DL Open Thread: Friday, Dec. 20, 2019

Filed in Featured by El Somnambulo on December 20, 2019

Where Did Trump Get That Ukraine Meddling Theory? Um, Putin.

Almost from the moment he took office, President Trump seized on a theory that troubled his senior aides: Ukraine, he told them on many occasions, had tried to stop him from winning the White House.

After meeting privately in July 2017 with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Trump grew more insistent that Ukraine worked to defeat him, according to multiple former officials familiar with his assertions.

The president’s intense resistance to the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia systematically interfered in the 2016 campaign — and the blame he cast instead on a rival country — led many of his advisers to think that Putin himself helped spur the idea of Ukraine’s culpability, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

This is who the Rethugs will go to the mat (don’t get so excited, Jimmy Jordan) for. I mean, sometimes there’s nothing left to say. Other than ‘useful idiot’ doesn’t even begin to cover all his idiocy.

Which reminds me. That wouldn’t have been a good look right about now…

Cellphone Tracking: “Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy”. This series defines the term ‘investigative journalism’. An excerpt:

Every minute of every day, everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies — largely unregulated, little scrutinized — are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones and storing the information in gigantic data files. The Times Privacy Project obtained one such file, by far the largest and most sensitive ever to be reviewed by journalists. It holds more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans as they moved through several major cities, including Washington, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles…

Each piece of information in this file represents the precise location of a single smartphone over a period of several months in 2016 and 2017. The data was provided to Times Opinion by sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to share it and could face severe penalties for doing so. The sources of the information said they had grown alarmed about how it might be abused and urgently wanted to inform the public and lawmakers…

The data reviewed by Times Opinion didn’t come from a telecom or giant tech company, nor did it come from a governmental surveillance operation. It originated from a location data company, one of dozens quietly collecting precise movements using software slipped onto mobile phone apps. You’ve probably never heard of most of the companies — and yet to anyone who has access to this data, your life is an open book. They can see the places you go every moment of the day, whom you meet with or spend the night with, where you pray, whether you visit a methadone clinic, a psychiatrist’s office or a massage parlor.

Don’t think that even Orwell or Kafka thought of this. BTW, today’s second installment? ‘Tracking Donald Trump’.

Yep, Trump Might Have Lost Michigan At That Rally. Something tells me that he will not tone down his behavior…what state icon will be next?

An A To Z Of What Trump Could Have Been Impeached For. Share with that Trump relative of yours over the holidays.

Will ‘The Wine Cave’ Doom Buttigieg? No wonder he’s been so secretive about his fundraisers. BTW, I didn’t watch the debate, anyone wanna give their take?

He’s BA-A-A-CK. James Spadola running for an At-Large seat on Wilmington City Council. As a Republican? Question wasn’t asked. If WDEL has done this with other announced candidates, like Coby Owens, I’m not aware of it. I would hope that they will do this with ALL candidates. That’d be a public service. If done selectively, not so much.

What do you want to talk about?