Category: Stupid

It’s Jobless Thursday

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Last week, initial unemployment claims fell to 444,000, down 34,000 from last week.

Once again, it’s an improvement, but with the rush of the stupid states to roll back unemployment benefits, I expect the pace of improvement slow down in those states: 

The number of workers seeking and receiving unemployment benefits through state and federal programs has reached pandemic lows ahead of this summer, when 22 states plan to end a $300 federal benefit early.

Initial unemployment claims through regular state programs dropped to 444,000 last week, marking a new low level since the pandemic hit in mid-March 2020.

The number of people claiming benefits through state and pandemic-related programs also declined in the week ended May 1 to a pandemic low of 16 million people from 16.9 million a week earlier, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That includes benefits through one of several programs, including regular state aid and federal emergency programs put in place in response to the pandemic.

………

Though jobless claims are on a downward trend, April’s job gain of 266,000 fell far short of the one million economists had forecast, fueling concerns about the recovery. Republicans also are concerned that enhanced federal unemployment payments are discouraging people from seeking work.

The low job creation numbers are a fly in the ointment.

States have announced dates ranging from mid-June to mid-July for when they will stop processing pandemic-related benefits. That means nearly 3.7 million individuals could lose the $300 weekly benefits—which were set to expire in early September—beginning in mid-June, according to estimates by forecasting firm Oxford Economics.

Of those, about 1.45 million will also lose pandemic benefits for gig work, and about 1.31 million will no longer have access to extended benefits that kick in after claimants exhaust their regular state benefits.

This is the whole Brood X Cicada emergence in the ointment.

This recovery is driven by government spending, and because they fetishize being cruel, they are knocking the pins out from underneath the recovery.

Sadism as policy is never a good thing.

Punk’D

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Remember that unhinged letter signed by 100 retired US military retired general officers? It included the signature of one, “Rear Admiral Jack Meehoff.”

The MAGAts are really, really stupid people:

A group of more than 100 retired generals and admirals who have accused President Joe Biden of being a communist have been pranked by a faux flag officer going by the nom de guerre “Rear Adm. Jack Meehoff.”

If you don’t get the joke, just say the name “Jack Meehoff” aloud. That’s right. You understand now.

Earlier this month, the group Flag Officers 4 America posted an open letter that repeated lies spread by former President Donald Trump and the elected leaders who support his claims that the FBI and Supreme Court ignored “election irregularities” in 2020.

………

In their letter, the retired generals and admirals – most of whom have been out of uniform for several years – claim the Biden administration has “launched a full-blown assault on our Constitutional rights in a dictatorial manner” by passing executive orders. They also claim the administration is damaging the military’s ability to fight wars through an “infusion of Political Correctness.” And they raise doubts about Biden’s ability to serve as commander in chief by claiming: “The mental and physical condition of the Commander in Chief cannot be ignored.”

“Under a Democrat Congress and the Current Administration, our Country has taken a hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government which must be countered now by electing congressional and presidential candidates who will always act to defend our Constitutional Republic,” reads the heavily capitalized letter. “The survival of our Nation and its cherished freedoms, liberty, and historic values are at stake.”

Enter “Jack Meehoff.”

After Christopher Mathias of the Huffington Post wrote a May 12 story about the letter, he received an email the following day from someone showing how he had managed to get the apocryphal “Rear Adm. Jack Meehoff” added to the list of signatories.

………

On Monday, Task & Purpose spoke to “Jack Meehoff” – not his real name – who said he was prompted to prank the cabal of McCarthyites because he felt their open letter was “f—ing absurd”, especially in the context of the Jan. 6 riots.

The man – who declined to provide his real name or a copy of his DD-214 [military discharge documents] – claimed to be a former enlisted submariner. He said Flag Officers 4 America removed “Rear Adm. Jack Meehoff” from the letter on Saturday after Mathias tweeted about how they had fallen for his ruse.

………

Among its other more well-known signatories are retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, a U.S. Senate candidate in New Hampshire; retired Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a virulent anti-Muslim bigot who now heads up the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council; and retired Vice Adm. John Poindexter, best known for being convicted for his role in the Iran-Contra Affair as national security adviser for President Ronald Reagan.

One way to fix the problem is to understand that we have too many general officers in the US military.

In World War II, there were 16 million men in service, and about 2000 GOFOs, and now with 1.3 million men (and women) under arms, there are 900 general/flag officers.

Additionally, the ratio of officers to enlisted men has gone from the traditional ratio of about 10:1 then to about 5:1 now.

Tighter standards for officers, they reducing the size of the officer corps would go a long way toward reducing the total numbers blithering idiots in the higher ranks of US military.

Worst Headline Ever

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The good folks at the Gray Lady wrote a story on Marine Le Pen, the right wing nationalist running for French President.

It’s a rather soft article, highlighting things like her cat breeding, which is kind of classic New York Times, normalizing awful people, but whoever wrote the hed, and it’s probably an editor, and not the author, should be fired, because, “On the Scrappy Fringes of French Politics, Marine Le Pen Tries to Rebrand,” is a simply horrific exercise in editorial discretion.

It is simply, “Bad beyond all dimensions of of possible badness,” to quote Berkeley Breathed.

This Will Not End Well

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Between sucking up to the Petty Persian Gulf Potentiates, outing a sexual harassment victim in her own organization, assaulting an employee, running a generally abusive workplace, having no experience with budgeting, and writing mean tweets about Republicans, Neera Tanden was deemed unacceptable by the Senate to head the White House Office of Management and Budget.  (Rather depressingly, it was the tweets that were the primary concern of the Senate)

But you know how it is with Washington, D.C. insiders: No matter how badly you f%$# up, and no matter how profoundly unsuited you are to a position of influence, you get another bite at the apple, so Neera Tanden gets a gig as Senior Advisor at the White House, a position that does not require Senate confirmation:

A contentious nomination process kept Neera Tanden out of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, but she still landed in the White House.

The White House confirmed on Friday that Biden had appointed Tanden to be a senior adviser. She will start on Monday. 

………

Tanden will hold various duties in the White House but her focus will be handling any potential fallout from Republican lawsuits challenging the Affordable Care Act at the Supreme Court. Tanden will also be tasked with reviewing the United States Digital Service, a program that aims to make government accessible online.

This from someone who has never worked as a lawyer (she does have a J.D. from Yale), was a model of opacity at CAP, and has no background in IT.

Lovely choice.

Except for her tweets excoriating Republicans, which I wholeheartedly approve, her entire career has been as a crass political hack and an awful human being.

More importantly, the people around her hate her enough that anywhere she works leaks like a sieve, which is rather a contrast to her mentor, Hillary Clinton.  (Say what you will about Hillary, but anyone reasonably close to her could have written a tell-all book for a 7 figure advance, and no one has.)

Much like Rahm Emanuel, we will now have another member of the Biden administration inside the tent pissing in.

For F%$#’s Sake, Why?

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Why the hell does Joe Biden want to appoint Rahm Emanuel ambassador to Japan?

Rahm has a serious claim to be the most overrated man in Politics, he does not speak Japanese, and he is a loud obnoxious bully, which does not play well with Japanese social norms.

Anyone this side of the “My Pillow” guy would have been a better selection.

The man is a cancer on the body politic:

Joe Biden has picked the former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel to be his ambassador to Japan.

………

Some progressives view Emanuel as a major antagonist within the party. He is often criticized among liberals, for example, for his handling of a shooting of an African American teenager during his time in Chicago.

He covered up the shooting, and kept the shooter on the force until the courts forced the release of the video.

I get that political supporters get assignments like this, but why the f%$# do you have to appoint someone so completely ill-suited to the position.

Not this Sh%$ Again!

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The stupid people in economics have been bleating about inflation since, well, forever, and last month’s CIP numbers will only elicit more wankerhood from the pundits:

US consumer prices soared in April as post-lockdown demand and shortages drove up the cost of a wide range of goods, from used cars and home furnishings to airline tickets.

The news triggered a further slide in markets unsettled this week by the threat of rising prices, which could force central banks to abandon zero0-interest rate policies that have helped stoke share prices. The Dow Jones index fell 1.3% in early trading and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 2.5%.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) climbed 4.2% during the month from a year earlier, the labor department said, the biggest 12-month increase since September 2008, the height of the financial crisis. The figure was significantly higher than economists had predicted.

CPI measures the prices consumers pay for goods and services, including clothes, groceries, restaurant meals, recreational activities and vehicles. This month’s rise saw increases across the board and was driven by many factors.

The Biden administration’s economic stimulus package has pumped money into the economy just as it reopens from coronavirus lockdown measures. Fresh demand for goods and services has also outpaced supply, which is still recovering from the lockdowns at the start of the pandemic, leading to shortages for a broad range of goods from lumber and steel to ketchup.

Speaking of wankers, the Sultan of Schmuck, the Patron of Pissants, the Don of Dickheads, the ……… Never mind, enough alliteration, Lawrence “Larry” Summers has weighted in:

Others are more concerned. Former treasury secretary Larry Summers has warned the US could face a period of high inflation unseen since the 1970s. Talking to Bloomberg TV he said it was “plain wrong” to suggest that inflation cannot surge unexpectedly.

“It may be that a way will be found to bring it under control,” he said. “But as I look at $3tn of stimulus, $2tn of savings overhang, a major acceleration coming from Covid in the rear-view mirror, rates expected by the Federal Reserve to be at zero for three years even in a booming economy, record growth this year, major expansion of the Fed balance sheet, and much new fiscal stimulus to come – I’m worried.”

It’s nice that you are worried, Larry, but you have been wrong about everything since  ……… Well ……… Forever, so how about a nice hot cup of shut the f%$# up!

But now we will hear the wankers wanking about inflation for at least 18 months, and they will be on you teevee and your editorial pages.

Sadism as Official Policy

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Context on the Dental Floss

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte is ending his state’s participation in the federal program increasing unemployment payments, because he thinks that it makes people too lazy.

Instead, he’s offering a one time limited offer of an “Employment Bonus.”

This is unbelievably and deeply stupid policy, as well as being stupid politically, particularly in a state so lily white (88.54%) that there are virtually no Black people (0.50%) to blame everything on.

I think that his brain has been poisoned by agricultural chemicals used on those famous Montana dental floss farms:

The coronavirus pandemic – heard of it? It’s famously still going on! Though national case numbers are finally starting to drop and recent regional outbreaks in the midwest have begun to subside, there were still about 50,000 new Covid-19 infections recorded in the US on Tuesday and just over 700 new virus-related deaths.

But Greg Gianforte, Montana’s governor, has other priorities: he’s been talking about a “labor shortage” in a cynical attempt to cut public assistance. The Republican governor released a statement on Tuesday announcing his state will stop participating in the federal program that has given unemployed workers additional unemployment payments since the start of the pandemic – in an apparent attempt to get Montanans back to work, and he plans to give those who choose to do so something he calls a “return-to-work bonus”.

………

Although Montana’s unemployment rate fell to 3.8% in April, which is about at pre-pandemic levels, the state’s labor commissioner, Laurie Esau, says its labor force is approximately 10,000 workers smaller than it was pre-lockdown, a drop that Gianforte assumes is to do with lazy people who, given their new found pandemic benefits, don’t want to work any more. And according to Montana department of labor estimates, nearly 25,000 people are currently filing unemployment claims, a good chunk of whom the governor is eager to push into the state’s 14,000 or so job openings.

But this means there aren’t enough job openings for the number of people unemployed; even if the governor’s plan succeeds in filling those vacant positions as intended, there will still be over 10,000 people without jobs to apply for, forced to subsist on less. It is also wildly reductive to assume that because there are fewer people working, it must be the result of a lack of will. People had jobs, and those jobs were taken away, either through mass layoffs or government shutdowns of businesses. That kind of disruption takes time to recover from. People could now be working out childcare arrangements again; finding out where they fit in a new jobs market; or worried about returning to work until the coast is clear.

The headline of this story should be, “Montana Governor has tragically small penis, inflicts pain on whole state to compensate.”

Also, boycott Montana grown dental floss until this policy is reversed.

Good Riddance, You Incompetent Prat

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DCCC chair in the last election cycle, who has seen her chances to advance in House leadership as a result, will not be running for reelection in 2022.

In a just world, she would be run out of town on a rail.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos of Moline announced Friday she would not seek reelection next year after serving since 2013 in a northwest and west-central Illinois district that has trended increasingly Republican.

She does not know how her district will change in redistricting.

………

At one time, Bustos had been viewed as a rising star among House Democrats, demonstrating an ability to win in largely Republican territory.

No, she managed to get mentored by Nancy Pelosi, which is why she got, and mismanaged her time as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, most egregiously when she explicitly stated that consultants working on primary challenges would be blacklisted by the organization.

It’s called saying the quiet part out loud, and it is very very stupid.

I’m not sure if Pelosi is just a bad judge of people, in the early 2000s, she pushed Anthony Weiner and Deborah Wasserman Schultz who were similarly disastrous in their own special ways, or if she decided that the best way for her to remain speaker was to support flawed individuals as a part of the next generation.

I think that she may be following the advice of Lord Julius, “When you’re running a bureaucracy the best way to safeguard your job is to make sure you’re the only one who knows how the whole thing works.” (Pelosi might also be following he advice of Weisshaupt, but that is enough of a deep dive into Cerebus quotes)

Her path up the Democratic Congressional leadership is done for a very long time, and she knows it, so she’s looking to cash in as a lobbyist or a pundit.

If You Thought That There Was a Speck of Sanity in Law Enforcement………

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Then you should read just how cops believed the weirdest conspiracy theories during the Black Lives Matter protests.

I want what they are smoking:

The graffiti on a port-a-potty in a gravel pit was, in the opinion of one Washington state resident, a sign that anti-fascists might blow up a nearby dam. Another local was convinced that a young man reading signs was actually an “Antifa or BLM scout.” A third person warned, via an anonymous email tip, that her ex-husband was part of an anti-fascist group that was coming to burn down the town.

All these complaints were forwarded throughout police ranks in Washington, where officials urged vigilance against the leftist threat.

As racial justice protests flared across the country in summer 2020, so did conservative fears of leftist protesters. From Oregon to Virginia, social media lit up with rumors about anti-fascists (“antifa”) or Black Lives Matter participants, who were allegedly coming to terrorize small towns.

Anacortes, a scenic city of 17,000 in coastal Washington, was no exception. From June to August 2020, the city’s police department received repeated tips about supposed antifa threats, according to police documents obtained by the government transparency nonprofit Property of the People and shared with The Daily Beast. Even some of the most absurd claims found their way up to state-level law enforcement, those documents show.

………

The documents, obtained via Freedom of Information request, reveal the absurdity of some of last year’s complaints.

………

The following month, another alleged antifa threat, even wilder than the others, found its way to the Skagit County Sheriff, documents show. In this case, it involved two overturned port-a-potties in a gravel pit near a boat launch in Concrete, Washington.

One of the port-a-potties had been spray painted with the acronym “ACAB,” short for “all cops are bastards.” The other was tagged with an A in a circle, an anarchist symbol. But where some observers might have seen common vandalism symbols, the tipster who photographed the port-a-potties saw something more ominous—maybe even part of a plot to blow up a dam.

………

“When individuals and law enforcement have been whipped into such a paranoid frenzy that they’re primed to see ‘antifa’ or ‘BLM’ terrorist conspiracies literally in the toilet, the situation is a powder keg,” Shapiro said. “There’s a direct line from this sort of deliberately induced political hysteria to violent, repressive crackdowns on progressive dissent.” 

The police were clutching at any potential excuse to foment violence and beat up (riot against) protesters.

It’s not conducive to the proper functioning of a democratic society.

I Fat Fingered Myself into a New Word

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In a discussion on the Stellar Parthenon BBS, there is a discussion thread about Chauvin’s conviction, I shared an article titled, “Nancy Pelosi Can Go F%$# Herself For Real.” 

I introduced the link with the following, “Speaking of paychopaths, I love this take-down of Pelosi’s thank you to Floyd.”

Clearly, my finger slipped and hit an “A” instead of a “S” in “Psychoath.”

It seems completely apropos to describe the dysfunctional and corrupt, “Anything for a campaign donation,” ruling elites to be described as a “Paychopath.”

Thoughts and Prayers

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Ted Nugent has Covid.

Musician Ted Nugent has tested positive for coronavirus months after he said that the virus was “not a real pandemic”.

In his Christmas message shared on social media in December, Nugent called the worldwide crisis a “scammy pandemic” and said that people who wore masks were “sheep”.

On Monday (19 April), Nugent revealed on Facebook Live that he had caught Covid-19, admitting that “everybody” told him that he shouldn’t announce his diagnosis.

“I have had flu symptoms for the last 10 days and I thought I was dying, just a clusterf***,” he said.

“Today is the 19th of April 2021 during clusterf*** pandemic… I was tested positive today. I got the Chinese s***.”

Dumbass.

Never Happier to be Wrong

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Chauvin Upset He Isn’t Able to Properly Celebrate Hitler’s Birthday Thanks to Guilty Verdict https://t.co/6PmmnYQw7b pic.twitter.com/TKZzmtkmK7

— The Hard Times (@REALpunknews) April 20, 2021

Yeah, Pretty Much

I have not been commenting on the Derek Chauvin trial, because I found it too depressing.

I figured that in Minneapolis a city legendary both for antisemitism and for its completely dysfunctional police force, that at most Chauvin would get was a conviction for 2nd degree manslaughter, be sentenced to less than 5 years, and be out in less than 2 years, particularly after the jury deliberated about 10 hours.

I was completely wrong, and I am elated to be wrong.  The now-convicted murderer was convicted on all three counts, and, assuming that the judge is not completely in the tank for the malefactors in Minneapolis law enforcement, is facing decades in prison:

Derek Chauvin has been convicted of murder for killing George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes, a crime that prompted waves of protests in support of racial justice in the US and across the world.

The jury swiftly and unanimously convicted Chauvin of all the charges he faced – second- and third-degree murder, and manslaughter – after concluding that the white former Minneapolis police officer killed the 46-year-old Black man in May through a criminal assault, by pinning him to the ground so he could not breathe.

Huge cheers immediately went up among a crowd of several hundred people outside the heavily fortified courthouse with people chanting “All three counts” and “Whose victory? Our victory!”

And then things went back to normal, when a cop in Columbus pumped 4 rounds into the chest of a 15 year old girl.

………

However, a fatal police shooting in Ohio of a 15-year-old girl, which took place just moments before the verdict was read, unleashed a sense of fury and frustration among protesters who gathered at the scene.

“We don’t get to celebrate nothing,” said one protester, KC Taynor, according to the Columbus Dispatch. “In the end, you know what, you can’t be Black.”

Chauvin, who showed little emotion as the verdicts were read, was immediately taken into custody to await sentencing. He faces up to 40 years in prison but is likely to receive a shorter sentence, according to legal guidelines.

What happened in Minneapolis is not just about one specific violent incident. It’s about systemic violence as well. This absurd headline from the Minneapolis Police Dept. drives that home. In a better world it would read “Minneapolis cop kills resident in broad daylight.” pic.twitter.com/6mrL3rBTCi

— Josh Skolnick (@JoshDSkolnick) May 26, 2020

Police lie confirmed on Snopes

It should be noted that if not for a teenage girl capturing the video of George Floyd’s murder, the police department lies about this incident would have meant that Chauvin would still be out on the streets, free to kill again.

In a related note, Nancy Pelosi needs to resign, because she is suffering from what can only be described as senile wokeness.

When she literally said that she thanked George Floyd for his sacrifice in the cause of civil rights, she was so clueless and so offensive that she needs to be removed from her position as speaker of the house.

This is even more racist and more clueless than Trent Lott’s endorsement of Strom Thurmond’s segregationist 1948 Presidential campaign in 2002.

It’s even worse because she did this at a Congressional Black Caucus press conference.

Sorry Madam Speaker, but as much as you love the limelight, this was a time for members of the CBC to take center stage, not you.

Also, Floyd was not a civil rights activist, he was a victim of a murder by a corrupt and evil police officer:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was condemned on Tuesday saying that George Floyd, a Minneapolis man murdered by a police officer in 2020, “sacrificed his life” for racial justice, a statement some critics called “ignorant” and “tone deaf.”

………

“Thank you George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice. For being there to call out to your mom, how heartbreaking was that, call out for you mom, ‘I can’t breathe,'” Pelosi said at a press conference hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus following the verdict. “But because of you and because of thousands, millions of people around the world who came out for justice, your name will always be synonymous with justice.”

What a f%$#ing clueless narcissist.

Headline of the Day

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This Is the Most Embarrassing News Clip in American Transportation History

—Vice Magazine on Elon Musk’s recent video of how its Vegas tunnel “works”.

Seriously, this is literally the Disney ride “Autopia” at about twice the speed of the original.

This is not transportation, it’s not even a demonstrator of the technology.  This is a rip-off of a Disney ride by the greatest humbug of our generation.

But The Boring Company’s cost per mile isn’t as impressive as it sounds. This project avoided all the expensive parts of a mass transportation tunnelling project. The station is a big hole in the ground with a flat parking lot and doesn’t have pedestrian entrances, walkways, platforms, mezzanines, etc. The tunnel itself is also very skinny. But most importantly, tunnelling itself is never the part of American mass transit projects that create the cost overruns, which is why on-street and elevated rail projects also cost way more in the United States than elsewhere. In other words, The Boring Company avoided the most complex and costly aspects of transportation projects, shrunk it in both scale and the number of people it will supposedly serve, then bragged about how little it cost to build.

He May Be the Must Repugnant Member of the Democratic Party Establishment (There Is No Democratic Party Establishment) Today

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No, not Joe Manchin, nor even the twisted wannabe punk Kyrsten Sinema.

I am talking, of course about Rahm Israel Emanuel, a politician so contemptible that he was run out of the Chicago Mayor’s office on a rail.

There seems to be no level of evil and stupidity he won’t support, so now he’s cast his lot against raising the minimum wage, which is arguably the most beneficial, and is certainly the most politically popular policy initiative in the United States today:

As disgraced former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel reportedly keeps floating his name for a Biden administration appointment, he is recycling an old Republican plan to let states opt out of a higher minimum wage. Now, he is slated to headline the annual conference of one of the major corporate lobbying groups fighting against congressional Democrats’ $15 minimum wage legislation.

The National Restaurant Association, the lobbying group which led the fight to block a minimum wage increase in the COVID-19 relief bill passed last month, will be hosting Emanuel as a keynote speaker for the group’s virtual conference on April 20, an event entitled: “Seeking Unity: Conversations on How We Can Come Together.”

The speaking slot follows Emanuel’s Washington Post op-ed last month arguing that omitting a minimum wage increase from the American Rescue Plan was not a big deal, and asserting that Democrats should work with Republicans on a plan that does not guarantee $15 nationwide.

He’s always wrong, he’s not particularly competent, and he’s a bully.

Why is he not flipping burgers at minimum wage for a living?

My, How Nick Clegg has Fallen

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Roll Tape!

In 2010, largely on the basis of being telegenic and glib, Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrats, (Slightly Silly Party) managed to snag enough seats in Parliament, no mean feat in Britains first-past-the-post system, to be the junior member in coalition with David Cameron and the Tories until the next election, where

In the next election, they lost 48 of 57 seats, because the electorate realized that all Clegg cared about was proximity to power.

Speaking of Nick Clegg’s pathological need to be close to power, he is now Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, and so, much like his days in UK politics, defending the indefensible.

In this case, the former head of the Lib Dems is defending Facebook’s algorithms and its reckless and insecure handling of user data. 

Clegg’s descent into an irrelevant joke does not surprise me one bit:

Facebook wants to reintroduce users to its algorithms.

On Wednesday, within the span of a few hours, the company took several steps to encourage users to trust its ranking and recommendation systems. In a blog post, Facebook said it would make it easier for users to control what’s in their feeds, pointing to both new and existing tools. In an apparent attempt to buttress that announcement, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs Nick Clegg published a 5,000-word Medium post defending the company’s ranking algorithms and repudiating the argument that those algorithms create dangerous echo chambers. Clegg also defended Facebook’s algorithms in a wide-ranging interview with The Verge published on the same day.

Taken together, these moves appear to be a concerted campaign by Facebook to repair the negative reputation of its algorithms, which many say actively encourage and incentivize political polarization, misinformation, and extreme content. The efforts come as the company faces heavy criticism from lawmakers for its platform design, and just a week after CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified to Congress during a hearing on misinformation.

In its latest PR blitz, Facebook is pushing the idea that it’s not particularly responsible for the proliferation of polarization and extreme content on its platforms and is taking appropriate steps to combat both. That defies longtime critics, who have said Facebook’s algorithms are engineered to reward the most odious content, a specific narrative that Facebook and Clegg are actively denying.

………

“Nick Clegg’s Medium post is a cynical, breathtaking display of gaslighting on a scale hard to fathom even for Facebook,” a spokesperson for the Real Facebook Oversight Board, a group of scholars and activists critical of Facebook, told Recode. “Clegg asks, ‘Where does FB’s incentive lie?’ A better question might be: Where does Nick Clegg’s incentive lie? The answer to that is clear.”

“Facebook managed to both insult its users for being too dimwitted to understand how its algorithms work while also blaming them for taking advantage of them too effectively,” said Ashley Boyd, the vice president for advocacy at Mozilla, in a Wednesday statement. “The News Feed controls unveiled today amount to nothing more than an admission that its algorithms are the problem.”

Ashley Boyd’s quote is spot on, and I have nothing to add.

バカにつける薬はない*

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In response to raucus partying and a refusal to engage in proper social distancing, Miami Beach has announced a curfew.

Who could have possibly known that a bunch of drunk college students on spring break would take of their masks and swap bodily fluids?

The answer to this question is, “Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together.” 

One day after the spring break oasis of South Beach descended into chaos, with the police struggling to control overwhelming crowds and making scores of arrests, officials in Miami Beach decided on Sunday to extend an emergency curfew for up to three weeks.

The officials there went so far as to approve closing the famed Ocean Drive to all vehicular and pedestrian traffic from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. — the hours of the curfew — for four nights a week through April 12. Residents, hotel guests and employees of local businesses are exempt from the closure.

The strip, frequented by celebrities and tourists alike, was the scene of a much-criticized skirmish on Saturday night between at-times unruly spring breakers who ignored social distancing and masking guidelines, and police officers who used pepper balls to disperse a large crowd just hours after the curfew had been introduced.

The restrictions were a stunning concession to the city’s inability to control unwieldy crowds of revelers that the city and the state of Florida aggressively courted amid the continuing coronavirus pandemic.

Florida, man.

*Pronounced in Japanese, “baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai”, which means, “There is no medicine for stupidity.” Apologies for any inaccuracies in the text, I do not know Japanese.

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

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In Arizona, State Representative John Kavanagh kist said. “We don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote – but everybody shouldn’t be voting.”

We’ve always known it to be the case that Republicans don’t just object to the Democratic Party, they object to Democracy:

A Republican lawmaker in Arizona has defended GOP-sponsored legislation to restrict ballot access as a means to protect “the quality of votes” and arguing that “everybody shouldn’t be voting” as Republicans in at least 43 states introduce dozens of bills to curb voting rights, compelled by spurious fraud claims and election conspiracy theories in the wake of 2020 elections and disproportionately impacting Black voters.

Arizona state Rep John Kavanagh, who chairs the state legislature’s Government and Elections Committee, told CNN that Democrats are “willing to risk fraud” by expanding voter access, and that “Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote – but everybody shouldn’t be voting.”

Mr Kavanagh was referencing a measure that could purge thousands of people from a list of voters who automatically receive popular mail-in ballots during elections. Arizona lawmakers are considering roughly two dozen other bills.

………

Mr Kavanagh also suggested that Democrats’ voter registration and ballot collection drives can “greatly influence the outcome of the election” by targeting “uninformed” voters.

When Dick Tuck said, after losing a campaign for Congress, said, “The people have spoken, the bastards,” he was making a joke to liven up what was a somber moment.

The Republicans really mean it.

Today in Language

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Another reminder that the word ‘ultracrepidarian’ (19th century) describes someone who loves holding forth on matters they know absolutely nothing about.

— Susie Dent 💙 (@susie_dent) March 8, 2021

As my reader(s) have no doubt noticed, I rather like to use the archaic word, “Snollygoster,” to refer to dishonest people, particularly politicians. 

I find the word wondrously evocative, and believe that it should enter general use again.

Well, I must thank Susie Dent for informing me about another wonderful word that has fallen out of use, “Ultracrepidarian,” which means someone who ……… Hell, it means almost every pundit on the planet earth with NY Times pundit Tom Friedman being the apogee (or perhaps nadir) of the form.

Why the Hell Haven’t I Been Banned from Twitter?

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And I am outraged that James Hodgkinson was not a better shot.

— Jack Dorsey Is Objectively Pro-Nazi (M.G. Saroff) (@40_Years) March 4, 2021

Seems bannable to me

In response to a Tweet from Steve Scalise (R-LA) wherein he expressed, “Outrage,” over the House of Representatives passing a bill to make it easier for people to vote, I replied, “And I am outraged that James Hodgkinson was not a better shot.”

James Hodgkinson, as you probably already know, was the left-wing gunman who opened fire on a baseball practice being conducted by Congressional Republicans, severely wounded Representative Scalize. (He nearly died, both from the immediate effects of the shooting, and later from a post operative infection.)

Not only am I still on Twitter, but I haven’t even been called an asshole.

At least this time, unlike the last time, I will actually have done something meriting a banning.   (Last time, it was (I think, I never got an answer) for using the term “Wymyn” as a part of a joke.)

You have to love automated content moderation, where things like discussions of chess get flagged as hate speech.

It’s like They Are Playing to Lose

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The headline in New York Magazine says it all, “Democrats Strip $1,400 Checks From 12 Million for No Reason.” 

That’s 12 million voters who know that the Democrats lied to them, and they were likely the margin of victory in at least one of the Georgia runoffs that gave Democrats Joe Manchin control of the US Senate.

This is horrible policy, about $8 billion in a $1.9 trillion stimulus package, 0.42%, and it is worse politics.


The official hat of the Biden Administration

The stimulus checks are the single most popular part of the bill, but the so-called moderates in the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) needed a scalp so that they could wave their dicks, and Biden caves.

To quote not-Tallyrand, (it is frequently misattributed to him) “It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

Democrats often wonder why they don’t get more votes, because their policies are popular.

They don’t get more votes because people do not believe that Democrats will actually follow through.