DISTRACT US FROM!!! No Trump is a big dumbass who vomits nonsense into his phone. There is no supergenius strategy behind it (yes he has certain instincts of a showman and a conman, but they aren't exactly expert level instincts, especially with the brain worms).

DON'T DO THIS!!! THIS IS WHAT THE REPUBLICANS WANT US TO DO!!! Shut up. This generation of Republicans is just a 20something in a diaper in a dumpster which is about to catch on fire.

SNOW PANIC!!!!!!

I'm certainly not against schools etc. closing when snow shows up, and it doesn't take much to make life miserable for anyone who has to drive, but the amount of general panic every time we have a bit of snow in the forecast this winter has been a bit bizarre. 3 inches of snow just isn't a big deal, aside from the driving issue. Life will go on.

Tuesday Night

Tomorrow is...

Sure, Elon

I do not know how this company does not get sued out of existence.

The entrepreneur made the comment on a podcast with Cathie Wood and Tasha Keeney of ARK Invest, a firm that owns shares in the company. Tesla's automated driver assistance system Autopilot has garnered both positive attention for the sophistication of its features and negative attention for its association with a number of high-profile accidents.

"I think we will be feature complete — full self-driving — this year," Musk said. "Meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up and take you all the way to your destination without an intervention, this year. I would say I am of certain of that. That is not a question mark."

Afternoon Thread

Enjoy

Tuesday Crass Commercialism

The perfect gift for all your MAGA friends and family. The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump.

KISS

Back when I was The Man Who Saved Social Security some weirdo invited me to speak at a retirement policy conference in DC. There was consensus agreement that our retirement system was fucked, and also consensus agreement that expanding Social Security was unpossible. So proposals ranged from The Left (how about...state-level add ons to Social Security which are just like more Social Security but only in some states!!) and the Right (well, if we make 401ks opt-out instead of opt-in, experiments show a 25% increase in contributions so surely if we re-run this experiment for another 45 years it'll work out better this time).

One of my points in the discussion was that I didn't know why all these plans, whatever their merits otherwise, were so damn complicated and put the burden of handling this complexity onto individuals. The conservative guy response was, "Social Security is so complicated! Have you actually looked into the benefit formulas!" Also something about "individual responsibility" as if working for 45 years isn't individual responsibility enough.

And, you know, I have looked into the benefit formulas some. They are complicated! But they're sitting on a computer in a warehouse somewhere and nobody has to worry their beautiful minds about them. I work, some money is taken out of my pay, and when I retire the government starts sending me the check. Nerdy bureaucrats are paid a salary to deal with the complexities. Ideally I don't have to do a damn thing!

Of course policy implementation is complex and transition costs are potentially costly. There's no reason the burdens of either need to be placed on the shoulders of voters. The idea that anything good must be made just a little bit miserable for normal people is pervasive.

Better Things Are Not Possible

I just want a presidential candidate who tells it like it is.

Tuesday Morning

Just off the top of my head, I can think of at least a half a dozen people who should be indicted and/or arrested this morning. Make it so.

Monday Evening

Get your Monday on.

Mini Movie Review

Played hookie on this most important day and went to see The Wandering Earth. Is good if you like that sort of thing.

Royalty

I dislike the view that The President is supposed to be performing some role in a costume drama called The President. Yes we have this weird head of state/head of government problem but the whole head of state thing is mostly dumb anyway. Honestly I don't care much if The President can't string a sentence together in public or doesn't wear the right suits or whatever. Sure I suppose there is some real value in the pageantry in terms of leadership and persuasion at times, but it's way don't the list of things that matter most of the time. I roll my eyes when people get gushy over Barack and Michelle looking good (and they quite often looked good!), saying things like, "I miss having a president I could be PROUD OF."

Trump is a horrible uncouth dumbass but if all he did was try to play dress up president but did it badly it wouldn't matter all that much. The problem is the policies.

Nudge

The ESCHATON ENDORSEMENT will influence precisely zero voters, and perhaps not even me as I might change my mind before I go pull the lever, but basically my desire is for a candidate that doesn't think the problems can be solved with a few more tax advantaged savings accounts.

Morning Thread

Remember When Lindsey Graham Was Cool And Reasonable

Um, no, he never was. That never happened. Chaining himself to John McCain's leg for several years did not make him reasonable and cool, and he wasn't reasonable and cool before that.

Afternoon Thread

Pivot To Smellovision

I'm no expert on The Business Model of journalism but the willingness to hand over control and revenue every time someone comes up with a shiny new idea has been bizarre to watch.

I suppose it's a bit like how companies hire consultants for everything so that management is never really to blame for anything. We hired the experts! We did what they told us! We outsourced every single part of our company to another company that's trying to take all of our revenue! How could we have known this was a bad idea! Yes thank you for my $10 million bonus for this genius plan!

Morning Thread

I Don't Give A Shit How You Bend The Cost Curve

"We" spend too much money on health care costs in this country, but I don't particularly care about that. I mean, I do, it's absurd, and we shouldn't, but it isn't actually my job do worry about how to fix that. It isn't your job. It isn't the job of voters to waste their beautiful minds worrying about what the best plan to cut health care costs is, and it's absurd that for some reason it's expected that voters all play Wonk for a Year and try to figure out who has the wonkiest wonko plan of all.

People are paid a lot of money to figure that shit out. Go figure it out. What kind of health plan should pass that makes voters happy and doesn't make them upset because it doesn't raise their taxes or upset the status quo or isn't "moderate" or whatever the fuck? One which mails them a card on day one that they can use to go to the damn doctor without paying any money. Then the wonks and the politicians can get to work for the next 10 years fixing the engine under the hood.

Make voters happy by making them happy. Tomorrow. Eat the up front costs because we are a rich country and we can afford to eat the costs, and then spend the next 10 years clawing money back from the other "stakeholders" who have been looting the bank accounts of dying people for decades. Just don't make us have to worry about how.

Make getting sick slightly less of a hassle than Comcast Customer Support and voters will love you. It's that simple. The details matter, but the wonks should be working out that shit between themselves, not by writing memos on op-ed pages because none of us should have to care about them.

Afternoon Thread

Saturday, Saturday.

Brain Worms

At his peak, Donald Trump was not going to be shortlisted for a Nobel Prize in Physics, but he was a normal enough guy who spoke in reasonably complete sentences and was aware of the world around him, or at least the parts of the world that interested him.

Degenerative brain diseases don't take you all at once, or even very quickly. But he isn't just a cranky asshole rich guy. The boy ain't right.

Morning Thread

Twenty years behind bars sounds about right to me for Manafort.

A Very Late Happy Hour

Early Happy Hour Thread

Because it's Friday.

Portlandia

Oregon has an interesting history and present.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The mayor of Portland, Oregon, has asked the police chief to investigate “disturbing” texts between the commander of the department’s rapid response team and the leader of a far-right group involved in violent protests in the city.

The text messages show Lt. Jeff Niiya communicating with Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson during protests, detailing the movement of a rival anti-fascist protest group and warning Gibson a Patriot Prayer member with a possible warrant for his arrest needed to be careful. The messages were first reported Thursday by the Willamette Week newspaper.

Friday Crass Commercialism

Because everybody needs external drives. 4 TB for $99.99! I remember my 4k computer with cassette drive fondly.

Perfectly Normal Company

Zuckerberg 2020!

Facebook maintains a list of individuals that its security guards must "be on lookout" for that is comprised of users who've made threatening statements against the company on its social network as well as numerous former employees.
The company's information security team is capable of tracking these individuals' whereabouts using the location data they provide through Facebook's apps and websites.

Eff Off Then

This isn't about safety, because programming the things not to hit pedestrians in areas when they are driving relatively slowly is the easy part. This is just about making driverless cars work because they are more important than pedestrians.

KPMG’s second Autonomous Vehicles Readiness Index was published on Monday and it rates the Netherlands as the country most ready for the adoption of driverless cars. But there’s a fly in the ointment. In fact, millions of them: cyclists.

In the report, KPMG’s digital advisory manger for automotive Stijn de Groen was blunt: “We have a lot of bicycles.”

He added: “In urban, crowded areas it will be very difficult to start autonomous driving.”

...

In this future, pedestrians and cyclists may have to be learn to get out of the way of AVs.


Charlie Simpson, co-head of KPMG’s “mobility 2030” project, on the KPMG booth at MOVE in London.CARLTON REID

“There will have to be some reprogramming,” admitted Simpson. “Right now we’re at the stage of a guy with a red flag walking in front of the [19th Century] car. When that guy went, and the cars started to go faster, humans learned not to step in front of them. We are going to have to go through that evolution.”

I repeat: fuck off.

Though what people are supposed to do once they get out of the cars I never understand. In urban areas everybody, except maybe Donald Trump, is a pedestrian sometimes.

Not A Lot Of Whistleblowing From Hope Hicks

Maybe cultivate better sources? Two people close to Ivanka and Jared think this is a good idea

This stuff is damning. But whistleblowing in this administration has often come after someone has been fired and writing a book, not when they’re there. https://t.co/yghEj2wf1f

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 15, 2019

Journalists are so weird.

But really the point is how dare he profit off of book sales instead of letting ME profit off of book sales.

Upper Class Twits

Leaving aside the merits of Brexit as a project, The Discourse about Brexit has proven beyond any doubt that the wealthy Tories who run everything (not just MPs but journalists and many in business etc) are fucking idiots.

Conservative MP David Davies says warnings about food shortages in a no-deal Brexit are a scare story because there are "orchards in Monmouth where we grow plenty of fruit and vegetables."

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) February 14, 2019

Morning Thread

It's Friday. I'm dreaming of indictments, though there are no hints of any coming down the pike. Still dreaming.

America's Worst Humans

The Blob.

Happy Hour Thread

Emergency drinks on me.

Give Us All The Money AND Do Some Stuff For Locals

The thing about the Amazon deal failure I can't quite get, or at least I think I get it but it shows how blind politicians and American oligarchs are to the obvious, is that had Amazon just said "give us $3 billion and, oh, I dunno, fix the subways or something" then the locals might have been on board. They couldn't even imagine that possibility.

Afternoon Thread

I Guess We Can't Call Him "Amazon" Cuomo Anymore

Amazon not going to New York City after all. huzzah.

Idiots Everywhere

Sometimes I am weirdly comforted by the fact that the US does not have a monopoly on Kakistocracy, that this is not actually the worst and true manifestation of American Exceptionalism. But not always.

Listening to another Commons Brexit debate just after spending two days in Brussels I am struck yet again by how little Tory Brexiteers (even ministers) understand the EU or how it works (thread)

— John Peet (@JohnGPeet) February 14, 2019

Read the whole thread, as the kids say.

Vaporware

Last year, Waymo promised that by the end of 2018 they'd have an operational public robotaxi service. Geofenced over a fairly small area, but still real. Such promises led to predictions like this.

It didn't happen, though they kinda sorta tried to pretend it did for PR purposes. Journalists still ran the press releases about how they were offering a "commercial self-driving service." They removed NDA obligations from their approved passenger list, so they can talk about their experiences, but that's about it. They still have at least one "safety driver" (and often two professionals, it seems). It's still not open to the public, just an existing list of "early riders."

As I keep saying, the technology is neato. It works surprisingly well! Wow that's neat!

People just underestimate how good it has to be before it's actually useful.

The Foreign Policy Blob

(ht DanFmTo)

Never Tweet

Yesterday was a fun day on the Twitter machine, with many members of the Foreign Policy Community, which appears to be the result of a generations long inbreeding project, stepping up to defend the honor of America's Greatest Human, Elliott Abrams.

Including the Vice President for National Security & International Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Morning Thread

He Just Tweeted It Out

Afternoon Thread

At the DMV.

Freak Show

I would like to see the internal memos at CNN discussing how they gave an hour of TV to some guy who is polling below 5% and hasn't even declared for president for a Presidential Town Hall or whatever the hell they're calling it, but this is the kind of good content they've provided us with.

Starbucks ex-CEO (and possible presidential candidate) Howard Schultz, on CNN town hall forum last night: "I didn't see color as a young boy, and I honestly don't see color now"

— Anthony Zurcher (@awzurcher) February 13, 2019

Maybe he's actually Stephen Colbert? In any case the guy grew up in segregated public housing (he was in public housing, nobody ever did anything to help him) so it's quite possible that he never did see people of color.

Did Trump Do A Stupid Tweet

So many days I think I should say something about national politics and there isn't much to say other than "Trump said something stupid and dishonest again."

Overnight

Enjoy.

Tuesday Evening

Time flies.

Go Big

Of course nothing good is going to pass in the Trump era, but this is when politicians have a chance to promise the moon.

No one but David Brooks and Chuck Lane and Jon Chait are impressed with half measures because, well, what's the point of going half way to the moon?

Who Is To Blame

Dealing out precise blame in any particular situation isn't the point. The whole concept behind "autopilot" is flawed, and the company will always try to blame the driver.

Eric Carter tells News 12 New Jersey that his X-Model Tesla electric car misread the lines on the road, causing him to crash near Adams Lane.

Carter says that as he was driving north on Route 1 with his hands on the steering wheel, the car turned to the right, sending him into the median. He says that he was able to slightly correct the turn and avoid hitting a road sign head-on.

But Tesla’s website states that autopilot “is intended for use only with a fully attentive driver who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any time…it does not turn a Tesla into an autonomous vehicle, and it does not allow the driver to abdicate responsibility….The driver can override any of Autopilot’s features at any time.”

A spokesperson for Tesla says in a statement, "Safety is the top priority at Tesla, and we engineer and build our cars with this in mind. We also ask our customers to exercise safe behavior when using our vehicles.”

Assuming this driver is telling the truth he was paying attention. You can't possibly be attentive enough to correct for a car which is essentially driving itself at highway speeds if it decides to send you into a median.

Delivery People Are Basically Paid In Tips

My other issue with robot delivery is... what labor costs are being saved? Instacart-type drivers are basically paid in tips. I don't believe that there are any cost efficiency gains to be had, especially given the limitations of even ideal robot delivery vehicles.

Parking Is Expensive

Requiring that units have parking increases per unit costs in high land price areas significantly. The focus on the affordability of new construction as opposed to affordability generally is a bit misplaced, but parking takes up a lot of space - and therefore a lot of land - and requiring that any housing units be built with parking increases the costs a lot.

“A big part of what I hear is that the limitations or compatibility restrictions, based on what you’re building next to, keeps down the amount of units you can get,” says Nicole Joslin, chair of the Austin Housing Coalition, a consortium of affordable-housing developers. “I hear a lot from people that parking requirements that are over what they would naturally need to provide for the community can take up a lot of cost and space in that development.”

And some elements of the proposal, like eliminating parking requirements for certain projects, would serve other planning goals as well.

“We’re already talking about how we stop mandating the overbuild of parking as part of our larger zoning rewrite … I think that affordable housing is just one of the many goals that get hurt when we require too much parking.” Casar says.

Parking requirements are bad for other reasons (note we're talking requirements here, not even suggesting banning parking if developers want to build it), but affordability is one.

Here in my urban hellhole the NIMBYish neighbors, when consulted about projects they want, say:

1) Single family
2) More parking
3) Affordable

Absent massive subsidies, ... you can't do it, my friends.

We Have Considered Your Criticisms

And concluded that, no, we did a great job.

I'm proud of our 2016 coverage and our team. I don't think we applied double standards to Clinton, but I’m mindful of the criticism.

— Patrick Healy (@patrickhealynyt) February 12, 2019

I am mindful of the criticism, which comes from stupid people who should shut up and buy subscriptions.

Monday Evening

Have a fugue. Or just enter a fugue state. Or both.

Happy Hour Thread

Get happy.

Get Out On That Limb Just As They Start Sawing

A long time ago in the glory days of blogofascism, occasionally there would be some Democrat targeted by the hissy fit of the day and comms people would reach out to people like me to try to enlist to us to mount a defense of their boss, or whatever. Nothing wrong with this. I have never advertised myself as an Objective Journalist. I am an activist if any label accurately applies. Just a madman with a blog. No one asked for bullshit defenses. The hissy fit of the day is usually bullshit. Responding to it accurately is not. Drudge ruled their world back then, and one out of context partial quote on that wonderful website of his, and every cable news program would focus on it.

The problem was (and probably still is) that every congressional office is tuned to cable news, and what's being talked about on cable news starts to seem like the totality of the universe. By the time the blog signal went up, those members of Congress were usually busy crafting their apologetic statements for their supposed transgressions.

Hyperloop

This one will work!

In an interview with Arabian Business, Houston said that the pavilion – which he compared to the Guggenheim Museum in New York – will allow visitors to ‘experience’ various innovations that the United States has to offer.

...

“There, you’ll enter the hyperloop pod,” he added. “It will be the first time anywhere in the world that you’re able to go through a hyperloop pod. These things will be designed to have the look, the feel, the sounds and the vibrations – what little vibrations there are – of a real hyperloop.”

narrator: the pod doesn't move.

Daley

Obama really did not surround himself with the best people.

Actual transit experts have almost universally dismissed Musk’s plan, which involves digging a tunnel from the Loop to O’Hare and shooting well-heeled travelers through it in pods at over 100 mph using “electric sled” technology. But Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants the express to be part of his legacy, so he’s pushing to get the contract inked before he leaves office this May.

...

One notable exception is former Obama chief of staff Bill Daley, perhaps the most business-friendly candidate, whose brother Richard tried and failed to build an airport express when he was mayor. Bill Daley stated that while he has some questions about the project’s cost and fare structure, Chicago shouldn’t be afraid to innovate. So barring a third Mayor Daley, it appears that Musk’s plan is increasingly unlikely to happen.

But, at least until Emanuel vacates the fifth floor of City Hall, CDOT staffers are under orders to promote the O’Hare Express as a sensible and essential project, as transportation chief Rebekah Scheinfeld did in December in a Sun-Times interview, regardless of what they actually think of the scheme.

A theme for Dem presidents.

Self-Driving Package Delivery Vehicles

This one puzzles me more than the other fantasy applications of self-driving cars. Especially for urban delivery, speedy delivery relies on the fact that delivery drivers are going to do a lot of questionably legal things, both in terms of driving and stopping/parking. A self-driving delivery vehicle that actually obeys the laws isn't going to be able to do much here in the urban hellhole. And I'm assuming a self-driving delivery vehicle would still have to have someone on the truck to actually, you know, deliver the packages.

An Expert In 10 Minutes

I get that journalism requires a different pace and style than academic work. When you gotta file several times per week you can't really treat each piece as a dissertation. But there's a difference between accepting the limitations imposed by the reality of the job and the belief that you, A Journalist, have a unique ability to become an expert in any subject in about 5 hours and conversations with 2 experts. It's one trouble with the fact checking genre, which for some reason rarely limits itself to things mere mortals understand as facts, and veers into highly subjective "well my friend and Mercatus told me" territory regularly.

It takes awhile to learn a subject field. I get that journalists mostly can't be expected to do this with every subject they write about (probably elite newsrooms with resources should have more reporters on specific beats than they do but this is above my pay grade). That isn't really the problem. The problem is when journalists begin to believe they can become experts in any subject in 24 hours. Not just experts, but ur-experts, gazing down from above it all, with a level of knowledge and objectivity that mere experts can't possibly achieve because they have not been traind in Objective Journalism.

Sunday Evening

Rock on.

A History Of America From Indentured Servitude To The War of Northern Aggression

This is a man pickled in a rather odd, if common, narrative of history.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam: "We are now at the 400-year anniversary — just 90 miles from here in 1619. The first indentured servants from Africa landed on our shores in Old Point Comfort, what we call now Fort Monroe, and while—"@GayleKing: "Also known as slavery" pic.twitter.com/AiX96MU1rJ

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) February 10, 2019

Where The Trains Should Go

Now with more color saturation. Everyone's a critic. @punished_marcus pic.twitter.com/IgYEeol6zS

— Alon Levy (@alon_levy) February 10, 2019

People always think about the start and end points, but even though America is a big place, there are numerous city pairs <300 and <500 miles away from each other for which decent train travel options would be desirable if they existed. People always respond, "oh, well, what's the point if you have to just rent a car at the other end" because intra-city transit at destinations is often not what it should be, but people already fly these distances all the time and then you really need to rent a car because the airports are not anywhere you actually want to be.

You Have Deal And No Deal

If you block a deal and then block a no deal you have....?

The government has sought to buy Theresa May more time to put together a workable Brexit deal by promising another say for MPs by the end of the month, as business leaders said the process was now in the “emergency zone”.

James Brokenshire, the communities secretary, said that if by 27 February there was no finalised deal to put to the Commons, MPs would again be given an amendable motion to consider. This would give them the chance to block a no-deal departure or other interventions.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Saturday Evening

Enjoy

SUPERTRAINS

Since people are talking about them again and being dumb as usual, trains don't actually have to be that SUPER to be competitive with flying over certain distances. Top speed sound exciting, but it's average speed that matters. The problem with the Acela isn't that it "only" gets to 150 MPH, the problem with the Acela is it only travels that fast for very short distances.

Average speed of 100 MPH means you travel 300 miles in 3 hours (this is advanced math, so pay attention). That's Philly to Pittsburgh or St. Louis to Chicago. That beats driving and it's more than competitive with flying given the various inconveniences associated with airport travel (security, more affected by weather, flight delays because airlines suck generally, airports are not in population/employment centers, etc.). Get that average speed up to 150 and (again, advanced math) and that's down to 2 hours and is going to be competitive with private jets, overall time wise.

It's a big country and trains from NYC to LA, even if SUPER, will never be competitive with flying. Nor will NYC to Chicago, really, though it would be fast enough that some people would take it.

If I ran the zoo with a fixed budget, I'd spend the money on 1) intra-city transit enhancements, 2) upgrades for inter-city rail (curve straightening, double tracking, etc) and frequency enhancements that would improve service greatly without large amounts of money. But, really, rail corridors between city pairs under 300 miles apart can be desirable if we manage to get those speeds up to (checks notes) 1910 levels. Any city pairs under 500 miles would be that way if the trains go just a bit faster. True SUPERTRAINS are great, but even then it isn't precisely the top speed of the train that matters, but the average. If the train sits in an intermediate station for a 20 minute stop, or has one 50 mile "slow" segment, then the gains from those top speeds disappear pretty quickly.

EWWW

I remember reading about this "disgust" theory before and it made a lot of sense to me (that it made a lot of sense to me does not make it true, of course).

Conservatives just tend to be grossed out by difference. One signal to me of how much "conservative" there is in "conservatarian" is that all the glibertarians get about as punk rock as wearing a leather jacket. The freedom is the freedom to conform, because people who don't comform are icky.

Just A Few Details To Take Care Of

Sure.

TOKYO — They call it Toyota's moonshot: In just one year, Japan's biggest carmaker wants to start selling a self-driving vehicle that it says will be the "most powerful supercomputer on wheels."

I'm sure faster processing power always helps, but lack of it isn't really the barrier.

Saturday, Saturday

I got nothin'.

Friday Evening Thread

Friday Happy Hour

So happy.

Good Hitler/Bad Hitler

The good Hitler is the conservative one. The bad Hitler is the liberal one. Got it?

Turning Points

Candace Owens: "But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine. The problem is that he wanted, he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalise." jfc https://t.co/f0ek45Uscs

— Matt Ortega (@MattOrtega) February 8, 2019

The Tears of Amazon Cuomo

Amazon doesn't need any subsidies from anyone, and there's no sane argument that suggests that NYC needs to attract large employers at the moment, even if such subsidies were a reasonable thing for some municipalities to do (probably not!).

Amazon.com is reconsidering its plan to bring 25,000 jobs to a new campus in New York City following a wave of opposition from local politicians, according to two people familiar with the company's thinking.

Where Have I Heard That Name Before

Neal Katyal... Neal Katyal...

100 years from now, law students will read about this decision. It may be read alongside Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Korematsu, and the Chinese Exclusion Act cases. https://t.co/SwqM547yGV

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) February 8, 2019

Hmm....

Oh yes.

Glass Houses

I'm a bit of a softy on plagiarism charges generally because sometimes it gets into "is this enough of a paraphrasing" territory. I guess I buy the sloppy defense a bit more than some do. But especially when you're a journalist writing a book about how all the new journalism is bad unlike the good old days of journalism and the good old journalists like yourself, and you screw up that badly (bad enough that even I don't think the sloppy defense is applicable), you have a bit of a problem and a little bit of remorse and shame would be appropriate.. But New York Times journalists and alums are not known for their sense of shame, as by definition they can do no wrong. They never get it wrong.

It’s not the status of the words that defines the offense, it’s the status of the person who originally wrote the words compared to the person who copied them. That’s why people who otherwise profess to care about professional standards are rallying around Abramson. Jill Abramson can’t seriously be a plagiarist, because plagiarism isn’t a serious offense when people like Jill Abramson do it. Fareed Zakaria, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stephen Ambrose, Juan Williams—above a certain level, a public figure is immune to any real career consequences for stealing work from the lower castes.

Thursday Evening

Tomorrow is...

Backwards

Perhaps there is a reasonable debate to be had about how much Teh Deficit matters and when, but what isn't actually controversial - or wouldn't be if people weren't paid lots of money to claim otherwise - is that if there is going to be deficit spending, then spending it on literally anything else, from food stamps to planes that can't fly, is better, from a budgetary perspective, than spending it on tax cuts for rich people.

But the press focus is the opposite. Tax cuts lol nothing matters, ZOMG $5 per month more for THE POORS????

He Saw Her On TV

Only the people in the little box that talks to him are real.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration will tap a former Fox News reporter and former intelligence operative to lead the U.S. government's premier agency charged with exposing and countering disinformation from Russia and other foreign governments around the world.

Lea Gabrielle, who joined Fox News in 2013 and is also a former Navy pilot, will be the new head of the Global Engagement Center, according to a copy of the announcement obtained by USA TODAY.

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

The Boss

Stories like this one about bad women bosses are always going to get some pushback asking why a woman senator is being singled out for bad boss behavior which is thought to be common from her male colleagues. There's no way to know how much perceived bad boss behavior is due to people just reacting differently to a woman boss. And I don't claim to know.

But Klobuchar being a bad boss is one of those "everybody knows" things in DC. I haven't been in DC in years and even I "know" it. Klobuchar has a reputation for being a bad boss over and above normal "of course most senators are assholes" behavior. And, for what it's worth, I've heard this about Klobuchar specifically. I've never heard it about any other Dem women in Congress. I suspect (I have no idea!) Claire McCaskill (for example) wasn't always pure sunshine, but I never heard bad boss stories about her.

The joke I heard:

Amy Klobuchar is a very likable and popular senator from Minnesota. She wins re-election with 70% of the vote there. The other 30% have worked for her.

The Best American Family

WTF

Phoenix police on Wednesday disputed Cindy McCain's account of human trafficking at an Arizona airport. McCain had told local news station KTAR on Monday that she intervened at Sky Harbor International Airport last week when she spotted a woman with a child of a “different ethnicity. ” “I went over to the police and told them what I saw and they went over and questioned her and, by God, she was trafficking that kid,” she was quoted as saying. Although she went on to claim that the woman was “waiting for the guy who bought the child to get off an airplane,” Phoenix Police Sgt. Armando Carbajal told KTAR that police conducted a welfare check on the child and found “no evidence of criminal conduct or child endangerment.” McCain—who is reportedly the co-chair for Arizona Governor’s Council on Human Trafficking—responded on Twitter Wednesday evening, apologizing if “anything else I have said on this matter distracts from ‘if you see something, say something.’”

Wednesday Night

Almost Friday!!!

Happy Hour Just Commening

on the West Coast. I plan to enjoy.

No Ambition

I know I keep harping on this, but Trump could go from being a somewhat unpopular president to being a somewhat popular president so easily. Totebagging Democrats are so forgiving. Trump could keep doing the racism for his adoring MAGA fans and then actually give the Democrats something they could work with. Infrastructure, whatever. It would be so easy and require so little in the sense of giving anything up because Trump doesn't give a shit about most things so what would he even be giving up?

Someone just needs to tell him that they'll put a 60 foot picture of him next to every fixed pothole, giving him credit for it, and he'll love it.

(Whether or not the Democrats should play along is another question, but I'm pretty sure they would.)

Can Dish It Out

Don't know what's going to break the UK madness. Maybe we'll find out in 51 days when they, uh, break.

Anyway: the lesson here is clear. Pro-Brexit politicians and commentators think it’s entirely reasonable to describe European leaders as Nazis, Soviets, or whatever other historically inept slur leaps to mind, and just expect them to take it. But the minute they answer back, even politely, they have somehow crossed the line into indecency, sir, and this shall not stand.

Somehow, Britain has ended up in an abusive relationship with the European Union – and Britain is the abusive partner.

There are 51 days to go until Brexit.

2019

They're better than they used to be, but Democrats still haven't quite figured out that they don't have to have a response to whatever shit the Republicans are cooking up in the kitchen that week. Trump talks about the wall and the Dems feel the need to stress how much that while they don't want the wall they do want MORE MONEY FOR BORDER SECURITY AND TECHNOLOGY AND SHIT LIKE THAT.

A few years ago they'd be saying, "how about half a wall," so they are better. But, really, just say "fuck that we've got other things to worry about."

OWNED

We all get sucked in sometimes, but the theater of politics is just entertainment even though it's a bit hard to forget that when a reality show star is the president. Sure the theater sadly matters, some, for appealing to voters, but elections are pretty far away right now.

The Language of Diplomacy

Oh dear.

I've been wondering what that special place in hell looks like, for those who promoted #Brexit, without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely.

— Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) February 6, 2019

Can't Sleep

But someone's being tested for Ebola locally, so no shortage of morning entertainment.

Late Night

Tired: socialism

Wired: full communism

SOTU

Enjoy

SOTU Pregame

Still time to hit the booze store.

Afternoon Thread

Busy with life.

ACA Was A Failure

No, really, a total failure. Yes there were some good regulatory changes. Yes the exchanges make it possible for some people to buy on the individual market (though that insurance is mostly...not good). Yes the Medicaid expansion was great.

But the important thing to remember about the Medicaid expansion was that it was a last minute *fix* to keep the price tag down. Think about that. It was cheaper to provide free health care for more people than to throw them onto the subsidized exchanges at subsidy levels that they could possibly afford. If they'd taken it up to 500% of FPL and 600% of FPL it would have been even cheaper! And that became a political problem, because your poor neighbor has free health care and you have to pay for a bronze plan which sucks.

The failure was the exchanges. Now we're supposed to talk about all of the other good things in ACA, but remember back in 2009, the exchanges *were* Obamacare. They were the plan. Everything else was tinkering. The exchanges were going to free us from employer-provided health care (a good goal!) by letting everybody buy "affordable" individual health insurance. The exchanges were going to be great, because there's nothing we love more than buying health insurance every year through a website, and employer-linked health insurance would, over time, just fade away. ACA wasn't about the exchanges because a few million more people would be able to buy insurance. ACA was about the exchanges because the exchanges were THE FUTURE OF HEALTH INSURANCE, my friends.

Nobody involved wants you to remember this. And the same people are going to bullshit you in 2020 and beyond.

Chasing Buses

Reporting on collisions between cars and pedestrians/cyclists is almost always horrific.

JUST IN: Georgia college student killed after his bicycle hits university bus

Wow his bicycle hit a bus! Sort of hard to even picture that, but he must have been at fault somehow then!

Just before 10:15 a.m., 21-year-old Logan Jones of Milledgeville was traveling east on the sidewalk next to Hancock Street, Georgia State Patrol said in a news release. The bus was also traveling east on the street and was approaching the intersection with Clark Street while the traffic light was green.

...

The bus made a right turn onto Clark Street, and Jones’ bicycle didn’t stop, hitting the passenger side of the bus, the release said. Jones fell off the bike and was struck by the rear wheels of the bus.

The cyclist was crossing with the green, and the bus driver made a right turn into an intersection on that same green and hit someone in that intersection. What the hell is with "Jones' bicycle didn't stop, hitting the passenger side of the bus." The Bus drove into him!

The guy was riding in the sidewalk. My point is not to condemn the bus driver, but... you know, as reported, if anybody is at fault it is the bus driver who made a right turn and slammed into somebody who was traveling straight with the light. Not "bicycle hits university bus." Jeebus.

Speaking Of Things That Were Predicted

Dem charter advocates mostly went silent a few years ago as reality caught up with them. All of this was perfectly predictable.

After more than 20 years of growth nationally, it is noteworthy that some of the trend lines for charters are on the decline. This experiment with deregulation has resulted in massive corruption, fraud and diminished learning opportunities for young people.

As a state monitor, I observed a number of incompetent people serve as charter school administrators because Ohio state law has no minimum educational requirements nor any professional licensing prerequisites for school leaders.

In addition, numerous conflicts-of-interest, including a board member serving as landlord and management companies charging exorbitant rents for properties conveniently used for charter schools, are only part of the problem of the charter experiment.

Teachers unions are bad... so what if we just throw lots of money at unaccountable for profit companies with minimal oversight! Because freedom! I see no problems with this approach at all.

We'll Do Better Next Time

Nobody has any excuse for being surprised by this stuff ever. It is how it supposed to work.

Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners have transferred American-made weapons to al Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, and other factions waging war in Yemen, in violation of their agreements with the United States, a CNN investigation has found.

Well if they violated the agreement I'm sure we'll stop providing weapons

Monday Night

Tomorrow is...

Monday Happy Hour

Apparently Northam hasn't resigned yet.

It isn't that the dude couldn't have found a path to redemption, but he didn't try and certainly didn't take it.

Monday Crass Commercialism

I don't read that much science fiction these days, but occasionally. The Three-Body Problem is good old school style "hard SF" if you like that sort of thing.

Autopilot

Yes. In fact Autopilot is getting so good you rarely need to pay attention to the road at all.

— Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) February 4, 2019

Despite things Elon says, Tesla's have neither the hardware nor software to safely let you stop paying attention. They tell you that! People are gonna die.

Everybody's Just A Little Bit Racist

I think that was the theme song from Crash. Anyway, uh, this is not actually inevitable and does not excuse people from their dumb takes.

Apropos of so much stupid.

Lunch Thread

enjoy

The Concern Is Touching

The slightly but not really paranoid view of this has been it's been part of a grand project to kidnap children for white Christian adoption. I haven't seen anything yet to really discount that theory.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Trump administration says it would require extraordinary effort to reunite what may be thousands of migrant children who have been separated from their parents and, even if it could, the children would likely be emotionally harmed.

Jonathan White, who leads the Health and Human Services Department’s efforts to reunite migrant children with their parents, said removing children from “sponsor” homes to rejoin their parents “would present grave child welfare concerns.” He said the government should focus on reuniting children currently in its custody, not those who have already been released to sponsors.

"For Christian adoption" is the more benign view of this, of course.

Dead Man Walking

I don't know why Northam is prolonging this.

Super Bowl

It is a very super bowl.

Afternoon Thread

Busy with life stuff.

The World Passes You By

I didn't watch the Northam press conference but caught descriptions of the various highlights. Forget the past, or even him... there's no way that people around him for years haven't noticed that he's a bit... uh... problematic on certain issues. And not "didn't use the most woke word on Twitter" problematic, but... problematic.

50-50

Northam changes parties to GOP tomorrow, they embrace him, and all his sins are "forgotten" by Monday.

Stop. Recruiting. Republicans. To. Be. Democrats.

Evening Thread

Probably won’t see one minute of tomorrow’s game.

Could Be

It was plausible that I was the KKK guy or the blackface guy in that photo, but now I am not 100% sure that it was me.

Happy Groundhog Day

Again.

Saturday, Saturday

Northam hasn't resigned yet?

Morning Thread

I Think That Answers The Question

One thing to do it, another thing for there to be a picture, and yet another for it to be on your yearbook page photo... from med school.

RICHMOND — Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam on Friday acknowledged appearing in a “clearly racist and offensive” photograph in his 1984 medical school yearbook that shows a man in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan robe.

...

Northam did not say if he was the man dressed in blackface or Klan robes. The governor’s statement indicated that he had no immediate plans to resign, despite some calls for him to do so.

Just resign.

Happy Hour Thread

enjoy

Speaking Of Vaporware

Sure, Jan.

Two days after Foxconn said it no longer planned to build a sprawling new factory in Wisconsin, the Taiwanese technology giant appears to have reversed course, citing a “personal conversation” with President Trump.

The surprise announcement followed heavy backlash in Wisconsin, which in 2017 agreed to pay the prominent electronics maker and supplier to Apple at least $3 billion in state tax incentives. At the time, Foxconn pledged to deliver up to 13,000 blue-collar jobs and a $10 billion display-making plant in the state’s southeastern corner -- a move Trump has

Anyone in a MAGA hat want to have a little wager with me?

Vaporware

I didn't care too much about Elon Musk until he started floating fantasies about hyperloops and ridiculous subways. His self-driving car claims amuse me but mostly that's for Tesla owners to deal with. But since he did get into my lane with the SUPERTRAINS that aren't trains, I've been paying attention, and, well...

Another quarter, another delay for Tesla Inc.'s solar roof – the signature product of its sprawling Buffalo solar panel factory.

If the South Park Avenue factory is ever going to reach its goal of employing 1,460 people by April 2020, the electric vehicle maker is going to have to sell lots of solar roofs.

That's not happening now, and Tesla officials indicated this week that it likely won't happen until sometime later this year, after predicting just three months ago that it would ramp up production in Buffalo by June.

Musk made a lot of promises with his solar roof system and got a lot of good press and, while it's above my pay grade a bit, had some related business shenanigans between his various companies. Not happening any time soon...

There Is A Natural Order To Things

In DC, it's a Republican president who isn't obviously vulgar (W. was a challenge at first but then 9/11 removed all such concerns). Democrats can control the House or Senate, but only if there are enough conservative Democrats to mean that many wonderful moments of bipartisanship (Republicans getting what they want) can happen.

Democrats having power... even just Nancy Pelosi running the House without dozens of "blue dog" types undermining her every 5 seconds... confuses the Villagers.

They're All Bad

The only good reason (and it isn't a very good reason, but it's the only one) to have a primary campaign that starts a year before there's an actual primary is it gives candidates a long time to figure out how to respond to many perfectly valid criticisms of their records that cannot simply be wished away.

The Morning Joseph Movement

There's always a campaign seemingly designed to appeal directly to Morning Joseph and Tom Friedman, one which winks at being Democratic but which is just right wing Republicanism without the obvious racism and abortion obsession (this doesn't mean anti-racism or pro-choice, just...not concerned).

It was especially hilarious during the Obama administration with Tom Friedman, who would dream of a president who was basically Barack Obama and then pretend he didn't exist.

Why Would I Waste My Beautiful Mind On That?

Pundits never really go away, but their relevancy mostly fades with time (bloggers, too, I know). I remember when it mattered when a George Will column dropped, no matter what his history of duplicity and mendacity. Maureen Dowd had her time. For a long time it mattered, even or especially during the Obama administration, when David Brooks had something supposedly profound to say. One (I am "one" in this narrative) would have to read these things just to know what was being read.

Now, eh. Who cares what David Brooks writes?