Forbes. AP. The renegade Republicans brinkmanship had McCarthy working to get sufficient Dem votes for passage. Sorehead renegades expected to seek revenge via a resolution to remove McCarthy from Speakership.
Emmer advancing? Enough Dem votes to keep McCarthy as Speaker, with bipartisan effort stymieing the soreheads? Something will give.
Ukraine? That's a separate question, big money pit, little promise of a resolution beyond a negotiated settlement with the current Ukrainian government saying NO to land for peace. For now, they say that.
We'll see.
These continuing resolutions must make the nation look silly to the rest of the world.
It is an adult action to fund the nation, on more than continuing resolutions.
The Dems saved McCarthy's reputation, he made concessions. Isn't mixed government supposed to function via bipartisanship? It is interesting they tried it.
UPDATE: Both Houses passed a bill withholding billions from Ukraine, and sonofabitch, he signed off on it. Isn't that how the narrative went? More or less?
President Joe Biden released a statement on Saturday calling the passage of a stopgap funding measure “good news,” but criticized that it had no funding for Ukraine.
“We cannot under any circumstances allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted,” Biden said in a statement.
He continued:
While the Speaker and the overwhelming majority of
Congress have been steadfast in their support for Ukraine, there is no
new funding in this agreement to continue that support.
…
I fully expect the Speaker will keep his commitment to the people of
Ukraine and secure passage of the support needed to help Ukraine at this
critical moment.
[...] The CR not containing Ukraine aid was a victory for
conservatives who oppose more spending on Ukraine aid. So far, since
last February, the U.S. has approved sending $113 billion. The Biden
administration is pushing for $24 billion more, for a total of $135
billion. That money would last through the end of 2023, and does not
include any 2024 requests.
Biden’s Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, also called on Congress to pass more aid to Ukraine.
[...]
Why quote Breitbart? Whether any other outlet put the reporting of the kibosh on further Ukraine money in context of already spent amounts, Breitbarrt did. Without extensive web search, Breitbart was the only one saying it was a denial (postponement?) of $24 billion on top of $113 billion already sunk cost for the year.
What has that bought beyond harassment of Putin? What has kept sides from the negotiation table? One possible answer, $113 billion with promise of $24 billion more has not exactly put pressure upon Ukraine's Z to negotiate. A settlement presumably would cut off cash flow, and no news outlet has posted an audit of where the money went. Presumably the Biden government has no audit, or declines to release one if held, and there seems to be some degree of responsibility to account for that amount of money, given needs existing for spending here.
House Republicans holding firm on denying Ukraine further money with House Dems willing to go with a generally reasonable CR suggests there may be developing pressure from the Republicans over where has the money so far gone before more gets sunk, and over why is there insufficient pressure on the warring parties to negotiate.
Are the Russians adamant about not negotiating? If not them, who? It appears the Russians hold land across a former border without any real sign of their being moved from there. The suggestion is to settle on a "Green Line" to end fighting, especially given a 2014 ceasefire having its place in history.
What is the whole of NATO thinking about settlement vs a total Russian ouster. Both as to ultimate goals, and practical realities? Then, how does Repubican reluctance to further fund the adventure affect the remainder of the whole of NATO besides us?
Will France and Germany with others fund it alone? Or in major part? $113 billion seems a lot for nothing - so far. It suggests a cry, "What have we bought?" Then a cry, "When will it end?" And, "How much more or is it endless war, endless cost?"
If you are buying a limited war with Russia via surrogates, not our citizens losing their lives, you still should be concerned with loss of life on both sides, and with cost. Total loss of lives being the major human cost, money drain being our nation's major cost. It seems a Fix It time may be here or approaching.
Who in the US government has responsibility to account for where what we spend goes into, for what goal or purpose? Has that been a topic MSM has reported?
Conservative hardliners are privately
strategizing who could replace Kevin McCarthy if there is an ouster
effort against the speaker.
But they’re hitting a familiar dead end: They can’t land on a feasible alternative.
[...] McCarthy has faced public threats to
his gavel for weeks as he navigates a looming government shutdown. Yet
the private discussions — including in closed-door House Freedom Caucus
meetings this week — about a potential successor indicate his detractors
have hit a more serious phase in their plans.
[,,,] Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), the former
Freedom Caucus chair, has privately raised Majority Whip Tom Emmer
(R-Minn.) as a potential choice, according to two Republicans familiar
with the discussions. Biggs, however, denied claims that he had
mentioned Emmer as untrue, while slamming any claims of the conservative
group coalescing around the whip as “completely false.”
Why not Sparkie the Dog, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or ChatGPT? Names as feasible as Emmer.
Some
members of the far-right faction of the party are coalescing around
nominating a member of McCarthy’s leadership team, Rep. Tom Emmer
(Minn.), to be the next speaker if they can successfully oust McCarthy,
according to those people. The members think Emmer is more attuned to
their concerns and will better deliver conservative results.
The
effort to replace McCarthy with one of his top deputies is the latest
example of the acrimony and chaos that has upended the Republican
conference this year and has Congress on the path to a government
shutdown. [...]
Emmer, according totwo
people who have spoken to him, has not indicated whether he would want
to pursue the speakership or support a measure to oust McCarthy.
“I
fully support Speaker McCarthy. He knows that and I know that,” Emmer
told The Washington Post in a statement. “I have zero interest in palace
intrigue. End of discussion.”
It’s
unclear if far-right members will move forward with the plan or if the
plotting is simply a warning to McCarthy about the seriousness of their
displeasure. But some members have emphasized that removing McCarthy is
“inevitable” and “imminent” and they are calculating the right time to
try to do it.
But - Emmer? Another what-you-see-is-what-you-get human being, foibles and all. With bluster seldom matched; never exceeded.
Crypto-man, a consistent platform belief maintained while serving on the House Financial Services Committee. An astute judge of people, who to jump on with spurs (9/27/23), who to praise beyond merit (12/8/21)?
Criticize as you might, ChatGPT, while only a robot computer program stringing words together probabilistically after trained on a massive word corpus, shows better judgment. And would make a better Speaker.
Ask ChatGPT who you should trust with your money, SEC Chair Gary Gensler, or SBF. See what it says.
___________UPDATE___________
In fairness, Emmer questions whether one with long standing ties to big banks can be a fair regulator; a question many ask; see Transcript, Emmer questions to Gensler. Asking complex questions and suggesting yes/no answers apply IS a rhetorical trick. But the underlying theme, with leading regulators, Secretaries of the Treasuery, etc. having banking backgrounds, can they be fair, and if having general backgrounds not so tied to the industry, can they regulate competently is of great importance, but not a yes/no thing without nuance.
Also, stablecoins present a separate Crypto situation, since by definition they are not profit-promising investment contracts.
Also, a skepticism over the potential privacy impact of CBDC, central bank digital currency, is widely held, and questioning in that direction is valid. Study after study has been posed on CBDC policy, while also there is much research on how a CBDC can best be implemented. We do not have it, yet, and if Emmer's beliefs prevail, we will never have a US CBDC.
Emmer's embrace of crypto is clearly a strongly held belief, but how to minimize the potential for fraud is a dimension Emmer seems to discredit; witness his willingness to take SBF as a credible and learned source of crypto market prudence and stability prior to the SBF shell breaking. SBF being a Humpty Dumpty figure if there ever has been one.
Seriously, Emmer as Speaker seems to vault him beyond his capacities; but the feeling at Crabgrass, where residence is in the district that elected Emmer; is that when looking at vaulting beyond capabilities, look to Emmer's predecessor in office, Michel Bachmann. Emmer remains an upgrade, however faint that is as praise.
Next Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a
case that could have far reaching effects on the legislative ability of
Congress to have flexibility in how it funds regulatory agencies, as
well as place in jeopardy the survival of the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau (CFPB), a government watchdog for the little guy,
elderly, young, poor and unsophisticated against goliaths on Wall Street
and other financial predators.
The case arrives at the Supreme Court as a result of a decision handed down in October by a three-judge panel at the right-wing 5th
Circuit Court of Appeals. All three judges on the panel (Don Willett,
Kurt Engelhardt, and Cory Wilson) were appointed by former President
Donald Trump. The 5th Circuit effectively ruled that the CFPB’s funding system, legislated by Congress, was unconstitutional.
The shadow of Trump and the invisible hand that had an outsized role
in setting the agenda for his administration, fossil fuels billionaire
Charles Koch, and his corporate law firm – Jones Day – have their
footprints all over this case. On Trump’s first day in office, January
20, 2017, Jones Day announced that 12 of its law partners were moving
into the Trump administration. Among the 12 was Noel Francisco, who
became Trump’s Solicitor General. Francisco is now one of the five Jones
Day lawyers representing the opposing side at the Supreme Court
attempting to gut funding for the CFPB.
Right wing Republicans and corporate interests have been attempting
to kill the CFPB since it was created under the Dodd-Frank financial
reform legislation of 2010, following the financial crash of 2008.
Dodd-Frank and the creation of the CFPB came in response to the greatest
fraudulent wealth transfer from the middle class to the 1 percent since
the Wall Street frauds of the late 1920s. Both periods devastated the
U.S. economy for years and left millions of Americans unemployed.
Mega banks on Wall Street and other bad actors are particularly
hostile to the fact that the CFPB allows consumers who have been
victimized by financial firms, even where small amounts of money are
involved, to file a complaint
with the CFPB, who then demands a timely written explanation from the
alleged wrongdoer. Bad actors dislike the fact that these complaints go
into a permanent database at the CFPB, which can be mined by the public, reporters, class-action attorneys and prosecutors looking for patterns of fraud.
On May 15, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chairman of the Senate
Banking Committee and Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), Ranking Member
of the House Financial Services Committee, led 144 current and former
members of Congress in filing an amicus brief in the case: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) v. Community Financial Services Association of America (CFSA).Their
amicus brief argues that when Congress established the CFPB after the
2008 financial crisis, a judgment was made that the CFPB, like other
financial regulators, needed independence from unpredictable annual
funding cycles to be effective. As legislated in the Dodd-Frank Act, the
CFPB is funded through the Federal Reserve. Congress maintains
oversight authority of the CFPB, and the Director of the agency
testifies regularly before Congress.
The CFSA, the opposing front group, which cleverly put the homespun
word “Community” in its name, is the evil twin sister of the CFPB. It’s a
pool of financial sharks, including payday lenders, who don’t want a
well-funded federal investigatory agency looking into their predatory
practices against financially-strapped and/or financially
unsophisticated Americans.
[...] The hatred of the CFPB is so strong by predatory financial actors
that another front group, American Action Network, launched a $500,000
ad campaign during the November 10, 2015 Republican presidential debate,
comparing the advocate for the little guy to a communist organization.
The ad features giant banners
of then CFPB Director, Richard Cordray, and Senator Elizabeth Warren,
who pushed for the creation of the agency, hanging on the front wall in a
nod to Soviet dictators.
The advertisement was a masterpiece of misinformation, overtly
suggesting that the job of the CFPB is to deny car loans and mortgages
to regular folks seeking credit. [...]
According to the New York Times, American Action Network, the front
group that funded the ad, had admitted that keeping private justice
systems alive for corporations, known as mandatory or forced
arbitration, was one reason behind the $500,000 outlay for the ad. [...]
I read "Norm Coleman" and the image that comes to mind is an oil slick. Eric Cantor named, the image is an oil slick from a nasty oil spill. People on the other side is one thing, people there, and as well on the Dark Side of the Force, is more to face. Senator Norm, because Paul Wellstone died. Enough.
That is today's big question, not who won/lost among the seven contestants.
Things are getting very dicey. The shutdown, the impeachment thing, so far without any "show me the money" against Joe; Hunter being a different person.
And for a trifecta. Hunter is suing Rudy Guiliani and Bob Costello, while Bob Costello is suing Rudy Guiliani. With those examples, is it a surprise the Senate faces a backlog of judicial nominees. Suit happy people. Roy Cohn was the lawsuit champ, but now he is dead. Trump had Cohn as his lawyer, and learned. Now Hunter is stepping up to the plate.
Civil complaints. Criminal indictments. It keeps justice in contention.
Is it The New American Way?
("Fumblers and Bumsteads" is, I am told, a term Bobby Hull used in once describing Chicago Blackhawks management personnel. In too many places the term fits.)
___________UPDATE__________
As to fumblers and Bumsteads, Marcy Wheeler, who has a better grasp of facts and a better sense of irony than Crabgrass, writes of Republican impeachment leadership intentions:
Wheeler does a tightly written compare-and-contrast of Trump family Chinese dealings with Hunter Biden's "trading on the brand" in Chinese dealings. Not that it makes Hunter look good for what he did while Joe was out of office, but it shows Trump, himself and kin, did comparable stuff while Trump was in office. Go figure.
First, the lens used for this image makes all but the center three look portly:
Breitbart homepage image
Only three got both feet on the Presidential seal flooring, making them front runners.
None stepped on the eagle. My observations, before reading anything but headlines and search return blurbs. Six dark suits and a red dress. Ramaswamy looks taller than DeSantis. Ramasamy looks to be waving at people in an airplane.
While the seven (you said "Magnificent," I didn't) were doing their thing Trump and offspring in his businesses were getting a partial summary judgment against him/them for fraud against banks and insurers. Everyone earned what they got?
But who got what, at the seven-fest? What do the pundits say?
Donald Trump sang
the praises of American autoworkers in a speech in the battleground
state of Michigan Wednesday night, creating a stark contrast between the
former president and rivals for the Republican nomination who were
debating in California.
“I want to begin this evening by saluting these truly great Americans who do not get the credit they deserve,” Trump said.
The tone of Trump’s discussion of autoworkers was very different from
what listeners heard from the Republicans at the official GOP debate in
the Reagan Library in California.
At the opening of the GOP debate, Senator Tim Scott
(R-SC) was asked about the strike by the United Auto Workers union
seeking better wages and working conditions for its members. He recently
praised Ronald Reagan for his decision to fire air traffic controllers
in 1981, drawing a parallel with the current UAW strike. One of the
debate moderators asked in Scott would fire the striking autoworkers.
“Obviously the president of the United States cannot fire anyone in the private sector,” Scott said.
“One of the challenges we have in the current negotiations is that
they want four-day, French work weeks but more money. They want more
benefits working fewer hours. That is simply not going to stand,” Scott
said.
The language deployed oddly echoed the words of
President George H.W. Bush who responded to Iraq’s invasion of
neighboring Kuwait by declaring: “This will not stand.” Eight years
later, the character known as The Dude used the phrase in the film “The
Big Lebowski.”
“I do mind, the Dude minds,” the Dude said. “This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man.”
Trump’s remarks stayed away from criticizing the benefits and wages for which the workers are negotiating.
Trump addressed his remarks to the “welders, assembly line workers,
machine operators, forklift drivers, pipefitters, tool and dye makers,
mechanics, electricians, technicians, and journeymen.”
“We love being with you,” Trump said. “You love this country. You
built this country. And you are the ones that make this country run.” [Breitbart]
The implication is Lebowski won the event. (The welders are all robots, and the UAW built automobiles, not "this country.") And tell Breitbart it's "tool and die," not "tool and dye." On a parallel Breitbart post, throwing more shade:
Many critics on social media pronounced the debate “unwatchable,” after
the anchors failed to control the candidates and asked questions that
once would have been expected on a left-wing network, not on a Fox
platform.
I was a step ahead of those "many critics online" because I deemed it unwatchable before it happened, without watching. That second Breitbart item mentioned only Burgum, among the seven, as if declaring him winner, while most people would ask, "Who?" A third Breitbart item, second on the unwatchable theme, where all pictured except Pence have a hand in things:
Haley's dress looks purple in that image. Getting into the more interesting "who won" punditry; Politico: Christopher Cadelago Scott won. Sally Goldenberg Scott won. Steven Shepard Haley won. Adam Wren: Nobody had a great night. Are we supposed to recognize those names as pundits we trust? Anyway, South Carolina did okay, seems the trend.
Vox, give credit for a clear headline, "1 winner and 3 losers from Fox’s dud of a second GOP debate." Read it, if you know and trust: " Andrew Prokop
is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White
House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He’s worked
at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a
research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau." He wrote it, hence winner. Subheadline: Vivek lost.
It is difficult to keep at it, so, winner/loser commentary links: WaPo, NYT. The Hill. [correction, the intended The Hill link, is supplemented by that first given]
Without exhaustive search, nobody was found to write, "Donald and the Seven Dwarfs," or "ConvictedAdjudged Fraudster and the Seven Dwarfs," so it is likely here is the first place you see that. ("Convicted" would only apply in a criminal trial.)
Opinions can differ, but Don v. Joe seems everyone's conclusion, with lip service to anything else. There, Joe gets the Crabgrass vote - of that pair.
Joe only faces Republican banter and theater. Finger pointing and clucking about bribe-taking. Trump's now an adjudged fraud, in a civil action, while facing four indictments with countless counts. Best and brightest.
Then simply read sequentially the posts there, one about the computer store owner's description of intereaction with FBI personnel before they had a warrant to examine the laptop he'd turned over to them. Searching before having a search warrant to search being bad practice. All the recent EW posts are worth the time it takes to read.
The more one sees about the circus show handling of "the laptop" the more one can see why DOJ was eager to cut a plea deal - as they did, covering all the mis-tracks they'd left, FBI personnel and all, swept under the carpet away from prying public eyes.
The Hunter Biden position is that the deal DOJ cut still binds them, regardless of the one judge calling it into question. That it ties their hands. The judge would not go along, but they proposed the deal, negotiated, and drafted the paperwork defining what the deal terms and conditions would be. And the thing is moved from that judge's court.
Without the House Republican screeching, things would have been so much cleaner. For everybody. The feeling here is Weiss should be bound by the deal his DOJ folks cut.
And does anyone believe that the handling of "the laptop" does not destroy its admissibility as credible chain-of-custody evidence of anything? Or that FBI handling of it should not result in suppression of it and all contents as evidence?
Readers likely have seen the question in one form or another, AI bumping into copyright, primarily by LLMs (large language models) crawling the web for content to feed to a model such as OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot in order to train it to probabilistically generate content for users. A second dimension, AI created "art" or content, can it be copyrighted, is a focus of ArsTech, here.
The ComputerWorld item is a generic example, where readers can surely search and find a host of items on point, e.g., Ars again, here. (websearch returned items)
Crabgrass will not try an exhaustive review - instead this brief post is flagging the concerns for those who may be unaware of issues, or unfamiliar with what is at stake.
The initially cited CW item, from the headline paragraph, continues -
Fair use, in brief, is a defense to copyright claims written into
federal law. The four factors that courts have to consider when deciding
whether a particular use of copyright material without permission is
“fair use,” are the character and purpose of the use (educational or
other not-for-profit use is much more likely to be deemed fair than
commercial use), the nature of the original work, the amount of the
original work used, and the market effect on the original work.
Copyright a stumbling block for AI model training
Given
those factors, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the lawsuits against
companies like OpenAI have already begun. Most notably, a group of
authors that includes comedian and writer Sarah Silverman sued OpenAI and Meta in July over the company’s use of their books to train ChatGPT.
The
core issue in that lawsuit is the use of a data set called
“BookCorpus,” which, the plaintiffs say, contained their copyright
material. OpenAI and Meta are likely to argue that the market effect on
Silverman’s and others works is negligible, and that the “character and
purpose” of the use is different than that which prompted the writing of
the books in the first place, while the plaintiffs are likely to
highlight the for-profit nature of Meta and OpenAI’s use, as well as the
use of entire works in training data.
Precedent, however, may be on the AI companies’ side — the Google Books case,
which was a fair use action brought by the Author’s Guild of America
against Google’s mass book digitization project in 2005. The case’s
history is complicated, including appeals went on for a decade, and was
ultimately settled in Google’s favor.
Whether
that’s likely to be predictive, however, is debatable, according to
Loengard, and much could depend on a judge’s willingness to challenge a
large, profitable industry.
“By the time it ended, Google Books
had become a tool of many researchers,” she said. “So there’s this idea
that the cat’s out of the bag — and of course, the court wouldn’t say
this out loud, and I’m not saying this is what they did, but they could
look at it and say that once something has entered mainstream commerce
that it’s harder to reel it back in and regulate it.”
Obviously
derivative works could be another copyright battleground for the AI
industry, given that the technology has already been used to produce
convincing imitations of popular singers and songwriters. The right of
publicity — a different legal concept covering the rights to a person’s
name, image and likeness, could become a cause of action for the
performance itself — i.e., the sound of Taylor Swift’s voice. But
copyright could still become an issue if the underlying song is
sufficiently similar to one written by Swift.
That flags the questions, so that as the judiciary fleshes out a law of do-and-don't, the matters reported will not be unfamiliar to readers. Enjoy, as things sift through the filters of the law. It will affect the World's Highest Standard of Living. And the EU will have its own say. And hackers will attempt to figure how to throw a sabot into the machine, in a profitable way or for the hell of it, where ransomware has recently flourished as a way to make money. In parallel to cryptocurrency flourishing as a way to be defrauded. Not that all in that arena are fraudsters, but once legal tender gets put into the system, it is sometimes hard to get it back, unregulated crypto exchanges and all. A video. From before the FTX bottom dropped out.
UPDATE: Fads come. Fads go. Currently crypto seems on the wane. LLM products are the rage. Aside from playing around with ChatGPT and its use in Microsoft's Bing search product, I have discovered no compelling reason to focus on them. To the extent there is behind the scene assistance given search engines better performance, the LLMs are great, and not in the way nor the primary driver of what list a particular search engine returns for a particular choice of wording in a search.
Aside from each being a fad, crypto and LLMs share little, one being a place to lose time and money, the other being a place to lose time and to face yet more of an intrusive Gestalt affecting personal data privacy. (Personal data privacy being something affecting Hunter Biden now more than affecting me.)
___________UPDATE__________
A while back, "data mining" was a buzz term. An enterprise has much data, the buzz was how to maximize the use of it. Now the buzz will be AI models as "data miners."
It may not be phrased that way, but it will be the direction of effort.
The CW item linked to this CIO post, giving a flavor of how opportunists are pouncing onto the new thing, how to use it, how to monetize usage knowledge of a specialist boutique to sell expertise to large enterprise IO departments.
In a sense, same as it ever was. The man in the blue suit coming from IBM to straighten out things will evolve more and more toward independent specialist service providers, as has happened in advertising and PR, and in political consulting, where some poll, some do video half-minute positive or negative specialized products, some do booking, some scout influential sub-market talent and allied entrepreneurs, same party, or opposition research.
Remember MySpace? Gone, while Facebook is still there. Sorting out will be the next phase. Winnowing. Remember Netscape?
Hungry people with ideas, competing with one another, and the big firms and deep pockets will keep control, keep calling the shots, with teams of consultants available, and teams of AI products to select from, to tune to specific enterprise needs.
FURTHER: The last paragraph, in a concrete embodiment; 155p worth;
Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4
ZeroHedge, here, (cited derivative item because the original Seymour Hersh item is behind a subscription wall).
At WashExaminer, "Hawley says Ukraine aid has no ‘end game’: ‘What about our nation?’" by Heather Hamilton, Trending News Editor --September 21, 2023. Not that Hawley is the world's foremost authority, but his claim has seen no cogent rebuttal.
"Push on," is not a rebuttal, nor is "spend more," and Hawley is correct that Ukraine is NOT about China/Taiwan. The Chinese are patient. The Chinese seeing our quitting it in Ukraine, bad idea not enslaved to sunk costs; should that actually happen; will conclude we are susceptible to rational behavior. In many ways it is not a bad thing to have them think of us that way. A negotiated settlement, land in exchange for peace, a non-NATO-expansion commitment to Russia, it is not too complicated to contemplate. Putin might be quite amenable. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, quite pliable -- accepting of a reality he could not alter should Russia and NATO want to settle.
Economist, Mar. 2022: "John Mearsheimer on why the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis -- The political scientist believes the reckless expansion of NATO provoked Russia." He dates things back,
THE WAR in Ukraine is the most dangerous
international conflict since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
Understanding its root causes is essential if we are to prevent it from
getting worse and, instead, to find a way to bring it to a close.
There
is no question that Vladimir Putin started the war and is responsible
for how it is being waged. But why he did so is another matter. The
mainstream view in the West is that he is an irrational, out-of-touch
aggressor bent on creating a greater Russia in the mould of the former
Soviet Union. Thus, he alone bears full responsibility for the Ukraine
crisis.
But that story is wrong. The
West, and especially America, is principally responsible for the crisis
which began in February 2014. It has now turned into a war that not only
threatens to destroy Ukraine, but also has the potential to escalate
into a nuclear war between Russia and NATO.
The
trouble over Ukraine actually started at NATO’s Bucharest summit in
April 2008, when George W. Bush’s administration pushed the alliance to
announce that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members”. Russian leaders
responded immediately with outrage, characterising this decision as an
existential threat to Russia and vowing to thwart it. According to a
respected Russian journalist, Mr Putin “flew into a rage” and warned
that “if Ukraine joins NATO, it will do so without Crimea and the
eastern regions. It will simply fall apart.” America ignored Moscow’s
red line, however, and pushed forward to make Ukraine a Western bulwark
on Russia’s border. That strategy included two other elements: bringing
Ukraine closer to the eu and making it a pro-American democracy.
These
efforts eventually sparked hostilities in February 2014, after an
uprising (which was supported by America) caused Ukraine’s pro-Russian
president, Viktor Yanukovych, to flee the country. In response, Russia
took Crimea from Ukraine and helped fuel a civil war that broke out in
the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
The
next major confrontation came in December 2021 and led directly to the
current war. The main cause was that Ukraine was becoming a de facto
member of NATO. The process started in December 2017, when the Trump
administration decided to sell Kyiv “defensive weapons”. What counts as
“defensive” is hardly clear-cut, however, and these weapons certainly
looked offensive to Moscow and its allies in the Donbas region. Other
NATO countries got in on the act, shipping weapons to Ukraine, training
its armed forces and allowing it to participate in joint air and naval
exercises. In July 2021, Ukraine and America co-hosted a major naval
exercise in the Black Sea region involving navies from 32 countries.
Operation Sea Breeze almost provoked Russia to fire at a British naval
destroyer that deliberately entered what Russia considers its
territorial waters.
It is a confrontation on Russia's border, not ours. It is a more immediate thing to them, as we'd possibly feel perturbed were Russia active in Mexico, up to mischief there. Moreover, they have a land bridge and Black Sea presence. Proximity favors their efforts.
Some might say that buying a proxy war is not a sound investment.
The Biden administration thinks otherwise. Having bought one, on payments.
Hawley is correct that more pressing things could be done stateside, with money and policy.
Is NATO expansion worth a long lingering distant loss of lives, both sides; a big weapons suck where only U.S. domestic arms manufacturers smile?
A test of wills? Why? What's it gain our citizens? Better jobs (outside of weapons plants)? A safer world? A bigger NATO, after Baltic area membership expansion, or is that a "So what?"
A fact: With both pipelines already blown up, there is no comparable easy thing.
After the recent coup, France is exiting Niger. Macron gets a brightness award for that one.
Earlier introductory Crabgrass post. Political dimensions of Trudeau having a minority government with Sikhs politically positioned in Canadian politics were mentioned in a half-hour AJ video segment, online at the end of this online AJ item.
There appears to be a Sikh diaspora desiring a Sikh independent homeland nation within a part of India that had been Sikh dominated over historical time.
Recent prior major Indian history, per Wikipedia, and history.com, involves things from the 1980s which went unmentioned within the AJ video discussion (as well as within accompanying AJ text).
Indeed, there is a history dating back prior to British colonizing India. See, also, BBC here.
The situation of the shooting in British Columbia can touch and impact economic relations between Canada and India, and there is impact on US policy.
Understanding the range of impacts leads to a perspective on the seriousness of what is going on in Canada, now. It is worth knowing more. It goes beyond a mere expatriate from the Indian subcontinent being shot. It hinges upon who was shot. And who did the shooting, who instigated it.
There is a political insurgency against education as handled by professionals who know what they are doing. In Minnesota. With help from their friends, cohorts, kindred minds, or whatever. The webpage
by its footer shows a peek at who is behind the curtain.
This WILL thing is a Wisconsin right-wing propaganda operation. Milwalkee Journal Sentinel, from July 2016, Scott Walker days, notes:
Conservative legal group announces states' rights initiative
Republican
Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch speaks Monday in support of a new effort by
the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty to combat what it sees as
federal government overreach as the group's president Rick Esenberg
(right) and director of the new center Mario Loyola listen. Credit: Associated Press
Madison — A conservative law firm that helped defend
Gov. Scott Walker's union bargaining repeal announced a national effort
Monday to protect the rights of states and limit those of the federal
government.
The Center for Competitive Federalism — an initiative of the
Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty — will bring lawsuits and
issue advocacy and research reports to promote state sovereignty, its
leaders announced at a news conference at the Capitol.
The effort "will allow the voters of Wisconsin and the diverse
communities of the state of Wisconsin to be able to regulate themselves
and to be able to live the way that they were meant to live under the
(U.S.) Constitution, according to their preferences and not the
preferences imposed by distant bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.," said
Mario Loyola, a WILL senior fellow and the center's new director and
head of research activities.
In 2016, WILL announced the launch of the Center for Competitive
Federalism, a national effort to bring lawsuits and conduct research to
promote state sovereignty.[5]
That same year, the organization filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn
Wisconsin's Unfair Sales Act, also known as the minimum markup law,
which prevents companies from selling products below cost.[6][7] In 2017, it filed a lawsuit in the Wisconsin Supreme Court Koschkee v. Taylor arguing that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) issued regulations without the approval of the state's governor and the Wisconsin Department of Administration, thus violating the REINS Act. It was seen as an attempt to limit the power of Governor Tony Evers,
then the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Though Evers's
role was nonpartisan, he had announced he would challenge Republican Scott Walker for the governorship.[8] In June 2019, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4–2 in favor of WILL, determining that DPI could not make administrative rules without approval of the governor.[9]
In September 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Wisconsin, WILL filed lawsuits to stop a face mask mandate in Wisconsin.[10]
In March 2021, the conservative-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court, on a
4–3 vote, struck down the statewide mask mandate, saying that Governor Tony Evers had violated state law by extending his emergency orders, including the mandate, beyond the initial 60-day emergency mandate.[11]
In October 2020, a progressive legal group, Law Forward, was founded in Wisconsin as a counterbalance to WILL.[15]
Wisconsin Elections Commission lawsuit
In
2019, WILL sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission for not removing
from the voter rolls 234,000 Wisconsin voters who were flagged as having
potentially moved and who did not respond to a mailing.
Paul V. Malloy, the presiding circuit court judge in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, ruled in favor of WILL, purging the voters.[16] The Wisconsin Elections Commission filed suit in federal court to halt the contested purging.[17] Acting on behalf of the state's Elections Commission, which deadlocked 3-3 on the matter, Wisconsin Attorney GeneralJosh Kaul joined the appeal to stay the removals ordered by Malloy.[18]
The Elections Commission estimated that the voter verification process
would take from one to two years to complete prior to initiating any
action to remove those former voters, the accuracy of whose
registrations still remained unresolved.[19]
On January 2, 2020, WILL said it asked the circuit court to hold the
Elections Commission in contempt, fining it up to $12,000 daily, until
it advanced Malloy's order.[20]
The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard the case about the purging of the
voter rolls on October 4, 2020, but was not expected to make a decision
before the November election.[21]
The Democratic Party argued that the purge targeted voters living in areas favoring Democrats.[17]
On January 12, 2020, Malloy found the three Democrats on the stalemated
six-member Elections Commission to be in contempt of court, ordering
them each to pay a fine of $250 daily until they complied with his
order. Malloy urged speedy implementation of his order, saying, "We're
deadlocked, time is running and time is clearly of the essence."[22] The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
examined the list of voters subject to being purged because they were
presumed to have moved and found that about 55 percent of those
registrants had been domiciled in municipalities that had been won by Hillary Clinton
in the 2016 general election. Those were mainly from Wisconsin's
largest cities, Milwaukee and Madison, as well as other college towns.[23]
In 2016, Trump had carried Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes.
After the contempt order was issued by Malloy, a stay issued later that
day by the state Supreme Court upheld his purge mandate.[23] That finding was subsequently reversed by an appeals court, but WILL appealed its decision to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.[24] In the April 7, 2020, election, voters ousted incumbent Daniel Kelly, a conservative Supreme Court justice, who had been appointed by Governor Scott Walker. Kelly had been thought to be a possible swing vote in the Court's deciding the case.[25]
In April 2021, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in a 5-2 ruling that
the Wisconsin Election Commission should not remove from its rolls
voters flagged as possibly having moved, as local municipal elections
officials rather than the state election commission should be tasked
with removing voter registrations. Of the 69,000 people flagged by the
elections commission as being "likely movers", none voted in the 2020
presidential election. No voters were removed from the voter rolls while
the legal fight was pending.[26]
That was not in the report. It was an added thought. The report notes:
Microsoft’s Copilot-branded AI assistants will provide a unified
experience across operating systems, applications and devices, Microsoft
CEO Satya Nadella said Thursday at an event in New York. As an example,
Microsoft showed how a user can ask Copilot to find a flight booking
from text messages.
[...] The Office product, unveiled in March, has been in testing with about
600 customers and will cost $30 per user a month on top of what most
business customers already pay. The product lets workers uses data from
the web as well as a company’s internal information, to do things like
analyze spreadsheets, generate slide shows and predict future business
issues.
Microsoft announced the Windows product in May, saying it
would be accessible from a PC screen taskbar button that opens a side
panel customers can use as an assistant. The tool lets one copy and
paste text, as well as rewrite, summarize and explain content, among
other tasks. Windows users can also ask the Copilot questions as they
can with the Bing AI chat.
Thirty bucks per user per month, for paperclip redux? How is Linux doing these days? Linux, without Cortana. Without OpenAI. Without a built in Chatbot.
ChatGPT4 passed the bar exam? I want to see it try a case. Link.
I want to see it represent Hunter Biden.
I want to see it investigate Hunter Biden. Put it on both sides of the Hunter Biden paradox. I want to see it testify to Republicans with an agenda against it.
I want to see it decide the best of the current batch of Republican presidential wannabes, how it makes comparisons, how it would investigate histories on the web. Microsoft, headlong into attempted justification of the billions it pumped into OpenAI, might be barking up a wrong tree, making decisions on sunk costs.
Under Dwight Eisenhower the tax rate on the highest-income Americans
was 91% and roughly a third of American workers were unionized.
And
Republicans largely accepted that state of affairs. In a letter to his
brother, Eisenhower wrote, “Should any political party attempt to
abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor
laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again”; while
there were a few conservatives who thought differently, “their number is
negligible and they are stupid.”
Beginning in the 1970s,
however, the Republican Party increasingly came to be dominated by
people who did want to roll back the New Deal legacy.[...] Why didn’t
Republicans pay a big political price for their hard right turn? Largely
because they were able to offset the unpopularity of their economic
policies by harnessing the forces of religious conservatism and social
illiberalism — hostility toward nonwhite Americans, LGBTQ Americans,
immigrants and more. [...]
But
eventually the forces that economic conservatives were trying to use
ended up using them. This wasn’t something that suddenly happened with
the Trump nomination; people who think that the GOP suddenly changed
forget how prevalent conspiracy theories and refusal to acknowledge the
legitimacy of Democratic electoral victories already were in the 1990s.
The current dominance of MAGA represents a culmination of a process that
has been going on for decades.
And for the most part, Republican
politicians who probably weren’t extremists themselves went along. For a
while this may have been because MAGA was still delivering the
right-wing economic goods. Bear in mind that despite all the talk of
“populism,” Trump’s main policy achievement was a big cut in corporate
taxes. But non-extremist Republicans also, and increasingly, gave in out
of fear — for their careers and perhaps even their safety.
It’s
to Romney’s credit that he finally reached his limit. But he did so very
late in the game — a game that people like him basically started.
When the Clintons moved to embrace the Republican economic agenda in large measure, Republicans panicked. If George W.H. Bush [and running mate Willie Horton] could not keep in power, panickville touched ground.
Son Bush, worse but reelected?? What did that tell the party? Play the marginal voters they had, co-opt their Angst, and have them controlled and voting in lockstep. After all, what did the Dems offer such fringe players? They were locked in.
Soon the fringe organized and ousted those thinking they owned and ran their prols.
Q happened. MTG and LB and Gaetz happened.
Romney? Sidetracked. While he at least made no Sarah Palin miscue, who/what did he inspire (and - some may suggest Paul Ryan WAS a Sarah Palin error).
Romney simply inspired distrust of his Bain Capital take no prisoners background. Adding Paul Ryan, generously speaking toward Mitt, was - how wise, how reassuring? That he thought Ryan would help his chances was as strong an indictment of his judgment as was his schmoozing Netanyahu.
Add to that a haughtiness endemic to too many of those who grow up in privilege, what's to like about Mitt Romney unless you're a Mormon? He has all the charm and warmth of a Jarad Kushner or Rudy G. He's leaving, the mess will belong to others.
(Elon calls it X, yet keeps the twitter web address so everybody's set bookmarks keep it as regularly in play as before the rename. Elon doubtlessly has an explanation beyond helping folks who've saved links for it not being - X.com.)
State and national politicians have come out to support union workers, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, U.S Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor), U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Bloomfield Twp.) and U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.).
President Donald Trump rally in Battle Creek, Dec. 18, 2019 | Andrew Roth
Former
President Donald Trump’s plans to skip the second GOP presidential
candidate debate and head to Michigan to meet with striking autoworkers
isn’t going over well with the United Auto Workers (UAW) top official.
“Every fiber of our union is being
poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches
people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers,” UAW President Shawn
Fain said. “We can’t keep electing billionaires and millionaires that
don’t have any understanding what it is like to live paycheck to
paycheck and struggle to get by and expecting them to solve the problems
of the working class.”
Labor speaks. Former President Donald John Trump seems to face a headwind in trying to use the UAW. They saw him in action for four years. They see him in an attempt to use them. They have other aims than to give him a photo-op. They accept endorsement of their strike by those in politics who appear sincere in support.
FURTHER: Two other MinnReformer items, labor related, here and here. Also, this, about a report on labor matters in Minnesota:
Minnesota jobs have recovered to pre-pandemic levels, [...] according to a release from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
Minnesota’s labor force participation
rate — the number of working-age people who are employed or looking for
work — held steady at 68.5%, about six percentage points higher than
the national average.
For every unemployed person in Minnesota, there are two open jobs, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
That means employers are struggling
to fill open positions, and demographic trends have company leaders
worried that the problem will continue to worsen.
A shrinking portion of Minnesota’s population is working-age, according to a report
released Monday by data analytics firms, Presbyterian Homes and
Services and Minnesota Business Partnership, a trade group representing
Minnesota’s biggest companies.
And, the number of people moving out of Minnesota is outpacing migration into the state.
There’s also a growing disconnect
between the characteristics of Minnesota’s workforce and the jobs that
are in-demand. Most Minnesotans have an education beyond high school,
but the jobs that are projected to be in highest demand, like personal
care assistants and retail workers, require only a high school diploma.
Currently, 28% of Minnesotans 25 and
older have no higher education, while 45% of the labor demand is for
jobs that only require a high school diploma, according to the report.
And while 16% of Minnesota adults have an advanced degree, only 4% of
open jobs require that level of education.
The jobs projected to be in highest demand over the next 10 years are also some of the lowest-paid.
The report points to several ways to
bring people into the workforce and keep them there. Increased
productivity via automation and digitization, flexibility and
accommodations, immigration and training could help solve the problem.
An idea for attracting workers that is notably absent from the report: Raising wages.
[italics added] To avoid confusion, yet with some uncertainty, the reading Crabgrass gives is that the closing two paragraphs of item reporting refers to the report from the Minnesota Business Partnership, and not from anything released by the State agency, DEED. It just feels right to guess who'd be inattentive to raising wages as an option; DEED; or others.
The Business Partnership item begins, "Ask the leader of any business, regardless of industry or size, to name the biggest challenge facing their business today, and they’re likely to cite difficulty finding enough workers." At 50 pages in length, Crabgrass did not study the report.
Strange. Somewhere in a 50 page analytical item one might expect decent commentary about the link between worker attraction and wages. In a propaganda item, possibly not. Again, Crabgrass did not study the MN BP item. Readers may wish to.
FURTHER: Thinking it worth some effort, here is the lead page from that 50 pager.
click the image to enlarge and read
It says, "That’s why the Minnesota Business Partnership, Presbyterian Homes & Services, and SullivanCotter partnered with Lightcast on this report,[...]" and the page footer, right side, "LIGHTCAST."
Bullshit is as bullshit does, and the Crabgrass opinion is that LIGIHTCAST does not cast the MN BP in a good light. Propaganda is what it is. A webinar premised on a 50 page thingy which at its SECTION 4 declines to explore the link between pay level and filling a job, while at that SECTION 4 touting, "1. GET MORE PEOPLE INTO THE WORKFORCE, AND KEEP THEM THERE," seems to a degree, propagandistic. Dilute the labor pool and you can pay less is something you do not need a PhD in economics to comprehend; particularly if you're in the labor pool, and not the hiring pool. Opinions can differ, but I don't really like some things . . .
And, surprise, the UAW is striking for better pay. Tell that to LIGHTCAST, as a possible part of their webinar. The day after that webinar, UAW may strike another plant or two.
While serving as president, Trump
essentially took a neutral stance during the UAW’s last strike against
one of the Detroit Three — its 2019 action against General Motors that
lasted 40 days. The Republican did not go to the picket line.
“Here we go again with General Motors and the United Auto Workers. Get together and make a deal!” he tweeted on Sept. 15, 2019.
The previous year, in May 2018, Trump issued Executive Order No. 13837
that hurt a union’s ability to represent workers by preventing union
stewards from using official time to aid employees in preparing or
pursuing grievances.
This time, the UAW is fighting for
increased wages, a 32-hour work week and better pension benefits, among
other issues such as an end to tiered compensation between workers with
different lengths of service.
Biden, Dems and unions slam Trump
President Joe Biden, a Democrat who defeated Trump in the 2020 election, blasted his former opponent.
“Donald Trump is going to Michigan
next week to lie to Michigan workers and pretend he didn’t spend his
entire failed presidency selling them out at every turn,” Ammar Moussa,
spokesperson for Biden-Harris 2024, said. “Instead of standing with
workers, Trump cut taxes for the super-wealthy while auto companies
shuttered their doors and shipped American jobs overseas.
“He’s said he would’ve let auto
companies go bankrupt, devastating the industry and upending millions of
lives. That’s why Trump lost Michigan in 2020 and his MAGA [Make
America Great Again] friends further decimated the Michigan Republican
Party and cost them 2022. No self-serving photo op can erase Trump’s
four years of abandoning union workers and standing with his ultra-rich
friends.”
Biden has not announced plans to
visit with striking workers, although several of his allies, like U.S.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, have done so.
On Tuesday, U.S. Reps. Debbie Dingell
(D-Ann Arbor) and Haley Stevens (D-Waterford) joined Michigan Democrats
for a press call slamming GOP former president Donald Trump’s
“anti-worker record following reporting” of his planned visit to
Michigan next week.
Both speakers highlighted how Trump’s
“MAGAnomics” [Make America Great Agenda] agenda “hurt autoworkers,
incentivized companies to ship jobs overseas, and lined the pockets of
billionaires and big corporations at the expense of Michigan’s middle
class.”
The call also spotlighted the “stark
contrast” between Trump and President Joe Biden —”who has a proven
record of being the most pro-union president in history and a
demonstrated history of standing up for workers,” according to a press
release issued by the Michigan Democratic Party.
[image omitted]
“Trump was one of the most
anti-worker presidents this country ever had. He showed us what he
really stands for when he said he would have let the auto companies go
bankrupt in 2008,” said Dingell. “The last thing Michigan’s autoworkers
need right now is more empty promises or kerosene on a fire. So while
President Trump’s gonna try to come in and erase his history … I think
that Michiganders are going to know what the record was and will reject
his anti-worker agenda.”
Stevens argued that Trump did little to address negotiations between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the Detroit Three.
“He signed into place a tax law that
gave billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest and did hardly
anything, if close to nothing, for the middle class,” Stevens said. “I
find this disrespectful to the men and women of the UAW on the picket
line right now. Donald Trump can take his politics elsewhere.”
United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters General President Mark McManus also threw shade on a Trump strike visit.
“When Donald Trump was first elected
president, he invited me into the White House during the first days of
his administration and promised that he would pass the largest
infrastructure bill in generations. He claimed to be a builder, just
like us. But after four years, one thing was clear: when it comes to the
bread and butter issues our members care about – fair wages, safe job
sites, and the ability to retire with the dignity we earned – Donald
Trump is just another fraud.”
What Minnesota needs is a webinar on when it comes to the
bread and butter issues union members care about – fair wages, safe job
sites, and the ability to retire with the dignity they've earned - be there or be square.
And the one Dem politician saying Biden has been the best president for unions, if you think about it that might be true over my lifetime, very young, Truman, and then onward, two Bushes and a Raegan, and to make it false we should have elected Bernie, over Biden, or, sooner or later, might it be AOC time?
FURTHER: This is important. Some readers may already have spotted a less than total rabid embrace of organized labor at Crabgrass, while most may not have.
Yet it is necessary to my self expectations to explain myself - Bob Kroll and the Minneapolis police union were so misguided that the federal government had to step in and mandate reasonableness at the same time that the George Floyd murder inspired most of the State to view that union as a diseased entity for what it embraced and fostered. Then, the Iron Range focus upon jobs at any cost, including the likely sacrifice of earth's integrity in Northern Minnesota for a temporary handful of sulfide mining jobs shows ignorance, and disdain toward the remainder of the nation for one job more, and the Tom Bakkian attitude of leverage begetting privilege over time grew harsh judgment from many populist progressives aside from Crabgrass. Other than those two 21st Century adverse examples, unions have not had past power in the nation, and Crabgrass believes that factor has lessened rather than enhanced fairness in the nation's apportionment of economic wealth and benefit.
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