Today’s podcast is Betty Cracker and mistermix discussing Florida politics, chickens, dogs and guns.
Balloon Juice Podcast Episode 2 – Betty Cracker Comes to TownPost + Comments (59)
by $8 blue check mistermix| 59 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Today’s podcast is Betty Cracker and mistermix discussing Florida politics, chickens, dogs and guns.
Balloon Juice Podcast Episode 2 – Betty Cracker Comes to TownPost + Comments (59)
by Adam L Silverman| 318 Comments
This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election 2018, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, Popular Culture, Post-racial America, Silverman on Security, Not Normal
Wow. Britain's Information Officer announces she is seeking a warranting to raid Cambridge Analytica and seize servers
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) March 19, 2018
Facebook has been "co-operative" with ICO says Elizabeth Denham. Cambridge Analytica on the other hand has required them to seek to use their statutory powers to compel evidence….
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) March 19, 2018
Here’s the Channel 4 expose of Cambridge Analytica:
Senior executives at Cambridge Analytica – the data company that credits itself with Donald Trump’s presidential victory – have been secretly filmed saying they could entrap politicians in compromising situations with bribes and Ukrainian sex workers.
In an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News, the company’s chief executive Alexander Nix said the British firm secretly campaigns in elections across the world. This includes operating through a web of shadowy front companies, or by using sub-contractors.
In one exchange, when asked about digging up material on political opponents, Mr Nix said they could “send some girls around to the candidate’s house”, adding that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well”.
In another he said: “We’ll offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land for instance, we’ll have the whole thing recorded, we’ll blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the Internet.”
Offering bribes to public officials is an offence under both the UK Bribery Act and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Cambridge Analytica operates in the UK and is registered in the United States.
The admissions were filmed at a series of meetings at London hotels over four months, between November 2017 and January 2018. An undercover reporter for Channel 4 News posed as a fixer for a wealthy client hoping to get candidates elected in Sri Lanka.
Here’s the actual video:
What Nix and Turnbull are caught describing as their standard operating practice is separate from whatever program Christopher Wylie built for Cambridge Analytica. Rather, they’re describing a hybrid of privatized human intelligence and what are sometimes referred to as black psychological operations (black PSYOP), which is a misuse of the term. Initially black PSYOP was used as short hand for the highly compartmented covert form of PSYOP necessary to support special operations. This is not surprising as Cambridge Analytica is subsidiary business development unit of SCL Group, which claims to provide these services to the British Ministry of Defense and the US DOD. Several boutique companies were created to do this type of work in support of coalition operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and people eventually left these companies and started their own boutique shops. All they’re really doing is creating propaganda and then trying to insert it into the news and social media space without it seeming to come from non-natives.
I’ve had dealings with some of these folks and to be perfectly honest I find them to be largely full of crap about what they actually can and cannot do. Usually they have a very limited understanding of both socio-cultural considerations in general and the specific socio-cultural dynamics of the people they’re trying to influence in specific. One of the most obnoxious of them, another Brit, has only the bare minimum idea of what this work, especially the descriptive statistical analyses, actually entail. But he’s memorized a bunch of jargon, talks a good game, sounds posh, and gets contracts. He gets away with this because there are really no institutionalized quality assurance/quality control programs in place to ascertain if this stuff actually is helpful, let alone if it works, and whether it actually is useful to the uniformed and civilian personnel at the pointy end. And because there are too few folks like me who actually know better, so it is hard to preemptively block these folks before they make there clients dumber and put people’s lives at risk.
Updated at 5:10 PM EDT:
Breaking: Channel 4 just announced they’re airing another undercover film tomorrow where Cambridge Analytica say they won the election for Donald Trump and describe how. This is a car crash airing live on TV. Journalism matters.
— Kevin Beaumont, Esquire (@GossiTheDog) March 19, 2018
Updated at 5:22 PM EDT:
The ICO is trying to get a warrant tonight to go in tonight. BUT no judge available…
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) March 19, 2018
And this is a very good question:
What is Facebook doing at Cambridge Analytica's offices tonight??? Good question from MP @DamianCollins. This should be a matter for the authorities, he says. Exactly. Also #WheresZuck?
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) March 19, 2018
Delete your Facebook page!
Don’t take any online surveys!
Stay frosty!
Open thread.
Breaking: Britain’s Information Officer Moves Against Cambridge AnalyticaPost + Comments (318)
This post is in: Immigration, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs, Assholes, General Stupidity
I hear Trump is snuffling publicly about the opioid crisis today. “Something-something let’s execute drug dealers like my state visit invitee Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who also hates Obama, and let’s put a pharma exec in charge of the new war on drugs because MAGA.” Or some such shit. In other news, there might be a DACA fix in the works:
NBC News confirms the WH reached out to Dems ystdy offering immigration deal to fund the border wall w/ $25b over three years with a 2.5 year DACA patch. Ds pushes backed asking for pathway to citizenship for all 1.8 million Dreamers who are eligible under DACA
— Alex Moe (@AlexNBCNews) March 19, 2018
It’ll likely come to naught, but perhaps it’s a promising sign that a) the White House is making proposals even though Trump has been meeping about the Democrats not crawling to him for a deal for a month or so, and b) if the above is an accurate description of the proposed deal, it doesn’t include any renewed attacks on LEGAL immigration.
We’ll see what happens. Open thread!
PS: The stock market is tanking for some reason, but not as badly as it tanked that last time.
This post is in: Meetups and social events, Readership Capture
Commentor Dog Mom, following up on Friday’s meet-up post:
In regards to Western NY meet ups, the suggestions are:
Rochester – Tap and Mallet (South Wedge) – Wednesday, March 28 – 5:30
Buffalo – Founding Fathers – Wednesday, April 4 – 5:30
Barring crazy weather or crazy life, I plan to go to both. Don’t feel limited by geography if you are able to make one or the other or even both.
It would be good to have a count of folks, so that we have an idea who to look for. I will confirm we are coming with the Pubs prior to those dates.
As always, lurkers, friends & significant or insignificant others welcome. Leave a comment below if you’re interested in one or both, or contact me — annelaurie (dot) bj (at) gmail (dot) com — and I’ll forward your message to Dog Mom. (Who promises to bring a green balloon.)
Western NY Meet-Ups — Rochester *and* BuffaloPost + Comments (15)
by David Anderson| 10 Comments
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance
Senators Alexander and Collins as well as Reps Walden and Costello (all Republicans) released their ACA stabilization bill. This will be an ongoing first read:
The naming convention starts at Title 6.
Section 601 is a naming section.
Section 602 is a revision of the Section 1332 waivers.
So far this looks to be a close textual grab from Alexander-Murray. The governor shall have the power to apply for a 1332 waiver without needing state legislature buy-in. The state legislature can block the governor but does not need to pass a law to pursue a 1332 as the current system is set up.
Section 602-2-A-bb solves the Minnesota Basic Health Plan 1332 problem. As a reminder when Minnesota applied for reinsurance, the lower index premium whacked the funding for their Basic Health Plan (Section 1331).
Section 602-2-(4) is a reinsurance or high risk pool program run through the 1332 process.
There is serious money involved. $5 billion for Fiscal Year 18, and then $10 billion per year for FY-19,20, and 21.
That should be enough to knock down premiums by roughly 10% against the current counter-factual. I am slightly confused as to why there is FY18 reinsurance money as by the time the program is set up and the first application is in the door there might only by four months of FY-18 left and premiums won’t change. This is just odd to me, as if they are willing to drop $35 billion on reinsurance between now and 9/30/21 I would have expected the money to flow when it could influence future premiums.
Section 602-3 is a rewrite of the 1332 guidelines that would allow the Iowa Stopgap Plan’s final revision to be allowed. This is pretty close to the language that was agreed upon last September.
There is a big little change. The budget neutrality provision would now be a 10 year window instead of a year by year budget neutrality requirement. If a state thinks that it can bend the cost curve with an upfront investment, it can now use federal funds via a 1332 to do so. This is a good idea. Another change from Alexander Murray’s language from September. 1332 waivers are to be approved in 120 days instead of 180. A-M had a 90 day timeline. The actuaries will thank Congress for that month.
Waivers are to be good for no more than 6 years (same as A-M). Language change from A-M, the Sec. of HHS may pull a waiver if a state materially fails to comply with the waiver. If waiver funds are spent on hookers and blow, the waiver can be cancelled.
UPDATE Hyde language is in 602-C and 602-D.
Part G is the invisible risk sharing segment. It can either be through insurers ceding premiums and risk or through reinsurance. This makes sense to me.
Now here is the big deal.
The Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) would be funded from October 1, 2017 to September 30 December 31, 2021. Any insurer that Silver loaded in 2018 won’t get 2018 CSR payments. This is going to be the major fight as the reinsurance funds put $35 billion into the ACA and this change will pull out at least as much money.
Section 603 is opening up Catastrophic plans while renaming them Copper plans. The intent is to offer lower cost plans to more people. Catastrophic plans have a premium advantage over actuarially value similar Bronze plans because current Catastrophic plans are risk-adjusted only against other Catastrophic plans in a state while Bronze plans are part of the Metal risk adjustment pool. Sec. 603 modifies Sec 1312 which implies that the new Copper plans are to be part of the Metal risk adjustment process which to me says most of the pricing advantage of the current catastrophic plans disappears.
Section 604 explicitly calls for $105 million in outreach spending of which some may be contracted back out to the states. More reporting is also called for.
Section 605: Congress tells CMS to get their ass in gear and issue the regulations needed to operationalize Section 1333 the interstate compacts that could allow for sales across state lines.
Section 606: Consumer warning that Short Term Plans are very lightly regulated.
Update 2 Seems that 606 greatly restricts states ability to regulate short term plans.
Okay, everything but the Hyde Language AND CSR fundingfor 2019-2021 and Short Term plan limits should easily pass. Funding CSR in 2019-2021 pulls a lot of money out of the ACA individual market. That is going to be the fight.
/fin
This post is in: Excellent Links, Hail to the Hairpiece, Republicans in Disarray!, Decline and Fall
I just don't think if you work for a POTUS who has trouble condemning Nazis, loves ripping apart families and has no problem taking away healthcare you get to play the "I had affection for the man and I didn't tune in to the policies" card. https://t.co/Y5Troe0EFP
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 19, 2018
Trump’s White House assistants are progressing to the “working on their best wide-eyed innocence” stage of self-defence. Perhaps because professional character assassin Olivia Nuzzi was the first reporter to notice the importance of Hicks to the inner circle, hers is the Big Get, for NYMag:
On the morning of Wednesday, February 28, Hope Hicks arrived at the White House just after 8 a.m. Within a week, it would be snowing in Washington, D.C., but she was dressed for spring in a bouquet of purple, yellow, and blue, as if willing the end of winter with her miniskirt. She held on to her iPhone in the West Wing, in violation of a rule that normally diverted it to a locker secured by a shiny silver key, then retreated to her office, a first-floor broom closet that in the past had been assigned to presidential secretaries.
When the administration began 13 months before, competition among some staffers had manifested as a struggle for real estate here; Omarosa Manigault, a perennial reality-TV contestant, had gone so far as to steal a room that had been designated for Anthony Scaramucci, “the Mooch,” a hedge-fund millionaire obsessed with astrology and the word fuck, because of its status-confirming glimpse of the Washington Monument. Both of them were eventually fired, along with a procession of others who failed to maneuver the chaotic status hierarchy President Trump seemed to cultivate out of boredom.
A view of duck-tour buses circling the mall wasn’t needed for Hicks to know her standing. What her office lacked in flair it made up for in proximity. While others were left wondering what the president was thinking, Hicks could often hear him shouting, even with her door closed. “Hope!” he’d scream. “Hopey!” “Hopester!” “Get in here!”
Many requests were mundane. “He doesn’t write anything down,” one source close to the White House told me. “He doesn’t type, he dictates. ‘Take this down, take this down: Trump: richest man on Earth.’” A second source who meets regularly with the president told me that Hicks acted almost as an embodiment of the faculties the Trump lacked — like memory. “He’ll be talking, and then right in the middle he’ll be like, ‘Hope, what was that … thing?’ ” When the name of a senator or congressman or journalist came up, Trump would prompt Hicks to provide a history of their interactions, asking, “Do we like him?” “And she fucking remembers!” (Trump has said his own memory is “one of the greatest memories of all time.”) “She’s the only person he trusts,” the second source continued. “He doesn’t trust any men and never has. He doesn’t like men, you see. He has no male friends. I was just with one of them the other day, someone who’s described as one of his closest friends, and he doesn’t know him very well. But a small number of women, including his longtime assistant back in New York, he really listens to them — especially if he’s not banging them. Because, like a lot of men but more so, Trump really does compartmentalize the sex and the emotional part.”…
Hicks took out one of her notebooks, black leather with the Trump name embossed in gold on the front. She’d prayed a lot over the weekend, and also written two lists in the same bubbly print that had recently been photographed on a note card in Trump’s hand, reminding him to tell survivors of a school shooting, among other things, “I hear you.” One list contained reasons to resign as White House communications director immediately; the other, reasons to wait to resign. Not resigning at all wasn’t a consideration.
She’d come close twice before. Over dinner in Bedminster in early August, she told Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump that she was unhappy. She’d thought that being in the White House would feel different than the campaign, but instead, surrounded by eccentrics, maniacs, divas, and guys from the Republican National Committee who seemed to think they were managing a Best Buy in Kenosha, it was somehow sicker there in the stillness of it all. She suggested removing herself from the belly of the psychodrama to work elsewhere in the administration. Sharing her frustrations, Jared and Ivanka engaged her idea with caution; they asked her to give General John Kelly, the new chief of staff, a chance to change the West Wing for the better.
But as time went on, it became clear that the sickness was a feature, that anyone who entered the building became a little sick themselves. And no matter how dead any of the eccentrics or maniacs or divas appeared to be, how far away from the president their status as fired or resigned or never-hired-in-the-first-place should have logically rendered them, nobody was ever truly gone. The people who were problems on the campaign or on the inside continued to be problems. The president’s taste for the other and the new was so established that the most driven among them knew that all they had to do was wait for an opening, or shrewdly create one — a weakened staffer, a particularly demoralizing news cycle — and they could worm their way back in. The madness engulfing the White House, in other words, was not just a matter of staff infighting or factional ideological rivalries, as it was often portrayed in the press, but also, in part, the result of manipulation from the fringes of Trumpworld…
Longish piece, but rich, in a not-particularly-good-for-you way. Principal villains discretely targeted: Corey Lewandowski, violent nutball; John Kelly, who’s gonna get his; and the ultra-conservative, married-to-CPAC-director woman Kelly ‘is said’ to prefer in Hicks’ role, Mercedes ‘(No) Mercy’ Schlapp, who only thinks she’s the most vicious word-ninja inside the Beltway.
For your further delection consideration, this closer:
… “She is the one person he thinks is totally on his side. And I happen to think that he’s right,” the source who meets regularly with the president told me. “Trump’s main problem with other people is he sees them as competition, and he doesn’t see Hope that way, because she’s not.” The source went on, “This is why he’s fired all these people. This is why he hated Bannon, the problem with Scaramucci. They were seeking to eclipse him and he can’t handle that.”
Trump also had a different relationship with Hicks than he did with his children, who keep what the source called “ironic distance” from their father. “He knows that Ivanka has a separate agenda. Ivanka refers to him as ‘DJT’ just like the boys do, and Ivanka understands that her father is gonna be dead in ten years.”…
Interesting Read: “What Hope Hicks Knows”Post + Comments (338)
by Alain Chamot (1971-2020)| 35 Comments
This post is in: On The Road, Open Threads, Readership Capture
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
Today, pictures from valued commenter PAM Dirac.
Growing up in the D.C. area the summer getaway was to the MD/Delaware beaches. For some reason our crowd started out always going to Ocean City, MD and drifted farther north as we got older. We are now definite oldsters (my first SS check comes in Aug) and not only to we go to Rehoboth, but we go in October or November and avoid the more rowdy crowd.
Rehoboth Boardwalk
Rehoboth, DE
Boardwalks are boardwalks, but in the off season not only is it less crowded, but things are slower and calmer. A big plus is that dogs are allowed and everyone knows that life is better with dogs, especially when the population, like their owners, seems to be enriched with the calmer, slower varieties.
Rocket Launch
Rehoboth, DE
In 2016 our visit luckily coincided with a Antares launch from Wallops Island, which is about 60 miles down the coast. The hotel has a rooftop hot tub, which was a very civilized place to watch a launch, wine in hand. From this distance you don’t get the bone shaking rumble, but you get to see a very graceful arc across the sky.
Capy May-Lewes ferry
Lewes, DE
I don’t ever remember even considering taking the Cape May Ferry in the past, but last fall we did just that. The trip was fine, although I can see where this is something that would work much better in the warmer months. Cape May was a very pleasant day trip, with some nice wineries.
Wine at the beach
Rehoboth, DE
This is our idea of a great vacation: Dolles caramel corn, Black Ankle Passeggiata, and a balcony overlooking the beach.
Thank you so much PAM Dirac, do send us more when you can.
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email