JULIETTE “BALDILOCKS” OCHIENG: It’s not just Vox, it’s happening to me, too. “On January 1, 2020, it will severely limit all of my gigs. In short, AB5 limits me to 35 pieces of freelance work per year for an individual recipient. This include my blogging here at DaTechGuy Blog. Most of you know that I live in Los Angeles. Back in 2013, Peter invited to me to be one of his Da Magnificent Seven. Initially, each of us contributed one blog post per week, but, a few years back, we upped the number to two a week which, of course, means that I post here 104 times per year. You can figure out the impact. By the way, Peter — who lives in Massachusetts — is an awesome boss and a great guy.”
Archive for 2019
December 18, 2019
FLASHBACK: Flashback: 58% of Democrats supported impeaching Trump … a month after he was sworn in. I suspect the number was about the same the day after the election.
ANDREW DAVIS: A House Divided: Impeachment As The New Normal. “Impeachment is the figurative ejector seat in our democracy. It was designed as a measure of last resort to protect the nation from its president. Does anyone really believe this phone call passes muster? We have now chosen to employ impeachment twice in twenty-one years, after using it only once before in the history of our nation. We have impeached two out of the last four presidents. Let that sink in. This is a dismal reflection on the state of our politics.”
OUT ON A LIMB: Impeachment debate a hyper-partisan, hate-filled charade.
ADVERSARY TECHNOLOGY: Washington Post Hacked into a Chevy Volt to Show How Much Cars Are Spying on Their Owners.
For now, exactly what information goes where is a bit of an unknown by anyone other than the automakers themselves. As Fowler writes, “My Chevy’s dashboard didn’t say what the car was recording. It wasn’t in the owner’s manual. There was no way to download it.”
To figure this out, Fowler had someone hack into the Volt. He discovered that the car was recording details about where the car was driven and parked, call logs, identification information for his phone and contact information from his phone, “right down to people’s address, emails and even photos.” In another example, Fowler bought a Chevy infotainment computer on eBay and was able to extract private information from it about whoever owned it before him, including pictures of the person the previous owner called “Sweetie.”
While GM was the subject of Fowler’s experiments, it’s not the only company collecting data on its drivers. In 2017, the U.S. Government Accountability Office looked at automakers and their data privacy policies and found that the 13 car companies it looked at are not exactly using best practices. For example, while the automakers say they obtain “explicit consumer consent before collecting data,” the GAO says they “offered few options besides opting out of all connected vehicle services to consumers who did not want to share their data.”
Hey, you just bought it. Doesn’t mean you own it. At least, not if “owning it” means it works excusively for you.
ROGER SIMON: Trump Should Not Prolong Boring Impeachment Battle. “For once I agree with McConnell. Enough already. This House impeachment session was like having root canal—without anesthesia. Twice a year is more than enough for visits to the dentist.”
BRYAN PRESTON: The U.S.-China Trade Deal: A Tentative Win for American National Security.
Bryan’s new Kindle book, Hubble’s Revelations: The Amazing Time Machine and Its Most Important Discoveries, drops on Friday.
TAKINGS NEWS: Court Rules Federal Government Flooding of Homes During Hurricane Harvey is a Taking. “The decision is significant in itself and has important implications for other cases where the government deliberately damages private property in the process of coping with natural disasters.”
MEANWHILE, IN THE BATTLEGROUND STATE OF MICHIGAN: ‘Impeach this’: Long line forms for Trump rally in Battle Creek. Impeachment is a reality show. They’ve chosen to fight on Trump’s home ground.
DANIEL GREENFIELD: Bloomberg Shows Reporters Are Political Operatives.
Michael Bloomberg will never be the President of the United States. He poses no threat to President Trump. But his ambitions and ego have already inflicted a severe blow on the media. Bloomberg’s actions have opened up a debate within the media about the legitimacy of his outlet’s coverage. Even while starring in his very own version of Citizen Kane, he exposed the truth about what the media is.
Some conservatives are content to criticize media bias. But the media is no more biased than Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, or Michael Bloomberg are biased. They’re politicians. The media is a political operation. Its personnel are political operatives. Their goal is no different than that of the politicians they support. Some politicians employ them, as in Bloomberg’s case, or, as is more common, their major donors do.
President Trump and the GOP were right to dump Bloomberg News. The Washington Post and the New York Times should be next.
Political operatives don’t deserve press credentials on the campaigns they’re working to undermine.
And the hits just keep on coming: Fake news report costs Bloomberg $7.6m in fines: “France’s financial markets watchdog on Monday (Dec 16) hit Bloomberg with a five million euro (S$7.6 million) fine for a report based on a fake news release that triggered a plunge in the shares of French construction giant Vinci and wiped billions off its market value.”
JOE BATTENFELD: Impeachment debate a hyper-partisan, hate-filled charade.
AT AMAZON, Holiday Savings in Automotive.
OPERATION CHOKEPOINT: THE PRIVATIZED VERSION. New Facebook/Instagram Policy Bans Branded Content From 2A Influencers.
COCAINE MITCH DON’T MESS AROUND: McConnell fires back: Let’s adopt the 1999 rules — with the option for dismissal. “Remember when the Senate could come to a unanimous, bipartisan approach to rules governing an impeachment trial? Good times, good times. In fact, those were such good times that Mitch McConnell wants to bring them back. Rather than keep having his counterpart Chuck Schumer negotiate via MSNBC, the Senate Majority Leader announced that he’ll simply reinstate the rules package that governed Bill Clinton’s impeachment twenty years ago. By the way, that also includes a dismissal option.”
Plus: “It’s not just Schumer who will be stuck in a vise. Voters will likely see this re-use of previously unanimous rules as a reasonable and fair approach. Any Democrats who vote against this set of rules will have to explain why they suited Bill Clinton’s impeachment but aren’t sufficient for Donald Trump’s. The only substantial difference between them is that Clinton’s impeachment clearly established a statutory crime (perjury), while House Democrats have established nothing of the sort, and are relying solely on hearsay and conjecture for both articles of impeachment.”
GROUND GAME: For Every New Registered Democrat In Florida This Year, Republicans Have Added Two Voters of Their Own. I may be wrong, but my impression is that a lot of areas where the GOP used to be flailing seem to be doing better now.
ADHERING TO OUR ENEMIES, GIVING THEM AID AND COMFORT: Expert: Cash Transferred by Obama Admin to Tehran Led to Expansion of Iranian Military Budget by 39 Percent. But if a GOP Congress had tried to impeach Obama over this, they would have been called racist conspiracy theorists.
INDIVIDUAL MANDATE RULED ILLEGAL.
A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate runs afoul of the Constitution now that it is no longer a tax.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, remanded the case back to the lower court to evaluate whether other parts of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, can still stand.
“There is no other constitutional provision that justifies this exercise of congressional power,” wrote Judge Jennifer Elrod, a Bush appointee. . . .
After facing a number of legal battles, the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate in 2012, saying it was a tax under the Constitution’s taxing powers.
But in 2017, as part of the Republican majority’s tax overhaul bill, the penalty for failing to purchase healthcare coverage was changed to zero — leading to the current legal battle over whether the individual mandate can still legally stand as a tax.
Nope.
UPDATE: While everyone was focused on impeachment, 5th Circuit cut the legs out from under Obamacare.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY ACTIVISTS WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: CNN’s Maeve Reston Can’t Stop Fawning Over the Dems She Covers. “An analysis of her campaign coverage suggests Reston’s approach to reporting on Democrats closely resembles the coverage President Donald Trump believes he ought to be receiving in light of his historically successful presidency.”
WAR ON THE ROCKS: There Was No “Secret War on the Truth” in Afghanistan. “The story the Post is telling is neither wholly true, nor supported by the documents it published. Instead, the Post’s reporting puts sensationalist spin on information that was not classified, has already been described in publicly-available reports, only covers a fraction of the 18 years of the war, and falls far short of convincingly demonstrating a campaign of deliberate lies and deceit.”
Nonsense, the Post wouldn’t publish it if it weren’t true.