Attribution: THE EVOLUTION OF MAN by Nikola Listes, Croatia, politicalcartoons.com
32 thoughts on “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby”
apropos of this thread and worthy of a repost, trail friend Bink’s comment from last thread:
It’s almost as if conservatives have spent 50 years dismantling public education to deliberately prevent the masses from developing critical thinking skills
The long-game is paying-off
more on this thought in an excerpt from a recent Vanity Fair piece
It’s a cynical political play, of course—a moral panic led by Republicans to leverage their base’s fears and prejudices into votes. But it’s also part of a broader “war on ideas,” as my colleague Molly Jong-Fastput it recently—a quest not just win elections but to erase, rewrite, and marginalize ideas, people, and history it deems threatening.
This dangerous anti-education crusade has arguably been most potent at the state level, where Republicans are, among other things, banning books; barring discussion of race, gender, and sexuality; undermining public education; and intimidating teachers and librarians. But their crusade also reared its head at the Supreme Court last week, when the conservative majority the GOP installed struck down affirmative action and President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan—both programs that, either in practice or in promise, strove to make education more accessible to all Americans.
“Turning back the clock…the Court indulges those who either do not know our nation’s history,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jacksonwrote in a scathing dissent in one of the two affirmative action cases decided this term, “or long to repeat it.”
When I was a kid I had one of these. You’d dial to and type one letter at a time. It was frustrating if you actually ever wanted to use it.
And now we’re back to one letter at a time.
Oh, sure.
While going through some clickbait about differences between Millennials and Boomers I realized it was very confusing. It was the typical clickbait about what Boomers know and grew up with and why Millennials do not know or care, stick shift, dial telephones and such. But, the wording was strange, Millennials and their parents type thing. That is odd, I thought. Millennials would be my grandchildren, or possibly great-grandchildren. Yeah, another clickbait of garbage, whomever did this mess probably used mass edit in the word program changing Gen X to Millennial.
Old Berman
Does Senator Ron Johnson – demanding immunity for Luft so that this multi-national con-man can testify to the House – know Where Gal Luft is? Does Chairman James Comer – still insisting Luft must testify despite the damning revelation that he has been under indictment in this country for 20 months for allegedly bribing a Trump Advisor on behalf of Chinese interests – does Chairman Comer know where Gal Luft is? Does Congresswoman Nancy Mace – still on board the sinking Luft ship and calling him quote “our witness” and promising “we are going to work as hard as we can and deliver as much evidence as we can to the American people so that they can decide whether or not Joe Biden should be in prison” – does Representative Mace know where Gal Luft is?
And if the answer to any of these questions is yes – or the answer to the question “do any of them know how to reach him through intermediaries” is yes – then why have they not communicated to the proper authorities the whereabouts of this FUGITIVE FROM THE AMERICAN JUSTICE SYSTEM AND FOREIGN SPY – and why has the Department of Justice not questioned them about what they know about Gal Luft
What do the Republicans know about Gal Luft and how long have they known it?
Most creative crap of the week — goofball Rep. Comer last night on FOX arguing that because his “game changing” so-called whistleblower (and fugitive) Gal Luft is a Chinese spy it gives him more credibility to call out Hunter’s China connection. As an old military saying goes: “Blow on one hand and crap on the other, see which one sticks”
Goofball Rep Comer. Perfect
Inflation falls to 3% in June, lowest since March 2021. Overall inflation has plunged from a peak of 9% last summer. The core measure, watched by economists, also showed notable signs of cooling in June. — AXIOS
If you want to know more about how they did it, starting with attacking public education to thwart desegregation, this is a good book to start. I read it a few years ago after hearing her on Bill Maher.
Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean
An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution.
Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority.
Poobah, bet your ass that there will be bupkis for coverage about the inflation taming that’s gone on over the last year. Hell, gasoline prices have dropped $.40 in the past 2 weeks here in East Bumfuck, but I have to admit food seems very expensive.
FOX is still saying “Bidenflation” at a 40-year high
I’m interested in the mechanics of the grand jury proceedings in Georgia. Sounds closer to my experiences as a grand juror in Jefferson County, Alabama, more so than other grand juries stories that have recently been reported on. There seems to be differences between special grand juries and regular ones. I served on a regular one. There was no “voir diring” in our case, we were randomly selected from the big jury pool, herded away with no explanation into a room and rather quickly sworn in. It was pretty shocking, like getting pulled over and arrested. The only way you could get out of it was to plead hardship to the judge. If you thought you could go awol, you were warned the sheriff would be out for you that day.
*also “secret” – we were told to keep our mouths shut about any cases we heard.
Maureen Dowdy a ridiculous person posing as an opinion commentator.
Her article on Hunter Biden’s child is a fantasy and she clearly had not read
the story writtenby her colleague. She is a big fat liar and should retire.
“The chief executive of an Indian startup laid off 90% of his support staff after the firm built a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence that he says can handle customer queries much faster than his employees.”
“…the chatbot — built by one of the firm’s data scientists in two days — could respond to initial customer queries instantly, whereas his staff’s first responses were sent after an average of 1 minute and 44 seconds.”
The news of the layoffs comes as fears that AI will result in mass job losses have escalated eight months after Open AI released its AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT to the public.
“ChatGPT has stunned users with its ability to provide lengthy, sophisticated responses to questions. Its potential uses — from writing high school essays to dispensing medical guidance — have heightened concerns that the technology could oust real people from their jobs.”
“Low- and middle-skilled jobs are most at risk from AI, including in construction, farming, fishing and forestry, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said Tuesday.”
Eventually, the coders will code themselves out of a job if AI can do that, too. While 2022 will be remembered as the great resignation, 2025 (if it takes that long) will be remembered as the great replacement.
While white nationalists are worried about being replaced by folks who don’t look or sound like them, the reality is that AI will replace us all.
The problem is, if folks can’t make money they can’t be consumers of the products you’re selling, so you are slowly starving your business to death while the jobless may literally be starving. Someone needs to get a handle on this; basic, living income for all.
The James Webb Space Telescope was designed to tunnel deeper into space and farther back in time than any previous observatory, with the audacious goal of seeing the very first galaxies that lit up the young universe. Creating pretty pictures was always a pleasant but ancillary feature of having this amazing new piece of hardware out in space.
Today, 365 days after NASA unveiled the mission’s first batch of data and images, it’s clear that the JWST can produce the hard science and the beauty shots with equal aplomb. NASA is marking the first anniversary of the JWST’s scientific debut with the release of a new image, demonstrating the telescope’s ability to re-envision the universe. The dramatic, somewhat hallucinatory image captures the dynamism of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth, where planetary systems like our own could be in the initial stages of forming.
…
Stunning stuff. I left the links in because the images make the comment too long. If they screw up the site, feel free to remove them.
“We might have accidentally killed the only life we ever found on Mars nearly 50 years ago”
“Life may have been discovered on Mars almost 50 years ago, but it could have been unintentionally destroyed. This theory arises from the ambiguous results of life detection experiments conducted by NASA’s Viking landers in the mid-1970s.”
“Life on Mars could have adapted to the arid environment by existing within salt rocks and absorbing water directly from the atmosphere. The Viking experiments, which involved adding water to soil samples, might have overwhelmed these potential microbes, leading to their demise.”
“Elon Musk on Wednesday announced the formation of a new company focused on artificial intelligence…”
“The company, called xAI, unveiled a website and a team of a dozen staffers. The new company will be led by Musk, according to the website, and “will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards our mission.”
“The goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe,” the website states, echoing language Musk has used before to describe his AI ambitions.”
“Musk was an early backer of ChatGPT-creator OpenAI, but later criticized the company for inputting safeguards that aim to prevent the viral chatbot from spewing biased or sexist responses.”
“The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly,” Musk tweeted in December, responding to a Twitter user who asked OpenAI’s CEO if it was possible to “turn off the woke settings” on ChatGPT.
“Musk’s announcement of the new company comes months after he warned in an interview that he thinks AI could cause “civilization destruction” and joined other tech leaders in calling for a pause in an “out of control” AI race.
I hope this megalomaniac hops on a rocket and doesn’t come back.
“The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background,” said Wray, a Republican who was appointed by Trump.
“For Republicans, this hearing is little more than performance art. It is an elaborate show designed with only two purposes in mind: to protect Donald Trump from the consequences of his actions, and to return him to the White House in the next election,” New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the committee’s top Democrat, said Wednesday.
I hope Jordan, Gaetz and a few others hop on that rocket to nowhere with Elon.
“Ray Epps, the Arizona man that conspiracy theorists falsely claim led an FBI plot to orchestrate the January 6 insurrection, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Fox News, accusing the right-wing channel and former host Tucker Carlson of defamation.”
“In the aftermath of the events of January 6th, Fox News searched for a scapegoat to blame other than Donald Trump or the Republican Party,” the lawsuit said. “Eventually, they turned on one of their own.”
“The lawsuit from Epps comes after his lawyer demanded a retraction in March over the “fanciful notion” Carlson advanced on his show.”
“In the aftermath of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, conspiracy theorists baselessly suggested that the assault was a so-called “false flag” operation staged by the federal government to make supporters of then-President Donald Trump look bad.”
To paraphrase the saying, tRUMPsky can look bad all by himself.
“Epps’ lawsuit said he was a “poorly cast villain” for Fox News and Carlson, describing him as a former Trump-voting Marine who “was an avid and loyal Fox viewer and fan of Mr. Carlson’s.” In fact, the lawsuit indicated Epps was at the US Capitol on January 6 because he was “persuaded by the lies broadcast by Fox asserting the election had been stolen.”
“In a private deposition with the House committee that investigated January 6, Epps denied that he ever worked for the FBI or for federal law enforcement, according to a transcript of his interview. He told the committee he supported Trump in 2020 and attended the DC protest because he was concerned about widespread voter fraud.”
“These denials from Epps are meaningful because it’s a crime to lie to Congress.”
“Some of America’s largest tax-prep companies have spent years sharing Americans’ sensitive financial data with tech titans including Meta and Google in a potential violation of federal law — data that in some cases was misused for targeted advertising, according to a seven-month congressional investigation.”
“The report highlights what legal experts described to CNN as a “five-alarm fire” for taxpayer privacy that could lead to government and private lawsuits, criminal penalties or perhaps even a “mortal blow” for some industry giants involved in the probe including TaxSlayer, H&R Block and TaxAct.”
“Using visitor tracking technology embedded on their websites, the three tax-prep companies allegedly sent tens of millions of Americans’ personal information to the tech industry without consent or appropriate disclosures…”
“Beyond ordinary personal data such as people’s names, phone numbers and email addresses, the list of information shared also included taxpayer data — details about people’s filing status, adjusted gross income, the size of their tax refunds and even information about the buttons and text fields they clicked on while filling out their tax forms, which could reveal what tax breaks they may have claimed or which government programs they use…”
“…the United States needs federal legislation guaranteeing every American a basic right to data privacy — an issue that has languished in Congress for years despite electronic data becoming an ever-larger part of the global economy.”
Per Mars: “Oopsies”
May have learned the reason for the Vagner “coup”. For some reason the Vagner group have turned over all their arms and munitions to the russian army. Russian army was out of arms and munitions, now they have some more. The Vagner are under fighting strength so dumping off the gear in Ukraine makes sense, now they can head to the barracks fro R&R. Guarantee the vatnics will lose those, real fast.
I already have promoted this book, Watergate A New History by Garrett M. Graff, and do it again. It fills in gaps, brings up to date information and the stuff from material released after 1978. It is a long read, but for those who lived through those years and are seeing parallels today it is important to read. For those too young, it is an important read. So much is related to today.
“Retired Memphis homicide detective Mark LeSure was found dead in front of his home Sunday morning. Police have not released a cause of death. LeSure had criticized his department over the beating death of Tyre Nichols.”
I’m going to suggest the book, How To Stand Up To A Dictator. With Bong Bing Marcos in power, and China unhappy with our increased presence in the Philippines, everything old is new, again.
BB – Thanks for the suggestion. My only memory of it was Nixon winning a second term by a landslide, and then he suddenly resigned. I didn’t understand all of the jokes Johnny Carson made, but that’s the only reason I knew the other names involved. Too young to know what was going on, and it was too recent to study in history class when I got a bit older.
Thanks for the citation, patd.
At the risk of doxxing myself, Scorpio is about as high in the sky as it gets for us Northern Hemisphere folks- it’s that time of year, again!
“It seems that they’re also doing that [selective targeting] to any group now… to groups that are simply political enemies of the current administration or at least of the Biden administration. I was the first person censored by the Biden administration, according to Judge Doughty’s decision.”
RFK, Jr. seems to be another self-important, paranoid politician.
Bink – Have the northern lights made an appearance?
Nah, i am headed to the top of the hill and try to get away from these evil street and house lights, they’re so obscenely bright 😒
…got my space music, let’s do this
💫 👀 ✌️
Old Berman:
Groups of Congressional Democrats have now separately called for investigations of Gal Luft and his influence on Congressional Republicans, investigations by the House Armed Services Committee, by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, by the House Select Committee on China, and by the House Oversight Committee. investigations into the obvious security breaches and the potential national security threat. But if the questions are about quote “security breaches,” quote “our national interests and those of our allies” quote “national security” then the investigation needs to be conducted by the Office of Homeland Security and The Office of the Director of National Intelligence because while the big red rotating, blaring siren may be Luft. But he isn’t a sitting member of the House or the Senate and this nation needs to know immediately to what degree if any, Congressman James Comer, Congressman Jim Jordan, Congresswoman Nancy Mace, Senator Ron Johnson and other Republicans, have been compromised by China, or have been targets FOR compromise by China.
COUNTDOWN: https://tinyurl.com/yck9db5m
NEW THREAD
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apropos of this thread and worthy of a repost, trail friend Bink’s comment from last thread:
more on this thought in an excerpt from a recent Vanity Fair piece
Republicans Have Staked Their Claim on Education. Democrats Can Take It Back
When I was a kid I had one of these. You’d dial to and type one letter at a time. It was frustrating if you actually ever wanted to use it.
And now we’re back to one letter at a time.
Oh, sure.
While going through some clickbait about differences between Millennials and Boomers I realized it was very confusing. It was the typical clickbait about what Boomers know and grew up with and why Millennials do not know or care, stick shift, dial telephones and such. But, the wording was strange, Millennials and their parents type thing. That is odd, I thought. Millennials would be my grandchildren, or possibly great-grandchildren. Yeah, another clickbait of garbage, whomever did this mess probably used mass edit in the word program changing Gen X to Millennial.
Old Berman
Does Senator Ron Johnson – demanding immunity for Luft so that this multi-national con-man can testify to the House – know Where Gal Luft is? Does Chairman James Comer – still insisting Luft must testify despite the damning revelation that he has been under indictment in this country for 20 months for allegedly bribing a Trump Advisor on behalf of Chinese interests – does Chairman Comer know where Gal Luft is? Does Congresswoman Nancy Mace – still on board the sinking Luft ship and calling him quote “our witness” and promising “we are going to work as hard as we can and deliver as much evidence as we can to the American people so that they can decide whether or not Joe Biden should be in prison” – does Representative Mace know where Gal Luft is?
And if the answer to any of these questions is yes – or the answer to the question “do any of them know how to reach him through intermediaries” is yes – then why have they not communicated to the proper authorities the whereabouts of this FUGITIVE FROM THE AMERICAN JUSTICE SYSTEM AND FOREIGN SPY – and why has the Department of Justice not questioned them about what they know about Gal Luft
What do the Republicans know about Gal Luft and how long have they known it?
Most creative crap of the week — goofball Rep. Comer last night on FOX arguing that because his “game changing” so-called whistleblower (and fugitive) Gal Luft is a Chinese spy it gives him more credibility to call out Hunter’s China connection. As an old military saying goes: “Blow on one hand and crap on the other, see which one sticks”
Goofball Rep Comer. Perfect
Inflation falls to 3% in June, lowest since March 2021. Overall inflation has plunged from a peak of 9% last summer. The core measure, watched by economists, also showed notable signs of cooling in June. — AXIOS
If you want to know more about how they did it, starting with attacking public education to thwart desegregation, this is a good book to start. I read it a few years ago after hearing her on Bill Maher.
Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean
An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution.
Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority.
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Chains-History-Radical-Stealth/dp/1101980966
Poobah, bet your ass that there will be bupkis for coverage about the inflation taming that’s gone on over the last year. Hell, gasoline prices have dropped $.40 in the past 2 weeks here in East Bumfuck, but I have to admit food seems very expensive.
FOX is still saying “Bidenflation” at a 40-year high
I’m interested in the mechanics of the grand jury proceedings in Georgia. Sounds closer to my experiences as a grand juror in Jefferson County, Alabama, more so than other grand juries stories that have recently been reported on. There seems to be differences between special grand juries and regular ones. I served on a regular one. There was no “voir diring” in our case, we were randomly selected from the big jury pool, herded away with no explanation into a room and rather quickly sworn in. It was pretty shocking, like getting pulled over and arrested. The only way you could get out of it was to plead hardship to the judge. If you thought you could go awol, you were warned the sheriff would be out for you that day.
*also “secret” – we were told to keep our mouths shut about any cases we heard.
Maureen Dowdy a ridiculous person posing as an opinion commentator.
Her article on Hunter Biden’s child is a fantasy and she clearly had not read
the story writtenby her colleague. She is a big fat liar and should retire.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/business/dukaan-ceo-layoffs-ai-chatbot/index.html
“The chief executive of an Indian startup laid off 90% of his support staff after the firm built a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence that he says can handle customer queries much faster than his employees.”
“…the chatbot — built by one of the firm’s data scientists in two days — could respond to initial customer queries instantly, whereas his staff’s first responses were sent after an average of 1 minute and 44 seconds.”
The news of the layoffs comes as fears that AI will result in mass job losses have escalated eight months after Open AI released its AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT to the public.
“ChatGPT has stunned users with its ability to provide lengthy, sophisticated responses to questions. Its potential uses — from writing high school essays to dispensing medical guidance — have heightened concerns that the technology could oust real people from their jobs.”
“Low- and middle-skilled jobs are most at risk from AI, including in construction, farming, fishing and forestry, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said Tuesday.”
Eventually, the coders will code themselves out of a job if AI can do that, too. While 2022 will be remembered as the great resignation, 2025 (if it takes that long) will be remembered as the great replacement.
While white nationalists are worried about being replaced by folks who don’t look or sound like them, the reality is that AI will replace us all.
The problem is, if folks can’t make money they can’t be consumers of the products you’re selling, so you are slowly starving your business to death while the jobless may literally be starving. Someone needs to get a handle on this; basic, living income for all.
Happy birthday, James Webb Telescope. WaPo:
Stunning stuff. I left the links in because the images make the comment too long. If they screw up the site, feel free to remove them.
https://bigthink.com/hard-science/accidentally-killed-life-mars/
“We might have accidentally killed the only life we ever found on Mars nearly 50 years ago”
“Life may have been discovered on Mars almost 50 years ago, but it could have been unintentionally destroyed. This theory arises from the ambiguous results of life detection experiments conducted by NASA’s Viking landers in the mid-1970s.”
“Life on Mars could have adapted to the arid environment by existing within salt rocks and absorbing water directly from the atmosphere. The Viking experiments, which involved adding water to soil samples, might have overwhelmed these potential microbes, leading to their demise.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/tech/elon-musk-ai-company/index.html
“Elon Musk on Wednesday announced the formation of a new company focused on artificial intelligence…”
“The company, called xAI, unveiled a website and a team of a dozen staffers. The new company will be led by Musk, according to the website, and “will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards our mission.”
“The goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe,” the website states, echoing language Musk has used before to describe his AI ambitions.”
“Musk was an early backer of ChatGPT-creator OpenAI, but later criticized the company for inputting safeguards that aim to prevent the viral chatbot from spewing biased or sexist responses.”
“The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly,” Musk tweeted in December, responding to a Twitter user who asked OpenAI’s CEO if it was possible to “turn off the woke settings” on ChatGPT.
“Musk’s announcement of the new company comes months after he warned in an interview that he thinks AI could cause “civilization destruction” and joined other tech leaders in calling for a pause in an “out of control” AI race.
I hope this megalomaniac hops on a rocket and doesn’t come back.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/politics/christopher-wray-hearing-house-judiciary/index.html
“The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background,” said Wray, a Republican who was appointed by Trump.
“For Republicans, this hearing is little more than performance art. It is an elaborate show designed with only two purposes in mind: to protect Donald Trump from the consequences of his actions, and to return him to the White House in the next election,” New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the committee’s top Democrat, said Wednesday.
I hope Jordan, Gaetz and a few others hop on that rocket to nowhere with Elon.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/media/fox-news-defamation-ray-epps/index.html
“Ray Epps, the Arizona man that conspiracy theorists falsely claim led an FBI plot to orchestrate the January 6 insurrection, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Fox News, accusing the right-wing channel and former host Tucker Carlson of defamation.”
“In the aftermath of the events of January 6th, Fox News searched for a scapegoat to blame other than Donald Trump or the Republican Party,” the lawsuit said. “Eventually, they turned on one of their own.”
“The lawsuit from Epps comes after his lawyer demanded a retraction in March over the “fanciful notion” Carlson advanced on his show.”
“In the aftermath of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, conspiracy theorists baselessly suggested that the assault was a so-called “false flag” operation staged by the federal government to make supporters of then-President Donald Trump look bad.”
To paraphrase the saying, tRUMPsky can look bad all by himself.
“Epps’ lawsuit said he was a “poorly cast villain” for Fox News and Carlson, describing him as a former Trump-voting Marine who “was an avid and loyal Fox viewer and fan of Mr. Carlson’s.” In fact, the lawsuit indicated Epps was at the US Capitol on January 6 because he was “persuaded by the lies broadcast by Fox asserting the election had been stolen.”
“In a private deposition with the House committee that investigated January 6, Epps denied that he ever worked for the FBI or for federal law enforcement, according to a transcript of his interview. He told the committee he supported Trump in 2020 and attended the DC protest because he was concerned about widespread voter fraud.”
“These denials from Epps are meaningful because it’s a crime to lie to Congress.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/tech/tax-prep-companies-taxpayer-data-google-meta/index.html
“Some of America’s largest tax-prep companies have spent years sharing Americans’ sensitive financial data with tech titans including Meta and Google in a potential violation of federal law — data that in some cases was misused for targeted advertising, according to a seven-month congressional investigation.”
“The report highlights what legal experts described to CNN as a “five-alarm fire” for taxpayer privacy that could lead to government and private lawsuits, criminal penalties or perhaps even a “mortal blow” for some industry giants involved in the probe including TaxSlayer, H&R Block and TaxAct.”
“Using visitor tracking technology embedded on their websites, the three tax-prep companies allegedly sent tens of millions of Americans’ personal information to the tech industry without consent or appropriate disclosures…”
“Beyond ordinary personal data such as people’s names, phone numbers and email addresses, the list of information shared also included taxpayer data — details about people’s filing status, adjusted gross income, the size of their tax refunds and even information about the buttons and text fields they clicked on while filling out their tax forms, which could reveal what tax breaks they may have claimed or which government programs they use…”
“…the United States needs federal legislation guaranteeing every American a basic right to data privacy — an issue that has languished in Congress for years despite electronic data becoming an ever-larger part of the global economy.”
Per Mars: “Oopsies”
May have learned the reason for the Vagner “coup”. For some reason the Vagner group have turned over all their arms and munitions to the russian army. Russian army was out of arms and munitions, now they have some more. The Vagner are under fighting strength so dumping off the gear in Ukraine makes sense, now they can head to the barracks fro R&R. Guarantee the vatnics will lose those, real fast.
I already have promoted this book, Watergate A New History by Garrett M. Graff, and do it again. It fills in gaps, brings up to date information and the stuff from material released after 1978. It is a long read, but for those who lived through those years and are seeing parallels today it is important to read. For those too young, it is an important read. So much is related to today.
https://www.insideedition.com/former-memphis-homicide-detective-who-criticized-cops-over-tyre-nichols-death-is-found-dead-outside
“Retired Memphis homicide detective Mark LeSure was found dead in front of his home Sunday morning. Police have not released a cause of death. LeSure had criticized his department over the beating death of Tyre Nichols.”
I’m going to suggest the book, How To Stand Up To A Dictator. With Bong Bing Marcos in power, and China unhappy with our increased presence in the Philippines, everything old is new, again.
BB – Thanks for the suggestion. My only memory of it was Nixon winning a second term by a landslide, and then he suddenly resigned. I didn’t understand all of the jokes Johnny Carson made, but that’s the only reason I knew the other names involved. Too young to know what was going on, and it was too recent to study in history class when I got a bit older.
Thanks for the citation, patd.
At the risk of doxxing myself, Scorpio is about as high in the sky as it gets for us Northern Hemisphere folks- it’s that time of year, again!
https://www.foxnews.com/media/rfk-jr-was-first-person-censored-by-the-biden-administration
“It seems that they’re also doing that [selective targeting] to any group now… to groups that are simply political enemies of the current administration or at least of the Biden administration. I was the first person censored by the Biden administration, according to Judge Doughty’s decision.”
RFK, Jr. seems to be another self-important, paranoid politician.
Bink – Have the northern lights made an appearance?
Nah, i am headed to the top of the hill and try to get away from these evil street and house lights, they’re so obscenely bright 😒
…got my space music, let’s do this
💫 👀 ✌️
Old Berman:
Groups of Congressional Democrats have now separately called for investigations of Gal Luft and his influence on Congressional Republicans, investigations by the House Armed Services Committee, by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, by the House Select Committee on China, and by the House Oversight Committee. investigations into the obvious security breaches and the potential national security threat. But if the questions are about quote “security breaches,” quote “our national interests and those of our allies” quote “national security” then the investigation needs to be conducted by the Office of Homeland Security and The Office of the Director of National Intelligence because while the big red rotating, blaring siren may be Luft. But he isn’t a sitting member of the House or the Senate and this nation needs to know immediately to what degree if any, Congressman James Comer, Congressman Jim Jordan, Congresswoman Nancy Mace, Senator Ron Johnson and other Republicans, have been compromised by China, or have been targets FOR compromise by China.
COUNTDOWN: https://tinyurl.com/yck9db5m
NEW THREAD