Discussion: New Bob Woodward book - “War”

nan said:

This group was indicated but when they actually showed up to defend themselves the charges were dropped.  

No. The indictment still stands and these men are all still wanted by the FBI. 

https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/boris-alekseyevich-antonov

Stop making **** up. 

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Discussion: New Bob Woodward book - “War”

I think there is a fair discussion to be had about the fact that some people’s expectations run a little wild when the media reports on certain things. 

For instance, starting in 2016 and moving forward it became clear that a group in Russia was using social media to try to influence American voters. That influence was pretty clearly designed to benefit Donald Trump. Moreover evidence started to emerge about possible contacts between those Russians and members of the Trump campaign. Also questions about whether the Russian government, and Putin specifically, were directly involved in this. 

I think a lot of people took that narrative and tried to very publicly draw a lot of conclusions about Donald Trump’s direct culpability in all this. Then when all the investigation was complete, people were dismissive of the end results. They’d been reading for months about a video of Donald Trump in a Moscow hotel getting peed on by Russian prostitutes while Vladimir Putin sat nearby and planted fake Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop then sending it to James Comey via FedEx in October 2016. So when the actual results of investigation came out, of course it was disappointing, and it allowed some people to say it was all a hoax. 

This has had the unfortunate effect that any information which comes out about Trump and Russia gets filed under the same “Russiagate was a hoax!” banner. If Trump had Abbott testing machines sent to Putin for his personal use, that should not have been kept a secret. If he wanted to make a case that it was in the interest of the United States to help a foreign government manage a dangerous pandemic, they should have openly said so.  I can spin it: If Putin had died of COVID that could have been very destabilizing. Boom. People would have gotten mad but it would be over. 

Also, a former President having private phone calls with a foreign leader, especially Russia, is not okay. Trump is in possession of all kinds of sensitive information in his head. And, according to articles about the book, he asked to be left in private to have those conversations. Nobody from the US other than Trump knows what he said to Putin. It doesn’t matter what they talked about … the conversations should not have been private. 

So we end up with headlines that oversell the facts, and pundits speculating on TV and online. And a real problem gets dismissed because it doesn’t live up the the hype. 

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Discussion: Two MMS students hit by a car

When prospect is finished paving the Andretti brothers and sisters will come flying through. The only way to stop this madness is to have police presence handing out tickets like Halloween candy. 

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Discussion: Twitter is a Private Company

Good to see another successful Falcon Heavy launch, too. And soon we'll know so much more about Europa, even though we should attempt no landing there.

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Discussion: The NYT Spelling Bee Thread

Got the QB again today. Two words were guesses, but I think I had them lodged somewhere in my subconscious.

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Discussion: Meet the Mets (For Mets Fans Only!)

Also, I'm thinking of Jerry Ryan tonight. During the 2015 postseason run Soul29 arranged viewing parties and Jerry was there each night cheering for "DANIEL MURPHY!!"

Jerry would be loving this. 

"FRANCISCO LINDOR!!"

:-)

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Discussion: Meet the Mets (For Mets Fans Only!)

ml1 said:

Also, I'm thinking of Jerry Ryan tonight. During the 2015 postseason run Soul29 arranged viewing parties and Jerry was there each night cheering for "DANIEL MURPHY!!"

Jerry would be loving this. 

"FRANCISCO LINDOR!!"

I miss this ficking guy. 

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Discussion: The Rose Garden and White House happenings: Listening to voters’ concerns

mtierney said:

 From the WSJ TODAY…Best laid plans of Dems

The Harris Broadband Rollout Has Been a Fiasco

Three years after the $42.5 billion subsidy passed, not a single project is underway. Here’s why.

By The Editorial BoardFollow

Oct. 4, 2024 at 6:12 pm ET

Government makes many promises, the Biden Administration more than most. Results are another story. For the latest example of the latter, consider the “internet for all” plan that President Biden tapped Kamala Harris to lead. Fiasco is the word for it.

The 2021 infrastructure law included $42.5 billion for states to expand broadband to “unserved,” mostly rural, communities. Three years later, ground hasn’t been broken on a single project. The Administration recently said construction won’t start until next year at the earliest, meaning many projects won’t be up and running until the end of the decade.

Blame the Administration’s political regulations. States must submit plans to the Commerce Department about how they’ll use the funds and their bidding process for providers. Commerce has piled on mandates that are nowhere in the law and has rejected state plans that don’t advance progressive goals.

Take how the Administration is forcing providers to subsidize service for low-income customers. Commerce required that Virginia revise its plan so bidders had to offer a specified “affordable” price. This is rate regulation.

Brent Christensen of the Minnesota Telecom Alliance recently reported that none of his trade group’s 70 or so members plan to bid for federal grants because of the rate rules and other burdens. “To put those obligations on small rural providers is a hell of a roadblock,” he said. “Most of our members are small and can’t afford to offer a low-cost option.”

Commerce hoped to spread the cash to small rural cooperatives, but the main beneficiaries will be large providers that can better manage the regulatory burden. Bigger businesses always win from bigger government.

Commerce is all but refusing to fund anything other than fiber broadband, though satellite services like SpaceX’s Starlink and wireless carriers can expand coverage at lower cost. A Starlink terminal costs about $600 per home. Extending 5G to rural communities costs a couple thousand dollars per connection. Building out fiber runs into the tens of thousands.

Fiber networks will require more permits, which delay construction. But fiber will require more union labor to build. Commerce wants grant recipients to pay union-scale wages and not oppose union organizing.

The Administration has also stipulated hiring preferences for “underrepresented” groups, including “aging individuals,” prisoners, racial, religious and ethnic minorities, “Indigenous and Native American persons,” “LGBTQI+ persons,” and “persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”

Good luck trying to find “underrepresented” hard-hats in Montana. An official overseeing Montana’s program told Congress last month that the Administration has given “conflicting or even new and changed guidance after submitting our plans” and is “slowing states down and second-guessing good-faith efforts.”

The official added that “we have yet to receive clarity on permitting, a foundational component of broadband deployment.” The government system that states are required to use for federal permits, she noted, “will not be available for another 6 to 8 months to evaluate each project’s environmental and historic preservation effects.”

Then there’s this Catch-22. The Biden National Environmental Policy Act guidance requires companies that receive federal funds to consider alternative plans with smaller environmental impact. But the program’s rules disfavor such alternatives as satellites and home 5G.

States must also identify future climate risks and “how the proposed plan will avoid and/or mitigate” them. Broadband providers already safeguard their systems against natural disasters in part with redundant networks, so the extraneous mandates will merely make building more expensive.

Cox Communications last week sued Rhode Island over the state’s plan to “build taxpayer-subsidized and duplicative high-speed broadband internet in affluent areas of Rhode Island like the Breakers Mansion in Newport and affluent areas of Westerly,” where Taylor Swift owns a $17 million vacation home. Cox says there are better ways to spend taxpayer dollars. According to the Federal Communications Commission, 99.97% of U.S. households already have access to high-speed internet.

The broadband non-rollout is a classic of modern progressive government. Authorize money for a cause that private industry could do better, but then botch the execution with identity politics and union favoritism. Ms. Harris is promising four more years of the same.

This article is false.

I own a home on the side of a mountain in Fairview, NC. It is a definitely rural area outside of Asheville. (We fared very well in Helene)

For our first 18 months there we relied on internet via a line-of-sight signal cast from a tower on another mountain over 10 miles away. The service was OK, not great. We paid $85/month.

In May and June of this year, buried fiber optic cable was installed throughout the community. Scores of miles of cable. We paid $99 for the termination of the cable inside the house. Not a penny more.

The F.O. cable installation was funded by the Infrastructure Act. 

We now have much faster, more reliable service for $70/month. We could get service that is 100X faster than we had for just $99 per month.

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Discussion: The NYT Spelling Bee Thread

mjc said:

alha said:

and today I'm the one stuck at -1 and not likely to get QB

ditto, enjoy the rest of your day!

I'm not even at genius. Somedays are not so kind to me. I did get QB twice this week! I think that's a record.

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Discussion: Meet a Baseball Fan (Welcome to Anyone)

Congratulations to the Mets and their fans. The Phillies had a very fun “gravy” postseason like this in 2022. Now it’s your turn to enjoy one.

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