Friday, November 16, 2018
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #442
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Schadenfreude Feels So Good!
scha·den·freu·de
/ˈSHädənˌfroidə/
noun
- pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune.
Jeffrey Toobin rips ’98lb weakling Jeff Flake’ over anti-Trump stunt: ‘McConnell will squash him like a bug’
The outgoing Arizona Republican was blocked by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from bringing the legislation before the Senate for a vote, The Hill reported.
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin slammed the “98-pound weakling named Jeff Flake” who is all talk and little else, telling a CNN panel Wednesday that the retiring senator’s threats are without merit.
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“Is there anything more empty in American politics than a threat from Jeff Flake, who has made his entire career by folding every time Mitch McConnell breathes hard?” Toobin asked on “The Situation Room.”
I have informed the Majority Leader that I will not vote to advance any of the 21 judicial nominees pending in the Judiciary Committee, or vote to confirm the 32 judges awaiting action on the floor, until the Mueller protection bill is brought to the full Senate for a vote.
“Mitch McConnell is going to squash Jeff Flake like a bug, as he always does. And the idea that Jeff Flake is going to hold up anything to protect Robert Mueller is, in my opinion, absurd,” Toobin continued.
“Mitch McConnell has said we don’t need a law to protect Robert Mueller, and that means there’s not going to be a law to protect Robert Mueller. I mean, Mitch McConnell is in charge,” he added. “Jeff Flake is wandering off into the darkness these last few days as a senator. I mean, this is not a fair fight. Mitch McConnell and a 98-pound weakling named Jeff Flake is just not––you know, that is not going to happen.”
Toobin noted that this will mean the administration will “have a free hand to do with Mueller what they will. And we’ll see what happens.”
McConnell was re-elected as Senate majority leader on Wednesday, with a vote included from Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott who posed in a photo with McConnell and other incoming Republicans senators despite the recount going...
Venezuela Is Implementing China's Orwellian, Totalitarian, "Social Credit" System...
In April 2008, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez dispatched Justice Ministry officials to visit counterparts in the Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen. Their mission, according to a member of the Venezuela delegation, was to learn the workings of China’s national identity card program.
Chávez, a decade into his self-styled socialist revolution, wanted help to provide ID credentials to the millions of Venezuelans who still lacked basic documentation needed for tasks like voting or opening a bank account. Once in Shenzhen, though, the Venezuelans realized a card could do far more than just identify the recipient.
There, at the headquarters of Chinese telecom giant ZTE Corp, they learned how China, using smart cards, was developing a system that would help Beijing track social, political and economic behavior. Using vast databases to store information gathered with the card’s use, a government could monitor everything from a citizen’s personal finances to medical history and voting activity.
“What we saw in China changed everything,” said the member of the Venezuelan delegation, technical advisor Anthony Daquin. His initial amazement, he said, gradually turned to fear that such a system could lead to abuses of privacy by Venezuela’s government. “They were looking to have citizen control.”
The following year, when he raised concerns with Venezuelan officials, Daquin told Reuters, he was detained, beaten and extorted by intelligence agents. They knocked several teeth out with a handgun and accused him of treasonous behavior, Daquin said, prompting him to flee the country. Government spokespeople had no comment on Daquin’s account.
The project languished. But 10 years after the Shenzhen trip, Venezuela is rolling out a new, smart-card ID known as the “carnet de la patria,” or “fatherland card.” The ID transmits data about cardholders to computer servers. The card is increasingly linked by the government to subsidized food, health and other social programs most Venezuelans rely on to survive.
And ZTE, whose role in the fatherland project is detailed here for the first time, is...
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