In both Bulgaria and Moldova have elected pro-Russian Presidents.
In the case of Bulgaria, this has brought down the current Prime Minister, and as Bulgaria is an EU member, (and has a pro Russian history) it makes the extension of sanctions against Russia that much less likely.
Victoria Nuland’s gift in the Ukraine just keeps on giving.
Yep, employees of the DNC have sued the DNC for unpaid overtime:
A Democratic campaign organizer filed suit in federal court in Philadelphia on Wednesday, saying that she and others were forced to work 80 to 90 hours a week and were not paid overtime by the Pennsylvania Democratic Committee, and through it, the Democratic National Committee.
“I don’t want to harm the Democratic Party,” Bethany Katz of Rosemont said Thursday. “I just want it to stand up for the principles it puts forth.”
Katz said she’s a Democrat who believes in “Hillary Clinton’s cause,” which is why the 21-year-old college graduate with a degree in history and political science took a job as an organizer for the Democratic National Committee over the summer, from June to August. She earned $3,000 a month.
………
No one gets overtime on political campaigns, said Neil Oxman, founder of the Philadelphia-based Campaign Group, who has worked on “hundreds and hundreds of races” on the national, state, and local levels.
“I’ve hired hundreds and hundreds of people. I’ve watched thousands of people work on campaigns. People know these jobs are 80- to 100-hours-a-week jobs. No one asks for overtime. If they did, people would think they were joking.
Yes, humor as a defense against the law, what a concept.
It appears that they think that Obama’s new overtime rule shouldn’t apply to them:
Katz’s suit comes at an interesting time in labor law. On Dec. 1, new regulations will go into effect that will require everyone who earns $913 a week or less to receive overtime, no matter whether their duties are managerial in nature or routine.
Oxman said that when the law goes into effect, most campaign groups will respond by hiring organizers as independent contractors.
“There is an irony here,” said [Katz’s lawyer, Justin L.] Swidler: The Democrats campaigned on raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour so workers would be paid fairly, yet “despite pushing these principles, they weren’t following them.”
I would note that Mr. Oxman’s suggestion of making organizers independent contractors would fall afoul of the law as well, since, according to the IRS, independent contractors cannot get the specific assignments, or extensive demands for detailed information.
Needless to say, the irony of this lawsuit is rather intense.
I would also note that these employment practices are a classic example of class privilege, since poor kids cannot afford to put in that much unpaid time, much in the same way that unpaid internships screen out the poor and minorities.
It appears that Silicon Valley freaking out because Donald Trump said that the H1B program has driven down wages, and that he does not like it:
Before he was elected to be the next US president, Donald Trump had garnered the support of just one prominent billionaire in Silicon Valley: Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Facebook board member.
The US technology industry had been shocked that one veteran from the Valley, which prides itself on liberal values, had supported, funded and even spoken for Mr Trump at his convention — and is now part of the president’s transition team.
………
But amid a feeling of bewildered detachment from the rest of the US, a serious business problem emerged — that Mr Trump’s plan for a wall to keep out illegal Mexican immigrants could end up hurting Silicon Valley’s growth prospects. The industry is worried he could stall their hiring programmes dependent on H-1B visas or make it harder for them to fund foreign start-up founders.
Of course, they could just pay more, and they would get the talent, but instead they want to bring over slave laber kept captive by the remote possibility of an eventual green card.
Here is the classic bullsh%$ scare quote:
“Given the rate of growth we are seeing in so many different tech companies from Facebook to Uber to Google or a company like Box, there’s simply a shortage of really great talent,” Mr Levie said. “When you have incredible talent that wants to work in your organisation but you are preventing them from doing so, that is disastrous to innovation and competition.”
Amit Kumar, chief executive at Trimian, an app developer with employees in Silicon Valley and India, said a restriction of H-1B visas for skilled guest workers could push tech companies to invest more in overseas offices, like manufacturers who had moved abroad.
The cost of moving IT overseas is astonishingly small.
It’s not much more than the cost of moving it across the street.
If it was all about saving money, they would already be in Bangalore, you would pay less for programmers, secretaries, grounds keepers, office space, etc.
What’s more, I have it on good authority that there are some good curry places there.
The H1B and L1A programs have been thoroughly corrupt for at least 3 decades, and it needs to be torn down.
It appears that Facebook has given up on trying to prevent fake news from showing up on its users feeds because said fake news overwhelmingly comes from right wing sources, and they are too terrified of the flying monkey crowd to tweak their algorithm:
It’s no secret that Facebook has a fake news problem. Critics have accused the social network of allowing false and hoax news stories to run rampant, with some suggesting that Facebook contributed to Donald Trump’s election by letting hyper-partisan websites spread false and misleading information. Mark Zuckerberg has addressed the issue twice since Election Day, most notably in a carefully worded statement that reads: “Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics.”
Still, it’s hard to visit Facebook without seeing phony headlines like “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide” or “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement” promoted by no-name news sites like the Denver Guardian and Ending The Fed.………
According to two sources with direct knowledge of the company’s decision-making, Facebook executives conducted a wide-ranging review of products and policies earlier this year, with the goal of eliminating any appearance of political bias. One source said high-ranking officials were briefed on a planned News Feed update that would have identified fake or hoax news stories, but disproportionately impacted right-wing news sites by downgrading or removing that content from people’s feeds. According to the source, the update was shelved and never released to the public. It’s unclear if the update had other deficiencies that caused it to be scrubbed.
“They absolutely have the tools to shut down fake news,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous citing fear of retribution from the company. The source added, “there was a lot of fear about upsetting conservatives after Trending Topics,” and that “a lot of product decisions got caught up in that.”
………
In a Facebook post published after the election, former Facebook product designer Bobby Goodlatte blamed the social network for boosting the visibility of “highly partisan, fact-light media,” and for not taking bigger steps to combat the spread of fake news in the lead-up to the election. “A bias towards truth isn’t an impossible goal for News Feed,” he wrote. “But it’s now clear that democracy suffers if our news feeds incentivize bullshit.”
Yeah ……… That whole free market saving the world thing? ……… Not so much.
No vid, because this image says it all:
Bernie Sanders and his allies are looking at replacing the Democratic Party leaders at the state and local levels.
Good. This is how to make real change, and make it stick:
The revolution is back in business.
Supporters of Bernie Sanders’ failed presidential bid are seizing on Democratic disarray at the national level to launch a wave of challenges to Democratic Party leaders in the states.
The goal is to replace party officials in states where Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton during the acrimonious Democratic primary with more progressive leadership. But the challenges also represent a reckoning for state party leaders who, in many cases, tacitly supported Clinton’s bid.
“I think the Bernie people feel very strongly that they were abused, somehow neglected during the primary process and the conventions,” said Severin Beliveau, a former Maine Democratic Party chairman who supported Sanders in the primary. “In Maine, for instance, where Bernie got 70 percent of the caucus vote, they are emboldened and in effect want to try to replace [Maine Democratic Party chairman] Phil Bartlett, who supported Clinton.”
I hope that they can make this work, but they are fighting the Iron Law of Organizations Institutions, which states that power WITHIN an organization is pursued at the expense of the power OF that organization.
But it is not her theme alone. Regardless of who leads it, professional-class liberalism seems to be forever traveling on a quest for some place of greater righteousness. It is always engaged in a search for some subject of overwhelming, noncontroversial goodness with which it can identify itself, and under whose umbrella of virtue it can put across its self-interested class program.
—Thomas Frank, on Hillary Clinton, and what constitutes her true base.
Frank is a bit more reductive that I wold like, but it does a pretty good job of explaining Hillary Clinton’s real base.
I would further argue that his description accurately describes the DLC/New Democrat identity politics that have served to decimate the Democratic party and the American working man.
Read the rest.
The Obama administration has given up on the idea of passing the TPP during the lame duck session of Congress.
This is unsurprising. Trump was uncharacteristically precise on his position on the trade deal during the campaign, and as such, it is highly unlikely that Obama would get the necessary support from Congressional Republicans that he would need to pass the trade agreement:
White House officials conceded on Friday that the president’s hard-fought-for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal would not pass Congress, as lawmakers there prepared for the anti-global trade policies of President-elect Donald Trump.
Earlier this week, congressional leaders in both parties said they would not bring the trade deal forward during a lame-duck session of Congress, before the formal transition of power on 20 January.
The Democratic senator Chuck Schumer, who will be minority leader in the next Congress, told union leaders the trade deal would not pass. Senator Mitch McConnell, the chamber’s Republican majority leader, told reporters “no” when asked if Congress would consider the TPP.
So, Barack Obama loses one items that he hoped would cement his legacy as President, and the rest of us win.
My heart bleeds borscht for you, Mr. President.
Vice President Joe Biden seems to have the ability to be totally cool and totally uncool at the same time.
When I made this comment, my son observed that this was “Schrodinger’s Coolness,” in that he is simultaneously cool and not cool, much like the famously indeterminate cat.
Case in point are reports that Biden made a friendship bracelet for Barack Obama for his 55th birthday:
Vice President Biden on Thursday celebrated President Obama’s 55th birthday with a touching note on Twitter.
Happy 55th, Barack! A brother to me, a best friend forever. pic.twitter.com/uNsxouTKOO— Vice President Biden (@VP) August 4, 2016
I’m gonna miss him when Bond villain wannabe Mike Pence takes the seat.
Considering the explosion of Biden memes on Facebook, I do not think that I am alone in this.
It appears that Barack Obama has finally decided that overthrowing the Assad regime is not at the forefront of US interests, if I were a cynic, and I am, I would suggest that the timing of the decision to make al Qaeda in Syria a primary target, even though they are the most effective anti-Assad force, was only made because there is no longer a domestic political cost to the decision:
President Obama has ordered the Pentagon to find and kill the leaders of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Syria that the administration had largely ignored until now and that has been at the vanguard of the fight against the Syrian government, U.S. officials said.
The decision to deploy more drones and intelligence assets against the militant group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra reflects Obama’s concern that it is turning parts of Syria into a new base of operations for al-Qaeda on Europe’s southern doorstep, the officials said.
The move underlines the extent to which Obama has come to prioritize the counterterrorism mission in Syria over efforts to pressure President Bashar al-Assad to step aside, as al-Nusra is among the most effective forces battling the Syrian government.
That shift is likely to accelerate once President-elect Donald Trump [Gaah!!!!] takes office. Trump has said he will be even more aggressive in going after militants than Obama, a stance that could lead to the expansion of the campaign against al-Nusra, possibly in direct cooperation with Moscow. The group now calls itself Jabhat Fatah al-Sham — or Front for the Conquest of Syria — and says it has broken with al-Qaeda, an assertion discounted by U.S. officials.………
Obama’s new order gives the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, wider authority and additional intelligence-collection resources to go after al-Nusra’s broader leadership, not just al-Qaeda veterans or those directly involved in external plotting.
But aides say Obama grew frustrated that more wasn’t being done by the Pentagon and the intelligence community to kill al-Nusra leaders given the warnings he had received from top counterterrorism officials about the gathering threat they posed.
In the president’s Daily Brief, the most highly classified intelligence report produced by U.S. spy agencies, Obama was repeatedly told over the summer that the group was allowing al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan to create in northwest Syria the largest haven for the network since it was scattered after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Officials also warned Obama that al-Nusra could try to fill the void as its rival, the Islamic State, lost ground.
Lisa Monaco, Obama’s White House homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, said Obama’s decision “prioritized our fight against al-Qaeda in Syria, including through targeting their leaders and operatives, some of whom are legacy al-Qaeda members.”
“We have made clear to all parties in Syria that we will not allow al-Qaeda to grow its capacity to attack the U.S., our allies, and our interests,” she said in a statement. “We will continue to take action to deny these terrorists any safe haven in Syria.”
………
A growing number of White House and State Department officials, however, have privately voiced doubts about the wisdom of applying U.S. military power, even covertly, to pressure Assad to step aside, particularly since Russia’s military intervention in Syria last year.
U.S. intelligence officials say they aren’t sure what Trump’s approach to U.S.-backed rebel units will be once he gets briefed on the extent of the covert CIA program. Trump has voiced strong skepticism about arming Syrian rebels in the past, suggesting that U.S. intelligence agencies don’t have enough knowledge about rebel intentions to pick reliable allies.
Needless to say, the Russians are pleased about the decision, though they are hoping for some independent confirmation of the shift in policy.
This is a major move in the direction of the Russian position, which is that fighting the Salafist jihadists in Syria is the first priority, and that regime changes under the current condition is likely to benefit no one,
One of the justification for the Zumwalt class destroyers is that they would be able to engage in shore bombardment up to miles inland using their advanced cannon.
In any case, its capabilities proved too expensive, so only 3 ships are going to be constructed, and now we learn that the high tech shells that were to allow for long distance shelling have been canceled because they were too expensive:
The USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) is the US Navy’s latest warship, commissioned just last month—and it comes with the biggest guns the Navy has deployed since the twilight of the battleships. But it turns out the Zumwalt‘s guns won’t be getting much of a workout any time soon, aside from acceptance testing. That’s because the special projectiles they were intended to fire are so expensive that the Navy has canceled its order.
Back when it was originally conceived, the Zumwalt was supposed to be the modern-day incarnation of the big-gunned cruisers and battleships that once provided fire support for Marines storming hostile beaches. This ability to lob devastating volleys of powerful explosive shells deep inland to take out hardened enemy positions, weapons, and infrastructure was lost after the Gulf War’s end, when the last of the Iowa-class battleships were retired. To bring it back, the Zumwalt’s design included a new gun, the Advanced Gun System (AGS). As we described it in a story two years ago:The automated AGS can fire 10 rocket-assisted, precision-guided projectiles per minute at targets over 100 miles away. Those projectiles use GPS and inertial guidance to improve the gun’s accuracy to a 50 meter (164 feet) circle of probable error—meaning that half of its GPS-guided shells will fall within that distance from the target.
………
The “less cost” part, however, turned out to be a pipe dream. With the reduction of the Zumwalt class to a total of three ships, the corresponding reduction in requirements for LRLAP production raised the production costs just as the price of the ships they would be deployed to soared. Defense News reports that the Navy is canceling production of the LRLAP because of an $800,000-per-shot price tag—more than 10 times the original projected cost. By comparison, the nuclear-capable Tomahawk cruise missile costs approximately $1 million per shot, while the M712 Copperhead laser-guided 155-millimeter projectile and M982 Excalibur GPS-guided rounds cost less than $70,000 per shot. Traditional Navy 5-inch shells cost no more than a few hundred dollars each.
When we are discussing the subject of swamps that need draining, the Pentagon should be at the top of the list.
One of the differences between something like patents and copyrights and trademarks is that the first two are of limited duration, and the latter is forever.
This is why I am heartened that the EU Court Of Justice has ruled that the basic form of the Rubik’s cube cannot be trademarked:
You all should be familiar with a Rubik’s Cube, the three-dimensional puzzle toy that for some reason your grandmother kept on her coffee table to frustrate you while she watched Matlock. This invention of the 1970s still enjoys widespread popularity, with hundreds of millions of them being sold every year. The toy has been patented for some time, but ten years ago, a British company that manages the intellectual property rights for the toy also applied for trademark protection on the cube’s design in the EU. The reason for this should be obvious: patent protections last for limited amounts of time, while trademark rights exist essentially in perpetuity, so long as it’s actively used in the marketplace. It’s an end-around to patent law designed to lock up a monopoly.
But, in the case of the Rubik’s Cube, it didn’t work, as the European Union Court of Justice has correctly determined that the trademark applied for by Seven Towers was for a functional and technical solution, not one of branding. German competitor Simba Toys had challenged the trademark, and it won.ECJ judges agreed with Simba Toys’ arguments. Their decision is final and cannot be appealed.
“In examining whether registration ought to be refused on the ground that shape involved a technical solution, EUIPO and the General Court should also have taken into account non-visible functional elements represented by that shape, such as its rotating capability,” they said.
EUIPO will now have to issue a new decision based on the ECJ judgment.
Trade and service marks are to protect branding, not functionality, and what the Rubik;s folks were doing was trying to apply a trade mark to functional characteristics, because any patent has long since expired.
Good call by the court.
It looks like the Clintons are 
now grooming Chelsea for a potential run for Congress:
While some pundits are declaring the Clinton political dynasty dead, sources tell us that it is far from over. Chelsea Clinton is being groomed for the New York seat held by Rep. Nita Lowey.
Chelsea could run for the seat in NYC’s 17th Congressional District once Lowey, a respected, 79-year-old career politician with nearly 30 years in office, decides to retire, we have exclusively learned.
Lowey’s district includes parts of Rockland and Westchester counties and, conveniently, Chappaqua, the Clinton family home base.
The only thing that I can think to add is a Sam Kinnison quote:
YOU DON’T HAVE TO LEAVE YET, DO YOU?!….YOU HAVEN’T SHOVED A CHAINSAW UP MY ASS YET!….MY HEAD’S STILL ON MY TORSO!!….I’M GLAD YOU F%$#ERS CAN HANDLE YOUR HIGH!
Seriously, too soon. Way too soon.
Hell………This century is too soon.
*H/t Lambert Strether for the title.
A participant at the Stellar Parthenon BBS was commiserating about how he had to buy health insurance, and it was all expensive and crappy coverage.
He ruefully observed that his cheapest option (he’s a Jew) was to join “Medi-Share”, an evangelical Christian health co-op, but that would require him to, “Declare a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Somehow or other, my muse grabbed my hands, and this flowed from my fingers:
You know, back in the day, Jesus and I went drinking and engaged in pig contests.
The person who beds the ugliest babe wins.
He never lost, and once he came 1st, 2nd, AND 3rd.
Damn! That guy could work miracles with women.
And he could make a Tequila Sunrise like no one’s business.
Eventually though, he flunked out of school.
Test problems, he got nailed on the boards.
I am so glad that (at least until January 21) I live in a nation where blasphemy is legal.
H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
First, we had a historically large (but still small) number of batsh%$ insane district attorneys turfed out of office, because they are sick and tired of abuse of prosecutorial power. (In Houston, the DA jailed a mentally ill rape victim, and they were given the boot, for example)
Also, in conservative San Diego, voters rejected another huge give away to a pro sports franchise for a gold plated stadium complex.
I hope that both of these are the beginnings of a trend.
It’s a little thing, but it is a good thing.
I’m not suggesting that much of what is being said on this video is true, just that it reflects the mainstream attitudes of the Russian people, and by extension that of the Russian leadership, and so it bears watching, even if you have to read subtitles.
Big pharma’s bucket of cash has defeated California Proposition 61.
This is why the granting of government sanctioned monopolies through IP laws should be as circumscribed as possible.
The money generated these monopolies goes into expanding their monopolies, and they become parasites extracting more and more of a toll on the ordinary conduct of society.
The racist sh%$ bag Sheriff Joe Arpaio has lost his bid for reelection in Maricopa County Arizona:
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an enduring symbol of Arizona’s unforgiving stance toward illegal immigration, lost his bid for a seventh term on Tuesday, effectively ending the career of perhaps the most divisive law enforcement figure in the country.
In the end, Sheriff Arpaio’s bid for re-election as sheriff of Maricopa County was undone by Latino voters who responded to his hard-line position on illegal immigration, which included workplace raids, frequent traffic stops and harsh talk.
“The people Arpaio targeted decided to target him. He lost his power when undocumented people lost their fear,” said Carlos Garcia, executive director of Puente, an advocacy group formed in 2007 to counter the sheriff’s embrace of a federal program that allowed his deputies to act as de facto immigration agents.
“We knew that losing an election was only a matter of time,” Mr. Garcia said. “For us, what is most important now is to undo the damage and culture of hate that he has brought upon this county.”
This man was a cancer on law enforcement and the body politic of Arizone.
It could only get better if he dies as a prisoner in what used to be his own jail, which is possible, as he is facing a criminal contempt citation from a Federal judge.
BRITAIN: Brexit is the stupidest, most self-destructive act a country could undertake.
USA: Hold my beer.— Brian Pedaci (@bpedaci) November 9, 2016
True Dat
H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.