Saturday, July 01, 2017
"No Parks, But Casinos Will Stay Open"
Pretty much captures the current state of affairs.
NJ Gov. Chris Christie shuts down state government amid budget impasse. No parks, but casinos will stay open. Story: https://t.co/INtrUKoa8N pic.twitter.com/hIW0A2IN9u
— AP Eastern U.S. (@APEastRegion) July 1, 2017
Can Always Get Away With Screwing The Right People
Just not the ones who are richer than you are.
Joon H. Kim, the acting United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement: “McFarland allegedly presented fake documents to induce investors to put over a million dollars into his company and the fiasco called the Fyre Festival.” If convicted, Mr. McFarland could face a maximum of 20 years in prison, but is likely to receive a lesser sentence.
Tech
One of my ever-growing number of pet peeves (yes I am getting old and cranky) is that every newish thing is referred to as "tech." I mean, come on, unless you are inventing a new microchip or a time machine, it isn't really "tech." A new online store isn't tech any more than this blog is tech. A new "food delivery app" isn't tech, it's a trivial piece of software that any smart 14-year-old could write which will be (or not be) a successful business plan based on a bunch of things which have little to do with "tech" (marketing, sales, business partnerships, etc). A new dating app (Tinder, but slightly different!) isn't "tech." A new coffee maker probably isn't "tech" unless it, I dunno, uses quantum lasers or some shit like that. Linking your toaster to the internet isn't "tech" at this point any more than sticking a digital display in a car 25 years ago was "tech." This is all just "design" with commodity components and trivial software development skills at this point.
Nothing against new ideas. Some of them might even be good ones! But just because a company is based in the Bay Area and does something on your smartphone doesn't really make it "tech" at this point any more than something which uses that new-fangled electricity is tech.
Nothing against new ideas. Some of them might even be good ones! But just because a company is based in the Bay Area and does something on your smartphone doesn't really make it "tech" at this point any more than something which uses that new-fangled electricity is tech.
This Is The White House
I get that during the campaign there are people whose job it is to worry about this stuff, as ridiculous as it sounds. But that's a campaign. They won. They run the world.
Some White House advisers said they were frustrated that the Brzezinski feud — which continued to unfurl throughout the day Friday with accusations and counteraccusations — overtook the president’s fight with CNN, which seemed in their eyes to have clearer villains and heroes.
Saturday Morning
Digby nails it, in just a few words.
It's only been five months.
But one thing is sure. Trump is not doing the job of president. He's a celebrity managing his personal PR. He doesn't seem to know that this is not the job of president.
It's only been five months.
Friday, June 30, 2017
What To Do About Obamacare
Republican voters mostly aren't against it for reasons other than the fact that it was championed by the black Muslim guy from Kenya. They don't like the as-yet-unenforced mandate, and they don't like it for all of the reasons that few people actually like our health care system - at best it's needlessly a pain in the ass, at worst, well, you know the worst. A lot of them are pissed off because they think the blahs got the secret welfare ACA (Medicaid) while they got Obamacare (the exchanges), even though a big reason (not the only one!) a lot of them didn't get Medicaid was they yelled and screamed for their states to "reject Obamacare" and, thanks to Roberts, what they could reject was the Medicaid expansion.
Hospitals hate the idea of repeal. Insurance companies mostly don't like it. For people with employer insurance, people who got Medicaid, and people who can kinda sorta afford the individual plans, it's mostly better (and since the mandate isn't even enforced, it's basically better for anyone who chooses to buy it).
Ultimately any "Republican healthcare plan" is basically Obamacare, but shittier. Even my glibertarian college facebook friend who HATES OBAMACARE earnestly described what the health care system should be, and it really was Obamacare without the mandate, to the letter.
The sociopaths in Congress wants to take away Medicaid, make it less affordable and with fewer benefits (at worst, completely fake insurance, at best something slightly better than that). Remove revenue from insurance companies and hospitals, including forcing them to eat more emergency room bills. Oh, and people don't get needed care and go bankrupt and die.
The leading liberal think tank has decided to make another stab at bipartisan fixes to Obamacare because I guess whatever was in the water that made Obama think elected Republicans were interested in such a thing is still in the water in DC. I'm not sure why "here's a really complicated plan that people won't like much more than the status quo and has no chance of passing" is better than "here's a really simply-sounding (nothing is simple, of course, but the bureaucracies should handle the bureaucracy, not us) idea that would be popular and better and universal and has no chance of passing right now" but centrists gotta centrist I guess.
Hospitals hate the idea of repeal. Insurance companies mostly don't like it. For people with employer insurance, people who got Medicaid, and people who can kinda sorta afford the individual plans, it's mostly better (and since the mandate isn't even enforced, it's basically better for anyone who chooses to buy it).
Ultimately any "Republican healthcare plan" is basically Obamacare, but shittier. Even my glibertarian college facebook friend who HATES OBAMACARE earnestly described what the health care system should be, and it really was Obamacare without the mandate, to the letter.
The sociopaths in Congress wants to take away Medicaid, make it less affordable and with fewer benefits (at worst, completely fake insurance, at best something slightly better than that). Remove revenue from insurance companies and hospitals, including forcing them to eat more emergency room bills. Oh, and people don't get needed care and go bankrupt and die.
The leading liberal think tank has decided to make another stab at bipartisan fixes to Obamacare because I guess whatever was in the water that made Obama think elected Republicans were interested in such a thing is still in the water in DC. I'm not sure why "here's a really complicated plan that people won't like much more than the status quo and has no chance of passing" is better than "here's a really simply-sounding (nothing is simple, of course, but the bureaucracies should handle the bureaucracy, not us) idea that would be popular and better and universal and has no chance of passing right now" but centrists gotta centrist I guess.
And 500 Other Things
Self-driving cars fans live in environments which have basically been built for cars and not in somewhat older areas where car-centric environments were retrofitted slowly over time. Roundabouts are hard, but so are hundreds of other non-standardized things.
This is correct, though I think it also misses the point. While there will be uses for this technology, they'll be so limited as to be almost pointless. Great, self-driving shuttle buses in Disney World to get people from the parking lot to the park gate. I mean, cool, I guess, but...
"Roundabouts are considered to be very challenging for automated vehicle technology," says Helen Kourous, a Ford engineer. "They are very unstructured. No two are alike. You can find many different configurations. Human drivers can sometimes get confused in them," she says.
In geofenced areas, such as the parking lot at Walt Disney World, a gated community, or a college campus, Level 5 self-driving vehicles make perfect sense, and they will work. I can see Level 3 vehicles in a few years where vehicles can drive themselves on highways but must hand off to the human driver if they can't figure out a situation. And that's about really all we can expect in the next 25 years.
This is correct, though I think it also misses the point. While there will be uses for this technology, they'll be so limited as to be almost pointless. Great, self-driving shuttle buses in Disney World to get people from the parking lot to the park gate. I mean, cool, I guess, but...
Everyone With A Name Match Will Be A Vote Fraudster
Kobach knows this game with databases. You program them to make soft matches - similar names, party affiliation - and then accuse everyone of having a match of having voted twice. Of course this almost never ever ever ever happens and certainly doesn't happen enough to swing elections, but gotta lock up potential Dem voters any way you can.
Voter suppression has been his career for years. What a calling. He should be in jail.
A letter from Kris Kobach, the vice chairman of a White House commission looking into voter fraud and other irregularities, is drawing fire from some state election officials. The letter, sent Wednesday to all 50 states, requests that all publicly available voter roll data be sent to the White House by July 14, five days before the panel's first meeting.
Voter suppression has been his career for years. What a calling. He should be in jail.
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Good Timing On Your Bret Stephens Hire, New York Times
No one weather event doesn't mean anything about climate overall, but...
A city in southwest Iran posted the country’s hottest temperature ever recorded Thursday afternoon, and may have tied the world record for the most extreme high temperature.Etienne Kapikian, a forecaster at French meteorological agency MeteoFrance, posted to Twitter that the city of Ahvaz soared to “53.7°C” (128.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Kapikian said the temperature is a “new absolute national record of reliable Iranian heat” and that it was the hottest temperature ever recorded in June over mainland Asia.
This Is Republicans
As Pareene says, Trump the person is not normal, but the Trump presidency basically is just a Republican presidency, with some extra crazy tweeting.
Guilty
Well my local DA just copped a guilty plea.
He ran courting the young progressive vote, people who assumed the younger black guy had to be better than the older white woman who seemed to like nothing more than trying to get capital convictions. He didn't promise to be a perfect progressive DA, but he did promise to be better in ways that mattered, promises he mostly didn't keep.
And then there was the corruption.
He ran courting the young progressive vote, people who assumed the younger black guy had to be better than the older white woman who seemed to like nothing more than trying to get capital convictions. He didn't promise to be a perfect progressive DA, but he did promise to be better in ways that mattered, promises he mostly didn't keep.
And then there was the corruption.
More thread
Only have my phone to post with but the lesson of the day is words speak louder than actions.
Guns Kill People
Also, sadly, very stupid people kill people, but it's a lot harder to do without the guns.
Gun nuts always respond to this kind of thing (and almost every "accidental" type shooting) with a No True Responsible Gun Owner fallacy. Responsible Gun Owners don't do this stuff! They lock their guns! They know gun safety!
We don't require gun owners to be responsible gun owners.
A Minnesota woman has been charged over the fatal shooting of her boyfriend, in what authorities say was a social media stunt gone wrong.
Monalisa Perez, 19, was booked into county jail after shooting at Pedro Ruiz as he held a book to his chest, believing it would stop the bullet.
Gun nuts always respond to this kind of thing (and almost every "accidental" type shooting) with a No True Responsible Gun Owner fallacy. Responsible Gun Owners don't do this stuff! They lock their guns! They know gun safety!
We don't require gun owners to be responsible gun owners.
Trumpkins
I get how this dynamic unfolds in a typical workplace (or family). The boss (father) is an asshole, a tyrant, everyone jockeys to curry favor and avoid the wrath of daddy, selling out each other if necessary, complaining to friends over drinks.
But this show is on teevee all day every day. Also, too, it matters? Like, the world can end kind of matters. I'm not asking anybody for extreme nobility, and certainly not this crowd, but it should be rather obvious that mere self-preservation, merely keeping Daddy from lashing out at you at the dinner table, is just not important. And you can just fucking quit.
But this show is on teevee all day every day. Also, too, it matters? Like, the world can end kind of matters. I'm not asking anybody for extreme nobility, and certainly not this crowd, but it should be rather obvious that mere self-preservation, merely keeping Daddy from lashing out at you at the dinner table, is just not important. And you can just fucking quit.
Veteran Washington reporters tell me that they have never observed this kind of anxiety, regret, and sense of imminent personal doom among White House staffers—not to this degree, anyway. These troubled aides seem to think that they can help their own standing by turning on those around them—and that by retailing information anonymously they will be able to live with themselves after serving a President who has proved so disconnected from the truth and reality.
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)