Late Night

Rock on.

Saturday Evening

Enjoy.

Weird Desires

The President isn't some abstract concept, a Sorkinian Archetype. His name is Donald Trump, and you don't want him anywhere near anything important.

Three Israelis, three Palestinians confirmed dead in #TempleMount crisis. Both sides digging in. Riots regionwide. Where's the president?

— Michael Wilner (@mawilner) July 21, 2017

Freebie For Next Trump Interviewer

Just what is it that you or your people need to be pardoned of?

Lunch Thread

enjoy

Robots Are Made Of People

Made by them, anyway.

But self-driving cars have been praised by members of both parties, who see the technology as a way to spur job creation while preventing many of the roughly 40,000 motor vehicle deaths that occur on American roads each year. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 94 percent of traffic deaths involve human error, including distracted driving and driving while intoxicated.

Human errors of another fashion exist, in other words. As I keep saying I don't think "eek they're unsafe!" is the issue. If they work they'll be safe enough, it's almost tautological. But I don't buy the claims that they'll eradicate accidents, and certainly not until the entire fleet is swapped out, which won't happen because they won't work. Even if the cars themselves don't hit anything, they can contribute to chaos around them.

I Think About This Regularly

Peter Thiel probably does, too, but for different reasons.

Late Night

Rock on.

We Have To Throw Money At This Bullshit To Pretend To Be In The Game

This is hilarious.

One thing is clear: Building its own autonomous vehicle technology gives Lyft more leverage in negotiations with other companies. Less apparent is whether it will be worth the money Lyft spends. And even less obvious than that is when self-driving cars will actually be cheaper than Lyft’s human-based driver model. (That model has the added benefit of employing human beings, rather than cutting big checks to other companies to borrow their robot cars.)

So much money in the bonfire.

Access To Labour

Hey, Michael, people aren't widgets.

Downing Street did not deny that free movement — under which EU nationals can live and work in any other member state without a visa — would continue for some time after Brexit.

In spite of reservations among Eurosceptic ministers that a “transition deal” could become semi-permanent, Mr Gove and fellow Brexiters have concluded it is unavoidable if British companies are to avoid the disruption of the UK crashing out of the EU in 2019 without an agreement between the two sides.

Asked about a free movement extension, Mr Gove, the environment secretary, said: “As we leave the EU we will have an implementation period which will ensure we can continue to have not just access to labour but the economic stability and certainty which business requests.”

Fire Jeffy Jeff

With Trump appointees (Republican appointees generally) there's always a sense that the next one could be much, much worse, but really I'm not sure you can get worse than Jeff Session.

Nothing New

But that people even tell these anecdotes is frightening.

Ditto with Gary Cohn, who goes with the conversational flow, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who'll say when talking about Chinese currency manipulation, for instance: "But that was before you were on the world stage." Trump is all ears.

What's It All About

There seems to a bit more there to the "Russia election collusion" angle than I thought, though I'm still not entirely sure what the underlying *crime* is (yes, there are possibilities, but it's always "could be in violation of..." and, you know, that ain't gonna do it), but whatever the merits of that I was always sure that what Trump was worried about was the dirty money.

The roots of Mueller’s follow-the-money investigation lie partly in a wide-ranging money-laundering probe launched by then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara last year, according to the person.

My bet is that Trump, Inc. (including Kushner) has basically been a money laundering operation for Russian money in various ways for years. Whatever Trump should be worried about, that's what he *is* worried about...

Bye Spicey

.@PressSec resigned after vehemently objecting to appointment at 10 a.m. Friday of Anthony Scaramucci as WH Communications director, per SAO

— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) July 21, 2017

Coulda done it for a high-minded reason, create some distance, but went with straight careerism instead. Even in quitting he owned himself. https://t.co/OvrDin1RvF

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) July 21, 2017

But He Had Verbal Approval

Verbal. Approval.

Musk was received with typical credulity by the tech press, and considerable consternation by various government agencies. Several spokespeople who answered the phones at relevant city, state and federal government bodies laughed upon hearing of the claim that an interstate transit project with a significant street-level footprint in four of the east coast’s largest cities could be approved verbally.

America Wasn't All That Great

And we have all kinds of horrible corruption in government, but we've managed to avoid this kind of corruption. You know, the kind that causes our various Very Serious People to refer to the heads of South American governments we don't like that week as "dictators" or "strongmen" or whatever.

Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort.

Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves.

And we'll never be able to avoid it again.

Late Night

Tomorrow is the day of the Fri, otherwise known as the Fri Day.

Happy Hour Thread

All day I thought it was Friday...but it's Thursday!

We Got Old

I got old, of course. "You" as in the regular readers and regular commenters were always a bit older than me. The kids today aren't always right, but pretty sure "we" weren't right very often (I was, and you were, but our generation? jesus christ we fucked things up).

Not How Any Of This Works

Sure, Elon.

Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2017

On You, On You, On You

1982 wants its political campaign back.

A member of Congress told me Democrats big 2018 slogan, which is set to be released Monday. It's: "Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages"

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_Vox) July 20, 2017

Because You Are An Ignorant, Racist Bigot

Who is trying to ruin the lives of other people because you're an ignorant, racist bigot? The intolerant left is rightly intolerant of that, but your martyr game will get you a pat on the head from Sean Hannity and an appointment to the job of Chief Bigot in the Trump administration.

But one of the state’s most conservative lawmakers, Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R., Butler), is now saying that an “unhinged” and “crimson-faced” Philadelphia lawmaker — whom his office later identified as Democratic State Rep. Brian Sims — threw papers at him and berated him after a hearing last month on emotionally charged legislation involving “sanctuary cities.”

...

“This is just another example of blatant, liberal intolerance by the radical left who would rather support lawless, illegal aliens instead of protecting American citizens,” Metcalfe says. “We must continue to defeat the left, defeat unruly progressive mobs, and defeat all other enemies of liberty.”

WAHH MOMMY THESE PEOPLE WHO HATE AMERICA AND LIBERTY AND PUPPIES AND WANT TO GIVE ALL YOUR STUFF TO BROWN PEOPLE ARE SOOOOOOO MEEEEEEEEEEAN TO ME I JUST WANT TO MAKE CHILDREN HOMELESS BY DEPORTING THEIR PARENTS WHY DO THEY HATE LIBERTY!!!

Fuck you, shitbag.