Last Call For The Law Of The Amazon

Amazon's Prime delivery services are very convenient, offering one-day and even same day delivery on items in dozens of US cities.  And the people paid to deliver those millions of packages daily are mostly contractors, not making minimum wage, in unsafe conditions, with no breaks, and no benefits.

Several people described instances when they felt their bosses at Amazon-affiliated courier companies took advantage of them.

Four drivers across three companies said their employers misrepresented the job by promising health benefits without following through. One worker said that when he started his job, his employer promised that he would get health benefits within 90 days of employment. He said he was fired within days of qualifying.

Eight workers across four companies said drivers were denied overtime pay, despite working well over 40 hours a week. Thirteen workers across five companies complained about wages missing from paychecks.

"The culture is predatory," said Ku Irvin, who started working as a driver for DeliverOL, in Aurora, Colorado, in November 2016. "It's a revolving door. A lot of promises are made that are not kept."

Nine months later, Irvin became a manager but said he couldn't stomach it. "Once I got behind the desk, I saw what was going on and it was sickening to me," he said.

A few drivers told Business Insider that they felt powerless to address problems because they feared retaliation.

They described the measures they feared as firings, withholding of wages, and denial of work — meaning drivers could be sent home without a delivery route on days they were scheduled.

"If I didn't come in on my day off, they threatened to fire me," Justin Waring, a former driver for Courier Distribution Systems, in Lisle, Illinois, told Business Insider.

A supervisor at a New Jersey-based logistics company, Prime EFS, sent a threatening text to drivers in late April:

"Tomorrow is Saturday. The Weekend. Where everyone wants to call out," read the message, which was viewed by Business Insider. "You're scheduled for tomorrow so I expect everyone confirmed and on time tomorrow. Any callouts I will make sure you do not receive a route for a week." Prime EFS did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

One Richmond, Virginia-based driver at another Amazon-affiliated courier company claimed he was sent home on a scheduled workday as punishment for arriving one minute late.

"That's their way of disciplining you," said the driver, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of getting fired.

I've talked about Amazon's Dickensian warehouses in the past, and things haven't gotten much better there, but I sure as hell wouldn't work for the company's white collar divisions either.

The company is a stain on the country, frankly.  It needs to be dismantled.

The Mustache Versus The World

Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton's Mustache made it painfully clear Monday (during a Federalist Society speech, natch) that the Trump regime wasn't going to tolerate the International Criminal Court meddling in US affairs any longer.

The United States will not in any way cooperate with the International Criminal Court, national security adviser John Bolton announced in a speech to the Federalist Society on Monday, blasting the ICC as an unaccountable, bureaucratic body that runs counter to the U.S. Constitution and is "antithetical to our nation's ideals."

In his first speech as national security adviser, Bolton made the case that the ICC's authority is invalid, subverts American sovereignty, and concentrates power in the hands of an unchecked authority in a way that is "antithetical to our nation's ideals." In November, the ICC prosecutor asked to investigate crimes allegedly committed by members of the U.S. military who served in Afghanistan. Bolton called those claims unfounded. The national security adviser said it was no coincidence he made his speech on the ICC one day before the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

"Today, on the eve of September 11th, I want to deliver a clear and unambiguous message on behalf of the President of the United States," Bolton said. "The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court.We will not cooperate with the ICC," Bolton said. "We will provide no assistance to the ICC. And we certainly will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us."

The ICC was formally established in 2002, although then-President George W. Bush authorized the U.S. to "un-sign" the Rome Statute and the Senate never ratified it. Bolton suggested the ICC was created to attack U.S. leadership, not to truly hold egregious international criminals accountable.

"In theory, the ICC holds perpetrators of the most egregious atrocities accountable for their crimes, provides justice to the victims, and deters future abuses," Bolton said. "In practice, however, the court has been ineffective, unaccountable, and indeed, outright dangerous. Moreover, the largely unspoken, but always central, aim of its most vigorous supporters was to constrain the United States. The objective was not limited to targeting individual U.S. service members, but rather America's senior political leadership, and its relentless determination to keep our country secure."

If the ICC does come after the U.S., Israel, or any allies, Bolton said the U.S. will not sit quietly. He listed a number of possible actions Bolton might pursue, from withdrawing financial aid to banning judges from entering the country.

"We will respond against the ICC and its personnel to the extent permitted by U.S. law," he said.

Now there are plenty of countries who are not party to the Rome agreement of 2002 and are not members of the ICC besides the US, but all NATO members are (except for Turkey, of course). We've heard this before, Bolton's Mustache has been tangling with the ICC since it was created 16 years ago.  But Alex Whiting at Just Security cautions that this time, with Trump at the helm, the stakes are much higher, and the damage that the Trump regime will do could be irreversible.

[t]here is the looming Afghanistan investigation, which will likely be authorized any day now by a pre-trial chamber and which no doubt prompted Bolton’s speech today. Indeed, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said on Monday, “They told us they were on the verge of making that decision, and we’re letting them know our position ahead of them making that decision.” The pending decision is expected to authorize the prosecutor to investigate the Taliban and Afghan government forces, as well as U.S. personnel for acts of torture against detainees in Afghanistan and at black sites in Poland, Romania, and Lithuania. There are reasons to believe that the ICC prosecutor will focus on the crimes of the Taliban, that far exceed in scale the allegations against U.S. persons, but just the existence of this investigation will likely become an impediment to a more constructive relationship between the U.S. and the ICC in the future. On Monday Bolton described the potential U.S. targets of an ICC investigation as “American patriots, who voluntarily went into harm’s way to protect our nation, our homes, and our families in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.” Given this framing, it will be challenging for future administrations to find a path back to even a constructive relationship with the ICC.

In sum, the policies announced today should not be dismissed as just some more overheated bluster from Bolton and this administration. The new rhetorical framing and policy positions genuinely risk serious damage to the ICC and the rule of law around the world, and these steps will be difficult, if not impossible, to undo. The court, for instance, may no longer be recognizable by the time a new U.S. administration makes the effort to pick up the pieces.

While the new U.S. posture reflects the particular ideological stances of Bolton and President Trump, it is also a further consequence of the misguided embrace of torture by U.S. government officials following 9/11. It is because the ICC is turning to scrutinize allegations of U.S. torture in Afghanistan and elsewhere that Bolton had to turn his sights on the court and bring out a wrecking ball. The U.S. has a proud tradition of initiating, supporting, funding, and participating in international institutions to achieve accountability for international crimes, dating back to Nuremberg and continuing through the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere. Today the U.S. turned against that legacy, likely for many years to come.

I fully expect Trump to demand that fellow NATO allies leave the ICC once it becomes clear that US military personnel will be facing war crimes investigations for 16 years in Afghanistan.  And if I were Vladimir Putin, I could think of no easier way to destroy NATO permanently than to talk Trump into this exact fight we're seeing play out now.

Race To The Bottom, Con't

FOX News resident white supremacist Tucker Carlson defended his white supremacist propaganda segment from Friday with the usual nonsense we've come to love and expect from the right, with such bad faith all-star hits like this:

The organized left is lying about a segment we did on Friday night. Our topic was "diversity is our strength," a phrase our leaders use to end conversation rather than spur it. You hear it all the time. We asked, what exactly does it mean? Is it true?

We only asked if having non-white people in America was actually good for America, what's the big deal?

Here are the words from our segment: "How precisely is diversity our strength? Can you think of other institutions, such as marriage or military units, in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are?"

So he's a segregationist and implies here that marriage should only be available to men and women of the same race (one of each, can't have same-sex marriages!)  Also, the US military integrated generations ago, and we've done fine since then.

"Do you get along better with your neighbors and coworkers if you can't understand each other, or share no common values? And if diversity is our strength, why is it OK for the rest of us to surrender our freedom of speech to just a handful of tech monopolies?"

My downstairs neighbor is deaf, Tucker.  I understand them quite fine, thanks.  And plenty of co-workers where I'm at speak a number of different languages, French, German, Spanish, Hindi, Mandarin, and hey, English!

Also, what do tech monopolies have to do with language at your workplace?  That's not a diversity issue, it's a broader free speech one.

These are the questions our leaders out to be asking every day. How does a nation of 325 million people hang together? What do we all have in common as Americans? Why should we remain a country? Nothing is more important than answering this. 

I'd say through common values like dignity, acceptance and tolerance, but you clearly don't share those values with the rest of America.  Problem isn't us, pal.  It's you.

But our leaders aren't even asking these questions. Instead they're trying to silence anyone who raises them, while at the same time promoting mindless tribalism for political expedience. Division keeps them in power. 

The guy with the 8 PM prime time cable TV show and weekday radio show, heard and watched by millions, is "being silenced" you guys.

What's at stake isn't a cable news segment. It's the existence of rational conversation in America. If they can prevent you from asking honest questions, there's nothing they can't do. More on this tomorrow night.

Except, as we pointed out, nobody is "preventing" Tucker Carlson from using his free speech rights.  He's just upset that he's not protected from the consequences of it.

The real issue is that Carlson's rancid racism is watched by millions, including Donald Trump, on a daily basis.  He's preparing the ground for Trump's inevitable mass deportation regime and rallying white supremacists to get out and vote.

If you thought America was ugly before, wait until Republicans survive 2018 with control of Congress.  We'll never get the country back to sanity at that point.

StupidiNews!

• More than one million in North and South Carolina are expected to evacuate coastal areas in the path of Hurricane Florence, now a Category 4 monster storm headed for Wilmington by Friday.
• Russia has launched its largest military drills ever held, the "Vostok-2018" joint exercises held with China and Mongolia are being condemned by NATO as preparations for "large-scale conflict".
• US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the US will not move to block Pakistan from getting an IMF bailout despite July comments from Pompeo that the US had "serious reservations."
• A measure of small business owner confidence has hit a record high as Republicans seek to make January tax cuts permanent before midterm elections.
• California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law the state's bill to go to 100% renewable energy by 2045, and signed an executive order mandating the state be carbon-neutral by then too.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

Once again, there's three aspects to the Trump/Russia story: 2016 election influencing, money laundering, and the cover-up of the first two.  NY Times columnist David Leonhardt reminds us that the money laundering aspect of the Trump mess is where the wide-scale criminality is going on, and there's a lot of evidence to support that Trump and the GOP are specifically targeting and purging the DoJ of expert investigators on the subject, and have been for some time now.

The latest reason to be suspicious is Trump’s attacks on a formerly obscure Justice Department official named Bruce Ohr. Trump has repeatedly criticized Ohr and called for him to be fired. Ohr’s sin is that he appears to have been marginally involved in inquiries into Trump’s Russian links. But Ohr fits a larger pattern. In his highly respected three-decade career in law enforcement, he has specialized in going after Russian organized crime.

It just so happens that most of the once-obscure bureaucrats whom Trump has tried to discredit also are experts in some combination of Russia, organized crime and money laundering.

It’s true of Andrew McCabe (the former deputy F.B.I. director whose firing Trump successfully lobbied for), Andrew Weissmann (the only official working for Robert Mueller whom Trump singles out publicly) and others. They are all Trump bogeymen — and all among “the Kremlin’s biggest adversaries in the U.S. government,” as Natasha Bertrand wrote in The Atlantic. Trump, she explained, seems to be trying to rid the government of experts in Russian organized crime.

I realize that this evidence is only circumstantial and well short of proof. But it’s one of many suspicious patterns about Trump and Russia. When you look at them together, it’s hard to come away thinking that the most likely explanation is coincidence.

Consider: The financially rickety Trump Organization, shunned by most mainstream banks, long relied on less scrupulous Russian investors. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. said a decade ago. “We have all the funding we need out of Russia,” Eric Trump reportedly said in 2013. And what was the rare major bank to work with Trump? Deutsche Bank, which has a history of illegal Russian money laundering.

Trump also had a habit of selling real estate to Russians in all-cash deals. Money launderers like such deals, because they can turn illegally earned cash into a legitimate asset, usually at an inflated price that rewards the seller for the risk. One especially dubious deal was Trump’s $95 million sale of a Palm Beach house to a Russian magnate in 2008 — during the housing bust, only four years after Trump had bought the house for $41 million.

Then there is Trump’s paranoia about scrutiny of his businesses. He has refused to release his tax returns. He said that Mueller’s investigation would cross a red line by looking into his finances. When word leaked (incorrectly) that Mueller had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank’s records on Trump, he moved to fire Mueller (only to be dissuaded by aides). Trump is certainly acting as if his business history contains damaging information.

All of this taken together shows a definite pattern.  There is an obvious solution however, and it's House Democratic subpoena power with a Democratic House majority.

For months, Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has been trying to get Congress to pay attention to the possibility of money laundering. He points out that Mueller’s mandate does not necessarily include a full investigation of Trump’s businesses. But those businesses could still have behaved in ways that give Putin, a hostile foreign leader, leverage over the president of the United States.

“We need to find out whether that is the case and say so. Or we need to find out that is not the case and say so,” Schiff told me. “But to leave it as an unanswered question, I just think would be negligent to our national security.” So far, congressional Republicans have chosen negligence.

Which means that the November elections may determine whether we ever get answers. If Democrats win House control, Schiff will gain subpoena power. If Republicans keep control, just imagine how emboldened Trump will feel. He could mount a full-on assault on the rule of law by shutting down Mueller’s investigation and any other official scrutiny of the Trump Organization.

And without that oversight, it will absolutely happen.  November is of dire importance, and with 60 days to go, it's time to check your registration, get your family and friends registered, and get them to turn out.

If we lose here, the country is done.

Something Rotten In The State Of...Sweden

As expected, Swedish elections on Sunday have resulted in 40% of the seats going to the current Social Democrats coalition, 40% going to the opposition center-right alliance, and nearly 18% of seats going to the flat-out neo-Nazi Sweden Democrats, who now may very well get to decide who runs the country, and how.

With almost all districts having reported, the ruling center-left Social Democrats and Greens and their Left Party parliamentary allies had 40.6 percent of the vote, while the opposition center-right Alliance was at 40.3 percent.

That gave the center-left 144 seats in the 349-seat parliament against 142 for the Alliance, suggesting weeks of uncertainty before a workable government can be formed.

The Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in the white supremacist fringe, won 17.6 percent and 63 seats, up from 12.9 percent and 49 seats in the last election four years ago, the biggest gain by any party in Sweden’s parliament, the Riksdag.

The results were largely in line with the conventional opinion polls tracked by Reuters in the run-up to the election but well below some online surveys that had predicted the Sweden Democrats could become the largest party.

While the results also fell short of leader Jimmie Akesson’s predictions of 20 percent of the vote or more, he told a party rally it was nevertheless the winner of the election.

“We will gain huge influence over what happens in Sweden during the coming weeks, months and years,” Akesson told party colleagues.

Akesson hopes his party, which wants Sweden to leave the European Union and freeze immigration, can play a decisive role in negotiations over forming a government.

He called on Ulf Kristersson, the center-right Alliance’s candidate for the premiership, to choose between seeking support from the Sweden Democrats for an Alliance government or to accept another four years of Social Democrat Prime Minister Stefan Lofven.

The problem is now that the neo-Nazis in Sweden have become too powerful to ignore politically.  Instead of dealing with them, they're now in a position to greatly influence Sweden's next government, and they are only growing more powerful.

I'd find fault with Sweden, except that here in the US, we have our own "center-right coalition with neo-Nazis for political expedience party" and they currently control the federal government and a nearly two-thirds majority of the states.

Sweden is just following our shameful example, after all.

Race To The Bottom, Con't

Like I keep telling people, Trump is not the cause of decades of GOP racism, Trump is the result. It is the Republican party itself that is hopelessly broken when somebody as racist as GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis gets a free pass on hanging out with white supremacists until he runs for Governor and somebody finally decides to ask questions.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), a gubernatorial nominee who recently was accused of using racially tinged language, spoke four times at conferences organized by a conservative activist who has said that African Americans owe their freedom to white people and that the country’s “only serious race war” is against whites. 

DeSantis, elected to represent north-central Florida in 2012, appeared at the David Horowitz Freedom Center conferences in Palm Beach, Fla., and Charleston, S.C., in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017, said Michael Finch, president of the organization. At the group’s annual Restoration Weekend conferences, hundreds of people gather to hear right-wing provocateurs such as Stephen K. Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos and Sebastian Gorka sound off on multiculturalism, radical Islam, free speech on college campuses and other issues. 

“I just want to say what an honor it’s been to be here to speak,” DeSantis said in a 27-minute speech at the 2015 event in Charleston, a video shows. “David has done such great work and I’ve been an admirer. I’ve been to these conferences in the past but I’ve been a big admirer of an organization that shoots straight, tells the American people the truth and is standing up for the right thing.” 

The Florida gubernatorial campaign is one of the marquee races of 2018, pitting DeSantis, a Trump acolyte and lawyer in the Navy Reserve, against Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, who would become the state’s first African American governor. President Trump has endorsed DeSantis, and Gillum is backed by progressive leader Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont. In less than two weeks since the primary, race has become a central issue in the nation’s largest battleground state.

Again, these are all appearances that DeSantis made while being a sitting Congressman for the last six years and apparently nobody bothered to check to see if there were things like "video of a 27-minute long speech that the guy gave at a white supremacists conference while being in Congress" until the Washington Post decided to look into it.

Nice.

In his 2017 speech, DeSantis echoed many of Trump’s top grievances — blasting Washington as a “swamp,” criticizing the special counsel investigation into the 2016 election and defending the travel ban against several majority-Muslim countries. 

Members of Congress are required to file disclosures when outside groups pay for their travel. DeSantis filed one for only the 2017 trip, reporting that the Freedom Center paid $468 in meals for him and his wife and $750 for lodging at The Breakers in Palm Beach. 

A spokesman for DeSantis said the congressman or his campaign paid his expenses in 2015 and 2016, so no disclosure filing was required. His campaign produced receipts for only the 2015 trip. In 2013, DeSantis spoke at the conference, but did not stay, so there were no expenses, the spokesman said. 

Beyond the annual conferences, Horowitz has a record of inflammatory comments on social media. He was temporarily locked out of his Twitter account last month for a post involving Islam. “If you’re a Muslim, you might not want to be sworn in on a Judeo Christian bible, since Islam has conducted a 1500 year war against Christians and Jews, is calling for death to Israel and has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Christians recently.” 

Twitter said the post violated rules against “hateful conduct.” Horowitz defended the tweet, telling The Post: “Most Muslims are law-abiding people who are trying to put food on the table for their kids but Islam is very problematic. . . . You show me the Islamic leaders who are not okay with the calls to exterminate Jews and Israel.”

Four times DeSantis showed up at this little cross-burning neo-Nazi shindig.  Four times in six years.

Wasn't news until today.  DeSantis resigned from the House to "focus on the governor's race" but it's clear just how much trouble he's in now.

He's the favorite to become the next governor of Florida still, however.

StupidiNews!

• Hurricane Florence is gathering strength in the Atlantic and could end up taking aim at the Carolinas as a Category 4 storm by the end of the week.
• Energy Secretary Rick Perry is expected to meet with Russian and Saudi energy officials this week over continuation of Iranian oil sanctions by the US. 
• Paris police have apprehended a suspect who wounded seven in a knife attack Sunday night, no initial motive of terrorism has been indicated so far.
• Alibaba chairman Jack Ma will step down next year to let CEO Daniel Zhang run the Chinese retail giant,  Ma is China's wealthiest person and will devote more time to his Jack Ma Foundation.
• Two new studies find that probiotic products have little benefit on healthy individuals and may be harmful if they replace native gut bacteria.

Last Call For The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

I haven't said too much about the Democrats retaking the Senate because despite being down 51-49, Democrats have ten seats to defend in states Trump carried in 2016.  To think that Democrats would win all ten and then pick up two more seats on top of that in Arizona and Nevada meant that they would have to be perfect 12 of 12 in those contests with zero room for error.

There's now room for error, with Phil Breseden in Tennessee and Beto O'Rourke in Texas making two more Democratic pickups in play.

NBC News released a poll of Tennesseeconducted with Marist on Thursday, and Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen has a statistically insignificant 2 percentage point lead over Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn among likely voters. Among all registered voters, Bredesesn's lead expands to 4 points, 48 percent to 44 percent. Both results are within the poll's margin of error (±4.5 points for registered voters, ±5.5 points for likely voters), but combined with NBC/Marist polls this week from Indiana and Missouri, they suggest Democrats have a shot at winning control of the Senate in November, despite an unfavorable map. 

Bredesen, a popular former governor, and Blackburn are running to succeed Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). Democrats, meanwhile, are defending Senate seats in Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota, Missouri, Florida, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states President Trump won in 2016. They need a net gain of two seats to win control, and their best shots of flipping seats are Arizona and Nevada. 

In NBC/Marist's poll of Indiana released Wednesday, Sen. Joe Donnelly (D) leads GOP challenger Mike Braun 49 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, just outside the poll's ±5 point margin of error. In Missouri, Tuesday's NBC/Marist poll found Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) and state Attorney General Josh Hawley (R) tied in a two-way race, 47 percent each, and McCaskill takes a 4-point lead if Libertarian and Green candidates are included. All three polls were conducted Aug. 25-29. Political handicapper Stuart Rothenberg, looking at those polls and others in Florida, West Virginia, and elsewhere, sees new hope for the Democrats.

Of course, at this point in 2016, Hillary Clinton had 1 70% chance of winning too, which is about what Democrats have of winning the House back.

There's still plenty of time for things to go wrong, and Democrats cannot forget that.

Another #MeToo Mogul Meets His Maker

Another powerful Hollywood executive is being shown the door, this time it's CBS CEO Leslie Moonves, who is now leaving the network over sexual harassment claims, and the fact they're bad for business, and Ronan Farrow has followed up his July expose' on Moonves with what was the final nail in his coffin.  (Bit of a language warning here.)

Members of the board of the CBS Corporation are negotiating with the company’s chairman and C.E.O., Leslie Moonves, about his departure. Sources familiar with the board’s activities said the discussions about Moonves stepping down began several weeks ago, after an article published in the The New Yorker detailed allegations by six women that the media executive had sexually harassed them, and revealed complaints by dozens of others that the culture in some parts of the company tolerated sexual misconduct. Since then, the board has selected outside counsel to lead an investigation into the claims.

As the negotiations continue and shareholders and advocacy groups accuse the board of failing to hold Moonves accountable, new allegations are emerging. Six additional women are now accusing Moonves of sexual harassment or assault in incidents that took place between the nineteen-eighties and the early aughts. They include claims that Moonves forced them to perform oral sex on him, that he exposed himself to them without their consent, and that he used physical violence and intimidation against them. A number of the women also said that Moonves retaliated after they rebuffed him, damaging their careers. Similar frustrations about perceived inaction have prompted another woman to raise a claim of misconduct against Jeff Fager, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” who previously reported to Moonves as the chairman of CBS News.

One of the women with allegations against Moonves, a veteran television executive named Phyllis Golden-Gottlieb, told me that she filed a criminal complaint late last year with the Los Angeles Police Department, accusing Moonves of physically restraining her and forcing her to perform oral sex on him, and of exposing himself to her and violently throwing her against a wall in later incidents. The two worked together in the late nineteen-eighties. Law-enforcement sources told me that they found Golden-Gottlieb’s allegations credible and consistent but prosecutors declined to pursue charges because the statutes of limitations for the crimes had expired. Early this year, Moonves informed a portion of the CBS board about the criminal investigation.

The terms of Moonves’s potential departure have yet to be settled. Last week, news reports had circulated that he might leave with an exit package of nearly a hundred million dollars. Several of the women expressed outrage that Moonves might be enriched by his departure from the company. Jessica Pallingston, a writer, alleges that Moonves coerced her into performing oral sex on him when she worked as his temporary assistant, in the nineties, and that, after she repelled subsequent sexual advances, he became hostile, at one point calling her a “cunt.” “It’s completely disgusting,” she said of the reports of Moonves’s potential exit package. “He should take all that money and give it to an organization that helps survivors of sexual abuse.”

In a statement, Moonves acknowledged three of the encounters, but said that they were consensual: “The appalling accusations in this article are untrue. What is true is that I had consensual relations with three of the women some 25 years ago before I came to CBS. And I have never used my position to hinder the advancement or careers of women. In my 40 years of work, I have never before heard of such disturbing accusations. I can only surmise they are surfacing now for the first time, decades later, as part of a concerted effort by others to destroy my name, my reputation, and my career. Anyone who knows me knows that the person described in this article is not me.” Moonves declined to specify which three encounters he considered consensual.

In separate statements, the CBS board of directors said that it “is committed to a thorough and independent investigation of the allegations, and that investigation is actively underway,” and the CBS Corporation said it “takes these allegations very seriously,” and called the board’s investigation “thorough” and “ongoing.”

Again, hours after this piece was published, CBS announce Moonves was gone as of Monday. Hollywood still has much to answer for, but it's being cleaned up one asshole at a time.

Sunday Long Reads: Playing Duterte Pool

If you want to know where the FAKE NEWS!!! regime of Donald Trump's use of social media and FOX News as state media is heading, ask somebody we know that Trump admires and wishes to emulate.

In August 2016, a handful of crude images began circulating widely throughout Facebook’s Filipino community: a middle-aged man and woman having clumsy sex atop a tacky floral bedspread. The man’s face, obscured by shadows, was impossible to make out. The woman’s was not. She appeared to be Sen. Leila de Lima — a fierce critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his bloody war on drugs.

But the woman was not de Lima.

The senator issued a strong public denial (“That’s not me. I don’t understand”) and internet sleuths subsequently tracked the provenance of the images to a porn site. Still, the doctored photos very quickly became part of a narrative propagated by Duterte, who had accused de Lima of accepting bribes from drug pushers. Duterte, who’d previously threatened to “destroy” de Lima in public, touted the pictures as stills from a sex tape featuring the senator and her chauffeur — the person she'd allegedly ordered to collect illicit payments on her behalf. “De Lima is not only screwing her driver, she is also screwing the nation,” Duterte said in September. If he were de Lima, the president added, he would hang himself. (“We believe the president was referring to another video,” Martin Andanar, communications secretary of the Duterte administration, told BuzzFeed News.)

De Lima was soon beset by disparaging fake news reports that spread quickly across Facebook: She had pole-danced for a convict; she’d used government funds to buy a $6 million mansion in New York; the Queen of England had congratulated the Philippine Senate for ousting her. Six months later, her reputation fouled, de Lima was arrested and detained on drug charges, though she vehemently disputes them. She has now been in jail for over a year, despite outcry from international human rights groups over what they consider a politically motivated detention.

For all the recent hand-wringing in the United States over Facebook’s monopolistic power, the mega-platform’s grip on the Philippines is something else entirely. Thanks to a social media–hungry populace and heavy subsidies that keep Facebook free to use on mobile phones, Facebook has completely saturated the country. And because using other data, like accessing a news website via a mobile web browser, is precious and expensive, for most Filipinos the only way online is through Facebook. The platform is a leading provider of news and information, and it was a key engine behind the wave of populist anger that carried Duterte all the way to the presidency.

Yet some Filipinos say Facebook treats the Philippines as an absentee landlord might, occasionally dropping by to address minor issues but often shrugging off responsibility for the larger, more problematic stuff: the conspiracies that helped land de Lima in jail, the misinformation that has clouded the public’s understanding of a brutal drug war, and the propaganda that continues to damage the democratic process in the Philippines.

“Until we find an effective way to counter” the misinformation problem in the Philippines, de Lima wrote to BuzzFeed News from Camp Crame, where she is imprisoned, “we cannot hope to repair the damage [it’s] already caused and to ensure it can never hijack our democratic way of life again.”

Facebook told BuzzFeed News the images violated its policies and were removed. The company also noted that it eventually prevented links to bogus reports about de Lima from being shared on its platform — but only after de Lima had been arrested.

Yet it is the photos, more than the links to fake news, that show what Facebook and the Philippines are up against. Unlike the fake news scandals in the US, which often sought to drive readers to third-party sites, misinformation campaigns in the Philippines live largely on Facebook itself. It is images, Facebook Live videos, and posts written directly on the platform; a never-ending meme-driven propaganda campaign that’s easier to share and harder to police.

If you want to know what happens to a country that has opened itself entirely to Facebook, look to the Philippines. What happened there — what continues to happen there — is both an origin story for the weaponization of social media and a peek at its dystopian future. It’s a society where, increasingly, the truth no longer matters, propaganda is ubiquitous, and lives are wrecked and people die as a result — half a world away from the Silicon Valley engineers who’d promised to connect their world.

"Weaponized social media" is a very good term, because it's what America is facing under Trump.  It's been fully weaponized by a bloody dictator in the Philippines, and it's being used to destroy and detain Duterte's political foes.

We're not that far away from that happening in the US, either.

Maybe just one election away, at most.

The Revenge Of Obamacare

Eight years after passing it ended up costing Democrats more than 70 House seats and a dozen Senate seats, the Affordable Care Act (and the Republican plans to dismantle it and take health care away from millions in red states with large white working-class voter blocs) just might save the necks of Blue Dog Democratic senators like Joe Manchin in November.

In a state where approval of President Trump is near the country’s highest, Mr. Manchin, a Democrat, was once thought to be deeply endangered in his re-election this year. But the 71-year-old incumbent, who likes to say “Washington sucks,” has a 7- to 10-point polling edge over his Republican opponent, Patrick Morrisey. A lot can happen before Election Day, but for now, he is the envy of other red-state Democrats as the parties wrestle over control of the Senate.

For an explanation, look no further than the issue Mr. Manchin has made No. 1 in his campaign: health care, specifically protections enshrined in the Affordable Care Act, a once-vilified law that has grown increasingly popular now that its benefits are woven deeply into a state with high poverty and poor health. West Virginia has the highest share of its population covered by Medicaid, 29 percent, including about 160,000 who became eligible in the Medicaid expansion under the law.

Mr. Manchin, a former governor and the state’s dominant politician for more than a decade, rarely cites the law’s formal name, much less its toxic-for-West Virginia nickname, “Obamacare.”

But he has relentlessly raised the alarm over the potential loss of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, about one in three West Virginians.

Mr. Morrisey, the state attorney general, practically handed him the issue by joining a new lawsuit seeking to repeal the health care law, which Mr. Morrisey calls “devastating” because of rising premiums in the individual market.

A federal judge in Texas heard arguments Wednesday in the case, which was brought by Republican state officials from around the country. If they win and the Affordable Care Act, or pieces of it, falls, an estimated 17 million Americans will lose coverage. And in a change that would affect far more people, insurers would once again be able to deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions or charge them more.

Democrats have seized on the lawsuit to defend endangered senators in red states, including North Dakota, Montana and Missouri.

But few are using it to galvanize votes as aggressively as Mr. Manchin, whose state has epidemic levels of diabetes, heart disease and opioid addiction. His TV ads star West Virginians with pre-existing conditions. He hosts round tables on the topic. And in the Senate, he introduced a resolution to fight the Republican lawsuit.

Running on health care is designed to overcome his chief vulnerability: Mr. Trump’s 60 percent job approval here.

Jimmy Ulbrich, from nearby Dawes, is a prime target. “He is bringing America back the way it should be,” Mr. Ulbrich, 48, said of Mr. Trump. But Mr. Ulbrich, who is disabled, does not like the idea of overturning the Affordable Care Act. “I guess Joe Manchin gets my vote,” he said.

The racist game show host is gonna make America white again, but in the unhealthiest state in the nation, people don't want to lose their government health care, either.

And that's how Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, and Heidi Heitkamp are going to win.

I hate Joe Manchin, he's an asshole and he regularly sabotages progressive legislation.  There's a reason his StupidiTag for years has been "Joe F'ckin Manchin".

But West Virginia gets two Senators like every other state, and if we can get a Democratic one in every red state and win back the House, we'd have a hell of a lot fewer problems.

Give people in red states reason to vote blue.  "I don't want to lose my health care" is a damn good reason, so more power to Manchin.

Maybe it'll work in Texas, too.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

Back in April, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was the deciding vote that shot down the Trump Regime's plans to assume basically all crimes were deportation-worthy "crimes of violence".

In a 5-to-4 decision Tuesday, the court overturned the deportation of a 25-year legal U.S. resident from the Philippines who was convicted of two burglaries.

James Dimaya came to the U.S. at age 13 as a legal permanent resident. More than two decades later — after he was convicted of two home burglaries in California and sentenced to a total of four years in prison — the government sought his deportation under a "violent crime" immigration law, though neither of Dimaya's crimes involved violence. The statute defines a violent crime as one involving force or the "substantial risk" of force.

The Supreme Court, however, said that language is so vague that it invites arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.

At the time, I noted Ian Millhiser warning that Gorsuch only did so out of a desire to cripple the federal government's regulatory capacity beyond verbatim what Congress allowed it. That's a double-edged sword, as Congress does have to define what the law is in order to be enforced, Gorsuch wrote in his concurrence.

On Friday, the House took the first steps towards doing just that.

The House on Friday passed a bill that would restore the federal government's ability to deport immigrants for a wide variety of violent criminal offenses in a vote that won quick praise from President Trump.

The Community Safety and Security Act aims to address an April Supreme Court ruling that found that the federal definition of a “crime of violence,” which under immigration law prompts the mandatory deportation of a noncitizen, is impermissibly vague. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Karen Handel (R-Ga.), specifically enumerates more than a dozen crimes that would qualify.

The bill passed 247-152, largely along party lines.

Democrats objected to the bill for being rushed to the floor without hearings or an amendment process in committee, though 29 broke ranks and supported it; four libertarian-oriented Republicans opposed it.

Trump tweeted his approval of the legislation early Friday afternoon: “House GOP just passed a bill to increase our ability to deport violent felons (Crazy Dems opposed). Need to get this bill to my desk fast!"

Among the offenses that would be considered a “crime of violence” under the bill: “murder, voluntary manslaughter, assault, sexual abuse or aggravated sexual abuse, abusive sexual contact, child abuse, kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, firearms use, burglary, arson, extortion, communication of threats, coercion, fleeing, interference with flight crew members and attendants, domestic violence, hostage taking, stalking, human trafficking, piracy, or a terrorism offense” defined elsewhere in federal law.

Also qualifying would be any offense involving illegal explosives or weapons of mass destruction or involving “the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another."

All of those would become deportable offenses under the law.  Most of them definitely fit "crimes of violence". But "communication of threats" and "fleeing" along with "the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another" is all extremely vague, and that's going to mean that saying mean things about Trump or fleeing an ICE raid means you go away if you're a non-citizen.

And we already have the Trump regime openly questioning American citizenship now.

You can guess where all this is going.

This bill needs to die in the Senate, but I'm not sure it will.

Race To The Bottom, Con't

Here's FOX News and unofficial Trump adviser Tucker Carlson giving us the 2018 Donald Trump white supremacy movement in under 30 seconds.

Tucker Carlson really really really really does not like living in a diverse country pic.twitter.com/iLpMr6QrNV

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) September 8, 2018

This is what a whole hell of a lot of Americans believe, politely, and overtly.  It is definitely what the Republicans running our government believe, including the man in the Oval Office.

Straight -up white nationalist propaganda.

The Absolution Solution

Ezra Klein arrives at the correct conclusion that both Barack Obama, in his speech yesterday, and conservative loudmouth Ben Shapiro, in his response to Obama, both made a massive mistake by absolving Trump voters of their sins.

Where Obama and Shapiro differ sharply in their explanation is in the attribution of blame. Obama blames Trump — and others in the Republican Party and conservative media — for demagogically preying on Americans’ fears and anxieties. Shapiro blames Obama for adopting a lecturing tone that alienated a critical mass of Americans.

Over email, I asked Shapiro to unpack this point for me. “Obama suggested that his political opponents were badly-motivated ignoramuses, routinely ignored the rule of law, and utilized identity politics to divide the country,” he replied. “He savaged McCain and Romney in scurrilous ways. Many in the Republican base felt angered and slighted, and raged at the supposed nice guys in the party who were allegedly too weak to fight back. They supported the most aggressive candidate on the stage.”

Some of this strikes me as, well, strange. John McCain just had Obama speak at his funeral. The idea that the 2008 campaign was uniquely scurrilous is provably wrong. The rest of it is the usual Rorschach test of American politics; I think Obama treated issues of identity with unusual care and caution and, particularly early in his presidency, was unusually willing to believe the best of his political opponents, but I doubt I’ll change any minds on that in this column. Indeed, the deep division over how identity politics was wielded in the Obama era, and who was really acting outside the norms of American politics, is exactly what you’d expect if you believe this broader story of demographic, political, and cultural upheaval.

More interesting, I think, is the way both Obama and Shapiro implicitly absolve voters of responsibility for the choices they made. Obama’s basic argument is that too much change, too fast, made right-leaning voters susceptible to a demagogue’s charms; Shapiro’s basic argument is that too much of Obama’s liberal provocations, for too long, made right-leaning voters long for a strongman of their own.

The term “white fragility” is overused in politics right now, but it is relevant here: The unwillingness to state the obvious — a critical proportion of Republican primary voters enthusiastically supported the candidate who promised to turn back the demographic clock — might be politically wise, but it’s analytically disastrous. Black voters who supported Louis Farrakhan would never be treated with such delicacy.

Trump, for all his flaws, ran a campaign based on clear positions and aspirations. He promised to build a wall; he said that our country was being weakened by louche, violent, parasitic immigrants; he said Obama was an illegitimate president with a forged birth certificate; he vowed to stop Muslims from traveling to the country; and in every speech, at every turn, he promised to turn back the clock, to make America great again.

That a crucial portion of the Republican electorate agreed with him in all of this is undeniable. What it says about them is often treated as if it is unspeakable — either because to state their beliefs clearly is insulting or because it just makes a bad political situation worse.

Trump did not create these voters. They long predated him — they were present in both Pat Buchanan’s and Ross Perot’s candidacies — but they were homeless in American politics, suppressed by the two parties for reasons of both principle and political expediency.

Trump, with his money, celebrity, and media-savvy, taking advantage of new communication technologies, a weakened Republican Party, and the rage that grew on the right amid the daily affront of Obama’s presidency, was able to break through the cartel and offer those voters the choice they actually wanted, and in the Republican primary, enough of them took it to make him the nominee. (The general election, it should be said, had more complex dynamics, with a lot of voters unhappily choosing Trump over Clinton, which is why I think the primary was the real pivot here.)

So yes, Republican voters enraged by the feeling that they were being lectured by the first black president is a big part of how we got Trump. This idea is popular in some quarters of the right because it’s understood as somehow absolving them of blame for Trump, but it’s just another way of saying that Obama’s presidency — and the broader demographic and cultural changes it both revealed and represented — activated ugly sentiments in the Republican Party, those fears and resentments were amplified by conservative media, and Republican voters turned to the candidate who championed those sentiments most clearly.

Which is all to say Trump’s voters made a rational choice based on their beliefs about, and preferences for, the country they live in. There’s a powerful impulse to absolve them of that choice, to blame it on someone or something else, but doing so obscures the reasons it was made and confuses our attempts to move forward.

This is not only correct, but clear-headed and sobering to boot.

The reason we have Trump in the White House is that 63 million Americans made the choice to vote for him.  

You know what?

Those 63 million Americans are the problem. 

Oh I know, "But Zandar, you can't blame the voters, that's playing right into the hands of the politics of resentment".

Horseshit.

Take responsibility for what you did.  Fix it in November by throwing out the Republicans at the ballot box.