TROLL LEVEL: POTUS DJT. Trump lights up Twitter ahead of his own Manchester rally, Dems’ NH primary.
Archive for 2020
February 10, 2020
CAN WE GET A CLASS-ACTION SUIT FOR DAMAGES? Chinese Intel Officers Indicted for Stealing Personal Data of 145 Million Americans in Equifax Hack.
I’M SORRY, BUT WITH THAT HEADLINE YOU’LL NEED TO BE MORE SPECIFIC: The MSNBC anchor who knew too little.
MSNBC’s Katy Tur, who anchors a weekday politics show, does not seem to know much about politics.
This is what happens when you promote someone based on popularity rather than merit.
On Friday, Tur, who became media-famous in 2016 after then-GOP candidate Donald Trump was mean to her, asked a guest whether gerrymandering could be used to break up Republican control of the U.S. Senate.
“Is gerrymandering something that would help improve the situation? How does that sort of divide promote consensus in the Senate, or even in the House?” she asked.
Senate races are not determined by gerrymandered districts as there is no such thing as a Senate district. The races are statewide. That a political journalist would not know this is absurd. That the anchor of a politics news show would not know this is something far beyond absurd. I am not sure if there is even a word for it.
The word is “#journalism.”
WEIRD THAT NONE OF THE DEMS RUNNING AGAINST HIM HAVE BROUGHT IT UP SO FAR: Sanders has a bizarre radical past that Trump and Republicans would use to destroy him. Also, what do they disagree with him on today?
POPULATION MOVING TO LOWER TAXED STATES WITH FEWER LAWYERS: A Truth-in-Accounting (TIA) analysis of the latest IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) data shows states with the highest taxes, most deficit spending and more lawyers per capita losing the most population, while states with the lowest taxes, least deficit spending and fewer lawyers per capita are gaining the most. So when are the politicians going to get out in front of this parade?
ROGER SIMON: Socialized Medicine in the Shadow of Wuhan.
My last argument against socialized medicine is that it is, ironically, much more hierarchical than ours. Despite what Michael Moore might tell you in his thoroughly-dishonest film about Cuban healthcare, socialist countries are the last place you would want to be if sick—that is if you’re not a member of the politburo or at least the nomenklatura.
I was in the Soviet Union twice on cultural exchanges in the late eighties, about the same time as Bernie Sanders’ honeymoon in the same country. (I don’t think we really visited the same place.) Because I was with a group of screenwriters, I was taken to Scriptwriter 1 and 2, two relatively nondescript high-rises inhabited entirely by writers whose work was approved by the state.
Several of them told me they didn’t really wish to live there—too many writers and little contact with the people they were writing about and for. Also, they felt watched. So I asked why they stayed. It was, they told me unanimously, the only building in Moscow with a decent clinic.
Read the whole thing.
HE HASN’T CHANGED: Sanders Dismisses Question About His Support For a Maximum Wage. “Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) on Sunday refused to discuss his support for a ‘maximum wage’ during his early days in Vermont politics, calling the unearthing of such radical proposals not ‘productive’.”
“Productive” depends on what it is you’re trying to accomplish, whether that’s to further an agenda or obfuscate it.
WHAT INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM AND SEXISM LOOKS LIKE: White male administrator resigns so faculty don’t have to censure his black female boss.
HMM: Powerful Cyber Attack Takes Down 25% Of Iranian Internet.
The NetBlocks internet observatory, which maps internet freedom in real-time, confirmed that there was extensive Iranian telecommunications network disruption on the morning of February 8. The internet observatory, an accurate and impartial monitor of internet availability, uses a combination of measurement and classification techniques to detect disruptions and critical infrastructure cyber-attacks in real-time. In a NetBlocks tweet, the national internet connectivity drop to 75% was said to be due to Iranian authorities activating the “Digital Fortress” cyber-defense mechanism, also known as DZHAFA.
In a NetBlocks report, the DEZHFA activation is said to have been implemented in order to “repel a cyber-attack on the country’s infrastructure.” With both fixed-line and mobile network providers impacted, it was seven hours before normal internet connectivity was resumed. A spokesperson for Iran’s Telecommunication Infrastructure Company, affiliated to the ministry of ICT and Iran’s sole provider of telecommunications infrastructure, Sadjad Bonabi, tweeted that a “distributed denial of service attack” (DDoS) had been “normalized” with the “intervention of the Dzhafa Shield.”
Us? The Israelis? A private actor?
MAYBE IT’S JUST ME, BUT MIKE BLOOMBERG’S WEBSITE APPEARS AWFULLY VANILLA AND CORPORATE.
On the other hand, coming straight from Google, Pete Buttigieg wants me to give them my email and zip code before I’m allowed to proceed to the actual website, which is pretty lame. (I bypassed that with some URL surgery).
Amy Klobuchar hits me up for that — and for a donation — but does let me get past the cruft to the actual website eventually.
Likewise, Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders, though I’m kinda afraid Sanders’ site will somehow just vacuum money straight out of my bank account.
Weirdly, I’d say that Joe Biden has the most professional looking political site.
HOW TO RESPOND: Nigel Farage challenges heckler, ‘Why don’t you listen and ask questions?’ “The heckler left the room after being confronted by Federalist Society members hosting the event.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Joe Biden Is a Cry for Help. “Remember, Biden was supposed to be the safe, sane option for the Democrats in this election.”
Ouch.
THEIR MOTIVES AREN’T PURE BUT THEY’RE RIGHT: WaPo, trying to tank Sanders: Let’s face it. None of these Democrats are “centrists.”
TRAINING FOR PERSISTENT ATTACK: An MQ-9 flies over the Nevada Test and Training Range.
CHINESE ASTROTURF: Narrative fail in Canada.
China recently discovered how astroturfing, creating fake “grassroots” support, loses its impact when the deception aspect is revealed. A recent example (late January 2020) occurred outside a western Canada (Vancouver) courthouse as demonstrators assembled to protest efforts to extradite a Chinese telecommunications executive. This was a big deal in China because this defendant worked for Huawei, the largest telecom company in China and the world. A crowd gathered carrying signs demanding the release of the Huawei executive. One sign even made reference to a pair or Canadian diplomats arrested in China and charged with espionage. That was relevant because the diplomats were actually taken as hostages to pressure the Canadian government to release the Huawei executive. Soon after the demonstrators began their protest things took a turn for the bizarre.
Read the entire post.
RELATED: My review of Chinese Communist Espionage.
CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: Coronavirus cases outside China may be ‘tip of the iceberg’ – WHO.
Coronavirus’ ‘case-fatality rate’ could range from 1% up to 18%.
Coronavirus in Singapore: Of the 45 cases so far, local cases exceed imported ones.
Coronavirus cases aboard quarantined cruise ship nearly doubles, bringing total to 135.
Coronavirus kills 97 in the deadliest day of the outbreak.
Inflation in China is running rampant because of the coronavirus.
Coronavirus cases on rise again in China; 65 more cases on cruise ship in Japan.
President Xi Inspects Coronavirus Hospital in Beijing After Conspicuous Absence.
Nissan to temporarily halt production at Japan factory due to coronavirus – Nikkei.
Coronavirus causing Apple supply chain disruptions.
LPGA cancels 2 Asian golf tournaments due to coronavirus.
Therapeutic options for the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).
Coronavirus breakthrough could help curb spread of the virus.
Coronavirus ‘serious and imminent threat’ to British public – health secretary.
BYRON YORK: Centrist voters cut Biden out of the picture.
“You think Biden is losing support by the hour?” I asked an experienced New Hampshire politico as he arrived to check out the Pete Buttigieg rally here in the southeastern part of the state Sunday afternoon.
“By the minute,” he said.
Nearly one-third of voters here remain undecided just hours before Tuesday’s primary. That certainly appeared to be true of many in the Buttigieg crowd. But being undecided does not mean a voter is open to any candidate. And that looks like more bad news for Biden.
In this way: By and large, the people who attended the Buttigieg rally saw themselves on the centrist side of the Democratic electorate. Of course, they would vote for any Democrat over President Trump, but in Tuesday’s primary, they tend to stay away from the two leading candidates farthest to the left, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
The conventional wisdom says that would leave them with three choices among the candidates with a plausible chance to do well: Biden, Buttigieg, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. The problem for Biden is that many of the centrists seem to have already squeezed him out of the picture.
“I don’t like Bernie and I don’t like Elizabeth Warren,” said Ann Cudlip of Brentwood. “They’re too far Left for me. I need center, and I need somebody who can defeat Trump. That’s my thing.”
“Who does that leave you with?”
“Amy and Pete,” she said, explaining that she now gives Buttigieg the edge because of his performance in the Iowa caucuses.
Buttigieg is no moderate.
AGENTS OF THE LAW, LUCKLESS PEDESTRIAN: Just realized it’s been ten years since government agents broke Jim Treacher’s knee, then tried to lie about it. Full story here.