May 1, 2018

Trump telegraphed the alleged "Mueller question leak", btw

Among the quirks of Trump's odd mental function is a tendency for perseveration - to continue to repeat ideas, words, themes, past the relevant context in which they came up which, with Trump, is whatever the previous conversation he had, and whatever was the last part of that conversation.

During the weird Fox rant last week, Trump jarringly brought up the "leaked debate questions" canard, seemingly out of nowhere, in the course of discussing the Russian investigation.

Watch it again:

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/989479385983062016

Of all of the things to go off on, among the various grievances he has expressed toward CNN, he comes around to:

"Can you imagine, by the way, if you gave me the questions to a debate?"

...out of nowhere, and with seemingly no relevance to what he was going on about.

April 28, 2018

For the comedy act at the dinner, they should just run a couple minutes of his rally

“We have a great comedy act for you, folks, but he couldn’t be with us here, so please direct your attention to the screens....

April 28, 2018

The case for Jim Bakker as Congressional chaplain

He is a perfect match for the “spiritual needs” of the Republican flock.

And... he can make a bundle switching the cafeteria over to his food buckets!



Heck, they could make it a tick box on your tax form - Do you want $500 of your refund in the form of a Jim Bakker End Times Food Bucket?

April 27, 2018

The actual ruling in the Stormy Daniel's case, if you are interested

This is the actual ruling on the 90 day stay. As reporters tend to often fail to report the basis of a decision, or sort of miss the point of where a particular ruling falls into the procedural landscape of the proceeding, you may want to have a look at it yourself:


https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.704250/gov.uscourts.cacd.704250.53.0.pdf

" It is also quite possible that the
outcome of the criminal inves
tigation will benefit the parties
and the Court by streamlining the
issues and questions presented in this action.
Accordingly, the interests of judicial efficiency
weigh in favor of a temporary stay. "

The point being that this is not to say the entire criminal proceeding needs to run its course. It is more along the lines of "let's have a look-see when we know what Cohen winds up being indicted for, specifically" in order to decide whether the scope of probable discovery or testimony in this case is relevant to the contract claims being litigated.

It may also be, as it often is, that a suspect under indictment such as Cohen, may negotiate the terms of that indictment, in the event he becomes cooperative.

But given the relatively more consequential criminal case, compared to a civil suit over a contract, the judge most probably doesn't want anything to happen in this proceeding that is going to potentially throw a curveball into the mix during the process of vetting the evidence and finally charging Cohen with something in the SDNY.

April 26, 2018

Paging Phill Griffith, call for you on Line 1

April 26, 2018

Is anyone else puzzled by the Chapman/Gerardot murder/suicide?

Two things I don't get:

1. Why did she take the trains? To get from Wilmington or Newark to Radnor by train is time consuming, since you have to take either Amtrak or the Septa R2 to 30th street, and then another Septa regional out to Radnor. I guess since Google maps provides transit instructions, then that's simpler for a new resident to figure out, but why not just drive there?

2. Why the disguise? Why would it matter if anyone on the trains or at the stations recognized someone who had moved here a few months ago, and didn't have many acquaintances in the area. And why disguise yourself if you've sent a string of texts or emails describing what it is you are going to do?

3. When did he show up in the driveway? The reports suggest that neighbors heard gunshot(s?) and then called police. Or did he arrive, and then call police? Either way, he is in the driveway when the police arrive. So, did he arrive after the shooting, but before the police?

When the police get there, he says "My wife may be inside." So, he shows up at the house, presumably aware of the threats, etc., goes to the door, has to notice that the door is broken, doesn't go inside, but just stays in the driveway until the police show up?

I realize that crazy people do crazy stuff, so things don't always make a lot of sense, but some of the details of this thing are a real head scratcher.

Like, was she expecting them to show up together, shoot the both of them, and take his car back home? So her plan would be messed up when Chapman shows up alone - unless she shot Chapman and then sent the texts to lure him to the house. But, for whatever reason, she decides to shoot herself instead.

I'm just having trouble making sense of what the plan may have been versus what seems to have happened. Him getting there (a) after the shooting, and (b) before the police, and making a guess about what's inside the house, just hits me as kind of odd.

April 26, 2018

One Internet Archive Quirk Which May Not Be Relevant

If you remember, a lot of the early web, in which the IA was first launched, consisted of static HTML pages, making it relatively easy to store and compress content. However, if you think the IA is merely gorging down a "copy of everything on the internet" on their budget and without the storage space of the Almighty, then you may have a simplistic view of how the IA works, and how it has worked at different times during its development.

And, oddly, since I was looking for an old picture I tweeted from an IA server location several years back, I found that my photograph wasn't archived....

https://twitter.com/Berryhillj/status/989296718201151488

In any event, as things moved beyond static HTML and storage capacity varied, IA implemented, at various times, different sorts of tricks to deal with either problem.

Since I deal in IP disputes which often hinge on claims of "who was first", one of the tricks I noticed was that IA would skimp on storage space by sometimes making external calls to the existing site for images. If the image wasn't stored at IA, one of two things would happen, (a) you'd get a broken image icon, or (b) if the same filename still existed on at the reference URL and the same last-modified date (which is easy to change on some systems), then when you called up the "archived" version of the page, IA would simply inline the presumed-to-be-the-same image file from the referenced site.

There was a time, and I haven't checked this lately, where active content - i.e. content generated by scripts or served up from databases - would be handled in a similar way: if the relevant php file existed on the live and current server, then it would be invoked to serve up the content.

None of this may be even remotely relevant to the teacup tempest at hand. I am only saying that there are circumstances I have encountered in the course of my career where there had been issues involving "things in the Internet Archive not actually being what they seem to be". That's all. Whether it applies in this instance - I have NO IDEA.

But more importantly:

Joy Reid is a living breathing human being. IMHO if you want to know what sort of person she is, and what sorts of opinions she holds, you don't need to consult the Internet Archive. I would imagine the best way to know what sort of person she is and what sorts of opinions she holds, would be to converse with her.

April 24, 2018

The 2020 Democratic nominee will be...

...the candidate for whom I will vote in the presidential election.

April 21, 2018

The real reason for the entire Comey Memo / Rosenstein play

I think we are missing the true genius of Trump and Nunes here.

Figure... The hypothesis goes that Rosenstein wouldn't release the memos, so he could be held in contempt by Congress, thus providing cover for firing Rosenstein. Rosenstein "outsmarts" them by releasing the memos, which are then immediately leaked and which, in fact, provide further damning insights into Trump's apparent knowledge of guilt.

Well, gee, anyone would have known that was a bad idea. Aside from which, how do they sell Trump on something as complicated as a Rube Goldberg scheme to get to fire Rosenstein? The dynamics are well beyond his comprehension level. It takes more than five words to explain to him.

So, I think I understand what may have been Trump's true reasoning -

To hurt Comey's book sales.

I know, this is crazy, but hang with me here for a moment. It's no more crazier than a lot of stuff that's actually true.

The only thing Trump understands is ratings - television, best seller list, top grossing movie, playmate of the year, whatever - So, to get Trump to buy in, what you'd have to tell him is:

"Comey is coming out with a book. We've already read it, since a former FBI official's book has to get agency review before publication. It's all based on his notes that we already have, see. So, how about we have Nunes demand the notes, so he can leak them, so everyone can get them for free, and then... boom... it cuts into Comey's book sales!"

THAT is, IMHO, a plan that Trump could understand and go for.

April 20, 2018

If you are interested in the actual DNC civil complaint re: Russia

Here's a link to the actual complaint itself, instead of 20 screaming headlines saying the same thing:

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.492363/gov.uscourts.nysd.492363.1.0.pdf

The DMCA claim is a nice touch.