Some Order Here Please

"We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads." --Zeynep Tufecki, UNC Chapel Hill

Globally, more than $490 Billion was spent on advertising in 2016 ($135 Billion spent by the top 200 US Brands alone).

These are smart, coldly-calculating people - they don't spend that kinda dough on shit that doesn't work.

Which makes this one even more important:

My Ayn Rand radar picked up on "...we can't abdicate our responsibilities..." - that's one of Rand's basic tenets even though her bit isn't only about responsibility - it's about reason and logic too, which makes those things are very closely related.

Anyway, I always love it when somebody uses one of the Daddy State Libertarians' favorite memes against them, and their insistence on ignoring and denying the bad shit that grows directly out of a short-sighted "philosophy" of "I'm gonna get mine and all y'all can just fuck off".

This is an old concern of course, and it goes with every big technological advancement.

What makes this instance particularly dangerous is that we don't have the kind of leadership that gets us to stop and think about what we're doing and where we're going with it.

Unfortunately, the people running this joint are in the thrall of some weird critical mass that (at best) carries us all forward into the 18th century, but this time with uncontrollable computer power and nuclear weapons.

Today's Tweet

The war is on Poverty, not poor people
... Drugs, not addicts
... Terrorism, not veterans

The GOP’s idea of a war on poverty is putting poor people in prison. Too many Republicans are way beyond vicious they are evil. Most annoying are those who call themselves Christians. https://t.co/66MZUrFPXr

— John Dean (@JohnWDean) December 28, 2017

 

Today's Pix

45* Speaks

NYT ran Michael Schmidt's interview with 45*, and here's a little taste:

Is that how your average not-guilty guy talks - or is it something else?

Charlie Pierce has an interesting take (as usual):

On Thursday, El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago sat down with Michael Schmidt of The New York Times for what apparently was an open-ended, one-on-one interview. Since then, the electric Twitter machine–and most of the rest of the Intertoobz–has been alive with criticism of Schmidt for having not pushed back sufficiently against some of the more obvious barefaced non-facts presented by the president* in their chat. Some critics have been unkind enough to point out that Schmidt was the conveyor belt for some of the worst attacks on Hillary Rodham Clinton emanating from both the New York FBI office and the various congressional committees staffed by people in kangaroo suits. For example, Schmidt’s name was on a shabby story the Times ran on July 23, 2015 in which it was alleged that a criminal investigation into HRC's famous use of a private email server was being discussed within the Department of Justice. It wasn’t, and the Times’ public editor at the time, the great Margaret Sullivan, later torched the story in a brutal column.

Other people were unkind enough to point out that the interview was brokered by one Christopher Ruddy, a Trump intimate and the CEO of NewsMax, and that Ruddy made his bones as a political “journalist” by peddling the fiction that Clinton White House counsel Vince Foster had been murdered, one of the more distasteful slanders that got a shameful public airing during the Clinton frenzy of the 1990’s. Neither of those will concern us here. What Schmidt actually got out of this interview is a far more serious problem for the country. In my view, the interview is a clinical study of a man in severe cognitive decline, if not the early stages of outright dementia.
Just because you're paranoid about a president who might lose it completely at any minute and get us all incinerated - that doesn't mean we're not in danger of being incinerated because we have a president who might lose it completely at any minute.

Amendment 25, Section 4.

Surprise - Really?

Matthew Yglasias, Vox (making it clear that he's using his head for a butt plug again):

But what’s flown under the radar is that there is plenty surprising about Trump’s conduct in office. In particular, on economic issues he’s governed a lot more like a hard-right conservative than a freewheeling populist.

As a candidate, Trump promised a crackdown on abusive pharmaceutical pricing. As president, Trump has put a pharmaceutical executive in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS is changing regulations to better fit the needs of pharmaceutical companies, and Trump is personally pocketing club membership fees from people with business before the federal government, including the CEO of Allergan. The candidate who ran as the champion of the forgotten man has led an administration dedicated to such causes as making it easier for financial advisers to rip off their clients and ensuring that workers suffer continued exposure to toxic chemicals in paint-removing solvents.


There is nothing surprising about any of this. "Donald Trump lies" was at the top of every tautology chart in the world before the GOP primaries even got started.

• Water is wet
• Pain hurts
• Trump lies

Another Tweet

Coin-Operated Politicians

Sen. Pat Toomey decided to buy between $15,001 and $50,000 worth of GE stock the day he was named one of the Senators who would negotiate the final tax bill. https://t.co/g8lNUKobcI pic.twitter.com/DKYYiRKVIu

— Josh Keefe (@thejoshkeefe) December 28, 2017

 

Today's Tweet

In the Age of The Professional Media Troll

The book editor's comments on Milo's manuscript could be used as a response to just about every comment from a Twitter troll: pic.twitter.com/HaY3uVLdeP

— Nick Jack Pappas (@Pappiness) December 28, 2017

 

A Song For Somebody

Somebody I Used To Know (cover) --Walk Off The Earth

The Nail-Biter

Shelly Simonds won her election to the Virginia House of Delegates.

But no she didn't. Not if The Republican Guard has anything to say about it.

There are at least 3 real possibilities on what this voter intended - and 2 of them tilt the race to Simonds.

• First, the voter intended what the Repubs are claiming - straight GOP.
• Second, the voter went with all GOP, but maybe they know Simonds and they were making an exception. Whatever the reason, people split their ballots all the time.
• Third, the strike-thru on the Simonds bubble means the same as the strike-thru on the Gillespie bubble.

This thing was tossed out on the first accounting, and again on the recount, but suddenly, it's magically resurrected when Yancey needs just one more vote.

It's a classic Under-Vote.

Simonds is challenging the decision in court, and I guess we don't find out what happens next for several more days.

Not That It'll Matter

I seem to recall the Wingnut Dis-Infotainment Industry screaming about "the war on cops unleashed by crazed hordes of Black Lives Matter and blah blah blah".

Brett Samuels, The Hill:

The number of police officers who died in the line of duty decreased in 2017 and nearly hit its lowest number in 58 years, USA Today reported Thursday.

As of Thursday, 128 officers died in the line of duty this year, down from 135 in 2016. Since 1959, only 2013 saw fewer officers die while on duty, when 116 were killed, according to data from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
So if you're scoring at home - or even if you're alone (thanks Keith), that's:

• Cops killed with guns - 47
• Civilians killed by cops - 971 (so far in 2017)

That's a kill ratio of 20:1, fellas - I don't think you're losing this one.