Saturday, September 23, 2017
Maybe Somebody Should Do Something
This isn't a sustainable state of affairs.
A humanitarian crisis grew Saturday in Puerto Rico as towns were left without fresh water, fuel, power or phone service following Hurricane Maria's devastating passage across the island.
A group of anxious mayors arrived in the capital to meet with Gov. Ricardo Rossello to present a long list of items they urgently need. The north coastal town of Manati had run out of fuel and fresh water, Mayor Jose Sanchez Gonzalez said.
Liberal Tears
I get Trumpism but also I don't. He pisses off the libturds and that's enough for the 27 percenters. I get that part. But he's...repulsive and clearly incompetent and, well, you wouldn't want to have a beer with him even if he did drink. He's that guy at the party that no one wants to talk to.
The Way We Live Now
Not a deep or original thought, but trying to explain all of this even to ten years ago me would be difficult let alone 20 years ago me.
Can't Quite Figure Out Why
But Trump does not like it when black people don't show the appropriate amount of respect.
The Price Is Right
I actually don't care much if Important People take charter flights. It's dumb and they shouldn't but it really isn't the biggest deal in the world. The big deal is that they pose as defenders of taxpayers as they're robbing us every way they can.
Friday, September 22, 2017
Your Moment Of Zen
And here, we have video of Trump saying that Melania “really wanted to be here”...while she’s standing next to him. (h/t @MaverickofKain) pic.twitter.com/rvQCUo4RYB
— Holly O'Reilly (@AynRandPaulRyan) September 21, 2017
America's Worst Humans
Chris Cillizza.
I long for the day when I don't have to remember how to spell his name. Two ells two zees. fucking hell.
I long for the day when I don't have to remember how to spell his name. Two ells two zees. fucking hell.
I Want To Love You, Donald
I don't, really, but I keep coming back to the idea that it is so easy to be a popular Republican president in this country. Our entire propaganda media is desperate to shower love on an "Eisenhower Republican." Everybody knows that this is a center right country and center right Republicans are the true adults and patriots. I am not saying this is true, of course, but this is how our media establishment perceives things, and those assumptions are embedded in every bit of objective reporting they do.
Don't be such a horrible asshole and your approval will hit 55%. It is so easy.
Don't be such a horrible asshole and your approval will hit 55%. It is so easy.
Tech Bros
My response to most of the stories about Uber behaving badly was... why? As in, I do not think this is helping you make money, I just think you did this because you are sociopathic assholes who liked the idea of being sociopathic assholes. Too clever by half, basically. They spent a lot of money trying to be clever without much concern for what was legal or ethical.
Uber will not be issued a new private hire licence, Transport for London (TfL) has said.
TfL concluded the ride-hailing app firm was not fit and proper to hold a London private hire operator licence.
We're Broke
The most hilarious thing (not ha ha funny, but you know) about American politics is the conceit that we can't afford the things that every other somewhat rich country in the world manages to afford.
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Bad People Are Bad People
Once upon a time conservatives claimed to have better ideas for lifting up the plight of the blahs and the poors. They don't even bother pretending anymore. They hate the blahs and the poors. This is just fact and journalists should not shy from pointing this out.
Authoritah
Jimmy Kimmel has made opposing Repblicans on health care part of his thing. Good for him! This has inspired the usual very selective backlash from conservatives about how comedians don't know nothing and should shutup except when they are Dennis Miller and we feature him on teevee every night. Most pundits don't know anything about anything. Our entire model of journalism - especially punditry - is largely allergic to actual expertise. Sean Hannity is on the teevee night after night opining about shit he knows nothing about, but Kimmel should shutupShutUpSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP.
I don't know if Kimmel is Good or Bad and he isn't any more of an expert than you or me but he's a guy with a platform and he's using it for good at the moment so good for him.
I don't know if Kimmel is Good or Bad and he isn't any more of an expert than you or me but he's a guy with a platform and he's using it for good at the moment so good for him.
It's Rube Goldberg's World
Years ago back when I had a bit of notoriety (my 15 respectable minutes - even the Colbert show called me though they did not have me on) for my crazy and controversial idea that maybe we could solve our retirement income problem by making Social Security just a bit more generous, I gave a talk at a conference about such issues. And really I was there to suggest the crazy idea that literally everybody else knew was totally true but could not say because of the politics of the issue. Everyone else had all of these ideas for addons and state plans and more savings tax credits and blahblahblah. They all knew it was bullshit, except for the token conservative who was there to pretend these ideas were serious when in fact he just wanted us all to give all of our money to Wall Street thieves (also bullshit, but a different kind). But because everyone knows that Social Security is going to go bankrupt, it was vital to propose alternative expensive complicated plans with additional layers of bureaucracy because is it too early to start drinking?
Keep. It. Simple. Stupid.
Keep. It. Simple. Stupid.
I Read The News Today
I just woke up and the CNN caption is "Maria Lashes Dominican Republic, Destroys Puerto Rico."
I hope that's a bit of hyperbole. 3.4 million people live in Puerto Rico.
I hope that's a bit of hyperbole. 3.4 million people live in Puerto Rico.
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Mysteries
The "pivot to video" by lots of sites is hilariously dumb (goodbye, pivot to video sites), but more than that even mostly text-based sites are increasingly putting like 3 lines on a page. Have any of you people ever seen the internet? I do not want to scroll through a giant picture and/or video and/or image ad every 3 sentences.
Count
"Moving cars is more important than moving people" is dumb policy which applies in basically every American city, but in addition to that my take is that a lot of "moving cars" policies actually don't help move cars at all. Anything which encourages a lot of lane switching in times of heavy traffic probably slows down traffic quite a bit. Sometimes rules are actually better than chaos.
If cars are the priority (they shouldn't be, but obviously they are), run an experiment. Measure numbers/speed without shunting them into the bus lane, and do the same when you do. The results might be surprising. Or not!
If cars are the priority (they shouldn't be, but obviously they are), run an experiment. Measure numbers/speed without shunting them into the bus lane, and do the same when you do. The results might be surprising. Or not!
Good Tweets, NPR
I can be a bit critical of Nice Polite Republicans even though I know that in a lot of ways they are Good, so good tweeting NPR (click and follow the thread).
Sen @BillCassidy called our reading of his health care bill on pre-existing conditions false. Here’s how we read it: https://t.co/6vkONctK7B https://t.co/sA4wAEXvh3
— NPR (@NPR) September 20, 2017
The System
What I'm a bit puzzled about with the latest GOP attempt destroy our health care system is that it really seems like it would destroy our health care system. I know they don't think poors should have health care, but if you pull too many Jenga tiles out of the system the whole thing starts to come down. Rural hospitals are gone, for example. And rural hospitals aren't just for the poors in rural areas. All those big square red states have rural areas. Have to be pretty damn rich to take a helicopter to the hospital when you get sick.
Colony
This is not normal, as is fashionable to say these days.
Spanish national police have stormed ministries and buildings belonging to Catalonia's regional government to put a stop to the region's independence referendum.
The Guardia Civil, which acts with the authority of Madrid's interior ministry, is searching for evidence regarding the planned 1 October referendum on Catalan independence, which Spain's Constitutional Court has declared illegal.
In the early hours of the morning armed officers arrived at various Catalan ministries, including the economy department, foreign affairs department, and social affairs department, Spanish media reports.
America's Worst Humans
The Philadelphia DA's office.
While the DA liquidates many of the assets it seizes, other records obtained by City & State PA and Philly Weekly reveal the DA has long been loaning out forfeited cars to its office personnel. Cars – not unlike Geiger’s seized Buick – are routinely doled out to top deputies for work use, as take-home cars and, in one case, even as a plaything for the district attorney himself. These perks are in addition to those that staff already enjoy, like assigned downtown parking spots, free gas and repair work – all courtesy of Philadelphia taxpayers.
Yet even this unprecedented disclosure appears to represent only a fraction of the city’s civil asset forfeiture proceeds. In reports submitted annually to the Pennsylvania attorney general, the DAO previously claimed to have spent between $2 and $7 million in forfeiture funds each year – at least $5 million more than shown in the budget documents delivered to City&State PA and Philly Weekly. Officials declined to explain the multimillion-dollar discrepancy, despite multiple requests for comment.
Philly Is Closer To DC Than Dulles Is
That's not true, but close enough.
Forget the flight and take the Acela like a sensible human being.
Price’s spokespeople declined to comment on why he considered commercial travel to be unfeasible. On one leg of the trip – a sprint from Dulles International Airport to Philadelphia International Airport, a distance of 135 miles – there was a commercial flight that departed at roughly the same time: Price’s charter left Dulles at 8:27 a.m., and a United Airlines flight departed for Philadelphia at 8:22 a.m., according to airport records.
Forget the flight and take the Acela like a sensible human being.
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Trump Is Broke
Rich people are cheap. I have had some limited time with rich people, and holy hell are they are cheap (#notallrichpeople). But the Trump grift can only be understood by acknowledging that Trump is broke. Not precisely, of course, but broke in the sense that he lives paycheck to paycheck and at the mercy of creditors like most of the rest of us if at a grander if short-fingered scale.
President Donald Trump is using money donated to his reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee to pay for his lawyers in the probe of alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. Federal Election Commission allows the use of private campaign funds to pay legal bills arising from being a candidate or elected official.
While previous presidential campaigns have used these funds to pay for routine legal matters such as ballot access disputes and compliance requirements, Trump would be the first U.S. president in the modern campaign finance era to use such funds to cover the costs of responding to a criminal probe, said election law experts.
A World Without Ideology
Every policy has a purpose and ever policy has winners and at least relative (but probably absolute) losers. The fantasy of centrist technocracy is that there are "good" and "bad" policies even though this determination rarely hinges on any metric whatsoever. Eschew the vagaries of the "welfare function" and you eschew the concept of welfare itself.
At Least William F. Buckley Could Fake Being Smart
"Righteous many." "Wicked few."
— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) September 19, 2017
A MUCH more poetic speech than Trump usually gives.
Unicorns
Free public college doesn't cost very much.
There's always money in the banana stand. We're the richest country in the universe (not really, but close enough). It's always about our priorities.
There's always money in the banana stand. We're the richest country in the universe (not really, but close enough). It's always about our priorities.
Morning Thread
Never a dull moment with this mal-administration. At least, now, we know what precipitated the tweet storm this weekend.
Monday, September 18, 2017
Crazy Times
Get your expert view elsewhere, but the Catalan government is trying to hold another independence referendum, and the national government, in Madrid, is not amused.
They're going after printing shops, hunting for ballot boxes, shutting down access to websites (I don't have a news source on this, but I've been told), etc.. it's actually... bad. What could have been a mostly pointless nonbinding referendum (pointless in large part because it would have failed) has become a genuine conflict, with the Spanish state engaging in actions which we tend to condemn in other countries.
BARCELONA (Reuters) - More than 700 mayors from across Catalonia gathered in Barcelona on Saturday to confirm their support for a planned independence referendum that Madrid has declared illegal.
...
On Wednesday, Spanish prosecutors summoned for questioning more than 700 mayors who had said they would allow municipal spaces to be used for voting. If the mayors do not respond to the order, police should arrest them, the order said.
They're going after printing shops, hunting for ballot boxes, shutting down access to websites (I don't have a news source on this, but I've been told), etc.. it's actually... bad. What could have been a mostly pointless nonbinding referendum (pointless in large part because it would have failed) has become a genuine conflict, with the Spanish state engaging in actions which we tend to condemn in other countries.
MANAFORT
His name almost, but not quite, movie villain scary.
Life comes at us fast.
Also from the first article:
Dumbest crooks on the planet.
Washington (CNN)US investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election, sources tell CNN, an extraordinary step involving a high-ranking campaign official now at the center of the Russia meddling probe.
The government snooping continued into early this year, including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump.
Life comes at us fast.
WASHINGTON — Paul J. Manafort was in bed early one morning in July when federal agents bearing a search warrant picked the lock on his front door and raided his Virginia home. They took binders stuffed with documents and copied his computer files, looking for evidence that Mr. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, set up secret offshore bank accounts. They even photographed the expensive suits in his closet.
The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, then followed the house search with a warning: His prosecutors told Mr. Manafort they planned to indict him, said two people close to the investigation.
Also from the first article:
The conversations between Manafort and Trump continued after the President took office, long after the FBI investigation into Manafort was publicly known, the sources told CNN. They went on until lawyers for the President and Manafort insisted that they stop, according to the sources.
Dumbest crooks on the planet.
And Again
Surviving the latest health care bullshit relies on Rand Paul being completely full of shit (good bet!), McCain deciding he'll get more attention for opposing than supporting (possibly!), and Collins and Murkowski not voting in favor of a worse bill than the one they just opposed. 3 out of 4 of those, anyway.
Spicey
My maybe controversial opinion is that while Trump is a uniquely horrible human being who is eroding certain important norms by grifting during his presidency instead of after, as respectable people do now, the Trump administration, as of yet, has not yet proven itself to be worse than the Bush administration (yet!). The people he surrounds himself seem to be a lot less likely to know which fork to use with the appetizer, and are maybe a bit more stupid, but they are no more craven than the people who populated the Bush administration.
As for Spicey being "rehabilitated" on the Emmys, well, Spicey was a not very important low level toady who just happened to be on the television so people know who he is. His earlier incarnation, Ari Fleischer, was and is a worse human being in every way, except maybe for the fork etiquette, and he was never ejected from polite society. Henry Kissinger is everybody's buddy. The Washington Post editorial page is full the worst Bushies/apologists for the worst of the Bush era.
Many people slept through the Bush administration. I'm not quite sure why that is. 9/11 is probably a big reason, but not the only one. Trump is very bad and the Trump administration is very bad, but a lot of bad came before them which was all perfectly normal. A lot of the people who are now conservative anti-Trumpers should be about 5000 places behind Spicey in the "return to polite society" line.
Without going into the full details of the responsibility of each, the full horrors that these people unleashed on the world are far greater than anything the Trump administration has managed yet, and they've never stopped being people in good standing. That all is forgiven because Bill Kristol doesn't like Trump...
As for Spicey being "rehabilitated" on the Emmys, well, Spicey was a not very important low level toady who just happened to be on the television so people know who he is. His earlier incarnation, Ari Fleischer, was and is a worse human being in every way, except maybe for the fork etiquette, and he was never ejected from polite society. Henry Kissinger is everybody's buddy. The Washington Post editorial page is full the worst Bushies/apologists for the worst of the Bush era.
Many people slept through the Bush administration. I'm not quite sure why that is. 9/11 is probably a big reason, but not the only one. Trump is very bad and the Trump administration is very bad, but a lot of bad came before them which was all perfectly normal. A lot of the people who are now conservative anti-Trumpers should be about 5000 places behind Spicey in the "return to polite society" line.
On the flip side, it has to be a bit heartening that some conservatives who used to be sort of MSNBC “villains” are now on your network trashing a Republican president.
One of the most amazing outcomes of the Trump administration is the number of neo-conservatives that are now my friends and I am aligned with. I found myself agreeing on a panel with Bill Kristol. I agree more with Jennifer Rubin, David Frum, and Max Boot than I do with some people on the far left. I am shocked at the way that Donald Trump has brought people together. [Laughs.]
Without going into the full details of the responsibility of each, the full horrors that these people unleashed on the world are far greater than anything the Trump administration has managed yet, and they've never stopped being people in good standing. That all is forgiven because Bill Kristol doesn't like Trump...
Shouldn't We All Just Put Our Disagreements Aside?
One annoying thing about DC is that good people (supposedly) are friends with bad people (certainly). I don't mean in the sense that, well, yes, sometimes we have to be polite to people at cocktail parties. I mean actual friendships with people who advocate for wars everywhere, for destroying the poor, and for gutting public education. People who deny the existence of racism and say things like "All Lives Matter" as if it is profound. People who work for the very worst politicians or worst publications or worst "think tanks" and who have spent their careers doing evil any way they can.
I don't get it.
I don't get it.
Morning Thread
Another week and another attempt to deny millions health insurance coverage. Ho hum.
Here's Digby on this week's attempt.
Edited to add link.
Here's Digby on this week's attempt.
Edited to add link.
Sunday, September 17, 2017
Occasional Reminder
People disagree about stuff.
I don't know why this is a controversial concept in politics, the method by which we hopefully resolve some of our fundamental disagreements in a peaceful manner.
I don't know why this is a controversial concept in politics, the method by which we hopefully resolve some of our fundamental disagreements in a peaceful manner.
Where's The Profit
One weird thing missing from all the news about self-driving cars is... who is going to make money? The way to make money is to be first, best, and also have lots of patents. It seems like everybody is competing and/or partnering with each other. I get that there's a "even if you can't beat them you gotta join them" aspect to this, but when there are so many companies - both auto manufacturers and the various technology firms they partner with - claiming to be ready in about 3 years..um?
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