Friday, November 30, 2018
Voter Fraud
Found some.
State officials in North Carolina voted Friday to continue investigating fraud in the 9th Congressional District election, potentially delaying certification of the results for weeks and leaving open the possibility that a new election could be called.
...
The board is collecting sworn statements from voters in rural Bladen County, near the South Carolina border, who described people coming to their doors and urging them to hand over their absentee ballots, sometimes without filling them out. Others described receiving absentee ballots by mail that they had not requested. It is illegal to take someone else’s ballot and turn it in.
[Sam Jackson Voice] PROVE ME WRONG, MOTHERF*****S
Waymo is supposedly starting realsie for sure taxi service in parts of Phoenix by the end of this year. And all their pilot program people will be released from NDAs so they can talk about their experiences. Going with: neato, annoying, and priced way below any rate that would make money even without the understandable additional costs of a research program.
Lol Nothing Matters
Things go from outrageous to normal rather quickly and easily. Back when I was young - early 80s - "PENTAGON PAYING $700 FOR TOILET SEATS!!!" type stuff was a big defense department procuring scandal. Of course that was outrageous, and you could still love TEH TROOPS and say that. Now a similar "scandal" would show up on page A18 and no one would care, because of course the Defense Department and their buddies are just robbing us all blind because America.
If You Control The Past
Gotta change that change that number to 40 now.
This is embarrassing even for James Bennet (editor), who apparently has no shame.
The still more serious problem that flows from both of these issues is that pundits who fail in these ways are hardly ever held to account, and thus self-serving, half-baked analyses keep showing up in op-ed pages and on cable news. For Bret Stephens, “accountability” takes the form of quiet changes to his column that leave its conclusions intact even as it gets more wrong with each update.
This is embarrassing even for James Bennet (editor), who apparently has no shame.
Scamming Black Kids, Scamming Elites
Read the thread as the kids say.
Hey, you know what the scandal is here? It's that HARVARD AND YALE AND PRINCETON AND BROWN AND DARTMOUTH AND STANFORD, in their hunt for the Perfect Black Miracle Student, got taken by this OBVIOUS FRAUD https://t.co/Yck3JeWSHk
— Will Stancil (@whstancil) November 30, 2018
Thinking Small
I can do all the crimes imaginable, but really you should just overpay for rooms in my shitty hotel.
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Such Fun
Federal agents showed up unannounced at Chicago Alderman Ed Burke's City Hall office & his ward office, kicked everyone out, and papered over the windows Thursday morning.
— Polly Sigh (@dcpoll) November 29, 2018
Ed Burke was Trump’s lawyer on reducing his property taxes for Trump Tower Chicago. https://t.co/vOrpSR7UUS
What An Era
Most people didn't really live through the Bush years the way they live through the Trump years. It's social media. Only weird blog reading nerds had any clue about the full cast of characters of the conservative Wack Pack. Most normies - even people who paid a lot of attention to current events - wouldn't have had any idea who all of these C-List conservative weirdos were, or what dumb shit thing was said on Fox News last night, etc. People who paid attention knew the big stuff, but the minutiae of horrors and stupidity went unnoticed by most. Now the phone beams it all directly into their foreheads so they have been dragged into this hell I have been living for so long.
But my real point is that the Bush years were full of horrible crazy shit, also, too, even aside from the more obvious stuff. People don't remember because they weren't really exposed to most of it at the time. Even I've forgotten so much (thankfully).
A little flashback from everybody's favorite totebagging reasonable conservative, David Brooks.
They still pull the first trick regularly now. Lefties are always irrational, always consumed by hatred. They just hate Trump because they are haters, and not for any reason. This was the drumbeat during the early Bush years. Liberals were just ANGRY so HULKANGRY they were silly not like the completely sensible rational people who responded to 9/11 by causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people who had nothing to do with it and 15+ years later still pat themselves on the back for their very sober reflections and very lucrative book tours about how they could have possibly gotten anything wrong.
That list of names in the last quoted paragraph... those are the liberals to David Brooks.
(via driftglass)
But my real point is that the Bush years were full of horrible crazy shit, also, too, even aside from the more obvious stuff. People don't remember because they weren't really exposed to most of it at the time. Even I've forgotten so much (thankfully).
A little flashback from everybody's favorite totebagging reasonable conservative, David Brooks.
My third guess is that the Bush haters will grow more vociferous as their numbers shrink. Even progress in Iraq will not dampen their anger, because as many people have noted, hatred of Bush and his corporate cronies is all that is left of their leftism. And this hatred is tribal, not ideological. And so they will still have their rallies, their alternative weeklies, and their Gore Vidal polemics. They will still have a huge influence over the Democratic party, perhaps even determining its next presidential nominee. But they will seem increasingly unattractive to most moderate and even many normally Democratic voters who never really adopted outrage as their dominant public emotion.
...
What lessons will they draw from the events of the past month? How will the fall of Saddam affect their voting patterns, their approach to the next global crisis? One way to think about this is to conduct a thought experiment. Invent a representative 20-year-old, Joey Tabula-Rasa, and try to imagine how he would have perceived the events of the past month.
...
WHEN JOEY LOOKS at the talking heads on TV, he begins to form judgments about this country's political divides. First, he sees the broad majority of people who support the war, who, it seems to him, deserve to be called the progressives. These people talk optimistically of spreading democracy and creating a new Middle East. They have a very confident approach to what America can achieve in the world. People in this political movement include Christopher Hitchens, Dennis Miller, Paul Wolfowitz, Joseph Lieberman, John McCain, Richard Holbrooke, Charles Krauthammer, the staff of Fox News, Bernard Lewis, and George Bush.
They still pull the first trick regularly now. Lefties are always irrational, always consumed by hatred. They just hate Trump because they are haters, and not for any reason. This was the drumbeat during the early Bush years. Liberals were just ANGRY so HULKANGRY they were silly not like the completely sensible rational people who responded to 9/11 by causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people who had nothing to do with it and 15+ years later still pat themselves on the back for their very sober reflections and very lucrative book tours about how they could have possibly gotten anything wrong.
That list of names in the last quoted paragraph... those are the liberals to David Brooks.
(via driftglass)
Racially Divisive
Euphemisms for "racism" are used, in part, because they make it sound like Both Sides can be to blame. Cops shooting unarmed black people, unarmed black people making cops angry by being black. Both sides! The power of the state being used to enforce discrimination in numerous ways, those people complaining about discrimination. Both sides!
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
House of Lords
Why be a senator for a long time? In many ways it isn't a very good job. Of course it's a better job than, say, coal mining. But most of these people are wealthy enough, or could leave the Senate and become wealthy enough pretty easily, that it's a choice. Sure some want to do good and see that as a pretty good place to do it. I'm not so cynical that I think all senators are bad. As for the rest...well, we don't have an actual aristocracy in this country and yet some people think they should be members of one. The most ridiculous deliberative body in the world is the closest you get.
Gossip
Political reporters know lots of things the way we all know lots of things. Gossip. Of course they "know" things, not know them. That's gossip. It affects how they cover people. That's not all wrong, of course. Sometimes there are things that are genuinely known that for complicated/legal reasons can't be reported and I don't think journalists should be the blank slates they like to pretend they are sometimes. But a lot of that stuff isn't that. It's shooting shit at the bar level of gossip. I'm sure there are a lot of skilled whisper disinformation campaigns in DC. A lot of happy hours. What do people talk about?
We Can Pay You To Do That, Too
A great mystery to me, which I mention occasionally, is why we can give obscene amounts of money to the usual corrupt stakeholders to do nice things instead of horrible things? Why does Big Oil care much if it makes its money off of oil instead of solar? Why do defense contractors care if they make planes that don't fly instead of SUPERTRAINS?
I get that the fat and happy corrupt sectors of our society will fight to the death to keep being fat and happy, but they can just lobby for subsidies to do nice things instead of subsidies to do evil? Lock in another government funded gravy train.
I get that the fat and happy corrupt sectors of our society will fight to the death to keep being fat and happy, but they can just lobby for subsidies to do nice things instead of subsidies to do evil? Lock in another government funded gravy train.
Participation Trophies
Not just for millennials.
I suppose I could be underestimating the ability of children to get their parents to hand over the wallets to an indoor water park while spending lots of money on upscale retail as the kiddies slide, but... I don't think this is going to work.
BERGEN COUNTY, NJ — It hasn't even opened yet, and already American Dream Meadowlands has won an award for its innovative approach to shopping and entertainment.
I suppose I could be underestimating the ability of children to get their parents to hand over the wallets to an indoor water park while spending lots of money on upscale retail as the kiddies slide, but... I don't think this is going to work.
The Purge
Maybe there should be one day a year when all of our elite political journalists should be able to go on teevee and tell us what they really think about things.
Would be... scary.
Would be... scary.
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
I Look Up From My Vermouth On The Rocks
Oh boy.
One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence, but we're not necessarily such believers. You look at our air and our water and it's right now at a record clean. But when you look at China and you look at parts of Asia and when you look at South America, and when you look at many other places in this world, including Russia, including – just many other places — the air is incredibly dirty. And when you're talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small. And it blows over and it sails over. I mean, we take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the time that comes over from Asia. It just flows right down the Pacific, it flows, and we say where does this come from. And it takes many people to start off with.
Number two, if you go back and if you look at articles, they talked about global freezing, they talked about at some point the planets could have freez to death, then it’s going to die of heat exhaustion. There is movement in the atmosphere. There’s no question. As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it — not nearly like it is. Do we want clean water? Absolutely. Do we want clean air to breathe? Absolutely. The fire in California, where I was, if you looked at the floor, the floor of the fire they have trees that were fallen, they did no forest management, no forest maintenance, and you can light — you can take a match like this and light a tree trunk when that thing is laying there for more than 14 or 15 months. And it’s a massive problem in California.
They Know Exactly Who They Are
I'm not dumb enough to think that all members of the "liberal media" are actually liberal. I mean some are, and some certainly are not, but what they all have in common is pretending to not know exactly what most members of the Republican party want. Too lazy to look it up, but not that long ago a Dem polling/focus group outfit discovered that the problem with telling voters the perfectly truthful agenda of the Republican party, without hyperbole, is that voters think it's so outlandish that they are being lied to. But most voters are blissfully dumb as they have better things to do than pay attention to politics all the time. However, there are people who are paid - sometimes a lot! - to pay attention to politics all the time and explain it to voters. And they don't do it honestly. Republicans aren't exactly very secretive about their agenda. Especially this generation, which has been simmering in their own bullshit for so long they don't get that normies don't actually think neo-feudalism is appealing.
Comrade Gritty For President
You should be worried.
All you gotta do is throw a few scraps down on the peasants occasionally to keep the guillotines away, but this lot isn't even capable of doing that.
Fox Business host fears capitalism is in trouble because Americans will see companies "posting record earnings and ... firing people"
Charles Payne on GM firings and plant closures: "The American public is going to get hip to this and my fear is that they're going to end up electing, not a democratic socialist, just a straight-up socialist"
All you gotta do is throw a few scraps down on the peasants occasionally to keep the guillotines away, but this lot isn't even capable of doing that.
Vaporware
Quite often I'm happy to be proved fucking wrong, and on most issues some angry rants on this blog aren't exactly going to change the world so being wrong has few consequences other than making me look bad. You can complain more about the consequences of being wrong when I am Special Adviser to President Gritty.
My pessimism about self-driving cars isn't that they can't work at all. Obviously they kinda work now! Neato! It's that working "90%" or "95%" or "99%" or frankly even "99.9%"... just isn't good enough.
The rest is behind the paywall, but even if they launch it's going to be in 60 square miles, which means a (if actually square) 7.45X7.45 mile square. And, hey, progress. Skynet wasn't built in a day. If it works! But..
I have other issues, too, such as the likely diversion of massive amounts of public money/infrastructure to these things and the fact that even if they work I suspect they'll have a lot of negative effects (and some positive ones, of course), but really...I just don't think they'll work well enough to be useful and certainly the idea that they're going to useful as a viable robotaxi business model in the foreseeable future seems to be insane to me.
Happy (sort of) to be wrong!
My pessimism about self-driving cars isn't that they can't work at all. Obviously they kinda work now! Neato! It's that working "90%" or "95%" or "99%" or frankly even "99.9%"... just isn't good enough.
Waymo has only weeks to meet its self-imposed deadline to launch a public taxi service using fully automated cars by the end of 2018. And right now, that deadline looks tough for the company to meet.
The Information has learned that within the past month or so, due to concerns about safety, the Alphabet company put so-called “safety drivers” back behind the wheel of its most advanced prototypes, ending a year-long period in which those people generally sat in the passenger or back seat.
The rest is behind the paywall, but even if they launch it's going to be in 60 square miles, which means a (if actually square) 7.45X7.45 mile square. And, hey, progress. Skynet wasn't built in a day. If it works! But..
I have other issues, too, such as the likely diversion of massive amounts of public money/infrastructure to these things and the fact that even if they work I suspect they'll have a lot of negative effects (and some positive ones, of course), but really...I just don't think they'll work well enough to be useful and certainly the idea that they're going to useful as a viable robotaxi business model in the foreseeable future seems to be insane to me.
Happy (sort of) to be wrong!
The Book of Faces
I deleted my account. I'm not one to push such things on people. All big companies are bad and we each have our own cost/benefit analysis. It was easy for me to delete it. But aside from "facebook is a bad actor" I didn't have a problem deleting it because...facebook is just... bad.
Once upon a time it was that cool new thing on the internet to find those high school friends you hadn't seen in 15 years. Then it was a decent way to keep up with what your friends were doing, maybe even arrange to meet for a drink or a show or whatever. And then...? I don't even know what it's good for now. You don't need facebook to find people on the internet now, if you really want to, and THE ALGORITHM and all the other shit on that website, which still has the worst user interface on the internet, meant that it stopped being useful for really anything. Once upon a time you could post something like "hey, anyone want to grab a coffee later" and your friends would see it. Now no matter what I do I can't make it just show me posts by people in a timely fashion.
Set up a group message, add a bunch of family members to it, send them a pic of your kids now and then. No need for facebook.
Once upon a time it was that cool new thing on the internet to find those high school friends you hadn't seen in 15 years. Then it was a decent way to keep up with what your friends were doing, maybe even arrange to meet for a drink or a show or whatever. And then...? I don't even know what it's good for now. You don't need facebook to find people on the internet now, if you really want to, and THE ALGORITHM and all the other shit on that website, which still has the worst user interface on the internet, meant that it stopped being useful for really anything. Once upon a time you could post something like "hey, anyone want to grab a coffee later" and your friends would see it. Now no matter what I do I can't make it just show me posts by people in a timely fashion.
Set up a group message, add a bunch of family members to it, send them a pic of your kids now and then. No need for facebook.
Our Sister Network
As if answering the softball questions was generally going to be too hard without a cheat sheet.
Former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt was clearly taken aback last year when occasional Fox & Friends fill-in host Ed Henry grilled him about a number of ethical scandals facing his administration.
And Pruitt had a good reason to be surprised. In past interviews with President Trump’s favorite cable news show, the then-EPA chief’s team chose the topics for interviews, and knew the questions in advance.
Pivot To Self-Driving
You, dear readers, know my opinion on the wisdom of this.
Aside from my skepticism about the technology actually, you know, working, I don't really get the race by everyone to develop the technology independently. If I was good at making cars I'd just buy the off the shelf technology when it became available and bolt it on (I know it isn't that simple). I haven't figured out how being FRIST makes anybody rich here. But what do I know?
The Detroit-based automaker said it would not be allocating any production to Oshawa Assembly in Ontario, Lordstown Assembly in Ohio and Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly in Michigan after December 2019. It will also stop allocating production at propulsion plants in White Marsh, Md., and Warren, Mich., after December 2019.
These changes are part of GM’s efforts to focus its resources on self-driving and electric vehicles, as well as more efficient trucks, crossovers and SUVs, the company said in a statement.
Aside from my skepticism about the technology actually, you know, working, I don't really get the race by everyone to develop the technology independently. If I was good at making cars I'd just buy the off the shelf technology when it became available and bolt it on (I know it isn't that simple). I haven't figured out how being FRIST makes anybody rich here. But what do I know?
Shut Up, Elon
And never, ever tweet.
One of the things that’s most irritating about politics in 2018 – and goodness me, aren’t there a lot of choices – is the utopianism that’s crept into the transport debate. There is an apparently endless supply of people who wouldn’t be seen dead on public transport, or using any other service labelled with the word “public”, if they can possibly help it, yet who have come to the conclusion that they are the people staid and dusty world of transport policy has been waiting for.
And the message they are keen to send is that the old ways of doing things is over: shiny new technologies are going to disrupt the transport sector, just as they disrupted the music industry or retail. Why bother investing in mass-transit, when autonomous vehicles (AV) and ride-hailing apps are about to take over the world? Why waste money on high speed rail, when Elon Musk’s exciting new hyperloop will be along any minute? Silicon Valley types ask these questions, even as they earnestly suggest some kind of fixed route, ride-sharing service based on vehicles larger than the private car, blissfully unaware that they’ve just re-invented the bus. Again.
Their Issues, Our Issues
Most people don't pay much attention to politics (lucky souls), but even they "know" things about the political parties. If you love guns and lower taxes, you vote Republican. If you love abortion and open borders, vote Democrat (this list should also include if you love Social Security and Medicare and...but, well, team D is not always so good at this game). Any individual candidate might be able to prove s/he loves guns as much as Team R, but to the extent that people are voting based on party affiliations, there's really nothing to be done (and when Coke is your brand you run a big risk if too many candidates are trying to convince people that actually it tastes like Pepsi).
The rewards to trying to run to the right of conservatives on issues like immigration are... at best, zero. Much likely negative. Oh, gee, why did our base not turn out they should just know "we" are better on immigration than team R despite our policies??? If hating immigrants is your thing, it really doesn't matter how many team D deports or how "hard" their policies are. You're gonna vote Republican.
I can't find it now for some reason but someone from the UK had a thread about New Labour's (Tony Blair) approach to immigration and refugee issues, which was explicitly to run to the right of the Tories on it. And they really did run to the right on it! So much that the Tories even *sounded* more pro-refugee and pro-immigration sometimes, whatever the specific policies were. Their reward for doing this in polls was to sink like a stone among people who were anti-immigrant. The other cost of talking up an issue is that you put that issue front and center. No matter how many internment camps for immigrants it opens, Labour will still be the pro-immigrant party, and all those internment camps on the news will make people really mad about immigrants and motivate them to vote Tory. The conservative party could explicitly make "open borders" their #1 priority going into election day, and voters would still "know" who the anti-immigrant party was. If you're putting the focus on "their" issues, you're losing.
Run with your brand, don't fight it. Especially when it's the right thing on the merits.
The rewards to trying to run to the right of conservatives on issues like immigration are... at best, zero. Much likely negative. Oh, gee, why did our base not turn out they should just know "we" are better on immigration than team R despite our policies??? If hating immigrants is your thing, it really doesn't matter how many team D deports or how "hard" their policies are. You're gonna vote Republican.
I can't find it now for some reason but someone from the UK had a thread about New Labour's (Tony Blair) approach to immigration and refugee issues, which was explicitly to run to the right of the Tories on it. And they really did run to the right on it! So much that the Tories even *sounded* more pro-refugee and pro-immigration sometimes, whatever the specific policies were. Their reward for doing this in polls was to sink like a stone among people who were anti-immigrant. The other cost of talking up an issue is that you put that issue front and center. No matter how many internment camps for immigrants it opens, Labour will still be the pro-immigrant party, and all those internment camps on the news will make people really mad about immigrants and motivate them to vote Tory. The conservative party could explicitly make "open borders" their #1 priority going into election day, and voters would still "know" who the anti-immigrant party was. If you're putting the focus on "their" issues, you're losing.
Run with your brand, don't fight it. Especially when it's the right thing on the merits.
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Sure
People are so gullible. This is not going to happen.
Driverless cars are to be tested on the streets of London this week as part of a plan to deploy the UK's first completely autonomous fleet on British roads by Christmas.
Democrats Will Keep Losing (Quick Find Somewhere They Lost) If They Don't Hide The Scary Black Kids
After painful losses, Democrats in the South face a dilemma: Appeals to progressives cost them the rural white voters who often decide elections. https://t.co/grPeXLlhia
— NYT National News (@NYTNational) November 24, 2018
After this election, the NYT puts on the front page a story about how the one place in America they could still find to tell the story about how Real Americans hate Democrats.
It is true that the Democrats are unlikely to be popular and win everywhere and that a one party state at all levels of government in all states and locations is not in our forseeable future. The New York Times is on it!
And The Gritmas Season Has Arrived
If you are going to be shopping at Amazon anyway, click a handy link like this one first and give me some of Jeff's money. Otherwise, shop elsewhere!
Saturday, November 24, 2018
This Is Now A Problem Solvers Blog
Solvin' problems is what we do, here at the problem solvers blog. We're not sure what problems, or how, but we're gonna solve them all. Because solving problems is our business, our reason to be, our life.
If you are not a problems solvers blog commenter, go elsewhere. Here we're all about the solutions, baby.
If you are not a problems solvers blog commenter, go elsewhere. Here we're all about the solutions, baby.
Friday, November 23, 2018
Working Class Stiffs
"Working class" wasn't really a term people used in the US until fairly recently. "Blue collar" was the closest we got to it, but that more described the type of job you had than the amount of money you earned. We (wrongly) used "middle class" to describe basically everybody between homeless and filthy rich. Now that "working class" is the vogue term for white people who have jobs, apparently it describes...the middle class!
Okay then.
All told, I’ve spent a good deal of the past two years talking with progressives about the broken relationship between elite white people and the white working class. (I use the term working class to refer to Americans with household incomes between the 30th and 80th percentiles. This group, which has median earnings of about $75,000 [ed: actually $70,000], is also commonly referred to as the “middle class.”
Okay then.
Thursday, November 22, 2018
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Populist
Nobody who uses this word even pretends to try to define it, or even have some vague consistent concept of what it means. It seems to mean "right wing racist nationalists, but also leftists who agree with none of that."
I Can
This is true for Trump about everything.
(thanks to reader rk)
and Gritty did his own.
TRUMP closes by saying this about Time Person of the Year: "I can't imagine anybody else other than Trump. Can you imagine anybody else other than Trump?
(thanks to reader rk)
and Gritty did his own.
— Gritty (@GrittyNHL) November 20, 2018
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Amazon Cuomo
His defense is that other municipalities also do horrible corrupt deals and THIS IS JUST CAPITALISM SO STOP COMPLAINING YOU SOCIALISTS and also that some of his critics like the New York Times (owner/editorial blah blah) benefited from horrible corrupt deals which were so stupid because what company wouldn't want to be in New York City.
I do not think these defenses are quite what he thinks they are.
Aside from the corruption, I really think Amazon Cuomo truly believed that the people of the world (and New York!) would be so impressed that he won the Amazon lottery and he is confused by the criticism.
Somebody buy this man an internet.
I do not think these defenses are quite what he thinks they are.
Aside from the corruption, I really think Amazon Cuomo truly believed that the people of the world (and New York!) would be so impressed that he won the Amazon lottery and he is confused by the criticism.
Somebody buy this man an internet.
We Fixed That
Related to this, smog used to be just normal near any city with any kind of polluting industry (all of them). My memory locally is that it faded over the decade, but in the early 80s the sky usually had a weird smoggy hue. Not thick smoke or anything, but truly clear days were uncommon. It was always hazy. I lived in the burbs, not right in the middle of the worst of it, and it had already improved significantly by that time. It was a smoggy smoggy world, and not just in Los Angeles, and then the evil government passed some laws and it got better.
Stop Pretending
I don't even care that a conservative activist with a TV show makes money being a conservative activist on the side. The bigger problem is that "we" consider anyone with a dumb TV show that happens to be on a notional "news" network to be a journalist. A news network should have relatively transparent rules about this stuff and stick to them but it doesn't really matter all that much to me what those rules are. I think the bigger problem is pretending that most faces on the teevee - and not just Fox - should fit into the box of "journalist." Many - not all! - are basically entertainers who happen to talk about the news.
Just Not As Fun As It Used To Be
Without Papa Bear O'Reilly around, the War on Christmas just isn't as fun as it used to be.
Weirdly it was his colleague, The Gibbers, who actually "wrote" (put his name on) The War On Christmas book. I never saw confirmation of this, but I always suspected that it was supposed to be a Papa Bear book but it was scheduled to come out not too long after his Mackris troubles so they switched the name.
Weirdly it was his colleague, The Gibbers, who actually "wrote" (put his name on) The War On Christmas book. I never saw confirmation of this, but I always suspected that it was supposed to be a Papa Bear book but it was scheduled to come out not too long after his Mackris troubles so they switched the name.
Haze
I went out about noon yesterday and thought, "wow, the sky looks like it did when I was a kid...smoggy. That's weird." And, yes, apparently, a wind pattern brought smoke from California to Philadelphia.
Monday, November 19, 2018
I Guess They Scared The Caravan Away
but lol nothing matters. obama wore a tan suit. email. zrrbp.
The port of entry closing was just a stunt, too, of course.
The Pentagon is set to begin a drawdown of its 5,800 troops from the Southwest border as early as this week, the Army commander overseeing the mission told POLITICO today — even as the approaching caravan of refugees prompted U.S. customs officers to close a port of entry near Tijuana, Mexico.
The port of entry closing was just a stunt, too, of course.
Turkee Week
Some travel ahead so blogging could be even more sucky than usual... or not! One never knows, really. Keep you guessing.
Deals Not On Offer
Any time you put up a policy idea - free public college for all! - people on The Left and The Right will question it. Wouldn't universal free pre-K be better, liberal??? This is mostly a gift to the middle class!!! How about affordable housing??? I don't mean this as a Both Sides thing. From The Left you can get a genuine desire to help the less fortunate more than the reasonable fortunate. From The Right is is just classic concern trolling - trying to disrupt the whole thing. You claim to care about the poor, eh liberal? Why do you want this 4-year-old to not have schooling so the children of rich people can go to Kabumfuck State Community College for free???
The first point is that these are not deals that are on the table. There's no poll we all get to take to decide whether free college or universal pre-K is the nice thing we're going to have this year.
The second point is that there's no reason to pit these things against each other. How about, um, both? As for tradeoffs, would you like to spend money on a plane that can't fly in the rain or free college??? I'll take option B.
There's always a better more progressive idea, always someone more in need. Implement good ideas when they do actually appear to be on the table. Work to getting other better ideas on the table, too..
The first point is that these are not deals that are on the table. There's no poll we all get to take to decide whether free college or universal pre-K is the nice thing we're going to have this year.
The second point is that there's no reason to pit these things against each other. How about, um, both? As for tradeoffs, would you like to spend money on a plane that can't fly in the rain or free college??? I'll take option B.
There's always a better more progressive idea, always someone more in need. Implement good ideas when they do actually appear to be on the table. Work to getting other better ideas on the table, too..
The Racism Is Coming From Inside Your Neighbor's House
One of the obvious myths embraced by our objectitudinal journamalismists is that racism is something for hicks from the sticks, and maybe the occasional southern politician, and that's it. These people do live in this world, of course, and are witness to the same not so casual racism that is apparent in daily life that the rest of us, even ones not from the sticks, do. The only way to deal with this is define elite racism as "not racism." It's scientific, it's just "good policy," it's rational, etc. Black people really are stupid, poor people really are 100% responsible for their lot in life, other cultures (brown ones) just don't have that Protestant work ethic, etc. It's why there was such an eager audience in the 90s (especially, but not just) for the various bestselling lauded-by-the-punditocracy racist tracts. Define my racism as not racism, and I'm good to go.
Short of putting on a hood and burning crosses, it's all good.
Short of putting on a hood and burning crosses, it's all good.
Up Schitt's Creek
The President isn't just a man with brain worms, he's a man with brain worms surrounded by people who tell him that his dumb ideas are brilliant. Maybe not all the people who work for him all the time, but certainly his phone-a-friend Sean Hannity and similar.
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Prime Minister Deals
The first "agreement" (which hasn't yet been agreed to) was about more high minded framework stuff. The next set of dealing is where every single country in the EU gets to demand their little piece.
While a UK withdrawal agreement dealing with citizens’ rights, the £39bn financial settlement and the Irish border have been agreed in principle, the political declaration on the future relationship is yet to be finalised. A seven-page declaration published last week is set to become a much heavier document after member states made a series of interventions in meetings with the European commission for additional text. One EU diplomat said: “It’s a Christmas tree and all the member states are putting their baubles on it.”
Gritty's Coming For You, Chester County
It never changes.
I vote we build that wall to keep people from Chester County out.
A district attorney in suburban Philadelphia called out the city's district attorney, Larry Krasner, on Friday for acting "like he cares more about criminals than their victims" in an apparent retort to a speech Krasner gave earlier in the day.
Chester County DA Thomas Hogan also side-swiped the entire city in a message posted on Facebook, warning "counties outside of Philadelphia" not to let "this blight spread, unless you want to end up like today's Philadelphia, riddled with violence and lawlessness."
I vote we build that wall to keep people from Chester County out.
Saturday, November 17, 2018
Saturday, Saturday
I got nothin'
...Proud Boys are coming to town.
...Proud Boys are coming to town.
Gritty sign: “GET FUCKED FOREVER RACIST PROUD BOY TRASH” pic.twitter.com/A7wBIcHZqR
— Billy Penn (@billy_penn) November 17, 2018
Late Night Thread
The Swan of Tuonela, composed by Jean Sibelius. Tuonela is the land of the dead in Kalevala, the Finnish mythology.
Friday, November 16, 2018
Bored Now
Perhaps Theresa May's cunning plan has been "no Brexit" all along?
nah.
European leaders have launched a campaign to sell the Brexit deal struck with Theresa May on a “take it or leave it” basis as EU ambassadors in Brussels collectively agreed it would be impossible to make major changes.
Putting aside the anxieties of some about the 585-page withdrawal text, the 27 member states collectively ruled out a redrafting of the agreement by either side during a meeting with Michael Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator.
Barnier had told the EU ambassadors they should not engage in “bargaining”, despite the political situation in the UK. A number of British cabinet ministers are said to have chosen to stay in their posts purely to engineer a change in the agreement.
nah.
It Mostly Isn't The Lies
Though sometimes it is. It's the constant lying.
Trump regularly makes 20 to 30 false claims in his rally speeches. But if you watched a network news segment, read an Associated Press article or glanced at the front page of the newspaper in the city that hosted him, you’d typically have no idea that he was so wholly inaccurate.
If a car salesman told you 36 untrue things in 75 minutes, that would probably be the first thing you told your friends about your trip to the dealership. It should have been the first thing we all told our readers about Trump’s August rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
Brexit Endgame
I still don't know what the Brexit endgame is for any of the Glorious Brexiteers.
The only possible outcomes were ever basically: "Norway," "no Brexit," or "no deal," with "no deal" actually requiring lots of deals to prevent the island from plunging into the ocean. May's deal is, roughly, a Rube Goldberg version of Norway with some additional kick-the-canning thrown in.
These resignations confirm a fundamental structural problem with the whole leave prospectus: it was a fantasy, and as such incompatible with the mundane fulfilment of ministerial responsibility. Raab has come to the same conclusion that David Davis and Boris Johnson reached earlier in the year: it is easier to be on the team that accuses the prime minister of failing to deliver majestic herds of unicorns than it is to be stuck with a portfolio that requires expertise in unicorn-breeding.
The only possible outcomes were ever basically: "Norway," "no Brexit," or "no deal," with "no deal" actually requiring lots of deals to prevent the island from plunging into the ocean. May's deal is, roughly, a Rube Goldberg version of Norway with some additional kick-the-canning thrown in.
All Over At 7:30 EST
There is something about spending 2 months hyping an event (election) and then wanting to "declare the narrative" at 7:30 EST, or file one version of their pre-written column, before most polls are closed and long before most votes will be counted. At least in presidential races they're all staring at flawed but somewhat informative exit polls. In Marco Rubio terms, they want to call the sportsball game in the first quarter before all the players have left the ice and when many more 3 point kicks could still happen. Most of the people paid boatloads of money to be on teevee have not spent any time learning anything about more than a few districts/races.
Orange County, CA, is now all blue.
"[I]n politics, intensity is not strategy. You have to be able to convert. The Resistance didn’t convert." - Bret Stephens, 11/8 pic.twitter.com/YqfFxao29j
— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) November 16, 2018
Orange County, CA, is now all blue.
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Neat But Ultimately Not All That Useful
Even I acknowledge that one day we might upload our brains into robots - including robot cars! As I have been saying
Obviously even now they "work" to an extent that is quite impressive and neat! But the fantasy of robot uber taxis driving around, say, Philadelphia, has always been that. (If you read Tesla fan boy boards many of them believe Elon's gonna give them a software update in a few months that'll let them rent their existing cars out as robot taxis when they don't need them). Not gonna happen any time soon. Their utility will be so limited as to basically be gimmicky or as part of the general research project, with a few very niche applications that are much more about the neato factor than any sort of viable consumer/business model,
It'll be decades before autonomous cars are widespread on the roads -- and even then, they won't be able to drive themselves in certain conditions, the CEO of Waymo said Tuesday.
John Krafcik, head of the self-driving car unit of Google parent company Alphabet, said that though driverless cars are "truly here," they're not yet ubiquitous. And he doesn't think the industry will ever achieve the highest driving rating of being able to drive at any time of year in any weather and any condition.
Obviously even now they "work" to an extent that is quite impressive and neat! But the fantasy of robot uber taxis driving around, say, Philadelphia, has always been that. (If you read Tesla fan boy boards many of them believe Elon's gonna give them a software update in a few months that'll let them rent their existing cars out as robot taxis when they don't need them). Not gonna happen any time soon. Their utility will be so limited as to basically be gimmicky or as part of the general research project, with a few very niche applications that are much more about the neato factor than any sort of viable consumer/business model,
Apropos Of Nothing
There was a time (long past, alas) when I probably could've made this blog a launching pad to other more seriously grifty activities and whether due to laziness or ethics I didn't.
Everything I do, I do it for you.
Everything I do, I do it for you.
Brain Worms
nomnomnom
This would be news to the WH political office, which repeatedly sent him to red-leaning House districts + put out memos on same !
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) November 15, 2018
“The only congressman I went for was Andy Barr and that was in Kentucky” https://t.co/6XaEFo5jUv
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Lean All The Fucking Way In
Did I mention THE JEEEWWWS?
Our critics are tools of THE JEWS and also they hate Jews.
While Mr. Zuckerberg conducted a public apology tour in the last year, Ms. Sandberg has overseen an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebook’s critics, shift public anger toward rival companies and ward off damaging regulation. Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, persuading a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic.
Our critics are tools of THE JEWS and also they hate Jews.
As I Said
Brave brave Tory rebels, always rebelling.
PM May says she has cabinet agreement
— Max Foster (@MaxFosterCNN) November 14, 2018
BREXIT
I'm too lazy right now to parse the latest "deal" but as usual rumors are being floated of DUP defections and Tory Rebels and...
hahaha. not gonna happen. They'll fall in line and keep supporting May. I don't entirely know why, but...
hahaha. not gonna happen. They'll fall in line and keep supporting May. I don't entirely know why, but...
Maybe An Improvement Over Subsidizing Casinos
Probably not even, given the magnitude of the subsidy offers to Amazon, but I do wonder how much of this stuff is "corrupt" and how much of it is "stupid." You don't have to choose, of course, as people individually and collectively can be both corrupt and stupid! But "casinos as economic development strategy worthy of massive subsidies" have been a staple of locations for decades, and not only do they never deliver they often manage to go bankrupt! I'd almost prefer "corrupt" to "stupid" as the explanation because how damn stupid do you have to be to think a casino is going to save your city? But I'm not even sure...
I Didn't Do It
Good thing nobody reads OUR newspaper. Maggie:
Faded from the television screens. Damn you television screens!
But since the election last week, Mr. Trump has tweeted about the caravan exactly once — to issue a proclamation preventing those who cross the border illegally from applying for asylum in the United States. Fox News, which faithfully amplified Mr. Trump’s warnings about the migrants, has gone similarly quiet on the subject.
...
While the caravan has faded from television screens, the costs of Mr. Trump’s response to it have not. Nearly 6,000 active-duty troops remain deployed from the Gulf Coast to Southern California, where they are putting up tents and stringing concertina wire to face a ragtag band that is still not near the border.
Faded from the television screens. Damn you television screens!
Notably, The New York Times and The Washington Post have run a total of 115 news stories in their print editions mentioning the caravan over the last three weeks. Each paper has run at least one such story on its front page on nine of the last 10 days.
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Pouty McPoutFace
I try not to dwell too much on the psychology of the man, as most of it's rather obvious and, well, who cares, ultimately? I am more fascinated by some of the dynamics between the various Trumpkins as I don't quite get how it works. Still the one thing about him specifically I don't get is how much he really does want to be liked, and how he putrid he has to be to not understand just *how goddamn easy that would be as president if he would just stop being a bit of a dick for 5 minutes every now and then*.
I know being a bit of dick (a lot of a dick) is what makes him popular with the MAGA crowd, but they're stupid and don't really care about policy. He can huff and puff all he wants on twitter as long as he stops doing things like putting babies in cages. I'm sure Chuck Schumer would happily play along as long as the Dems got thrown the occasional bone. They could have passed an Obamacare "repeal" which didn't really, said now it's "Trumpcare" and it's great, and had Chuck march out there to say he just couldn't beat the negotiating prowess of President Details and he just had no choice, thank you Mr. President may I have another.
There was that moment..I guess it was about a year ago... when there was talk that there could be some sort of compromise immigration legislation to preserve DACA. Chuck-N-Nancy went and had a talk, and obviously Chuck knows how to speak old man New York City, and Nancy knows how to flatter gross old men, and for a moment Donald actually seemed to be enjoying himself and ready to compromise. I might even correctly remember a smile. Then Fox and the White House MAGAs got to him and he went back to sulking and being a dick.
Democrats are forgiving totebaggers. He'd be at 50%+ popularity and probably presiding over a winning election if he had just dialed it down a little bit. Also, I even think, a little bit happier.
But his mood apparently has changed as he has taken measure of the electoral backlash that voters delivered Nov. 6. With the certainty that the incoming Democratic House majority will go after his tax returns and investigate his actions, and the likelihood of additional indictments by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump has retreated into a cocoon of bitterness and resentment, according to multiple administration sources.
Behind the scenes, they say, the president has lashed out at several aides, from junior press assistants to senior officials. “He’s furious,” said one administration official. “Most staffers are trying to avoid him.”
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, painted a picture of a brooding president “trying to decide who to blame” for Republicans’ election losses, even as he publicly and implausibly continues to claim victory.
I know being a bit of dick (a lot of a dick) is what makes him popular with the MAGA crowd, but they're stupid and don't really care about policy. He can huff and puff all he wants on twitter as long as he stops doing things like putting babies in cages. I'm sure Chuck Schumer would happily play along as long as the Dems got thrown the occasional bone. They could have passed an Obamacare "repeal" which didn't really, said now it's "Trumpcare" and it's great, and had Chuck march out there to say he just couldn't beat the negotiating prowess of President Details and he just had no choice, thank you Mr. President may I have another.
There was that moment..I guess it was about a year ago... when there was talk that there could be some sort of compromise immigration legislation to preserve DACA. Chuck-N-Nancy went and had a talk, and obviously Chuck knows how to speak old man New York City, and Nancy knows how to flatter gross old men, and for a moment Donald actually seemed to be enjoying himself and ready to compromise. I might even correctly remember a smile. Then Fox and the White House MAGAs got to him and he went back to sulking and being a dick.
Democrats are forgiving totebaggers. He'd be at 50%+ popularity and probably presiding over a winning election if he had just dialed it down a little bit. Also, I even think, a little bit happier.
Nothing
The absurd thing is that NYC is rather a large place and 25,000 jobs is basically measurement error in the monthly employment stats. Again, that many jobs in a small location might have a great impact (likely bad, at least for existing residents given the current state of NYC's housing and transportation) on that particular location and related transportation links, but the idea that anyone in NYC or NYS could argue that 25,000 jobs in a city of 9 million is... important... and worth all those subsidies is ridiculous.
That's a minimum subsidy $ as there will be many other pots of money for them to puts their hands in.
Under the agreement, first announced by Amazon in a blog post, the company would receive performance-based direct incentives of $1.525 billion based on the company creating 25,000 jobs in Long Island City, most of which come from a state tax credit. “Amazon will receive these incentives over the next decade based on the incremental jobs it creates each year,” th[e] company wrote.
That's a minimum subsidy $ as there will be many other pots of money for them to puts their hands in.
What For
As people start counting up the absurd amounts of public money that are going to be handed over to Amazon, I'll ask the dumb question of why most municipalities are unable to comprehend that providing nice things for their citizens is also a good way to attract a tax base. I mean, build a damn park. Improve your schools. Clean the streets (this is a Philly thing). These things are relatively cheap compared to throwing hundreds of millions at companies that don't need them anyway.
Pr0n
.@PaulaReidCBS reports: “I’ve spoken with many sources with knowledge of the Special Counsel investigation, and we do expect new indictments to be coming as soon as today.” pic.twitter.com/v7SJHR1r2g
— Norah O'Donnell🇺🇸 (@NorahODonnell) November 13, 2018
Low Housing Costs Are A Priority
I think the impacts of Amazon showing up to a city (good and bad!) were largely exaggerated. In my urban hellhole, people were fretting over FIFTY THOUSAND JOBS altering the place entirely, and my basic point was that if I said "job growth over the next 5 years would average 10,000 annually" no one would have thought it excessive. That's not to say that sticking 50,000 in jobs in essentially one spot wouldn't have some impacts, just that the city in the aggregate could handle that. (I also didn't think Amazon showing up would be especially good, just didn't care).
But the one thing that stood in Amazon's spirit quest was that they were interested in more affordable housing costs. Places that could actually absorb those jobs.. So, you know, congratulations on putting your major white collar presence in [checks notes] Seattle, San Francisco, and now the DC area, and New York City.
But the one thing that stood in Amazon's spirit quest was that they were interested in more affordable housing costs. Places that could actually absorb those jobs.. So, you know, congratulations on putting your major white collar presence in [checks notes] Seattle, San Francisco, and now the DC area, and New York City.
Monday, November 12, 2018
Horrible And The Next One Will Be Worse
The basic theme of Trumpkins going forward.
And she probably heard about this right as I did!
President Trump has decided to remove Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and her departure from the administration is likely to occur in the coming weeks, if not sooner, according to five current and former White House officials.
And she probably heard about this right as I did!
The Stone Zone
BREAKING: Roger Stone pal Jerome Corsi tells my colleague @annaschecter that Mueller's investigators informed Corsi about a week ago he will be indicted for perjury. "When they have your emails and phone records...they're very good at the perjury trap," he says.
— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) November 12, 2018
Even If They Pretended To Care, Reporters Wouldn't Pretend To Believe Them
A lot of people in politics and media over the years have, in various way, said that Democrats are just not as good at the game. If you're a journalist and not just a political hack this kind of observation should make you take a long look in the mirror and think about what you do every day. Oh, so you say it's a game, do you? And one you play a role in? Interesting.
If every Democrat and hack fanned out over cable news to suppress outrage over Trump being too lazy to go to Arlington, journalists would just roll their eyes and treat it like the fake outrage that it was. That's what they should do when Republicans do it. And yet...
If every Democrat and hack fanned out over cable news to suppress outrage over Trump being too lazy to go to Arlington, journalists would just roll their eyes and treat it like the fake outrage that it was. That's what they should do when Republicans do it. And yet...
ActBlue
So many grifters have tried to to implement "the Republican version of ActBlue."
I'm too lazy to find them all, but there was Rightroots, Slatecard, Big Red Tent, RedStormPac, ActRight...
The heart of the problem, McConnell said at the event at party headquarters on Capitol Hill, is ActBlue. The Democratic fundraising tool funneled over $700 million in small donations to House and Senate candidates over the course of the 2018 campaign. The GOP leader said Republicans were getting swamped in the hunt for online givers and that he’d charged his political team with coming up with a solution to enable them to compete in 2020.
I'm too lazy to find them all, but there was Rightroots, Slatecard, Big Red Tent, RedStormPac, ActRight...
Parliamentary Crisis
I chatted with a couple of UK journalists about this a few weeks ago and I don't think they quite had the answer. It's conventional wisdom that if May brings some sort of deal to parliament and they vote it down that it's election time. But no one seems to quite know what happens if there's just... no deal brought to a vote at all.
No one seems to come to terms with the idea that "no deal" will have to involve... lots of deals.
Senior cabinet ministers led by Brexit secretary Dominic Raab will tell Theresa May that the current deal on offer from the EU is unacceptable and she should prepare for the UK to leave with no deal if she cannot secure further concessions.
In a significant raising of the pressure on May from inside her own cabinet, the group of senior ministers will make clear to the prime minister that they could not support a deal that breaches their two red lines.
No one seems to come to terms with the idea that "no deal" will have to involve... lots of deals.
Maybe Someone Should Ask Trump About This
Every Trump twitter endorsement was basically a form tweet which went something like "Is a a great guy! Loves our law enforcement and our troops and vets, tough on crime and our border!!!"
Love the Vets.
Love the Vets.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is suffering from a series of information technology glitches that has caused GI Bill benefit payments covering education and housing to be delayed or — in the case of Roundtree — never be delivered.
"I’m about to lose everything that I own and become homeless," Roundtree said. "I don’t want to be that veteran on the street begging for change because I haven’t received what I was promised."
A Stiff Breeze
The consequences of elections are huge, of course, but I do think it's always a bit wrong to overthink What It All Means. Lots of elections are close and with a different dice roll things would be very different. Obviously electing Trump mattered quite a bit, but one problem with all the diner pieces and obsession with Trump voters is that.. he lost the popular vote and barely won the electoral college (yes numerically he won but with some very close states).
So does +40ish Dem House seats say an immense amount about the country that +25ish wouldn't have? Not so much. Sure the more the better, but I don't think the it changes what the think pieces should be all that much. Tells us something about trends in specific states and districts, but no so much about the soul of the country.
So does +40ish Dem House seats say an immense amount about the country that +25ish wouldn't have? Not so much. Sure the more the better, but I don't think the it changes what the think pieces should be all that much. Tells us something about trends in specific states and districts, but no so much about the soul of the country.
Counting Votes, How Does It Work
The people who are paid lots of money to go on your teevee and declare election results should perhaps have some idea how the election systems work (or don't) in different states.
Sunday, November 11, 2018
High School History Modern American History, 2040
It occurs to me the Iraq war won't even exist.
It barely exists now.
Those of us who did our own small (very small) part trying to stop it remember how it was the most important conflict since Normandy.
And then...
It barely exists now.
Those of us who did our own small (very small) part trying to stop it remember how it was the most important conflict since Normandy.
And then...
Democrats Only Win In Places They Win
This is a fair thing to talk about when they are, you know, losing, but when they are actually winning it is so weird. Democrats only win in, um, blue states! Yah, ok, whatever.
Saturday, November 10, 2018
Dentistry
I was in one of my local coffee shops a few weeks ago and the barista and a customer were having a conversation about dentists. They were both obviously not rich and lacking dental insurance, not that dental insurance means anything more than a cheap cleaning once per year. The divergence between dental care and medical care in this country is fascinating. Bad teeth can eat your brain, basically.
But they were discussing a hero dentist who while I think I caught her address I am not sure of so I can't advertise (near the Italian Market in Philly if anyone wants to share). (From what I heard) she offers a cheapish xray and cleaning, and prioritizes what you need. Like "you need 12 cavities filled but I really need to do these 2."
That people can't afford dentistry, which is probably more important than regular medical checkups, is why america is great.
But they were discussing a hero dentist who while I think I caught her address I am not sure of so I can't advertise (near the Italian Market in Philly if anyone wants to share). (From what I heard) she offers a cheapish xray and cleaning, and prioritizes what you need. Like "you need 12 cavities filled but I really need to do these 2."
That people can't afford dentistry, which is probably more important than regular medical checkups, is why america is great.
The Suffering of Others
While it is a defining pleasure for conservatives, I admit it seems to be part of human nature generally.
The Little Things
I know that Obama came into office facing a crisis and managed to pass ACA, blah blah blah, and there were lots of bad Dem senators and if we pretend things couldn't be passed in reconciliation that was a big problem, but what made me a cynical asshole was... where were the little things?
I sorta thought little things could be slipped into legislation without anybody noticing. Not super important things, perhaps, but they add up. It didn't happen.
I sorta thought little things could be slipped into legislation without anybody noticing. Not super important things, perhaps, but they add up. It didn't happen.
Friday, November 09, 2018
Pareene Is A Big Boy Now
Use it because of course you're going to lose it.
With Democrats about to control the House of Representatives again, I have been thinking about that last majority: what it achieved, what it was too cautious to attempt and what that caution actually bought. Because we may be asking the same questions about the next Democratic majority sooner than we think. The lesson of the careful restraint that Democrats showed the last time they controlled either chamber of Congress — and of the Republican ferocity since then — is simple: Your job is not to win power and then maintain it. Your job is to win power and then use it, with the knowledge that you won’t have it forever or even, most likely, for very long at all.
Why Aren't All The Votes Counted By Peggy Noonan's Happy Hour Time?
We get like 3 months of election tailgating from cable news and then they want it to be over with by 9:27 EST without having any knowledge of how elections actually happen in the various states.
I Could Be Anything
If someone from the Obama administration had called me up in 2010 and been like, "Hey, atrios, man, your blog is cool do you want to be Treasury Secretary?" I would have laughed and said no because what the hell kind of idiot would want me to be Treasury Secretary (or Tim Geithner but that's another issue).
I really don't get how obviously stupid people think they can run this country.
I really don't get how obviously stupid people think they can run this country.
Math
A highway lane operating at peak capacity (meaning just enough cars but not too many) can handle 1800 cars per hour. The off ramps and subsequent streets...maybe not.
A subway train can easily handle 1000 people (easily, this is a very low number). You can run a train every 3 minutes, easy.
A subway train can easily handle 1000 people (easily, this is a very low number). You can run a train every 3 minutes, easy.
Senate Miracles
Don't know why the final count is or should be yet, but it is quite the miracle that the Dems managed to do as well as they did and mostly not by totally sucking. Sure I'm never gonna love Manchin, for example, but the man wins and while he wins by not being my ideal Democrat, he also doesn't win by trying to emulate Evan Bayh, which is often the model.
Thursday, November 08, 2018
Racism
I need a nap so this is going to limited even by the standards of a blog post, but...
I have lived many places in our great dumb country. Racism is an extreme feature everywhere. North, South, East, West, whatever. It isn't a competition. This country is fucking racist. The details differ.
How the details differ is actually fascinating! Minorities manage to learn how to navigate that racism in one place and then find it intolerable in another place.
I am a dumb white guy so I can find it fascinating! But also it is bad and universal.
I have lived many places in our great dumb country. Racism is an extreme feature everywhere. North, South, East, West, whatever. It isn't a competition. This country is fucking racist. The details differ.
How the details differ is actually fascinating! Minorities manage to learn how to navigate that racism in one place and then find it intolerable in another place.
I am a dumb white guy so I can find it fascinating! But also it is bad and universal.
Fear
A million years ago I had a girlfriend who came from.. I think? Rural Ohio. Rural somewhere. I am old. Girlfriends were a long time ago (but not always from Canada!). But rural somewhere.
Her mother was... scared. Like scared of everything. Whether that was diagnosable anxiety disorder I have no idea. I never met her. But fear was... her defining feature.
I have no idea how you live in rural Ohio and fear black people from Philadelphia, but basically that was it.
Her mother was... scared. Like scared of everything. Whether that was diagnosable anxiety disorder I have no idea. I never met her. But fear was... her defining feature.
I have no idea how you live in rural Ohio and fear black people from Philadelphia, but basically that was it.
Gun Fetish
I don't want to give anyone any ideas, but there's another extraordinarily easy way to kill lots of people and maybe even make it out alive yourself. The availability of guns is a problem, but so is the culture that valorizes their use.
We Can Be Heroes Just For One Day
Another week of "if only there had been a good guy with a gun" commentary. Thoughts and prayers.
Wednesday, November 07, 2018
Funny Things To Tell 2004 Me
Jeff Sessions is the Attorney General...and you're upset when he gets fired.
If I Back That The Chamber Will Go After Me
I've told this story before but it was one of my big "oh, of course, that's how it works" moments. Maybe I am just stupid and this is obvious! But I don't think it's something that is generally explained to people.
Anyway, the story is: I asked a certain senator (hint he might be losing re-election) why he didn't get on board with a minimum wage increase ballot measure increase. I don't remember if it was something that was actually on the ballot, or if I was suggesting it as something to increase turnout (this was.. I dunno... 2006? I guess). He responded that with the quote in the title. And he didn't mean that the Chamber of Commerce would attack him about increasing the minimum wage, because that was popular! He meant that the Chamber would run ads accusing him of all sorts of unpopular things. It wasn't the issue, it was the money that the issue would unleash against him.
This is a real thing that politicians have to deal with, but there's a difference between "this is an unpopular issue with voters" and "this is an unpopular issue with people with lots of money" and often our dumb discourse does not adequately point out this difference.
Anyway, the story is: I asked a certain senator (hint he might be losing re-election) why he didn't get on board with a minimum wage increase ballot measure increase. I don't remember if it was something that was actually on the ballot, or if I was suggesting it as something to increase turnout (this was.. I dunno... 2006? I guess). He responded that with the quote in the title. And he didn't mean that the Chamber of Commerce would attack him about increasing the minimum wage, because that was popular! He meant that the Chamber would run ads accusing him of all sorts of unpopular things. It wasn't the issue, it was the money that the issue would unleash against him.
This is a real thing that politicians have to deal with, but there's a difference between "this is an unpopular issue with voters" and "this is an unpopular issue with people with lots of money" and often our dumb discourse does not adequately point out this difference.
Good stuff
My favorite news from last night:
"Louisiana votes to eliminate Jim Crow jury law with Amendment 2: The law made Louisiana one of two states that allowed a non-unanimous jury in felony trials."
"In Historic Move, Florida Approves Automatically Restoring Voting Rights To Felons: The move, reversing a Jim Crow-era policy, is one of the most significant expansions of the franchise in modern times."
I confess that I wanted to see this: "Democrat Ned Lamont Wins Connecticut Governor's Race," although I really have no idea how he will govern. Never gonna forgive Lieberman, though.
I also was cheered to see that Kobach lost despite all his election fraud. But Kemp's more effective use of election fraud won for him, sadly.
Look, I've been infuriated for a couple of decades now over the complete lack of movement the Democratic leadership has shown on going after voter suppression and election fraud. We all know who is doing it and we all know it is not a conspiracy theory that some pretty unlikely election results are the outcome, but the Kobachs and Kemps belong in jail, not in office. It should be a federal crime to interfere with an eligible voter's right to vote.
And It All Falls Apart
One of my regular critiques is that every 2 years - and especially every 4 years - a massive organization machine is created, and then disbanded. Finding ways to keep motivated people involved so that you don't have to rebuild the foundation in 18 months would seem to be easier than, well, having to rebuild the foundation every time. Of course in the February after an election there is less for volunteers to actually do, but involvement for most people is a bit of an illusion anyway. You just need to make people feel involved, and put the structures in place to make that possible.
The Caravan Of Doom
Going to be "fun" watching defensive reporters justify it as it disappears from the front pages where it had been for 2 weeks.
Benghazighazi
Reporters who enabled and cheered on every bullshit GOP investigation of the Obama era (and, frankly, the Republican were so stupid and lazy that they were *bad* at anything except getting reporters to run after their catnip) will suddenly find congressional oversight very troubling.
Those are the rules.
Those are the rules.
Not Bad
As I said, some disappointment - especially some marquee races - but overall a good night. Can't be too surprised that a country that elected all these horrible people 2 years ago didn't boot all of them and their fellow travelers out already. Took the House, did well in state governments (governors and trifectas), won some important ballot measures, kicked out some horrible people (and retained some, sadly).
Tuesday, November 06, 2018
A Very Fine House
That was all I was counting on. Some other stuff would have been nice, of course, but that was the big prize.
Money Well Spent
For all of the obsession with campaign fundraising, there doesn't seem to be much interest in how it is spent. On the teevee at the gym around 4:45 I saw an ad for a Republican congressional candidate. I suppose it wasn't too late!!!
Results Thread The First
I'm not even gonna try to keep up. Better comprehensive analysis can be found elsewhere or through the collective input of all of you, dear readers. Have at it!
Whatever Happens This Election Proves Me Right About Everything
Third Way and David Brooks will explain it one way (a victory for the common sense center if Democrats win, proof that Democrats are out of touch with Real America if Republicans win) and they'll be the ones who have the microphones because that's how it works.
They'll also provide a caricature of the supposed lefty view of things, which is that lefties want every candidate everywhere to get their orders from some Brooklyn Marxist Collective or something.
And there are enough people running for office that you'll basically be able to tell any story you want to! Lefty candidate X lost, proof that the lefties are wrong! Corporate Dem Y lost, proof that the lefties are right!
I don't speak for the Online Left. I never did and now I am old and The Kids Today have taken over with their Snapchats or whatever, but the real Online Left critique of the Democrats was never that they need to run commies in every district. It went something more like this:
Policy and rhetoric aren't entirely separable, but...
On policy: A lot of what DC thinks is "centrist" had no relationship to what the median voter actually likes and polls prove that some very lefty things are actually popular! Not all very lefty things! It is true that politicians who run on certain very lefty things can cause problems for themselves even when those things are very popular because not pissing off the money people makes them less likely to spend massive amounts of money to oppose you. Most people like minimum wage increases but the people who will run $10 million in ads against you about other things do not. Pundits do not explain this wrinkle.
On rhetoric: Everybody "knows" Democrats are going to raise your taxes, force you into a gay marriage, mandate that you have an abortion, take away your car, give all your money to black people, bus in caravans of doom from Central America, surrender to ISIS, etc. Mushy middle types also like "A politician who knows what he believes and knows what he stands for." You can't really run from the caricature of Democrats, and if you do you sound like someone who won't stand up for his own side in argument. Not a good look. Better to embrace it and make it sound good. Maybe not the take away your car one! That'll really make people mad. Explain that, yes, you're going to give rich people's money to black people but also white people! Free health care for the poors and the not so poors! Also, running against your party ("I'm a different kind of Democrat!") works for one politician, it doesn't work if half your candidates are doing it.
tl;dr: some, not all, lefty policies are actually quite popular! Sound like you believe what you're saying and that everybody can have nice things instead of hoping "not quite as evil as the other guys" works. If people want evil they're gonna vote for the evil party. It isn't a secret which one it is.
They'll also provide a caricature of the supposed lefty view of things, which is that lefties want every candidate everywhere to get their orders from some Brooklyn Marxist Collective or something.
And there are enough people running for office that you'll basically be able to tell any story you want to! Lefty candidate X lost, proof that the lefties are wrong! Corporate Dem Y lost, proof that the lefties are right!
I don't speak for the Online Left. I never did and now I am old and The Kids Today have taken over with their Snapchats or whatever, but the real Online Left critique of the Democrats was never that they need to run commies in every district. It went something more like this:
Policy and rhetoric aren't entirely separable, but...
On policy: A lot of what DC thinks is "centrist" had no relationship to what the median voter actually likes and polls prove that some very lefty things are actually popular! Not all very lefty things! It is true that politicians who run on certain very lefty things can cause problems for themselves even when those things are very popular because not pissing off the money people makes them less likely to spend massive amounts of money to oppose you. Most people like minimum wage increases but the people who will run $10 million in ads against you about other things do not. Pundits do not explain this wrinkle.
On rhetoric: Everybody "knows" Democrats are going to raise your taxes, force you into a gay marriage, mandate that you have an abortion, take away your car, give all your money to black people, bus in caravans of doom from Central America, surrender to ISIS, etc. Mushy middle types also like "A politician who knows what he believes and knows what he stands for." You can't really run from the caricature of Democrats, and if you do you sound like someone who won't stand up for his own side in argument. Not a good look. Better to embrace it and make it sound good. Maybe not the take away your car one! That'll really make people mad. Explain that, yes, you're going to give rich people's money to black people but also white people! Free health care for the poors and the not so poors! Also, running against your party ("I'm a different kind of Democrat!") works for one politician, it doesn't work if half your candidates are doing it.
tl;dr: some, not all, lefty policies are actually quite popular! Sound like you believe what you're saying and that everybody can have nice things instead of hoping "not quite as evil as the other guys" works. If people want evil they're gonna vote for the evil party. It isn't a secret which one it is.
My Boring Vote
Unless it's time to apply for asylum somewhere, the 3 candidates on my ballot (governor, Senator Casey, my new Rep. due to redistricting) are going to win by landslide or near landslide numbers.
Below Deck
I bet Alito and Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will do everything to run interference for top people, especially Trump, and they can afford lawyers, but the little people should run out the door now.
Working for President Donald Trump has never been easy, but his staffers can expect a whole new level of mayhem if Democrats win control of the House on Tuesday.
Democratic control of even one chamber of Congress would unleash an onslaught of hearings, subpoenas and document demands as lawmakers investigate everything from the president’s personal tax returns to his controversial policies on immigration, health care and the environment.
Voter 102
I lied. 45 minute wait! wtf
...adding in my head (data I'm looking at doesn't have a simple total and I am lazy) and it looks like my division had about 500 voters in 2016 total. So...turnout!
...adding in my head (data I'm looking at doesn't have a simple total and I am lazy) and it looks like my division had about 500 voters in 2016 total. So...turnout!
The Golden Age Of Movie Access
I was proved fucking wrong - at least for now - about Netflix making a big mistake by pivoting to streaming. I didn't get that they would spend enough money on their own content that people would actually want to watch. So good for Netflix the company. But it's shitty for movies. And video stores are gone. And DVD back catalogs are disappearing. I actually still subscribe to their DVD service but it gets worse and worse (catalog shrinks, turnaround time for DVDs has increased substantially).
Physical media had the first sale doctrine going for it. When that goes, unless some sort of mandatory licensing scheme becomes law, finding old movies/tv is going to be... increasingly hard.
Oh, hey, today is election day.
Physical media had the first sale doctrine going for it. When that goes, unless some sort of mandatory licensing scheme becomes law, finding old movies/tv is going to be... increasingly hard.
Oh, hey, today is election day.
Long Lines
About to make the 2 minute trip to my polling place where I doubt I will wait more than 5 minutes to vote, if that.
There is no reason for long lines at polling places. Just add more of them.
There is no reason for long lines at polling places. Just add more of them.
Monday, November 05, 2018
Confidence
I remember (memory is flawed, of course, so who knows) that on election day on 2006 there was basically no doubt that the Democrats were going to take the House. CNN had a little party at a bar in DC for Very Important Blogger types and similar. Even I was invited! The conservatives were all very sad. Wonkette was there but Wonkette was this young guy named Alex Pareene at the time. Wonkette has always been a bit like Doctor Who. He was kind of a dick to me but that was ok.
Not feeling that confidence this time around.
Not feeling that confidence this time around.
We Can All Agree That Incivility Is Bad
One obvious reason that elite journalists publicly fret about ill treatment of poor Sarah Sanders in restaurants is that they identify with her. They could be a press secretary one day! They could be denied service at an expensive restaurant!
But the other is that they can seize onto noncontroversial platitudes like "civility is good." Nobody powerful is going to disagree with that, however they behave themselves in public or private. Poor Sarah Sanders!
Whatever they think privately, they can't publicly get upset about babies being in cages or any other decidedly uncivil policies that this or any administration enacts. That would be taking sides, or partisan, or having an (air quotes) "opinion." Giving a shit, even.
In practice, this means that the powerful can always get away with punching down... especially way way down... but punching up unleashes the civility defense force.
Seems a bit backwards to me, but I'm just an uncivil blogger.
But the other is that they can seize onto noncontroversial platitudes like "civility is good." Nobody powerful is going to disagree with that, however they behave themselves in public or private. Poor Sarah Sanders!
Whatever they think privately, they can't publicly get upset about babies being in cages or any other decidedly uncivil policies that this or any administration enacts. That would be taking sides, or partisan, or having an (air quotes) "opinion." Giving a shit, even.
In practice, this means that the powerful can always get away with punching down... especially way way down... but punching up unleashes the civility defense force.
Seems a bit backwards to me, but I'm just an uncivil blogger.
SCOOP MUST CREDIT ATRIOS
I am endlessly fascinated that political reporters genuinely seem to believe that reporters who get "scoops" in the sense of "being the first one to get the press release" deserve the Nobel Peace Prize in Journamalisming or something. These kinds of scoops aren't actually "scoops," they're rewards for being bootlickers. Reporters who are regularly FRIST! with this stuff are the reporters who spend their entire lives writing beat sweeteners. Getting a scoop that reporter #2 and reporter #3 would have gotten 2 minutes later, or if every reporter just went home for the weekend could've been tweeted out by the man himself, is not meaningfully journalism. You're just a conduit for information that would've gone out anyway.
Hard To Beat A Foe That Doesn't Give A Shit
I claim no deep knowledge of internal Chinese politics, but I think it's fair to guess that their political leaders are somewhat more immune from fluctuations in public opinion and the fortunes of their populace than ours are. Somewhat. Also they can probably figure out how to get soy from elsewhere. Any one good might not matter that much for our economy overall, but it's pretty easy to inflict pain on certain geographic populations/areas.
One can have troubles with our general free trade regime, and especially the elite discourse and unwavering Friedmanesque faith in globollocks, and also get that President Deals isn't going to "win" any trade wars.
But this year, the Chinese have all but stopped buying. The largest market for one of America’s largest exports has shut its doors. The Chinese government imposed a tariff on American soybeans in response to the Trump administration’s tariffs on Chinese goods. The latest federal data, through mid-October, shows American soybean sales to China have declined by 94 percent from last year’s harvest.
One can have troubles with our general free trade regime, and especially the elite discourse and unwavering Friedmanesque faith in globollocks, and also get that President Deals isn't going to "win" any trade wars.
Sunday, November 04, 2018
A Time To Compromise
One of the not remarked upon enough things about the last couple of years is that on some issues - immigration in particular - Trump has been making it sound as if Democrats were preventing Congress from doing "something." Obviously it isn't entirely clear what "something" is, other than money for "the wall," but Mr. Deals is always complaining that the Dems won't give him whatever it is he wants. Of course a bit of knowledge that only deep political insiders have is that Actually, the Republicans control both houses of Congress, and that it isn't even the Senate, where in theory the minority can obstruct things a bit, which is causing problems.
If the Dems do actually take the House (or even the Senate!) the usual press calls for them to compromise with Republicans, which involves giving the Republicans as much baby cage money as they ask for, will return. Because those are the rules.
If the Dems do actually take the House (or even the Senate!) the usual press calls for them to compromise with Republicans, which involves giving the Republicans as much baby cage money as they ask for, will return. Because those are the rules.
Saturday, November 03, 2018
The Real Racists
Sometimes academic nitpicking about language annoys people, especially when it seems to redefine words in common usage. Still without power, racism is...not especially important? Being a bigot makes you an asshole but if you lack power, and especially lack association with the dominant power structures, that's really about it.
But in our topsy-turvy world of objective journalism, you can't be seen as taking sides against people in power, so almost by definition they can't be racist (or at least you can't call them racists).
But in our topsy-turvy world of objective journalism, you can't be seen as taking sides against people in power, so almost by definition they can't be racist (or at least you can't call them racists).
Complete Mystery How To Make Voting Easy
Obviously things like early voting and vote by mail etc., but here in Philadelphia we have none of that. But we do have about one polling place per 1000 registered voters, and a nontrivial number of those registered voters have died or moved, so in practice the ratio is even better. I don't bring that up because I think the urban hellhole is always an example of what's right and good, but because I never have to wait more than a few minutes to vote and have never heard of stories of widespread voting problems due to long lines in the city (I'm sure it can happen occasionally with high turnout and an after work voting crush, but just generally not a problem).
Anyway this doesn't require some sort of advanced technology or massive overhaul to your voting system. Just. More. Polling Places. The stories of "long lines" are not heartwarming stories of democracy in action, any more than kids selling lemonade to pay for their mom's cancer treatment are heartwarming stories of American family and compassion. They're stories of policy failure.
Anyway this doesn't require some sort of advanced technology or massive overhaul to your voting system. Just. More. Polling Places. The stories of "long lines" are not heartwarming stories of democracy in action, any more than kids selling lemonade to pay for their mom's cancer treatment are heartwarming stories of American family and compassion. They're stories of policy failure.
Your Liberal Media
For the 10th time in the last 11 days, the New York Times and Washington Post have put the caravan of migrants -- currently weeks away in southern Mexico and dwindling -- on their front pages. https://t.co/Frn76NYVNP pic.twitter.com/soDS6geyhp
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) November 3, 2018
Friday, November 02, 2018
Gonna Have To Ban Cars Until We Figure Out What's Going On
They do make people crazy.
NEW YORK (AP) — Alec Baldwin has been arrested for allegedly punching someone during a dispute over a New York City parking spot.
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) November 2, 2018
Sunday Bobbleheads
For years I tried to highlight the imbalances on the Sunday shows and eventually I just gave up because it was clear that nobody involved could be shamed into acknowledging a problem. Not the bookers, not the hosts, not the supposedly "neutral" journalists who regularly participated in this sham. They didn't see a problem with it, or did not care.
The conservative line, which the shows implicitly acknowledge in the way they book the shows, is that all the "journalists" are liberals and the conservatives are necessary to provide balance. Journalists who participate on these shows, whatever is in their hearts, do not like to be tarred with an ideological label, and should object to the fact that "liberal" is being stamped on their foreheads every week. That's what they are telling their audience when they allow themselves be a part of this theater.
And whatever their actual ideological leanings, their "neutral" pose means they cannot respond in kind to conservative advocates and hacks who appear on the show. Nerf gun versus actual gun, at most.
If everybody involved believes these journalists are liberals they should be identified and self-identify as such. If not, they shouldn't allow themselves to be "balanced" by conservatives.
But, as I said, I was on this beat for years and nobody gives a shit.
The conservative line, which the shows implicitly acknowledge in the way they book the shows, is that all the "journalists" are liberals and the conservatives are necessary to provide balance. Journalists who participate on these shows, whatever is in their hearts, do not like to be tarred with an ideological label, and should object to the fact that "liberal" is being stamped on their foreheads every week. That's what they are telling their audience when they allow themselves be a part of this theater.
And whatever their actual ideological leanings, their "neutral" pose means they cannot respond in kind to conservative advocates and hacks who appear on the show. Nerf gun versus actual gun, at most.
If everybody involved believes these journalists are liberals they should be identified and self-identify as such. If not, they shouldn't allow themselves to be "balanced" by conservatives.
But, as I said, I was on this beat for years and nobody gives a shit.
Well Okay Then
I know Trump doesn't know what a trade deficit is. He thinks if the trade deficit is $300 billion that means that other countries are stealing $300 billion from us somehow, and that "bad trade deals" means they get to steal more from us. No I don't quite know how thinks this works.
But even within the Trumpian worldview of trade, this makes no sense.
I do not think decreasing our trade deficit with China while increasing our trade deficit with Malaysia...reduces our trade deficit.
But even within the Trumpian worldview of trade, this makes no sense.
WH CEA Chair Hassett, echoing Trump, says trade war with China is mostly hurting them not us
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) November 2, 2018
explains that American consumers can easily buy substitutes for all the generic Chinese manufactured goods from alternative sellers like Malaysia
I do not think decreasing our trade deficit with China while increasing our trade deficit with Malaysia...reduces our trade deficit.
Elite Journalism Is Filled With Racist White Supremacists
It's calmed down a bit recently, but for decades many of our leading lights were more than a little sympathetic to "Bell Curve" type "race science" and "racial realism." And I don't just mean at the National Review.
They don't like the ugly in the mirror, but it has long been ugly to the rest of us.
They don't like the ugly in the mirror, but it has long been ugly to the rest of us.
Obviously She Was A Crack Ho Like All Black Women
That's what he means.
The president loves his Yale Law grads. Abrams is a Yale Law grad.
ATLANTA — President Trump disparaged Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, in ambiguous and unusually personal terms on Thursday, warning that “her past” left her “not qualified to be the governor.”
The president loves his Yale Law grads. Abrams is a Yale Law grad.
Whatever Happens On Election Day, Rest Assured America Remains A Center Right Country
Remember the avalanche of those takes when Obama won in 2008?
Thursday, November 01, 2018
Stop That
That Tesla calls it "Autopilot" combined with the tendency of Musk to make rather outlandish (and not) promises about capabilities is... a problem.
Musk likes to suggest regulators are getting in his way instead of acknowledging the reality that his fantasy technology doesn't (yet?) work. A reasonable if not fully educated buyer would conclude that the cars require less driver attention than they do.
California regulators, it turns out, take a dim view of Tesla Motors’ Autopilot — not the self-steering system itself, but the name.
In draft regulations released late Friday, the state Department of Motor Vehicles said car companies should not use the terms “self-driving,” “automated” or “auto-pilot” in advertising unless their cars are capable of driving themselves without human passengers paying attention.
For Palo Alto’s Tesla, that could pose a problem.
Musk likes to suggest regulators are getting in his way instead of acknowledging the reality that his fantasy technology doesn't (yet?) work. A reasonable if not fully educated buyer would conclude that the cars require less driver attention than they do.
Two Futures
Do they forget the caravan of doom the day after the election or do they go ahead and plan to start shooting when they arrive.
Give This Man A Ticket
While I am not fully aware of the driving laws in all 50 states, pretty sure "driving in public streets by remote control" is not legal generally.
And, yeah, sure Elon.
Driving around a parking lot (especially a garage) and finding a parking spot is one of the tasks that sounds easy to people but is actually really really hard! I do think people who drive a lot have internalized some of the basic tasks so much that they don't know which ones are straightforward for humans but probably not for machines. I, a rare driver, know that cruising around a parking lot is complicated!!!
I was not sure when I would use this feature... till today. @elonmusk @tesla pic.twitter.com/bC6rFt2SuW
— D Shawn Kennedy (@rarelyserious) October 31, 2018
And, yeah, sure Elon.
For those unfamiliar, this uses Tesla Autopark/Summon. Slightly smarter version hopefully ready soon. By next year, a Tesla should be able to drive around a parking lot, find an empty spot, read signs to confirm it’s valid & park.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2018
Driving around a parking lot (especially a garage) and finding a parking spot is one of the tasks that sounds easy to people but is actually really really hard! I do think people who drive a lot have internalized some of the basic tasks so much that they don't know which ones are straightforward for humans but probably not for machines. I, a rare driver, know that cruising around a parking lot is complicated!!!
The Show As Written
One of the worst perversions of objective "both sides" journalism, whatever its merits, is presenting Both Sides as they ask to be presented. As in, running the press releases. Report what they say they're doing, not what they're doing. Report what they say they "think" or "believe" (sometimes mind reading is possible!) not what they're doing, even when they're obviously contradictory. It's unfair, you see.
Anthropology And Sociology
The regular appearance of "we" versus "they" reporting is so laughably obvious in lifestyle/trend/real estate/gentrification stories (white people are always "discovering" neighborhoods, like the modern day Chris Columbuses that they are), but it also comes out a lot in basically any coverage of minority/immigration issues. Often it's subtle, but subtle doesn't make it better. I don't know how "objective" reporters can be so unaware of this in how they write.
It's also present in all the "real America" and "Trump voters still like Trump" stories. Or really any time someone from the New York Times gets off the lower half of the island. It's one of the maddening things about those stories. Who are they for? Nobody is interested in them - neither the subjects nor the audience of the newspaper - and nobody is placated by them. They're condescending.
It's also present in all the "real America" and "Trump voters still like Trump" stories. Or really any time someone from the New York Times gets off the lower half of the island. It's one of the maddening things about those stories. Who are they for? Nobody is interested in them - neither the subjects nor the audience of the newspaper - and nobody is placated by them. They're condescending.