Socialism is perhaps the only ideology that Americans are asked to judge solely based on its piddling “successes.” Don’t you dare mention Albania or Algeria or Angola or Burma or Congo or Cuba or Ethiopia or Laos or Somalia or Vietnam or Yemen or, well, any other of the dozens of other inconvenient places socialism has been tried. Not when there are a handful of Scandinavian countries operating generous welfare state programs propped up by underlying vibrant capitalism and natural resources.
Of course, socialism exists on a spectrum, and even if we accept that the Nordic social program experiments are the most benign iteration of collectivism, they are certainly not the only version. Pretending otherwise would be like saying, “The police state of Singapore is more successful than Denmark. Let’s give it a spin.”
It turns out, though, that the “Denmark is awesome!” talking point is only the second-most preposterous one used by socialists. It goes something like this: If you’re a fan of “roads, schools, libraries, and such,” although you may not even be aware of it, you are also a supporter of socialism.
To be fair, socialists will tell any lie to gain power.
As Linda Greenhouse observed in the Times at the end of Gorsuch’s first term, he managed to violate the Court’s traditions as soon as he arrived. He dominated oral arguments, when new Justices are expected to hang back. He instructed his senior colleagues, who collectively have a total of a hundred and forty years’ experience on the Court, about how to do their jobs. Dissenting from a decision that involved the interpretation of federal laws, he wrote, “If a statute needs repair, there’s a constitutionally prescribed way to do it. It’s called legislation.” Perhaps he thought that the other Justices were unfamiliar with this thing called “legislation.”
Maybe that’s because he’s read their work. But if they’re having trouble keeping up with him, they can always retire. . . .
Speaking of which, there’s no mention of another outspoken Supreme Court Justice whose public statements have been far less temperate than Gorsuch’s. I suspect that’s because she’s the source of the piece.
There is a strong internal culture based on the idea that no Justice should embarrass the Court; Gorsuch might earn some advice from the Chief Justice to mind the unwritten rules.
Photograph by Fred Schilling / Supreme Court via AP
In 2009 and 2010, Virginia Thomas became an outspoken opponent of the new President, Barack Obama. Ginni Thomas, as she is known, travelled the country as a leader of the growing Tea Party movement, which was particularly focussed on overturning the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Around the same time, legal challenges to the law were working their way to the Supreme Court, where Ginni’s husband, Clarence Thomas, serves. Media attention began to focus on the propriety of such a close association between a Justice and a public adversary of a law whose fate was before the Court. Then, shortly before the A.C.A. case came before the Justices, in 2012, something happened. Ginni Thomas stopped her public advocacy; indeed, she has virtually disappeared from public view in the past few years.
Why? Neither Thomas has ever addressed the issue publicly, but it’s possible to offer some informed speculation. The Justices, and especially Chief Justice John Roberts, are assiduous defenders of the Court’s reputation. As savvy denizens of Washington, D.C., they understand the political dimension of their work, but they are careful to avoid any taint of outside political activity that might raise questions about their ethics. This view is shared across the ideological spectrum at the Court, as the Justices believe, with some reason, that an attack on one of them could quickly expand into an attack on all. So did the Chief Justice suggest to Justice Thomas, in a gentle and deferential way, that perhaps his wife’s activities were reflecting poorly on the Court? And did Clarence and Ginni Thomas subsequently decide that she might dial back her outspoken role? It seems more than possible.
The retreat of Ginni Thomas brings to mind the emergence of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. Earlier this week, Gorsuch gave a speech before the Fund for American Studies, a conservative educational and advocacy group. The Justices do occasionally speak before groups with high political profiles. Most of the Justices on the conservative wing have appeared in front of the Federalist Society, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen G. Breyer have addressed the American Constitution Society, the Federalists’ liberal counterpart. What made Gorsuch’s appearance especially notable was that it took place at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, which is the focus of several pending cases that may well wind up before the Supreme Court. These lawsuits allege that the Trump family’s ownership of the hotel, which is patronized by foreigners with interests before the executive branch, violates the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Gorsuch’s presence at the hotel could look like an endorsement of the propriety of its ownership arrangements.
Gorsuch’s Trump Hotel speech followed one he gave at the University of Louisville, where he was introduced by Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, who was, more than anyone, responsible for blocking Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the seat that Gorsuch now occupies. Gorsuch rewarded McConnell not only with an appearance in the senator’s home town but with a speech that underlined the Justice’s own conservative approach to the law.
There is nothing unlawful about Gorsuch’s speeches, though it’s hard to say just what the ethical rules are for Supreme Court Justices. They are exempt from the code that governs the conduct of other federal judges, so the Court has traditionally relied on informal self-policing. There is a strong internal culture based on the idea that no Justice should embarrass the Court; Gorsuch’s tiptoeing up to the line of advocacy for and gratitude to conservatives might earn some advice from the Chief Justice to mind the unwritten rules.
Gorsuch’s speeches might appear less distasteful to his colleagues if he had made an otherwise more graceful début on the Court. As Linda Greenhouse observed in the Times at the end of Gorsuch’s first term, he managed to violate the Court’s traditions as soon as he arrived. He dominated oral arguments, when new Justices are expected to hang back. He instructed his senior colleagues, who collectively have a total of a hundred and forty years’ experience on the Court, about how to do their jobs. Dissenting from a decision that involved the interpretation of federal laws, he wrote, “If a statute needs repair, there’s a constitutionally prescribed way to do it. It’s called legislation.” Perhaps he thought that the other Justices were unfamiliar with this thing called “legislation.” Gorsuch also expressed ill-disguised contempt for Anthony Kennedy’s landmark opinion legalizing same-sex marriage in all fifty states. Earlier this year, the Court’s majority overturned an Arkansas ruling that the state could refuse to put the name of a birth mother’s same-sex spouse on their child’s birth certificate. Dissenting, Gorsuch wrote, “Nothing in Obergefell spoke (let alone clearly) to the question.” That “let alone clearly” reflected a conservative consensus that Kennedy’s opinion was a confusing mess.
Perhaps Gorsuch will, as the years pass, prove to be a more clubbable colleague; or perhaps he’ll decide, at least socially, to go his own way. But what’s already clear is his ideology as a Justice. In his first fifteen cases on the Court, as the number-crunchers at FiveThirtyEight discovered, he joined Thomas, the most right-wing Justice, every time—and he even joined all of Thomas’s concurring opinions. Gorsuch’s outside activities may draw a private word from the Chief Justice, but Roberts would never presume (or want) to change Gorsuch’s votes. And the new Justice is casting those just as his sponsors had hoped and his opponents had feared.
For instance, there is a common misconception that Trump was ushered into power by old, white, economically disenfranchised men. However, according to the exit polls, Trump actually did worse than Romney among whites and seniors, but outperformed him among blacks, Asians, Hispanics and young people.
While the Democrats lost a lot of support among low-income Americans, I think it would be a mistake to interpret these as Trump’s base. He won a plurality of every income bracket above US$50,000 as well. He also won more non-Christian and nonreligious voters than any Republican since the 2000 election.
However the biggest surprise of 2016 probably relates to gender. The first major party female candidate for president, running against a notorious misogynist, captured the Democrats’ lowest share of female voters since 2004. And although Trump also got a lower share of female voters than his last three Republican predecessors, he nonetheless won over a majority of white women.
Granted, Trump’s candidacy and campaign were exceptional. However, it would be a mistake to think of these outcomes as aberrations rather than the culmination of a long-running trend. Contrary to the emerging Democratic majority thesis, there does not seem to be any demographic category with which Democrats are progressively improving.
“Blacks, Asians, Hispanics and young people” for the most part did horribly under eight years of Obama, and last year enough of them — if I may borrow the trendy word for this — “woke” and helped put Trump in the White House.
The former president has set up an office on the West End of the national’s capitol, where he recently hosted an open house for his White House staff – including Joe Biden, Susan Rice, Josh Earnest and Jarrett.
But the office, part of his post presidency perks, cannot be used for political purposes. The rent on his home is paid by him personally.
On Tuesday, former Attorney General Eric Holder revealed that Obama is indeed getting closer to making his public reappearance in politics.
‘It’s coming. He’s coming,’ Holder said speaking to reporters. ‘And he’s ready to roll.’
According to the family source, Obama was at first reluctant to assume the role of leader of the opposition.
‘No longer the most powerful man in the world, he was just observing Trump and not liking what he saw,’ said the source.
“The 2018 races are central not only to the individual states, but also to the federal policies in the House of Representatives,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, vice chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, said in an interview. “The key that unlocks the governors’ doors also unlocks the House of Representatives. And we’ve got to get the national team to understand that.”
As Republicans captured control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, Democrats have suffered deep losses at the state and local level in recent years.
Republicans control about 4,170 state legislative seats across the country, almost 1,000 more than they held in 2009 when Barack Obama was sworn in. Today, 33 governors are Republican; when Obama took office, just 21 governors were Republican.
“Their backs are against the wall,” said Matt Walter, who heads the Republican State Leadership Committee, a group that supports GOP candidates in state-level races. “In 2018, they’re in full panic mode about it, so we’re anticipating as a result of that, that they’re going to be throwing everything but the kitchen sink to try to restore the ground that they’ve lost.”
There is one bright spot for Democrats. The party holding the White House loses an average of 26 House seats in off-year elections — enough to turn control over to the Democrats in January, 2019.
Then again, Democrats are still actively avoiding the soul-searching their party has needed since 2010.
So who knows?
The money transfer startup TransferWise has launched a new chatbot that enables Facebook (FB, Tech30) users to move funds abroad using the social platform’s Messenger service. The bot can be used to move money between the U.S., Canada, Australia and the European Union. It will also notify users via an alert when their regularly used currencies hit favorable rates. Facebook users were previously able to transfer money within the U.S., but not between accounts in foreign countries.
FACEBOOK is deeply invested in virtual reality – and now Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has revealed how the world's most popular social network plans to use the technology in the not-so-distant future.
Facebook Mark Zuckerberg hinted at the VR-fuelled future of the social network
Facebook believes the future of sharing online will be 360-degree video and virtual reality (VR) headsets.
–– ADVERTISEMENT ––
The US social network purchased Oculus VR – the team behind the Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR – for a cool $2 billion, back in 2014.
When my daughter Max takes her first steps, I want to capture the whole scene with a 360-degree video
Mark Zuckerberg
VR headsets have a number of difference use-cases, from rollercoasters at Alton Towers, to computer-generated theme parks and hardcore pornography – but Mark Zuckerberg thinks the technology will also play an important role for Facebook users.
Opening the social network's annual F8 developer conference in San Francisco, co-founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed his vision of VR on Facebook.
"We all have a desire to be understood and to relate to each other. So we're always looking for better and richer ways to express ourselves and share with one another," he told the crowd.
GETTY
Developers and journalists test-out the Samsung Gear VR at Facebook's F8 conference
"When I was a baby and I took my first steps, my parents wrote down the date in a baby book, so that they could share it with their friends and family.
"When my nephews' took their first steps, my sister took photos and videos on her phone, so she could send them to us.
"And when my daughter Max takes her first steps – hopefully later this year – I want to capture the whole scene with a 360-degree video, so I can send it to my family and my friends and they can go into VR and feel like they're actually right there in the living room with us.
"We're always trying to get closer to this purest form of capturing an idea, or an experience."
FACEBOOK • IG
The Facebook CEO showed an example of the immersive family home video
Whether friends and family will start to plug into their Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR headsets to catch-up on their loved ones' first steps in an immersive 360-degree Facebook video, remains to be seen.
It is also unknown whether the average Facebook user will feel comfortable enough with the privacy settings on the social network to allow their online friends to freely peer around their home video in virtual reality.
But the 31-year-old multi-billionaire's example nevertheless hints at why he decided Oculus VR was a good fit for Facebook's ever-growing portfolio of technology firms, which now includes Instagram, WhatsApp and MSQRD.
Overall sharing is believed to have fell 5.5 per cent between mid-2014 and mid-2015, that means Facebook now has fewer posts to pick from to populate your News Feed.
And worse still, personal updates – in which Facebook users share their thoughts, their life stories, photos – plummeted by 21 per cent during the same timeframe, a trend that reportedly continued into this year.
It's safe to assume that a 360-degree video of your baby's first steps would fall into this latter category.
Facebook has struggled to encourage users to share their thoughts and photos
The US firm secretly rolled-out a slew of artificial errors within the Android app that would automatically crash the mobile app for hours at a time, a source has claimed.
The experiment was designed to test at what point a Facebook user would give-up and ditch the Facebook app from their device all-together.
Speaking anonymously to The Information, a source familiar with the one-time test, which is believed to have taken place a few years ago, said Facebook was never able to reach this threshold.
"People never stopped coming back," the source said.
Facebook wanted to see whether users would abandon the social network or simply switch to the far-inferior mobile website while their Android app was artificially broken.
Former Facebook data scientist JJ Maxwell defended the move, saying tests like these are "hugely valuable" to the company and "their prerogative," The Verge reports.
Admittedly, Facebook is not alone – many technology firms quietly test new features on users.
GETTY
Overall sharing is believed to have fell 5.5 per cent between mid-2014 and mid-2015
Google famously cycled between 41 different shades of blue on its homepage, to see which promoted the best response from its users.
But tweaking a shade of blue is very different to testing the loyalty of your users by deliberately crashing their access to the service.
First of all, I’m not a big proponent of complaining when Facebook changes a security setting or deletes a useful feature. We don’t pay a fee to use Facebook so they pretty much have free game to do what they want. It’s our responsibility to not post content (pictures, posts, videos, etc.) that we wouldn’t mind the whole world seeing.
Facebook is migrating its chat feature to a brand new app called Facebook Messenger. The Facebook Messenger app was launched in 2011 and already has 200 million users. Soon, you won’t be able to chat in the stand-alone Facebook app. I’m sure this is a feature many of you use often. And I’m sure many of you will download the new Messenger app without a second thought; however, here are seven things you should know before doing so.
Why the New Facebook Messenger App is Creepy!
1. Facebook can alter your connection to the Internet or mobile service service. This means that Facebook can turn on features of your smartphone for their own personal evil reasons (I added the evil part here – I’m sure they aren’t evil).
2. Facebook can send SMS messages or phone numbers. This is not as scary as it sounds because you can call or text your Facebook friends from the app so you need to give them permission, however, if Facebook wanted to be evil and send evil things to your friends, they could.
3. Facebook can record audio, take pictures and take videos any time they like. This means the folks at Facebook can look through your camera lens any time they wish. Again, this isn’t too bad. If you take pictures using Facebook right now, you’ve already given them a lot of permission.
4. Facebook can read your smartphone contact data including who you call and email (and how often). They will use this information for personalized advertisements. You might notice this feature if you use Gmail. The ads are strangely tailored to write you write about in your emails.
5. Facebook can read and record personal profile information stored on your smartphone. They can see your addresses, pictures, personal info, etc.
6. Facebook will find out which apps you use and how often. It will also see how you use them and what information you store in those apps.
7. Facebook will recommend dinner ideas based on the pictures you take in Instagram. KIDDING!
What do you think about the new Facebook Messenger app? Will you download it? Or will you cry PRIVACY INVASION and delete Facebook from your phone. The important takeaway here is to study the privacy settings carefully and see if you are okay with them. If not, stay away from the app and chat inside the Facebook website. If you’re okay with it, download the new app and chat away
