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Archive for 2017
December 5, 2017
SOME ARE UNHAPPY ABOUT THE LACK OF A DOUBLE STANDARD: Under New Civility Rules, Facebook Is Banning Women For Calling Men ‘Scum.’ “When asked why a statement such as ‘men are scum’ would violate community standards, a Facebook spokesperson said that the statement was a threat and hate speech toward a protected group and so it would rightfully be taken down.”
Related: “I don’t support what Facebook is doing, but I do think the use of the word ‘scum’ warrants a historical note on ‘SCUM’ — The Society for Cutting Up Men. The author of ‘The SCUM Manifesto,’ Valerie Solanas wasn’t joking. . . . I wrote ‘Valerie Solanas wasn’t joking,’ because she did go out and shoot Andy Warhol.”
A READER WHO SAYS HE IS A FORMER PROSECUTOR AND JUDGE EMAILS:
Did the prosecution tell Flynn’s lawyer that their main witness against him was removed for bias? Since Strzok led the interview and his testimony would be needed to establish untruthfulness, he is a critical witness not just a prosecutor. If not disclosed, would this not be a Giglio violation? This is the kind of misconduct that can get a case dismissed and a lawyer disbarred. It is a Constitutional violation. This has bothered me since I heard about it.
Me too.
Though to be clear, I’m not a former prosecutor. But with no recording and a witness who’s been dismissed for bias. . . .
NOT-SO-INDEPENDENT COUNSEL: New Emails Show Special Counsel ‘Pit Bull’ Cheered Sally Yates For Blocking Trump Travel Ban.
New documents obtained by government watchdog Judicial Watch show a top DOJ prosecutor, who is now working as a deputy on Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation, cheered the decision by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to defy orders and refusal to enforce President Trump’s first travel ban in January. Yates was the acting attorney general at the time and was promptly fired for her defiance.
Emails show Andrew Weissmann, who served as chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Fraud Section under President Obama, loved Yates’ refusal to implement the ban.
“I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects,” Weissmann wrote.
The New York Times has described Weissmann as “Mueller’s Pitbull.”
Nothing says “independent and professional” like fanboi squee at sticking it to the hated Trump. These people are embarrassing.
CIA DIRECTOR: Trump’s Tweeting Has Actually Helped Us.
CHRISTINE KEELER, FORMER MODEL AT HEART OF BRITAIN’S PROFUMO AFFAIR, DIES AT 75:
Keeler, then a teenage model and showgirl, became famous for her role in the 1963 scandal that rocked the establishment when she had an affair with the Tory cabinet minister John Profumo and a Russian diplomat at the same time at the height of the cold war. Profumo was eventually forced to resign after lying to parliament about the affair.
Keeler’s son, Seymour Platt, 46, told the Guardian she died on Monday at the Princess Royal university hospital in Farnborough: “My mother passed away last night at about 11.30pm.”
She had been ill for several months, and suffered from the lung disease COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).
The past really is a foreign country, given John Profumo’s response to the scandal, particularly in light of this fall’s endlessly recurring headlines. As Mark Steyn noted in his obit for Profumo (which also addresses Keeler’s sad later years), who died at age 91 in 2006:
There was no comeback, and no attempt at one. He accepted that his career was ruined and never sought public sympathy. As extraordinary as his downfall was, the aftermath was unique. On June 5th 1963 he resigned from the government, from Parliament and from the Queen’s Privy Council. Not long afterwards, he contacted Toynbee Hall, a charitable mission in the East End of London, and asked whether they needed any help. He started washing dishes and helping with the children’s playgroup, and he stayed for 40 years. He disappeared amid the grimy tenements of east London and did good works till he died. And, with the exception of one newspaper article to mark Toynbee Hall’s centenary, he never said another word in public again.
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In 1963, “Profumo” was shorthand for establishment hypocrisy. Across 40 years, he reclaimed the narrative, as a story of shame and redemption, of acting honorably, making the best of a sticky wicket and all the other allegedly obsolescent virtues of his class the sex and hookers had supposedly rendered risible. Had Stephen Ward not thrown a teenage girl’s bathing suit into the topiary, John Profumo would have been noted as the last surviving member of the House of Commons to vote in the confidence motion of May 8th 1940, after the fall of Norway. He was one of only 30 Conservative MPs to join the opposition in declining to support the continued leadership of Neville Chamberlain and thus to usher Churchill into Downing Street. That vote changed the course of the war. But instead his place in history is as the man who saw a call-girl naked in a swimming pool.
Profumo was a word that defined the British establishment for the pre-swinging London era, if not the entire 1960s. Today, the scandal would just be a blip in the news cycle, as the ’60s sexual revolution concludes by descending into a 21st century repeat of the French revolution.
ALL YOUR CODE ARE BELONG TO US: US Claims It Doesn’t Need a Court Order to Ask Tech Companies to Build Encryption Backdoors.
According to the documents, intelligence officials told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that there’s no need for them to approach courts before requesting a tech company help willfully—though they can always resort to obtaining a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order if the company refuses. The documents show officials testified they had never needed to obtain such an FISC order, though they declined to tell the committee whether they had “ever asked a company to add an encryption backdoor,” per ZDNet. Other reporting has suggested the FISC has the power to authorize government personnel to compel such technical assistance without even notifying the FISC of what exactly is required.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act gives authorities additional powers to compel service providers to build backdoors into their products.
Nice product you have there. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it.
OUT: LOVE IS IN THE AIR. IN: Viagra is in the air near Pfizer’s plant. “One whiff and you’re stiff . . . . There were women having babies all the time, there were babies everywhere.” Pfizer denies any airborne, er, emissions.
GRIDLOCK: Senate DACA Deal at Stalemate Over Pathway to Citizenship.
The kicker? “Durbin willing to shut down government over DREAM Act.”
This might be yet another way to Get More Trump™.
WHEN THE VOICE OF REASON IS JEET HEER IN THE NEW REPUBLIC: The Democrats’ Dangerous Obsession With Impeachment: The party needs to focus on winning elections, not removing Trump. I wonder if Trump isn’t happy to encourage the former, at the expense of the latter.
AND ANOTHER ONE: Netflix cuts ties with Danny Masterson after rape allegations.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Cataract Surgery Can Prolong Your Life.
TAX CUTS: THERE’S NOTHING THEY CAN’T DO. Will the GOP tax bill lower home prices in California?
THERE’S A LOT OF LOW-HANGING FRUIT: Replacing Awful Hospital Lighting Could Create A More Healing Environment.
BUT ENLISTING IT IN THE GENDER WARS IS THE MAIN APPEAL: Against Overgendering Harassment. “About 30% of the victims of sexual harassment are men. About 20% of the perpetrators of sexual harassment are women.”
And I think that understates it because behavior — like comments on clothing, or unsolicited hugs — that would be defined as harassment if done by men is not so defined when done by women.
Plus: “Could this kind of ploy really shut up everybody? It didn’t have to. Men absolutely came forward with stories of harassment by high-profile women in Hollywood, and they were summarily ignored. By freak coincidence I came across this story from last month where Mariah Carey’s bodyguard accused her of sexually harassing him. Carey is much higher-profile than most of the men involved. But she didn’t even publish an apology, or a denial, or try to pick holes in his story. She just assumed nobody would care – and she was right. Having silenced or ignored all men who might be sexually harassed, the media proceeded to treat sexual harassment in the most gendered way humanly possible, constantly reinforcing that only men can do it and only women can suffer it.”
And: “But more than that, if men were included in the conversation – if it were understood that a man who was sexually harassed by a female Hollywood celebrity would have the slightest chance at a fair hearing – then maybe they would feel like it was more in their self-interest to support victims. And if women were included in the conversation as potential perpetrators, they might understand why some people find it scary when people lose their careers over unsubstantiated allegations.”
Hint: The agenda here isn’t justice.
I WAS PROMISED A 21ST CENTURY WITH ELECTROMAGNETIC RAILGUNS, AND I WANT A 21ST CENTURY WITH ELECTROMAGNETIC RAILGUNS: The Navy’s Horrifyingly Powerful Electromagnetic Railgun Might Be Coming to an End.
As the Navy has been developing the electromagnetic railgun, it has also been investing in hypervelocity projectile (HVP), a low-drag guided spike that the railgun could use for ammo. And now it seems the SCO has more interest in that ammo than the railgun it was originally built for.
HVP can also be fired using available powder weapons, and the Department of Defense might be interested in getting those projectiles combat-ready before the railgun makes it through years of testing. “SCO shifted the project’s focus to conventional powder guns, facilitating a faster transition of HVP technology to the warfighter,” Chris Sherwood, an SCO spokesperson, told Task & Purpose. “Our priority continues to be the HVP, which is reflected in the program’s budget.”
According to Task & Purpose’s report, some researchers think the SCO’s prioritization of HVP means the railgun wont go through the necessary testing that would lead to its permanent installation on ships.
I had understood that half the point of railguns is that they provide much greater range than traditional powder guns.
WELL, IF I QUIT EATING RED MEAT, MY RISK OF DEPRESSION WOULD AT LEAST DOUBLE: Red meat halves risk of depression: Women who reduce lamb and beef in their diets are more likely to suffer depression, according to the new study.
Of course, if you need the heavy guns, bring out the bacon.
Jill Filipovic isn’t the first to make this argument, but she’s the first to present it cogently in the pages of the New York Times. She wrote that men like Matt Lauer, Mark Halperin, and Charlie Rose—prominent journalists who helped set the national political narrative—contributed materially to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss. When they were not patronizing toward Clinton, Filipovic’s argument goes, they were nakedly hostile. Even the New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush, suspended temporarily amid an investigation into claims of impropriety, received an unfriendly mention. “These recent harassment allegations suggest that perhaps the problem wasn’t that Mrs. Clinton was untruthful or inherently hard to connect with,” she wrote, “but that these particular men hold deep biases against women who seek power instead of sticking to acquiescent sex-object status.”
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Filipovic’s targets deserve all the recrimination she heaps upon them and more. By their own admissions, they’ve abused and disrespected their colleagues, to say nothing of their audiences. But her contention amounts to a conspiracy theory. The behaviors in which Clinton engaged don’t sound any better when they’re summarized by a female journalist. And yet, in a way, this is all immaterial. Filipovic was not trying to save Hillary Clinton from the consequences of her own actions. This was an excommunication.
Geez, considering he cheerfully dubbed Hillary’s illegal home server “badass,” and according to Wikileaks, forwarded his emails to her campaign chairman for vetting, what more does a guy like Thrush have to do to prove he’s a loyal DNC foot soldier with a byline?