IN WASHINGTON THEY CAN’T EVEN BACKSTAB EFFECTIVELY ANYMORE: Trump Sabateur Op-Ed Backfires: LA Times Calls “A Coward”; Greenwald: “Unelected Cabal.”
Archive for 2018
September 6, 2018
LOOK, SURE, HARVARD LAW SUCKS, BUT IT’S NOT ACTUALLY PRISON: Harvard Law students stand in solidarity with nationwide prison strike.
WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Nike’s Favorability Drops Double Digits Following New ‘Just Do It’ Campaign with Colin Kaepernick. A 34 point drop almost overnight. But wait, it gets worse: “Among younger generations, Nike users, African Americans, and other key demographics, Nike’s favorability declined rather than improved.”
Plus: “Before Kaepernick was revealed as the face of Nike’s campaign, only two percent of Americans reported hearing something negative about Nike. After the launch, that jumped to 33 percent.”
Get woke, go broke.
GENERIC VOTE: YouGov: Dem +5 | Selzer: Dem+2 | ABC/WP: Dem +14.
That’s quite the spread.
REASON TV: The Coddling of the American Mind: How Overprotective Parenting Led to Fragility on Campus (Video).
As of time of time this post was written, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling Of The American Mind is the number one book at Amazon in its Social Sciences category.
HOME ON THE FRONT RANGE: Local sports store boycotts Nike after Kaepernick ad, sells all Nike gear at 50%.
Stephen Martin has owned Prime Time Sports for 21 years but this is the year he’s going to stop selling Nike gear.
“It’s probably 40-50% of the store,” Martin said, shrugging. “They are the exclusive dealer of the NFL jerseys, it’s all Nike.”
Owner Martin said NFL jersey sales are a huge part of his business. He said he will miss the sales but this is a sacrifice he’s willing to make.
“The thing that fired me up the most, that got me motivated to put the sign up and the sale was the last two words of their add, ‘sacrificed everything,’” Martin explained.
“He doesn’t know sacrifice, not in my opinion.”
Related: Nike’s Reputation Takes A Hit Overall and Across Key Demographics.
A BIT LIKE HISTORY, THEN: The great Ron Bailey says most nutrition research is bunk.
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Wisconsin student labeled ‘disruptive’ for passing out ‘Jesus loves you’ valentines takes a stand.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: NYT’s Deep State Hero and Much, Much More. “How does it feel to learn that there is a powerful self-interested bureaucracy asserting itself above and against the will of the people?”
It feels like I’ve been reading the papers since the early ’80s.
SEEMS LIKE THE FBI KEPT A LOT OF THINGS FROM THE FISA COURT: Paul Sperry: Exclusive: FBI Kept From U.S. Spy Court Russian View of Carter Page as ‘an Idiot.’
The FBI omitted from its application to spy on Carter Page the fact that Russian spies had dismissed the former Trump campaign adviser as unreliable – or as one put it, an “idiot” – and therefore unworthy of recruiting, according to congressional sources who have seen the unredacted document.
The potentially exculpatory detail was also withheld from three renewals of the wiretap warrant before a special government surveillance court. The warrants issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court allowed the FBI to spy on Page and others he was in contact with for almost a year, the sources also confirmed.
The FBI was aware of Russians’ skepticism that Page knew anything of value or was a significant player because the bureau had recorded them voicing such doubts in a wiretap, from an earlier espionage case involving three Russian spies working undercover for the Kremlin in New York.
The FBI cited that 2013 case, minus the disparagement of Page, in its applications to the FISA court. They have been made public only in redacted form, professing evidence that Page was “recruited” by Russian intelligence and had “coordinated” with the Russian government. But “that’s a mischaracterization of the facts in the case,” a congressional source said.
Does the FISA Court have contempt power?
UH-OH: Unpatched routers being used to build vast proxy army, spy on networks. “Multiple malware campaigns are spreading hacks of MikroTik gear, including failed Monero miners.”
According to a report by Netlab 360’s Genshen Ye, more than 7,500 of them are actively being spied on by attackers, who are actively forwarding full captures of their network traffic to a number of remote servers. Additionally, 239,000 of the devices have been turned into SOCKS 4 proxies accessible from a single, small Internet address block.
MikroTik provides routing and wireless hardware for Internet service providers and businesses worldwide, including ISP and campus network infrastructure such as outdoor fiber routers and wireless backbones. The vulnerable routers discovered by Netlab 360, still configured with an unpatched interface for the company’s Winbox router configuration utility, are widely distributed—but the largest concentrations of affected networks were in Brazil and Russia. There were 14,000 devices identified operating using US-based IP addresses.
Previously, researchers at Trustwave had discovered two malware campaigns against MikroTik routers based on an exploit reverse-engineered from a tool in the Vault7 leak—the first originally targeting routers in Brazil with CoinHive malware. The attack injected the Coinhive JavaScript into an error page presented by the routers’ Web proxy server—and redirected all Web requests from the network to that error page. However, in routers affected by this type of malware found by the Netlab 360 team, the attackers had shot themselves in the foot. “All the external web resources, including those from coinhive.com necessary for web mining, are blocked by the proxy ACLs (access control lists) set by attackers themselves,” noted Ye.
I’ve been very happy with the security features of Ubiquiti’s UniFi line of prosumer-grade network gear, which came recommended to me by an IT friend.
MORE CORRUPTION ISSUES FOR ANDREW GILLUM: Sloppy redaction shows large deposit into candidate’s account. Reason: Pay the bills. “The deposit came during the FBI investigation into public corruption in Tallahassee and just days before Gillum took a now-scrutinized overseas trip with his friend and lobbyist, Adam Corey. On May 5, less than a week after the deposit, Gillum went to Costa Rica with his wife, Corey, and several other couples. His campaign said Tuesday in releasing the documents that Gillum paid cash to someone in the group for his and his wife’s share of a villa. The campaign has not said who received the money. Corey’s lawyer has said that he did not receive payment from Gillum.”
THE CRAZY ONES: Michael Barone: Democrats’ visions of hand signals from white supremacists.
The meaning of this gesture was not lost on certain alert viewers. “Who is she? What’s up with the white power sign?” tweeted one Keith R. Dumas. Further enlightened tweets streamed in. From TV actor Kelly Mantle: “This neo-nazi is Zina Bash. She’s intentionally throwin [sic] up White Power signs at a Supreme Court Justice hearing. On national TV. She works for Kavanaugh & is also one of the writers for Trump’s immigration policy. This is their new Amerikkka.”
Author Jamie Ford: “Zina Bash, who works for Kavanaugh, quietly flashing the white power sign. Welcome to the dystopia, folks.”
Tommy Christopher, writer for a George Soros-funded website: “The woman sitting behind Kavanaugh giving what appears to be a white supremactist ‘Pepe’ salute has been identified as Zina Bash, member of Trump’s transition, domestic policy, and now SCOTUS team.”
Eugene Gu, MD: “Kavanaugh’s former law clerk Zina Bash is flashing a white power sign behind him during his Senate confirmation hearing. They literally want to bring white supremacy to the Supreme Court. What a national outrage and a disgrace to the rule of law.”
These people and the scores who tweeted in their support were deterred not a bit by the fact that Zina Bash is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, and that her mother is a native of Mexico. Not a likely white supremacist.
They seem not to have wondered why a white supremacist would find it necessary or useful to communicate such beliefs by an obscure hand gesture that isn’t really a white supremacist hand gesture, when so many other forms of communication are readily available and more easily concealed from alert eyes like their own.
They seem to find it inconceivable that everyone doesn’t know that the hand gesture recognized universally and for many years in this country as signifying “OK” now signifies support of white supremacy.
In other words, they have taken leave of their senses.
The more they tell us Trump is crazy, the crazier they themselves act.
BUT AN ANONYMOUS OP-ED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES TOLD ME THAT TRUMP IS AN INCOMPETENT TODDLER: Kim Wants to Denuclearize During Trump’s Term, South Korea Says.
REMEMBER LAST WEEKEND WHEN IT WAS ALL ABOUT CIVILITY, DECORUM, AND BIPARTISANSHIP? Feinstein Incites Progressive Outrage After Apologizing to Kavanaugh for Hearing Disruptions.
HMM: China ‘nearing mass production’ of J-20 stealth fighter after engine problems ironed out.
The WS-15 engine features cutting-edge single-crystal turbine blades and has been in development for several years, but Chinese technicians have struggled to get it into mass production.
However, many of the problems – which largely related to blades overheating at top speeds – have been ironed out in ground tests and trial flights, putting the goal of a consistently high quality product in sight, sources told the South China Morning Post.
I’ll believe China is producing First World jet engines when they find export customers for them who aren’t s—hole countries.
Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov are being hunted in connection with the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal, Yulia Skripal and police officer Nick Bailey.
The men are also facing charges of conspiracy to murder 67-year-old Mr Skripal, the use and possession of novichok contrary to the Chemical Weapons Act, and causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Yulia Skripal and Mr Bailey.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Prime Minster Theresa May said the two suspects were officers of the Russian intelligence service GRU. She said “only Russia” had the motive to carry out the attack.
Well, yeah.
DON’T REGULATE THEM, BREAK THEM UP: Congress Wants Tighter Regulation of Social Media Giants Ahead of Midterm Elections.
Related: BBC: Could Google Flip Elections?
Also Related: Could Facebook Swing An Election?
I FAIL TO SEE A PROBLEM HERE: China Is Getting Less Bang for Its R&D Buck Than Peers.
You would think that with their reputation for being a “fast follower” and all that stolen IP that China would get more out of less spending, but apparently not.
JEFF SANDERS: Are There Really Jihadist Training Camps in the U.S.?
WELL, YES: As we praise John McCain for civil discourse, we liberals ought to recall how we treated him.
Like body odor and accented speech, however, incivility is a lot easier to notice in the other guy than in yourself. So I hope that those of us at universities will pause for a moment and ask ourselves how we, too, have eroded the civil discourse that McCain held dear.
How many professors have made snarky comments about Republican candidates or causes, instead of engaging our conservative students in respectful dialogue? How many students have denounced anyone they disagree with as racist, thereby cutting off discussion instead of promoting it?
And how many of us have insisted that only certain views — our own, of course — should be aired on campus, and that opposing ones should be discouraged or prohibited?
That’s what happened at the New School in 2006, when nearly 1,000 students and faculty signed a petition urging the school to rescind its invitation to McCain. “Pre-emptive War is Not a New School Value,” declared one sign at a rally outside the school. Other protesters denounced McCain’s position on abortion. “He has been opposed to Roe vs. Wade for more than 20 years,” one professor told the rally. “He is a man who believes in female sexual slavery.”
Got that? We (always “we”) are opposed to the war in Iraq, so we don’t want to hear from anyone who thinks otherwise. And if you’re pro-life, you don’t belong here either. In fact, you’re an advocate of slavery!
And so it goes, right down the line. If you question affirmative action, you’re a bigot; if you oppose gay marriage, you’re a homophobe; and if you resist gender-neutral bathrooms, you’re a transphobe.
Mind you, not everyone on our campuses believes that. But enough people do that they’re able to inject fear in others.
Well, all you have to do to know that the civility bullshit is bullshit is to observe the transition from the McCain funeral to the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing. And honestly, the stuff he covers doesn’t even scratch the surface of what was done to and said about McCain by lefties.