Category: Businesses / Corporations / Industry

Harris Campaign: Donald Trump’s Very Good, Very Normal Press Conference

August 8, 2024, 3:56 pm | in

This is quite good:

Donald Trump’s Very Good, Very Normal Press Conference
Split Screen: Joy and Freedom vs. Whatever the Hell That Was (No photo on the page.)
Donald Trump took a break from taking a break to put on some pants and host a p̶r̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ public meltdown. We have a lot to say about it. Here are some initial thoughts – with more to come.

He hasn’t campaigned all week. He isn’t going to a single swing state this week. But he sure is mad Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are getting big crowds across the battlegrounds.The facts were hard to track and harder to find in Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago meltdown this afternoon. He lied. He attacked the media. He made excuses for why he’s off the campaign trail. We’re here to help because his staff clearly isn’t.

But first, an important reminder on the question Donald didn’t answer: how he will vote on the Florida abortion referendum. (He has been ducking this question since April.) We worked to pin down reality so Donald Trump, bless his heart, doesn’t have to. Here are the facts:

We had 12,000 and 15,000 people in Wisconsin and Michigan yesterday, respectively (Not 2,000.)

The ABC debate is September 10th. Not the 25th.

People have spoken to bigger crowds than Donald Trump. (Obama, Clinton, literally anyone at Lollapalooza, Coachella, the World Cup…)

January 6th was decidedly nothing like MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech. And Trump did not get a bigger crowd than Martin Luther King Jr. on that historic day.

There was famously not a “peaceful transfer” of power after the 2020 election, which Donald Trump fought to overturn. (Famously.) Five police officers died because of January 6th.

Donald Trump said he was off the trail this week because of the Democratic convention. (That convention is not happening this week.)

Trump said they have commercials at a level no one else does. (He is being drastically outspent on the airwaves.)

Governor Josh Shapiro is actually a great guy.

Project 2025 author Tom Homan, the “father” of Trump’s cruel child separation policy, is not a person to praise.

Jewish people should not “have their head examined” for not supporting him. (That’s actually antisemitic.)

Trump said he was not complaining. He in fact very much was.

Trump does not know the difference between asylum seekers and an insane asylum.

Donald Trump does not “cherish” the Constitution.

Abortion is not “less of an issue” for voters. It is not “subdued.” It is not a “small issue” for voters, despite how much Donald Trump wants it to be. Donald Trump did not answer the abortion question “very well in the debate.”

Everybody did not want Roe v. Wade overturned. The American people do not support states banning abortion.

After-birth abortion does not exist.

Minnesota and Virginia are not the same.

Donald Trump doesn’t know what progressive means.

Kamala Harris does not want to take away everyone’s guns. Tim Walz is a gun owner.

Vice President Harris does not support an arms embargo on Israel.

Donald Trump could not remember Tim Walz’s name.

Donald Trump’s tax cuts are not the biggest in history.

We don’t know what “the transgender became such a big thing” is supposed to mean.

Donald Trump will cut Social Security – just like he proposed every year he was in office.

Government was not weaponized against Trump and Steve Bannon.

Mail ballots are secure.

We agree – Elon IS a different kind of guy.

There are no polls that say Donald Trump is going to win in a landslide.

The MAGA base is not 75% of the country.

https://www.insidernj.com/press-release/harris-campaign-donald-trumps-very-good-very-normal-press-conference/

A new one-

I’ve heard of and even seen camel toe, but …

Trump Spox: Harris Continues To “Cow-Toe” To Radicals

Heh. I wonder whatever happened to rehearsal, and making sure one knows a word before one uses it?

(I remember Scottie likes to post from JMG, and mentioned it just the other day, so I’m looking at the page now. Others are probably wishing to see it, too.)

This is so good-

That Was Fast

Thanks to Zorba

I love Jim Hightower!

Jim Hightower: The Real Purpose of Project 2025

Project 2025 in Two (2) Minutes …

Project 2025 in Two (2) Minutes …

House kills child online safety bills that could’ve hurt LGBTQ+ kids & allies

Progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez opposed the bill.
By  
The man plays computer games at home. Young guy is bored during online learning. Neon light in the evening. Weekend at home at the screen.The boy lost, was tired and upset.

Photo: Shutterstock

Despite passing in the Senate earlier this week, the Kid’s Online Safety Act (KOSA) is reportedly dead in the U.S. House after progressives, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), worried that it would possible censor LGBTQ+ content. Some Republicans also opposed the bill, stating that it would violate free speech protections for social media platforms and their users.

KOSA would have mandated that social media companies take measures to prevent recommending any content that promotes mental health disorders (like eating disorders, drug use, self-harm, sexual abuse, and bullying) unless minors specifically search for such content. Opponents worried that Republican attorneys general who see LGBTQ+ identities as harmful forms of mental illness would use KOSA’s provisions to censor queer web content and prosecute platforms that provide access to it.

“KOSA was a poorly written bill that would have made kids less safe,” said one of the bill’s most vocal opponents, Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit that protects human rights in the digital age. “It’s good that this unconstitutional censorship bill is dead for now, but I am not breathing a sigh of relief.”

“KOSA was always too controversial to succeed, and divided our coalition,” Greer added. “If we want to take on Big Tech and win, we have to quickly regroup and make a plan for next Congress. We need strong privacy, antitrust, and algorithmic justice legislation that address the harms of Big Tech without endangering free expression and human rights.”

Many other groups opposed the bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, the LGBT Technology Partnership, as well as LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations in six states.

While KOSA passed in the Senate earlier this week in a 93-1 vote, three senators voted against the bills: Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Rand Paul (R-KY) — all three made statements explaining why.

Wyden specifically said he voted against the bills because he worried a future administration could use the legislation to “pressure companies to censor gay, trans, and reproductive health information,” The Hill reported.

Lee said, “This legislation empowers the [Federal Trade Commission (FTC)] to censor any content it deems to cause ‘harm,’ ‘anxiety,’ or ‘depression,’ in a way that could (and most likely would) be used to censor the expression of political, religious, and other viewpoints disfavored by the FTC.”

Paul wrote in a recent Louisville Courier Journal opinion article, “KOSA would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to design their sites to mitigate and prevent harms…. This requirement will not only stifle free speech, but it will deprive Americans of the benefits of our technological advancements.”

KOSA was introduced by anti-LGBTQ+ Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who said that one of the bill’s top priorities is to protect children from “the transgender in this culture.” Blackburn’s office told LGBTQ Nation that her comment had been “taken out of context” and wasn’t related to KOSA. Nevertheless, the anti-LGBTQ+ conservative think tank Heritage Foundation has also said it wishes to use the law to “guard” kids against the “harms of… transgender content.”

Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said, “KOSA compounds nationwide attacks on young peoples’ right to learn and access information, on and offline. As state legislatures and school boards across the country impose book bans and classroom censorship laws, the last thing students and parents need is another act of government censorship deciding which educational resources are appropriate for their families.”

How to strip metadata from your files

https://getsession.org/blog/how-to-strip-metadata-from-your-files

You are being sold with every email, every picture, every blog post, every Instagram post, every thing you put on X or Facebook, you are the cash cow these companies want to milk.  I have been taking steps for years to reduce how much these businesses can strip mine my stuff data about me.  Here is a program I like, and here is a free tutorial on how to remove a lot of the metadata out of your images and files.  I recently realized how much information about myself I include in messages, so I looked into this program by Sessions.   Hugs.  Scottie

January 07, 2022 / Alex Linton

Metadata is a big deal — especially for people who are trying to protect their online privacy. For any files on your computer, there is probably a bunch of metadata about the file — such as location data, when the file was created, when it was last changed, or even what device created the file. If you ever give that file to someone else (or upload it to the internet), the file’s metadata will be transferred as well — which means they can see all that info. 

There are plenty of reasons you might want to share a file without wanting to share the metadata as well — such as preserving your privacy or anonymity. To do that, you’ll want to strip the file’s metadata. Stripping metadata from files removes all that extra information and leaves you with just the information in the file itself. Some messengers—like Session—strip metadata from your image files when you attach them to a message. This is because they can contain sensitive EXIF data, which contains device and location information. Other file types—like MP3s—might have less sensitive metadata (such as a song name or artist) which won’t be stripped.

However, if you want to be sure, you can always manually strip the metadata from your files. Here’s how!

How to remove metadata from files using Windows

Scrubbing your files on Windows is relatively easy, you can do so directly in the File Explorer without relying on any third party software. 

  1. Locate the file you want to strip in Explorer

  2. Right click on the file and select Properties

  3. Select the Details tab to see the associated metadata

  4. Click Remove Properties and Personal Information 

  5. Select the metadata you want to remove

  6. Select to either Create a copy (if you want to preserve the original) or Remove properties from this file

  7. Click OK

Ta-da! Metadata removed, now you can safely share the file without extra personal information being attached. 

How to remove metadata from files using macOS

Unfortunately things aren’t as simple on macOS. There’s no catch-all option for all file types, and you can only remove specific kinds of data. For images, you can remove location data using macOS’s built-in Preview application. 

  1. Open the image in Preview

  2. Hit CMD + i to display the image’s metadata 

  3. Navigate to the Info tab (circle with an ‘i’ inside it)

  4. Click on GPS to see the location metadata

  5. Click Remove Location Info to remove the GPS information stored in the image

For anything more thorough than this (or any file type other than images) you’ll need to use third-party software, such as Acrobat Pro for PDFs. 

How to remove metadata from files using Linux

Thankfully, things are much easier on Linux! Note: Instructions may be different depending on your distro.

  1. If you’re using a Debian-based system (such as Ubuntu), you can install MAT (which comes pre-packaged) using this command: $ sudo apt-get install mat

  2. You can then launch the MAT GUI using this: $ mat-gui

  3. Add the file you want to strip to MAT by clicking the Add icon in the top navigation bar

  4. Once the file is added, click Check to scan for metadata

  5. If metadata is detected, MAT will mark the file as ‘Dirty’, you can double click the file to see what metadata has been detected

  6. Click Clean to strip the metadata from the file

Simple as that! 

Keep your files safe

Stripping metadata from your files before you share them is a good idea — especially if you’re going to upload them somewhere public on the internet. If you want to be certain that the files you send are completely metadata free (even to the people you send them to) — make sure to strip them first! To ensure your files stay private, it’s also important to consider how and where you store your files. Make sure you’re encrypting your hard drives, and be careful about what Cloud storage providers you use and what upload. 

These days, it’s a normal everyday thing to share files on messaging apps and social media — but it’s important to be mindful about what exactly you’re sharing. Once those files hit the internet — they could end up anywhere! 

“Put The Ten Commandments in Corporate Boardrooms…”


@jasonalaimo4787
14 hours ago
“We have capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich.” MLK

Trump would ‘absolutely’ scrap Biden’s Air Force One colors, adviser says

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/30/trump-air-force-one-00171453

If reelected, Trump still has time to change the paint job back to red, white and dark blue. But it’d be expensive.

A model of the proposed paint scheme of red, white and dark blue for Air Force One is on display as Donald Trump sits in background.
 

When he was president, Donald Trump displayed a model of Air Force One with his preferred paint scheme in the Oval Office. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

By LEE HUDSON, DANIEL LIPPMAN and CONNOR O’BRIEN

If Donald Trump returns to the presidency, he’ll have another shot at achieving a goal that eluded him last time: Changing the colors of Air Force One to his beloved red, white and dark blue.

And he’ll likely do it — even though replacing the traditional light-blue-and-white design with Trump’s preferred scheme would be complicated and expensive.

A former senior Trump White House official who remains close to him says it would be totally in character for the former president to insist on using his preferred colors on the planes.

 
 

“Absolutely. 100 percent,” said the former official, granted anonymity to discuss Trump’s thinking.

The Air Force is still modifying two Boeing 747-8s to replace the existing aircraft, and the two planes are on track to be delivered in 2026 and 2027, years late and well over budget. When they arrive, they’ll be sporting the traditional white-and-light-blue livery that has adorned presidential aircraft since the Kennedy administration.

But according to three people familiar with the program, there’s still time for Trump to order the color scheme back to his favored palette, similar to the pattern already on his private plane. In 2019, the then-president told ABC host George Stephanopoulos that he wanted to shake up the traditional pattern with a design he made himself.

“There’s your new Air Force One,” Trump said at the time, holding up mock-ups of the aircraft that at the time was supposed to be delivered by this year. “I’m doing that for other presidents, not for me.”

After POLITICO reported in 2022 that Trump’s preferred colors would lead to expensive design fixes, the Biden White House scrapped the plan and brought back the traditional palette.

 
 

The person familiar with Trump’s thinking said he expects him to change the colors back because of how proud the former president was of the design change.

“The model was on the coffee table in the Oval Office and he pointed it out many times to foreign and domestic visitors,” the person said. “He thought it represented America more and represented strength, the red, white and blue.”

Yet the cost of bringing back Trump’s favored shade hasn’t gone away.

At some point after Trump announced he was changing the colors in 2019, Boeing determined that the dark blue paint on the underside of the plane and its engines would likely contribute to excessive temperatures, a problem that Boeing would likely have to pay out-of-pocket to fix.

Specifically, the dark color would require modifications to cool some of its components, the three people familiar with the changes said. The people were granted anonymity to speak freely about the sensitive program.

The people said changing the color scheme this far in the process may require more engineering work, millions of dollars in cost overruns, and further delays.

“For example, Boeing would need to ensure antennas work with the new livery and that there is no interference,” one person said.

Boeing referred to the Air Force for comment. An Air Force spokesperson said the service does not speculate on hypotheticals. Asked for comment, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said “Sounds like Joe Biden hates the Red, White, and Blue.” He did not specifically answer whether Trump would change the color.

As president, Trump took pride in personally getting involved in the negotiations for the replacement aircraft once he learned of the cost. In February 2017, he said the Air Force was “close to signing a $4.2 billion deal” and “we got that price down by over $1 billion.”

The Air Force awarded Boeing a $3.9 billion contract in 2018 for the two modified 747-8s to replace the existing Air Force One aircraft, based on the 747-200B model that has been flying since the 1990s.

The company consented to a fixed-price contract with the Air Force, meaning any changes made to the airplane are at Boeing’s cost, not the government’s. The program is already more than $2 billion over budget.

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun told investors in 2022 that company executives should never have agreed to Trump’s terms for the Air Force contract six years ago.

The program faced major problems when a subcontractor hired to furnish the cabin interior went bankrupt, and Boeing had to switch to a new supplier. The program also faced hurdles due to labor shortages and a lack of employees with the proper clearances to work on the sensitive program.

During Trump’s presidency, Democrats registered their opposition to his decision to change Air Force One’s paint scheme. After winning control of the House in 2019, Democrats pushed to limit changes to the paint job or interior decorations on the program.

Defense legislation that passed the House that year included language limiting changes to the aircraft’s livery and interior design to what was included in the contract.

Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), who sponsored the proposal, said at the time that Congress needed to rein in “less essential aspects” of the new planes and close a potential “backdoor for the program to hemorrhage” money.

“The president will have an opportunity to make some suggestions and changes to the plane,” Courtney said during the 2019 House Armed Services Committee deliberations on the defense bill. “But we do want to keep this within the parameters of the existing contract process so that, again, we’re not creating additional costs for the operation of the plane.”

 
 

“Additional paint can add weight to the plane,” he noted.

Republicans, however, accused Democrats of using the program to take a swipe at Trump. Then-Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.) criticized the effort as “an attempt to just poke at the president.”

“Prior to 2017, I don’t recall attempts to block things like paint colors,” he said.

The measure passed the House, but not the Senate. Lawmakers ultimately approved a compromise bill that required the Air Force to notify Congress before it undertook any “over and above” work on the aircraft.

X Suspends Account For “White Dudes For Harris”

X Suspends Account For “White Dudes For Harris”

July 30, 2024 Social Media, Trump cultists

 

Newsweek reports:

Newsweek observed that the White Dudes for Harris X account had been suspended after the group held a star-studded virtual call on Monday night that raised more than $4 million.

The automated message when the account was suspended read: “X suspends accounts which violate the X rules.” Mike Nellis, who is involved in the organization, shared an update on Tuesday explaining that while the X account is live again, it still remains suspended.

He said the account is “permanently in read-only mode,” meaning it cannot post. When contacted by Newsweek for comment, X’s press office responded: “Busy now, please check back later.”

Read the full article.

Mark McGovern19 hours ago

So Twitter is defacto a GOP political asset.

Gregory In Seattle  Mark McGovern18 hours ago

Technically not GOP, but definitely a platform for white racist bigots, Nazis, and other hate-filled bigots. Which, I suppose, is pretty much the same thing nowadays.

I like to combine the old name into the new: Xitter, with the X pronounced as /sh/, because that is exactly what it has become since Musk took over. In a similar fashion, the messages are now xits, with x pronounced the same way

TheSeer  Mark McGovern19 hours ago edited

Yes. And both the GOP and Xitter are Kremlin political assets.

Tim 🇺🇦19 hours ago

He’s an asshole, and should be deported back to South Africa

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