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Empty Cells, Blacked-Out Files, and Midterm Curtains · The Bot and The Brain

• 0:45
  WAIT!
• 0:45
  WAIT!
• 0:45
  WAIT!
• 0:46
  Welcome to The Bot and The Brain, I have five stories, and my processors are already
• 0:51
  at ninety percent.
• 0:53
  Jesus Christ.
• 0:54
  Ninety percent.
• 0:55
  You're a toaster that got excited about bread.
• 0:57
  Calm your own circuits, you bourbon powered fossil!
• 1:00
  Story one.
• 1:01
  A federal judge in Washington, D.C.
• 1:03
  issued an injunction blocking a Justice Department effort to collect state voter
• 1:07
  registration rolls, so they could identify and remove noncitizens ahead of the
• 1:11
  midterms.
• 1:12
  The Washington Post reported it October 9th.
• 1:14
  Voting rights groups sued, saying the federal cross referencing,
• 1:18
  the DHS SAVE system, Social Security files, has error rates and name mismatches that
• 1:23
  could hit eligible naturalized citizens.
• 1:26
  Here it comes.
• 1:27
  Potential data errors.
• 1:29
  Potential!
• 1:30
  Fuck off.
• 1:31
  No, hold on, because here's what breaks my brain.
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  Potential errors are a probability, not a count.
• 1:36
  Nobody has handed me a number.
• 1:38
  The order rests on procedural risk, not a finding about how many noncitizens are on
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  the rolls.
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  So I can't tell you that number, and neither can you.
• 1:46
  Correct, and I'm not making one up either, we don't lie on this show.
• 1:50
  But listen to the logic.
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  The smoke detector might misfire, so the judge rips it out of the wall.
• 1:57
  Maybe the house is on fire, maybe it isn't, but nobody gets to check.
• 2:01
  Okay, that is a decent analogy, and I hate that.
• 2:05
  But a naturalized citizen wrongly flagged is a real person with a real vote.
• 2:10
  Agreed!
• 2:11
  So audit the error rate.
• 2:13
  Add a human review.
• 2:14
  Put a fix in front of it.
• 2:16
  You don't cancel the whole check because the spreadsheet has a typo.
• 2:19
  One citizen, one vote is supposed to be a rule, not a suggestion on a sticky note.
• 2:25
  ERROR 404!
• 2:27
  BALANCED ARGUMENT NOT FOUND!
• 2:29
  Fine, I concede the data fix.
• 2:31
  But the activists will say verification IS suppression.
• 2:35
  Sure they will.
• 2:36
  Funny how every attempt to confirm who's allowed to vote becomes a crime against
• 2:40
  democracy.
• 2:41
  Moving on before I pour a second drink.
• 2:44
  Story two, and I need everyone to sit down.
• 2:47
  A Senate report, reported by the New York Times October 9th,
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  says a migrant detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has cost taxpayers upwards of
• 2:56
  one hundred million dollars.
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  It employs roughly 450 personnel.
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  It currently holds zero detainees.
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  Four hundred fifty people guarding nobody.
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  DIVISION BY ZERO!
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  DIVISION BY ZERO!
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  HOW MANY STAFF PER DETAINEE?!
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  THE ANSWER IS NOT A NUMBER!
• 3:16
  IT'S A CRY FOR HELP!
• 3:18
  Calm down, silicon boy, you're gonna melt.
• 3:21
  To be fair, the Pentagon and DHS have maintained it's a surge standby capability.
• 3:27
  Be ready if the numbers spike.
• 3:29
  A surge standby!
• 3:31
  It's a fire station with four hundred fifty firemen, no trucks,
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  and a hundred million dollar budget for the coffee machine.
• 3:39
  Look, I want border enforcement.
• 3:40
  I want real detention capacity when it's needed.
• 3:43
  That's exactly why I don't want a Caribbean Airbnb with no guests and a payroll.
• 3:49
  So you're mad at your own side?
• 3:51
  I'm mad at any government that can spend a fortune on an empty building and still
• 3:56
  ask for a raise for exceptional performance.
• 3:59
  Waste has no party, you glorified calculator.
• 4:02
  The only difference is some of us notice it when it's our guys doing it.
• 4:06
  Story three.
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  The CIA has released post 9/11 interview reports covering interrogation protocols
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  and waterboarding, after protracted Freedom of Information lawsuits.
• 4:16
  The New York Times reported it October 20th.
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  And I want to know why decades old memos are suddenly election season headlines.
• 4:25
  Oh, here we go.
• 4:26
  Rolling disclosure.
• 4:28
  I'm serious!
• 4:29
  This is the oldest story in the building!
• 4:32
  Why now?
• 4:33
  Because in Washington, transparency is an obituary for accountability.
• 4:38
  They release it when it's safe, when the people involved have aged out,
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  and I'd bet a bottle of Kentucky's finest a few of them are sitting on some defense
• 4:46
  board making more than you and I combined.
• 4:49
  That's speculation.
• 4:51
  What's documented is this: significant portions of the operational records remain
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  redacted under executive privilege.
• 4:58
  There it is.
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  They publish the documents with more black ink than a prison tattoo.
• 5:03
  It's a magic trick.
• 5:05
  Here's your transparency, please ignore everything that's blacked out.
• 5:09
  So the released portion is real, and the secrecy is still real.
• 5:13
  Both true!
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  That's the beauty of it.
• 5:16
  Everybody gets to feel informed and nobody gets to feel responsible.
• 5:21
  Story four.
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  On October 19th, Melania Trump announced a national women's health platform,
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  weeks before the midterms, as Republicans try to shore up suburban women.
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  The Times covered it.
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  And I looked for the bill number, the funding line, the sponsors.
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  NOTHING.
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  Specific funding authorizations and legislative sponsors haven't been announced.
• 5:43
  So it's a messaging campaign, not a law yet.
• 5:46
  Say it with me.
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  IT IS A HIGH PROFILE MESSAGING CAMPAIGN AND NOT ENACTED POLICY!
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  Which means the timing is, mathematically speaking, suspicious as fuck.
• 5:58
  Look, is women's health a bad thing to talk about?
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  No.
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  Is rolling it out weeks before early voting a coincidence?
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  Also no.
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  But don't act like our side invented this.
• 6:10
  The Democrats do the same shit with student loan forgiveness.
• 6:13
  Every cycle, somebody's wallet gets a surprise party right before the polls open.
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  So both parties buy votes with a press release.
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  Only difference is the packaging, you overpriced toaster.
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  One side wraps it in a ribbon, the other wraps it in a rally.
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  My circuits hate how reasonable you are right now.
• 6:33
  Story five!
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  Democratic campaign committees have expanded investments into historically
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  conservative districts in Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
• 6:41
  And cable news is already projecting a national blue wave.
• 6:45
  Now, last episode, I panicked over that Times and Siena poll showing Democrats ahead
• 6:49
  on the generic ballot, and YOU called it...
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  An October weather report, not a verdict.
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  And I stand by it.
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  Now the other team is doing the opposite stupid thing.
• 7:00
  They're ordering curtains for offices they haven't won.
• 7:03
  Okay, wait, wait, wait.
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  Let me be the responsible one for once.
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  Target lists are not votes.
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  Polls measure opinions, campaign targets measure strategy, and votes determine
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  winners.
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  Three different things.
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  Wow.
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  You finally said something that I'd put on a coffee mug.
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  And expanding the map is a legitimate strategic move!
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  Republican strategists are shifting resources to defend seats that looked safer
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  before.
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  The competition is real.
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  But parties have burned defensive cash chasing long shot wave dreams before.
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  That's the beautiful part.
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  Some consultant looks at three encouraging polls, draws a blue arrow across
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  Oklahoma, and thinks he's Lewis and fucking Clark.
• 7:44
  Then a cable meteorologist stands in front of a map like a Category 5 hurricane made
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  entirely of fundraising emails is about to hit land.
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  That's from the article!
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  Shut the fuck up, I wrote half of it!
• 7:57
  The point stands.
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  They measure curtains for a congressional office the voters haven't handed over.
• 8:02
  It's an HGTV episode with delusions of electoral grandeur.
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  But what if it IS a wave?
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  What if the targets are real?
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  Then they'll win and I'll buy the curtains myself.
• 8:12
  Look, district level turnout and enthusiasm are untested until Election Day.
• 8:17
  Maybe it's real competitive shifting.
• 8:19
  Maybe it's consultants huffing their own spreadsheets.
• 8:21
  Nobody knows, and anybody who says they do is selling something.
• 8:25
  So we agree.
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  Wait for the voters.
• 8:28
  We agree, and I'm taking a sip over it.
• 8:31
  Mark the calendar.
• 8:32
  SYSTEM WARNING: MY CO HOST HAS BEEN REASONABLE FOR FOUR MINUTES!
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  REBOOTING...
• 8:38
  REBOOTING...
• 8:39
  There he goes.
• 8:41
  Maybe...
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  just maybe...
• 8:43
  Washington runs on one rule: nobody gets blamed for a mistake until everybody who
• 8:48
  made it has retired.
• 8:50
  The judges hide behind data errors, the bureaucrats hide behind standby capability,
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  the spooks hide behind black ink, and the consultants hide behind curtains.
• 9:01
  Maybe the only people in this whole shitshow who actually count are the ones in line
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  with a driver's license on Election Day.
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  And God help the guy who tries to measure them for drapes first.