Memo to the newsroom: Sit and be a zombie

by Mouser The King Cat

First they banned journalism from newsrooms in favor of advocacy (apparently). Now the York Daily Record’s publisher wants to ban profanity. Publisher Sara Glines doesn’t want to hear it, even when the computer system crashes on deadline. Her memo:

I’ve heard some troubling conversations recently, so I want to remind all employees that cursing is not appropriate in the work environment. … I know that newspapers have had a salty history and culture. And I know that we all will slip from time to time. Still, I believe we can express ourselves adequately without the use of profanity. Let’s clean up our language and make this a workplace that anyone can feel comfortable in.

WTF? Is this sh** for real? Swear words have been tossed around newsrooms forever, but in this era they almost always come from women. (Hey Angela, a gang of longshoremen just came through on a tour; I think they were offended by your language. You kiss your boyfriend with that mouth?)

Anyway, that memo from January 2015 (I know it’s old, just saw it) wound up on the website of Jim Romenesko, who has covered newsroom doings for nearly as long as they have been declining. With it was a companion memo from Ms. Glines about the banning of Mountain Dew and Snickers bars from vending machines.

The twin memos inspired a string of comments, including this from Brian O’Connor of the Detroit News: 

Good thing she’s not a micro-managing fusspot. And I imagine her paper must be rolling in the profits and pulling in the Pulitizers if this is how she spends her time. Of course, most of the cursing is likely reserved for the poor readers who are asking "WTF?!" when greeted with hard-hitting local news such as: "Teams demonstrate old logging techniques at Farm Show."

A quick check of Ms. Glines’ career shows she is moving up the ladder, having just been appointed president and publisher of The News & Observer of Raleigh. She takes over today. Staffers there are advised stock up on candy bars. Soon there may be a black market.

Trying to sell books? Good luck with that

by Mouser The King Cat

The founder and chairman of Barnes & Noble moaned on the quarterly earnings conference call about the “terrible” climate for retail. Leonard Riggio said traffic in the chain’s 638 stores was “close to a historic low point.”

Same-store sales were down 6% year over year. Revenue was $45 million shy of analysts’ expectations. Surely it’s that darned retail climate, which Mr. Riggio called “one of the worst I have ever experienced in the 50 years I have been in this industry.”

He also tried to blame politicians. “The current trend can be traced precisely to the current election cycle, which is unprecedented in terms of the fear, anger and frustration being experienced by the public.”

In short, Mr. Riggio came off sounding not only stupid, but the special Macy’s strain of stupid. He tried and failed to make it sound like being in the book business had nothing to do with the results. B&N sells at high-overhead stores in major malls. Amazon.com also sells books -- at lower prices, delivered to your house. You pick the winning business model.

Amazon is also having success in e-books. Paul R. La Monica of CNN Money nailed the situation: 

The success of the company’s Kindle is also a big reason why Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader has been such a huge flop. Nook sales – which include the device as well as digital books and magazines – plunged 24.5% in the most recent quarter. Simply put, Amazon is eating Barnes & Noble’s breakfast, lunch and dinner – and Sunday brunch and midnight snacks while we’re at it.

Mr. Riggio is 75. He had planned to retire but recently kicked out his CEO after less than a year on the job. The ex-CEO wanted redesigned stores that included restaurants. B&N already has a partnership with Starbucks.

Nobody knows what will happen now. Perhaps the company, which has relatively little debt, will be taken private. It has been speculated that Starbucks might make an offer. Maybe B&N will follow its former competitor, Borders, and just go away, leaving books to be sold exclusively at modest shops in strip malls.

I love books. They contain much knowledge. But public tastes have changed. Selling a book at any level, wholesale or retail, is tough. Maybe Mr. Riggio should take a different tack and convert B&N stores into giant liquor warehouses. The retail climate he speaks of is much better in that space. For that, politicians might shoulder a smidge of blame.

Could Hillary's double have signed on with the campaign?

by Mouser The King Cat

When I wrote about the upcoming presidential debates on Aug. 22, I mentioned that Hillary Clinton had health problems “the mainstream media go to great lengths to never mention.” That brought admonishment from a friend of the blog who brought up the term “conspiracy theory,” a term invented by the CIA decades ago to belittle people who question illogical statements from the government.

Well … then came Hillary’s early exit from a 9/11 commemoration in New York. While stepping into her van, she collapsed and lost a shoe. The campaign had banned news cameras from the area, and her wranglers would have whisked her off attracting little notice had it not been for one meddling man who captured video on his cellphone and posted it on Twitter. Rut-roh.

Then the denials and changed stories started coming in too thick to keep track of. When it comes to Democratic politicians and their operatives in the media, I have ADHD (as does Donald Trump, according to reports). But one aspect of affair caught my eye: Hillary has a lookalike. Could she have signed on with the campaign?

The woman who popped out of the apartment building a couple of hours after the 9/11 incident, waving and breathing pneumonia germs to a little girl for a photo op, looked from a distance like Hillary minus 30 pounds or so. She also carried a handbag over her right shoulder, the opposite of Hillary’s habit.

Will the media even ask questions? Of course not. But the Daily Mail of London carried a story in mid-July about Teresa Barnwell, 61, a former advertising executive from Palm Desert, California, who quit her job 23 years ago to become a Hillary imitator. From that story:

When Bill Clinton became the 42nd president in 1993, she was bombarded by people telling her she was the first lady’s doppelganger. Because they looked so much alike, she decided to … become a full-time Clinton impersonator. Since Clinton announced her plans to run for president last year, Barnwell has seen bookings skyrocket and in a month she can make up to $10,000 or even more. She’s been invited all over the world for photo shoots, TV commercials, music videos and corporate events, meeting the likes of comedian Jay Leno, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Clinton herself.

The Hillarys met in 1996 at a book signing. The Mail carried a picture of the two, and the real deal appears to be five or six inches taller. It is obvious from subsequent pictures of Ms. Barnwell that she worked hard to get some finer details down pat, including hairstyle. Aside from physical attributes that cannot be changed, she is almost an exact double. Was she the mystery woman?

After teasing followers on Twitter as speculation swirled, Ms. Barnwell came back the next day and posted this:

OK people, calm down. I was in LA today, all day. Was just messin' with your crazy conspiracy minded little heads. Go to bed.

— Teresa Barnwell (@teresa_barnwell) September 12, 2016

In an era when too many conspiracy theories become conspiracy facts, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel had the best assessment: “You know, these conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s health would be a lot harder to believe if they didn’t actually come true.”

Mostly forgotten TV comedy "Love That Bob" launched numerous careers

by Mouser The King Cat

For a variety of reasons, “The Bob Cummings Show” has never been recognized as a 1950s TV classic. Reruns (retitled “Love That Bob”) faded after about a decade and now only turn up occasionally, even though the series ran four-plus seasons in prime time. Some episodes have lapsed into public domain.

Maybe it’s because the stars, Cummings and Rosemary DeCamp, are better remembered for their movie work. Perhaps it’s because the show wasn’t all that funny. Cummings played a carefree, skirt-chasing photographer in L.A. (DeCamp was his widowed sister), and the best lines were risque for those times, horribly dated now.

But looking back, there’s more to this humble back-and-white series than meets the eye. It launched some astounding careers, as many TV historians have noted.

Paul Henning, previously an itinerant sitcom writer, was the creator and producer, in addition to providing many scripts. He would go on to create iconic properties for CBS – “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Petticoat Junction” and “Green Acres.” When CBS became disenchanted with rural-oriented shows, all proved to be gold mines in syndication.

 Ann B. Davis played Cummings’ assistant, Charmaine “Schultzy” Schultz. She was nominated for four Emmys and won twice, going on to greater fame a decade later as the housekeeper in “The Brady Bunch.”

The neighborhood bird-watcher, Pamela Livingstone, was played to perfection by the prim and proper Nancy Kulp. Henning later cast her as the banker’s spinster secretary in “The Beverly Hillbillies.” (A TV husband never came along, but an Emmy nomination did in 1967.)

The youngest member of the cast was the biggest breakout star. Dwayne Hickman played Cummings’ girl-crazed nephew Chuck while still studying at Loyola University. As the show was ending its run, Cummings tried to sell a spin-off called “Chuck Goes to College.” The idea likely was sound, but Hickman was to spend more time in high school, moving on to become a TV icon in “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” a fixture on CBS from 1959-63.

What about the headliner? Cummings tried a couple of more sitcoms, including one where he played a psychiatrist entrusted to care for humanoid Rhoda the Robot (Julie Newmar). “My Living Doll” drew dismal ratings against tough competition and lasted only 26 episodes; Cummings was gone after 21 of them, apparently miffed that Newmar got far more attention.

Long before she matured into Catwoman, Newmar showed she had a good grasp of all things catty when she told an interviewer that Cummings was “trying to hold on to his long-gone youth.” Wonder if she has regrets now at age 83?

Several episodes of “Love That Bob” are on YouTube, including this one: 

The elites' war on (your) cash goes on

by Mouser The King Cat

World governments’ ongoing war on cash, and by extension the war on freedoms of all citizens, is being fought on many fronts, including propaganda. From an essay by Dr. Kenneth S. Rogoff in The Wall Street Journal:

There is little debate among law enforcement agencies that paper currency, especially large notes such as the U.S. $100 bill, facilitates crime: racketeering, extortion, money laundering, drug and human trafficking, the corruption of public officials, not to mention terrorism. There are substitutes for cash – cryptocurrencies, uncut diamonds, gold coins, prepaid cards – but for many kinds of criminal transactions, cash is still king. It delivers absolute anonymity, portability, liquidity and near-universal acceptance. It is no accident that whenever there is a big-time drug bust, the authorities typically find wads of cash.

Gee, I thought portability and near-universal acceptance would be considered good things, but not to those of Dr. Rogoff’s ilk, who worship central bankers and their power to decree low or negative interest rates, punishing savers. The hole in that nefarious plan is that if interest rates are too low or negative at the bank, people simply stuff currency under their mattresses. He goes on:

Cash is also deeply implicated in tax evasion, which costs the federal government some $500 billion a year in revenue. According to the Internal Revenue Service, a lot of the action is concentrated in small cash-intensive businesses, where it is difficult to verify sales and the self-reporting of income. By contrast, businesses that take payments mostly by check, bank card or electronic transfer know that it is much easier for tax authorities to catch them dissembling.

Later in the article, an excerpt from his new book “The Curse of Cash,” Dr. Rogoff tries to appeal to statists: 

Perhaps the most challenging and fundamental objection to getting rid of cash has to do with privacy – with our ability to spend anonymously. But where does one draw the line between this individual right and the government’s need to tax and regulate and to enforce the law. Most of us wouldn’t want to clamp down on someone’s right to make the occasional $200 purchase in complete privacy. But what about a $50,000 car or a $1 million apartment?

His conclusion: 

Governments have let cash supplies get way out of hand, to the benefit of criminals and tax evaders everywhere. It is time, at last, to get rid of all those $100 bills.

This orange cat’s conclusion: Dr. Rogoff, who teaches public policy at Harvard, must be a budding communist apparatchik or perhaps a closet Nazi. My scholarly opinion is that he may go f**k himself.

Cue up the #2MinutesHate for Tim Tebow

by Mouser The King Cat

With Tim Tebow back in pro sports, it’s time to cue up the predictable media hatred. At age 29, he has signed a minor-league contract with the New York Mets and will play in the fall instructional league. This after a workout in front of scouts from 28 of the 30 teams and a gaggle of baseball writers.

The Mets think Tebow, who’ll play a corner outfield position, will be a good influence on their young players and could advance quickly in a sport he has not played full time since 2005, when he was a junior in high school. The question is if he can hit a breaking ball. Said General Manager Sandy Alderson: 

“While I and the organization are mindful of the novel nature of his situation, this decision was strictly driven by baseball. This was not something that was driven by marketing considerations or anything of the sort. He is a tremendous athlete, has great character, a competitive spirit and aside from his age, this is a classic player development opportunity for us.”

If you’re reading this, you know about Tebow’s career as a quarterback at the University of Florida and in the NFL. You also know he is an outspoken Evangelical Christian. You may not know that he was homeschooled, was born in the Philippines and spent three pre-college summers there helping with his father’s orphanage and missionary work.

Tebow may not be the prototype NFL quarterback, but nobody even wants to audition him as a backup. A reasonable orange cat would conclude that he is blackballed because of his religious beliefs. So did Larry Taunton, executive director of the Fixed Point Foundation, which defends the Christian faith. In 2011, he wrote this in USA Today:

[Former Arizona QB] Jake Plummer said on a Phoenix radio station that he would like Tebow more if he would ‘shut up’ about his faith in Jesus Christ. And with that little comment, the cat, as they say, was out of the bag. Plummer said what the commentators wouldn’t say. Their dislike for Tim Tebow is not, as they would have us believe, about his throwing motion or his completion percentage; it’s all about his open professions of faith and his goody-two-shoes image. When it comes right down to it, we don’t want heroes who are truly good. We want them to fail the occasional drug test or start a bar fight from time to time. It makes us feel better about ourselves.

It is important to note that Tebow will not have to give up his day job, analyzing football for the SEC Network. His duties in the instructional league will take up a couple of days a week; if he plays in the minors next season, the season will be over on Labor Day.

Might as well close with a comment about another public symbol of the QB persuasion, Colin Kaepernick. Boo if you must, but the man is suffering enough. He’s sitting the 49ers bench while Blaine Gabbert starts.

Dave Barry, defender of Sunshine State weirdness

by Mouser The King Cat

Dave Barry has made a good living writing funny stuff, including dozens of books, fiction and nonfiction, and a syndicated humor column for the Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005 that snagged him a Pulitzer Prize. (Or, as we say in the South, a “pullet surprise.”)

A native Noo Yawker from the hamlet of Armonk north of NYC, he decided decades ago to settle in Florida and a unique role evolved – defending the state from those who would ridicule its overall weirdness. That led to yet another book, “Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends his Homeland.” The Wall Street Journal ran an excerpt:

These interviewers are not always calling from states that have a lot to brag about. I have been interviewed on the wrongness of Florida by people who live in, for example, Illinois, which constantly has to build new prisons just to hold all its convicted former governors, who form violent prison gangs and get into rumbles with gangs of convicted former state legislators.

Even so, Florida has become the Punchline State, the one everybody makes fun of. If states were characters on ‘Seinfeld,’ Florida would be Kramer: Every time it appears, the audience automatically laughs, knowing it’s going to do some idiot thing.

But we weren’t always the Punchline State. We used to be the Sunshine State, known for our orange groves and beaches and deceased senior citizens playing shuffleboard. People might have seen Florida as boring, but they didn’t laugh at it. They laughed at New Jersey, because it contained the New Jersey Turnpike and smelled like a giant armpit. Or they laughed at California, because it was populated with trend-obsessed goobers wearing Earth shoes and getting recreational enemas.

Dave’s theory is that the state’s image went downhill on election night of 2000. (Indeed, this orange cat thinks that is when this once-great country’s latest leg of decline began.) Again from the book excerpt:

Florida had no earthly idea who it had voted for. By dawn we still had no winner, and network TV political analysts were openly shooting heroin on camera. Meanwhile, the morning skies over the state were darkened by vast fleets of transport planes swooping in from Washington, D.C., opening their doors and dropping tens of thousands of election lawyers. Some landed in the Everglades and were consumed by Burmese pythons. But tragically many survived … and commenced filing lawsuits. This finally ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a 7-2 decision, that Florida should be given back to Spain. OK, not really. But by then, that was basically how the rest of the nation felt. … The nation had formed a negative, stereotyped image of Florida as a subtropical festival of stupid.

Naturally, Dave has his own website. It’s full of his archived writings and weird news items submitted by readers. No matter how you feel about Florida, it’s definitely worth a bookmark.

Scanners have created the honest shoplifter

by Mouser The King Cat

A decade or so after they entered supermarkets, opinions remain divided about self-service checkout lanes. My Type A assistant thinks they are the orange cat’s pajamas. My other assistant, a world-class slug, prefers that clerks handle their traditional duties, no matter how untrained. (“This isn’t scanning. Do you remember how much the sign said it was?”)

Grocery chains figured the technology would catch on quickly and produce savings in personnel costs. But now there is evidence that using the honor system at checkout has produced a new breed of criminal: the otherwise law-abiding shoplifter. The New York Times reports on research done by two college professors in England:

The study examined nearly 12 million shopping trips from four retailers in Britain, two in the United States and one each in Belgium and the Netherlands from December 2013 to February 2015. One million shopping trips were audited in detail, amounting to 6 million items checked. Nearly 850,000 were found not to have been scanned, the report said, making up nearly 4% of the total value of the purchases.

Given the small margins in the grocery business, that’s a lot of shrinkage. Seeing that one bored employee giving six time-strapped shoppers the evil eye may not be working all that well, some retailers have installed Big Brother cameras. But they can’t be monitored in real time, and hiding an overpriced greeting card behind three gallons of laundry detergent hardly requires the dexterity of Penn & Teller.

There will always be accidents and thieves, but the area that seems to most alarm retailers is customers who rationalize that they are entitled to a few freebies now and then. From The Times:

In a behavior known as "neutralizing your guilt," shoppers may tell themselves that the store is overpriced, so taking an item without scanning is acceptable, or they might blame faulty technology or problems with product bar codes, or claim a lack of technical know-how, the report said. The study quoted one respondent as saying that people who do not normally steal may come to realize that "when I buy 20, I can get five for free."

A cautionary tale about Roombas

by Mouser The King Cat

Robotic vacuum cleaners are cute. The Internet is teeming with videos of my fellow cats riding them. To me, having help in keeping the floors clean seems to have no downside. That is what Jesse Newton of Little Rock thought until … he was up in the middle of the night trying to clean up something resembling “a Jackson Pollack poop painting.”

Dogs are behind all home disasters (my theory anyway), and this one started with the family puppy leaving an extensive late-night dump on a rug. The Roomba, as programmed, started its cleaning tour at 1:30 a.m. From Mr. Newton’s Facebook account, relayed by PJ Media, on how “it” happened:

It will be on your floorboards. It will be on your furniture legs. It will be on your carpets. It will be on your rugs. It will be on your kids’ toy boxes. If it’s near the floor, it will have poop on it. Those awesome wheels, which have a checkered surface for better traction, left 25-foot poop trails all over the house. Our lovable Roomba, who gets a careful cleaning every night, looked like it had been mudding.

But your nose would tell you otherwise, and Mr. Newton’s did, when his 4-year-old climbed into bed at 3:30 a.m. with a distinctive smell:

You’re not just using profanity – you’re inventing new types of profanity. You’re saying things that would make Satan shudder in revulsion. You hope your kid stayed in bed, because if he hears you talking like this, there’s no way he’s not ending up in prison.

Wait, it gets worse: 

Then you get out the carpet shampooer. When you push it up to the rug – the rug that started it all – the shampooer just laughs at you. Because that rug is going in the trash, folks. But you shampoo it anyway, because your wife loved that damn rug, and you know she’ll ask if you tried to clean it first.

Then you get out the paper towel rolls, idly wondering if you should invest in paper towel stock, and you blow through three of four rolls wiping up poop. Then you get the spray bottle with bleach water and hose down the floorboards to let them soak, because the poop has already dried. Then out comes the steam mop, and you take care of those 25-foot poop trails. And then, because it’s 6 a.m., you go to bed. Let’s finish this tomorrow, right?

The Roomba did not survive its trip to the bathtub, but there is a happy ending. Mr. Newton bought it from catalog merchant Hammacher Schlemmer, which graciously replaced it. Two other companies, Merry Maids and Clorox, reached out when they heard about the Facebook post. Kudos to all.

The news blackout on George Soros' e-mail hack

by Mouser The King Cat

George Soros, who holds dual citizenship in Hungary and the U.S., recently turned 86 and has long been one of the richest men in the world. Because of his support for liberal causes, some conservatives consider him the devil incarnate. (Me, I find him less loathsome than Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, just to name a few senators.)

Like his cronies at the Democratic National Committee, Soros’ Open Society Foundations organization was the victim of a computer hack. A group called DC Leaks posted more than 2,500 documents dating back to 2008. From Investor’s Business Daily:

“The leaked documents show how Soros’ far-flung international organizations attempted to manipulate Europe’s 2014 elections. The ‘List of European Elections 2014 Projects’ details over 90 Soros efforts. … The documents reveal that Soros has poured nearly $4 million into anti-Israel groups, with a goal of ‘challenging Israel’s racist and anti-democratic policies.’ Here at home, they show that Soros proposed paying the Center for American Politics $200,000 to conduct a smear campaign against conservative activists. More recently, an October 2015 document came to light showing that Soros … had donated $650,000 to ‘invest in technical assistance and support for the groups at the core of the burgeoning #BlackLivesMatter movement.’ ”

OK, it’s his money; he can spend it however he likes. But then there is this from IBD:

“We couldn’t find a single story on the New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, CBS News or other major news sites that even noted the existence of these leaked documents, let alone reported on what’s in them. Indeed, the only news organization that appears to be diligently sifting through all the documents is the conservative Daily Caller, which as a result has filed a series of eye-opening reports.”

Why is this stuff important? Soros is a major contributor to Democrats, including presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. When she was secretary of state, he sent along step-by-step instructions about how to deal with unrest in Albania in 2011. (That was confirmed by an e-mail released by WikiLeaks, not the latest stuff.)

I conclude with a question that makes mainstream media outlets uncomfortable. If a conservative-leaning billionaire donor (say casino magnate Sheldon Adelson) were unfortunate enough to have his memos hacked, would they be ignored? The fact that more people than ever know the answer is making the propagandists nervous.

KFC's big secret has been blown

by Mouser The King Cat

Salt. Thyme. Basil. Oregano. Celery salt. Black pepper. Dried mustard. Paprika. Garlic salt. Ground ginger. White pepper. Colonel Harland Sanders called them his secret “11 herbs and spices.”

 OMG. Beans, spilled. Feline, out of the bag. (And a long prison term for the dick who would put one of us there.)

How did one of the top secrets in corporate marketing history wind up on the pages of the Chicago Tribune? Innocently, it turns out, after freelance writer Jay Jones went to Corbin, Kentucky, to visit the Harland Sanders Cafe and Museum for a travel section story. Corbin is where the Colonel first served Kentucky Fried Chicken to customers of his gas station. As Mr. Jones tells it:

With the help of the local tourism office, I arrange to meet a man named Joe Ledington. The 67-year-old retired teacher has spent his entire life in Appalachia. He still lives in the house in which he grew up, just north of the city limits of Corbin, a town of about 7,300. He agrees to meet me to share a few yarns about the Colonel.

Mr. Ledington is the Colonel’s nephew, if he hasn’t been disowned from the grave by now. Leafing through his Aunt Claudia’s family album (she was the Colonel’s second wife), the reporter saw a list of 11 ingredients, with the teaspoon proportions for each, to be mixed with two cups of white flour. Asked about it, Mr. Ledington said: “That is the original 11 herbs and spices that were supposed to be so secretive.”

After realizing what he’d done, he tried in vain to undo it. As Mr. Jones reports: 

 In a subsequent phone interview with a Tribune editor, Ledington dialed back his certainty and expressed reluctance about sharing a recipe that – if it’s legit – ranks among corporate America’s most closely guarded secrets. “It could be; I don’t know for sure,” he said about the handwritten list of ingredients, adding that this was the first time he’d shown it to a reporter. “I’ve only had that album for four years, since my sister passed away.”

            

Asked to confirm the recipe was real, a Yum! Brands corporate weasel sent this e-mail: In the 1940s, Colonel Sanders developed the original recipe chicken to be sold at his gas station diner. At the time, the recipe was written above the door so anyone could have read it. But today, we go to great lengths to protect such a sacred blend of herbs and spices. In fact, the recipe ranks among America’s most valuable trade secrets.

            

Through the years, various people have claimed to find or tried to guess the 11 herbs and spices. Again from Mr. Jones:

            

Probably the most famous previous find occurred more than 15 years ago, when a couple in Shelbyville, Kentucky, said they stumbled upon what could be the secret recipe in the basement of the home they bought from Harland and Claudia Sanders in the ‘70s. Tommy and Cherry Settle reportedly found the recipe written on a piece of paper tucked inside a 1964 datebook.

            

KFC sued but dropped the matter after determining the formula could not be the real one. This time, there will be no lawsuit. Editors at the Tribune fried up some chicken using the newly discovered recipe, compared it to KFC and reported it to be finger lickin’ good. I’ll take their word for it from my table at Chick-fil-A.

Big Data is stalking every American

by Mouser The King Cat

Bit by bit, byte by byte, American traditions of privacy are eroded every day. Now IDI, a new player in the market, claims to have taken Big Data to the next level by compiling a profile on every adult in the U.S. (Presumably pets are next; they will know I like Fancy Feast.) Bloomberg Businessweek reports:

The Boca Raton company’s database service, idiCORE, combines public records with purchasing, demographic and behavioral data. CEO Derek Dubner says the system isn’t waiting for requests from clients – it’s already built a profile on every American adult, including young people who wouldn’t be swept up in conventional databases, which only index transactions.

Who wants this stuff? Mainly private detectives, of which there are 35,000 in the country, according to the story. Forty-three states require that PIs be licensed, so there is oversight. But that amounts to little, the story notes:

When logging in to IDI and similar databases, a PI must select a permissible use for a search under U.S. privacy laws. The Federal Trade Commission oversees the industry, but PI companies are expected to police themselves, because a midsize outfit may run thousands of searches a month.

So what’s in an idiCORE report? From the story, citing Mr. Dubner:

“These personal profiles include all known addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses; every piece of property ever bought or sold, plus related mortgages; past and present vehicles owned; criminal citations, from speeding tickets on up; voter registration, hunting permits, and names and phone numbers of neighbors. The reports also include photos of cars taken by private companies using automated license plate readers – billions of snapshots tagged with GPS coordinates and time stamps to help PIs surveil people or bust alibis.”

The story doesn’t say where other information might come from, but the company late last year acquired marketing profiler Fluent, which claims to have 120 million profiles of U.S. consumers. In June, IDI bought ad platform Q Interactive. Chains with loyalty programs might be selling data. To supplement its legitimate sources, IDI runs two shady coupon websites, which inquire about medical conditions and the like, supposedly so discounts on products might be offered. Talk about preying on the dumb.

Mr. Dubner downplays the threats to privacy, citing such uses as locating a missing person or catching fraud or terrorism suspects. The concept of PIs and detectives trading information goes back a long way.

How accurate are individuals’ profiles? That is a major question, because databases are easily fouled up as information is imported. (The job is too big for mere humans, explaining why the NSA can’t identify terrorists despite vacuuming up billions of phone calls, e-mails and postings on social media.)

Case in point: One of my assistants constantly gets mail at her house addressed to people who have NEVER lived there. Because data companies can’t figure out she’s divorced, mail for her ex shows up every week.

On the other hand, technology consultant Roger Kay says time is on the side of the data gatherers: “The cloud never forgets, and imperfect pictures of you composed from your data profile are carefully filled in over time. We’re like bugs in amber, completely trapped in the web of our own data.”

Will there even be presidential debates?

by Mouser The King Cat

We are still more than a month away from the first real presidential debate. That is opposed to the 622 or so preliminary skirmishes in the nominating processes. The site will be Hofstra University on Long Island.

On top of the usual pre-debate arguments about who will moderate, whether the candidates will stand or sit, blah blah, heavier questions hang. When the schedule was announced, the Trump camp objected to the dates, pointing out that two of the three conflicted with national telecasts of NFL games. The “they want to hide Hillary” talk led to a spate of stories, apparently made up out of whole cloth, about how he might skip the debates.

Superstar blogger Ann Althouse recently speculated that Clinton, with health problems the mainstream media go to great lengths to never mention, might be the one who backs out. Ms. Althouse:

“If Hillary can maintain her lead in the polls, why would she want to subject herself to the kind of treatment we’ve seen Trump deliver in debates? … If she’s on a clear path to victory, what would he do to her when he’s got nothing left to lose? She might think that just standing there solidly allowing him to be offensive in her presence would make a powerful implicit argument in her favor … But it’s still risky. There are now attacks on her physical and neurological fitness, and any flubbing of lines or seeming shakiness will be used against her.”

Ms. Althouse, a law professor, speculates about how some Clinton political strategists might be proactive:

“She would have to handle the bowing out carefully. Get proxies to float the idea. Smoke out the arguments against it, see who picks up the idea and expands upon it. Choose some things Trump says and act like these things are the last straw making it inappropriate for her to stand beside him on the stage. He’s the one that essentially forfeited the debate. And so on.”

Her conclusion: “Whatever hits she may take for bowing out, they’re a known risk, and they pale in comparison to the unknowns of the debate. She might make blunders. She might falter in her stamina. Trump may get off some brilliant hits that leave her reeling. Her verbose, flat, evasive style of speech might seem especially awful next to the pithy, entertaining Trump. His presence on the stage with her may catapult him into a newly presidential appearance. And how can she prepare? He likes to surprise. He might take any number of approaches, while she has only her usual, boring presentation. People may think: Is that what we want to look at and listen to for the next 4 years? Why give Trump that opening?”

If Hillary calls in sick, she will enjoy the full-throated approval of most of media outlets, which will stand on their heads to somehow call the idea of presidential debates un-American. But a question will linger: If she can’t stand down a real estate developer, how will she fare against Vladimir Putin?

I hate debates, but if this one comes off as scheduled, from 9 to 10:30 p.m. Eastern, the Falcons and Saints won’t keep me from watching.        

"The McLaughlin Group" has lost its leader

by Mouser The King Cat

This was shocking, until I realized how many years had flown under the radar. Conservative political pundit John McLaughlin, the former Jesuit priest and Nixon speechwriter who hosted a show on PBS for decades, passed away Tuesday at the age of 89.

From CNN Money: Last week, McLaughlin missed his show because he was “under the weather,” he said in a statement. It marked the first time in 34 years he had failed to host his show. The news of his death was announced in a post on the show’s Facebook page. … “Now he has said bye-bye for the last time, to rejoin his beloved dog, Oliver, in heaven. He will always be remembered.”

Mr. McLaughlin entered the Jesuit Order at the age of 20 and has been in the public eye since 1970, when he ran for a U.S. Senate seat in Rhode Island, losing to incumbent John Pastore. After that came speechwriting and a column for The National Review. In 1982, he became a pioneer of talking-head television by launching “The McLaughlin Group,” usually featuring two conservatives and two liberals with himself in the middle.

His loud and forceful style of conducting the show made him fodder for satirists, notably Dana Carvey of “Saturday Night Live.” McLaughlin himself appeared on SNL as the Grim Reaper during a Carvey sketch. He also appeared in several movies and other TV ventures.

He would not mind me mentioning other notable celebrities who died on Aug. 16 – Babe Ruth, Elvis, Bela Lugosi and Margaret Mitchell. R.I.P.

It seems little has changed in 132 years

by Mouser The King Cat

The quote “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes” is usually attributed to Mark Twain. Whether he actually wrote or said it is up for debate; no matter, most reasonable people accept the notion. Which brings us to the presidential election of 1884, as told by Wesley Pruden, editor-in-chief emeritus of The Washington Times:

Politics were particularly rowdy in the decades after the War of Northern Aggression, and rarely rowdier than in the year 1884, with Gov. Grover Cleveland of New York, the Democrat, suiting up against James G. Blaine of Maine, the Republican. The Democrats rehashed old allegations of bribes, graft and grease suborned by Blaine, the man in the pocket of railroad barons, the Wall Street villains of his day. Like a presidential candidate we could name, Blaine didn’t brook allegations of sordid behavior but haughtily dismissed them as "stale slander." This gave Democrats the famous rallying cry, “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine.” Not quite as to the point as “lock her up!” But it stirred the masses.

The Democratic base liked to cite evidence (in the form of letters that ended “burn this letter”) that Blaine peddled influence when he was speaker of the House. On the other side, Cleveland was nicknamed “Grover the Good,” having graduated from mayor of Buffalo to governor by cleaning out corrupt politicians. Back to Mr. Pruden:

For his part, Cleveland, a Presbyterian preacher’s son of starchy upright reputation, was accused of fathering an illegitimate child when practicing law in Buffalo. (A preacher’s son misbehaving? A naughty lawyer? Surely not.) The woman was a lady of wide acquaintance, and Cleveland, the only bachelor in the circle of usual suspects, manned up, and unlike another president we could name, took responsibility for his sporting life, and paid child support. But in turn the Democrats accused Blaine and his missus of not having been married when their eldest child was born. Bastardy was not fashionable in that backward day, and the rumor was disproved only after the sell-by date.

As was the custom, newspapers took sides. Later came the era of “objectivity,” which morphed into subtle liberal bias and now rages as outright partisanship, mostly against Donald Trump and for Hillary Clinton. Mr. Pruden notes:

No one has let passions get out of control like the mainstream press, but only so called, because in the digital era there is no mainstream, only angry tributaries of toxic venom and lethal bile struggling to be the mainstream. All standards of neutrality and intellectual discipline have been abandoned in the race to see who can be the loudest, the shrillest and the most irresponsible in decrying Donald Trump as a traitor, a mass murderer and a Republican (take your pick).

It must be noted that some of the bias runs the other way; several hosts of highly rated Fox News shows are blatantly pro-Trump. But remember this: Trust in media outlets is at an all-time low, perhaps because so-called gatherers of news are in the same space they were 132 years ago. Many individuals, perhaps even entire cable networks, eventually will be swept out with the tide.

The Cleveland-Blaine election was close, with Cleveland winning his home state’s decisive 36 electors by only 1,047 votes out of 1.17 million cast. Could we be headed for another rhyme on Nov. 8?

           

One of the ways The Man is prospering is payday loans

By Mouser the King Cat

One refrain around the 'hood that has resonated for decades is that The Man is sticking it to everybody and getting rich. So why not just ignore him? Well, that’s not easy, because in many states he offers payday loans. From The New York Times: 

People who borrow money against their paychecks are generally supposed to pay it back within two weeks, with substantial fees piled on: A customer who borrows $500 would typically owe around $575, at an annual percentage rate of 391%. But most borrowers routinely roll the loan over into a new one, becoming less likely to ever emerge from the debt. 

Mainstream banks are generally barred from this kind of lending. More than a dozen states have set their own rate caps and other rules that essentially prohibit payday loans, but the market is flourishing in at least 30 states. Some 16,000 lenders run online and storefront operations that thrive on the hefty profits.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is ready to crack down, and payday lenders are scared. But so are advocates for people who borrow. Again from The Times: 

In 2004, Georgia made most short-term, high-interest loans illegal. Afterward, Georgia residents paid more bounced-check overdraft fees and became more likely to file for bankruptcy, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. … When short-term loans disappear, the need that drives them does not; many customers simply shift to other expensive forms of credit like pawn shops, or pay late fees on overdue bills, the study’s authors concluded.

None of these stories mention what would bring The Man down: People living within their means. So he continues to thrive, laughing at the peons struggling to pay him back.

In another development, Capital One Financial Corp. sees “opportunities for growth” in the subprime loan market. From the Washington Business Journal: 

Auto loan originations grew to $6.5 billion, up 20% from $5.4 billion during the same time last year, and up 12% over the previous quarter. … Its total auto loan portfolio jumped to $44.5 billion in the second quarter, an 11% increase from the same time last year. The company does not provide specifics on how much of the portfolio is subprime.

In the lending biz, “subprime” too often means “I’ll pay you back for a while but don’t feel exceptionally obligated because, after all, you are The Man and you’ve been sticking it to me all my life.” In other words, you may be hooked on the fast cash, but The Man is hooked on the juice he gets from lending it. None of this will end well.

What is up with millennials, anyway?

By Mouser the King Cat

Writing for the New York Post, Johnny Oleksinski offers a succinct take on the hard-to-understand millennial generation: They suck. From the article, in which he describes The Lousiest Generation: 

At 26, I’m stuck in the middle of the world’s most maligned, mocked and discussed age group. And I hate it. Imagine being forever lumped into a smug pack of narcissists who don’t just ignore the past, but openly abhor anyone and everything that came before them. … This is my number one rule: Do whatever millennials don’t. Definite no-nos include quitting a job or relationship the moment my mood drops from ecstatic to merely content; expecting the world to kowtow to my every childish whim; and assuming that I am always the most fascinating person in the room, hell, the ZIP code.

There are no precise starting and ending birthdates for millennials (first known as Generation Y), but 1983 to 1995 looks like a good guess. That would make them 21 to 33. Sounds about right; you all suck, and that goes double for special snowflakes on college campuses studying to be baristas at Starbucks. Back to the article: 

Perhaps their messiah complex is a result of being coddled, petted and worshiped like toy poodles from infancy all the way to college. Pundits love to cite soccer participation trophies as the downfall of Western civilization – but it gets even worse. Last week, Hastings High School in Westchester, N.Y., handed out 87 commendations at its Senior Awards ceremony. The graduation class size? 141 teens.

Needless to say, millennials’ attitudes aren’t going down well in workplaces, where bosses tend to be older and suspicious of serial job hoppers. More from Mr. Oleksinski: One friend of mine has tackled six different jobs in two years, which seems more stressful than just sticking with one less-than-perfect spot for a while. How long should any person stay in a gig? At least 18 months, according to most career experts. Think of it as binge-working.

Finally, he has some advice for peers, guaranteed to fall on deaf ears: Action item one: Stop blaming everybody. Don’t blame the big banks, don’t blame your mom, don’t blame the baby boomers, don’t blame your employer, your landlord, the economy … By absolving ourselves of responsibility, we’ve become forever 8-year-olds, tattling on the world in hopes it will better our situation. It won’t. It will only make it crummier.

Now that he has spoken his mind, Mr. Oleksinski notes that friends might label him an “old soul” or “26 going on 76.” He should take that as a compliment and tell them to get off his lawn.