DON’T BE WEEVILS: Google May be Guilty of Gender Discrimination But Is Definitely Guilty of Bad Data Analysis.

Google employees seem to be up on their applied math, since they put together an analysis so that they could make the following statement:

Based upon its own analysis from January, Google said female employees make 99.7 cents for every dollar a man makes, accounting for factors like location, tenure, job role, level and performance.

On the surface, this seems to suggest that significant gender discrimination just doesn’t show up in the data. BUT…and this is important…this example highlights the difference between doing math and doing data analysis (or, more charitably, data science)- while this conclusion may be mathematically correct, it’s basically a “garbage in, garbage out” use of econometric tools. Simply put, if you’re trying to isolate gender discrimination, you can’t just blindly control for things that themselves are likely the result of gender discrimination!

Why are progressive corporations such cesspits of misogyny?

CHOICE FOR ME BUT NOT FOR THEE: Anti-School Choice Activist (and Hypocrite) Matt Damon Sends His Kids to Private School.

What’s the point of becoming rich and famous if some poor or middle-class parents get some of the same opportunities that you do?

The Politician Behind California High Speed Rail Now Says It’s ‘Almost a Crime.’

California’s high speed rail line was sold to voters on the bold promise that it will someday whisk passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours. Nine years later, the project has turned into such a disaster that its biggest political champion is now suing to stop it.

An icon of California politics known as the “Great Dissenter,” Quentin L. Kopp introduced the legislation that established the rail line, and became chairman of the High-Speed Rail Authority. He helped convince voters in 2008 to hand over $9 billion in bonds to the Rail Authority to get the project going. Since he left, Kopp says the agency mangled his plans.

“It is foolish, and it is almost a crime to sell bonds and encumber the taxpayers of California at a time when this is no longer high-speed rail,” says Kopp. “And the litigation, which is pending, will result, I am confident, in the termination of the High-Speed Rail Authority’s deceiving plan.”

I’d wager that Kopp underestimates Sacramento’s ability to deny reality.

OH: Detroit doctor in genital mutilation case freed on $4.5M bond.

Jumana Nagarwala, the Northville doctor accused of mutilating the genitalia of “countless” young girls, was released on $4.5 million unsecured bond Tuesday after five months in jail.

Nagarwala, 44, smiled after U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman freed her under a set of extraordinary bond conditions — including what is believed to be the largest unsecured bond in Detroit federal court history. Relatives and friends helped win her release by posting more than $4.5 million worth of real estate in multiple states.

The judge’s decision came despite federal prosecutors calling Nagarwala a danger to the community and flight risk with ties to Africa and India and access to $2.4 million in assets that could bankroll a prolonged flight from justice. They reminded the judge Nagarwala was arrested in April while trying to board a flight to Kenya for a prearranged visit with two of her four children, who study abroad.

That’s a lot of money. Where did it come from?

PATRICK POOLE: Top Swiss Islamic Officials Indicted for Making Al-Qaeda Propaganda Videos.

FINALLY: These White People Will Respond To Your Racist Trolls So You Don’t Have To.

The volunteer-run Facebook group, founded last year by friends Layla Tromble and Terri Kompton in Washington state, has white people respond to racist trolls online at the request of people of color.

“If a white person is filling your social media with white nonsense ― anything from overt racism to well-intentioned problematic statements, tag us and a white person will come roundup our own,” the group’s Facebook post reads.

At a time of deep political divides and tensions around racism and white supremacy, the group exists to support people of color, who are all too often the targets of online hate but are also often asked by white people to explain everyday race-related issues, from why NFL player Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to why you can’t just touch a black woman’s hair.

“It’s the responsibility of us white folks to do the emotional labor that’s required to educate other white folks ― and it shouldn’t be required of people of color again and again,” Tromble told HuffPost. “One of the goals of the service is to do some of that labor for people. Let them go have a drink and not worry about nonsense going on on their Facebook.”

It occurs to me that a group of counter-counter trolls could keep these people busy chasing ghosts, and maybe even their own tails.

OLD AND TIRED: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

NEW AND HOT: Washington Post Turns the Lights Off on Ed Gillespie Campaign Chairman.

In response to a recent Washington Post editorial (“Ed Gillespie Flirts with Toxic Ideas At His Own Risk,” 9/8/2017), Gillespie for Governor Campaign Chairman Pete Snyder offered the paper a rebuttal, submitting a 750 word op-ed. His submission was swiftly rejected, and was told that responses to editorials must come in the form of a letter to the editor, which are typically capped at 250 words. Snyder obliged, editing down his submission per request.

Days later, The Washington Post returned his letter to the editor in almost unrecognizable form, altering not only Snyder’s words, but the broader theme of the piece, including its title. The piece was also reduced to 223 words — well short of the agreed upon word limit.

As Snyder notes in his original op-ed (which can be found below), “…it is painfully obvious that this publication has an agenda, a narrative that they demand this race follow, and no interest in letting facts and actual events get in the way of it.”

Jeff Bezos may of course publish what he chooses to in his paper. But breaking a deal and altering someone else’s content of its meaning tells you what kind of a paper Bezos runs.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Samantha Power Unmasked Americans at a Freakishly Rapid Pace in Obama’s Last Year.

LET THE CHIPS FALL WHERE THEY MAY: Push to unseal the draft Whitewater indictment against Hillary Clinton gets court date.

HMM: Amazon Puts Whole Foods on Fast Track to Conventional Supermarket.

Under the changes planned to begin in April, Whole Foods’ 470 locations will no longer allow brand representatives to promote their products or check to make sure they are stocked and displayed correctly.

Whole Foods also is centralizing much of its decision-making regarding the assortment of products across the country. Instead of allowing brands to frequently pitch their products to individual stores or regions, Whole Foods executives in its Austin, Texas headquarters will choose a higher percentage of the items stores carry.

The move had slowly gotten under way in recent months, but Amazon.com Inc.’s AMZN 0.35% merger with the chain in August provided additional incentive for Whole Foods to move away from its decentralized model and become more efficient.

“This is another step in the conventionalizing of Whole Foods as we know it,” said Jim Cusson, of Charlotte, N.C.-based Theory House, a brand consultancy.

Amazon is hoping to boost sales at the struggling grocer, in part, by standardizing operations and prices. Market reports show traffic improvement since the deal closed last month, likely because the chain lowered prices on key items like eggs and milk.

“Conventional” for grocery stores also means “low margins,” which would be new for Whole Foods. But Amazon has always been happy with low (or nonexistent) profits, so long as cash flow remained high and competitors were brought low.

CHRIS CILLIZZA: John Kerry running for president in 2020 wouldn’t be the craziest thing.

Yeah, “crazy” isn’t the word I’d use, either.

REPORTS: Manafort Offered Campaign Briefings to Oligarch; Mueller Wants Docs on Oval Office Meeting.

CHEATS: From Russia with fuel – North Korean ships may be undermining sanctions.

At least eight North Korean ships that left Russia with a cargo of fuel this year headed for their homeland despite declaring other destinations, a ploy that U.S. officials say is often used to undermine sanctions.

Reuters has no evidence of wrongdoing by the vessels, whose movements were recorded in Reuters ship-tracking data. Changing a ship’s destination once underway is not forbidden and it is unclear whether any of the ships unloaded fuel in North Korea.

But U.S. officials say that changing destination mid-voyage is a hallmark of North Korean state tactics to circumvent the international trade sanctions imposed over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

Changing course and the complex chain of different firms — many offshore — involved in shipments can complicate efforts to check how much fuel is supplied to North Korea and monitor compliance with a cap on fuel imports under U.N. sanctions.

It may be time to bring up at the UNSC a Cuban Missile Crisis-style quarantine of cargo ships headed for North Korean ports — at least as a public test of Russian and Chinese intentions.

ELI LAKE: What We Still Don’t Know About Obama-Era ‘Unmasking.’

Unmasking Kushner, Bannon and Flynn in that meeting is not in and of itself evidence of political spying. It does not support Trump’s claim that Obama had tapped Trump Tower. It doesn’t rise to the level of a scandal. What’s more, Republicans like Representative Trey Gowdy have praised Rice for her openness this month in her closed-session testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, and reiterated a point made by that committee’s chairman, Devin Nunes, that Rice did not violate the law by requesting that some U.S. persons in intelligence reports be unmasked. Rice, according to sources familiar with her testimony, reiterated that she never leaked the information she unmasked.

Gowdy is still trying to get answers. He told me Monday, “The issues are serious enough to warrant an open-minded, objective review, but we don’t have all the information necessary to draw to a conclusion.”

That’s important. Gowdy says he still has not received exact numbers on how many times Rice or other senior Obama officials made requests to unmask U.S. citizens in intelligence reports. He said he doesn’t yet have enough information to determine whether the volume of requests or their dissemination within the intelligence community were unusual. His committee has learned that Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, also made a number of unmasking requests in her final year in office. Was that unusual or part of her job? Why did she need this information?

Keep digging.

HASSAN ROUHANI, INTERNATIONAL MAN OF PATIENCE: ‘We are Waiting for Mr. Trump to Apologize’ for ‘Offensive’ Speech.

JAMES POULOS: Two Cheers for Democracy.

How best to return the body politic to both liberal moderation and classical natural right is the puzzle that defines American conservatives’ central challenge. David Brooks, also invoking Craiutu, recently attempted to cast moderation’s charm in stark terms, as the only alternative to the “warrior mentality” in politics. The radicalizing, “warrior” mentality, he says, “just means more culture war, more barbarism, more dishonesty and more dysfunction.” The moderate soul does “not see politics as warfare,” but as “a voyage with a fractious fleet,” or a method of “coping with the complexity of the world.” No sect can master the science of politics, because politics is a “limited activity” that can never save us or become the whole. Thus, the political art emerging from the acceptance of politics’s limits is a conversational art. Political arts require mediating between what are falsely propounded and marketed as airtight, mutually exclusive, comprehensive doctrines. Both extremism and careless moderation can cause disaster, but humility emerges from practicing political arts, properly understood. Politics is the art of reflectively choosing the least bad options—accepting human political wisdom and knowledge’s limits, instead of lusting and lurching after utopian visions of justice.

Plus, “In today’s political landscape, the influence of fake ‘warriors,’ for social justice or other causes, is maximized, while the deployment of soldiers, real warriors, is seen as a risk and burden to be minimized.”

Young people need some kind of outlet for their energies, and it would seem that social-justice warrior-ing is filling in for more traditional coming-of-age rituals.

PERHAPS SARAH HOYT WILL LET ME BORROW HER SHOCKED FACE: This NPR Reporter Doesn’t Understand Federalism.

Every now and then, there is a reporter who tries to play analyst without realizing what in God’s name they are talking about. It may surprise you to find out than an example of that would be an NPR reporter, and it may further surprise you to find out this reporter was attacking a GOP plan.

Brace yourselves, lads.

That’s right, folks. Obamacare, which seeks to force everyone in the nation, regardless of what state they are in, to buy health insurance, is a shining example of federalism.

That’s… That’s not how this works, Domenico.

When Obama propagandist Ben Rhodes said that “the average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and… literally know nothing,” his only crime was committing a gaffe of the Kinsley variety.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Condensed for the High Holidays.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: If you leave your kids alone, it’s not predatory strangers who are a risk. “A California study found it’s moralizing do-gooders who are most likely to make mischief.”

Do-gooding is rarely done for the benefit of the being-done-good-to.

JEFF DUNETZ: Anti-Semite Supporter Keith Ellison Compares Illegal Aliens To Jews Under Nazi Control.

Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, the vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, evoked the Holocaust on Monday, comparing illegal immigrants in the U.S. to Jews in Nazi Germany.

“I’m going to tell you right now, I’m one of them people who believes you should give your neighbors sanctuary.

(…)If you ask yourself, ‘What would I do if I was a Gentile in 1941 if my Jewish neighbors were under attack by the Nazis? Would I give them sanctuary?’ — you might be about to find out what you would do. Will you pass that moral test, or will you fail it? This is the time for people who truly have faith and belief in their hearts to step up and demonstrate.”

It is always disgusting when someone uses the Holocaust to score political points, but it particularly sleazy when Congressman Ellison does it. After all, the guy supports anti-Semitic organizations such as Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood.

Jeff adds, “There are many more examples of Ellison’s, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic actions, plus his connection to Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas associated groups such as MAS, CAIR, and ISNA. (MAS even paid for his Haj to Saudi Arabia).”

Well, if anyone knows Nazi tactics, it would be the Muslim Brotherhood and by extension its many offshoots around the Middle East.

FABULOUS: Alarmed by Islam, Europe’s Gays Are Moving to the Right.

NOW I’VE SEEN EVERYTHING: Topless carwash raises cash for deputies wounded in gun battle at Rastafarian pot farm.

JOHN ELLIS: The Best Albums of the Reagan Presidency.

I would have swapped out Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs for Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombone. And really, any ’80s list is more than complete if it doesn’t include The Joshua Tree.

I COULD HAVE SWORN DIVERSITY WAS OUR STRENGTH: Bridgewater State Professor Says “Fuck Any” Students Who Voted For Trump, They Are KKK And Are Not Welcomed In His English Class.

For all the complaints about “chilly” or “hostile” classroom environments, here’s the real deal — and you don’t have to guess which side the hostility comes from.

DUMB: What Was Tom Price Thinking?

This Politico piece blows him up so thoroughly, I’m not sure there’s anything left to say. He chartered private jets for HHS-related travel five times in the last week alone, likely at an average cost of at least $12,000 per flight, when he could have easily flown commercial for some or all of them. The most ridiculous charter: A flight from D.C. to Philly, which only takes two to three hours to drive and may well have been faster than traveling to and from airports in both cities to use a plane. When Politico asked Obama’s HHS people if they’d ever felt obliged to use a charter, the only time they could recall doing so was when the secretary had to get to a remote part of Alaska. And that department was tasked with rolling out the ObamaCare exchanges across the country, remember. It’s not like their travel needs were any less pressing than Price’s.

As I write this on Wednesday morning, he and HHS haven’t even tried to justify the flights beyond a pro forma statement that “When commercial aircraft cannot reasonably accommodate travel requirements, charter aircraft can be used for official travel.” The point of the story, though, is that commercial aircraft could have accommodated him. In at least one case, a *rental car* could have accommodated him. The only obvious conceivable excuse is that it wasn’t taxpayers who ended up footing the bill for the flights, it was someone else. But the groups Price visited last week during his trips say they didn’t pay for his travel.

I had hoped we’d gotten rid of such imperial travel accommodations along with the previous Administration.