Saturday Night

It's alright.

Trump's Worldview

If I am confronted with one more piece of serious "journalism" about what Trump Thinks About Things...

He's a senile racist old man who watches Fox news and gets pissed off and otherwise doesn't know anything about anything who thinks he is super smart and thinks all deals are zero sum the end.

Afternoon Thread

The end.

But That Was Different

Because reasons.

The Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee asked U.S. spy agencies late last year to reveal the names of U.S. individuals or organizations contained in classified intelligence on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, engaging in the same practice that President Trump has accused the Obama administration of abusing, current and former officials said.

The chairman of the committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), has since cast the practice of “unmasking” of U.S. individuals and organizations mentioned in classified reports as an abuse of surveillance powers by the outgoing Obama administration.

Debt Ceiling

There's a pretty good chance Trump will blow through the debt ceiling just because he's a senile old man who wants to watch the world burn. I don't actually know if blowing through the debt ceiling and shutting down the government and then not making bond payments is actually the apocalyptic event we imagine it could be (shutting down the government is Bad, but as for the All Powerful Bond Markets ????), but Trump is gonna Make America Great Again even if that means destroying it.

Friday Night

Time for bed.

Distracted

Maybe you've known an elderly relative who is like this.

While the department has compiled a long list of candidates for the White House, there has been no “clear framework or logic for who was interviewed and why,” said one of the sources.

Another of the three sources described the process as chaotic and said that in one interview, Trump spoke mostly about himself and seemed distracted.

The End of an Illustrious Career

I don't give a crap about Manafort, but Sessions...

BREAKING: Special counsel's Trump campaign investigation includes Paul Manafort and may expand to include Attorney General Sessions

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) June 2, 2017

Theft As A Business Model

And they still don't make money.

Now evidence has emerged suggesting that Uber and New York State regulators were aware of the improper deductions from drivers’ earnings as early as 2015.

The error involved Uber’s taking its commission on fares that included sales tax, rather than on the pretax portion of the fare. If, for instance, a passenger paid $20 for a ride, and if taxes accounted for roughly $2 of that fare, Uber took its commission on the entire $20, rather than on $18.

When admitting the error last week, Uber officials said they had discovered the problem only a few weeks earlier, as the company was updating its contract.

But changes that Uber made to its contract in 2015 suggest that the company has been aware of the issue and grappling with it since at least that year.

The Circle of Bullshit

The head of the EPA cites New York Times affirmative action hire Bret Stephens to criticize "climate exaggerators."

And that's why it matters who the New York Times hires, and that's why you should cancel your subscription, especially given that post-election they conned people into buying subscriptions based on their ad campaign centered around rejecting "alternative facts."

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

Mnuchin Has The Legal Authority to Mint The Trillion Dollar Coin

Just saying.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin signaled a preference for a so-called “clean” bill to raise the debt limit, one without any spending reductions or other policy riders. But Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, who is also a member of Trump’s cabinet, said he’d “like to see things attached to it that drive certain spending reforms and debt reforms in the future,” in an interview with the Washington Examiner published Wednesday.

Open Season On Brown People

There are countries I won't visit because of tales of how overzealous law enforcement sometimes interacts with tourists. My perceptions might be wrong or out of date, but there are a lot of places I can visit if I happen to have the time and money so why risk it? The point is that it takes a long time to get rid of a reputation like that, and you'd be nuts to visit a country where unaccountable ICE agents might throw you into a van and take you to a detention center because you had a vaguely Mexican-sounding accent and forgot to bring your stamped passportto breakfast.

Mexico is America's second-largest inbound tourism market, accounting for some 18.4 million visits in 2015. Just this year, experts predict 7% less visits from Mexico, totaling a $1.6 billion loss in direct economic spending by 2018, according to Tourism Economics, a research firm.

Thursday Night

Tomorrow is...???

High Thread Count

Makes for nice sheets.

Happy, Happy, Happy

Vampires

The real story is that selling blood is already a "big business," though much like college sports, everybody makes money but the people doing the actual work.

It might sound like science fiction, or a recent episode of "Silicon Valley," but a start-up called Ambrosia is charging $8,000 for blood transfusions from young people.

...

The donated blood typically comes from teenagers, although anyone under age 25 is eligible. The company buys its supply from blood banks, which also sell blood to pharmaceutical companies. So high-schoolers donating their blood are not aware that it might be used on healthy adults.

It's illegal to sell your own blood, but legal to sell somebody else's! Capitalism!

I'll Put That Date On The Calendar

Maybe this time I won't be disappointed!!

A $300 million preliminary bond offering for American Dream Meadowlands claims the long-delayed shopping and entertainment center will open "no later than March 1, 2019."

I should get invited to the VIP opening for all the publicity I have given them!!!

More Thread

Busy with some stuff.  Talk to each other.

Morning Thread

June 1st. A new month, a new start? Maybe we'll even get an administration instead of a couple of dude bros and family members. A science advisor who actually is a scientist would be a good start.

Wednesday Night

Is tomorrow Friday?

Wednesday Evening

Rock on.

Happy Hour Thread

Get happy.

Uber, But For Journalism

Longform!

Uber’s potential aspirations toward monopoly are a sensitive matter — in discussing how Uber Pool became more efficient the more people used it, McClendon referred to Uber’s ideal state as a “monopoly,” before correcting himself to call it “not a monopoly, but a heavily used service” — and while every company dreams of owning its entire market, the question of whether Uber can do so has become murky. One Uber investor told me he no longer sees ride-hailing as winner-take-all but didn’t want to speak for the company; when I put the question to Rachel Holt, Uber’s head of North American operations, she ducked it by praising the value of competition and saying she didn’t have a crystal ball.

Recent events have made a monopoly harder to imagine, to say nothing of how regulators might react. While Uber said its business in the United States was briefly profitable early last year, the company had been forced back into the red by Lyft, which had secured a new round of venture funding and begun offering more subsidies of its own to attract drivers and riders. Uber’s woeful early 2017 had also helped Lyft, which saw ridership increase 137 percent compared to the year prior. And while so far Lyft remains content to focus on the U.S., Uber’s ambitions for a global reach have added further costs. It is now in 75 countries, and faces an array of regional and local operators in each market. Its most formidable rival may actually be Didi Chuxing, a Chinese company that has already clocked more rides than Uber and recently raised $5.5 billion to help it compete in new markets. Uber spent two years, and $2 billion, trying to break into the Chinese market but eventually called a truce last year and agreed to sell its Chinese business to Didi in exchange for a stake in the company.

tl;dr Uber's fortunes depend on it being a monopoly (multiple local monopolies), which it has no realistic path to achieving.

Which brings me back to my original point, made years ago, that whatever the problem with local cab regulation, there is a reason the market depends on rate regulation and supply restriction...

Afternoon Thread

Busy with stuff.

Cars Are Bad

Dense urban areas as "green" in the sense of having a smaller carbon footprint for a variety of reasons, but the concentration of emissions is bad locally. And it's the damn cars.

Researchers at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability found that air quality near 405, when it was closed, was 83 percent better than during a typical weekend. What's even more amazing is that Carmageddon, in just two days, made the air cleaner in surrounding regions. Parts of West Los Angeles and Santa Monica saw air quality improve by as much as 75 percent.

You Can Never Win

Read the details yourselves, but basically the insanity behind Uber is that they think they can "win" and then the competition will disappear and they will have a monopoly. The entire premise of companies like Uber is you can "disrupt" an existing business by having low entry costs and cheap scaleability. And therefore perpetual actual and potential competition.

Something like Uber can be a nice business. As can its numerous competitors. It just can't take over the world.

The Great Thing About The Trump Era

Is journalists and headline writers get to keep coming up with new euphemisms for "racist."

Actually that's not so great.

Rogue Nation

Bye bye Paris Climate Accord.

A Final Suck On This Day (Yes It Was Yesterday) Anecdote

I could never verify this, of course, and the precise details in the email have been lost to time, so just take this as fiction, but many many years ago someone emailed me with a story which went something like this:

Hey, I was walking around Manhattan and I bumped into Tom Friedman. I was a bit drunk so I said "hey, Paul Krugman!" He said, "No, I'm the other guy." I said, "Oh, Tom Friedman! Isn't it true that you went on Charlie Rose and said we went to war to tell Iraqis to suck on this?" Friedman responded, "That doesn't sound like something I would say."

Late Night

Rock on.

Tuesday Evening

I think tomorrow is Friday?

Happy Hour Thread

Get happy.

Lola

I have no deep thoughts on this, but I grew up in an especially homophobic time and place (generic suburbs, 60s-70s backlash, reagan, aids, moral majority, etc.). A time (as a teen) when calling something "gay" was an all purpose devastating insult, and when being identified, in any way, with being gay was the quickest path to complete social ostracism. Yet we all jammed out to Lola! Lola was the best song! And we all know the lyrics. They aren't subtle.




I have no explanation. Just one of those weird things that always stuck with me.

(not getting into the gay vs. trans distinction here, this was the early 80s and we were teens, we didn't get such things)

So Many Friedman Units

Of Tom Friedman writing this column:

The World Is Tiny

Contra Mr. World is Flat, the a big problem we face is that for most people (I'm thinking of the US but not just of course), the World is Tiny, or specifically Our Individual World is Tiny, not extending much beyond where we live. Yes the magical internets give us a window into the entire world on demand, but Other Places really are just Storyland if you have never traveled. China is about as real as Oz, and most people aren't that interested in finding out about either of them. Even Canada is a fictional land (it's not even a real country anyway).

I'm not blaming people. Travel is an expensive luxury (requiring both money and time, neither of which are in tremendous supply for most people). Fox News tales of things like "Muslim No Go Zones" where neither non-Muslims nor local law enforcement ever enter in Paris and London sound real, because basically anything you could say about Paris or London would sound real to people who have never been to Europe.

Still Sucking

Yes we laugh at Little Tommy Friedman, age 9, and the "Suck. On. This." is extra funny coming from a Very Serious Pundit, but the reason to return to that piece over and over again is "burst the [terrorism] bubble" was the kind of thing that passed for Deep Wisdom at the time. We have long been ruled by idiots.

Almost Forgot

Happy Suck On This Day! Has it been 14 years already???

I think it [the invasion of Iraq] was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie.

...

We needed to go over there, basically, um, and um, uh, take out a very big stick right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble, and there was only one way to do it.

...


What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, "Which part of this sentence don't you understand?"

You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna to let it grow?

Well Suck. On. This.

Okay.

That, Charlie, was what this war was about. We could've hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.

(Ht reader th)

Monday Night

Tomorrow is... Monday!

Probably Not Close Enough

But judging by the recent polls, the Tories have gone from appearing to be about to destroy the Labour party for all eternity to just about holding on to what they have in about 2 weeks. Of course who knows what will happen on election day. But, really, "if you get dementia we're going to take your house" while pretty much US policy in practice, probably wasn't the best thing to put in your campaign document...

Tories are horrible, and May and her people are too stupid to not say the quiet bits out loud.

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

Rich Guys and DUI

Tiger Woods arrested for DUI. My usual "you're rich, hire a damn driver" statement.

Not that anyone should drink and drive, but I'm mildly sympathetic to relatively low alcohol first time offenders. We built a world in which you have to drive everywhere and where alcohol consumption is "normal" and then tell people not to do both simultaneously. I mean, they shouldn't! Don't do it! But many places even getting a taxi home isn't an option.


Unless you're as rich as Tiger Woods. Then you can hire a damn driver.

Shit People

We don't live in a "show your papers" society. Nobody carries their passport around with them. Driver's license, sure, but that's not proof of citizenship to the Feds. ICE detains people because they're brown, and then laughably asserts that they wouldn't do so if people had evidence of their citizenship. I bet half the country would have a hard time producing clear evidence of citizenship, and 99.9% couldn't do it on the spot.

It's a fascist, racist organization dedicated to terrorizing brown people.

Who To Root For

Related, who to root for in the White House? I mean, given the way Trump is, it matters who works for him. Jared seems to be evil in a lazy banal sort of way, and concerned about the Javanka Brand. Lazy being Good in this context. Others seem to be a bit more dedicated to evil. They're all stupid. So complicated.

Failson

It is remarkable how stupid Jared is. I mean, like, stupider than Trump stupid.

Sunday Night

Tomorrow is...a holiday!

Everybody Should Learn To Code

One of my (I am getting old and cranky so there are many) pet peeves is any version of this. All knowledge is good. Some learning also teaches you to think and learn better. Some skills might have good job prospects associated with them, but such things are "trendy" to some degree so by the time you decide you should learn to code you will have probably missed the gravy train.

I've heard many versions of this: everybody should learn a bit of economics, everybody should knit, everybody should garden, everybody should study math, everybody should study Latin, everybody should take humanities, everybody should be STEM majors, everybody should learn an instrument, everybody should..

I mean, everybody should! It's all good. But we can't all do it all, and while a bit of generalization is good, we all gotta specialize a bit both in our vocations and avocations...

Imagine Working With These People

Everybody in the White House is horrible. And while I get that horrible people find a certain kinship sometimes, you still are working with a bunch of other horrible people who all spend their whole day whining, er, leaking, to the press.

Afternoon Thread

Holiday weekend blogging schedule.

New World Order

Maybe not exactly how I envisaged the end of the America empire.

BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel is urging European Union nations to stick together in the face of new uncertainty over the United States and other challenges.

Merkel said Sunday at a campaign event in Bavaria that “the times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days.”

Welcome Home

And happy Sunday to your lawyers!

It is my opinion that many of the leaks coming out of the White House are fabricated lies made up by the #FakeNews media.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2017

Morning Thread

Still a few days left in Echidne's fundraiser week. Daily blogging is hard work and bloggers like Echidne, who bring a wealth of experience, knowledge and thought deserve to be compensated. If you can manage a few sheckles, now is the time to donate. After all, how many feminist bloggers with a Ph.D in economics and an expert in health care do we have?