August 12, 2020

Interrupt tRump

Don Winslow (@donwinslow) Tweeted:
Dear White House Press Correspondents, (@whca)
Thank you for the very difficult job you do every day. I understand Trump is having another press conference today. Here's my new short video to prepare. #InterruptTrump

#InterruptTrump https://t.co/EZbvSqiYi1 https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1292930084622368768?s=20

August 10, 2020

There was a shooting, the fucking moron is saying.

Someone was shot by the secret service, CNN. It was outside the W House and the suspect went to the hospital.

August 10, 2020

TRANSITION CRISIS Getting from November to January

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2020/08/06/getting-from-november-to-january/
"Wargaming shows that, short of a landslide victory for Joe Biden in the upcoming elections, we may be headed for a severe constitutional crisis. Here are six strategies for averting the worst outcomes."

I helped organize and participated in the Transition Integrity Project last December to assess and guard against the risk of irregularities in the November election. In June 2020, our group conducted scenario planning exercises to model different election scenarios: a big Trump win; a big Biden win; a Biden squeaker; and a truly ambiguous or uncertain result.

Teams were assigned to play the Trump campaign and the Biden campaign, Democratic and Republican elected officials, the media, the judiciary, and the executive branches of government. A group of more one hundred people participated. Recruited from across the political spectrum...In the scenario exercises, which unfolded over a series of turns designed to simulate the period between November 4 and January 20, each team had a chance to make “moves,” which other teams would debate and counter, with the results adjudicated by a roll of the dice. Following methods common among military wargamers, disaster preparedness experts, and other policy planners, we designed this structure to uncover how the dynamic interactions between competing teams, as well as sheer luck, might produce unexpected results.

The bad news: in each scenario other than a Biden landslide, we ended up with a constitutional crisis that lasted until the inauguration, featuring violence in the streets and a severely disrupted administrative transition. The good news: we also learned a great deal about how to prevent the worst from transpiring. There were six major takeaways.

Read the rest...

One of the people on the team was on Bill Maher Fri night.

August 9, 2020

Big Tech Needs to Be Regulated. Here Are 4 Ways to Curb Disinformation and Protect Our Privacy

https://time.com/5872868/big-tech-regulated-here-is-4-ways/?amp=true&__twitter_impression=true
BY ROGER MCNAMEE
McNamee has been a Silicon Valley investor for 35 years. His book is Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe.

"Demands from policy makers for change began nearly a decade ago, when the Federal Trade Commission entered into a consent decree with Facebook designed to prevent the platform from sharing user data with third parties without prior consent. As we learned with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook paid lip service to that consent decree, following a pattern of “apologize, promise to do better, return to business as usual” that persists to this day. Other platforms, especially Google and Twitter, have also resisted calls to change business models partly responsible for the amplification of hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories."

"There are at least four areas that need regulation: safety, privacy, competition, and honesty. Only by coordinating action across all four will policy makers have any hope of reducing the harm from internet platforms."

*Read more about these four areas that need regulation at the link

August 8, 2020

DU Poll: Who is causing the most harm to the US right now?

* This is a question posed by Robert Reich

August 8, 2020

What the Hell Is Kanye West's Campaign About?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/what-the-hell-is-kanye-wests-campaign-about.html

"The campaign is not serious, but it’s not a joke, either. It has aspects of both a vanity project and a Republican ratfucking operation, but not fully either. Instead, it is an entirely original creation, previously unknown to science."

"The candidate’s public participation in his own presidential campaign has consisted of one bizarre campaign rally, two interviews with Forbes, and some tweets. Other than that, West has simply signed paperwork and paid for professional signature gatherers to petition him onto the ballot."

"Much of the campaign seems to be linked to a variety of Republican operatives and activists, intent on putting West on the ballot with the belief that he will take African American votes away from Joe Biden."

"Many of Kanye West’s electors — those who would cast electoral votes on his behalf if he wins their state — are also active Republicans. There is polling data on West from May 2018, when he famously met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office wearing a red Make America Great Again hat. Then, only 23 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of him, and 53 percent had an unfavorable opinion. However, among Republicans, West broke even: 35 percent had a favorable opinion of him and 35 percent did not. By contrast, he was deeply unpopular with Democrats, 12 percent of whom had favorable opinion and 67 who did not. And it is unlikely that the events of recent days have improved his standing with Democrats."

August 8, 2020

If looks could kill...

A reporter is booed by the country club crowd for noting that the crowd here was not following New Jersey guidelines. Trump says there are exceptions for "political activity" and "peaceful protest," and this is a protest because attendees "know the news is fake.

After pool reporters tweeted that guests were not adhering to New Jersey COVID-19 regulations, club members were given masks to wear.

This is in blatant violation of New Jersey's COVID-19 reopening protocols, which *require* golf clubs to limit the number of patrons at any indoor premises to 25% capacity and decline entry to anyone refusing to wear a face mask.

Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) Tweeted:
Where is Judge Smails https://twitter.com/KeithOlbermann/status/1291889369742225408?s=20

August 7, 2020

Meet Kanye West's presidential running mate, Michelle Tidball

https://nypost.com/2020/08/06/meet-kanye-wests-presidential-running-mate-michelle-tidball/
*She IS what you'd expect...

"Tidball is a 57-year-old spiritual coach who, like West, lives on a ranch in Cody, Wyoming, and has a deep religious background. Since she was tapped as the billionaire sneaker mogul’s VP pick, multiple pages from Tidball’s website for her nonprofit Bible study program, called Abundant Ministries, have been taken down."

"Those pages included her biography, in which she says she has pursued God since she was 6 months old, when she says she was “slipping away into a crib death” before a higher power visited her “in a hospital tent” and saved her life."

"In a now-deleted Bible teleconference from June 2017, also obtained by the outlet, Tidball suggested that one’s mental illness could be handled by completing domestic chores. “If you would get up every day and make your bed and do your dishes — you would be better,” she said, adding that in her 10 years of working with people with mental illness, none did the dishes or made their beds. In that same teleconference, she said she doesn’t “watch news.”

"Tidball has not publicly discussed having any other careers, though The New Yorker reports that she also works in a dental office."

August 6, 2020

Major U.S. Health Insurers Report Big Profits, Benefiting From the Pandemic

"Consumers are probably entitled to millions of dollars in rebates under Obamacare rules that cap companies’ profits. The companies’ staggering pandemic profits stand in stark contrast to the scores of small medical practices and rural hospitals that are struggling to stay open. And the earnings are putting a spotlight on the big insurance companies at a time when government officials in many states are facing massive budget shortfalls as businesses collapse, unemployment rises and tax revenues plummet. Some states are discussing cutting payments to insurers that offer Medicaid plans to their residents."

"The companies’ staggering pandemic profits stand in stark contrast to the scores of small medical practices and rural hospitals that are struggling to stay open. And the earnings are putting a spotlight on the big insurance companies at a time when government officials in many states are facing massive budget shortfalls as businesses collapse, unemployment rises and tax revenues plummet. Some states are discussing cutting payments to insurers that offer Medicaid plans to their residents."

"Under the federal health care law, insurers are required to use a fixed percentage of the money they take in from premiums for their customers’ medical expenses. The companies must spend at least 80 cents of every dollar they collect in premiums from small businesses and individuals on health care, and 85 cents per dollar for large employers. The remaining 15 to 20 percent is all they are allowed under the Affordable Care Act to spend on administrative costs like overhead and marketing and to keep as profit. Any additional revenues are to be returned to consumers in the form of rebates."

"Insurers are currently spending a far lower portion of premium revenue on their customers’ health care costs. CVS said its medical-benefits ratio was 70 percent for the quarter, compared to 84 percent in the same period of 2019. That translates into millions of dollars that some lawmakers in Congress and advocates say should wind up in the pockets of consumers."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/health/covid-insurance-profits.html#click=https://t.co/Vqegzqh2ok

August 5, 2020

Kanye West, with GOP help, plans to be a spoiler in the election...

"to recap Kanye's ballot efforts...

– WISCONSIN: ballots submitted by *Trump campaign attorney*; electors are GOP activists

– ARKANSAS: point of contact was nearly Trump's campaign manager

– VERMONT: elector is Trump delegate; wife is Trump appointee

Of Kanye West's 18 electors in Ohio, six appear to live at the same address in Cleveland, another 4 appear to be at the same address in Lakewood, Ohio."