SO NOW THE PRESS IS CALLING ARMED HOME INVADERS “UNWANTED HOUSE VISITORS.”

I can’t do better than this response:

CONSTITUTION-DENIERS VS. CONSTITUTION DEFENDERS: Dems Introduce Gun-Ban Bill as GOP Seeks to Expand Gun-Carry Protections.

NEXT UP, SELF-REPLICATING ROBOTS FOR TERRAFORMING MARS? Robots can now carry out plutonium production process for space exploration.

PRIVACY: I Gave a Bounty Hunter $300. Then He Located Our Phone. “T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are selling access to their customers’ location data, and that data is ending up in the hands of bounty hunters and others not authorized to possess it, letting them track most phones in the country.”

More:

The bounty hunter sent the number to his own contact, who would track the phone. The contact responded with a screenshot of Google Maps, containing a blue circle indicating the phone’s current location, approximate to a few hundred metres.

Queens, New York. More specifically, the screenshot showed a location in a particular neighborhood—just a couple of blocks from where the target was. The hunter had found the phone (the target gave their consent to Motherboard to be tracked via their T-Mobile phone.)

The bounty hunter did this all without deploying a hacking tool or having any previous knowledge of the phone’s whereabouts. Instead, the tracking tool relies on real-time location data sold to bounty hunters that ultimately originated from the telcos themselves, including T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint, a Motherboard investigation has found. These surveillance capabilities are sometimes sold through word-of-mouth networks.

And:

Although many users may be unaware of the practice, telecom companies in the United States sell access to their customers’ location data to other companies, called location aggregators, who then sell it to specific clients and industries. Last year, one location aggregator called LocationSmart faced harsh criticism for selling data that ultimately ended up in the hands of Securus, a company which provided phone tracking to low level enforcement without requiring a warrant. LocationSmart also exposed the very data it was selling through a buggy website panel, meaning anyone could geolocate nearly any phone in the United States at a click of a mouse.

Carriers should be on the hook for serious civil and maybe even criminal liability for this reckless selling of confidential information.

TREATING OBAMA LIKE OBAMA TREATED BUSH: Trump’s secretary of state slams Obama’s ‘misguided’ Mideast policy.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a scathing rebuke of the Obama administration’s Mideast policies on Thursday, accusing the former president of “misguided” thinking that diminished America’s role in the region while harming its longtime friends and emboldening Iran.

In a speech to the American University in Cairo, Pompeo unloaded on President Trump’s predecessor, saying he was naive and timid when confronted with challenges posed by the revolts that convulsed the Middle East, including Egypt, beginning in 2011.

Pompeo denounced the vision outlined by then-President Barack Obama in a speech he gave in Cairo in 2009 in which he spoke of “a new beginning” for U.S. relations with countries in the Arab and Muslim world.

“Remember: It was here, here in this very city, another American stood before you,” Pompeo told an invited audience of Egyptian officials, foreign diplomats and students. “He told you that radical Islamist terrorism does not stem from ideology. He told you 9/11 led my country to abandon its ideals, particularly in the Middle East. He told you that the United States and the Muslim world needed ‘a new beginning.’ The results of these misjudgments have been dire.”

Well, thanks to Obama’s policies — and Hillary Clinton’s — black people are sold as slaves in Libya, so I’d call that dire.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: ‘Venezuela is a cradle of terrorism,’ member of underground resistance group tells i24NEWS.

REAGAN’S FAREWELL ADDRESS: ‘Informed patriotism’ in 1989 and 2019.

CHARLIE MARTIN: The Stupidest Argument of the Week. “Among the many many stupid arguments this week is the one about walls and tunnels.”

I GUESS I’M DOING IT WRONG: Model stayed thin thanks to steady diet of ‘tapas and cocaine.’

FROM HOLLY LISLE (I’M ALMOST DONE READING THIS, AND ENJOYING IT IMMENSELY):  The Longview Chronicles: The Complete Saga [BOXED SET – BOOKS 1-6] (Tales from the Longview).

When the trusted are monsters… one monster becomes a hero.

In the vast reaches of Settled Space, everything is legal, or at least obtainable privately… for a price.

Science has created near immortality, and the wealthy and powerful are buying it to make themselves gods. But these gods require — and create — an endless procession of slaves and sacrifices for their amusement.

Until one twisted creature born to be a sacrifice discovers the truth. This escaped slave declares a secret war against corruption, enslavement , and the wealthy, powerful men and women woh have declared themselves gods, and made their whims law.

THE COMPLETE SERIES IN ONE VOLUME

Born From Fire
The Selling of Suzee Delight
The Philosopher Gambit
Gunslinger Moon
Vipers’ Nest
The Owner’s Tale.

In one volume with all the original afterwords and one new afterword specifically for this collection.

MEET THE LONGVIEW – An Ancient Spaceship Resurrected To Transport Conspiracy

Inhabited by a crew of misfits fleeing nightmare pasts, with a cargo of Condemned slated to die at the hands of the highest bidders, and with a passenger roster made up exclusively of people NOT who they claim to be, The Longview serves the hidden agenda of an eccentric recluse bent on playing puppetmaster to all of Settled Space.

IS LINDSEY BACK TO HIS OLD HABITS?  YOU KNOW THE LEOPARD NEVER CHANGES HIS SHORTS*:  Kushner and Graham are on the case, what could go wrong?

*Yes, I do know it’s spots, but as it happens I was reading Pratchett in the middle of the day.

NAH. WE JUST MAGNIFY THE DUMBASS VOICES:  The Great Issue of Our Time…

OH, DEAR, DEAR LORD:  And the Beto Goes On…the Road.

OH DEAR LORD:  Starbucks’ Needle Disposal Boxes and Chai Latte.

SO SHOCKED. MUCH SURPRISE. WOW:  CNN Analyst Files Nails, Doesn’t Care About Border Security.

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO?  Chocolate is a better fix for your cough than medicine: study.

NOW, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY I WAS PROMISED:  Eyes might be the secret to accurately measuring pain.

YOU KNOW, I CAN’T DISLIKE THAT: As God and Heinlein intended.

I’M AFRAID TO TELL CHARLIE THIS IS NOT THE STUPIDEST ARGUMENT AGAINST THE WALL. I HEARD THE STUPIDEST HOURS AGO. IF WE BUILD A WALL… WAIT FOR IT…. MEXICANS WILL COME IN VIA CANADA!  I… LIBERALS MAKE MY HEAD HURT.  The Stupidest Argument of the Week.

CHUTZPAH ALERT: I Sure Hope Mitt Romney Primaries Trump, Says … Harry Reid. Harry. Reid.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Tragedy of the Starbucks Commons.

THROWING SOME LOCAL SHADE AT CNN’S JIM ACOSTA:

EPIC SELF-OWN: Jim Acosta May Have Just Proved Trump’s Point With This Video He Just Shared From the Border.

CNN reporter Jim Acosta, who President Trump, and his associates often spar with, shared a video from the U.S.-Mexico border Thursday as he awaits Trump’s arrival. As he walked along a part of the border with a steel barrier, Acosta tried to upend Trump’s narrative that there’s a “crisis” at the border. To the contrary, Acosta observed, there didn’t appear to be any emergency and it was in fact, quite “tranquil.”

Fox Butterfield could not be reached for comment.

UPDATE: Trump trolls Acosta with “Dear Diary” tweet.

THIS WHOLE “RELATABLE” THING IS A FAD:

The thing is, as Elizabeth Warren’s painful attempt illustrates, if you don’t have the deft touch it comes across as awful.

MEDIA MYTH ALERT: Seattle Times rant deplores ‘debasement of reality’ but invokes prominent media myth.