FORMER CIA BOSS CELEBRATES IMPEACHMENT: ‘Thank God for the Deep State!’
Related: Old and busted? The Deep State is merely a paranoid Republican conspiracy theory. The new hotness? NYT Columnist Admits Deep State Exists…To Protect Us From Trump.
Archive for 2019
November 1, 2019
AT AMAZON, Deal of the Day, Invicta Men’s 9212 Speedway Analog Japanese Quartz Chronograph Stainless Steel Watch.
Senate lawmakers proposed bipartisan legislation that would require search engines to disclose the algorithms they use in ranking internet searches and give consumers an option for unfiltered searches.
Search engines such as Alphabet Inc. ’s Google unit use a variety of measures to filter results for individual searches, such as the user’s browsing activity, search history and geographical location.
Critics have increasingly complained about algorithms enabling online-search and social-media companies to determine the content users see, with some on the right claiming the result is a form of censorship because certain views may be excluded. The big internet firms generally have denied such claims and contend that using profile information gives users better-tailored results.
The proposed Filter Bubble Transparency Act would require big online search engines and platforms to disclose that they are using algorithms to sort the information that users are requesting or are being encouraged to view.
The bill would also require the online search engines or platforms to offer a relatively unfiltered version of the same information if users ask for it.
The bill was filed by Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.) and is being co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers.
I called for something much like this in my The Social Media Upheaval. Glad someone was listening. My own senator, Marsha Blackburn, is a co-sponsor.
#JOURNALISM: New York Times Reporter Sat On Public Records Challenging Warren’s Pregnancy-Discrimination Claim.
A reporter who now works for the New York Times failed to report on public records which he obtained in April that cut against Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D., Mass.) claim that she was fired from a teaching position in 1971 due to pregnancy discrimination.
Reid Epstein, who was then working for the Wall Street Journal, filed an open-records request with the Riverdale Board of Education on April 2 seeking “to inspect or obtain” copies of public records relating to Warren’s time teaching at Riverdale during the 1970-1971 school year. In response to his request, Epstein received school-board minutes on April 10 that challenge Warren’s story, according to documents obtained by National Review through the New Jersey Open Records Act.
Epstein, who moved to the Times on April 19, never broke the story. . . . Epstein continued to publish articles at the Journal until May 4, none of which included reporting on the school-board minutes. His final byline was published more than three weeks after he received the relevant documents. He declined to comment when asked why he failed to report the story.
Well:
PAUL BEDARD: Report: Border crisis ‘is over,’ Trump ‘is due credit.’
While border apprehensions of illegal immigrants have reached a decade high, they did not hit the projected 1 million in 2019, leading experts to believe that the Trump administration has finally made good on its promise to stop the surge.
“The crisis is over,” said analyst Steven Kopits in a new report on the just-released fiscal year 2019 border crossing data.
Kopits, the president of Princeton Policy Advisors of Pennington, New Jersey, said the summer to fall drop in expected apprehensions followed the Trump administration’s success in getting Mexico and other Central American countries to help with the crisis.
“President Trump is due credit for the reduction in apprehensions,” said Kopits’s report, shared with Secrets.
He said that Trump’s “pressure” on Mexico to help stop the flood of migrants rushing through to the U.S. border “has led Mexico to take effective steps to prevent Central American migrant families from transiting to the U.S. border.”
U.S. officials, in announcing Customs and Border Protection data this week, said that the crisis is not over and by apprehending 851,507 on the southwest border, the numbers show that.
But Kopits noted that the number trailed off after the administration stepped up its efforts on the border, and they are having a significant impact in stopping the surge of illegal immigrants.
Hmmm. Related: About a mile of new wall built each day along Mexico border, Pentagon says.
VIDEO: I TALK ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA, and my The Social Media Upheaval, in a half-hour interview with Ben Weingarten.
TO BE FAIR, HE’S NOT THE FIRST 73-YEAR OLD TO DO SO: Trump officially ditches NYC, changes residence to Florida.
HEAP BIG: Warren’s no top-dollar fundraiser pledge includes big caveat.
Fowler and other Democratic leaders say Warren isn’t being honest about her fundraising plans if she were to become the party’s nominee. They say she can’t tell voters she is personally shunning big-dollar fundraisers while simultaneously headlining state and national party events at which she would raise millions of dollars from major donors supporting her bid for the White House.
“What I hope she understands is that after a candidate becomes the nominee, the DNC is their campaign and their campaign is the DNC,” said Rufus Gifford, Barack Obama’s 2012 finance chairman. “There is not a distinction that you can draw.”
Surprised?
BIG BROTHER: ACLU sues FBI, DOJ over facial-recognition technology, criticizing ‘unprecedented’ surveillance and secrecy. “The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday sued the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI for records detailing their use of facial-recognition software, arguing that the agencies have secretly implemented a nationwide surveillance technology that threatens Americans’ privacy and civil rights.”
I AGREE – IT’S DEFINITELY TIME TO END THE WAR IN VIETNAM: “Watch: Joe Biden says, ‘I’m going to make sure that we rejoin the Paris Peace Accord on day one.’ The Paris Peace Accords = a treaty to end the Vietnam War that was signed in 1973, Biden’s first year in the Senate. He’s not playing with a full deck, folks…”
To paraphrase the esteemed Senator John Blutarsky, was it over when the Paris Climate Accord bombed Pearl Harbor?!
CYBERSECURITY: WhatsApp hacked to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies.
Sources familiar with WhatsApp’s internal investigation into the breach said a “significant” portion of the known victims are high-profile government and military officials spread across at least 20 countries on five continents.
The hacking of a wider group of top government officials’ smartphones than previously reported suggests the WhatsApp cyber intrusion could have broad political and diplomatic consequences.
WhatsApp filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Israeli hacking tool developer NSO Group. The Facebook-owned software giant alleges that NSO Group built and sold a hacking platform that exploited a flaw in WhatsApp-owned servers to help clients hack into the cellphones of at least 1,400 users.
While it is not clear who used the software to hack officials’ phones, NSO says it sells its spyware exclusively to government customers.
Even allies eavesdrop on each other all the time. But you’re supposed to be extra-careful to not get caught at it, or put at risk a good relationship. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
ONE-PARTY DEMOCRATIC DOMINATION TAKES ITS TOLL: As Homelessness Surges in California, So Does a Backlash: Tent encampments across California are testing residents’ tolerance and compassion as street conditions deteriorate.
Insults like “financial parasites” and “bums” have been directed at them, not to mention rocks and pepper spray. Fences, potted plants and other barriers have been erected to keep them off sidewalks. Citizen patrols have been organized, vigilante style, to walk the streets and push them out.
California may pride itself on its commitment to tolerance and liberal values, but across the state, record levels of homelessness have spurred a backlash against those who live on the streets.
Gene Gorelik, a property developer in Oakland and an aggressive critic of the homeless, recently suggested luring the thousands of homeless people in the San Francisco Bay Area onto party buses stocked with alcohol and sending them on a one-way trip to Mexico. “Refugee camps in Syria are cleaner than this,” he said in an interview at a fast-food restaurant in Oakland that overlooks a homeless encampment.
Homelessness is an expanding crisis that comes amid skyrocketing housing prices, a widening gap between the rich and poor and the persistent presence on city streets of the mentally ill and drug-dependent despite billions of dollars spent to help them.
The point of the billions isn’t to help them. You know, I’m beginning to think Trump might be able to, er, “pounce” on this backlash and carry California. At the very least a lot more people will vote for him there than will admit it.
WHAT, NOT GLOBAL WARMING?! Massive California wildfire sparked by stolen car fleeing cops.
AND THEY WEREN’T EVEN COY ABOUT IT: Impeachment Has Been Their Plan All Along.
THOSE #METOO TORPEDOES WERE SUPPOSED TO TAKE OUT TRUMP, NOT CIRCLE AROUND AND NAIL OUR PEOPLE! Media Mourn Katie Hill.
MY HOUSE IS A WRECK: In their justly famous article, “Broken Windows,” George Kelling and James Q. Wilson put forward the theory that disorder invites crime. When people see a disorder around them—broken windows, graffiti, trash, loitering, etc.—they act as if they have been given permission to engage in petty and not-so-petty crime. Communities that fix broken windows, clean up graffiti and trash, and discourage loitering will thus prevent crime.
I have the following corollary: Bathroom remodeling leads to slovenly behavior. My bathroom is currently being made into what I hope will soon be a wonderland of blue and white talavera tile. In the meantime, the area around the bathroom is unavoidably untidy. Alas, I have succumbed to the tendency Kelling & Wilson warned of. So far I haven’t broken any laws that I know of. But the whole house looks like a tornado hit it. My bad ….
October 31, 2019
AT AMAZON, ComfortZone Motion Detector Space Heater.
FALLEN ANGELS IS JUST A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? GUYS? Utah sees record cold of -43.6 ºF – ‘Perhaps the lowest October temperature ever recorded’ in continental U.S.
Meanwhile, just miles from me, Mt. LeConte Lodge reports 25 degrees and a significant snowfall.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Trump is hilarious, but the people who hate him are totally cut off from the fun. To be fair, they’re not fun people.
THIS THREAD IS PRETTY MUCH A BEATDOWN:
I mean sure, it’s Jen Rubin. But hey, Pierre Delecto took her seriously . . . .
UPDATE (From Ed): Double Whammy: CBS Journo Jan Crawford Shuts Down Hillary Clinton, Jen Rubin Over Trump Judicial Nominee Criticism.
OPEN THREAD: Start your engines.
THURSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM: “Kids from poorer neighborhoods keep coming to trick-or-treat in mine. Do I have to give them candy?”
Found via Bridget Phetasy who tweets, “lol this is the best description of limo liberals I’ve ever read. ‘Hate has no home here. But neither do the poors.’”
(Classical reference in headline.)
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Are You Overdue for a Sexual Makeover?