Author Archives: Bok
Stormy Daniels Campaign Finance Scandal
Eleven days before the 2016 election Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000. In exchange she signed a non-disclosure agreement. That was to keep her quiet about her alleged one night love affair with The Donald in 2006.
Campaign Finance Scandal
But Stormy didn’t stay bought and now it appears Cohen might have a problem of his own. Common Cause thinks the hush money amounts to an illegal in-kind campaign contribution.
So far, he FEC isn’t showing much interest. They say they lack resources and an investigation would take well over a year.
Journalists are showing even less interest. Paul Mulshine explains why it’s not a story in the Star- Ledger. And The Daily Mail reports Daniels tried to peddle her story for $200,000 but got no takers.
Facebook Regulation
Facebook is getting hammered for colluding with the Trump campaign by allowing Cambridge Analytica to access its user data. But the Obama campaign was praised for similar data mining in 2012.
Facebook Regulation
Now Reason says Mark Zuckerberg is “going all in on government regulation:”
“The question,” he toldWired‘s Nicholas Thompson, “isn’t ‘Should there be regulation or shouldn’t there be?’ It’s ‘How do you do it?'” On CNN, he said, “I actually am not sure we shouldn’t be regulated. I think in general technology is an increasingly important trend in the world. I think the question is more what is the right regulation rather than ‘yes or no should we be regulated?'”
According to The Wrap Mark Zuckerberg lost another billion since I drew the cartoon.
Trump Do Not Call List
President Trump defied his handlers by calling Putin to congratulate him on his election victory. He was specifically told in a leaked all caps note: DO NOT CALL PUTIN. And he did it anyway.
Driverless Cars Eliminate Human Error
A woman walking her bicycle was hit and killed by a driverless Uber. So Uber and Toyota stopped testing driverless cars. But GM still says it will have a sans driver fleet on the road in 2019.
Human Error
Meanwhile The Atlantic estimates driverless cars could save 300,000 lives per decade. Most vehicle accidents involve human error so why not eliminate the the human? Well, that’s one thing autopilot has done so far – eliminate humans.
Russian Youth Vote
Trump congratulated Putin on his re-election. It made him the longest serving Russian ruler since Stalin.
Stalin no doubt would have admired Putin’s 74% take of the vote. But even that’s not as impressive as his 86% support among Russian young people.
Young people in American used to be less skeptical of Russian leaders too. For example, Jimmy Carter warned us of our inordinate fear of Communism. And more recently President Obama dissed Mitt Romney for calling Russia our greatest “geo-political” threat. “The 1980’s are calling and they want their foreign policy back, because the cold war’s been over for 20 years,” Obama mocked.
Brennan’s Russian Youth Vote
Speaking of the 1980’s, former CIA director John Brennan outdid both Carter and Obama. He actually voted for a real live Communist for president. In 1980 he pulled the lever for Gus Hall, leader of the American Communist Party. Brennan was disillusioned with American politics at the time but since then he’s changed his mind.
Which makes him the only American not disillusioned with politics now.
Anyway, as a young CIA recruit Brennan was required to take a polygraph test for a top security clearance. He came clean about his voting history. All was forgiven and he was put in charge of the CIA.
Kind of makes you wonder what Jared Kushner did to lose his top security clearance.
