Tag: Stupid

Gonna Leave a Mark

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When the Columbia Journalism Review writes an article about your paper, it can frequently be uncomfortable.

When the CJR title is, The Post’s Masthead Will Have to Accept That It Is Not God, you know it is going to be an unpleasant read for the WaPo editorial staff.

The problem here is not one of technology. It is one of politics. The attempt of prestige newspapers like the Post to cast themselves as perfect sentinels of objectivity standing outside the tawdry world of political judgment is, as honest journalists have long realized, absurd. And impossible. The Post’s current social media policy forbids posting anything “that could objectively be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism.” 

Consider the assumptions inherent in such a standard. It posits, first, the existence of someone capable of telling hundreds of journalists with hundreds of different sets of life experiences covering a complex nation of 330 million citizens what “objectively” is political or racial bias. (Maybe God is up to that job, but Marty Baron is not.) We see in practice that what is ruled to violate this standard is a reporter noting a history of sexual assault in a recently deceased celebrity, or a reporter saying that the Tea Party was motivated by racism. Are these observations “objectively” evidence of some sort of “bias?” No. They are, instead, evidence that it is a fool’s errand for the management of the Post to act as though they alone have insight into objective truth.

Oh, snap!

This May be the Stupidest Thing Ever

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Seriously, posting your personal details on 4chan boards is not smart.

If you want to do a story on 4chan, or 8chan, take the following:

  • Don’t piss them off.
  • Get a burner phone, a dumb one, bought with cash that ties to none of financial information.
  • Get a burner email account, and read it only at the library.
  • Use an assumed name or code name.
  • Don’t piss them off.

You might also want to don CBW protective gear.

Finally, and I mean this with sincere respect, and no small amount of fear, do NOT f%$# with the chan.

Posting personal details on chan boards was a bad idea BEFORE everyone on them turned into literal Nazis. It is an even worse idea now.

— Sara Luterman (@slooterman) February 6, 2020

Iowa Caucuses Tonight

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The vote count has not budged from 1.9% reporting for something like 2 hours.

In 2016, they were at over 90% reporting at this time, but since it appears that they employed the geniuses from the Clinton campaign who f%$#ed up their political models completely, the app is not working well, so the state party is holding results back for, “quality control”.

In reality, they aren’t holding back results for, “quality control.”

In the best case they are holding back for, “Employing blithering idiots to handle critical infrastructure,” and in the worst case, they are holding back results for, “Electoral fraud.”

I guess that we will find out in the morning.

Standings with 1.9% reporting, which means that it’s still a crap shoot are:

  1. Sanders (27.7%)
  2. Warren (25.1%)
  3. Buttigieg (23.8%)
  4. Klobuchar (11.8%)
  5. Biden (11.1%)

No analysis, because the numbers are to preliminary, and too dodgy, reports are that state party officials are verifying by hand, to make any analysis beyond this xkcd cartoon:

Link

Yes, She is a Distant Relative (Facepalm)

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My second cousin once removed,* Dianne Feinstein, in an attempt to generate some bipartisan cred, made an incredibly inartful statement about having an open mind on impeachment to an LA Times reporter, which was interpreted as a statement that she was leaning against impeachment.

Feinstein and the Times seem to be on the same page about this, the paper has issued an update correcting the story, but I blame Feinstein for her eagerness to preen and play the bipartisanship game for this sh%$ storm to have blown up in the first place, and this likely makes it easier for someone like Joe Manchin to allow their cowardice to overrule their constitutional duties:

The fate of key votes in President Trump’s impeachment trial remained uncertain Tuesday as his defense lawyers concluded their arguments and Republicans led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell struggled to muster the votes to bring the trial to a speedy close without calling witnesses.

But even as McConnell struggled to corral Republicans, Sen. Dianne Feinstein seemed to signal fissures in the unity of Senate Democrats. Feinstein suggested that while she had serious concerns about Trump’s character, she is still weighing her ultimate vote on whether to acquit him.

………

Feinstein’s comments came initially in remarks to reporters outside the Senate chamber in which she said she had leaned against impeachment at the outset.

“Nine months left to go [before the election], the people should judge. We are a republic, we are based on the will of the people — the people should judge,” she said.

She then added: “That was my view and it still is my view.”

Still, she indicated that arguments in the trial about Trump’s character and fitness for office had shifted her thinking. “What changed my opinion as this went on,” she said, is a realization that “impeachment isn’t about one offense. It’s really about the character and ability and physical and mental fitness of the individual to serve the people, not themselves.”

In a later written statement, in which she said she had initially been “misunderstood,” Feinstein said “it’s clear the president’s actions were wrong.”

There are 39½ million people in California, and something north of 20 million registered voters, and this boneheaded play to civility will not change a single vote.

It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers, though we have never met, either in person or electronically.

Tweet of the Day

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Why not? She was the most factor in electing him in 2016

Bankole: Is Hillary Clinton helping to elect Trump? https://t.co/yKgjoUeMnE via @detroitnews

— Another Nobody for #Bernie2020 (@laughingliberal) January 27, 2020

Hillary Clinton, even more than her minions, has completely eschewed any responsibility for her loss.

I am not the most self-aware individual, but even I see a serious need for some introspection here.

This is Incredibly F%$#ed Up

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Now that the majority of Iraq wants the US troops gone, the US State Security Apparatus wants to carve out a Sunni rump state so that they can continue basing troops there.

This is unbelievably f%$#ing stupid:

Backed into a corner and influence waning, the United States has in recent weeks been promoting a plan to create an autonomous Sunni region in western Iraq, officials from both countries told Middle East Eye.

The US efforts, the officials say, come in response to Shia Iraqi parties’ attempts to expel American troops from their country.

Iraq represents a strategic land bridge between Iran and its allies in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.

Establishing a US-controlled Sunni buffer zone in western Iraq would deprive Iran of using land routes into Syria and prevent it from reaching the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.

For Washington, the idea of carving out a Sunni region dates back to a 2007 proposition by Joe Biden, who is now vying to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.

It was hoped that the scheme could tighten US control over Iraq and provide protection for Sunnis during the 2006-08 sectarian civil conflict, in which tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis from both the Sunni and Shia communities were slaughtered.

But opposition to Iraq being divided along sectarian and ethnic lines, as well as Americans’ insistence on keeping the country united, has postponed attempts at its implementation.

Now efforts to expel US troops have breathed new life into the project, and the creation of a Sunni region is just one of the options being considered by Washington to counter Iranian pressure, a top Iraqi Shia official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told MEE.

Iraqi unity “is no longer a priority now for the US,” the Shia official said.

“If the Americans reach a dead-end in terms of the presence of their forces in Iraq, they will work to implement this project vigorously.”

A former US official familiar with the project confirmed that the Americans have worked on “taking this project out of the drawer and putting it on the table”.

“The creation of a Sunni region has always been an option for the US. The Iranians cannot be allowed to reach the Mediterranean Sea or benefit from the land bridge connecting them to Hezbollah” in Lebanon, the former US official told MEE.

“The project is American, not Sunni. The presence of the American forces has been the guarantor for the Sunnis and the Kurds, so if the US has to leave Iraq, then establishing a Sunni region in western Iraq is its plan to curb Iran and its arms in the Middle East,” he added.

“We are talking about establishing a country, not an administrative region.”

Seriously, what passes for the conventional wisdom among the US defense and foreign policy establishment is remarkably stupid.

What an Entitled Pissant

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Seriously, no one will ever miss Hillary Clinton if she refuses to leave.
Bernie Sanders 3 joint appearances, dozens of campaign stops for her, and Hillary Clinton is still upset that she hired the worst possible people and ran the worst possible campaign:

For three years, Hillary Clinton has watched the Democratic Party search for a path forward in the Trump era.

………

And she’d largely refrained from weighing in — until Tuesday morning, when The Hollywood Reporter published an interview with Mrs. Clinton promoting a new documentary about her that will premiere on Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival. In the documentary, she rips into Mr. Sanders and declines to say if she would endorse him and campaign on his behalf if he were to win the Democratic nomination.

“Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician,” she said. “It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.” Asked by The Reporter recently if that assessment still held, she replied, “Yes, it does.”

………

Some Democrats fear that Mrs. Clinton is adding fuel to the tensions within the party, whose leaders have spent years trying to overcome the lingering hostilities of the 2016 campaign, hoping to unify Democrats around the singular mission of defeating Mr. Trump.

That’s her goal.  If she cannot have it, no one can.

………

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday in Washington, Mr. Sanders said: “Secretary Clinton is entitled to her point of view. My job today is to focus on the impeachment trial.”

When asked for his response to Mrs. Clinton’s assertion that no one liked him, he joked that “on a good day, my wife likes me, so let’s clear the air on that one.”

Mrs. Clinton tried to clarify her remarks on Tuesday evening. “I thought everyone wanted my authentic, unvarnished views!” she wrote on Twitter. “But to be serious, the number one priority for our country and world is retiring Trump, and, as I always have, I will do whatever I can to support our nominee.”

No one wants your, “Authentic, unvarnished views,”  They want you to GO THE F%$# AWAY.

Since Mr. Sanders endorsed Mrs. Clinton in July 2016, the acrimony between the two camps has lingered. Mrs. Clinton and her former aides maintain that his endorsement came too late and was too lukewarm to truly unify the party. Some supporters of Mr. Sanders still argue that the Democratic National Committee “rigged” the rules to help her secure the nomination.

Numerous campaign appearances, in fact more in September 2016 than Hillary did that month, and it was “lukewarm” .  If you want to find someone to blame for your loss to an inverted traffic cone, look in the f%$#ing mirror!


Unlike nearly all of the other two dozen Democratic candidates this primary cycle, Mr. Sanders did not call Mrs. Clinton before he entered the race.

Oh you poor dear.  The horror.

What a self-important ass.

Clearly, We are Preparing to Invade Endor

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Smart call on the Space Force camouflage.

Never know when you’re gonna have to blend into a space jungle or hide behind a space bush.

IT’S NOT LIKE SPACE IS A BLACK VACUUM WHERE NO ONE EVER GOES OUTSIDE OR ANYTHING. https://t.co/jbIR4ZlHs5

— SarcasticRover (@SarcasticRover) January 18, 2020


I know this is hard to understand, but on the left there is a picture of camouflage and on the right there is a picture of space. Study these carefully until you can see the difference. pic.twitter.com/7HhAeHRyrm

— JRehling (@JRehling) January 18, 2020

Now we’re talking. Let’s get that sweet military contract. Do you want to underbid me this time? Or shall I underbid you? #spacefarce pic.twitter.com/7i3dQnlhsk

— HartbrakебляMcCarthy (@BumpItMcCarthy) January 18, 2020

ShopBop has been hired to design the new #SpaceForceCamo uniforms. A sneak peak: pic.twitter.com/oOnl8jmiCU

— Ken Smith (@KenSmith) January 18, 2020

This would explain why the newly constituted US Space Force will have a camouflage uniform.

The alternative, that they have discovered space jungles, is too absurd to consider.

Needless to say, Twitter is going insane over this:

The U.S. Space Force on Friday offered a first look at its utility uniforms with its service name tape, unleashing a torrent of mockery over the decision to use a camouflage pattern for a military branch associated with the dark endlessness of the universe.

“Space Force” soon began trending on Twitter — mostly not because of excitement about the uniform.

“Smart call on the Space Force camouflage,” one Twitter user wrote. “Never know when you’re gonna have to blend into a space jungle or hide behind a space bush.”

“I’m dressed better for Space Force than this and I’m wearing $10 leggings from Target,” said one woman, who shared a photo of leggings with images of cats floating in space.

Another person posted a picture of a camouflage pattern next to a completely black box. “Study these carefully until you can see the difference,” he wrote in response to the Space Force.

The reality, as it usually is, is actually a bit more prosaic.

Their new uniform is, except for the various badges, reuses the existing camouflage uniforms, because, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Why spend all that money on a new uniform?

Then again, why spend all that money on standing up the cockamamie idea of a Space Force in the first place?

Why You Don’t Hire or Promote Torturers

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The CIA torture fetishists are not realists, nor do they show competence or perspective.  Rather, they spend their lives trying to force the world to comply with their own paranoid and twisted version of reality. (Paraphrasing from an online post, whose sourc I cannot find)

Appearing on a video screen was Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, who was monitoring the crisis from the agency’s headquarters in Northern Virginia. In the days before General Suleimani’s death, Ms. Haspel had advised Mr. Trump that the threat the Iranian general presented was greater than the threat of Iran’s response if he was killed, according to current and former American officials. Indeed, Ms. Haspel had predicted the most likely response would be a missile strike from Iran to bases where American troops were deployed, the very situation that appeared to be playing out on Tuesday afternoon.

Though Ms. Haspel took no formal position about whether to kill General Suleimani, officials who listened to her analysis came away with the clear view that the C.I.A. believed that killing him would improve — not weaken — security in the Middle East.

This is why Obama should have jailed CIA torturers instead of promoting them.

I’ve Heard about Getting Back on the Horse, but This Is Ridiculous

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It appears that the Boeing’s failure to properly implement automation on the 737 MAX, to the tune of 346 dead passengers, has led the Seattle (Chicago) aviation giant double down on automation in its airliners.

It’s clear that Boeing has neither the skill set nor the corporate culture to properly implement flight control automation, but they want to get rid of the pilots.

To quote Nietzsche, “It is like the bite of a dog into a stone, it is a stupidity.”

Boeing Co. is increasingly committed to transferring more control of aircraft from pilots to computers after two crashes exposed flaws in an automated system on its 737 MAX that overpowered aviators in the disasters.

Executives at Boeing and other makers of planes and cockpit-automation systems for some time have believed more-sophisticated systems are necessary to serve as backstops for pilots, help them assimilate information and, in some cases, provide immediate responses to imminent hazards.

Now, such changes also seek to address the fact that average pilots may not react to problems—including those tied to automation—as quickly or proficiently as designers traditionally assumed, according to former and current Boeing officials and industry executives. The view took hold after a flight-control system known as MCAS put two MAX jets into fatal nosedives within the past 14 months that together killed 346 people. “We are going to have to ultimately almost—almost—make these planes fly on their own,” then Boeing Chairman Dave Calhoun said in a CNBC interview in November. Mr. Calhoun will become the plane maker’s chief executive Jan. 13.

The first rule of being in a hole is to stop digging, something which completely escapes the  finance types now running the company.

Autocorrect Changed “Biden” to “Buffoon”.

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I am beginning to think that the predictive AI on my phone’s keyboard is better than I originally thought, because, it was when I was forwarding a story about how Biden is open to having a Republican as his Vice Presidential running mate.

Seriously, this guy is living in a complete delusion, and if anyone thinks that he can beat Donald Trump by sh%$ting on the party and ignoring what the Republican party has become, they are as delusional as Joe is:

Former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, said on Monday he would consider choosing a Republican running mate if he is the party’s nominee next year.

However, even as he raised the possibility of a Republican running mate while speaking to a crowd at a campaign event in Exeter, New Hampshire, Biden said, “But I can’t think of one right now.”

Biden has premised much of his presidential bid on appealing to moderate Democrats, independents and Republicans who have been alienated by President Donald Trump. On the campaign trail, Biden has regularly spoken about the need to work with Republicans in Congress should he prevail in the November 2020 general election.

In response to a question by an attendee at the event, Biden elaborated on his answer, contending that Trump’s party has not done enough to hold the president accountable. “There are some really decent Republicans that are out there still, but here’s the problem right now,” he said. “They’ve got to step up.”

He really believes this sh%$, and the country cannot afford to have 2 delusional Presidents in a row.

The Bedbug at “All the News That’s Fit to Print” Endorses Eugenics

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I am referring, of course, to Brett Stephens, who is now claiming that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically more intelligent, at least a bit:

Ashkenazi Jews might have a marginal advantage over their gentile peers when it comes to thinking better. Where their advantage more often lies is in thinking different.

Seriously, between Brett Stephens and Bari Weiss, I’m beginning to wonder if the Times Editorial Page Editor James Bennet is literally trying to find the most contemptible Jews possible to become regular columnists.

Seriously, as a human being and an American, I find Stephens an embarrassment, and as a Jew, I find him a Shanda fur die Goyim.*

*Yiddish for a, “Shame before the nations,” meaning that this person is an embarrassment to the whole Jewish people.

After Major Sh%$-Storm, Biden Clarifies

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In an interview with the Des Moins Register, Joe Biden said that he would defy a Senate subpoena as a part of the impeachment investigation.

After his statement exploded, Biden “clarified” that he WOULD comply with any Senate subpoena, but he would call them out on their bullsh%$:

The shadow of impeachment clouded Joe Biden’s trip through eastern Iowa on Saturday after the former vice president confirmed he would defy a congressional subpoena if he didn’t believe there was a legal rationale behind it.

Biden told the Des Moines Register’s editorial board Friday he would not comply with a Senate subpoena during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate. It confirmed a statement he made in an interview with NPR earlier in the month.

He began the day Saturday clarifying those remarks on Twitter before making appearances in Tipton, Washington and Fairfield.

“I have always complied with a lawful order and in my eight years as VP, my office — unlike Donald Trump and Mike Pence — cooperated with legitimate congressional oversight requests,” Biden tweeted. “But I am just not going to pretend that there is any legal basis for Republican subpoenas for my testimony in the impeachment trial.”

Seriously, Biden basically sold the entire impeachment effort down the river, and when it blew up, he “Clarified.”

This is, for a lack of a better term, pure malarkey.

Keynes Noted This 80 Years Ago

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John Maynard Keynes wrote about the dangers of destructive speculative capital flows, and now even the IMF is beginning to warm to capital controls:

Advanced economies have delivered a decade of woeful economic growth since the global financial crisis. The last thing the world needs is for emerging economies to be dragged down, too.

Such thinking is taking hold in some parts of Washington, where the IMF is rethinking the once rigidly “neoliberal” advice — stressing open markets and free-floating currencies — that it doles out to economies great and small.

David Lipton, first deputy managing director of the IMF, says one of its primary concerns is that low inflation in the developed world may, through capital flows, be “spreading in an undesirable way to emerging countries and causing them to stagnate”.

“Many of these countries are concerned about how spillovers from advanced world policies cause them to lose some degree of control over their domestic economies.” He questioned whether policies such as currency intervention could be used to “offset this transmission mechanism”.

………

Developing countries run the risk of becoming overindebted as a result of capital inflows reducing borrowing costs. For some such countries, she said, the IMF’s preliminary modelling suggested “capital controls are the appropriate instrument to tackle this overborrowing problem, and they should be imposed as prudential policy in normal times before debt limit shocks strike”.

The use of the phrase “in normal times” suggests that, for some countries at least, the IMF is moving towards endorsing capital controls on a semi-permanent basis, not just in an emergency.

………

One EM economist at a leading bank, who backs the rethink but asked for anonymity given the sensitivity around the subject, said that for decades the IMF “has been guilty of capital account fundamentalism”.

It only took them 74 years for them to get a clue about this sh%$.

One wonders just how many people died before they got a smidgen of a clue.

Stupid and Short-Sighted

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It looks like Pelosi is trying to have an impeachment vote before year’s end, which means that the credible investigations of obstruction of justice in the Mueller report, and efforts to get testimony from John Bolton and Don McGahn are not being undertaken.

Seriously, you are only going to get one shot at this.

You want everything that is an impeachable offense in the articles of impeachment, and you want them exposed to the public.

Nancy Pelosi wants to show that Democrats want to get thing done by ……… wait for it ……… passing an update on NAFTA, the USMCA, because it worked so well for the Democrats in 1994. (Hint, it DIDN’T)

I get that Nancy Pelosi is eager to sell out the American worker to trans-national corporations because she, and the Blue Dog and New Democratic caucuses, will find it easier to fund raise that way, but the last time the Democrats did this, they lost the house and the Senate.

This is both bad politics and bad policy.

Impeachment is about turning over rocks to see what is underneath, and you are not done yet.

There is Stupid, Desperate, Stupid and Desperate, an Then There Is ………

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There is so clueless and desperate that you feel compelled to consult with Mark Penn, the man who (mis)managed Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential campaign. (He did not know that the Democrats do not have winner take all primaries)

Penn is now advising Donald Trump on impeachment:

As President Trump’s White House battles impeachment, he turned to a familiar face last week: Mark Penn, one of President Bill Clinton’s top strategists.

 Penn visited the Oval Office for more than an hour last Monday, three people familiar with the meeting said, and provided polling data and impeachment advice for the president. Penn reassured Trump that he would not be removed from office, according to people familiar with the meeting, and encouraged him to travel the country as Clinton did when he was fighting impeachment over 20 years ago, officials said.

………

In a brief interview, Penn said repeatedly that he was not working for Trump. “It’s the second time I have ever met with the president. I’m not counseling him. I’m not advising him.” Penn said he discussed with Trump only publicly available data but declined to be specific on his advice. “I don’t get into presidential meetings.”

That is a distinction without a difference.

Penn is a hack and an incompetent, so while I am angry about his disloyalty to the Democratic Party, it’s better that this mook* is advising Trump as opposed to someone who has a modicum of competence.

*Not to be confused with 2016 Clinton campaign chair Robby Mook, who is also, ironically, a mook.