Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

ELECTION 2020: Establishment Dems Can’t Say ‘No’ to Billionaires

In real life, billionaires don’t bring any exceptional brilliance into the political process. They bring their billions. They bring outsized stashes of cash that can distort election outcomes and safeguard their fortunes. Witness the $200 million our tech giants spent this fall on a ballot initiative to kill protections for gig workers.

And these dollars, even worse, drop a suffocating ideological wet blanket over the campaigns that Democratic Party candidates run. In this fall’s presidential contest, for instance, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were formally running on a platform many analysts considered “the most progressive document to come out of a major national party in U.S.  history.” The ideas in that platform — everything from a $15 minimum wage and ending tax breaks for capital gains to making public colleges and universities “tuition-free” for most students — had come out of joint task forces that brought together the party’s left and moderate wings.

But the campaigns up and down the ticket essentially ran away from anything that might overly discomfort the nation’s most comfortable — and let Donald Trump and his pals pose as champions of average people against America’s overbearing elites. Trump came unnervingly close to winning. Many of his endangered pals did win.

Various national pundits are now savaging Republican movers and shakers for indulging Donald Trump, post-election, at his every narcissistic turn. But Democratic Party insiders remain largely free to indulge their super-rich benefactors. That has to change.

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Some Illinois Eateries Won’t Obey Shutdown Order. It’s “Defy Or Perish”

Earlier today, we discussed the fact that law enforcement agencies around the state of New York were simply refusing to comply with the Governor’s mandate that no more than ten people can attend a private Thanksgiving dinner with their family (or any other gathering) inside their private residence. These are not, however, the only places where the natives have become restless and begun to rise up against oppressive restrictions mandated in response to the novel coronavirus. Out in the Windy City and around the rest of the state, both the Governor of Illinois and the Mayor of Chicago have issued another set of orders that essentially shut down most operations for bars and restaurants yet again. Still reeling from the previous shutdowns and teetering on the brink of fiscal collapse, some owners are telling CBS News that they will not be complying with the orders. For their businesses, it’s simply no longer an option and it’s become a matter of staying in operation or closing permanently.

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How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps

The U.S. military is buying the granular movement data of people around the world, harvested from innocuous-seeming apps, Motherboard has learned. The most popular app among a group Motherboard analyzed connected to this sort of data sale is a Muslim prayer and Quran app that has more than 98 million downloads worldwide. Others include a Muslim dating app, a popular Craigslist app, an app for following storms, and a “level” app that can be used to help, for example, install shelves in a bedroom.

Through public records, interviews with developers, and technical analysis, Motherboard uncovered two separate, parallel data streams that the U.S. military uses, or has used, to obtain location data. One relies on a company called Babel Street, which creates a product called Locate X. U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), a branch of the military tasked with counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and special reconnaissance, bought access to Locate X to assist on overseas special forces operations. The other stream is through a company called X-Mode, which obtains location data directly from apps, then sells that data to contractors, and by extension, the military.

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Bill Will Legalize Vaccination of 11-Year-Olds Without Parents’ Consent

On Tuesday, the 17th of November, the District of Columbia will finalize a bill that would flout existing Supreme Court precedent and greatly diminish parental rights regarding a minor’s healthcare. The Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act (Bill 23-171) will allow children as young as 11 to consent on their own in regard to receiving vaccinations. Their parents will not be informed.

The bill will declare, “A minor, eleven years of age or older, may consent to receive a vaccine where the minor is capable of meeting the informed consent standard, and the vaccine is recommended by the United States Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)…”

To meet the “informed consent standard,” the bill says the minor must be “able to comprehend the needs for, the nature of, and any significant risks ordinarily inherent in the medical care.”

However, the bill does not establish exactly who would determine if the child is able to comprehend these factors, nor does it state that the child will be told that vaccines, though generally safe, are not risk free.

Supreme Court precedent has been clearly established and has held for decades that parents have both the duty and the right to direct the care, custody, and control of their minor children. This bill is in direct conflict with said Supreme Court precedent and contrary to the U.S. Constitution.

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