Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Judge rips apart RNC's law suit vs Gmail filtering out Republican fund raising

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 21:39:55 GMT

The RNC filed a lawsuit against Google for Gmail sending RNC fundraising mail addressed to Gmail users directly to spam folders, saying that they had an anti-conservative bias. Of seven claims they made, the judge thoroughly squashed five of them, and is letting the RNC amend two. However, the basic underpinnings of the two claims were knocked away and they'll have to be significantly readdressed to be refiled.

Here is perhaps my favorite utterance from the judge. The RNC claimed that Google committed fraud, I guess for failing to deliver the solicitation mail to the mailing list inboxes? The judge said: "The RNC lacks standing to bring the fraud claim because it is not a Gmail user, ... The RNC uses Salesforce and a separate email-delivery platform called Everest."

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Plus, Gmail is a free service! How could Google defraud me if I'm not a business-class customer paying for it? Yes, they do have a business tier.

Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that Google might buy a business-class subscription and start spraying their Google email address base direct that way?

Oh, and here's another beauty of a quote: Google previously ran a pilot program that let political emails bypass the Gmail spam filter. Google said in a January 2023 court filing that "the RNC has chosen not to participate in Google's FEC-approved Pilot Program."

And here's a comment for the article from a mail server administrator: "Speaking as a mailserver admin: more GOP fundraiser emails wind up in the spamtrap because the GOP uses more spammer tactics, more aggressively. I've seen everything from spoofed to and from lines to entire messages in the subject line to white text on white background to bayes poison to substituting letters for numbers to try to evade money-related spam filters to you name it.

A brand new install of spamassassin with default filters only will also block far more Republican fundraiser emails than DNC ones, for exactly this reason... And the disparity only gets worse if you let it train its Bayes filter (which, quick reminder, the GOP sometimes attempts to poison)."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/judge-tears-apart-republican-lawsuit-alleging-bias-in-gmail-spam-filter/

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Proposed Florida law requires bloggers who write about DeSantis et al to register with the state!

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 18:34:56 GMT

If you are a compensated blogger, you would have to register with the state within five days of your first post or face a possible $25/day fine. This applies more to paid bloggers with active posting and following and excludes news web sites.

The law also requires political bloggers writing about Florida to file monthly reports reporting their income from blogging.

Talk about gross First Amendment overreach! Now, this is just a bill filed in the legislature, a proposal. It may never see consideration, or it may sweep through. But the thing that gets me is the Republicans keep calling Democrats snow flakes and such, here they are the ones being incredibly thin-skinned.

Time for me to create a Ron DeSantis tag and post more about him!

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/03/florida-bill-would-make-bloggers-who-write-about-governor-register-with-state/

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/03/03/1732240/florida-bill-would-make-bloggers-who-write-about-governor-register-with-state

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I am minded of a Charles Dickens quote

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 19:45:52 GMT

“Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them.”

There's also one about "Lies, damned lies, and statistics".

And then there's the Trump Train.

In my state - actually he's a County Commissioner somehow, we have Couy! Couy founded a group called Cowboys For Trump, which he created as a non-profit but it was investigated and declared to be a lobbying group and had to pay taxes and file paperwork accordingly and retroactively fined. He appealed but it was a lost cause.

And then Couy was captured on video and photographs at the January 6 freedom Lover's Capital Lynching Rehearsal Barbecue last year. And he was banned from setting foot in the Mescalero Apache Reservation, which is a part of Otero County for his participation in said event. He recently was convicted of his participation and sentenced to time served, a $3,000 fine (IIRC), and pretty hefty amount of community service. He loudly announced that he was going to take guns to DC and was shown on video loading (IIRC) a rifle, shotgun, and revolver - standard cowboy gear - into his car as he left for DC. Fortunately he left them at a friend's house before he crossed into the jurisdiction or he would have been arrested for additional violations and lost some very expensive pieces.

We had our primary election a couple of weeks ago, my wife worked at our local polling place. And the three member Otero County Commission initially refused to certify the election.

Here's Couy on the election. I don't know if it's from the day after the election, when they decided not to certify the results, or from when the Commission finally decided to certify the election. I'm guessing the latter.
"My vote to remain a no isn't based on any evidence, it's not based on any facts, it's only based on my gut feeling and my own intuition, and that's all I need."
-- Couy Griffin, Otero NM County Commissioner, on refusing to certify results of June 7th primary despite lack of evidence of voting fraud

The Secretary of State threatened to sue them and have them arrested. Monday they buckled when threatened with jail and in a two to one vote they approved the results so preparation for the November general election could go ahead.

And here's a lovely one from Rudy:
"We've got lots of theories, we just don't have the evidence."
-- Rudy Giuliani, urging AZ state Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers (R) to help overturn 2020 election results

Teach them facts! And it won't make a bit of difference as they will make up their own fictions to justify their own existence. Let's just ignore the fact that around 90-95% of the cases they put up in court they had to withdraw because they couldn't present any evidence showing valid claims.

I have a lot of theories, too, about Donald Trump, Rudy, and all of his family and cronies. Most of them are not fit for polite company.

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