THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST: Bill de Blasio Roasted for Quoting Che Guevara at Miami Campaign Stop.
UPDATE (From Ed): De Blasio attempts to backtrack, but c’mon:
More: “It’s not the first time [de Blasio] used that Che Guevara quote. He said it during the 2013 mayoral race too, per this report,” former NY Post reporter Yoav Gonen tweets.
FLASHBACK: A President Clinton Would Be Out Of Control.
Hotel magnate Leona Helmsley famously said “only little people pay taxes.” Clinton seems to feel the same way about obeying laws.
It won’t be that way with a President Trump. This isn’t because Trump is any less arrogant than Clinton (though it would be hard to be more arrogant). It’s because more people will be willing to tell Trump no. The civil service, which leans overwhelmingly Democratic, won’t be bending over backwards to do his will. The press can’t stand him. And Congress, even if controlled by the GOP, won’t support him if he misbehaves because so many Republicans dislike him, too.
The truth is, neither one of our leading candidates for president is a paragon of virtue. But only one of them has already made a habit of flouting the law while in office, selling favors and escaping the consequences, and only one of them is likely to be able to pull it off from the White House.
Truer than I knew on October 30, 2016.
THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT: Running a marathon ramps up levels of a gut bacteria that made mice run faster, but it’s unclear whether it would work in people.
BUT DO THEY, REALLY? “Joe Biden’s Iraq Decisions Haunt Him in 2020,” DNC house organ the Atlantic claims:
The criticism tends to focus on Biden’s Senate vote for a resolution authorizing military force in Iraq, which George W. Bush used to justify his invasion. But his time leading Iraq policy during Barack Obama’s first term is more relevant to the present moment. Whoever wins the presidency in 2020 likely will confront a similar dilemma to the one Biden then faced: a lingering U.S. troop presence, a war-weary U.S. public, and an enemy that is down but not yet defeated.
This story begins in early 2009, after Obama swept into office promising to end the deeply unpopular war in Iraq. There were still 150,000 American soldiers in the country. The newly inaugurated president turned to his vice president and told him to bring the troops home. “We were sitting in the Oval Office one day and talking about [the troop presence], and Obama looked at Biden and said, ‘Joe, I think you should do this. We need sustained focus from the White House. You know Iraq better than anyone,’” Antony Blinken, Biden’s national security adviser, told me. “It was as simple as that.”
The gravity of that mission for a man who’d played a part in starting the war was apparent. Seventy-six senators, including 28 Democrats, had joined Biden in the fateful 2002 vote, but he bore special responsibility as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. (He claimed at the time that the authorization would avert war by pushing Saddam Hussein to let weapons inspectors into the country, and later argued that Bush had misused it.) In the years since the invasion, he’d traveled often to Iraq, building relationships with the war’s key players.
Biden threw himself into the mission. He chaired meetings and oversaw negotiations. By the end of 2011, the war was over, and the American troops had left. “He is the guy who oversaw the drawdown, in effect, on the political side, of U.S. forces from 150,000 to virtually zero,” Blinken told me.
Then it all went horribly wrong.
SEVERELY CONSERVATIVE: Mitt Romney, On Track to Being Worse For GOP Than John McCain.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: EDC Medical Gear: On-Body Carry Methods & Tools.
THEY NEVER MISS AN OPPORTUNITY TO MISS AN OPPORTUNITY: What if They Offered the Palestinians $50 Billion and No One Showed Up?
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: E. Jean Carroll: ‘I Have Not Been Raped.’
HMM: ‘Dark patterns’ are steering many internet users into making bad decisions.
Classic example: You encounter a prompt asking if you want to sign up for some program or service, and the box is already checked. If you don’t uncheck it — that is, if you do nothing — you’re enrolled.
A bipartisan bill has been introduced in Congress that would prohibit websites and online platforms (hi, Facebook!) from employing such deliberately deceptive tactics, and would empower the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on sites that keep trying to fool people.
The Deceptive Experiences to Online User Reduction Act (a.k.a. the DETOUR Act) is the brainchild of Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.). They’re hoping the legislation will be included as part of sweeping privacy regulations now under consideration in the Senate Commerce Committee.
Warner and Fischer will be hosting tech and privacy experts on Tuesday for a Capitol Hill seminar on the various ways consumers can be hoodwinked online.
“For years, social media platforms have been relying on all sorts of tricks and tools to convince users to hand over their personal data without really understanding what exactly it is that they’re handing over,” Warner told me.
He says website developers aren’t stupid. They closely study behavioral psychology to understand how internet users can be most easily misled.
“Our bill is pretty simple,” Warner said. “We just want consumers to be able to make more informed choices about how and when to share their personal information.”
I’d settle for a 30% cut of the action instead.
FLASHBACK: It’s too easy to form a mob today. Where are our protections from online mob ‘justice?’. “Mob action has always been a reliable means of obtaining emotional catharsis and validation. Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, mob action no longer requires any significant investment of time or physical energy. In essence, mobs have been subsidized, so we’re getting more of them.”
IF YOU LIKE YOUR PLAN, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR PLAN: Elizabeth Warren leaves no doubt: She’s ‘with Bernie’ on kicking 180 million people off of private insurance.
I hope the Antitrust Division will look into this concerted action against competitors. I’ve raised the issue before.
Remember, it was these American companies that helped China set up its infrastructure of tech dictatorship.
THE SCIENCE IS NOT SETTLED: “The benefits of aspirin therapy for the secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease clearly outweigh the risks of bleeding, and low-dose aspirin is uniformly recommended in this setting. However, no clear consensus exists about whether, and if so in whom, aspirin therapy is appropriate for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease.”
VIEW FROM THE PORCH: Island of Misfit Toys…
I hadn’t intended to watch Wednesday night’s session, since Thursday (featuring Harris, Sanders, Biden, and Buttigieg) looked more interesting. I’m glad I did, though, because there was at least one moment that was like Tumblr Come To Life.
For the most part, there weren’t many surprises. Klobuchar was composed but bland and staked out the Sensible Centrist position (Delaney kept trying to, but his inability to shut up didn’t help him) while most of the rest of the stage galloped hard to the left. Gabbard came across as very genuine, which unfortunately tends to translate as “bad on television”. Beto took a beating at the hands of Castro.
But the mayor of NYFC managed to come across as a stereotype of a New York F#&@ing City mayor.
Click on over for… the rest of the story.
JOURNOLIST* HAS BRAINFART: Democrats and Media Members Get Dragged for Political Flip-Flopping on Border Crisis.
* Or whatever its 2019 equivalent is called.
AT AMAZON, Deals Of The Day.
LARRY ELDER: Reparations: How Not to Foster Racial Harmony.
FASTER, PLEASE: New urine test might predict aggressiveness of prostate cancer.
CHRISTIAN ADAMS ON TODAY’S SUPREME COURT DECISIONS: “It was a bad day for the right, a very bad day for the left, and an extremely bad day for Chief Justice John Roberts…Whether or not the citizenship question can still be added to the Census before the printer needs the final proofs remains to be seen.”
Read the whole thing.
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