3. Is Joy Reid leaving their party something Democrats view as ominous? I guess it could be if she represented an exodus of ignorant anti-Semites and bigots, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on. “The Democratic Party is as married to this Israel over everything. Israel, no matter what, Israel, no matter what they do, no matter how many people they kill, the Democrats were as married to that as the Republicans. And so it would take a really strong Democrat. It would take a Mamdani-style event to get a Democrat to say that they weren’t getting down with that,” the ex-MSNBC anti-white racist announced during an interview on her podcast with pseudo-academic anti-white racist Ta-Nehisi Coates. This week she also said that “Nobody black I know is really excited about the 4th of July. It is the celebration of slaveholders who freed themselves from having to pay taxes to the Crown for their slave empire.”
That, of course, is “1619 Project” fake history. I’m pretty sure the GOP wouldn’t trade Tucker for Reid even if Democrats threw in cash and a player to be named later.
4. ElevenLabs‘ AI audiobook version of Christopher Nolan’s movie “The Odyssey,” coming the theaters in July, will feature the fake voice of Michael Caine. This roughly 13-hour verbal version of “The Odyssey” was released today through the company’s ElevenReader audiobook app. Yes, Caine, who is retired (finally) licensed his voice and image, so this is all legal and ethical as long as the marketing is clear that anyone who thinks they are paying for Michael Caine’s unique approach to the material and the use of his veteran dramatic instincts to enrich the material is being conned, or, in the alternative, is an idiot.
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down a state-funded scholarship program that awarded financial aid based on the race of college students. The Democrat-controlled court followed the precedent laid out by the United States Supreme Court in finding that Gov. Tony Evers and the state were violating the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. Two of the most liberal justices, however, wrote a concurrence denouncing the bar on the use of race for such scholarships. If Democrats are able to pack the Supreme Court as demanded by many party leaders, this concurrence is an example of the likely changes that a packed court will bring in reversing anti-discrimination and other rulings.
“The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty represented the taxpayers in this successful challenge of the Wisconsin Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant Program. That program administered taxpayer-funded grants of up to $2,500 per academic year to eligible students of Black American, American Indian, Hispanic, or certain Southeast Asian backgrounds.
“The state paid out roughly half a million dollars in scholarships, now found to be racially discriminatory.
“Citing the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Court reaffirmed that “The Constitution requires that every person ‘must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.’”
…Chief Justice Jill Karofsky and Susan Crawford, lamented the loss of racially discriminatory programs. In her concurrence, Chief Justice Karofsky captured the sweeping, open-ended rationales used for such programs:
“Why have we not learned from our past? Why are we not willing to recognize the harms this country has caused to those who are marginalized, disempowered, or disenfranchised? Why, instead of wielding the Equal Protection Clause as a sword against racism, do we employ it to shield against the promise of equality for all? The answer appears to be because we have failed to fully recognize how societal and governmental practices have long continued to enforce a preference for White Americans and to burden Black Americans and those of other disadvantaged races or backgrounds.”
Ethics Alarms 
4. “Watched my wedding video again the other day. Damned if Michael Caine wasn’t in it!”
— Dennis Miller
Joy Reid: how many times does a name need to be repeated and heard by a populace to react as if the name has some import?
We did.
There has been a civil rights movement since the 1860’s. The 14th Amendment was ratified at a time when an amendment to enshrine racial segregation and apartheid would have been very politically popular.
It was. Again, I rem ind readers
The 14th Amendment was used as a sword against this program.
While this particular program did not enforce a preference for White Americans, the precedents that required the Wisconsin Supreme Court to strike down this program had struck down actual preferences for White Americans.
google search results:
Total Spending on the War on Poverty Since Its Inception
Since President Lyndon B. Johnson declared an “unconditional war on poverty” in 1964, U.S. taxpayers have spent more than $30 trillion on federal anti-poverty programs (Cato Institute). This figure covers the combined costs of the 134 welfare and anti-poverty programs administered by multiple federal agencies, including cash assistance, in-kind benefits, and targeted programs for specific groups (Cato Institute).
Context and Scope
I’d say the war on poverty qualifies as the quagmire of quagmires.
“I’d say the war on poverty qualifies as the quagmire of quagmires.”
Jeepers, YB…you want to ruin everything…?
PWS
Well, I heard that Elon’s Trillion will solve child poverty.
Obviously, the government is throwing the wrong money at this problem.
-Jut
It is only a quagmire if you think it was supposed to elevate minorities and alleviate poverty. If you think it was supposed to create a new means for keeping blacks as a permanent underclass dominated by the Democratic Party, then it was not a quagmire. It also created a massive government bureaucracy, a 4rth branch of government, that is also controlled by the Democratic Party. From that perspective, it was incredibly successful. It was so successful, that even suggesting that it be dismantled is considered to be ‘undermining democracy’. This is so ingrained in people’s view of what ‘the government’ is, that most people are incapable of imagining a life with a pre-depression governmental structure.
2. Fake caller IDs are necessary in limited cases, such as a doctor’s cell phone spoofing his office’s number, or a local insurance agency spoofing the corporate customer service number for some outgoing calls. Using spoofing deceptively is indeed illegal. (which no doubt is the vast majority of its uses). Some numbers (like 1800-medicare) are able to prevent other’s from claiming they’re that number, but this kind of blocking is not based on a system that can scale.
Telemarketing law is roughly split along two chunks, the ‘Telemarketing Sales Rule’ regulations which are quite extensive, and only rarely enforced, and the ‘Telephone Consumer Protection Act’ rules. The latter are much more basic (essentially “do-not-call” record keeping rules) and give consumers the private right of action for enforcement.
Spoofing was previously thought to only fall under TSR, so only enforceable by government agencies, but a certain well-known retired cop pro-se plaintiff discovered that the FTC promulgated rules about deceptive caller ID under the TCPA law prior to congress encoding the same into the TSR, so people can now claim up to $1500 damages per call for spoofed spam.
Phone consumers can’t sue CVS for the caller stating they’re with CVS though, that’s the hard part. I just signed onto my fourth lawsuit for illegal telemarketing today. In my experience It takes a minimum of 12 minutes and sometimes over an hour on the phone before you MIGHT identify the company paying for the spam. TSR rules require full company identification provided within the first few statements, but, again, it’s the government that (doesn’t) enforce that.
That spoofing isn’t ‘necessary’, it is just convenient. The doctor can have a separate phone for business calls that is registered to the office. The sales people can too.
Caller ID spoofing technology is good enough that a scammer can fool your phone into thinking a legitimate number is calling.
I recently had my credit card number stolen; when my bank detected fraud, my banking app directed me to call their fraud number. Luckily, it was easy to resolve, and since it was just my credit card that was stolen, my bank accounts were safe. The next day, however, I got calls from what my phone said was my bank, correct number and ID. I answered, but was suspicious from the start, since that’s not how my bank handles issues. It was easy to tell that it was a scam, trying to get my banking info. Figure it was the same people that tried to use my credit card and were frustrated when it failed. They tried getting info about my account, info the bank already has and would never ask for. Didn’t give them any info, and reported the incident to my bank’s fraud department. They tried calling a few more times but gave up when I hung up without answering.
Besides asking for info like bank balance, and account passwords, they also made specific claims about the attempted fraud (an AirBnB), they repeated the same line several times verbatim, with no connection to the actual conversation, and they made claims that they were going to change the account number to prevent future fraud, but that any direct deposits and autopay would continue without me having to change anything. Those accounts would have to be updated if the checking account number changed. These scams are getting harder to figure out, and the scammers don’t mind spending hours slowly wearing you down before you accidentally give out info you shouldn’t. I figure the best way to deal with them is to not answer your phone if it says your bank is calling, then call your bank yourself and ask if they called you for anything.