Twitter Now Doing Political Comedy 

It never ceases to amaze me how few people actually ask what happens next ? Twitter is today’s example of a company that can’t see further than its nose, either that or it has complete contempt for its customers. Take your pick it could be both.

Twitter Cracks Down on Verified Accounts With New Policy

Twitter Inc. updated its policies for removing the verification of a user’s identity, saying it can pull the blue check mark at any time without notice for behavior including promoting hate or inciting harassment of others.

While “verification has long been perceived as an endorsement,” Twitter’s support account wrote Wednesday in a tweet, “this perception became worse when we opened up verification for public submissions and verified people who we in no way endorse.”

Earlier this month, the social network stopped the system of authenticating a user’s identity with a blue check mark after drawing intense criticism for verifying the account of Jason Kessler, who is credited with orchestrating the white-supremacist rally last August in Charlottesville, Virginia.

–Bloomberg

So let me get this straight, Twitter doesn’t want to be perceived as endorsing people with the blue checkmark, but is now taking it away from people it doesn’t like ? This is why you teach children basic logic and critical thinking, so one day they wont do things like this.

When Al Franken Attacks

I’ll start off saying while I can’t stand Al Franken and have no doubt the little slimeball could have done this, this story just doesn’t have the ring of truth for me.

News anchor Leeann Tweeden accused Minnesota Sen. Al Franken Thursday of sexually harassing her multiple times during a USO entertainment tour in the Middle East in 2006.

Tweeden alleges that Franken, a writer for Saturday Night Live before he became a senator, wrote a script that featured him kissing her, and harassed her during rehearsals, Tweeden writes for KABC.

When Tweeden returned from the tour, she noticed a photo from the tour where Franken has his hands on her breasts and is smiling into the camera.

“You knew exactly what you were doing. You forcibly kissed me without my consent, grabbed my breasts while I was sleeping and had someone take a photo of you doing it, knowing I would see it later, and be ashamed,” Tweeden wrote.

—The Daily Caller

Could Al Franken do this ? Sure the man has no integrity whatsoever. If he had any morals or scruples he wouldn’t be in the senate. I can see how a sexual assault from him could not only result in repressed memory but wholesale retrograde amnesia, I just don’t buy anyone suddenly remembering this just as this becomes the cause celebre of the moment. If it costs him his senate seat though , I certainly wont shed a tear.

Tax Reform: Sexual Harassment No Longer Deductible ??

No matter how you think about this it has to make you think twice thrice and maybe a few times again. It seems legal fees and payouts for settling sexual harassment cases are Tax Deductible

The latest changes to a Senate Republican tax plan, released at 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, include tax cuts for producers of beer, wine and liquor, and a new provision that might be called the Harvey Weinstein tax: An end to corporations’ ability to deduct attorney fees and settlement payments in sexual harassment or abuse cases if there is a nondisclosure agreement. …

–TaxProf Blog

Well our current tax code is criminal no surprise that crime should be deductible.

Quiz:

Drink up That’s it for the Watercooler today. As always it’s an open thread