That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

Nate Silver crunches the numbers and finds out that America's pollsters failed miserably in their likely voter models, not in the direction that I anticipated (underestimating voters of color) but in badly underestimating the number of white voters without college degrees that showed up for Trump.

Let’s take two fairly obvious data-driven conclusions from the 2016 election and see if there’s any link between them. 

The first conclusion: Education was almost everything in explaining the results of the race. Donald Trump substantially improved on Mitt Romney’s performance among voters without college degrees — especially white voters without college degrees. Hillary Clinton somewhat improved on President Obama’s performance with college-educated voters. The link between education levels and the shift in the vote is robust, even when controlling for other factors, such as income levels. 

The second conclusion: The polling was bad. Actually, let me amend that: The polling wasn’t that bad. (Reporters and analysts should have been more prepared for the possibility that Trump might win. We’re going to keep being really annoying about this.) 

With Clinton’s lead in the popular vote still expanding, the national polls are going to wind up having been pretty good (they showed her winning by 3 to 4 percentage points, and she’ll eventually win by about 2 points). The state polls? Not so hot. What matters, though, is not only the magnitude of the error in the state polls but the direction of it. The errors were correlated from state to state, and Clinton underperformed in a trio of states in the Rust Belt — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — that were supposed to have been part of her firewall; that underperformance cost her the Electoral College.
So, are these two things connected? Did Trump beat his polls in states with large numbers of white voters without college degrees? 

The short answer is “yes.”

And the data is pretty convincing: there are 19 states that have a majority of white voters without college degrees.  Donald Trump beat the averages of state polls in 18 of those 19 states (all but Oregon) and he beat them by an average of 7.6 points.  He beat Ohio's and Wisconsin's state polls by 6 points,, Michigan's by 4, Pennsylvania's by 5, NC's by 4, and Florida's by 2.  He won all of those states.

In blood red states like Kentucky, he beat his state polling average by 11 points and by 14 in WV..

In other words, where national polling was correct (Clinton will end up winning the national popular vote by 2.5%-3% or so, where the polls had her) state polling in 2016 was 100% useless.

The same thing that happened in Kentucky in 2015 with Matt Bevin versus Jack Conway, the poll that was off by 13 points?  In 2016 it was national, and every single polling outfit messed up at the state level.

It's worth thinking about.  The reality however?

So Clinton lost Michigan by ~0.2%, Wisconsin by ~0.7%, Pennsylvania by ~0.8%. https://t.co/wbnGFEmcen

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 1, 2016

With this update:
WI: Hillary down 22,177
MI: Hillary down 10,704
PA: Hillary down 46,435
Total: 79,316 https://t.co/pcOqvSQlNz

— Charles Gaba (@charles_gaba) December 1, 2016

All less than Jill Stein's total in each state.

This is why Trump will be President in January.

Never forget.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump's "Thank You" rally in Cincinnati last night continued his campaign themes of attacking a "lying media", restricting immigration and building a Mexican border wall.
• Indiana state officials say they have agreed to $7 million in tax breaks in order to get Carrier International to keep 1,000 jobs in VP-elect Mike Pence's state.
• Donald Trump's pick for Defense Secretary is retired Marine Gen. James "Mad Dog" Mattis, who would need a waiver from Congress to serve as the DoD's civilian head.
• Senate Democrats say Donald Trump's cabinet choices could meet stiff resistance in confirmation hearings, but ultimately Democrats can't stop them without GOP help.
• Finnish cell phone maker Nokia is back after years of being overrun by the Apple/Android smartphone revolution, the brand will introduce Android smartphones in 2017.

Last Call For The Great Preet-Ender

Donald Trump summoned US Attorney Preet Bharara to Trump Tower on Wednesday, raising all kinds of conflict of interest questions.

Donald Trump met with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on Wednesday at Trump Tower, a senior law enforcement official told NBC News.

Bharara, whom many regard as the Justice Department's most powerful prosecutor, told reporters that he agreed to remain the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York after a "good meeting" with the president-elect. He added that Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump's attorney general pick, previously reached out to him, asking him to stay as well.

Bharara and his office are known for their successful prosecutions of Wall Street figures, such as securing the guilty plea of Bernie Madoff's brother, Peter, for his role in the infamous Ponzi scheme.

The federal prosecutor also created two units focusing on financial fraud, including the Civil Frauds Unit, which has collected multimillion dollar settlements from financial institutions.

In other words, Trump only bothered to personally talk to precisely one US Attorney: the one who would be dealing with any Trump Organization cases, as NYC-based Trump would be in Bharara's Southern NY district.

You know who else Bharara would be dealing with in a federal prosecution?

The Clinton Foundation.

You do the math. I have, and two plus two equals authoritarian.

White Out In The Senate Dems

I understand the fact that 99% of the time, activist and NY Daily News columnist Shaun King is in it solely for the benefit of one Shaun King rather than the racial justice issues he advocates for, but this is part of the 1% of the time that he actually has a valid point: Senate Democrats have a major, major lack of diversity on their staffs and it's pretty appalling as he talks to a Senate staffer about it.

“Do you know how many black Chiefs of Staff exist in the Senate? The whole Senate? One. Out of one hundred chances they had to hire a black chiefs of staff, they hired just one African-American,” the staffer said in disgust. 

“But hold up, hold up,” the staffer continued. “I haven’t even given you the punchline yet. Guess who the one black Chief of Staff works for?” 

“Who?” I asked — having no idea what the answer was. 

“Tim Scott,” the staffer replied. “The lone black chief of staff in the entire United States Senate works for South Carolina Republican, Tim Scott. His office may be the most diverse in the entire Senate.” 

It was like a punch to the gut. It’s one thing for the elected officials in one of the most important halls of government in our nation to be just 2% black — that could be blamed on voters or demographics or fundraising, but the fact that only one U.S. Senator has hired a black chief of staff, and that senator is a Republican, is an indefensible choice. 

According to a recent study from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, of the 336 senior staff positions in the U.S. Senate, 0.9% of them are held by African-Americans. That’s three people. 

This is inexcusable and it has a devastating impact on the positions and priorities taken by senators themselves. 

“When Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were shot and killed by police in Minnesota and Louisiana, I practically begged my boss to issue a statement. My request fell on deaf ears,” the staffer said, 

It’s no wonder the Senate has done so little of substance on issues that truly matter to black folk. 

The lack of diversity in the U.S. Senate is so severe that it was called “one of the world’s whitest workplaces” in a scathing critique authored by The Atlantic’s Russell Berman. Berman also highlighted how the online magazine, Diversity Inc., “the nation’s worst employer for diversity.” 

The NBC News4 I-Team in Washington, D.C. actually discovered that Congress isn’t even following its own rules and laws on diversity. As Congress attempts to hold tens of thousands of employers feet to the fire on diversity all over the country, they aren’t even doing it themselves by tracking and reporting the most basic data on their hiring practices and records for women and people of color.

 It's pretty awful, and King is right.  It really is indefensible that fewer than 1% of Democratic staffers are black, when black voters make up more than 25% of the party as a whole.

Fix this, Democrats.

More than ever, heading into 2017?

Fix this.

Welcome To 2007, Suckers

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H. L. Mencken

After campaigning with lots of populist and anti-Wall Street rhetoric, Donald Trump is seriously considering a veteran Wall Street financier, Steve Mnuchin, to be his Treasury secretary.

Mnuchin spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs, ultimately as a partner at the investment bank. More recently, he's headed a privately owned hedge fund, Dune Capital Management. Last April he became Trump's chief fundraiser, and he's now a member of the president-elect's transition team. 

But Mnuchin's resume also includes a stint as chairman and CEO of a California bank that's been called a foreclosure machine. 

During the depths of the financial crisis, Mnuchin was looking to make profits from the ruins of the housing bust. In 2009, he put together a group of billionaire investors and bought a failed California-based bank, IndyMac. It had been taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. after its sketchy mortgage loans went bad.

The next housing bubble and economic meltdown is probably not going to be remotely recoverable. Not with Trump's team of crooks at the helm.  It's going to be brutal when it goes.

And it's the fault of idiot voters like Rex and Rose Schaffer.

Rex Schaffer, 86, and his wife Rose were among those who lost their homes, in a OneWest foreclosure. After living nearly 50 years in their home in La Puente, Calif., the Schaffers took a home equity loan but struggled to make the payments. They say they qualified three times for a government assisted modification, but OneWest failed to modify the loan.

"It was a disaster dealing with those people," Rex Shaffer says. "We'd have a different person every time we called in." He counted 33 OneWest employees, in all, and each one would give him "a different story." 

Facing threats that their home would be auctioned off, the Schaffers finally got through to a OneWest vice president. According to Rex Shaffer, the VP said, "I'm going to get you a 60-day extension on the sale date, so we can work this thing out." That was on Feb. 17, 2011. But the next day, the Schaffers' house was sold without their knowledge. "We didn't even know it — didn't have the faintest idea," Rex Shaffer says. 

They voted for Donald Trump, but Rose Schaffer says they're praying he doesn't choose Mnuchin as his Treasury secretary. "If he can't run his own little bank," she asks, "how can he handle a large thing for the United States?"

Spoilers: he can't.  But hey, the Schaffers are in their 80's.  They're not going to have to spend 50 years dealing with the next economic collapse, and they live in California, where their vote for Trump wasn't directly responsible for his election.

Guys like me, well,  It was nice knowing all of you.

StupidNews!

• A group of 20 stamping factory workers in Tennessee are among America's newest millionaires, they'll split a $420 million Powerball jackpot won on Sunday.
• A coalition of abortion rights groups are banding together to legally challenge 20-week abortion bans in three states in anticipation of coming national GOP legislative restrictions.
• The death toll in this week's wildfires in the Southeast has risen to seven as firefighters continue to battle blazes across Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
• The Trump era has spelled the worst bond market in decades for US treasuries as November saw a $1.7 trillion loss as investors dropped debt to head into stocks.
• A critical flaw in Mozilla's Firefox and Tor web browsers could be used to unmask anonymous web users as experts are asking users to update those programs now.

Last Call For Trumped At The Pump

After 8 years of dealing with President Obama and an America that was going away from oil, OPEC suddenly has Trump and now knows it can leverage oil production to start turning the screws on US consumers.

OPEC clinched a deal to curtail oil supply, confounding skeptics as the need to clear a record global crude glut -- and prove the group’s credibility -- brought about its first cuts in eight years. 

OPEC will reduce production by 1.2 million barrels a day to 32.5 million a day, two delegates said Wednesday during a ministerial meeting in Vienna, asking not to be identified as the decision isn’t yet public. Benchmark Brent crude rose 8 percent to $50.07 a barrel in London at 1:37 p.m. local time. 

After weeks of often tense negotiations, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ three biggest producers -- Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran -- resolved differences over sharing the burden of cuts. Notably, it appears the Saudis accepted that Iran, as a special case, can raise production to about 3.9 million barrels a day. The agreement is also likely to include an additional reduction of about 600,000 barrels a day by non-OPEC countries. 

“This should be a wake-up call for skeptics who have argued the death of OPEC,” said Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd. “The group wants to push inventories down.” 

The deal promises to revive the tattered finances of countries from Venezuela to Libya and restore flagging confidence in the producer bloc that controls 40 percent of the world’s oil. But the consequences will reverberate far beyond OPEC, giving a boost to U.S. shale drillers crippled by a two-year price rout and oil giants such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc, which have cut spending to the bone to weather the prolonged downturn.

So the countries Trump has repeatedly criticized during his campaign like Iran, Venezuela and Libya stand to benefit the most from a new, more muscular OPEC.  Like it or not, the global energy trade war that Trump all but promised is on, and rising oil and gas prices are just the first step.

Trump will of course look to retaliate by wrecking the environment to put new drilling and fracking everywhere in the US in order to try to boost production instead of beating OPEC at their own game as Obama has and lowering demand through alternative energy. He played hardball.

Trump on the other hand just helped his Saudi buddies make billions off of US consumers, and then there's the biggest non-OPEC economic winner when the price of oil goes up: Russia.  It's almost like there's a pattern here, guys.

So we'll have an oil price war AND global warming accelerating.  Won't that be fun?

Oversight Is Over And Out

House GOP Oversight Committee chair Rep. Jason Chaffetz, robbed of spending four years of persecution of Hillary Clinton by a Trump win, has no plans whatsoever to even lift a finger to look at The Donald's actual conflicts of interest and open boasts of kleptocracy.

Back in October, Representative Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight Committee, had big plans for 2017. After leading the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, he positioned himself to be President Clinton’s greatest foe in Congress, bragging to the Washington Post that he would spend the next four years probing her alleged misdeeds. 

“It’s a target-rich environment,” Chaffetz said. “Even before we get to Day One, we’ve got two years’ worth of material already lined up. She has four years of history at the State Department, and it ain’t good.” 

Even after the election, Chaffetz said he had a “duty and obligation” to continue investigating the former secretary of State. However, he claimed his committee would investigate President-elect Trump with equal fervor. “I am optimistic that a Trump administration would actually be cooperative,” Chaffetz said. “The Obama administration has given us the stiff arm every single step of the way. I think a new administration would actually work with us to quickly get to the truth, learn what we need to learn and then fix it.” 

It’s unclear why Chaffetz thinks the candidate who refused Chaffetz’s call to release his tax returns will be more responsive as president, but so far the Utah congressman isn’t even asking for a response.

Amid staggering evidence of Trump’s conflicts of interest — from letting the manager of his blind trust sit in on meetings with foreign dignitaries to allowing his D.C. hotel to court foreign diplomats — Chaffetz has ignored calls to launch an investigation into the president-elect.

And he will continue to ignore them, and he will be rewarded with easy reelection in a Utah district that he won by 46 points just three weeks ago, and he will remain House Oversight Committee chair.

And nobody will care.  Anyone who thought for a moment that Chaffetz was ever going to investigate Trump is nearly as much of a problem with our political system as Chaffetz himself is.  The next four years will be brutal, blood-soaked payback against the Obama coalition in an effrot to make sure Democrats never hold power again.

Jason Chaffetz won't even begin to interfere with that.

America's Coming Labor Pains

Politico is reporting that Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Lou Barletta is up for Labor Secretary, and judging from his record he'll be no friend of America's workers.

According to a transition pool report, Barletta said that he and President-elect Donald Trump “talked about the secretary of labor.” When asked whether he was interested in the position, Barletta said, “I’m going to consider what we talked about.”

Barletta is a member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee and would likely roll back key Obama administration regulations. In September, he backed a proposal to delay the Labor Department’s final overtime rule by six months, calling it ‘“ill-considered." (A Texas judge issued a preliminary injunction against the rule last week.)

In addition, Barletta opposed the Labor Department’s fiduciary rule, which requires broker-dealers to consider only their clients’ best interest when providing retirement advice. In April, Barletta voted to block the rule under the Congressional Review Act. (The measure did not pass.)

Barletta is vocal on immigration issues. He was a signatory to an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case challenging President Barack Obama’s 2014 executive actions extending deferred action to undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and expanded deferred action for undocumented children. Barletta also supported legislation passed by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives that penalized so-called sanctuary cities that did not comply with federal law enforcement.

“Sanctuary cities provide refuge for illegal immigrants, drain local resources, and contribute to an increase in crime,” he said in a statement. “ This bill says that sanctuary cities can no longer operate with impunity and holds them accountable for their own actions and the behavior of the illegal immigrants they are sheltering.”

Ragerdless of who's in charge of the department, I'd expect whoever it is to rail against immigrants, Obamacare, and the minimum wage.  Barletta, coming from coal country in the Keystone State, seems like the perfect front man for Trump's coming deregulatory push that will almost certainly reverse worker protections under the Obama administration.

Barletta entered politics in 1999, when he became Mayor of Hazelton, Pennsylvania. He held the office until 2010. Barletta, who was born there, became nationally known as one of the toughest politicians on illegal immigration, a reputation that must have impressed Trump. He even vowed to make the city “one of the toughest places in the United States” for illegal immigrants.

In 2006, Barletta and the Hazelton City Council made it illegal for all illegal immigrants in the city to rent homes or work there. As the the Washington Post notes, the act also made English the city’s official language and banned employees from translating documents without authorization.

“I see illegal immigrants picking up and leaving — some Mexican restaurants say business is off 75 percent,” Barletta told the Post in 2006. “The message is out there.”

In July 2007, a Federal District court Judge struck down the ordinance, ruling that it interfered with federal laws on immigration and the due process of employers.

“Whatever frustrations officials of the City of Hazleton may feel about the current state of immigration enforcement, the nature of the political system in the United States prohibits the city from enacting ordinances that disrupt a carefully drawn federal statutory scheme,” Judge James M. Munley wrote in his ruling, reports the New York Times.

“I will not sit back because the federal government has refused to do its job,” Baretta vowed after the ruling. However, the ruling was upheld in 2010 by the U.S. Court of Appeals.

So yeah, a loud and virulent critic of "illegals" will almost certainly be offered the job of Labor Secretary.  His job will almost certainly be to justify measures to "clean up" the workforce.  Whether or not Trump and Barletta decide to take aim at employers who make billions every year by knowingly hiring undocumented workers and not paying taxes on them, well I wouldn't hold your breath on that.

StupidiNews!

• Tornadoes touched down in northern Alabama and killed three last night, dozens more were injured including several children at a 24-hour day care facility that was destroyed by storms.
• Wildfires in Tennessee forced the evacuation of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, several buildings and homes were destroyed as blazes continue across the Southeast.
• Donald Trump is expected to name Wall Street financier Stephen Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary and mining executive Wilbur Ross as Commerce Secretary today in Washington.
• Despite expected cuts to electric car federal programs by the incoming administration, California plans to continue statewide electric car subsidies through the near future.
• Mobile device game-maker Zynga is suing two former employees for what the company says amounts to stealing confidential information in order to create a new startup firm.

Last Call For Healing The Rift

Donald Trump's "I Won, Now Suck It Libtards!" victory tour will start on Thursday right here in Cincy.

Donald Trump is planning to launch his nationwide victory tour in Cincinnati on Thursday, according to the Republican's official website.

The president-elect and Vice President elect Mike Pence are scheduled to be at U.S. Bank Arena at 7 p.m. Tickets are free and limited to two per person. Doors open at 4 p.m.

Trump's victory in Ohio on Nov. 8 helped send him to the White House. Hamilton County went for Hillary Clinton, but Trump overall won Southwest Ohio and every county county bordering Hamilton in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

Trump has said he loves Cincinnati, because Bond Hill is where he made one of the first deals of his real estate career.

The fact Trump is holding a victory rally in one of the few counties he lost in Ohio is the real message here.  You're surrounded, blue voters.  And now, you are the Enemy.

You will be dealt with accordingly in the Trump regime.

A Tale Of Abortive Efforts

With the incoming Trump administration and full control of Congress, the GOP is going to be spending 2017 collecting heads.  While Obamacare is likely to be the first trophy, Planned Parenthood is also on top of the endangered species list, and there's precisely zero that Democrats can do to save either.

Congressional Republicans are aiming to cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood early next year, according to GOP sources on and off the Hill, as social conservatives press for a milestone win under Donald Trump's presidency after years of thwarted attempts to defund the health care group. 

Although the Senate passed a budget bill in late 2015 that eliminated federal money for Planned Parenthood and also repealed Obamacare, President Barack Obama vetoed the measure in early January. But with Trump in the White House next year, conservatives say it's just a matter of time before a defunding bill becomes law.

“The entire movement is poised for a victory,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony List, an advocacy group that opposes abortion. “We have every assurance [from congressional leaders] that it’s going to happen. Nobody is saying ‘whether,’ the question is ‘when.’” 

If successful, this latest push would be the single biggest victory for anti-abortion groups in years, and likely the first step in a broader agenda aimed at sharply curtailing abortion procedures. Federal law already bars Planned Parenthood from using taxpayer funds for abortions; the group uses the money for family planning and other health services. But anti-abortion groups insist the funding facilitates abortion by freeing up other funds for abortion services. 

After Planned Parenthood, advocates are expected to take aim at banning abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy and making the Hyde amendment — which bans the use of federal money for abortions — permanent. But even with Republicans in control of all the levers of government, those goals face much longer odds. At the same time, they're going to be marshaling forces to help ensure the confirmation of a conservative Supreme Court justice to replace Antonin Scalia, who died in February. 

More immediately, Republicans and their allies are considering a procedure early next year that would neuter Democratic resistance before it's even begun. Anti-abortion advocacy groups are lobbying Republicans to make the defunding provision part of an Obamacare repeal and pass the whole thing using a fast-track budget procedure that would block any Democratic filibuster. Using that so-called budget reconciliation procedure would mean Republicans could have the package on Trump's desk within weeks of his inauguration.

So yeah, once the ball gets rolling on this, it's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to stop.  Voters effectively handed the keys over to America's drunk asshole of an uncle, and he's going to do everything he can to wreck the place again and again and again.

Remember how Texas cutting off the state's Planned Parenthood condemned the state to the worst infant mortality rate in the developed world and will be forcing women to pay to bury or cremate fetal tissue from a miscarriage or abortion procedure starting next month?

Expect that nationally.  The war on women is just about over, guys.

Women lost.

The Price Is Wrong For Obamacare

Donald Trump has apparently decided on Georgia GOP Rep. Tom Price as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, and as Vox health reporter Sarah Kliff points out, that signals Trump is deadly serious about eliminating Obamacare completely.

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services Secretary, already has a plan for how to abolish Obamacare. 

The Washington Post reported late Monday that Trump intends to announce Price, who currently serves as House Budget Chair, to lead the federal agency overseeing Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. 

Price will arrive with at HHS with a clear blueprint for what comes next: he is the author of the Empowering Patients First Act, one of the most thorough and detailed proposals to repeal and replace Obamacare. He’s the HHS Secretary you’d pick if you were dead serious about dismantling the law. 

It would replace the law with a plan that does more to benefit the young, healthy, and rich — and disadvantages the sick, old, and poor. Price’s plan provides significantly less help to those with pre-existing conditions than other Republican proposals, particularly the replacement plan offered by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI). 

The biggest cut to the poor in Price’s plan is the full repeal of the Medicaid expansion, a program that currently covers millions of low-income Americans, which Price replaces with, well, nothing. 

Most Republican replacement plans are still white papers rather than actual legislative language. This means they leave out a lot of key details — who, for example, would qualify for a high-risk pool or how big tax credits would be. But Price’s plan is detailed. It is 242-pages long and lays bare exactly how he would repeal Obamacare — a program Trump is now putting him in charge of.

So yes, this is pretty much the worst-case scenario for Obamacare.  Price's plan would kick more than 20 million people off Medicaid and drastically reduce subsidies for the individual market.  It would skyrocket the number of uninsured overnight.  And regardless of the expected early GOP legislative response to Obamacare, putting its nastiest foe in charge of the plan all but guarantees de facto repeal.

In other words if you have health coverage through the Affordable Care Act, kiss it goodbye.

It's what you voted for, after all. And don't you dare say that you weren't warned.

StupidiNews!

• Officials in Colombia are confirming that at least 76 people are dead after a charter plane crash near Medellin, several passengers on board were members of a pro Brazilian soccer team.
• A Somali transfer student at Ohio State University injured 11 with his car and a knife before police shot and killed him, the FBI is looking into a motive.
• President-elect Trump says he will end the current US normalization with Cuba in January unless the country makes America "a better deal".
• Both France and the UK are vulnerable to winter power shortages for the rest of 2016 as Brexit and cooler weather could increase the need for power imports.
• Texas health officials say a Brownsville woman is the first local transmission case of Zika virus in the state as the CDC is coordinating a response.

Last Call For Straight Out Of The Comics

Sometimes life imitates art, and sometimes it's basically the opening gambit in a techno-thriller movie.

San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said on Monday it had contained a cyber attack, which disrupted its ticketing systems and forced it to offer free service to some customers during the Thanksgiving weekend. 

The agency, known widely as Muni, said it was the victim of a ransomware attack on Friday that affected internal computer systems including email, but had no impact on safe operation of transit services. 

The agency disabled fare gates from Friday to Sunday “as a precaution to minimize possible impacts to our customers,” Muni spokesman Paul Rose said in an email on Monday. 

Muni said on its website that “the situation is now contained and we have prioritized restoring our systems to be fully operational. 

It was the latest high-profile intrusion with ransomware, a pernicious type of computer virus that scrambles data on infected machines, sometimes making it impossible for organizations to deliver critical services. 

Attacks have increased sharply over the past year, with criminals targeting hospitals, police departments and other providers of critical services in the United States and Europe. Criminals typically charge a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars or more to provide digital keys that restore systems to normal. 

U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesman Prentice Danner said the agency was “in contact with Muni officials,” though he declined to say if the FBI had launched a formal investigation.

Ransomware is certainly nothing new, but taking down a major city's public transit system is the kind of thing information security experts have been warning us about for years.  Expect a lot more of this in the future, and soon.

In fact, if I were a budding Mr. Robot type, there's a certain 45th President of the US who has commercial and corporate interests all over the world that are exactly the kind of high-profile targets I'd be very, very, very interested in.

Just saying.