Something seems really off about how the cancellation is being promoted. We are going to find out soon. The county Eureka is in has a one percent black population. Eighty-five percent white.

Here is video of their MLK march from last year. It’s a sea of white people.

https://m.#


Never have I heard of such absurdity.

I think it has more to do with being scheduled two days before the MLK march.

The ad that came up for me in the op about the letter to Sanders about sexual harassment on the campaign was for erectile dysfunction.

This is the link it went to if you click thru to the ad.

Medical journal daily.com

I guess the algorithms recognize “sexual” and “Sanders” being repeatedly used and go with an ED ad. Ok. Bad joke. I’m sure it’s just the word sexual they pick up on and figure it a good time to go for those wishing to get back in the game.

I often find advertising interesting. It’s a very robust field of study. My problem is that this seems offensive and like it missed the mark, but I don’t think it did miss the mark. It’s probably viewed as a good placement. BTW, it’s a Dr. Oz promoted ED drug. That gives me huge confidence. Gotta get those big names. The competition is stiff.

In 2008, our mother asked my sister, Maya, and me to meet her for lunch. When we arrived, our mother didn’t seem like herself. We wondered what was going on. Then she took a deep breath and reached out to us both across the table.

“I’ve been diagnosed with colon cancer,” she told us.

I know that many can relate to the emotions I felt in that moment. Even just reflecting back on it now fills me with dread. It was one of the worst days of my life.

The hard truth is that every one of us will go through an experience like that sooner or later, whether it is coming to terms with a loved one’s terminal illness or experiencing our own. My mother was a breast cancer researcher. She understood, from a career of looking at cancer cells under a microscope, that no matter who we are or where we are from, our bodies are essentially the same. They work the same way — and they break down the same way, too.

NYT

"That will include debate on Donalds border curtain. As for now, Don is little more than a hostage taker. An unstable hostage taker with limited to no impulse control which makes negotiating on behalf of his wake of victims very difficult."

I personally think that we are at a time when our leaders can start opening up their attacks on Trump. I'm only talking about attacks being directed at Trump. There is a modicum of decorum that is expected from elected officials. That is out the door with respect to Trump. I think our leaders should start opening it up. I have noticed some of them have been using more aggressive language. I like it. This isn't rolling in the mud with Trump. It's fighting for our base while getting at Trump. The word unstable needs to be used more often. Lack of impulse control needs to be used more often. We aren't going for Trumps base. We are looking to expand our own.

In the summer of 2016, the Department of Energy started doing something counterintuitive: It tried to hack its own network.

“To protect the grid from hackers, you need to break it,” the DOE later explained in a now-deleted post about how officials had taken the unlikely step in order to learn how to better protect it against aggressive adversaries.

The approach signaled an increasingly defensive mindset when it comes to U.S. cyber strategy that continues today. Just last month more than 100 cybersecurity experts and engineers from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) quietly worked for six days in November on a remote island off Long Island Sound to restore power to the U.S. electrical grid after it was hit with a devastating — and fictional — cyberattack.

Vice News

Someone is trying to take entire countries offline and cybersecurity experts say 'it's a matter of time because it's really easy'

The West's weakness is in the older electronics and sensors that control processes in infrastructure and industry. Often these electronics were installed decades ago. The security systems controlling them are ancient or non-existent. If a hacker can gain control of a temperature sensor in a factory, he — they're usually men — can blow the place up, or set it on fire. "The problem people don't realise is it becomes a weapon of mass destruction. You can take down a whole country. It can be done," he said.

And then, how do you respond? Does the country that was attacked — the one struggling to get its power grid back online — launch nukes? Probably not, he said, because "you have no idea who did it."

Business Insider

Russia is trying to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have flared anew after the Russian Navy fired upon and seized three Ukrainian ships near the Kerch Strait on November 25. In an unprecedented move, the Ukrainian Parliament subsequently enacted martial law in 10 of Ukraine’s 27 regions. According to President Petro Poroshenko, the move was warranted by the extraordinary nature of the circumstances, which represented the first open attack by Russia on the Ukrainian military.

But in truth, Russia’s latest act of aggression is neither extraordinary nor unexpected. Since the beginning of its confrontation with Ukraine in 2014, Russia has consistently followed a strategy of multi-dimensional coercion against Kyiv. This has entailed multiple attempts at subversion and destabilization via the informational, economic, and military domains.

Even before the start of the current conflict, Ukraine has been a primary target of Russian disinformation. A targeted information campaign served as the pretext for Russia’s invasion of Crimea, in which Moscow announced annexation as a measure to protect the rights of ethnic Russians in the region. Today, Russia continues to spread disinformation that paints Kyiv as an aggressor supported by fascists, and Moscow as simply responding to attack. In much the same vein, Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused President Poroshenko of provoking the recent Kerch Strait incident in an effort to boost his standing ahead of the 2019 Ukrainian elections.

Ukraine has also been the victim of countless Russian cyber operations. In late 2016, President Poroshenko declared that Russia was waging a full-fledged cyberwar against Ukraine, involving an estimated 6,500 cyber attacks within the span of two months, including hacks of Ukraine’s treasury and power grid.

The Hill

As we retreat on the world stage Putin is going on a full assault. It's war. That is not over the top. Putin is attacking the infrastructure of sovereign nations.

“I was shocked to read more lies in the press about me today. They say I owe $2m. I don’t! It’s at least $4m. Do you know how successful you have to be to owe that kind of money?” he writes in the Facebook post.

VOX

Seems that about 1.6 of the 4 million in debt Milo is bragging about is money he owes to himself.

(CNN) California Sen. Kamala Harris has placed number one in our 2020 power rankings for the last few months. Yet, she has lagged in public opinion polling for the 2020 Democratic nomination.

A look at the early signals in the endorsement part of the invisible primary, however, point to Harris as a force to be reckoned with in 2020.

CNN

Retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis won't be on the presidential ballot this fall.

On Friday, The New York Times reported that the retired Marine four-star sent an email to associates ruling out any chance of a third-party presidential run.

The paper reported that Mattis met with political strategists to listen to pitches during a Washington, D.C. visit earlier this month, but dismissed taking further steps. Shortly before the meeting, during a think tank speech on April 22, Mattis said he hadn’t given the idea of a presidential bid any thought.

Joel Searby, who had helped lay the groundwork for a potential Mattis campaign, told the Times that the 65-year-old former head of U.S. Central Command made clear in his email to supporters that he "decided definitively not to pursue a run for president."

Military Times

Interesting. From 2016.

A new legal filing appears to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene for the first time in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election.

The document, which is under seal, stems from a Dec. 18 federal appeals court ruling that required an unidentified company, owned by an unidentified foreign country, to turn over information to a grand jury.

Bloomberg

The massive corporate tax rate drop has been wildly successful. It couldn’t overcome real market forces. Corporations have repatriated enormous sums of foreign profits and used much of it to buy back stocks. Many analysts are saying this trend will actually increase in 2019.

Without provisions in the tax scam to give employers incentive to hire or increase pay for workers this massive repatriation of money is simply being shifted around by the investor class and artificially inflating the value of corporations. It is doing nothing for workers. Get that. With this continuing to happen the market is still going down. Without the tax scam we would be seeing a huge downturn.

So how is the market taking a downturn if many of the metrics look pretty solid and companies have been able to artificially increase their worth through the tax scam? I believe one of the main factors is that the market was already way overvalued. As a whole, it hasn’t been a true reflection of its value for years. There are other reasons but this one is major and highlights the real irrisponsibility of the tax scam, leaving out ethical and moral arguments.

The tax scam was an enormous screwing over of American workers and has delayed a massive market correction. It will continue to delay that correction into 2019. The correction would be huge without the tax scam. It’s nothing more than a dream for the investor class and an artificial propping up of an overvalued market.

It has been successful for political reasons and for the investor class. That is why I call it wildly successful. It’s slowing the bubble from popping. Without it Republican would be hurting even worse right now as the markets would be going through a more realistic correction. A deep dive.

I personally like the moral and ethical arguments when it comes to taxation. But the real shifting of money and end results of changes to tax law must be analyzed. The tax scam helped no one outside of the wealthy and is temporarily helping Republicans. That couldn’t last as overvalued is overvalued. It considered the American worker in no way.

The tax scam is one of the most irresponsible pieces of legislation I have seen in my lifetime.