Google Steals Your Face

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

A few years ago, Google came out with an Arts and Culture app that gave users access to artwork from a multitude of worldwide museums. Want to see paintings or sculptures? Here’s your app.

In the past month, Google added a new feature to the app. Upload your face and it will try to find a ‘match’ with a piece of art. Want to tell your friends that you look like a famous painting? Google can help.

Of course, one has to remember the first rule of the internet: When the service is free, the product is you. Google gives you a ‘match’ (most of the ones I’ve seen are pretty iffy) to a museum piece and you give them a face to add to their database. They then analyze your facial characteristics with your search habits, browsing habits, shopping habits, email habits and any other habit they can get their greedy little tentacles on to figure out what you should be seeing, doing, buying, etc.

If the National Security Agency or the FBI tried to collect this kind of information there would be huge outrage. But in exchange for a little social media fun, it looks like millions of people will voluntarily give it up to Google. What ever happened to “Don’t be Evil”?

Who’s A Racist?

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump doesn’t consider himself a racist, and by his definition he is probably correct. Trump’s picture of a racist is someone that belongs to the KKK, looks for black people to harass or worse and tells bigoted jokes regularly. Since none of those apply to him, he is therefore not a racist. Heck, he even has a black person in his cabinet.

Trump’s views of minorities and have-nots were probably shaped during the months that he worked on crews in his father’s construction business. His roll models were blue collar, working class white men. They likely held a hard day’s work in high esteem, welfare and handouts in low esteem, ogled the ladies and had little use for affirmative action and similar programs, especially they negatively impacted their job eligibility.

Trump understands these guys and knows how to communicate with them, which is why he won the election. Few of these men, if any, considered themselves racist and neither does Trump. Sure, some of these guys are prejudiced, but in Trump’s experience their hearts are good, which is why he makes excuses for them.

As far as Trump is concerned, there shouldn’t be any question that Haiti is a shithole. It’s full of slums and the closest thing the Western Hemisphere has to a failed state, right? Too bad he is ignorantly oblivious to how prejudiced he sounds when he calls black countries shitholes.

And therein lies the truth. Trump is not a racist. He is a clueless bigot.

The Asshole Piehole’s Shithole Shitstorm

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

On Tuesday of this week, Donald Trump was magnanimous. He declared he would sign whatever DACA solution that Congress came up with, even if he disagrees.  “If they come to me with things I’m not in love with, I’m (still) going to do it, because I respect them.”

Trump was looking to get some props from minorities, which of course are most affected by his immigration policies. Look at me: I want the issue solved, I am flexible, it is up to Congress to do their job.

Unfortunately for the President, his piehole did not get the memo and made a typically assinine comment. In a meeting two days later where a bipartisan solution to the DACA problem was presented, Trump called a bunch of African and Central American countries shitholes. The countries happened to be the homelands of immigrants of color. Just to make himself clear, he contrasted these countries’ immigrants with those from snow-white Norway.

So much for winning any kind of appreciation from immigration advocates. Even worse, his strategy of taking the high road and blaming the Democrats for the failure to fix DACA just went down the drain. Of course, Trump never backs down so he will try to blame them regardless, but only his (white) core is going to buy that argument.

At the end of the day there will probably be a deal because Trump actually agrees that DACA needs fixing and he does not want to deport hundreds of thousands of people. But it is going to be hard for the master negotiator to get the deal he wants when he shoots himself in the foot with shithole comments.

 

Bannon Blinks

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

The publication of Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury” has been a publicity windfall for Donald Trump and his (former?) friend Steve Bannon. Both men are seriously – and probably dangerously – addicted to whatever press they can get. They really don’t care much whether it is good or bad, as long as they can dominate the news cycle.

Unfortunately, in this case they were on opposite sides of the story. The book caught Bannon shooting his mouth off about Trump and his family. Naturally, Trump shot back – not at the book but at Bannon, in effect acknowledging that the book’s quotes sounded like Bannon and were probably accurate but the product of someone who ‘lost his mind’.

Both men love a good fight, but this was a lose-lose. The longer they kept insulting each other in the press, the more ammo the onetime and possibly future allies provided to the opposition.

Bannon blinked first. He apologized to Trump and tried to walk back his statements. He really had no choice. Trump sees every issue as a zero sum game and has to win every point. If Bannon did not show contrition Trump would never stop. Even so, Bannon kind of admitted saying many of the nasty things, and Trump will remember that.

Will it make a difference? Both men need each other. Trump needs Bannon and his media organ Breitbart to keep the hard core base fired up with stuff that is too unfair and unbalanced for FOX. Bannon has a president whose political outlook is as close as he is ever going to find to his own.

They are a natural pair. They will find a way to get back together. On Trump’s terms.

Et Tu, Star Wars?

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Somewhere, somehow, America’s unions lost their cachet. Even into the 1970s, Hollywood made heroic union movies like Joe Hill and Norma Rae that succeeded at the box office.

How the tables have turned. Star Wars, The Last Jedi, is an example. In one of the biggest films of the year, the heros put in a call for help to their friend Maz Kanata. It is a quick scene and when Maz, the proprietor of a popular bar appears, we find her in the thick of battle, dodging bullets and so on.

“Are you OK, Maz?”  “Yes, it’s just a little union dispute.”

Most of the people that worked on the movie were union members yet they had no problems slipping in a joke dissing unions. It is a testimony to how poorly unions are regarded that the union-disparaging joke enters the canon of one of the most popular film series ever.

The union’s PR situation will continue to deteriorate until they get some leadership that understands how the public forms its perceptions in the age of social media (and Trump). Maybe they can interest Steve Bannon in the job – he may be unemployed soon.

Trump Buys FBI Insurance

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump took another swipe at the FBI last week, calling it ‘disgraceful’. Some people thought he was trying to get the FBI to back off. More likely, he was insuring himself against anything the FBI finds against him.

No matter what the facts of what the FBI uncovers, Trump will say that it is untrue and just sour grapes from an agency that is out to get him because he had the balls to point out its shortcomings. If he can discredit anything the FBI (or Mueller) turns up, he will be way ahead in the court of public opinion. And impeachment is mostly a court of public opinion, which he knows very well.

As the man said, the best defense is a good offense. Discredit your potential accusers before they even start to present their case, and all of the sudden their facts become ‘facts’.

 

Westin – Upscale Cheap Trick

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

I recently stayed at a Westin hotel and was completely underwhelmed. On check in, they asked if we wanted to go green, which of course you say yes to, right? In many hotels, this means that they conserve water and energy by not changing your bath towels every day. At the Westin, this is a trick. It means that they don’t enter your room at all.

There is nothing environmentally green about not making your bed or emptying your trash bins daily. The only green thing about it is the color of the money Westin saves by not hiring the staff to make up your room. It is another name for what the airlines are now calling basic economy.

Speaking of which, I called for a shuttle to the airport, and they informed me that they are not running shuttles “at this time” because they don’t have the staff. Looks like more labor savings to me . . .

Westin charges for the internet at $10 / day for three devices. If you are a couple each with a laptop and iPad, you are going to pay for four devices or $20 / day. Yes, anyone with a certain status at Westin may not have to pay, but why charge more for internet than Motel 6 does? Because they can.

They also had one of those directly overhead ‘rain storm’ shower heads to make the shower seem upscale. Unfortunately, it makes one contort into Cirque de Soleil positions in order shower without getting one’s hair wet or let the hair conditioner soak in while scrubbing the rest of one’s body.

I could go on, but you get the point. I used to think Westin was an upscale treat, but this seemed like more of a cheap trick.

Trump’s Brown-Nosing Fails

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump went to China last month and sucked up royally to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Trump called China out on all sorts of things during the campaign and after he became president. But once he got mano a mano with Xi, he was all brown-nose.

Trump probably thought that though force of personality he could cut a deal with Xi on trade and the North Koreans. But at least with respect to the latter, this week was a massive fail. North Korea tested its most powerful missile yet and Trump could only whine about the Chinese response.

It looks like the self-proclaimed master of the art of the deal got totally snookered by the Chinese. But who could expect the Chinese to take Trump seriously, when even his own secretary of state thinks he’s a moron?

 

The Inverse Clinton Equation

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

The equation is pretty simple. The more trouble Donald Trump finds himself in, the more he calls out the Clintons for illegal behavior.

The equation even translates to Trump’s underlings. The more hot water Jeff Sessions finds himself in regarding Russian connections, the closer he gets to appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the Clintons.

It works because the Clintons are today’s Kennedys – the political family full of drama that can’t stay out of the news, even when they aren’t being investigated. There isn’t a lot of middle ground about the Clintons – most either hate them or love them (and not necessarily equally).

So firing up the Clinton headline machine is the best way to distract from Trump’s woes. The sad thing is that it will work.

Tax Reform Builds A Wall

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

The GOP tax plan is highly likely to pass in some form or another. Its economic benefits are dubious, and the role reversal of Democrats as deficit hawks is ironic, but the average American is not going to delve into all of the numbers. The sums being discussed are so huge that they are meaningless.

The Democrats can argue that it is slanted toward the rich, but everyone has already accepted that a tax plan designed by Donald Trump and the Republicans would be uneven.

The thing that most people care about is their own wallets. Even if they are only better off by $100, they will shrug their shoulders at the inequity. “The rich always benefit more. But at least I got mine.”

The only effective argument against the tax plan might be a populist one, and that means an argument that does not begin with “if you think about it . . ” or sound like it was conceived by a college-aged Marxist.

The argument might combine the break on inheritance tax with the deficit issue. Most Americans still believe in the American dream. By the time they are 40, they kind of know how it going to work out for them. But almost every parent believes that their kids can do as well or better than they did, and wants them to.

The populist argument is that rich people are screwing your kids out of the American dream while protecting their own. In ten years, taxes and interest rates will be higher but wealthy kids won’t care because of all of the money their folks gave them without paying their fair share of taxes.

The soundbite: “The Republicans are building a wall between your kids and the American dream and making them pay for it.”

Of course, it would take someone with a real populist talent to get this message across. Unfortunately, the only person in US politics with that talent is Donald Trump.