LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela inches closer to a formal default.

Venezuela and PDVSA are legally separate entities, so PDVSA’s default would not trigger Venezuelan CDS or a Venezuelan sovereign default. But there are myriad other overdue interest payments by both borrowers, and unless the money appears soon then Venezuela will be in formal default on all its international bonds.

Venezuela has summoned bondholders for negotiations in Caracas on November 13, but the talks are expected to yield little. Indeed, US investors will be wary of even attending, given that the person leading the Venezuelan side of the talks, vice-president Tareck El Aissami, has been sanctioned by the US Treasury as an alleged drug smuggler.

None of the big rating agencies have formally declared a default yet, but S&P Global Ratings on Monday lowered the country’s rating to CC, the second-lowest rung possible, and said there was a 50 per cent chance of a default within three months.

TANGENTIALLY RELATED: Venezuela Constituent Assembly Cracks Down On Media.

Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly has approved a law its authors say would punish messages of hate in broadcast and social media with penalties reaching 20 years in prison.

The new law comes in a period of rising political tensions over the rule of socialist President Nicolas Maduro.

The Assembly, created by Maduro in July and mainly composed of his supporters, bans any message transmitted through radio, television or social media that instigates hate. The new law is designed to encourage “broadcast message aimed at promoting peace, tolerance, equality and respect,” according to the legislation, as quoted by the Associated Press.

Or else.

CHANGE: Trump channels Ronald Reagan in speech to South Korea’s National Assembly.

IT’S LIKE NOBODY CARES: Hacking the vote: Threats keep changing, but election IT sadly stays the same.

I have an idea. But I’ve been proposing it for 15 years with no success.

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Chilling ISIS Vow to Kill Kids.

THE INSTA-WIFE CONGRATULATES A FELLOW PSYCHOLOGIST FOR breaking the silence.

FACE/OFF: Christopher Plummer to Replace Kevin Spacey in All The Money In The World.

As of now, director Ridley Scott plans is to keep the film’s Dec. 22 release date.

In a monumental and expensive move, Ridley Scott will remove embattled actor Kevin Spacey from his finished thriller All the Money in the World just weeks before the film’s release.

Christopher Plummer will now play J. Paul Getty in the story about the infamous 1973 kidnapping of his grandson, 16-year-old John Paul Getty III.

The movie, which was pulled as the closing night screening of AFI Fest at Scott’s insistence, is scheduled to hit theaters on Dec. 22 via Sony’s Tristar. As of now, the release date remains unchanged despite the re-shoots but insiders say that if anyone can pull off re-shoots and still make the holiday release date, it’s Scott.

Shades of Francis Ford Coppolla swapping out Harvey Keitel and replacing him with Martin Sheen during Apocalypse Now. As with that film, movie obsessives will have a field day wondering which long shots and shots of the back of “Getty’s” head are Spacey and which are Plummer.

HMM: Monopoly critics decry ‘Amazon amendment.’

The amendment, Section 801 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), would help Amazon establish a tight grip on the lucrative, $53 billion government acquisitions market, experts say.

The provision, dubbed the “Amazon amendment” by experts, according to an article in The Intercept, would allow for the creation of an online portal that government employees could use to purchase everyday items such as office supplies or furniture.

This government-only version of Amazon, which could potentially include a few other websites, would give participating companies direct access to the $53 billion market for government acquisitions of commercial products.

“It hands an enormous amount of power over to Amazon,” said Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a research group that advocates for local businesses.

Mitchell said that the provision could allow Amazon to gain a monopoly or duopoly on the profitable world of commercial government purchases, leaving smaller businesses behind and further consolidating the behemoth tech firm’s power.

Well, this is a two-edged sword, isn’t it? Government spends too much and takes too long to buy its simple office needs, but streamlining that process and cutting costs puts more money in the pocket of Jeff Bezos.

OOPS: Driverless shuttle in Las Vegas gets in fender bender within an hour.

The shuttle, an egglike 8-seater Navya, is operated by the AAA and Keolis. It was a test deployment along half a mile of the Fremont East “Innovation District,” so this thing wasn’t cruising the strip. Probably a good thing.

Now, it must be said that technically the robo-car was not at fault. It was struck by a semi that was backing up, and really just grazed — none of the passengers was hurt.

Like any functioning autonomous vehicle, the shuttle can avoid obstacles and stop in a hurry if needed. What it apparently can’t do is move a couple feet out of the way when it looks like a 20-ton truck is going to back into it.

That’s worrisome.

BIG IN JAPAN: Japan is going crazy for the Trump burger.

(Classical reference in headline.)

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: China Spreads Propaganda to U.S. on Facebook, a Platform It Bans at Home.

CNN POLL: Approval Ratings for Democratic Party and Republican Party Collapse.

Well, one party hates half of America and the other party would rather be liked by the party that hates half of America than deliver on its promises.

Or as Glenn was just saying…

WEIRD: “We have heard nothing concerning Madam Wasserman Schultz’s congressional laptop computer for a long time.”

SILENCING: Elite Media Harassment Scandal Expands After NPR Chief Is Accused of Covering Up Complaints.

AN EMBARRASSMENT FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS: An awful policy: UA proposal guts academic freedom.

Tenure and academic freedom are designed to protect freedom of speech, thought, and expression on top of the limited remedies universally available in the law, so that learning and knowledge can flourish. This has been a bedrock principle in academia for a century and came in response to McCarthy-style red-baiting and loyalty oaths. These extra protections recognize the critical role of academics as truth-finders and truth-tellers.

But two weeks ago, we learned–for the first time–that University of Arkansas attorneys have been working behind the scenes for over a year to decimate the academic freedom and tenure rules that have been in place for decades across the UA system. It appears that their plan was to rewrite these rules systemwide to drastically diminish any real protections, and then hurriedly ask the Board of Trustees to approve the new policy before the proposal could be properly vetted.

That is not how any institution should operate, let alone one of higher learning.

The proposed changes are radical. For example, under the existing rules, faculty are explicitly free to provide “mere expressions of opinions,” even “vehemently.” Who could object to that? Answer: University counsel. Their proposal guts that protection–relegating that “right” to only limited and controlled circumstances. And lest there be any doubt that university attorneys were well aware of this, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request uncovered the following statement by those working behind the scenes to eviscerate these free-speech rights: “This is limiting and may be controversial.” Quite an admission.

Why would they propose such a change? Consider the description a few years ago by UA-Fayetteville’s treasurer of the “overwhelming amount of evidence” at their fundraising division “that point[ed] to [a] lack of management oversight, noncompliance with university policies and procedures and deliberate efforts to disguise poor financial management.” Faculty who report to authorities this very type of wrongdoing are protected today under the tenure and academic-freedom rules dealing with faculty governance and public service. The proposal drafted by university attorneys would eliminate those protections and permit the firing of faculty who report this type of wrongdoing.

People who want to censor speech usually have something they don’t want talked about.

THE NEXT TARGET IN DONNA BRAZILE’S PRIVATE WAR? JAKE TAPPER:

Brazile, a former CNN contributor, recalled in her new book when emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta showed that she relayed information about possible topics that would be brought up during the Democratic primary debate hosted by her network.

“The next day, even Jake Tapper took a swing at me, calling me unethical and ‘journalistically horrifying’ during a radio interview with WMAL even though I worked for CNN as a commentator not a journalist,” Brazile wrote in her book Hacks: The Insider Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House. “When I called him on this, he did not apologize. His attack on me was really about him. He wrote in an email, ‘I don’t know what happened here except it undermines the integrity of my work and CNN … you have to know how betrayed we all feel.’”

Brazile continued, “The feeling is mutual, my friend.”

This is the mirror image version of the question that Mike Cernovich asked CBS’s Scott Pelley, when Pelley attempted to give the pro-Trump blogger/Twitter star the third degree 60 Minutes treatment. In March, Pelley asked Cernovich about a piece he ran during the campaign headlined “Hillary Clinton Has Parkinson’s Disease, Physician Confirms,” telling Cernovich “It isn’t true.” When Cernovich mentioned Hillary’s apparent seizure on September 11th last year, Pelley dismissed it as “pneumonia.” Cernovich asked Pelley how he knew that, and Pelley replied “Well, the campaign told us that.”

Cernovich then asked the veteran CBS anchor the obvious question, one that he telling refused to answer: “Why would you trust a campaign?”

Why would Donna Brazile, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, trust an “objective” CNN reporter in the heat of a presidential campaign? As with Pelley, to ask the question is to answer it:

PUTTIN’ ON THE FOIL: Wi-Fi problems? You can boost signals with this $35 tinfoil 3D-printed reflector.

“With a simple investment of about $35 and specifying coverage requirements, a wireless reflector can be custom-built to outperform antennae that cost thousands of dollars,” said Xia Zhou, an assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth.

The work builds on past experiments that have used a soda can behind a router’s antenna to act as a reflector that boosts bandwidth by targeting a Wi-Fi signal in one direction.

This system allows users to design their own ‘soda can’ reflector that’s optimized for the layout of a house. The design is 3D-printed and then wrapped in foil. Their wave-shaped example for a single access point focused Wi-Fi signals on two rooms and minimized signals to two other rooms.

The researchers’ tests showed that a reflector for a single access point can boost throughput by 22 percent to the desired rooms and reduce throughput by 36 percent to non-targeted rooms.

Sounds like an inexpensive solution for homes or workspaces too small to bother with expensive mesh systems, or knocking holes in walls to pull ethernet cable through.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College expelled male student after coordinated sexual assault claims fell apart, suit says.

A jealous boyfriend convinced four female students to falsely accuse a graduating male of sexual misconduct years after the alleged behavior, according to the former student’s lawsuit against a small New York liberal arts school.

“John Doe” accuses Hamilton College of changing its sexual-misconduct investigative procedures so drastically in response to Obama administration Title IX “guidance” – since rescinded by the Trump administration – that it effectively denied him due process and discriminated against him based on his gender.

As with other lawsuits alleging procedural and gender-related violations by colleges in response to Title IX investigations prompted by accusers, Doe’s complaint alleges Hamilton ignored his text-message evidence that the accusations were a setup.

“Hamilton was under enormous pressure to show it was willing to take a hard line against male students accused of sexual assault in order to dispel the notion that its campus was an unfriendly and unsafe environment for women,” the suit reads.

Cost of attending Hamilton College: $66,250 per year. That’s a lot of money to pay to be presumed a rapist if you possess a penis.

UGH: Woman who reported rape on TripAdvisor says company lied about apology for deleting post.

IT’S NOT YOU SARAH; IT’S JUST THIS WAR AND THAT SON OF A BITCH WEINSTEIN: L.A. Times writer blames ‘sexist world’ for attack on White House press secretary.

(Headline inspired by Iowahawk.)

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Fusion GPS Strikes Deal, Texas Update and Much, Much More.

ON DEEP BLUE WATER: A USN guided missile destroyer crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

FASTER, PLEASE: Administration Has ‘No News to Share’ on Promise to Move U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.