November 17, 2022

Like ENRON level complexity.

Reminded me of M&M Enterprises in Catch-22:

November 12, 2022

Who do you think he was selling to?

How does Milo Minderbinder's syndicate work in Catch 22?



By Sasi Priyadharshini
Business is my business, Quora

Milo Minderbinder, being the business savvy guy he is, uses the word syndicate to mask his capitalism. The entire business under the name of ‘M&M enterprises’ or the syndicate is solely run by one person- Milo Minderbinder. Yet he says that everyone has a share. This is because he wants to trick his consumers into believing that it is not him who benefits from the syndicate but the consumers themselves who receive the benefits. And he succeeds in his little trick. How?

Milo Minderbinder is a mere mess officer in the U.S. Air Force rooted in Pianosa, a small island in Italy, far away from the rest of the world. He flies to many different countries claiming that he's buying things for the mess hall (which is apparently a part of his syndicate). So naturally, all his travel expenses are the responsibility of the government. He establishes his business in every other place he has travelled to and everyone prefers to have deals with him. In no time, he becomes an international businessman. How?

This is where his cunning little tactics come into play. For instance, he buys eggs from Malta for 7 cents per egg and sells them to the mess hall for 5 cents per egg. Outwardly, this seems stupid. His business is at loss. But no, he earns a significant amount of profit. How?

Here is the answer. This egg business actually involves three places- Sicily, Malta and the mess hall in Pianosa. Sicily is a place where there are plenty of poultry farms and eggs are quite cheap. Milo buys eggs from Sicily at 1 cent apiece. Now Malta is a place where there are no poultry farms and there is quite a demand for eggs. Milo sells the eggs to the local traders in Malta for 4 and a half cents apiece. Then again, he offers to buy them back from the traders at 7 cents apiece, which they readily accept. The people in the mess hall know that he buys eggs from Malta at 7 cents apiece but they are unaware of his prior transactions. They are more than happy to buy the eggs at 5 cents apiece. In the end, Milo spends 1 cent in Sicily and 7 cents in Malta, totalling 8 cents. And he earns 4 and a half cents in Malta and 5 cents in the mess hall, totalling 9 and a half cents. The net profit he gets is one and a half cents for every egg he sells.

He uses similar tactics for his other businesses. And that's how his syndicate works.

Source: https://www.quora.com/How-does-Milo-Minderbinders-syndicate-work-in-Catch-22

November 7, 2022

Stolen Valor

Remember all the pukes who claimed to their constituents they were responsible for infrastructure etc they actually voted against?

https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/12122-0

November 6, 2022

Russia Revives Its Botnet to Hit Swing-State Democrats

The smile Trump made upon seeing the loan shark who holds his marker (November 11, 2018).



Russia Revives Its Botnet to Hit Swing-State Democrats

Old networks are lighting back up with MAGA propaganda in key races, say security pros.

by Madison Pauly
Mother Jones, Nov. 6, 2022

Russian trolls and bots are coming back online ahead of the midterms—this time, amplifying right-wing vitriol on Gab, Parler, Gettr, and other minor social media platforms serving far-right audiences. Cybersecurity researchers have identified the reactivation of inflammatory accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, a propaganda group associated with the Kremlin that has interfered in US elections since at least 2016, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

Some of the Russia-linked accounts are attempting to undermine Democrats in close races, posting a series of racist cartoons about Sen. Raphael Warnock, according to social network analysis company Graphika. Others are boosting Republicans in tight races, such as Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. Tellingly, they’re posting a lot about the Russian war in Ukraine—arguing that President Joe Biden is wasting money on military aid to Ukraine to the detriment of “working class Americans.” And, as always, they lavish praise on former President Donald Trump.

Gab and other nontraditional platforms are much smaller than Facebook, where the 2016 Russian influence campaign reached millions of voters. But users of the far-right platforms are seen as more susceptible to incendiary political commentary. “You can engage the audiences in much more targeted influence ops because those who are on these platforms are generally U.S. conservatives who are maybe more accepting of conspiratorial claims,” said Brian Liston, a senior intelligence analyst with cybersecurity research firm Recorded Future.

It’s difficult to measure the impact these accounts will have on the election, the Times warns—just as it’s still unclear how much Russian influence truly swayed the outcome in 2016. But perhaps Russia has concluded it doesn’t need to work so hard to promote its interests among the US electorate, since Fox News host Tucker Carlson is already doing so for free. Earlier this year, David Corn reported on a leaked memo from a Kremlin agency to Russian media outlets:

“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,” advises the 12-page document written in Russian. It sums up Carlson’s position: “Russia is only protecting its interests and security.”

Source: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/11/russia-revives-its-botnet-to-hit-swing-state-democrats/

November 3, 2022

Break it down.

An old story, relevant today:

Clarence Thomas at Bohemian Grove...

Justice Thomas reported a wealth of gifts

In the last six years he has accepted free items valued at $42,200, the most on the high court.

December 31, 2004|Richard A. Serrano and David G. Savage | Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts since joining the high court, including $1,200 worth of tires, valuable historical items and a $5,000 personal check to help pay a relative's education expenses.

SNIP...

He also took a free trip aboard a private jet to the exclusive Bohemian Grove club in Northern California -- arranged by a wealthy Texas real estate investor who helped run an advocacy group that filed briefs with the Supreme Court.

Those and other gifts were disclosed by Thomas under a 1978 federal ethics law that requires high-ranking government officials, including the nine Supreme Court justices, to file a report each year that lists gifts, money and other items they have received.

Thomas has reported accepting much more valuable gifts than his Supreme Court colleagues over the last six years, according to their disclosure forms on file at the court.

CONTINUED...

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/dec/31/nation/na-gifts31



Wanna bet that's just the tip of the iceberg, those gifts, Ginni?

November 1, 2022

Paul Pelosi Almost Died, and Most Republicans Don't Have a Big Problem With That

In fact, some of them have even suggested committing violence against his wife, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Michael Tomasky
The New Republic/October 31, 2022

Nothing in particular was happening on July 31, 2021, that should have given Kevin McCarthy’s words any special weight. It was a Saturday. The House of Representatives was on summer break. McCarthy was in Nashville at a fundraising event, and the state’s House Republicans presented him with an oversize gavel. Then he “joked”: “I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It’ll be hard not to hit her with it.” You can hear the audio here, and listen as the crowd laughs.

This is the man the voters of America are likely to make the next speaker of the House. But wait. The man in charge of this year’s House GOP effort, Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, has gone McCarthy one better. Last week, with political emotions at a fever pitch, he posted to Twitter a video of himself firing a weapon at a range, under which he wrote: “Enjoyed exercising my Second Amendment rights with @KellyCooperAZ & General @JackBergman_MI1. 13 days to make history. Let’s #FirePelosi.” Two days later, David DePape broke into Nancy Pelosi’s house, and you know what happened next.

SNIP…

You’ve read, I’m sure, about Elon Musk’s sick tweet Sunday morning. I’m not going to help spread the conspiracy theory in question. It came from a “news source” that wrote years ago that Hillary Clinton had died and been replaced by a body double. And Musk, on the very weekend he took over Twitter and started firing people, decided that “free speech” includes peddling to his 112 million followers a tale with no basis in fact from a right-wing propaganda outlet. Behold our new public square.

SNIP…

The reaction of course extends well beyond the vile Musk. In classic totalitarian fashion, figures on the right are interpreting the Pelosi attack as a moment of liberation. Dinesh D’Souza suggested—on Twitter, natch—that the Pelosi attack was a false flag operation, and then, of the discrepancy between the mainstream reporting on the incident (that is to say, the gathering of facts) versus the extremist conspiracy, he wrote: “The Left is going crazy because not only are we not BUYING the wacky, implausible Paul Pelosi story but we are even LAUGHING over how ridiculous it is. What this means is that we are no longer intimidated by their fake pieties. Their control over us has finally been broken.”

Substitute “Jew” for “left,” and that’s Joseph Goebbels in 1933.

CONTINUES…

https://newrepublic.com/article/168362/paul-pelosi-attack-almost-died-republican-response