Friday, March 23, 2018
Republican spending bill re-empowers agencies, not just courts, to decide if someone is competent to buy a gun or possess one
Reported here:
Unfortunately, the spending bill passed Thursday allows the ban to be reinstituted because it reauthorizes the 2007 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Improvement Amendments Act. This act allowed government agencies, not just the courts, to determine if someone is mentally incompetent to buy or possess a gun.
House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said during testimony late Wednesday that he was “disturbed” that the bill would undo part of Republicans’ good work. But by Thursday morning, the House leadership had decided to go ahead with the measure.
Despite the name Fix-NICS, the bill is likely to cause more problems than it is worth.
Nancy Pelosi is quite content for Trump to think he's getting his wall, and urges him to sign the spending bill
Quoted here:
". . . if you want to think you're getting a wall, you just think it and sign the bill."
Spending bill is a giant FU to Trump, prevents him from using any of the new border wall prototypes
Reported here:
But, crucially, the bill specifically prevents the Trump administration from using any of the new wall designs it commissioned and tested in California last year. All money has to be spent on “operationally effective designs deployed as of the date of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017” — a bill Trump signed on May 5, 2017.
If President Trump cared less about his wall than about a wall, this wouldn’t be an issue. But everything we know about the president indicates that’s not the case, and that this is a blow to his ego — he reportedly upbraided congressional Republicans this week for not supporting it, claiming they “owed” him for his support for the tax bill and his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The bullying tactics do not appear to have worked. ...
Trump wanted 1,000 new ICE agents; he’s getting barely 100, and none of them are the field agents responsible for arresting unauthorized immigrants. (Instead, ICE is getting more staff for investigations and mission support.)
And when it comes to immigration detention, Congress isn’t just refusing to give the White House the 20 percent increase in detention Trump asked for — it’s rebuking ICE for overspending and expecting Congress to bail it out.
h/t Mickey Kaus
Jobs Americans won't do: Ruthlessly efficient Hungarian soldiers, prisoners, unemployed built 110 mile razor wire border fence in mere weeks for $80 million
Reuters, dateline Sarok, Hungary, Sept. 23, 2015:
Built in a matter of weeks by soldiers, prison laborers and cadres of the unemployed, a vast new wall along Balkan frontiers is a monument to the ruthless efficiency with which Prime Minister Viktor Orban has mobilized Hungary against migrants. ...
While Europe dithered over a collective response, Hungary took matters into its own hands, shutting off the route with a new fence along its entire 175 km (110 mile) border with Serbia, topped with razor wire and guarded by helmeted riot police.
It was erected at a cost of 22 billion forints (about $80 million), a rare example of efficiency in a country which built its last underground metro line ten years behind schedule at triple the projected cost.
The government says it put the military in charge of the construction so that it could act more quickly. By swiftly mobilizing state resources, the authorities also managed to turn the fence into a national project, immensely popular at home even as it is denounced by European partners. ...
In just days since it shut the Serbian frontier, Hungary has already moved even faster to shut the border with Croatia, which is inside the European Union but outside the Schengen zone.
A 41-kilometre temporary fence was thrown up within four days. Work is already underway on a permanent barrier, with machines clearing the land, fence posts driven into the ground and razor wire rolled out.
Equivalent cost for 2,000 mile US southern border wall using soldiers, prisoners and the unemployed for labor: $1.45 billion. Actual US estimates of the cost run north of $20 billion and of the timeline to complete many years.
Where there's a will, there's a way, but we obviously don't have the will, or the imagination, Trump included.
Senate passes massive spending bill in the middle of the night, sends it to Trump
CNBC reports here:
The Senate passed a massive $1.3 trillion spending bill in the early morning hours of Friday, sending it to President Donald Trump's desk for his signature.
Congress approved the more than 2,200-page legislation swiftly with a midnight Friday government shutdown deadline looming. The plan was released only Wednesday night. The House approved the bill Thursday afternoon by a 256-167 vote with bipartisan backing. ...
[Trump] reportedly threatened to veto it days ago, but tweeted his support for it Wednesday night after a discussion with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. ...
It would put $1.57 billion in new funding toward fencing along the border with Mexico and border security technology such as aircraft and sensors. Trump had sought billions more in funding for a physical barrier on the border after he promised to build a wall as a candidate.
Thursday, March 22, 2018
Limbaugh predicts the omnibus spending bill will make Trumpists go wobbly
Well, they should since it's a total betrayal.
Republican profligates happy to spend an obscene $1.3 trillion, but none of it on The Wall
Fully-funding The Wall would come to just 1.7% of this gargantuan spending bomb. Republicans don't give a damn about border security, so I no longer give a damn about Republicans. Our new country isn't going to be great.
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Facebook users have only themselves to blame
Bloomberg, here:
Reporters were calling this a breach, but it wasn’t, because users freely signed away their own data and that of their friends. The rules were clear, and Facebook followed them.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Laugh of the Day 3.0: Facebook outraged it was deceived!
Outraged, I tell you.
From the story here:
Facebook said Tuesday that CEO Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg and their teams were "working around the clock to get all the facts and take the appropriate action moving forward" regarding the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
"The entire company is outraged we were deceived," Facebook added. "We are committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people's information and will take whatever steps are required to see that this happens."
Obama campaign 2012 hoovered up Facebook data too, but was lauded for it
So says Investor's Business Daily, here:
In 2012, the Obama campaign encouraged supporters to download an Obama 2012 Facebook app that, when activated, let the campaign collect Facebook data both on users and their friends.
According to a July 2012 MIT Technology Review article, when you installed the app, "it said it would grab information about my friends: their birth dates, locations, and 'likes.' "
The campaign boasted that more than a million people downloaded the app, which, given an average friend-list size of 190, means that as many as 190 million had at least some of their Facebook data vacuumed up by the Obama campaign — without their knowledge or consent.
If anything, Facebook made it easy for Obama to do so. A former campaign director, Carol Davidsen, tweeted that "Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn't stop us once they realized that was what we were doing."
More at the link.
Laugh of the Day 2.0: "Stepford wives cost me the election"
 |
| Joanna stabs "Bobbie" |
Hide the knives, folks, Hillary's on the hunt!
FedEx package screening fails, bomb in shipment headed to Austin explodes at San Antonio sorting center
The story is here but is stupid for focusing on race and Donald Trump's supposed lack of an adequate response. The victims of the tripwire bomb were white.
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