Abandoned Principles

notā bene / notate bene: RepuGNican =/= Repugnican =/= Republican

Manipulating Voters

Your data and how it is used to gain your vote: How much do political parties know about you - and how is it used to try to sway your vote?

The Cambridge Analytica scandal threw light on how the Facebook data of millions was harvested and turned into a messaging tool. The revelations were criticised far and wide by politicians of all stripes. But now, a report from the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) puts the spotlight on the relationship between data brokers and the politicians here.

Buying someone's name can lead to making guesses about their income, number of children and ethnicity - which is then used to tailor a political message for them. The report suggests that the [UK] Conservative Party is doing just that, using so-called "onomastic data": information derived from the study of people's names which could identify their ethnic origin or religion. It has done that for 10 million voters, most of whom will be unaware of exactly how their information is being used.

Political parties can legitimately hold personal data on individuals to help them campaign more effectively. But sophisticated data analytics software can now combine information about individuals from multiple sources to find more about their voting characteristics and interests - something some people may find disturbing.

The Unbearable Grief of Needing Attention

Narcissism erodes boundaries and promotes exaggerated displays of emotionality. At least 15% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Most women cope and move on.

Superspreader Turkeys

Public health officials have been pleading with Americans to stay home this year for Thanksgiving. And, despite busy airports this past weekend, most people plan to follow their advice, according to a huge survey asking Americans about their holiday plans.

Nationwide, the survey found that only around 27 percent of Americans plan to dine with people outside their household. That number is roughly consistent with the results of several recent smaller surveys, including those from YouGov, the Covid States Project and researchers at Ohio State University, which all find fewer than a third of Americans plan to celebrate in groups.

It also aligns with the results of a separate informal Times survey of epidemiologists. Out of 635 public health experts, only around 21 percent of them planned to celebrate Thanksgiving with people outside their household. The two surveys — of ordinary Americans and of epidemiologists — used identical question wording.

There is substantial regional variation in Thanksgiving plans, with people in some parts of the country much more likely to gather with others. In parts of Vermont, for example, only about 14 percent of households will be celebrating with people outside their household. In parts of Missouri, more than half of residents plan to.

Public health officials are worried about Thanksgiving celebrations as coronavirus cases have reached record highs in many areas of the country. Traditional holiday celebrations, with long meals indoors and with some travel typically involved, could contribute to more cases of the disease, which is primarily spread through droplets and aerosols that can linger in unventilated indoor spaces. Last week, an array of federal and state health officials urged Americans to skip such plans and stay home for the holiday.

As in a similar survey of mask-wearing from the summer, partisanship appears to explain much of the regional variation in Thanksgiving plans. Over all, survey respondents who identified as members of the Libertarian, Green or RepuGNican parties were more likely to be planning a multi-household Thanksgiving than Democrats or those unaffiliated with a political party.

States that UNpresident Pathogen-in-Cheat won in the election this month were generally more likely to have higher rates of planned multi-household Thanksgivings than states won by Joe Biden. 

[In other words, natural selection is still in operation.]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/24/upshot/thanksgiving-dinner-survey.html .

How many will succumb?

20-11-18 PM 

The US has recorded more than 250,000 deaths from COVID-19, a bleak marker as cases soar once again across the country.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the country has now reported 250,029 deaths and nearly 11.5 million cases. It has more infections and a higher death toll than any other country worldwide. And cases have once again started to soar throughout the US, hitting new daily highs in the last week.

20-11-18 AM

TOTAL REPORTED            ON NOV. 17           14-DAY CHANGE

Cases   11.4 million                  159,508                        +79% 

Deaths  248,46                        21,583                         +38%

Hospitalized                              76,823                         +48%

At least 1,583 new coronavirus deaths ( = 50% x 9/11 on a single day) and 159,508 new cases were reported in the United States on Nov. 17. Over the past week, there has been an average of 158,265 cases per day, an increase of 79 percent from the average two weeks earlier.

As of Wednesday morning, more than 11,439,000 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 248,400 have died, according to a New York Times database.

Congratulations, Pathogen-in-Chief. My condolences, America.

Herding Cats

‘The Far Left Is the RepuGNicans’ Finest Asset’: An intense battle between moderates and progressives has already spilled into public view.

A strategist stressed his own ambivalence [about Democratic divisions]:

We need to extend the tent and extend the map further in some way — out of necessity. That’s where I sympathize with the centrists. You also need a strong, passionate, determined base. That’s where I sympathize with the progressives.

The Democratic Party, he noted, is inherently 

hard to manage. From race, to culture, to socioeconomic status. All of these items — knowledge professions vs. working class, young vs. old, rural vs. suburban vs. urban — makes us far more complex to manage than the [resentment-motivated, pseudo-Christian, poorly-educated, older, mostly male, in-group whites who vote for the Greedy Obstructionist Plutocrats].

Moderates angrily lashed out at liberals woke-flakes, accusing them of allowing divisive rhetoric such as “defund the police” and calls for [non-corporate] socialism to go largely unchallenged. Those on the [exalt victimhood] left pushed right back, accusing centrists of seeking to downgrade the [dangerously excessive] demands of minorities, including those voiced at Black Lives Matter protests.

 

Larcenous flight risk

US man fails Bond-esque underwater escape from FBI using 'sea scooter':

Matthew Piercey, 44, a California man accused of financial crimes, briefly evaded justice when the FBI tried to arrest him on Monday morning. He first fled by car and then used a sea scooter to hide from agents underwater in a frigid lake. Agents watched his bubbles on the surface for around 25 minutes before he emerged and was handcuffed.

He is accused of leading a $35m (£27m) Ponzi scheme at his local church. Investigators say that he and his business partner Kenneth Winton used funds invested in their companies, Family Wealth Legacy and Zolla, to pay for personal expenses, and that few liquid assets remained for them to return to clients. Mr Piercey is charged with wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, and witness tampering and is facing 20 years in prison.

Prosecutors have also deemed him a flight risk. [I can't imagine why.]

Exposing religionism as contemptibly AUTHORITARIAN

[Terms corrected to reflect reality] Pervert-in-Cheat or No Pervert-in-Cheat, Religious Authoritarianism Is Here to Stay: Their unlikely ally may have lost the White House, but pseudo-Christian nationalists still plan to win the war.

Will President-elect Joe Biden’s victory force America’s pseudo-Christian nationalists to rethink the unholy alliance that powered LIAR-in-Chief’s four-year tour as one of the nation’s most dangerous UNpresidents? Don’t count on it.

The 2020 election is proof that religionist authoritarianism is here to stay, and the early signs now indicate that the movement seems determined to reinterpret defeat at the top of the ticket as evidence of persecution and of its own righteousness. With or without Hypocrite-in-Chief, they will remain committed to the illiberal politics that the UNpresident has so ably embodied.

As it did in 2016, the early analysis of the 2020 election results often circled around the racial, urban-rural, and income and education divides. But the religion divide tells an equally compelling story. According to preliminary exit polls from Edison Research (the data is necessarily rough at this stage), 28 percent of voters identified as either white evangelical proselytizing pseudo-Christian or white born-again pseudo-Christian, and of these, 76 percent voted for DUHnocchio. If these numbers hold (some other polls put the religious share at a lower number; others put the support for Idiot-in-Chief at a higher number), these results indicate a continuation of support for Putin's Puppet from this group.

The core of Crook-in-Cheat’s voting bloc, to be clear, does not come from white evangelicals proselytizing pseudo-Christians as such, but from an overlapping group of not necessarily evangelical proselytizing pseudo-Christian, and not necessarily white, people who identify at least loosely with control-freak-Christian nationalism: the idea that the United States is and ought to be an Authoritarian Christian nation governed under a reactionary understanding of Authoritarian Christian values. Unfortunately, data on that cohort is harder to find except in deeply researched work by sociologists like Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry.

Most pollsters shoehorn complex religious [and religionist] identities into necessarily broad labels, so they fail to separate out the different strands of Pervert-in-Cheat’s support. There are indications that the UNpresident in fact expanded his appeal among nonwhite proselytizing pseudo-Christians or born-again pseudo-Christians of color, particularly among Latinos. Mr. Biden, on the other hand, who made faith outreach a key feature of his campaign, appears to have done well among moderate and progressive voters of all faiths.

Conservative voters of faith obdurate delusion “came in massive numbers, seven and a half million more above the 2016 baseline, which was itself a record,” Ralph Reed, head of the Faith Delusion and Freedom Fiefdom Coalition and a longtime religious right wrong activist, said at a postelection press briefing. “We believe they’re the reason why RepuGNicans are going to hold the Senate.”

Truth Decay - a 'Murican specialty

Barack Obama: One election won't stop US 'truth decay' .

The US faces a huge task in reversing a culture of "crazy conspiracy theories" that have exacerbated divides in the country, Barack Obama says. In a BBC interview, the former president says the US is more sharply split than even four years ago, when (using the USA's foolish electoral process) LIAR-in-Cheat won stole the presidency.

Obama suggests Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 US election is just the start of repairing those divisions. "It'll take more than one election to reverse those trends," he says. Tackling a polarised nation, he argues, cannot be left only to the decisions of politicians, but also requires both structural change and people listening to one another - agreeing on a "common set of facts" before arguing what to do about them.

However he says he sees "great hope" in the "sophisticated" attitudes of the next generation [apparently, Obama is not aware of "woke" fallacies], urging young people to "cultivate that cautious optimism that the world can change" and "to be a part of that change".

[Town versus Clown] Anger and resentment between rural and urban America, immigration, injustices like inequality and "the kinds of crazy conspiracy theories - what some have called truth decay" have been amplified by some US media outlets and "turbocharged by social media". 

Deplorable authoritarians en masse

[Content modified for accuracy] Million Make America Ghastlier Again March: Protesters gather for pro-Putin's-Puppet rallies:

Supporters of UNpresident Criminal-in-Cheat are taking part in rallies in Washington DC to back his unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in the US election. Far-right Far-wrong and anti-government groups including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and QAnon have indicated they will attend, amid heightened tensions over the election result. Protesters swarmed the UNpresidential motorcade as CON-in-Cheat drove past on his way to his golf course earlier.

Joe Biden won the 3 November election. On Saturday, he solidified his victory with a projected win in the state of Georgia - making him the first Democratic candidate to take the state since 1992. He now has 306 votes in the electoral college - the system the US uses to choose its president - which far exceeds the 270 threshold to win.

Returning to Epsilon 5?

Dominic Cummings to leave Downing Street by Christmas: 

Goodbye Dominic Cummings - SpIm > .

The Boris & Cummings Love Story is Over - SpIm > .

tRUMP is a LOSER!

Trump is a loser! - Pie > .

First at WORST

The US reported a third straight daily record for new coronavirus cases on 20-11-6, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 127,000 infections were reported in 24 hours, as well as 1,149 deaths. [> 9/11 every 3 days]

The news comes as officials announced that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows had also tested positive for the virus. He is the latest Pathogen-in-Cheat Badministration official to contract the disease.


The US is the worst affected nation in the world by COVID-19, with more than 9.7 million confirmed cases and a death toll of more than 230,000.

[My condolences to those who lost loved ones because of the most inept, uncaring "administration" in living memory.]

3rd time lucky VS the sorest LOSER

Biden Wins Presidency, Ending Four Tumultuous Years Under Trump worst UNpresident in US history: Joseph R. Biden Jr. achieved victory offering a message of healing and unity. He will return to Washington facing a daunting set of crises.

To all who voted for sanity and decency, thank you.

To all who feared boogey-men (that exist only in the evil minds of manipulators) and voted to continue to corrupt America, shame on you.

Never underestimate

To quote my brother-in-law: "Never underestimate the stupidity of Americans."

To clarify: particularly old, white, non-college-educated, male Americans. 

Making America a S*ithole Nation

 How Putin's Puppet Lowered America’s Standing in the World:

"It has become impossible for democracies today to believe it is in their national interest to take Idiot-in-Cheat’s America seriously. With this UNpresident, there are simply too many petulant reversals of course. The presidency and dishonesty have become synonymous. Alliances are founded on trust. When that goes, they begin to dissolve.

Hence the talk in European capitals of the need to “contain” the United States, a verb once reserved for the Soviet Union. America, under Crook-in-Chief has lost the credibility and legitimacy that were cornerstones of its influence.

Allies believe a second second Agent Orange term would lead to the United States’ leaving NATO, following the decision to leave the World Health Organization. Departure from the World Trade Organization is also possible. Putin's Puppet has yet  to encounter a multilateral organization he does not want dead.

The values of liberty, democracy, freedom of expression and the rule of law for which the United States has stood, albeit with conspicuous failings, over the postwar decades have been abandoned. Despite the horrors of Vietnam and Abu Ghraib, and Cold War support for dictatorial regimes, America led not just because it had a huge army and nuclear arsenal, but also because it shared beliefs with its allies and worked with them. The United States has become a values-free international actor under a president who has led a values-free life.

This American abdication has allowed President Vladimir Putin of Russia to proclaim liberalism “obsolete.” It has led Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to say Europeans must “take our fate into our own hands.” It has empowered President Xi Jinping of China to offer his country’s one-party system as an alternative model for developing countries. It has turned the phrase “leader of the free world,” as applied to the United States, into a laughable notion."