PeraclesPlease's blog

Black Like We

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 08 Nov 2020 11:07:13 +0000

Chapelle's full monologue

The one thing that hit me, with all the Kahnemann and Malcolm Gladwell I read this year, and other personal stuff going on, is all these people walking around, these bodies, me, are still 9/10 chemistry and raw emotions and psychological traumas and a bit of intelligent consideration, maybe a tiny bit of enlightened thinking thrown in, and perhaps humor or orneriness to scramble it up. I look at the Rayshard killing, and for 40 mins things were ok, and then in 15 seconds it went to shit. Most of these "Karens" videos (*not* the woman walking her dog in Central Park) are likely women running around doing thankless work, and someone with a phone catches them in their worst frustrating moments, situations that maybe they didn't understand or were too flustered to control, or had more of an explanation than we see. I have my moments, but no one so far has a camera in my face to record it for all time, all humanity. "Humanity" - we use that word to sound noble, but it's just one batch of troubles after another.

Though actually things aren't that bad. Aside from Covid, the Trump years have just been about pissing us off every minute of the day. But there were no gas ovens. There was no drawn out Iran-Iraq War killing millions (though Xinjiang is bad). There were no famines in Ethiopia with wasting away babies (though pictures of cages from the border are bad). Gladwell talked about how people in London during the Blitz became immune to fear and troubles and danger. And under Trump, we became rather immune to good news. That cop putting his knee on George Floyd's neck, strangling him, and pretty much the entire world thought that was evil, even our usual racists. And even *that* was more or less criminal negligence, vicious uncaring mistreatment, sure, but not the ending that cop expected, was trying for. Those girls in that Birmingham church when I was a kid - those guys were *trying* to kill them. Those activists disappeared in Mississippi - those guys actively killed them. And the whole community largely approved, covered it up, denied these poor murdered souls justice.

We've come a long way. Chapelle is playing a pose here, trying to push people - whites - out of their comfort zone (and coming to grips with conflicted feelings on a weird day). But I know he doesn't think blacks shooting blacks in Chicago is any better. But still we're talking about Floyd, talking about black shootings, talking about police, but also small businesses, with the idea that we can do better, that it's not a lost cause. I voted for Reagan over Carter 40 years ago, and would do it again, for the simple reason Carter felt like he'd given up, that we couldn't fight back against the Soviets, the Ayatollah, the energy situation, all these seemingly insurmountable problems, yet 40 years later we got through all these and have new ones to face and shrug off. Maybe that's why people voted Trump, some little spark of connection that overrode Carter's good soul, his Habitat for Humanity, his better angels. Or maybe it was just a normal patch of bad road, and we got through it and it doesn't have more significance than that. We'll just have our ups and downs - don't read too much into it. And thank your lucky stars you ain't black ;-)

One thing Van Jones noted last night was that Trump actually got on the phone with some black leaders to discuss what could be done. Insincere, for sure, but it wasn't watered down with "all races should have equal opportunity" or some such. The Black situation is different from Asians, Hispanics, Natives, whoever, and we know it. I understand why Obama was reluctant to display "favoritism", but this particular pipe has a leak, and talking about replacing all the plumbing just slows us down.

With Covid, we look at points of transmission, effective & ineffective treatment, which classes of people are most vulnerable, most endangered. Sure, lifestyle choices make a difference, but still, we see what we can do to save and protect who we can, approach it both humanely and scientifically. 4 years ago "I can't breath" was less important than a football game or a pledge of allegiance to a flag. In 2020, by accident or good work or just getting more comfortable with a foreign idea, we're more accepting that *something* needs to be done. It's progress. It's hard to expect too much more from a plodding, sometimes well-intentioned, but often dim-witted humanity. It seems we're evolving, which is more important than a particular election, however relieved we feel.

Topics:

Personal

Politics

Social Justice

Roanoke discovery gives clues to American mystery

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 07 Nov 2020 21:02:13 +0000

Recent archaeological finds on America's East Coast appear to have pinpointed remains of Roanoke settlers who apparently split up and secretly moved the colony to 2 new locations, thereby avoiding a Spanish fleet sent to destroy them.

The discovery could help political scientists determine the fate of North Carolina voters and election officials after the 2020 presidential election, when apparently the whole election infrastructure grew unresponsive and simply disappeared amidst one of the most heated electoral races of modern times.

More intriguing is the possibility that the 2 sides in the political contest may have engineered their own disappearance to avoid external threats, including the possibility of a never-ending series of recounts and a general loss of who-gives-a-shit, and perhaps may be peaceably hiding out in an undisclosed location even talking and working together.

The Coast Guard has started a search among North Carolina's offshore islands, even though investigators believe it would be hard to hide a population much larger than Roanoke's there, and that the M.I.A. population is more likely in the mountainous region on the west side of the state, or simply vacationing somewhere in the Caribbean or South American coast until both elections and pandemic pass over, though others note the eery similarities between NC's Research Triangle and the renowned Bermuda Triangle that bewitched the Spanish some 5 centuries before.

The FBI earlier called in what are regarded as the greatest experts on finding missing or displaced persons - professional poll-takers and online ad campaign managers, only to make the shocking discovery that the whole community seems to have deleted all cookies and disconnected landlines, making discovery "virtually implossible with the limited tools and technology we have today", as one pollster explained. "It's as if they vanished without a single trace".

The USPS also announced they had ceased covering the territory due to "operational difficulties". But still, the search goes on, perhaps with a last-ditch attempt to send health and TV correspondents physically on location even without a viewer base or prior Nielsen rating, or at least airdrop cameras into the region to see if they respond to Zoom conference requests. As a CNN exec explained it, "we know they're within our coverage area, but without proper demographics, it's as if they don't even exist."

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/11/newfound-survivor-cam...

Topics:

Humor & Satire

Media

Politics

(11) UKE-GATE IMPEACH GRAB BAG - CRITICAL THREADS

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 07:13:06 +0000

Place holder for Uke-Gate stories that shouldn't roll off the blogroll. Will update number as it climbs. Not sure yet which stories qualify, but probably ones that best support the limited area of Uke-Gate & similar acts being impeachable behavior, and not just a one-off but repeated violation and/or dereliction of duty.

1) Trumps's private hush hush hit team - Rudy, DiGenova, Toensing - https://www.thedailybeast.com/joe-digenova-and-victoria-toensing-worked-...

2) Ur-Report of Uke-gate - where this reporting started (James Risen - from which it got twisted) - https://theintercept.com/2019/09/25/i-wrote-about-the-bidens-and-ukraine...

Updated in May by Robert Mackey to correct NYTimes reporting that left way too much innuendo: https://theintercept.com/2019/05/10/rumors-joe-biden-scandal-ukraine-abs...

3) Did Trump withhold a memo from Mueller summarizing key Russia meeting? https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/white-house-hide-memo-trump-...

4) When Jared got a blockade put on Qatar after Qatar wouldn't help out on his property - earlier Trump Shakedown Street example - https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-backed-qatar-blockade-after-qatar...

5) How Memorializing Conversations works/should work in the White House, including reaching consensus & distributing that info to affected persons/departments - https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/29/trump-white-house-ukr...

6) Special Ukraine Envoy Volker's odd conflicts of interest - https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/28/trump-ukraine-kurt-volker-1517874

7) Trump's State Dept retroactively classifies 7-10 year old emails to go after Hillary staff - 130 former & current employees contacted - https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5d908eb3e4b0019647a9f37e

8) Emptywheel's hacker background on Crowdstrike in Ukraine and why Trump's pushing this (tougher read, but likely important context) - https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/09/29/some-of-where-trump-wants-to-go-wi...

9) AG Bill Barr on world tour to dig up help from foreign governments in his Trump-pleasing anti-Democrat investigations. Last week he was in Italy. Much of this stems from shady info gathered from Mifsud & Papadopoulos. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/attorney-general-barr-p...

10) But Bill Barr hid this "official business" behind their misused "Top Secret" system - you might gues he didn't want anyone to find out what he was doing on "official time"? https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/09/30/bill-barrs-olc-treated-his-implication-in-the-whistleblower-complaint-as-top-secret/

11) Pence implicated:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/pence-gave-ukraine-the-message-too

[more linear version: https://shero.substack.com/p/complete-timeline-of-trump-ukraine
but is it more complete? or do we need more spread, more angles?]

Topics:

Politics

World Affairs

On Breaking up Google - this is not your Grandma's Monopoly

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 17:24:15 +0000

Another election and another round of liberal posturing - "how do we beat down the corporates, how do we dismantle their power?" "Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple...," exclaims Elizabeth Warren, "along with their little subsidiary acquisitions". Let's call these The Big Four.

So let's tear this down - first, are these the monopolists you're looking for? Back in the day of the Robber Barons, we had goons showing up to beat up the competition - quite a bit of heat brought down on anyone who was in competition. This kind of activity is pretty rare these days - mostly it's just that customers are flocking to the big boys, and that's just tough on the rest.

The IT age truly hit when Microsoft ended up with a practical monopoly on the desktop. Sure, Apple could scrape out 4 million laptop & desktop sales a quarter with a huge comparative margin, and techies could go for Linux or lately Chromebooks, but in terms of units at home and in the workplace, DOS-Windows machines predominated since 1982, and still do. Microsoft went on to do quite well in the Office software and database business - and people howled to break them up. But in the end, they went from a dominant consumer company to a dominant enterprise software company, with the whole industry resigning itself to the fact that the OS is boring, and is best off boring, and all the OS wars in the 70's and 80's mostly led to things not working with each other, whereas the Windows behemoth solved that problem. Until the Web came along and made everything interoperable in a different way, so the Windows monopoly became a "who cares?" We got a little flurry of excitement when Steve Jobs decided to put a knife in the heart of Flash and Adobe itself, pretending to go to a new standard that was far from market ready - and suddenly we saw what we'd avoided for 2 decades - having to choose when we really didn't care. Sure, Excel rolled over Lotus-1-2-3 and M$ killed some other fine mail & database software companies, but it was the 90's, baby - the Internet Age, and if things hadn't just worked, that would have harshed our mellow.

And that was in the age of price gouging. Antitrust was built on the old idea that monopolists like the oil and rail barons would take over everything and then raise the price. Except the new monopolists didn't do that. Hell, Google came along with a huge competitive field of shitty search engines and somehow did it much much better, incuding mail and calendar apps, but the consumer never (apparently) had to pay. Even the advertisers that flocked to the platform didn't seem to pay that much, considering how much the traditional ad agencies or classified ads had gouged people throughout the years. Remember how much it used to cost to sell your car, deciding whether to splurge for the week or just the Sunday edition?

Amazon was a bit similar - they were just an online bookseller back when we were buying computers the same way from Gateway - packed in some cow paddies up in North Dakota or somewhere where warehouse space roamed free. Of course as Amazon shipped books, they found they could ship other odds and ends like CDs and electronics and then household appliances, and they unfairly cemented their lead by... well, actually, they just sold stuff cheap and didn't have any stores, and their product search was pretty good, as was their reviews and the delivery... in short, they just crushed, helped of course by the lack of internet taxation - a 10% added margin can easily clench a sale over traditional stores. Sure we liked hanging out at Borders, but if we were going to binge on 5-10 books, online started making a lot more sense - especially when electronic versions became available. Yeah, I bought from Barnes & Noble a few times, and some other odds-and-ends sellers, but as with most consumer comfort, we end up going back to one familiar place.

[along the way, Amazon developed a whole bunch of cloud technology, AWS, to run all its services with - this of course could pretty easily be split off from the e-retail business - and no one would really care one way or the other]

Apple - lessee, yeah, they were bastards with Real Media and Adobe and put the hurt to dinosaur music labels and phone companies. But they also made online music work with the iPod and iTunes when everyone'd been yacking about it for a decade. When Apple introduced the iPhone, they overcharged for it - and people still bought them over the low and high-end Nokias and Blackberries. Google cleverly introduced their Android phones - but still more *elite* people wanted iPhones, and Apple naturally raised the price, while the rest could go buy cheaper Korean or Chinese Androids (Motorola went bankrupt during this transition, as did Nokia & Blackberry and a host of others). Apple made the App Store totally brainless to use, even to buy stuff. No "what version do I need?" - it figured it out and downloaded and installed the right one.

Facebook - uh, yeah, overall sux compares to what MySpace used to be. But for the non-musically/side-development inclined, I suppose, it was better with likes and little tweaks, but MySpace's CEO notes Facebook got people using their real names and they no longer minded (which meant bonanza time for marketers). They improved community and it too off. But with Zuckerberg's behavior in front of Congress and especially UK MPs, it's hard to feel any sympathy for their smug amoral attitude.

But let's say we break up Facebook. Within 2, max 3 years there'd be another trendy monopoly player that everyone flocks to because everyone's on it. (Younger kids have abandoned Facebook a great deal, thus the need to buy Instagram et al). If we break up Amazon, another player will implement 1-stop shopping that satisfies us, and we'll have a new different monopoly. Break up Apple - uh, like what? their tablet sales fell drastically after an initial goldrush, they discontinued their iPods cause they're just crippled iPhones now, they no longer really have desktops and their laptops sell the same 4 million per quarter as always.

Perhaps with Google we could split off the Android business from search, but Android on its own makes like 0 money, so Android development would grind to a relative halt (similar to Larry Ellison of Oracle buying Java just to keep someone else from having it, and so all interesting development has stopped).

Would any of this serve the customers, the consumers out there? The rapid rise of mobile use is based on being able to find anyone and anything quickly, to have over-the-air upgrades that don't need a techie to handle, being able to share data like photos and videos as a 5-year-old to 95-year-old. Remember when grandmothers used to have to ask for help with their PC's to use Hotmail or connect to the internet? Less and less does that happen. I haven't looked at "Senior Phones" in a decade, about when I was looking at some Senior video conferencing on tablet, but Skype and WhatsApp and Zoom pretty much covered that market for consumer and businesses. (okay, Microsoft bought Skype and merged it with its old clunky corporate package, so it's slightly worse, slightly better as tied to the Microsoft cloud - but still largely free or dirt cheap compared to what we recall of Telco charges).

We had the chance to break up some of our too-big-to-fail banks in 2009, and did a crappy job of it - but those were old school oligopolies and used market position to sell poison assets, robosign people's mortgage foreclosures, overcharge kids for credit cards, and other obscene practices. What'd we do? we gave traders bonuses, hand held investors with 100 cents on the dollar, bailed them out and let them merge into even bigger entities. Well, that went so well, let's try breaking up tech companies that politicians understand so poorly.

Even with advertising - Google & Facebook monopolize 60% of advertising, with Amazon working on breaking in. But one reason that advertising is so high is that advertisers want a single efficient spend, a single platform (or 2 at most). To build a mobile app you used to have to build 10 different versions at least ot effectively cover available phones. Now you build 2 - Android & Apple iOS, and just put it in their stores. Same pretty much for advertising - sure you can put up billboards or even pass out flyers, but it's totally simple to do Google & Facebook ads and check their analytics, and you know pretty much all the world is there if you design your pitch, your ad words right. So while people who want to enter the market complain, the ones using are mostly happy. What that means for consumers is evolving, since the system was built on "free lunch" and we're discovering (if we didn't know already) that "if you're not paying for the product, the product is you".

Does Elizabeth Warren and DC in general understand any of this? Do they see that people will freely gravitate towards a NetFlix without excessive pressure? We can see the damage that misuse of data creates, other types of abuses of worker pay, et al - but these aren't quite the focus of what a traditional split up would look like for a traditional monopoly. But as the bean counters from DC didn't help Detroit out much by taking over management (instead their only real successes were continuing say producton in China that was going well, while electric cars are still a bridge mostly too far), let's not expect Washington to understand well the retail or technology fields and what "platform-based" development means to the consumer and suppliers.

WalMart at one point was responsible for 13% of America's imports, but for the last decade or more has been trying to fight off Amazon's steady encroachment - including trying to compete with advertising, as well as go online, while Amazon has successfully taken the lead in apparel and opened bricks-and-mortars shops. Nokia had 50% of the global market share in 2007, and within 5 years was dead - despite a Microsoft buyout.

But would I rather be stuck with WalMart clothes and a Nokia flip phone?

It's a complicated developing world out there, and thanks to 2016 we're much more aware of the Big Brother side of corporations owning our data and other practices - but we're still a long way off from understanding the technical, legal and societal remedies. The Democrats always held Silicon Valley at arm's length, appreciating their support and often liberal values, but uncomfortable with their vast money-making technical enterprises and the venture capitalists that rose up around this.

So yeah, I'm uncomfortable with cries to just break up the Big Four and more - we've been down these roads before, and many of them look like the past. Develop a real goal, one that combines the challenges of Universal Basic Income and enough tax income for new initiatives like health care and better retirement and day care, one that identifies overstep in corporate behavior but tries to preserve consumer/B2B convenience and savings, one that's focused towards ensuring next-gen innovation rather than trying to recover some happier time that's already left last gen's Pandora Box. You can't have your Golden Goose and eat it too. It takes a platform to lay those eggs. We just need to make sure they're not Godzilla's instead.

Topics:

Business

Politics

2020 Rejects & Remainders

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 29 Jan 2019 12:25:18 +0000

Ok, was trying to stay out of this, but so far the "no way Jose" list:

- Tulsi Gabbard (Fox hawk if not Russian asset in Hawaiian hulu skirt with jackboots)

- Howard Schultz (latte corporate vulture with an odd sense of "centrist" looking more like "blame the Dems for asking for nice things" misguided conception of "independent", while pitching a well-tarnished "businessman saves America" deficit-scold message. 15 years ago maybe - plus a business run only on young hipster easily-exploited youth hardly seems like it offers a breakthrough message for the rest of us)

- Joe Biden (awful on women's issues and, as Warren's book notes, pushed much of the corporate entitlement that's created such inequality in 2019)

- Hillary Clinton (I suspect someone's floating her name just to get people to pee themselves, but no, not again, sorry, just too fatiguing)

- Beto (okay, he hasn't declared, but aside from being charismatic and knowing how to lose a Texas election, he has enough baggage over his city council support of his father-in-law, as well as his fairly wealthy lazy years as an adult. I'd rather vote Jack Black, who's roughly the same - in movies; in real life he's a raging success)

- Bernie ("old & in the way" was Jerry Garcia's non-Dead band, and while arguably Bernie put some fire in the race in 2016 - some such as myself say too much - a repeat isn't in the cards aside from one of these aging rock star reunion tours. Besides, he lags too much with women's and minority issues, and he doesn't have the adoring crowd he had last time, plus he's getting old a.f.)

- Trump, of course (GOP of course, & hopefully will be in Rikers by New Years at latest, but in any case, couldn't even manage the Republican Senate defections in this year's New Years stare-a-thon shutdown. Walking dead, so to speak)

Dreamers?

- Nancy Pelosi (she's starting to give "old a.f." a nice ring to it, what with her White House showdowns & her Cool Hand Lukette use of her shades after blowing someone away - perhaps she's the Devil Wears Prada/in the Red Dress, but she's on our side - and with a lucky roll of the dice, she could be prez even without a vote)

- Andrew Yang (has been in the race for a while, and has the businessman pedigree, but to claim that "the government's business is business" no longer works - and is baking in a Universal Basic Income into his program. Of course the events of the last year may put him more behind the 8-ball or firmly into irrelevance, and Elizabeth Warren has a much stronger regulatory & legislative record with stated on similar topics, but still an interesting character)

- and all the rest - Liz, Kamala, Kirsten, Julian Castro, Buttibuig(?) - still not enough energy to look at the positive choices & their positives - too busy knocking off the easy low-hanging fruits.

Who Knows?

- Michael Bloomberg (old megarich white cat from New York might not be what's trending in Trump derangement/MeToo-Women's March times, but he's got credibility from being Mayor & just talking more reasonably than Schultz could ever muster. Here are some of Bloomberg's stumbles. Are these enough to derail him, or are they already quaint by post-Trump daily insanity standards?)

Do note that at this stage it's probably most important to keep the Democratic field from being an overstocked laughable chaotic mess like the GOP's assortment in 2016 that helped Trump, or the Dems' "7 Dwarves" in some earlier primary season. 5 serious contenders is probably the max number before it becomes a farce.

Topics:

Politics

Now We Know: Hillary Was A Great Candidate

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 08 Dec 2018 13:50:12 +0000

There are many more details to come out of our continuing political saga, soap opera, meltdown, but at this point we have enough details to know what should have been suspected all along: Hillary was a great candidate.

This doesn't mean she didn't make a bunch of mistakes - whom among us has not?

We already knew some of the pressures Hillary faced by being an older woman instead of a young cool male cat like Obama - look at the traction Beto got despite having huge skeletons in his open closet vs. the "what designer clothes do you wear?" she got as Sec'y of State - or the inevitable problems of having a track record in politics vs. the clean slate of a newbie - sausage making turns ugly over decades.

We also knew of the unprecedented moves of calling a presidential candidate in front of Congress to try to derail their candidacy, to subpoena their emails to look for any dirt or slightly controversial phrasing, the FBI's ignoring standard procedure but instead ad libbing a damning condemnation on a closed case, and then late in the campaign publicly opening the case only to quickly shut it down again as an unearned present to her opponent.

We also learned that a rogue cell of New York FBI agents were leaking through Giuliani, which also resulted in various "Hillary will be indicted" speculation picked up by the NY Times, even as they grossly & prematurely publicly quashed the possibility that Trump was or would be investigated over Russian ties [and this pressured Comey to give his 2nd ill-advised notice to Congress which was immediately illegally leaked by Republican congressman Nunes].

We knew Hillary's campaign chairman's emails were hacked (but not hers) along with the DNC's, and released by Wikileaks with a steady drip-drip-drip and heavy spin through the last months of the campaign. We now know that Republicans' and varous newspapers' emails were stolen by Russians as well, but not released (whether they were used for extortion is unconfirmed). [we also know Hillary's primary targeting database was temporarily made open & downloaded by her opponent & potentially released to others - details remain unknown]

We knew Hillary's health had been attacked as early as 2014 via Roger Stone's disinfo campaign, in Jan 2016 by Stone's colleague Jerome Corsi, in May by Bernie Sanders' supporter Susan Serandon, but it wasn't until late July 2016 that a full-court press started combining with supposed content in an upcoming Wikileaks selected release of stolen emails - by Assange, by Corsi, by Stone, by Infowars, by Drudge, by Fox which was soon repeated by the rest of the news media - and then Assange released an anodyne email on "decision fatigue" pumped up to a health crisis, followed by a poll asking for audience input on what Hillary might be suffering. [Pretending to be a journalist holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy, Assange faced no legal constraints at that time.]

We also now know Corsi & Stone knew the scandalous "Hillary killed Seth Rich" was false from the beginning, a story that helped instill distrust of Hillary in Bernie supporters during the critical convention unity time, while freeing Wikileaks and Russia of their role in the episode.

We now know the NRA used its connections with Russia to funnel even more illegal money then usual into the pro-Trump campaign, and through the arrest & deal negotiations with Butina and those she recruited, the amount of influence her circle, including the odd participation of British figures like Nigel Farage in Mississippi politics and other states.

We also learned that Cambridge Analytica played a powerful background role in analyzing stolen Facebook data sets to give the Trump campaign an advantage on targeting ads, but over the following year we've learned of the involvement of other suspect actors, including AggregateIQ (a small opaque Canadian firm illegally involved in Brexit as well). And we've step-by-grudging-step learned just how much vast internal support & special API access Facebook gave to both the Trump & the Brexit campaigns (partially assisted by the UK confiscating Facebook's records on their last unhelpful appearance before angry MPs).

And as of yesterday's filing by the Special Counsel we now know for sure that Trump's long-time lawyer under the illegal instructions of candidate Trump illegally paid off 2 of Trump's mistresses to bury a story that would have harmed him in the election - abetting a felony.

But there's so much more - we've learned of 2 long-term Trump Tower-in-Moscow deals still ongoing through 2016 - both the Rozov deal and the oft-ignored Agalarov deal that Seth Abramson keeps focusing on (and it was further revealed that the female Russian "lawyer" at that mysterious June 2016 Mayflower meeting Donald denied knowing about - but his kids attended - was actually a GRU agent). And these were tentative sweetheart deals tied to getting Russian sanctions lifted (saving Russia billions) and helping get revenge against Hillary for an earlier set of sanctions on Russia as SoS. Quid pro quo, something of vast monetary value, enough for Trump to offer Putin a $50 million penthouse.

Meanwhile the press gave Hillary a wicked time over the Clinton Foundation's supposed transgressions, while Trump's Foundation was found to be engaging in self-dealing & illegal practices and shut down by New York state including a criminal investigation, with the board members - all of Trump's kids from Ivana - prohibited from engaging in any similar non-profit work, while the students ripped off in Trump's scam university were already paid off in a multi-million dollar settlement.

But likely the most important point is realizing actors and intelligence from Russia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Britain and Israel are avowed to have worked together to help Trump in multiple ways by hacking and spreading disinformation, all illegal assistance by foreign parties, much of the quid pro quos already acknowledged with others (like Saudi Arabia's nuclear ambitions) becoming clearer all the time. Many of these details are revealed already in court filings by Mueller & SDNY; more will come out as the full extent of plea and cooperation deals comes out from Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, Felix Sater, Maria Butina.

It should be remembered that Rick Gates & Paul Manafort used similar kinds of intrigue against Yulia Tymoshenko to discredit her and put her in jail - the "lock her up" chants were no coincidence.

And none of this addresses voter intimidation & disenfranchisement, and other irregularities in specific key states (such as Scott Walker's mysterious contacts with Russians before the surprising Wisconsin primary). But 2018's damaged vote-rigging North Carolina results, Georgia's corrupt behaving Secretary of State, and the once-again unbelievably incompetent and/or crooked results in Florida give an idea that the thwarted recounts in 2016's tight Midwest states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania might have easily divulged enough malfeasance to reverse the counts.

So after all this - but certainly not the end, but only a scary preliminary accounting *still*, we can recognize that Hillary's popular vote lead of 3 million votes was next to miraculous compared to the obstacles most candidates face.

The idea that Hillary should have easily defeated a crooked & annoying, but quirky & oddly appealing candidate who wiped the GOP slate clean with little effort is a meme that for some reason refuses to die. And knowing to what far-reaching ends he had illegal help in persuading the electorate and shutting down the opposition, we can put to bed the idea that he fairly garnered 50% of the electorate's support - a heavily crafted international propaganda scheme carried out with lots of intelligence assistance and huge amounts of dark money tunneled all over the place (see charges & convictions for Deutsche Bank, Cyprus Bank, et al,) makes a mocker of the contention that Hillary "outspent" Trump.

When Obama was running and while in office, people congratulated him on the poise and lack of drama he exhibited under duress. It's about time we acknowledged the same with Hillary - Hillary Clinton ran an impressive campaign and came very close to winning (including a vast popular vote advantage), except for the massive efforts to steal the election from her.

Because we've maintained this illusion that Clinton was such a bad candidate, we've yet to consider what's proper recompense for the election theft that's happened. Let bygones be bygones? Let Pence assume the Presidency after the slow-mo impeachment? Take it out on future candidates?

Sometimes great isn't good enough; sometimes atrocious isn't bad enough. If we think these latest electoral successes are enough, we haven't addressed the tilted playing field that led to this quandary. We've seen a couple of admired leaders pass on this Fall, but in honoring them, we continue to dishonor the one still among us, the one we keep telling to "just go away", and perhaps, like often with women, to "smile" a bit more - maybe then she'd be more "likable" and "authentic". Let's ask the new Republicans whether that'll make them start playing fair. 2018 should make that answer clear.

Topics:

Politics

Happy Hollow Wean: Open Thread of the Dead

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 07:51:50 +0000

Topics:

Arts & Entertainment

Potpourri

What WSJ knew & when: Avenatti dumps

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 29 May 2018 18:23:40 +0000

To:               Michael Cohen[mcohen©trumporg corn]
From:          Keith Davidson
Sent:           Thur 11/3/2016 7:31:38 Al

Subject: Fwd. WSJ

FYI

Sent from my mobile device Begin forwarded message

From: Keith Davidson <keith@kmdlaw.com>
Date: November 2, 2016 at 3:43 :32 PM PDT
To: "Palazzolo, Joseph" <joe.paIazzolo@wsj.com>, "KEITH@kmdassociates.com" <KElTil@kmdassociates_com>
Subject: RE,: WSJ

Joe,

We spoke last week. At that time, I told you that I had never represented Donald Trump nor anyone adverse to him.

Yet you persist to call anyone and everyone under the sun, (including my current clients with whom I have contractual relationships), and whom I am currently representing in litigation matters.

I understand that you are attempting to report that I am representing "women from Donald Trump's past" and that I am "presumably seeking settlements_"

Let me be abundantly clear that your repeated calls to my existing and past clients have caused disruptions in my contractual relationships and have and will cause me financial harm.

Let me further be abundantly clear that I have not now, nor previously represented anyone adverse to Donald Trump. Likewise, I have never sought, nor obtained a settlement from him. Any assertion by you or the Wail Street Journal to the contrary is false, defamatory and otherwise actionable.

Last week I asked you for proof or for you to name your unnamed sources. You refused to provide either

because as you stated, at that time, you had none. I implore you to provide what proof you have as to my representation of women adverse to Donald Trump at once. But you won't...because you have

none, ._because there is none.

Demand is hereby made that you and The Wall Street Journal immediately refrain from publishing, distributing or disseminating any factually untrue and unsubstantiated information regarding me or my firm since these falsehoods are, at a minimum, damaging, defamatory, and an invasion of privacy. I expect an immediate email confirmation from you that you and The Wall Street Journal will comply with this demand. Failing that, I will be forced to take appropriate legal action to protect my rights, and you and The Wall Street Journal will be acting at your and its legal risk and peril. Govern yourself accordingly,

This letter is not intended us a complete statement of all facts concerning this matter. Nothing contained herein shall constitute a relinquishment of any of my or my firm's rights, remedies, causes of action, or claims for relief at law or in equity, all of which are expressly reserved.

Keith M. Davidson

Keith M. Davidson, Esq, Davidson & Associates, PLC

8383 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 510

Beverly Hills, CA 90211

Phone (323) 658-54441Fax (323) 658 -5424

-w.1<indl aw.com KeithigiCmdI ZW.COM

The information in this electronic mail message is confidential and for use of only the named recipient_ The information may be

protected by privilege, work product immunity or other applicable law. If you arc not the intended recipient the retention, dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail message is strictly prohibited. If you receive this message in error please notify us immediately at (323) 658-5444 or by e-mail at keithgkindlaw.com

From: Palazzolo, Joseph [mailto:joe.palazzolo(4wsicom]
Sent: October 21, 2016 10:04 AM
To: KETTH(a.kindassociates.corn; Keith Davidson Subject: WSJ

Hi, Keith.

Hope you're doing well. I'm sure you're well aware we've been calling around about you. I'm sorry for the indiscretion. But I wanted to make sure I knew what I had before I bothered talking to you. At your convenience, could we talk? Happy to speak of the record.

Thanks and best,

Joe

Joe Palazzolo
Staff reporter

1211 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10036

212-416-4046

347-255-1866 (m)

joe.palazzolo@.wsj.corn

[APE Local 1096: We Power Dow Jones.

D DOW JONES
Craig Linder
Associate General Counsel 212.416.30 88
raig.lir derradconjonescorn

November 3, 2016

VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL (keith@kmdlaw.com)

Keith M. Davidson
Davidson & Associates, PLC
8383 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 510 Beverly Hills, California 90211

Re: Your November 2, 2016, email to Joe Palazzolo of The Wall Street Journal

Dear Mr. Davidson:

I am counsel to Dow Jones & Company, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal. I write in response to an email that you sent to Journal reporter Joe Palazzolo yesterday. In your email, you suggest that the Journal intends to disrupt your contractual relationships, disseminate false information about you, and invade your privacy.

Neither Mr. Palazzolo nor the Journal intends to do any such thing. Instead, both Mr. Palazzolo and the Journal intend to continue their constitutionally protected efforts to investigate a matter of pressing public concern and publish a fair and accurate report of any findings that they consider newsworthy.

One particular point in your email demands a specific response: In your email to Mr. Palazzolo, you say 'Mast week I asked you for proof or for you to name your unnamed sources. You refused to provide either because as you stated, at that time, you had none." That statement is not correct, At no point did Mr. Palazzolo state that he had no sources or other factual basis for his reporting. To the contrary, the Journal adheres only to the highest standards of responsible journalism, including fair, truthful, and unbiased reporting that is based on information provided by sources in which we have the highest confidence.

Consistent with those high standards, the Journal has no intent or desire to publish any false statement about you or any other subject. Mr. Palazzolo and Dow Jones's other reporters are committed to obtaining as much information as possible and to reporting in an honest and forthright manner. To that end, Mr. Palazzolo will be reaching out to you separately with additional questions based on his reporting into this matter, including inquiries pertaining to Stephanie Clifford and Karen McDougal,

The Journal continues to be willing to fully consider any information you provide in connection with its reporting on any future article that may discuss you. I encourage you to engage with Mr. Palazzolo so as to ensure that your views are fairly reflected in any article that he may prepare.
Of course, The Wall Street Journal will fully consider whatever information you provide in connection with any future article. And the Journal will in any event maintain its longstanding commitment to truth, fairness, and accuracy in any possible story regarding you.

This letter is not a full statement of Dow Jones's rights, all of which are expressly reserved.
Sincerely,

Craig Linder
D I DOW JONES

[As transcribed by OCR from copy placed by Michael Avenatti at https://www.dropbox.com/s/mzu5nxn457qzw28/Correspondence.pdf?dl=0 ]

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Silver Lining: the Skin I'm Not In

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 12 May 2018 10:36:01 +0000

Realizing AR/VR will make this appropriation "problem" mainstream everpresent explosive inevitable or go away completely. With Second Life 15 years ago you could make your own avatars and virtual worlds, appropriating whatever you wanted to from whomever and whatever. With Augmented and Virtual Reality, you no longer have to build your own worlds an characters - these are just new skins and templates in various libraries and pulled real-time out of real life. I don't even need to see *you* as you want - I can make you into a Tongan warrior princess (Maiello) or an effete Broadway theater goer (Peter) or a pack of feral kidney-craving zombies (all of you). I can change these instantly, or choreograph you lip-syncing to Justin Bieber or baying at the moon or giving a spanking to Donald Trump while watching Shark Tank. You will no longer be in control of your own image - your $100 hairdo can be remodeled in a moment to a depression-era bowl cut. Not into tattoos? You are now, right on the _ _ _ _. Weight problem? I just gave you anorexia (and a skin disease - sorry, got a bit carried away).

This isn't just me - you will be marketed to, microtargeted, placed on a faraway beach or driving in a new car of your dreams or in the middle of a Venetian costume ball or telemarking down an Alpine trail. Doctors will create models of your intestines and neural pathways; plumbers will guide plumbums thru your pipes. Your teachers will have instant visuals and which synapses are firing (or not) over their boring lessons, while your kids will get feedback of facial markers and body posture as to whether they can stay out late and how to break down your defenses. They can find your gridlines and 3D control points, spin you like a top, dispallay the 360 degree you from all vantages.

There'll be thorough genetic and social history trails to make sure none of your personality or decisions are registered as mere accidents, but we can build on these moments in time to create the new better fantasy you, one that you'll have trouble disagreeing with (the you you'd want to have a beer with, I suppose).

Walking into the VR conference I saw a girl in a flower dress - couldn't tell if it was an Asian pattern or not; wasn't even sure if *she* was Asian or not. So I said something insulting to her just to be safe. Thought y'all'd be proud of me - I'm learning, evolving on this. I feels so modern...

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Social Justice

Technology

Bronze Medal: why can't I change my skin?

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 04 May 2018 07:54:11 +0000

Set off by Vogue & Gigi Hadid's "scandal" over a bronzed up photo shoot, I'm amazed by what we can or cannot do. I can go to a tanning salon or the Bahamas to get as dark as can be, put on Smokey Eye and that's presumably fine. I can go into plastic surgery and give myself tits, tighter abs, a smooth face, almond eyes with a pert nose, and of course do my hair style in whatever manner or color (presumably - maybe some are off limits). If I transition to a woman, people will be supporting my right to use other bathrooms and not be discriminated against, and gender and sexual preference is a matter of what I "identify" with. If I dress up as an outrageous transvestite woman as Rudy Giuliani did, I'd just be a good sport, showing solidarity with LGBTQ. The Village People could costume up as whatever as part of the fun. De Niro could tubby up superfat to play Jake La Motta, and Daniel Day-Lewis could get in line with the intricacies and nuances of Cerebral Palsy to play Christy Brown, while dressing drag was the key plot device in Academy winners Some Like It Hot and Mrs. Doubtfire.

But as a high school girl discovered, it's not okay to put on a Chinese dress (unless willing to take 1000's of Twitter condemnations). As kids are discovering, it's not okay to be Pocahantas on Halloween. As Gigi Hadid found out, fake tans are only allowed so far before "appropriation" kicks in. Presumably Adam & the Ants could never regroup and keep the ~~Indian~~ Native American regalia. Rachel Dolezal discovered that "identifying as black" wasn't enough, even though she followed that up with action & involvement.

With each boundary our sense of understanding is damaged. We can't put ourselves in someone else's skin, understand what they feel like, identify with them, try to *be* them in some way. What used to be a natural in acting and childhood make-believe is now verboten, a step too far in human imagination even though it's so obvious that it's completely natural.

I remember the kids dancing on the bed in Crooklyn pretending they were the Partridge Family, and it was charming - whether "white" was part of it, I dunno, but if one put on a frizzy red wig and whiteface and went to school as Danny, I'd have no reason to be offended (except if wearing "dumbass honky" signs). Though we had a largely embarrassing period of blackface that faded out through understandable objections (but also launched a number of key black careers in the Chitlin' Circuit and others), that doesn't mean every use of skin coloring is a patronizing insulting attempt to exploit or make fun of people.

We can look at the steady appropriation of black music as a *good* thing (except when Led Zeppelin rips off Howlin' Wolf & Willie Dixon without credit). It means 2 cultures are mixing, integrating, getting closer together, accepting each other and their art forms and their people. Imitation is often the sincerest form of flattery, at least when it's not Trump making fun of disabled people in a disgusting manner. When I or De Niro/Jake LaMotta look in a mirror, it doesn't just have to be an "I coulda been a contender" or "how many bullets do I have left?" - it can easily be Jules going " Check out the big brain on Brett! You're a smart motherfucker." or Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles with his hilarious lines - lines that aren't even as ironic in retrospect as white guys & girls I'd see dancing to rap and mouthing off some rather self-abusing lyrics having to do with race and gender.

Whatever - it's as real as pretending I'm Michael Caine in The Man Who Would Be King mouthing a cockney accent in Afghanistan, or a gangster out of The Godfather or a ninja warrior in Sho-gun - much of what we do is simply entertainment, enjoyment. When Ray Davies sang "Ape Man", it didn't take us back 50,000 years - it was just a song. A vibe, a joke, a commentary. I wore a toga and mixed frozen margaritas at a high school party - should Italians have been offended by appropriation and mismatched drinks? Why are our red lines so screwed up? Why can't we lower oppression and exploitation while still maintaining respect and humor?

[Odd to me that there wasn't more outrage in the rather misogynistic Almodovar film "The Skin I Live In" where Banderas skins a guy who abused his daughter and turns him into a beautiful woman, with the assorted rape imagery you'd expect from such a film. But it's only scraping skin, not color...]

This isn't as complex as that of Apu from the Simpsons - a character that's both a mockery but also somewhat a fairly real caricature and perhaps an improvement on total absence of a culture on TV. Yes, little black girls will often want black dolls that look more like them - skin color is one of our more obvious traits - but most people wouldn't be worried or offended or conflicted if the girls had fun playing with a white doll or even preferred one. I cringe a bit when I hear yet another "first black or lesbian or transgender or..." to do something, as if all these firsts fattening up the Guinness book of records will stop the planet spinning, but folks enjoying Black Panther is fine with me, whether the hype's a bit contrived or not (and what is hype anyway but contrived excitement). While James Cameron finds The Avengers boring (like his green people in Avatar kept our interest for long?), it's just more adjusting our movies to the times we live in, just as we got rid of the slow pacing of the 50's, and once had a bunch of 48 Hours black guy/white guy knockoffs, and now we do action heroes.

I dunno, some days I just scratch my head - we're supposed to celebrate diversity, but not copy or enjoy it except in tightly approved ways. We're a weird species. What'll happen to all this angst when the aliens come and colonize us? "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain". Time to live.

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