Category: Wanker

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.

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.

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.

Headline of the Day

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Joe Biden Owes Neanderthals an Apology After Comments on Texas Mask Mandate Lift

—Charlie Pierce

Yes, the Texas governor has decided to lift all Covid restrictions, because  ……… TEXAS, and the governor of Mississippi has decided to lift all Covid restrictions, because  ……… they can’t abide TEXAS out-stupiding them.

Biden described this as, “Neanderthal Thinking,” which is, as the eminently quotable Mr. Pierce notes, unfair to Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, who by all indications were just as capable and intelligent as our own Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

I think that we should give Texas back to Mexico, if they will take it.

As to Mississippi,could someone please take them?  Anyone?

Today in Stupid

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It appears that one of the Capitol rioters was texting his ex-wife while breaking into, and said ex promptly notified the federal constabulary of the state of affairs.

As the saying goes, “バカにつける薬はない”.*

One consistent theme so far in the enormous federal investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on Congress is the overwhelming willingness of friends, family and lovers of Capitol rioters, past and present, to rat them out to authorities.

Wednesday brought yet another exemplary entry to the court record.

According to an FBI agent’s affidavit in a newly unsealed case, Richard Michetti texted someone with whom he had a prior romantic relationship several times during the attack. She contacted authorities the following day.

Michetti allegedly sent a video showing himself on Capitol grounds during the riot. Another video showed him inside the Capitol Building itself, according to the affidavit. He also allegedly texted a string of updates about what he was up to as he rampaged with the mob.

In addition to everything else, I get the sense that these folks were NOT exactly the the sharpest knives in the drawer.

*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.

Oh, Canada

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After discovering that teachers were leaving classroom windows open to improve ventalation and reduce the spread of Covid 19, Officials in Abbotsford, B.C. Canada brought in contractors to screw the windows shut. 

So, just in case you are wondering, asshole incompetent school administrators appear to be a universal thing:

Officials at a school in Abbotsford, B.C., had windows in the building either screwed shut or blocked from opening wider than a few inches after teachers began using them to compensate for poor ventilation, says the Abbotsford Teachers’ Union.

Teachers at Godson Elementary School had assumed a proper ventilation system was installed throughout the entire school — to maintain airflow and reduce the risk of coronavirus transmission — but they were shocked to learn in December that this wasn’t the case in an older wing of the building.

After teachers began opening windows wide to increase airflow in the affected classrooms — despite cold temperatures outside — the school district responded by sending contractors to fix the issue.

The district says those contractors found safety issues with the windows and partially sealed them.

………

On Feb. 14, health officials ordered one division at Godson elementary to self-isolate because of COVID exposure.

………

The wing with no ventilation system houses some 200 students and staff in 18 rooms.

“To start by screwing the windows closed — was instantly a large stress,” said Brooks.

“It was a great surprise to the staff. The day that it happened the teachers were very upset.”

She said the district supplied small air purifiers to process classroom air, but described it as “Band Aid” solution.

I think that this could be settled with a friendly game of hockey between the parents and the teachers, with the school administrators being the puck.

Because They Cannot Resist Hippie Punching

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Joe Biden is looking to appoint Rahm Emanuel ambassador to Japan.

I get it.  Rahm was once an important member of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), but there is no reason to appoint him to anything.

He is so incredibly awful that he was forced out as mayor, and under his watch, the police literally operated a black torture site, he sold his city to any well dressed charlatan with a few buck of campaign donations.

The only reason for Rahm to be given a position like ambassador to Japan, where, let’s be clear, he won’t have anything substantive to do, career bureaucrats in the US and Japanese have been handling the important stuff for years, is to show progressives in the Democratic Party that they are neither respected nor valued:

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel appears poised to take on a high-profile ambassadorship for President Biden, a step likely to trigger contention with progressives who’ve balked at him taking a Cabinet role.

Emanuel is the front-runner to be Biden’s nominee as ambassador to Japan, sources familiar with the matter told The Hill.

He’s also being considered for the post in China, but sources said Japan is the more likely landing spot for former President Obama’s chief of staff. Former State Department official Nicholas Burns is the likely front-runner to end up in Beijing.

The diplomatic role in Asia would mark a high-profile return to the federal government for Emanuel, who built a reputation as a brash but effective political tactician in the Democratic Party.

Emanuel led Democrats to the House majority in 2006, working closely with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to return the party to power for the first time since the Gingrich revolution in that cycle.

What he has is a gift for self-promotion.

He dropped millions on candidates who stood for nothing, and lost, while Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy generated seats that Rahm wrote off completely.

Furthermore, “Brash but effective,” is the WORST POSSIBLE combination for dealing with Japan.

Brash does not play well in Japan, though they do understand that the position is a political plum:

Japan has been seen as a top diplomatic post. Past ambassadors to Japan include the 1984 Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale, the legendary GOP senator Howard Baker and Caroline Kennedy.

See what I mean?

These are people who understood their role was not to make (or even implement) policy, but to show that the ambassadorship is prestigious, and hence the relationship is valued.

Even if we weren’t dealing with a crass and venal incompetent who had spent his political life failing up, he is spectacularly unsuited to this position.

It’s Like Having Your Mother-in-Law Drive off a Cliff in Your Brand New Car

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So, the worst “Democrat” in the Senate, Joe Manchin, has come out against Biden’s choice of Neera Tanden, the worst think tank drone ever to come out of the Clinton machine, to head of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

What’s more, he has done so for the worst possible reason, because Tanden is mean to Republicans sometimes. (Her venom toward Republicans is her ONLY redeeming feature)

The awfulness of the distinguished gentleman from West Virginia is self evident, but I’ll list a bill of particulars on Tanden: (It’s an updatepast from an old post if it sounds familiar)

I am hoping for a way that they can both lose, because neither of them deserve a win ever: 

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Friday that he would oppose Neera Tanden‘s nomination to head the White House budget office, potentially sinking her Senate confirmation.

Manchin cited Tanden’s harsh tweets about Republicans as the reason for his opposition.

“I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget,” Manchin said in a statement. “For this reason, I cannot support her nomination.”>br>
………

“Neera Tanden is an accomplished policy expert who would be an excellent Budget Director and we look forward to the committee votes next week and to continuing to work toward her confirmation through engagement with both parties,” Biden press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement distributed to reporters in response to Manchin’s remarks.

No, she’s a vacuous party hack, not that there’s anything wrong with that. 

The problem is that cannot keep good staff, has never had an original idea in her life, and has an affection for bad policy and bad politics that rivles that of her old boss, Hillary Clinton.

In a CNN interview Friday afternoon, Sanders was non-committal about supporting Tanden’s nomination, saying that he would speak to her next week about “what she wants to do.” Sanders reiterated that he was less concerned with her previous rhetoric than her future actions.

And Bernie Sanders is the only person in this entire sordid affair who is behaving like a mensch, probably because he is the only one in this entire sordid affair who values anything beyond his own career.

Worse Response to a Bad Idea

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The Australian government is in the process of passing a law that requires payment for linking to news sites, which to my mind is a horrible idea, and Mark Zuckerberg’s response to all of this is to have Facebook ban all Australian news content from their platform. 

Granted, Australia is not a huge market, at 25 million people, it’s only about 5 million more people than the New York City metropolitan area, but this ham-fisted response is going to do a lot of damage to Facebook while mildly inconveniencing the people of Australia.

I don’t expect Zuckerberg to cave, and in that case, I see Australia generally moving to some other source of rumors, genocidal racists, fascism, and cat pix.

The Australians are a hardy and inventive people:

Facebook has followed through on its threat to ban Australians from seeing or posting news content on its site in response to the federal government’s news media code.

The tech giant’s Australian and New Zealand managing director, Will Easton, said this would block links to Australian publishers from being posted, while no Australian users would be able to share or see content from any news outlets, both Australian and international.

“The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content,” he said in a blog post published on Thursday morning. “It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia.

“With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter.”

………

Users on Thursday reported seeing a pop-up error window when they attempted to post links to news, stating these cannot be posted in response to the news media code.

………

Facebook’s move is in contrast to the approach from the other major platform subject to the code, Google.

Although Google had threatened to withdraw its search engine from Australia if the code went ahead, in the past week, Google has signed agreements with some of Australia’s biggest publishers, including News Corp, Nine Entertainment and Seven West Media, for payment for its News Showcase product. The Nine deal is reportedly worth $30m a year.

As several people have pointed out to me, Facebook blocked itself. pic.twitter.com/LVhyJMAHfp

— Josh Taylor (@joshgnosis) February 17, 2021

Yes, Facebook banned Facebook, I think that the Aussies would call this an “Own Goal”

It gets even worse, because Facebook f%$#ed up the rollout of the ban, shutting down non-profits and government agencies as well:

The Bureau of Meteorology, state health departments, the Western Australian opposition leader, charities and Facebook itself are among those to have been hit by Facebook’s ban on news in Australia.

On Thursday morning Facebook began preventing Australian news sites from posting, while also stopping Australian users from sharing or viewing content from any news outlets, both Australian and international.

The social media giant said it made the decision in response to the news media bargaining code currently before the Senate, which would force Facebook and Google to negotiate with news companies for payment for content.

………

As Australia prepares to begin the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, state health departments, including SA Health and Queensland Health, were unable to post.

St Vincent’s Health in Melbourne said it was “extremely concerning”its Facebook page had been blocked “during a pandemic and on the eve of crucial Covid vaccine distribution”.

Facebook is claiming that this was a “Mistake.”

If you believe that, I have a bridge in Melbourne made completely of Koala poop to sell you.

And Clinton Throws the Democrats an Anvil

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So, now that the clusterfuck known as Donald is hanging around Republican’s neck like a millstone, Hillary Clinton is busy trying to remove that particular albatross: (welcome to the Matthew Saroff mixed metaphor festival)

Hillary Clinton is trying to entice Republican voters to ditch Donald Trump by portraying him as outside the mainstream of their party, putting her at odds with congressional Democrats who want to link the party’s House and Senate candidates to Trump’s controversial brand of politics.

In a speech on Aug. 25 that flayed the Republican nominee as an outlier channeling the views of white supremacists and courting the “fringe element” of his party, Clinton invoked the names of former President George W. Bush, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Arizona Senator John McCain and former Senator Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican nominee, to set up the contrast with Trump.

Republicans who’ve already voiced their opposition to Trump welcomed having the Democratic presidential nominee make their argument—that he doesn’t represent the party or mainstream conservatism.

“I’m glad that even Hillary Clinton recognizes that this isn’t our whole party,” Katie Packer, a former adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, wrote on Twitter. “This is strong,” Republican strategist Ana Navarro said of Clinton’s praise for past Republican nominees. “It’s easily the best speech of any candidate this year,” Tony Fratto, a former spokesman for Bush, tweeted.

It’s Bill all over again:  Throwing the party, and the party’s ideals over the cliff in the quest for personal gain.

I am so going to take a sh%$ in the ballot booth this year. (I am not speaking figuratively here.)

When the Washington Post Editorial Board Condemns Something, It Is a Hearty Endorsement

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They just came out guns blazing in their condemnation of the NAACP’s opposition to charter schools.

Don’t worry. They are just proving that the NAACP is right.

From their support for the ill conceived adventures in Iraq and Libya, to their endorsement of privatizing Social Security, there is perhaps no group in the country that has proven to more reliably and spectacularly wrong.

Fred Hiatt and his merry band of useful idiots are the veritable Washington Generals (taste the irony there) of punditry, which says a lot.

Do You Want Some Cheese With That Whine?

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Ordinary investors who are paying attention understand that aggressively managed mutual funds almost always under perform the market over any significant time horizon.

These same investors also understand that you pay more in fees for this lackluster performance, and so they tend to invest in passive investments.

You cannot continue this, because it is worse than Communism:

The rise of passive asset management threatens to fundamentally undermine the entire system of capitalism and market mechanisms that facilitate an increase in the general welfare, according to analysts at research and brokerage firm Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., LLC.

In a note titled “The Silent Road to Serfdom: Why Passive Investing is Worse Than Marxism,” a team led by Head of Global Quantitative and European Equity Strategy Inigo Fraser-Jenkins, says that politicians and regulators need to be cognizant of the social case for active management in the investment industry.

“A supposedly capitalist economy where the only investment is passive is worse than either a centrally planned economy or an economy with active market led capital management,” they write.

High fees and subpar returns, coupled with the creation of a plethora of relatively inexpensive exchange-traded funds that track major equity indexes have helped fuel a massive shift in asset flows away from active management in favor of passive. While policymakers are quick to praise the benefits of these low-cost options for retail investors, Bernstein argues that this is a short-sighted view that doesn’t take into account the potential downsides involved with the increase in passively-managed assets.

………

The social function of active management, in a capitalist society, is that it seeks to direct capital to its most productive end, facilitating sustainable job creation and a rise in the aggregate standard of living. And rather than be guided by the Invisible Hand and profit motive, capital allocation under Marxism is conducted by an oh-so-visible hand aimed at producing use-values that satisfy each member of the society’s needs. Seen through this lens, passive management is somewhat tantamount to a nihilistic approach to capital allocation.

No.

The mutual fund is a relatively new phenomenon.

You are having a kitten over this because, to quote Blazing Saddles, “We’ve gotta protect our phony baloney jobs!”