;)
The Conversation -- March 14, 2024
Oklahoma. Marie: I have found it impossible to find a straight news story on this: Judd Blevins successfully ran for the Enid, Oklahoma, city council. Blevins was elected in February 2023, even after some local residents -- and later the local newspaper -- outted him as a white nationalist who had participated in the Neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. He was also, from 2017 till at least 2019 an active leader of the alt-right Neo-Nazi group Identity Evropa and a Hitler admirer. After activists obtained the requisite number of signatures, the city council set a recall election in December 2023. The election will be held April 2. Here's the background story by Brandy Zadrozny of NBC News.
Annie Karni of the New York Times: “Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, on Thursday delivered a pointed speech on the Senate floor excoriating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East and calling for new leadership in Israel, five months into the war. Many Democratic lawmakers have condemned Mr. Netanyahu's leadership and his right-wing governing coalition, and President Biden has even criticized the Israeli military's offensive in Gaza as 'over the top.' But Mr. Schumer's speech amounted to the sharpest critique yet from a senior American elected official -- effectively urging Israelis to replace Mr. Netanyahu. 'I believe in his heart, his highest priority is the security of Israel,' said Mr. Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the United States. 'However, I also believe Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.... He has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.'" ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live updates of developments Thursday in the Israel/Hamas war are here: "Israel's military intends to direct a 'significant' portion of Rafah's population of 1.4 million toward 'humanitarian islands' in central Gaza ahead of Israel's planned ground offensive, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said.... The humanitarian zones 'that we will create with the international community' would house the displaced and provide food, water and other necessities, Hagari said at a news briefing Wednesday. The Biden administration announced sanctions on two West Bank settlements Thursday, marking the first time economic restrictions have been placed on entire Israeli outposts in the Palestinian territory. The move coincided with a scathing speech by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) calling for new elections in Israel." ~~~
~~~ The New York Times' live updates for Thursday are here.
Marianna Sotomayor, et al., of the Washington Post: "Pressure is mounting for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to address aiding foreign allies as House Democrats and Republicans tee up opposing measures that would supersede House GOP leadership and trigger votes on bills funding Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and the U.S. border. Democrats and a separate bipartisan group of lawmakers on Tuesday began gathering signatures for competing discharge petitions, a mechanism that moves legislation out of committees and forces a House floor vote without support from leadership if it has the backing of 218 lawmakers. The Democratic measure, led by Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), had amassed nearly 180 signatures from the caucus as of Wednesday evening and would advance a national security package the Senate overwhelmingly approved over a month ago that allots $95.3 billion to assist foreign democracies.... The bipartisan petition extends funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan for one year. But unlike the Democratic petition, it also extends Trump-era border security measures used to mitigate the flow of migrants at the U.S. southern border...." It has received fewer than 15 signatures. ~~~
~~~ Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Republican senators Wednesday to expect the House to send them legislation to help Ukraine, but cautioned that what comes out of the House will look substantially different than the $95 billion foreign aid package the Senate passed last month. Johnson tried to reassure frustrated GOP senators who asked him about funding for Ukraine during a question-and-answer session at the annual Senate Republican retreat, which was held at the Library of Congress." MB: Maybe the most startling part of this story is that Republicans found a library -- with books! (My vague recollection is that there's a tunnel between the Capitol building & the Library of Congress, so maybe the GOP members thought they were "retreating" via a secret tunnel and wouldn't get caught in the vicinity of books.) ~~~
~~~ Mitch Is Not Amused. Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Thursday again pressed Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to take up the Senate-passed national security spending package, which includes $60 billion for Ukraine, despite Johnson's message to GOP senators this week that he's moving in a different direction. McConnell didn't express much interest in waiting weeks or maybe months for the House to come up with an alternative proposal to help Ukraine [which reportedly would be some kind of lend-lease arrangement]. 'I want to encourage the Speaker again to allow a vote, a vote. Let the House speak on the supplemental that we sent over to them several weeks ago,' he said."
Marie: In case you were wondering how a kleptocracy works, the Trumps continue to provide previews. Here's one that involves multiple high-stakes business schemes (one of which led to RICO charges), personal associations, international intrigue, a dirty spy and fake attacks on the political opposition. IOW, it's got everything but sex (as far as we know): ~~~
~~~ ** Jacqueline Sweet of the Guardian: "An American company [-- Economic Transformation Technologies (ETT) --] that paid the now indicted FBI informant Alexander Smirnov in 2020 is connected to a UK company owned by Trump business associates in Dubai, according to business filings and court documents. Smirnov is now accused of lying to the FBI about Hunter Biden and his father, President Joe Biden, alleging that they engaged in a bribery scheme with executives at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Smirnov's accounts to the FBI, beginning in 2020, that federal prosecutors now say are fabrications, served as a major justification of the House impeachment investigation into the Bidens." Sweet elaborates on the complicated business and personal ties to Trump, which go back a decade. Thanks to RAS for the link. ~~~
~~~ AND worth noting: the Trump Congressional Gang, foiled by the DOJ's investigation & indictment of Smirknov, continues on its merry way: ~~~
~~~ Luke Broadwater of the New York Times: "Facing the prospect that they may never be able to impeach President Biden, House Republicans are exploring a pivot to ... issuing criminal referrals against him and those close to him.... The move would be largely symbolic, but it would allow Republicans in Congress to save face while ending their so far struggling impeachment inquiry. It has the added appeal for the G.O.P. of aligning with ... Donald J. Trump's vow to prosecute Mr. Biden if he wins the election.... On Thursday, Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed that Republican leaders were discussing the possibility of criminal referrals."
Then There's This. Aaron Gregg of the Washington Post: "Former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin is putting together a group of investors to buy TikTok, he said Thursday.... Mnuchin was part of a 2020 effort to force a TikTok sale or ban when he led the Treasury Department under ... Donald Trump.... Several other investors have expressed interest in buying TikTok, although it's unclear how advanced those efforts are." A CNBC story is here. MB: It works like this: (1) You use your high-profile government job to try to force the sale of a foreign O&O company to a U.S. company. (2) If you succeed, you buy the company, maybe at a bargain price because it's a forced sale.
Perry Stein of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump is attending a court hearing Thursday where his lawyers are trying to persuade a federal judge to throw out charges against him for allegedly mishandling highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home and private club in Florida. U.S. District Court Judge Aileen M. Cannon is hearing from prosecutors and defense lawyers about Trump's claim that he is protected from prosecution by the Presidential Records Act, and what his legal team says is the unfairly vague language of the federal law on national defense secrets. National security law experts say Trump's arguments about the records act misstate the law.... Jason R. Baron, former director of litigation at the National Archives, called Trump's reading of the PRA 'absurd.'... Legal experts have said multiple federal laws protect national security information -- and whether Trump considers the materials classified or personal property is irrelevant if they contain some of the nation's secrets."
Confused, Elderly Man Still Claiming Clinton Bleached (or Something) Her Emails. Philip Bump of the Washington Post: During an interview with Newsmax this week, "Trump claimed that Hillary Clinton had destroyed some emails with acid -- an assertion that is not only untrue but has also been debunked countless times over the past eight years. 'She used, uh, all sorts of acid testing and everything else. They call it, uh, BleachBit, but it's essentially acid that will destroy everything within 10 miles -- I mean, what she did was unbelievable. Nothing happens to her.'" Originally, Trump claimed Hillary bleached her emails, but that bleach morphed into acid over the years. MB: Now, I guess he's asserting she used an acid bleach. Bleach, as Bump notes, is a base, not an acid. But Trump has a very good brain so he definitely does not need something as lame as grade-school-level sciencey stuff to make his repeated absurd claims.
Ja'han Jones of MSNBC: "In a victory for the extremist wing of the Republican Party, it looks like Donald Trump's hand-picked leadership team at the Republican National Committee has officially scrapped the GOP's plan to encourage early voting this election cycle. Instead, the party is taking steps to prioritize legal challenges to voting systems ahead of November.... The significance, of course, is that Trump has pushed false claims that mail-in voting is rife with voter fraud since 2020, months before he lost the election to Joe Biden. Ever since the election, Trump has continued to spread conspiracy theories that mail-in voter fraud cost him that race."
~~~~~~~~~~
David Lynch & Cleve Wootson of the Washington Post: "President Biden, speaking Wednesday in a community that he cited as a painful example of racist urban policy, highlighted a new economic strategy aimed at revitalizing places that for decades have been cut off from the nation's growing prosperity. Biden spoke at a Boys and Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee in a largely Black and Latino neighborhood where 17,000 homes and 1,000 businesses were destroyed in the 1960s to make way for an interstate highway. The president's trip, which includes a stop in Michigan Thursday, is part of an effort to court minority voters in states that are key to his political future. In conjunction with the Midwestern swing, the White House unveiled $3.3 billion in federal grants to remove or retrofit highways that separate minority neighborhoods in many cities from jobs, entertainment centers, hospitals and other services."
Peter Baker of the New York Times: "He has a large storehouse of stories, this president, and he shared them freely during interviews with prosecutors last fall. Mr. Biden described giving an oration in law school on a case he had not read and lying his way into an exclusive club in Delaware. He recounted his time with President Barack Obama and trying to 'save his ass' from manipulative generals. He boasted of building a solar facility in Angola. What any of that had to do with Mr. Biden's handling of secret papers was not always clear, but transcripts of his five hours with the special counsel Robert K. Hur released this week opened a window into a president not often seen by the public lately. He was funny and folksy, chatty and charming, quick and quirky." ~~~
~~~ Marie: That's exactly what I thought when I read part of the transcript, and Biden's generosity to Hur made me even madder that Hur didn't have the decency to show any respect to the President. But then many Republicans aren't long on traits like common decency. Hur saw his job as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to nail a Democratic president. Bring him up on charges! Failing that, he would have to find another way to disparage Biden. It must have been disconcerting for Hur, then, when he had to sit through a long conversation in which it was obvious who the better person was. ~~~
Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: "Special counsel Robert K. Hur was even more unfair to President Biden than we originally knew.... We now have the transcript of the president's interview with Hur, and ... it turns out that the special counsel mischaracterized and overstated Biden's alleged memory lapses. He consistently adopted an interpretation that is as uncharitable and damaging to Biden as possible. Gratuitous is bad enough. This was gratuitous and misleading."
Sapna Magesgwaru, et al., of the New York Times: "The House on Wednesday passed a bill with broad bipartisan support that would force TikTok's Chinese owner to sell the hugely popular video app or be banned in the United States. The move escalates a showdown between Beijing and Washington over the control of technologies that could affect national security, free speech and the social media industry. Republican leaders fast-tracked the bill through the House with limited debate, and it passed on a lopsided vote of 352-65, reflecting widespread backing for legislation that would take direct aim at China in an election year. The action came despite TikTok's efforts to mobilize its 170 million U.S. users against the measure, and amid the Biden administration's push to persuade lawmakers that Chinese ownership of the platform poses grave national security risks to the United States. The result was a bipartisan coalition behind the measure that included Republicans, who defied ... Donald J. Trump in supporting it, and Democrats, who also fell in line behind a bill that President Biden has said he would sign. The bill faces a difficult road to passage in the Senate...." The AP report is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ David Sanger of the New York Times: "In the four years [the] battle [over TikTok] has gone on, it has become clear that the security threat posed by TikTok has far less to do with who owns it than it does with who writes the code and algorithms that make TikTok tick. Those algorithms ... are the magic sauce of an app that 170 million Americans now have on their phones. That's half the country. But TikTok doesn't own those algorithms; they are developed by engineers who work for its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, which assembles the code in great secrecy in its software labs, in Beijing, Singapore and Mountain View, Calif. But China has issued regulations that appear designed to require government review before any of ByteDance's algorithms could be licensed to outsiders. Few expect those licenses to be issued.... So [a] new, American-based company would have to develop its own, made-in-America algorithm."
Mariana Alfaro of the Washington Post: "Hunter Biden has declined an invitation to testify next week in a public hearing before the House Oversight Committee, according to a letter from Hunter Biden's attorney, Abbe Lowell, sent to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the panel's chairman.... In the letter to [Rep. Jim] Comer, Lowell argued that the younger Biden had answered every question Republicans had for him in the deposition, and he said the public hearing 'is not a serious oversight proceeding.... It is your attempt to resuscitate your Conference's moribund inquiry with a made-for-right-wing-media, circus act.'..."
Marie: I meant to look for this earlier. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) played a short video at Tuesday's Hur hearing, featuring elderly, confused & forgetful Donald Trump:
The Hur Report was revealed today! A disaster for Biden, a two tiered standard of justice. Artificial Intelligence was used by them against me in their videos of me. Can't do that Joe! -- Donald Trump on his social media platform, Tuesday night ~~~
~~~ Steve Benen of MSNBC: Donald Trump "could've simply ignored all of this and hoped that the clips went unnoticed. Instead, he drew fresh attention to the video montage and claimed that Democrats relied on 'artificial intelligence.' By pushing this defense, Trump is simultaneously (a) lying, (b) drawing attention to videos he should hope voters don't see; and (c) implicitly suggesting that the clips are so humiliating that they couldn't possibly be real, except they are, in fact, genuine and unaltered." (Also linked yesterday.)
Kathleen Culliton of the Raw Story: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Tuesday shared with her X followers a photograph of herself smiling directly into the camera next to an announcement for ... '... a hearing on investigating the black market of baby organ harvesting.'... Greene adds, 'Join me and special guests.' The hearing, slated for March 19 at 2 p.m., will include testimony from David Daleiden and Terrisa Bukovinac, according to the announcement.... Daleiden is an anti-abortion activist ordered to pay $2 million in damages to Planned Parenthood over accusations of conspiracy and eavesdropping, according to a Reuters report from October. Bukovinac is an anti-abortion activist who appears in a 2022 feature from New York Magazine about Lauren Handy, a fellow activist who reportedly stored baby fetuses in her refrigerator until they were removed by police." Thanks to RAS for the link. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: This announcement is weird on so many levels. Besides the beaming smile, MTG is wearing a dress that looks like just the thing to flounce around in at a lawn party. The announcement itself looks like a party invitation. And with "special guests"?? Witnesses called to a Congressional hearing on a serious subject are not "guests." They're supposed to be "experts," not that Miss Margie's crackpot "guests" are experts on anything. The whole thing just screams, "Wow, I'm having fun partying in Washington, D.C.! Join me!" It's not exactly breaking news that Miss Georgia Peach 1993 is not a serious member of Congress, but this is an offensive misuse of her office.
Kate Santaliz of NBC News: "Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., has come under fire in recent days over allegations that she misrepresented the story of a sex trafficking victim in the Republican response to the State of the Union last week. An NBC News review of her remarks over the last year shows it's an anecdote she's used often to criticize the Biden administration's border policies, though the victim she references was trafficked through Mexico roughly two decades ago."
Tierney Sneed, et al., of CNN: "The presiding judge in the Georgia criminal case against Donald Trump and his allies has thrown out some of the charges against the former president and several of his co-defendants. The partial dismissal by Georgia Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee leaves most of the sprawling racketeering indictment intact. McAfee ruled that six charges in the 41-count indictment related to Trump and some co-defendants allegedly soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer lacked the required detail about what underlying crime the defendants were soliciting.... 'As written, these six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission, i.e., the underlying felony solicited,' McAfee [wrote]. 'They do not give the Defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently, as the Defendants could have violated the Constitutions and thus the statute in dozens, if not hundreds, of distinct ways.'... The new ruling did not address the ethics allegations brought against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis by the defendants. McAfee has pledged to issue a ruling on that issue by the end of the week." (Also linked yesterday.) Related story linked under "Georgia" below.
Presidential Race
Confused, Elderly Man Still Begs to Debate President Biden. Amelia Neath of the Independent: Donald Trump "called himself 'Honest Don' in a recent Truth Social post in which he called on President Joe Biden to have a 'full-scale debate' with him. 'For the good of our now failing Nation, and in order to inform the American people of what is going on in our Country, we must immediately have a full-scale debate between Crooked Joe and Honest Don. I'm ready to go, ANY TIME, ANY PLACE!' Mr Trump posted on Tuesday.... [An X user [wrote]: 'Trump calling himself Honest Don is like Jeffrey Dahmer calling himself Vegan Jeff.'" Thanks to Akhilleus for the lead. (Also linked yesterday.)
Maya King & Michael Bender of the New York Times: "The Republican National Committee, days after electing new [MB: Trump-aligned] leadership and overhauling its presidential campaign operation, is shuttering all of the community centers it established for minority outreach nationwide and laying off their staffs.... The community centers ... were part of a yearslong effort to encourage Black, Latino, Asian and Native American voters to join the party. Republicans closed several minority outreach centers in battleground states more than a year ago and did not retain their minority media outreach directors.... Republicans have widely promoted the community centers, which were established largely within the racial and ethnic communities they aimed to court." MB: C'mon. These centers were totally superfluous. "The Blacks," et al., already love Trump. Just ask him.
~~~~~~~~~~
Georgia. Jeff Amy of the AP: "Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law Wednesday that lets a state commission begin operating with powers to discipline and remove prosecutors, potentially disrupting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' prosecution of ... Donald Trump.... Though Kemp signed legislation last year creating the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission, it was unable to begin operating after the state Supreme Court in November refused to approve rules governing its conduct. The justices said they had 'grave doubts' about their ability to regulate the duties of district attorneys beyond the practice of law. Tuesday's measure removes the requirement for Supreme Court approval."
News Lede
New York Times: "The third try turned out to be closer to the charm for Elon Musk and SpaceX, as his company's mammoth Starship rocket launched on Thursday and traveled about halfway around the Earth before it was lost as it re-entered the atmosphere. The test flight achieved several key milestones in the development of the vehicle, which could alter the future of space transportation and help NASA return astronauts to the moon." ~~~
~~~ Marie: It really irritates me that we live in a country with a tax structure that allows a private citizen to be rich enough to run his own space program.
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Reader Comments (20)
Closing RNC minority (sorry…hahahaha!) outreach centers?
Well of course! Every penny now goes to paying Fatty’s legal bills, fines, and penalties. Can’t be foolin’ around with darkies and wetbacks. Let them go mooch off the Demycraps.
Can’t imagine what must have been going on at these right-wing KKK “outreach” centers. Classes in steppinfetchit and front porch pickin’ n grinnin’? Critical Race Baiting Theory? Books written by David Duke, like “White Makes Right” and “Voting is Overrated”? Daily showings of “Birth of a Nation” and documentaries like “Pick Our Fruit and Shut Up”?
How salutary.
Sure. Debate. But not an event set up to give The Donaldo a platform to act out.
A television studio, a table with two chairs, but only one candidate seated at a time. The question: Why should I be elected President of the United States of America? Twenty minutes each, then ten minutes each for rebuttal.
No nooze personalities, no studio audience. Video cameras only.
When you think about it, the GQP is not just a party that actively supports treason, they’re also very big on death and disease.
A comedian, Noel Casper, who once worked on the unreality show created for the Fat Fascist by idiot TV executive Jeff Zucker, once wondered why everything the Republican Party stands for involves other people dying.
“Casler may have just been being glib, doing the written equivalent of a standup routine, but his question deserves a serious answer, so let’s look at the evidence.
It’s undeniably true that Republican-controlled ‘Red’ states, almost across the board, have higher rates of:
Spousal abuse
Obesity
Smoking
Teen pregnancy
Sexually transmitted diseases
Abortion
Bankruptcies and poverty
Homicide and suicide
Infant mortality
Maternal mortality
Forcible rape [there’s a kind that’s not forcible?]
Robbery and aggravated assault
Dropouts from high school
Divorce
Contaminated air and water
Opiate addiction and deaths
Unskilled workers
Parasitic infections
Income and wealth inequality
Covid deaths and unvaccinated people
Federal subsidies to states (‘Red State Welfare’)
People on welfare
Child poverty
Homelessness
Spousal murder
Unemployment
Deaths from auto accidents
People living on disability”
And why such a predilection for death and destruction?
The biggest driving forces in the GQP:
Money, racism, and, of course, religion.
“It turns out that… these terrible outcomes are the direct result of policies promoting greed and racism that the GOP has been using for forty+ years to get access to billions of dollars and win elections.”
There’s more…
Correction: the comedian’s name is Casler. Otto liked “Casper” better.
Hunter Biden is scheduled to go on trial June 3 on charges of gun
possession while being a druggie.
Wonder what the Second Amendment says about the combination of
guns and drugs. Probably nothing.
Is this just a distraction from Trump's 81 indictments? Nah, Republicans would never do that.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-trial-felony-gun-charges-june-3/
Otis C.,
Very nice idea. That’s what these exercises boil down to anyway. The problem is that it doesn’t matter what kind of rules you come up with. The Orange Monster won’t abide by a single one. Not just to show the MAGAts that he’s a tough, manly man who doesn’t just go along, but because he’s a petulant child who can’t control himself.
He didn’t deign to take part in any primary debates, but he had nothing to gain either, and far be it from Fatty to participate in any forum that provides a platform for any he considers an enemy. He might want to “debate” Biden if he thinks he can turn it into the Trump Show, but no one will learn anything they don’t already know.
One candidate is serious and honest, believes in democracy, rule of law, the Constitution, and the United States.
The other doesn’t. It’s really that simple.
The battle over Tik Tok points up a salient concern for Republicans.
My sense is, were this a company with connections to Russia, or Hungary, let’s say, everything would be peachy. The security concerns would be no less serious, but the ethnicity would make a difference. See, Tik Tok’s Chinese roots make it far less acceptable to PoT racists. They’d be okay with a company connected to white, Christian authoritarians, just not oriental, atheistic authoritarians.
Just my opinion.
(If you think this is far fetched, just recall the experiment Jimmy Kimmel did a few weeks ago in which Trump MAGAts were asked what they thought about something. If they thought Trump had done it, it was perfectly fine. If they thought it was Biden: terrible, horrible, illegal!)
Donar money
Seth Meyers on Hur and Trump.
"Trump launched CIA covert influence operation against China
Two years into office, President Donald Trump authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to launch a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media aimed at turning public opinion in China against its government, according to former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the highly classified operation.
Three former officials told Reuters that the CIA created a small team of operatives who used bogus internet identities to spread negative narratives about Xi Jinping’s government while leaking disparaging intelligence to overseas news outlets. The effort, which began in 2019, has not been previously reported."
Coincidences
"US firm that paid indicted FBI informant tied to Trump associates, records reveal
Alexander Smirnov was paid $600,000 in 2020 – the same year he allegedly began lying to FBI about Bidens’ role in Ukraine business
An American company that paid the now indicted FBI informant Alexander Smirnov in 2020 is connected to a UK company owned by Trump business associates in Dubai, according to business filings and court documents."
In light of the “gratuitous AND misleading” report filed by Trump pal Robert Hur to screw Joe Biden, can we have another round of applause for Merrick fucking Garland. Good job, Gar.
Otis,
I picture the set of "The $64,000 Question," at least as it was portrayed in the movie. Two booths, each of which contains a light and a microphone that are shut off during the other candidate's time to speak. It's likely that DJT would be moving and gesticulating and possibly even shouting, but because it would be totally mute the pantomime might actually be amusing.
@RAS: According to Ja'han Jones of MSNBC (story just linked above), we can add another bucket to the "multiple campaigns" Lara Trump is inviting us to donate to: "Campaign to Sue Elections Officials."
@Akhilleus: Quite right re: Merrick. It appears one way the kleptocracy works is to manipulate ostensible outsiders into cooperating with them. So Republicans appoint Republicans to investigate possible malfeasance and Democrats appoint Republicans to investigate.
For the most part, Democratic presidents seem to think only Republicans have sufficient tough-guy creds to fulfill law enforcement and defense responsibilities. So Republican Defense Secretaries Bob Gates & Chuck Hagel, FBI Directors Bob Mueller, Jim Comey & Chris Wray -- all appointed or retained by Obama or Biden.
Persuading Merrick the Unready to appoint Hur -- a fairly notorious partisan Republican -- as special counsel to investigate, then smear, President Biden, was a snap.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden made millions in Ukrainian kickbacks and bribes. Oh, and Hillary bleached/acid-washed (take your pick) her emails.
I learned today that TikTok does not own the algorithms it uses to do the things that makes it so useful to its users. Either ByteDance or other entities associated with ByteDance (i.e., operations physically in the PRC or owned by PRC entities) license these algorithms for TikTok to use. And the licenses are time-limited, not open ended.
So ... if you buy TikTok but can't get those licensed algorithms, you own a product that doesn't do what you want. And, if ByteDance uses those algorithms to start up another company (koTkiT?). that new company would automatically be available to departing TT users.
Why would anyone want to buy such a thing?
Those bad pennies keep turning up.
Steve fucking Mnuchin. You guys no doubt recall the photo, widely distributed (see the link), and even more widely mocked, of Money Man Steve and his horror movie actress wife (who played a role in ANOTHER horror movie, the Trump Administration…can’t make this shit up) posing like a couple of self satisfied, avaricious Bond villains, holding a ream of dollar bills, hot off the presses, as it were. Money, money, money. Bwah-ha-ha!
As part of the Trump Crime Family back then, Steve was tasked with clobbering Tik Tok (until Donald realized he could pad his pockets by reversing his position on banning the app). Now, smelling blood in the water, here he comes ready to gobble it up should Congress make it China non grata.
Mayhaps another Bond villain photo op in the near future? This time the wife can come as Cruella DeVille. Steve is fine as Gordon Gecko.
The bad pennies keep on comin’. And they ain’t comin’ from heaven.
@Patrick: What you write about the algorithm ownership and licensing agreement requirement re: TikTok is true.
But it seems to me the TikTok brand still has value, just as any brand-name has value (and why brand and trademark owners go running to court when some other entity even appears to be copying them -- like when Walgreen's drugstores sued Wegman's grocery stores because the "W" in Wegman's looked similar to the "W" in the Walgreen's logo).
If we assume that the TikTok algorithm is so unusual that another group of programmers could never reproduce, closely emulate or improve upon it, then I agree that TikTok would tumble in value. But I'm not sure how tough it would be for programmers to figure out the TikTok algorithm. Sure, reprogramming TikTok, more or less from scratch, I guess, would be a big expense that would have to figure into the value of the company, but all software companies have programmers on their payrolls, and all social media companies have programmers who work on developing and improving algorithms that attempt to give users the exposure and access they want and the company owners the revenues they want.
It all comes down to the "If ... Then"s and, ultimately, to the bytes and bits.
Marie,
Yeah. It’s not rocket science. (Not even sure if rocket science is rocket science anymore, except that the World’s Smartest,Richest Man —according to him—still has his space ships blowing up).
But at this point, the sort of algorithmic jiu-jitsu employed by social media companies to keep users coming back for more of the same is not a black box secret. Just think of all the senior programmers fired by Musk. These people would happily sign on to duplicate Tik Tok’s secret sauce, and wealthy investors like Mnuchin, et al, would have no problem forking over the dough necessary to turn their investment into a way to ensure them billions, fuck democracy, spread disinformation, and guarantee them control of a platform that could pump up charlatan pols who could help them out in so many other ways.
It’s just a matter of time. Tick tock, tick tock.
What assurances are there that the next Tiktok owner, especially someone like Mnuchin, wouldn't just reup the deal with China? They'd probably do it at least short term while they figure out how to change to a new algorithm. If that were the case it would still have the same vulnerabilities for a while and they could kick the can down the road until enough people in Congress could be bought off or afraid to try to take it down again.