Monthly Archives: August 2018

Privacy

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Now Facebook wants to hook up with banks to collect our financial information and our shopping habits as revealed by our credit card charging history.

No. Not ever. Not with Facebook’s lack of concern for our privacy or our personal data.

Facebook said it wouldn’t use the bank data for ad-targeting purposes or share it with third parties.

Sure. I might know about some beachfront property for sale north of Santa Fe, too.

Any bank that hooks up with Facebook in any way loses my business altogether.  Full stop.

An Oxymoron

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Apple has chosen to conceal accesses to Infowars by removing links to it from Apple’s podcast facility because Apple thinks Infowars is too far right for Apple’s taste and because the site pushes bad speech.

This is rank censorship.

Eliminating easy access to Infowars podcasts marks a rare, prominent foray for Apple into an issue confronting many major internet companies: how to remove hateful or conspiratorial messages from their platforms without infringing on free speech.

This is an impossible task to achieve legitimately.  Our 1st Amendment is explicitly intended to protect unpopular or disgusting or hateful speech as well as “approved” speech.  The Amendment recognizes the ability of individual American citizens to think for themselves and to evaluate for themselves what speech they choose to hear, free from Government “advice.”

It’s true enough that the Amendment enjoins Government and not private enterprise.  However, the principle the Amendment protects is a universal one; it applies to all of us, individuals and enterprises alike.

Apple’s MFWIC, Tim Cook, clearly thinks he’s above all of this.  His attaboy for resisting the FBI’s demand that Apple destroy individuals’ ability to encrypt effectively their private communications has been used up.

Integrity

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Recall that Paul Manafort, briefly a campaign mucky-muck for then-Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, is on trial for a number of tax and bank fraud charges.

One of those charges relates to a tax return filed by Manafort that supposedly

contained inaccurate information [that] falsely reduced his tax liability by classifying millions of dollars she believed was income as loans.

The accountant who filed the return, Cindy Laporta (“she” in the above cite) testified under oath last week at Manafort’s trial that [emphasis added]

manipulating tax returns in such a way was “inappropriate” and that she knew it was wrong, but did it because Mr Manafort was a longtime client of her firm. “I prepared the tax returns and communicated with banks based on information that [Richard] Gates and Mr Manafort provided to me that I didn’t believe[.]”

This included such incidents as

Ms Laporta said she agreed to help finesse [Manafort’s] company’s income, recasting $900,000 as a loan, based on a two-page loan agreement that appeared to be from one of Mr Manafort’s clients, Telmar, that she suspected was fake.

And another:

Messrs Manafort and Gates pressed her to send to the banks what she believed were false documents purportedly forgiving the previously booked loans, after the banks had asked to see more income to provide the mortgages.

She could have refused to do these things.  She chose, instead, to be serially dishonest.

Laporta was granted immunity for this testimony.

Given her testimony that she contributed to falsifying tax documents—Federal felonies (and State felonies if these affected any State taxes)—why should any of her testimony be believed?  She’s confessed to being dishonest; how can we take any of her testimony as other than dishonest?

On the other hand, Mueller’s Manafort prosecutors traded her immunity for her testimony.  On what basis then, can we conclude she simply didn’t sell her testimony like a Thursday night hooker?  Alternatively, on what basis can we conclude she wasn’t brow-beaten, with those felonies of hers as cudgel, into testifying the way she has?  Either way, it seems clear to me that it was the Mueller prosecutors, not Laporta, who testified during Laporta’s time on the stand; they were just using her mouth to do so.

Because It’s Time

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…for some humor.  Bear with me.

Many years ago I was in Wyoming elk hunting with a guide in prime grizzly-bear territory. Camped in an area with a host of bear tracks in the surrounding snow, I asked one evening how to stay safe from grizzly bears.
“First, tie bells to your shoes so they can hear you. Second, learn the difference between black bear and grizzly bear scat.”
I asked about the scatological difference.
“Grizz scat has bells in it.”

The devout cowboy lost his favorite Bible while he was mending fences out on the range. Three weeks later, a bear walked up to him carrying the Bible in its mouth. The cowboy couldn’t believe his eyes. He took the precious book out of the bear’s mouth, raised his eyes heavenward and exclaimed, “It’s a miracle!”
“Not really,” said the bear. “Your name is written inside the cover.”

A man in a movie theater notices what looks like a bear sitting next to him.
“Are you a bear?” asked the man, surprised.
“Yes.”
“What are you doing at the movies?”
The bear replied, “Well, I liked the book.”

A mangy looking guy goes into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender says: “No way. I don’t think you can pay for it.”
The guy says, “You’re right. I don’t have any money, but if I show you something you haven’t seen before, will you give me a drink?”
The bartender says, “Only if what you show me ain’t risqué.”
“Deal!” says the guy and reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a hamster. He puts the hamster on the bar and it runs to the end of bar, down the bar, across the room, up the piano, jumps on the key board and starts playing Gershwin songs and the hamster is really good.
The bartender says, “You’re right. I’ve never seen anything like that before. That hamster is truly good on the piano.”
The guy downs the drink and asks the bartender for another.
“Money or another miracle, or else no drink”, says the bartender.
The guy reaches into his coat again and pulls out a frog. He puts the frog on the bar, and the frog starts to sing. He has a marvelous voice and great pitch. A fine singer. A stranger from the other end of the bar runs over to the guy and offers him $300 for the frog.
The guy says “It’s a deal.” He takes the three hundred and gives the stranger the frog. The stranger runs out of the bar.
The bartender says to the guy, “Are you some kind of nut? You sold a singing frog for $300? It must have been worth millions. You must be crazy.”
“Not so,” says the guy. “The hamster is also a ventriloquist.”

NLMSM

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They’ve completely thrown in the towel on their job and on their highly self-touted role as the Fourth Estate.  Even Fox News‘ Jon Scott, on his Sunday 1700CST/1800EST program, made the conscious decision to make pressmen’s hurt feelings from President Trump’s picking on them the lede and centerpiece of his “reporting.”

Our economy is going gangbusters after years of doldrums, our immigration situation is in flux, there’s a tariff conflict in progress, there’s an election later this week in a key Congressional district, the Russians are doing things, the PRC is doing things, northern Korea is doing things, Iran is doing things, the EU is doing things, and the Trump administration is doing things about all of those.

Scott, though, chose to wallow—at the top of his lungs while quoting persons of the NLMSM from other media outlets who were wallowing at the tops of their lungs—in the misery of his hurt feelings.

Because pressmen are the center of our nation’s doings, and not those doings themselves.

It’s disgusting, and it would be shameful, except the pressmen of the NLMSM don’t have the grace to know shame.