July 8, 2020

Barry Diller Has No Time for Talk of a World Changed by Pandemic

LINK

(Bloomberg) -- Forget working from home and Zoom meetings. Barry Diller is betting the future looks a lot like the past.

A billionaire who made his fortune first as a Hollywood mogul and more recently in online dating, Diller is predicting that life pretty much returns to normal once there’s a coronavirus vaccine. Families will again take vacations and managers will send employees to conferences.

He’d better hope so, because one of his companies -- Expedia Group Inc., the online travel agency -- depends on it.

“You cannot live in this moment where we project the future based on present circumstance,” Diller said in a Bloomberg “Front Row” interview. “I think relatively little changes.”

Few chief executives share his view. Many are preparing for a world permanently altered by the pandemic, touting the virtues of video conferencing and discussing plans to downsize real estate.


While I think he's guilty of some very self-serving projection, at least he links a "return" to a vaccine. IMO anyone who does not get that is in for a very jarring awakening and a lot of frustration.

Full disclosure: I'm a big admirer of Barry Diller and his IAC team

December 17, 2018

Report: Russian troll farm included pro-Jill Stein messaging on social media

Source: CNN

Washington (CNN)A report prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee said Russian social media efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election included messaging in support of the Green Party 2016 presidential nominee Jill Stein.

CNN obtained the report, prepared by New Knowledge, which said the Russian government-linked Internet Research Agency -- a well-known troll farm -- utilized all major social media platforms, and its efforts online included messaging in support of Stein's third party presidential effort.
CNN has reached out to Stein for comment on the report.

The mentions of Stein online came alongside related and disparate messages noted throughout the report, which said the Internet Research Agency's themes ranged from support for Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Black Lives Matter movement to the Tea Party and gun rights.

A summation of the report's findings on "comprehensive anti-Hillary Clinton operations" said while the group's assumed Twitter personas had some pro-Clinton content, "the developed Left-wing Twitter personas were still largely anti-Clinton and expressed pro-Bernie Sanders and pro-Jill Stein sentiments."

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/17/politics/jill-stein-senate-intelligence/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_latest+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Most+Recent%29

---

Many here on DU knew as I did at the time that there was something rotten in Denmark with respect to the Jill Stein situation. I do not think the entire campaign was a scam but the Russians certainly saw it as a way to help them win in the end by hurting HRC.

Maybe that dinner in Moscow w Putin and Mike Flynn was what it appeared to be.

October 3, 2018

"We Need to Destroy the Republican Party" - David Corn interviews Max Boot

“We Need to Destroy the Republican Party”: A Conservative Luminary Calls for a Clean Start
In which Max Boot says the GOP is racist, the Iraq War was wrong, and Trumpism is a cancer.

Read here (podcast and transcript): https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/10/destroy-the-republican-party-max-boot-calls-for-a-clean-start/

A great quote from the article that sums up the state of the GOP today:

"Before Donald Trump, the Republican Party was a majority conservative party with a white nationalist fringe. Now it’s a white nationalist party with a conservative fringe."

Denial is not just a river in Egypt. The evidence was and still is there for anyone who will open their eyes.

April 1, 2018

This blog seems really suspect to me

It has many of the hallmarks of a fake news site. Maybe Fake News is not the right term. It could for example just be a click farm, or a quick money making effort, as they do use generic ad services to monetize traffic.

For example:
- They don't list the names of any of their contributors:
http://thebluewavecommunity.com/about/
- RED FLAG: They do not include links to the stories they post about, while almost all of the posts are based on or about stories originating on other sites.
- I saw NO way to JOIN or SIGN UP (so it's not a community, while Community is in the name)
- I saw No Comments on any posts
- Traffic: Their Aleaxa traffic Ranking suggests their traffic has only recently spiked up (but significantly)
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thebluewavecommunity.com#trafficstats
- Their Facebook page has 280,320 followers yet and only started in mid-Dec 2016. Ther is a good deal of posts on the feed/community
https://www.facebook.com/pg/thebluewavecommunity/community/?ref=page_internal
- Twitter: I was unable to find a Twitter account under @thebluewavecommunity or @bluewavecommunity, and there is only 1 tweet listing the #TheBlueWaveCommunity hashtag


It could be a 100% legitimate site of course but I am highly suspect.

August 18, 2017

Please share your words of remembrance for Political Career of Steve Bannon

August 13, 2016

New Study Reveals The IQ Of Republicans In America

Liberals have always agreed that conservatives suffer from a low IQ, and Donald Trump and his supporters have certainly cemented that belief. However, does science (the thing conservatives don’t believe in) come to that same agreement? Opinion is one thing. Facts are what matter.

Science does, in fact, prove that Republicans suffer from a lower IQ. The “Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes” study found that a person’s intelligence as a child could predict conservative and racist ideas as an adult.

http://bipartisanreport.com/2016/08/12/new-study-reveals-the-iq-of-republicans-in-america-prepare-to-not-be-shocked-study/

December 11, 2015

This is what a friend of mine refers to as an Ultimate Truth:

"Most of us are not going to vote for a woman just because she’s one of us, they’re going to vote for the candidate who is going to do the best by their children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and generations to come. That’s what we’re interested in."

December 3, 2012

he only covers 1/2 the reality...

He's right about WRH. But the real story lies in the why WRH launched a massive campaign against Marijuana.

My understanding is it had to due exclusively with the desire to kill the industrial production of Hemp, the industrial grade version / engineered derivative of the Marijuana plant: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp).

focus here: "The world leading producer of hemp is China with smaller production in Europe, Chile and North Korea.[18] While more hemp is exported to the United States than to any other country, the United States Government does not consistently distinguish between marijuana and the non-psychoactive Cannabis used for industrial and commercial purposes.[17]"

Hemp was the new massively popular industrial crop and was an excellent source of raw material for paper and so many other products (cloth, rope etc). Hearst owned a paper business that among other things , would be devastated if Hemp took over any significant market share from the lumber derived raw materials he was selling.

The plan was to kill Marijuana as a way to kill Hemp, and to blur the factual distinction between the two in the minds of the sheeple. The campaign was successful, and continues on a massive scale to this day.

I continue to be blown away at how few people in the US realize this. Today there are many big corporations who stand to have their businesses adversely impacted and their marketplace dominance challenged if Marijuana is decriminalized. let alone legalized. The real threat to indsutry is imo HEMP. Hemp could revolutionize our economy.

July 6, 2012

Organizers say it's not a cross-burning, but rather sacred Christian cross lighting.

R i g h t

That's not Bullshit, it's refined bovine excrement...

January 28, 2012

Thank you Professor Obvious!

I'll of course share this with my racist right wing friend.

And he'll dismiss it..