Slow Horses — Apple TV Series

Slow Horses — Official Trailer | Apple TV
Apple TV

Everybody's a villain here, except for the MI5 employees known as Slow Horses who have been exiled to Slough House, a small, seedy, three floor walk-up office building in a crummy part of London. All the action is at a higher level. On one side we have the Sons of Albion, a right-wing nationalist group. Over at Regent's Park we have Miss Stinky Pants Kristin Scott Thomas (Taverner). She's Deputy-Director of MI5, so she's got the power of the government behind her, in particular a tactical unit called the Dogs.

Pretty great show. MI5 - British version of the CIA, I guess - Gary Oldman (known by me as Zorg in The Fifth Element) is the disgustingly crusty old man running Slough House. First desk, AKA MI5 Director, is off on some diplomatic bullshit mission and while she's away Second Desk decides to cook up a false flag operation that will get blamed on the right-wing nationalists. She thinks this will give her an excuse to, in her words, "roll them all up". Her agent provocateur gets some white boys (three stooges) to kidnap a brown Briton who happens to be the nephew of some big shot in Pakistan, the idea being that when MI5 rescues him, it will help the Uncle feel more favorably toward Britain. Seems like a long shot to me, but you know you just can't trust those power hungry, liberal, white women with short blond hair like Hillary. Anyway, the plan goes awry and one of the white boys takes exception to Miss Stinky Pants' agent and lops off his head, so now when Miss Stinky Pants' dogs show up to rescue the hostage and kill the kidnappers, there's nobody there, well, except for the dead guy.

Menawhile, a very nervous reporter who has gotten wind of this fiasco, but since he has apparently fallen from grace he can't get anybody to listen to him. But somebody is interested in him, which gets our boy River interested, and since all he does at Slough House is busy work, he starts following the reporter around. Up till now, nothing very much is happening. But then River sees someone break into the reporter's house and now everything dissolves into chaos.

Season 1, 6 episodes, 45 minutes each.

Cast of Slow Horses
Actor		Character		Affiliation	Location	Role
Antonio	Aakeel	Hassan	Ahmed	Leeds University		student	kidnapped by the Sons of Albion
Chris	Coghill	Hobbs		MI5	Dogs
Chris	Reilly	Nick	Duffy	MI5	Dogs		head
Steven	Waddington	Jed	Moody	MI5	Dogs
Freddie	Fox	James 'Spider'	Webb	MI5	Regent's Park	Agent	Jerk
Sophie	Okonedo	Ingrid	Tearney	MI5	Regent's Park	Director General	First Desk
Kristin Scott	Thomas	Diana	Taverner	MI5	Regent's Park	Deputy Director	Second Desk
Gary	Oldman	Jackson	Lamb	MI5	Slough House	Boss
Christopher	Chung	Roddy	Ho	MI5	Slough House	Agent	hacker
Olivia	Cooke	Sidonie 'Sid'	Baker	MI5	Slough House	Agent	our girl?
Dustin	Demri-Burns	Min	Harper	MI5	Slough House	Agent
Rosalind	Eleazar	Louisa	Guy	MI5	Slough House	Agent
Paul	Higgins	Struan	Loy	MI5	Slough House	Agent
Jack	Lowden	River	Cartwright	MI5	Slough House	Agent	Our hero
Saskia	Reeves	Catherine	Standish	MI5	Slough House	Agent	number 2
James	Faulkner	Charles	Partner	MI5	former	Director General
Sam	Hazeldine	Alan	Black	MI5		undercover	Moe
Brian	Vernel	Curly		Sons of Albion			fanatic
David	Walmsley	Larry		Sons of Albion
Stephen	Walters	Zeppo		Sons of Albion
Samuel	West	Peter	Judd			MP
Paul	Hilton	Robert	Hobden			Journalist	Gadfly
Jonathan	Pryce	David	Cartwright			Our boy's grandfather

Character notes:

Standish is Lamb's long suffering number 2

I question whether Sid is 'our girl' because she gets shot early on and we only see her once more in hospital and at the end Roddy and Jack find that all of the digital records of her have been erased, it's like she never existed, which is weird, but it kind of paves the way for her to return in later seasons. Or not, I dunno.

Note that the character names of the three stooges are in the fact the names of the Three Stooges. Ok Moe was actually an MI5 Agent sent in to stir up shit and Zeppo is technically a Marx Brother, but you get the idea.

Brave New World

Rapid-Onset Political Enlightenment

Excellent story about political propaganda in the USA in the 21st century.

It's a little long. It talks about the collapse of traditional media and the rise of social media.

How Barack Obama Built An Omnipotent Thought-Control Machine... And How It Was Destroyed by David Samuels

Excerpt: 

When I wrote about Rhodes’ ambitious program to sell the Iran deal, I advanced the term “echo chambers” to describe the process by which the White House and its wider penumbra of think tanks and NGOs generated an entirely new class of experts who credentialed each other on social media in order to advance assertions that would formerly have been seen as marginal or not credible, thereby overwhelming the efforts of traditional subject-area gatekeepers and reporters to keep government spokespeople honest. In constructing these echo chambers, the White House created feedback loops that could be gamed out in advance by clever White House aides, thereby influencing and controlling the perceptions of reporters, editors and congressional staffers, and the elusive currents of “public opinion” they attempted to follow. If you saw how the game worked from the inside, you understood that the new common wisdom was not a true “reflection” of what anyone in particular necessarily believed, but rather the deliberate creation of a small class of operatives who used new technologies to create and control larger narratives that they messaged to target audiences on digital platforms, and which often presented themselves to their targets as their own naturally occurring thoughts and feelings, which they would then share with people like themselves. . . .

What I did not imagine at the time was that Obama’s successor in the White House would not be Hillary Clinton but Donald Trump. Nor did I foresee that Trump would himself become the target of a messaging campaign that would make full use of the machine that Obama had built, along with elements of the American security state. Being physically inside the White House, it turned out, was a mere detail of power; even more substantial power lay in controlling the digital switchboard that Obama had built, and which it turned out he still controlled. . . .

A key technique used in the Obama's 'digital switchboard':

permission structures - is most commonly defined as a means of providing “scaffolding for someone to embrace change they might otherwise reject.” This “scaffolding” provides:

• social proof (most people in your situation are now deciding to) 
• new information
• changed circumstances
• compromise

As one author put it, “with many applications to politics, one could argue that effective Permission Structures will shift the Overton Window, introducing new conversations into the mainstream that might previously have been considered marginal or fringe.” 

Later on we get this: 

The effect of the permission structure machine is to instill and maintain obedience to voices coming from outside yourself, regardless of the obvious gaps in logic and functioning that they create. The clinical term for this state is schizophrenia, . . . 

Samual's essay names a bunch of people and books, some of whom I knew and some I didn't. I collected them all in a spreadsheet.

Note: The first time I opened the essay, all I got was a plain orange screen. There is supposed to be a giant image there, but for some reason it didn't load. Anyway, scroll down a bit and you will get to the text.

Assange

Stolen entire from Aljazeera, mouthpiece of Qatar Islamists.

Julian Assange enroute from London to Australia

Iraq to NSA spying: The biggest revelations by Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks unearthed documents ranging from conflicts within the US Democrats to toxic waste dumping in West Africa. 

By Al Jazeera Staff 25 June 2024

On Monday, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, was released from prison after fighting a legal battle spanning more than 14 years.

In 2006, Assange launched the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, a platform that allows users to anonymously submit secret, classified documents and videos. The most recent publication by the platform was in 2021.

The New York-based Nation magazine reported in January 2024 that Assange said WikiLeaks was no longer able to publish documents since potential whistleblowers were thwarted following his imprisonment, United States government surveillance and funding cuts.

During the years it functioned, the whistleblower platform published classified documents that had been never seen before – embarrassing governments, causing diplomatic standoffs and forcing policy changes.

Here is a look at 10 such leaks by the platform:

Report about toxic waste in the Ivory Coast

In 2009, WikiLeaks released the Minton Report that exposed how an internal report commissioned by Singapore-headquartered multinational company Trafigura concluded that its dumping of 540,000 litres of toxic waste, including harmful chemicals, in the Ivory Coast potentially led to “burns to the skin, eyes and lungs, vomiting, diarrhoea, loss of consciousness and death”.

The United Nations reported that 108,000 people were affected by this dumping of waste.

Cablegate

In 2010, WikiLeaks started building out its Public Library of US Diplomacy (PLUSD), which is a growing collection of 3,326,538 US diplomatic cables between American diplomats posted to 274 consulates and embassies from 1966 to 2010, and their colleagues and bosses, including back home at the State Department.

In the first round of these leaks, 250,000 cables were released to the public – arguably the single largest such dump of confidential documents ever released.

The leaks included embarrassing details of how US diplomats perceived some of their foreign counterparts and nuggets of conversations where foreign officials, including many in high positions today, expressed frustrations with their own governments.

Afghanistan war files

In October 2010, the whistleblower site released 90,000 classified documents on the US war in Afghanistan.

The United States launched the Afghanistan war in 2001, following the September 11 attacks that year, finally withdrawing its forces from the country in 2021.

The documents painted a picture of the war – and the US struggle against the Taliban – that was very different from the public posture of confidence adopted by Washington.

Iraq war files

Also in October 2010, WikiLeaks made public almost 400,000 secret US files on the Iraq war.

In 2003, the US government under President George W Bush invaded Iraq.

The documents, from 2004 to 2009, showed that the civilian deaths in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were much higher than the numbers being reported. The leaks represented the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history.

Collateral murder – Iraq helicopter video

Among the most prominent of WikiLeaks revelations, in April 2010, was the release of video footage showing a US Apache helicopter attack which killed a dozen unarmed people, including two Reuters journalists, Namir Noor Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

The video, filmed from the chopper’s cockpit shows a US missile strike and shooting on a square in a Baghdad neighbourhood in July 2007, according to WikiLeaks.

The Guantanamo files

In April 2011, WikiLeaks released secret documents spanning thousands of pages to select US and European media outlets.

These documents unearthed how the Geneva Conventions were being violated routinely in the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. The documents, dating from 2002 to 2008 showed the abuse of 800 prisoners, some of them as young as 14.

At least 150 of these prisoners were found to be innocent Afghans or Pakistanis who were rounded up as part of frantic intelligence gathering and then imprisoned for years, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and the so-called “war on terror”.

The Syria files

In July 2012, WikiLeaks began making public two million emails from 680 Syrian political figures and ministries working with the Bashar al-Assad regime between August 2006 to March 2012.

The emails unearthed the involvement of European companies in the surveillance and crackdown on Syrian civilians. One such company was Italian-government-owned Selex, which continued to expand its contract with the Syrian police, despite sanctions.

The emails also exposed how PR company Brown Lloyd James (BLJ) was paid to engineer a now-deleted Vogue article about al-Assad’s wife Asma, according to WikiLeaks.

NSA spying

In 2015, the whistleblower website released details of illegal intercepts from the US electronic spy organisation, National Security Agency (NSA).

In a series of publications released from 2015 to 2017, WikiLeaks said the US, using the NSA, was also routinely spying on foreign officials from Japan, the European Union, Israel, Germany and Brazil.

Additionally, the whistleblower said the NSA intercepted communications between former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

WikiLeaks said that the NSA was not only spying on international politicians but also civilians. In 2017, it tweeted that the NSA could hack Pakistan’s mobile networks.

Sony Pictures hack

In 2015, WikiLeaks released at least 170,000 emails and more than 20,000 documents from a 2014 cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The leak was around the same time Sony was set to release the film about a fictional American plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The emails also revealed that female celebrities such as Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence were paid less than their male counterparts in the 2013 crime comedy film American Hustle.

US Democratic Party emails leaked

In 2016, WikiLeaks exposed 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the US Democratic Party national leadership.

The emails exposed that even though the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the party’s principal committee, pledged impartiality in the 2016 presidential race, it appeared to act against Bernie Sanders in favour of Hillary Clinton.

The leaks resulted in the resignations of five top DNC officials including the chair, CFO, CEO, communications director and finance director. Clinton accused WikiLeaks and Assange of colluding with Russia to raise questions about the credibility of the US election process. She lost the 2016 presidential race to Donald Trump.

I am glad Julian was released. I always thought the charges were bullshit and I still think so. The US Federal Government seems to be in the hands of idiotic maniacs, or maybe it's maniacal idiots. Somebody needs to bring the smack down on those useless fools.

Tulsi Gabbard

Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) speaks at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, February 22, 2024. ©  Global Look Press / Ron Sachs / CNP

RT reports:

Former Democrat lawmaker endorses Trump for US president

Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii has denounced her former party as enemies of democracy driven by a lust for power, while praising the Republican favorite for the presidential nomination, Donald Trump.

Gabbard was once the vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, but resigned in 2016 to protest the “rigging” of the party primaries against Bernie Sanders and in favor of Hillary Clinton. On Thursday, she spoke at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held just outside the US capital.

In her speech, Gabbard denounced the “Democrat elite and the swamp creatures in Washington” as having no respect for Americans and their rights, and being “driven by their insatiable hunger for power.”

Democrats claim that Trump will “destroy our democracy” if elected, she argued.

“They say he will be the dictator-in-chief, that if he’s elected it will be the last election this country sees. It’s laughable. This is so crazy, it’s laughable. They’re justifying their actions by telling themselves that they need to destroy our democracy in order to save it. It’s lunacy and it’s the mindset and mentality of dictators,” said Gabbard. “They are waging a multi-front battle and they will stop at nothing until they’re successful.”

She praised Trump as “a fighter” whose strength and resilience come from “a sincere love and concern for the future of our country and his care for the American people.” Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, whom she endorsed in 2020, would “crumble” under a fraction of the pressure and attacks currently directed against Trump, she said.

Gabbard denounced attempts by multiple US states to take Trump off the ballot, as well as prosecutions intended to convict him of anything ahead of the November vote. The most recent judgment against Trump’s business in New York, she said, was “very clearly a politically motivated hit job.”

The speech “sounded like an audition for the vice-presidency,” according to the Guardian, which disapproved of Gabbard’s message. The British outlet noted that she was met with “a standing ovation and cheers” and “notably more enthusiasm” than former British PM Liz Truss, who also addressed the gathering.

Trump is seeking a rematch with Biden, who officially won the 2020 election with the most votes in US history. Earlier this week, he reportedly mentioned Gabbard as a possible running mate.

The 42-year-old lieutenant-colonel in the US Army Reserve served in the House of Representatives from 2013 to 2021. She left the Democrats in 2022, denouncing them as elitist warmongers driven by “cowardly wokeness” who sought to divide Americans by “racializing every issue.”

I like Tulsi.

The Boss & Stupidity

Stupid Hillary
I haven't verified whether Hillary actually said this. For my purposes it doesn't matter.

I don't like being the boss. Being the boss means dealing with people. Unfortunately, you don't get to choose just what kind of people you have to deal with. If you can put together a good team of pleasant, energetic, cooperative people, it can be great. But inevitably there is going to be someone who is causing problems. It might be an employee, an important customer, or a supplier who isn't holding up his end of the deal. And when you investigate the problem you find it's some kind of bullshit that wouldn't have happened if the dumb clucks who were supposed to take care it of simply did their job.

Fortunately I found a nice little technical niche where I didn't have to deal with very many people. It was a job so there were people, but the technical work pretty much consumed me. I only popped my head up out of my hole when I had an answer to the problem du jour.

Lately I've been thinking about the electorate, the citizens of the USA who vote. And then I was thinking about intelligence and how half of the population has an IQ that is under 100. I don't know very many stupid people, if I know any at all. I think the reason for that is that I tend to avoid stupid people. It's not something I do consciously. I'm not sure, but I think it depends on whether they exhibit any intelligence in our conversation. Or maybe that conversation has to tick several of my subconscious requirement boxes and intelligence is only one of those.

And then today I tripped over the meme shown at the top. You might be offended or you might be overjoyed by the appearance of that meme, but it doesn't mean she's wrong. It's just a plain fact, the country if full of stupid people and if you want to get elected you need to tailor your message to appeal to those folks who are only playing with half a deck.

We can have all kinds of highfalutin conversations about any number of esoteric topics, but that doesn't mean shit unless you are able to turn it into something you can sell to Joe Sixpack, and then sell it to him.

Now it might be that the intelligence of the average voter might be slightly higher than 100. It might be that people with low intelligence just don't vote. I'm sure someone has done a study on it.

The Julie Principle

Chic - Le Freak
Every time Trump opens his mouth, liberals freak out, hence the above tune. Jack Marshall has something to say about this:

When a characteristic or a behavior pattern appears to be hard-wired into someone, it makes no sense to keep complaining about it. You either resolve to tolerate it ( and accept responsibility for the consequences of doing so), or decide that it is too much to endure, meaning that the relationship has to end.  “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…” [ Note: this is the most famous lyric in the second most famous song in “Showboat,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man o’ Mine,” sung by the tragic, abused mulatto Julie.]
. . .
Yesterday, many, not several but many, of my Angry Left Facebook friends posted links to stories attacking Trump’s silly tweet about him really winning the popular vote and there being millions of fraudulent votes for Hillary Clinton. “Is he going to do this sort of thing his entire administration?” one friend asked.
YES! YES HE IS! OF COURSE HE IS! DON’T YOU KNOW THIS ALREADY? ARE YOU REALLY GOING TO FLIP OUT AT EVERY SINGLE  INSTANCE WHEN TRUMP SAYS OR TWEETS SOMETHING STUPID LIKE THIS?

  Via Windy Pundit

Update June 2019 replaced missing video.

Secret City

Secret City - Trailer season 1
Short (6 episodes) series about modern day espionage in Australia. The arch villain reminds me of Hillary Clinton. That's not a coincidence, is it?

Everyone is chasing a SIM card from a smart phone. Supposedly it's contains a secret that someone is willing to kill to protect. The government security outfits (an alphabet soup of acronyms, much like what we have here in the USA) is very interested in this tiny little computer part.

One government agency has a TSA like security protocol for anyone coming into the building. They even have cell phone lockers for employees where employees can leave their smart phones when they come into the building. But the employees use computers inside the building that are connected to the outside world. How secure is that? It could be very secure if the people who are in charge of computer security know what they are doing, but if they are using any kind of commercial software there are going to be holes.

Problem is the way modern computers use RAM (random access memory). Any computer program is composed of two parts: code and data. The code is the program (the sequence of instructions) that the CPU (central processing unit) executes, and the data is what those instructions operate on. Both code and data reside in RAM and while there are flags that can be set that will tell you whether a particular block of RAM contains code or data, those flags can be changed, so what was once data can now become code and vice versa.

You can test your code all you want, verify that it has no holes and will not let anyone do anything that would allow the release of confidential information, but if you allow a program to change that flag on a block of data (which undoubtedly came from outside), you will now have a wild program running loose in your system.

Modern commercial computer software does this all the time. Javascript, which is what every web app (application program) in the world uses, comes down the pipe as data and is fed to the Javascript engine which interprets the Javascript instructions and executes bits of code as instructed. Now the Javascript engine may be very secure, but unless someone you trust has gone through it and verified that it cannot possibly do anything bad, how do you know? And is it even possible to verify it? I suppose, if you have set up some hard and fast boundary conditions, it might be.

Java, on the other hand, is not allowed on Chromebooks because it cannot be contained. You could make a Java interpreter that was constrained, but that is another software project that would need to be tested, vetted and verified.

I'm thinking if you want a secure computer system, you would need to write the code yourself, which means you are going to need an army of programmers. Big government agencies can afford that, but there are not too many people who are creative enough to write code and are docile enough to work with the restrictions imposed by working for a big Federal agency. Plus, programmers are people too, so some of them are liable to take short cuts, like 'borrowing' code from outside. And there might be a point where your system becomes so complex it is not possible to know whether every component has been rigorously tested and is known to be secure.

All it takes is one little loophole known to one guy and the whole thing can be compromised.

Small Business Opportunity

Cadillac Hood Ornament

Buy an old car, preferably a big old American land cruiser. You don't want to pay too much because there might be nothing left when we get done. It doesn't have to run or drive well, though it would help if you could drive it to our venue (what a stupid word. I don't think this word was part of our common vocabulary until maybe 10 or 20 years ago. What did we used to use? Theater, maybe? Stadium? Something a little more specific than venue). It would also help if the body was in decent shape. In other words, it needs to look good, but that's about all.

Now you go to your local ceramic shop and commission a hood ornament size statue of Donald (and / or Hillary, depending on your mood) and you order up a hundred or so plaster replicas. A little paint might make them more attractive. They need a hole in the base so they can be dropped down over a peg, a peg that you will stick in the hood of your car, right where the hood ornament goes.

When these preparations are complete, you drive downtown, somewhere where there a lot of people. Pick up a baseball bat along the way. Pull one of your statuettes out of the back seat and drop him on the post on the hood. Put up a sign: $10 to take a crack at the Donald and wait for your customers to queue up. I think you could probably make a fortune, possibly even enough to pay for the car, which might very well get destroyed by overenthusiastic customers.

Plaster-of-Paris might not be the best material. Whatever they use to make exploding golf balls might be better.

Donald & Hillary

Donald & Hillary, via Getty Images

I hope they will be happy together.

Local Perspective

Aberdeenshire business owner
wins presidential election

Donald Trump visited his Balmedie course earlier this year.

Donald Trump, owner of Trump International Golf Links at Balmedie, has been elected as the next President of the USA. Mr Trump, whose golf course opened in July 2012, beat off strong competition from Democrat rival Hillary Clinton. He has visited the area on several occasions, the most recent being earlier this year. Mr Trump is half Scottish - his mother Mary MacLeod being from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. She grew up in a simple croft until she landed in Manhattan at the age of 20 and her first language was Gaelic. - The Ellon (Scotland) Times

Via California Bob

Donald & Hillary, Sitting in a Tree

Trump Force One and Clinton’s campaign plane at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas

I spotted this picture in this morning's Wall Street Journal. I found it online at The Sun.

I am not voting in this election, mostly because both candidates are part of the established power base, and that base is all wrapped up in their own chickenshit. Real problems in the world are getting short shrift and I don't see anything changing.

The establishment is like a giant ocean liner charging ahead. It couldn't make a drastic course change it it wanted too. It has too much mass and too much momentum, so they spend their time and energy arguing about chickenshit, swilling cocktails and snorting coke. They might go on for a long time, but if they hit an iceberg, it's the people in steerage who are going to drown.

Word of the Day

1918

Gold Star Family - The term Gold Star family is a modern reference that comes from the Service Flag. These flags/banners were first flown by families during World War I. The flag included a blue star for every immediate family member serving in the armed forces of the United States, during any period of war or hostilities in which the armed forces of the United States were engaged. If that loved one died, the blue star was replaced by a gold star. This allowed members of the community to know the price that the family had paid in the cause of freedom.

 Peter doesn't much care for Hillary, to put it mildly. Can't say as I blame him. She is the very model of a limousine Bolshevik, and I don't much care for them. Now, in case you haven't been paying attention, Khizr Khan (a Hillary supporter) and the Donald have been throwing verbal bombs at each other. Doing a little point and click on this controversy takes me to Snopes dot com where I find this new-to-me term.

Trumpconian Economics

Salon article from four years ago. Credit: Tomas Skopal

There was a story in The Wall Street Journal the other day about how the destruction of American industry by competition from China and the resulting unemployment is where a large portion of Trump's support is coming from. No linkee because, well, paywall. Then today we have this column from The Washington Post:

The brave new world of robots and lost jobs By David Ignatius
WASHINGTON -- Job insecurity is a central theme of the 2016 campaign, fueling popular anger about trade deals and immigration. But economists warn that much bigger job losses are ahead in America -- driven not by foreign competition but by advancing technology.
A look at the numbers suggests that America is having the wrong debate this year. Economic security won't come from renegotiating trade deals, as Donald Trump claimed in a speech in Detroit Monday, or rebuilding infrastructure, as Hillary Clinton argued in Warren, Michigan, on Thursday. These are palliatives.
The deeper problem facing America is how to provide meaningful work and good wages for the tens of millions of truck drivers, accountants, factory workers and office clerks whose jobs will disappear in coming years because of robots, driverless vehicles and "machine learning" systems.
The political debate needs to engage the taboo topic of guaranteeing economic security to families -- through a universal basic income, or a greatly expanded earned-income tax credit, or a 1930s-style plan for public-works employment. Ranting about bad trade deals won't begin to address the problem.

We are growing a huge underclass of underemployed, unemployed and homeless people. Yes, there is large portion of our population who are getting along just fine, but overall the situation is getting worse. If half of the people have twice as much food as they need, and the other half has none, the average is that everyone has enough to eat. But that nice little bit of arithmetic is not going to keep half of the population from starving to death.
    I don't like the idea of giving money to lazy lay-abouts who are too lazy and/or stupid to find a job, but I also think that they are a very small minority. You wouldn't know it by watching the news, but most people want to be doing something useful, and given a little money, they could. But if we continue to crush the underclass you are not going to see anything good. All you will see is crushed and broken people.
    The Amish seem to be doing okay, but farming takes land, and with the price of farmland these days, even a small farm is worth a million dollars. And I'm not sure that there is enough farmland in the USA to make enough farms for all of the unemployed. And that's kind of going backwards, isn't it?
    Maybe we should reverse the situation. Give everyone a basic allowance and offer jobs to the highest bidder. Yes, we have jobs, but it's going to cost you. You want to work? How much are you willing to pay for that opportunity? Naw, that probably wouldn't work, there aren't that many jobs that people would be willing to pay to have, especially if there was no other reward.
     On the other hand, there are huge numbers of people who spend untold hours and thousands of dollars creating things for no other reason than they want to.

Hillary

Trump the jackass & Hillary the smooth sophisticate

I am trying to ignore the US campaigns for President. Most of what passes for news is useless drivel. I suspect Trump is all smoke and noise and he will go down in flames. But I've been wrong about every Presidential election before this, so maybe not.
     There is one thing I don't understand and that is why Hillary is so often vilified. Yes, I know she's a Democrat and Democrat's are known supporters of Gun Control, and therefor the enemy of every right thinking American, but it seems to go way beyond that.
    This morning I found a story in my inbox from Michael Arnovitz that delves into this phenomena. I found it that it confirmed my suspicions: the people who hate Hillary hate her because she's a woman who is trying to step into a role traditionally held by men. The stupider the jackass, the louder he brays.

P.S. Lots of pictures of the dynamic duo out there, and yes, I picked one that showed Hillary to advantage. Bluster can be useful, but I've had my fill of Trump.

The Homesman

  Homesman Tommy Lee Jones final dance scene
Comrade Misfit put up a post about this film today. She didn't like it much. I didn't like it much either, but I sure do remember it. It wasn't a bad movie, you know, with bad writing, bad acting and a bad story. I didn't like it because it was unrelentingly grim and depressing. And sad. The death of Hillary Swank's character was particularly disturbing.
    The movie is set in the 1850's in Nebraska and Iowa. On the plus side, it gives a realistic view of some of the trials people suffered, stuff that is given short shrift in most Westerns. Also, there is the hotel in the middle of nowhere, the burning of said hotel, the importance of shoes, the suddenly worthless money, and Tommy dancing a jig. Twice. That alone was worth the price of admission.

Sheila O'Malley has good review on Roger Ebert dot com.

Law

I came across some bit about Hillary Clinton talking up gun-control and I had a bit of a disconnect because I have heard her say some things that make a lot of sense. Why is she suddenly spouting non-sense? And then I had a vision of rich, privileged, white folks going to their social gatherings wearing gender appropriate dress up clothes (suits, ties, white shirts and fancy watches for the men, dresses, fancy shoes and pearls for the girls), talking about current events (did you see what Madge was wearing? I hear Bob got a new job.) and somebody mentions a shooting and everybody says how awful it is and somebody should do something, and you know if we just banned all the guns we wouldn't have these problems. Everyone agrees and then they move on to the next bright spot in their cocktail party universe.

The NRA seems to be the only organization that has any real effect of politics. True, it's only on one narrow subject, and it doesn't seem to be changing the path to hell we are all following, but at least we will be armed when we get there.

Many, if not most, of the ills in this country come from people trying to tap into the stream of riches this country is generating. Production has been optimized and automated to the point that we don't need nearly as many people working in manufacturing. It's similar to what happened with agriculture a hundred years ago. Used to be 99% of everyone lived and worked on the farm. The little bit of surplus they produced was enough to keep the king and his knights fed. Then came the industrial revolution and everyone moved to the city and worked in factories. Now we are in the midst of the computer revolution and we are separating into two classes: those who have enough money that they can spend all their time making YouTube videos, and those who have to work a minimum wage job in order to be able to get high on the weekend.

Okay, there are two other classes: those people who still have jobs making stuff, which is getting smaller every day, and those who spend their time redistributing the wealth this country generates. Well, somebody has to do it, otherwise it would all end up in Warren Buffet's pocket. Warren Buffet might be a good investor, but I don't think he is very good at keeping people busy, which is what we really need.

There are three factors that determine how you feel about your job:

1. Money
2. Engagement. Do you actually enjoy the work itself?
3. The people you work with.

A high rate of pay can compensate for having to do a stoopid job with stoopid people. This of course depends on your definition of stoopid. Likewise doing work you enjoy can somewhat compensate for poor wages and poor company. The last one I think is the biggest. You can put up with a lot of crap if you are with people you like.

The Wolf of Wall Street

Different movie by Charles Ferguson, but a similar topic, and this image doesn't give any particular slimeball any publicity.

I read a review of the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, and I read about how some guy stood up and called it 'crap' or something at the premier. On one hand I think it's probably a pretty good movie, I mean this is Scorsese, and it might even have some kind of positive effect on the people of this country. But I didn't want to go see it. It might be a cathartic experience when the bad guys get their comeuppance, but having to watch their criminal behavior might be more than I can stand. And then I read this story by Christina McDowell in LA Weekly, so now I have an excuse to not go see it. She might be wrong about what kind of effect the movie will have on people. Then again, with the endless parade of douche-baggery that our modern world offers, maybe she's not.

Via Comrade Misfit

P.S. Charles Ferguson's story about why he isn't making a movie about Hillary Clinton, or Money Talks, Part 3.

Saudi Arabia Rejects U.N. Security Council Seat in Protest Move

Amazon

I know the powers-that-be are effing jackasses, but I was still stunned by the news that Saudi Arabia was offered a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Never mind that they rejected the offer. Whose idea was it to propose them for membership in the first place? This news irritated me so much I sent a note to both of my Senators and my Congresswoman:

Whose idea was it to propose Saudi Arabia for membership on the United Nations Security Council? Which half wit thought selling them $7 billion worth of missiles was a good idea? Saudi Arabia is NOT our friend. Saudi Arabia is the source of all jihadist violence. Why are we even talking to them anymore? You want the CIA to do something useful for once? Have them pull down the house of Saud.

From Wikipedia's article on state sponsored terrorism:

Saudi Arabia is said to be the world's largest source of funds for Salafi jihadist terrorist militant groups, such as al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Taiba in South Asia, and donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide, according to Hillary Clinton.^[110] According to a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state, "Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups."^[111]

For your amusement, here's a story from 2009 by Glenn Greenwald that sheds a little light on the whole war on terror thing. Saudis want Jihad? I say we give them some right upside their collective heads.

P.S. Unfortunately the Wikipedia article quotes Hillary, who might be one of the most hated people in the world. I do not understand why that is, other than that she is a Democrat and therefor probably supports gun control. Or I dunno, maybe she is secretly an African Muslim Communist. Well, haters gonna hate.

Name Obama's New War

Via Tam. You might recognize this photo as the same one where the girls were photo-shopped out last year.

The picture ran in many publications, including the Brooklyn-based Hasidic newspaperDi Tzeitung. But Di Tzeitung’s version was missing two of the 13 officials: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Director for Counterterrorism Audrey Tomason. 

Time Warner Cable Drops Current TV Upon Sale To Al Jazeera

Ed Anger Says

From Michael Calderone's story on the Huffington Post:

"Some media observers interpreted the move as motivated by politics."

Ya think?

"Al Jazeera English received awards and acclaim for its comprehensive coverage of the Arab Spring protests in 2011, yet it has still faced an uphill battle in gaining cable distribution in the U.S., likely due to lingering fears of anti-American programming raised in the George W. Bush years. The Bush administration condemned Al Jazeera for its Arabic-language network's coverage of the Iraq War and broadcasting of al Qaeda tapes, even targeting its headquarters in Baghdad during the Iraq War. Perceptions that the news organization, which is funded by Qatar's government, is anti-American continue even as U.S. political leaders such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) have praised the network's reporting abroad."

I luvs me some stoopid people. Wait a minute, Calderone? Haven't I heard that name somewhere before?
The picture is from Weekly World News, which should tell you something. Inspired by Dustbury.

Update December 2022 replaced missing picture.