Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Thursday, December 5, 2024

News bits

 It's all pretty bad now. Not much positive to note in most news. Science and tech still report out some promising stuff, but the rest is mostly hellscape.

Moral rot and corruption in the USSC gets institutionalized:
A few Supreme Court justices went out of their way to fight back against enforcing the court’s new ethics rules, The New York Times reported Tuesday—and it’s not that surprising.

In a series of secret offline memos and meetings, the justices toiled away over how they would formulate their code of ethics, and—crucially—whether it could actually be enforced.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson all supported enforcement rules for the court’s code of ethics. Kagan even pitched a panel of “safe harbor” judges that justices could go to about ethics concerns. Her proposal failed to gain wider support.

Meanwhile, Justice Neil Gorsuch railed against enforcement of the ethics code, essentially arguing that not abusing his seat of power should be voluntary. One of his memos raising concerns over enforcement stretched to more than 10 pages, according to the Times.

Gorsuch warned that ethics enforcement would threaten the court’s independence, and Justice Samuel Alito echoed his concerns, the Times reported. Justice Clarence Thomas, who has failed to report that he accepted exorbitant gifts and trips from conservative megadonors such as Harlan Crow, argued that the court’s critics could not be appeased.

Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito compromised and agreed to some enforcement mechanisms—but only ones that couldn’t reasonably be enforced. Ultimately, the court decided to place no real restrictions on accepting gifts, travel, or real estate.
There we have it ethics and rule of law fans, moral rot and corruption of the USSC is legal. The argument that ethics burdens or even threatens the court is self-serving nonsense. Their arrogance and contempt for ethics and the rule of law is beyond stunning. At present, there are 11 people about 99.8% above the law, the nine USSC judges, president Bident and president-elect DJT. 
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Tariffs update: President-elect DJT announced 100% tariffs on countries that move to replace the US dollar on Saturday. In a Truth Social post, Trump took aim at “BRICS Countries” — meaning Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates — over longstanding efforts to do away with the US dollar currency. Trump demanded a “commitment” from these countries that they will “neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar.”

Ah, the distinct smell of nuanced, light touch diplomacy.
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Nervousness about democracy -- an opinion: As the drama played out in South Korea, my phone lit up with a question from friends and media colleagues — including from some of the most sober-minded people I know. Can this happen here? Can an American president — or any other American leader — create a similar political emergency? The short answer is no. The longer answer is yes — if a president (or a governor) exploits ambiguities in American law. .... there is a statutory basis for military intervention in domestic affairs, and the statute — called the Insurrection Act — is so poorly drafted that I have come to call it America’s most dangerous law. The Insurrection Act is almost as old as the United States itself. The law dates to 1792, and it permits the president to deploy American troops on American streets to impose order and maintain government control.

Remember, DJT wanted to call out the troops and shoot protesters. There is no evidence I am aware of that he feels differently today. But I am aware of some reporting that says DJT is chomping at the bit to us the US military to obliterate protesters in the US. Hegseth, a former Fox News host and combat veteran is more concerned about domestic enemies than foreign ones, and he is willing to break rules to defeat them — even the rules his potential job requires him to uphold. Throughout this latest presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly warned Americans about “the enemy within,” an amorphous collection of left-wing ideologues whom he said pose a greater danger to the country than Russia or China. Sometimes he spoke broadly of “radical left lunatics” and “very smart, very vicious people.”

America today is in a cold civil war,” Hegseth asserts in the book, which was published in June. “Our soul is under attack by a confederacy of radicals.” While his generation was fighting wars abroad, Hegseth writes, “we allowed America’s domestic enemies at home to gobble up cultural, political and spiritual territory.”

What? Me worry?? Nah, it's all good. But I do agree that we are in a cold civil war. Unfortunately we're losing.

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Tax policy for the wealthy: How One of the World’s Richest Men Is Avoiding $8 Billion in Taxes -- 
The chief executive of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, has taken advantage of popular loopholes in the federal estate and gift taxes, which have quietly been eviscerated. 
Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, is the 10th-richest person in the United States, worth $127 billion. In theory, when he dies, his estate should pay 40 percent of his net worth to the government in taxes.

But Mr. Huang, 61, is not only an engineering genius and Silicon Valley icon whose company, the world’s second-most valuable, makes the chips that power much artificial intelligence. He is also the beneficiary of a series of tax dodges that will enable him to pass on much of his fortune tax free, according to securities and tax filings reviewed by The New York Times.  
Revenue from the tax has barely changed since 2000, even as the wealth of the richest Americans has roughly quadrupled. If the estate tax had simply kept pace, it would have raised around $120 billion last year. Instead it brought in about a quarter of that.
Tax avoidance is using legal ways to reduce taxes. Tax evasion is illegal withholding of taxes that are owed. Officially, current tax evasion amounts to about $495 billion/year. My estimate is that it amounts to at least about $1 trillion/year. 

However, with new ways to use new tax avoidance laws, wealthy people don't need to resort to tax evasion and the embarrassment and inconvenience of felony convictions. That is what our failed two-party, pay-to-play tax system has done for the rich and powerful. Well, since they bought and paid to legalize tax evasion, why not use tax avoidance to steer clear of the law? Inconvenient felony convictions for tax evasion will soon be a bad memory of the past, just like that brief spasm of effort to get our morally rotted, failed USSC to operate honestly and ethically.
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I deleted my Bluesky account. The interest there was zero. But, it was an informative experiment in social media. I learned that social media like that is not suitable for serious politics. 

Trump is gonna spank Canada.........

 Want to know how to accomplish stuff? Bully your neighbors. Works perfectly for Trump:

Canada will deploy helicopters, drones to border after Trump tariff threat

Canada will deploy helicopters, drones and additional personnel to its border with the U.S. to enhance immigration security, a Canadian official announced Monday, Dec. 2. The move comes after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with President-elect Donald Trump, who threatened to impose high tariffs unless Canada took stronger action to secure the border.

Mind you, rather than tariffs, it might just be easier to annex Canada.........

Canada as the 51st state? Apparently, that’s what U.S. president-elect Donald Trump suggested at his impromptu dinner with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago last Friday.

When Trudeau said Canada couldn’t stomach 25 per cent tariffs, Trump mused about annexation and suggested that while prime minister is a better title, Trudeau could be governor of this 51st state. Sources told Fox News that another guest then suggested that Canada would be a very liberal state, whereupon Trump offered that Canada could be split into a conservative and a liberal state.

According to those present, this exchange produced a lot of laughter, though that of the Canadians was described as nervous. No wonder: while the scenario may seem implausible, with Trump back in the White House, anything is possible.   😳


Gotta admit, quite a contrast from Sleep Joe, when Trump says jump, Canadians ask "how high?"

Wednesday, December 4, 2024

News bits

The website Fight Health Insurance allows people who have had insurance claims rejected to use their AI to help them write an appeal against the denial. AI scans the paperwork and helps draft an appeal. To discourage people from even trying to appeal, insurance companies make the process unnecessarily complicated and hard.


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An article posted by FAIR, DC Station Rewrites Gas Exposé After a Word From Its Sponsor, describes how a gas utility company squelched reporting by WUSA in Wash. DC. The reporting was about the effects of gas burning stoves on air polluted with nitrogen dioxide from gas burning in homes. 
For the grassroots group, called the Beyond Gas Coalition, the most pressing message to get to families was how to lessen their exposure to NO2 by keeping windows open during and even after cooking with gas stoves.

WUSA, in fact, produced no less than three stories on the day of the report’s release (Heated, 11/27/24). Unfortunately, WUSA’s stories were quickly followed by an about-face.

WUSA’s trio of pieces began running on the morning of November 21, but by that evening, two of the three links to its stories were broken.

When [Beyond Gas] called up WUSA to inquire, they say the message they received from the producer who worked on the story was that the station made the decision at the behest of the utility company, choosing to pull the story down and hide the video from its YouTube channel until it could include a statement from Washington Gas.

Of course, Washington Gas was under no obligation to ever give a statement.

“[WUSA] essentially told Washington Gas, ‘We’ll kill the story, and let you decide when and whether we republish it,’” Mark Rodeffer, a member of Sierra Club’s DC chapter, told Heated‘s Emily Atkin. “It’s shocking to me that they’re letting one of their advertisers dictate stories.”
It is shocking that anyone nowadays is shocked that advertisers influence news reporting. 
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Trade restrictions are having an impact. China has banned exports to US of gallium, germanium, antimony in response to chip sanctions:
China announced Tuesday it is banning exports to the United States of gallium, germanium, antimony and other key high-tech materials with potential military applications, as a general principle, lashing back at U.S. limits on semiconductor-related exports.

The Chinese Commerce Ministry announced the move after the Washington expanded its list of Chinese companies subject to export controls on computer chip-making equipment, software and high-bandwidth memory chips. Such chips are needed for advanced applications.

The ratcheting up of trade restrictions comes as President-elect Donald Trump has been threatening to sharply raise tariffs on imports from China and other countries, potentially intensifying simmering tensions over trade and technology.

China’s Foreign Ministry also issued a vehement reproof.

“China has lodged stern protests with the U.S. for its update of the semiconductor export control measures, sanctions against Chinese companies, and malicious suppression of China’s technological progress,” Lin Jian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said in a routine briefing Tuesday.
That doesn't sound good. Those minerals are necessary for electronics. 
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U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack -- FBI and CISA officials said it was impossible to predict when the telecommunications companies would be fully safe from interlopers. Amid an unprecedented cyberattack on telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon, U.S. officials have recommended that Americans use encrypted messaging apps to ensure their communications stay hidden from foreign hackers. The hacking campaign, nicknamed Salt Typhoon by Microsoft, is one of the largest intelligence compromises in U.S. history, and it has not yet been fully remediated. .... The scope of the telecom compromise is so significant, Greene said, that it was “impossible” for the agencies “to predict a time frame on when we’ll have full eviction.”

That "salty hurricane" mega-hack sounds like a real whopper. Fortunately, my e-communications aren't worth hacking. I'm a very low value target, worth about the value of a medium sized turnip.  Ew, “full eviction” sounds nasty.


Walmart Buys Vizio to Use Its TVs as a New Way to Blast You With Ads -- Walmart paid $2.3 billion for Vizio with its SmartCast OS along with the 19 million accounts it can advertise to.

Getting blasted with ads sounds like lots 'o fun!


State board approves Bible-infused curriculum -- A majority of the Texas State Board of Education gave final approval Nov. 22 to a state-authored curriculum under intense scrutiny in recent months for its heavy inclusion of biblical teachings. Eight of the 15 board members voted to approve Bluebonnet Learning, the elementary school curriculum proposed by the Texas Education Agency earlier this year. The curriculum will become available in the spring, with schools that choose to adopt the materials expected to begin using them at the start of the 2025-26 school year. .... Members also said politics in no way influenced their vote and that they supported the materials because they believed it would best serve Texas children.

In the past, stunts like this would get shot down by the USSC. But with an aggressive Christian nationalist goal of de-secularizing public schools and a radical Christian nationalist supreme court, all bets are off. We can expect a USSC decision on this possibly in May or June of 2026 unless lower courts drag it out until the USSC's term starting in Oct. 2027.


Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Privacy update

This post is gonna be real ugly, sorry. Corporations routinely tell us how very seriously they take our privacy and security. Reality doesn't match the rhetoric.

In my opinion, greed is the biggest


Nearly unlimited highly personal info is available for anyone willing to pay. AI provides many ways to turn that into illicit profit or undermine national security.

Hackers are using artificial intelligence to mine unprecedented troves of personal information dumped online in the past year, along with unregulated commercial databases, to trick American consumers and even sophisticated professionals into giving up control of bank and corporate accounts.

Armed with sensitive health information, calling records and hundreds of millions of Social Security numbers, criminals and operatives of countries hostile to the United States are crafting emails, voice calls and texts that purport to come from government officials, co-workers or relatives needing help, or familiar financial organizations trying to protect accounts instead of draining them.

The losses reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center nearly tripled from 2020 to 2023, to $12.5 billion, and a number of sensitive breaches this year have only increased internet insecurity. The recently discovered Chinese government hacks of U.S. telecommunications companies AT&T, Verizon and others, for instance, were deemed so serious that government officials are being told not to discuss sensitive matters on the phone, some of those officials said in interviews. A Russian ransomware gang’s breach of Change Healthcare in February captured data on millions of Americans’ medical conditions and treatments, and in August, a small data broker, National Public Data, acknowledged that it had lost control of hundreds of millions of Social Security numbers and addresses now being sold by hackers.
With no federal privacy legislation to stem the flood, national security experts fear that foreign spy agencies will keep vacuuming up everything they need to hack, recruit or blackmail officials with sensitive missions, debts and embarrassing personal secrets. “Six or seven years ago, people said there was too much data; adversaries don’t know what to do with it,” CFPB Senior Counsel Kiren Gopal told The Washington Post. “Now they have AI tools to sift through for things that are actually useful.”  
Even if all that and more comes to pass — and Trump adviser Elon Musk’s threat to wipe out the CFPB remains unfulfilled — so much data is now available about so many people that any government action is likely to have limited effect.
That speaks for itself and the standard corporate spew, “don’t worry, we take your privacy seriously.” What a farce.

And this from an article, The 7 Biggest Business Lies Ever Told:
1. Equifax data breach

Equifax is one of the three major credit bureaus in the U.S., and in 2017, it was involved in a data breach that affected 143 million consumers. Hackers were able to access personal information like credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, home addresses and even driver’s licenses. The breach happened because the company failed to implement basic security measures.

The breach itself was bad enough, but the company deliberately misled customers and withheld information. It also later came out that additional data breaches occurred, but customers weren’t informed. As a result, Equifax had to pay a minimum of $575 million as a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and 50 states and territories. CEO Richard Smith was ousted three weeks after the data breach was revealed.

The takeaway: Don’t compromise on cybersecurity, especially if your business houses sensitive customer data. If your company does experience a breach, own up to your part in it and be forthcoming about what went wrong. Lying and trying to cover up the problem will only make it worse.
Now who is it saying that we need to deregulated businesses so they can solve problems and spread prosperity, peace and happiness on the land? . . . . . Oh yeah, Project 2025, DJT, MAGA and the GOP.