About F%$#ing Time

When he was Pope, John Paul II, when he wasn't covering up priest abuse and canonizing pedophiles, spent his time purging progressive clerics, even when they were dutifully obedient.

Well it appears that Pope Francis has finally had enough outright insubordination, and relieved Joseph Strickland of his position as head of the Dioceses for Tyler, Texas.

Given that there had already been an Apostolic Visitation, the Catholic equivalent of what HR in businesses call a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP), and he continued to accuse the Pope of undermining Catholic faith, and running a Latin mass in direct contravention of Papal decrees, this is long overdue:

Pope Francis fired on Saturday a bishop in Texas who was one of his loudest American critics within the Catholic Church, a highly rare dismissal that appeared to reflect the growing rift between the Vatican and a more conservative wing of the church.

The Vatican did not cite a reason for the dismissal of the bishop, Joseph Strickland, saying in a statement only that the pope “relieved” Bishop Strickland from the governance of his diocese in Tyler, Texas.

Bishop Strickland had significant ideological differences with Pope Francis. He was arguably the most prominent figure representing traditionalist American Catholics who see Francis as dangerously liberal on social issues like divorce, abortion and same-sex marriage, and on theological issues including his discouragement of the Latin Mass. Ultraconservatives in the United States have emerged as the financial center and media megaphone of the resistance to Francis’ papacy.

In the past year, Bishop Strickland has accused the pope of undermining the Catholic faith, questioned whether Vatican officials even qualified as Catholics and warned that the global meeting of bishops and laypeople that the pope convened last month was a vehicle to threaten “basic truths” of Catholic doctrine.

………

Supporters of Francis, who considered Bishop Strickland’s frequent salvos against the pope beyond the pale and indicative of views that were too extreme, were likely to welcome the firing.

For some observers, the bishop’s jeremiads often went too far, even in a role whose duties include proclaiming truth.

“I don’t remember when a bishop had become so violent in his public attacks against the pope,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology at Villanova University. “He had become a real embarrassment for the church.”

Bishop Strickland, 65 and well below the age of automatic resignation, tested the limits of that tolerance. On Oct. 31, he addressed the Rome Life Forum, a conference hosted by LifeSiteNews. He read what he described as a letter from an anonymous friend that suggested that Francis was a “usurper” in the role of pope, one who has “endangered souls by proclaiming that they are justified before God as they are, with no need of repentance.”

The speech shocked Rev. Timothy Kelly, the pastor of Holy Spirit Catholic Church in the diocese of Tyler. “How can you leave him in office after that?” he asked. “You can’t.”

The reason that I feel compelled to comment on this, even though as a Jew it does not personally effect me, is because it shows a weakness of progressives generally.

When conservatives come to  control of an institution, their first order of business is to purge progressives, while when progressives achieve power with that institution, they tolerate active sabotage of their own organization by their right wing.

The fact that Francis tolerated this sort of behavior in what is one of the few feudal monarchies on earth, is a mark of dysfunction, and not tolerance.

That's the bigger picture here.

This is Some Seriously Richmond Valentine Sh%$

It appears that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ tries to enforce aesthetic standards at his facilities that are actually dangerous.

He doesn't like bright colors, so no yellow pedestrian lanes at Tesla, and no yellow safety vests when Musk is on site at SpaceX.

To quote Samuel L. Jackson's character from the movie Kingsman, "If you get blood on the carpet you're going to have to take the carpet up!"

SpaceX employees have accused Elon Musk, the rocket company's founder, of being fast and loose when it comes to safety measures.

Four SpaceX workers told Reuters that Musk discouraged employees from wearing yellow-colored clothes for safety purposes because he does not like bright colors.

………

Three former SpaceX supervisors told Reuters that Musk would have machinery painted in industrial safety yellow repainted to black or blue because of he didn't like how it looked. The ex-supervisors also said that some workers were told not to wear yellow safety vests when Musk was on site.

The investigation by Reuters found that SpaceX has had at least 600 previously unreported worker injuries since 2014, including eight accidents that led to amputations.

Well on his way to be a cinematic villain, but, "This ain't that kind of movie."

Stoked About This

Best timed shot in TV historyThere will be a reboot of James Burke's Connections science documentary television series.

I loved it when I watched it in the 1970s:

Some 15 years ago, a friend recommended I check out a vintage BBC science documentary series called Connections: "I just think it will resonate with how your mind works." He was right. I was immediately hooked and devoured every available episode, following host James Burke down countless fascinating historical rabbit holes before arriving at an unexpected final destination—although in retrospect, the haphazard journey somehow made perfect sense. Connections was the science documentary series for compulsively curious people who weren't necessarily drawn to more traditional science and nature documentaries. And now Burke is back and better than ever with six new episodes of a rebooted Connections, thanks to the folks at Curiosity Stream.

The series had been around for decades before I made my belated discovery. The BBC first aired Connections to the UK back in 1978, expanding to the US the following year. Produced and directed by Mick Jackson, each episode would start with some past innovation or event—the invention of the cannon and subsequent changes to castle fortifications to eliminate blind spots, for example. Then Burke would spend the remainder of the episode tracking a path through a series of seemingly unrelated events—maps, limelight, incandescent bulbs, substituting guncotton for ivory in billiard balls, the zoopraxiscope, the telegraph—to demonstrate how they all connected to produce a modern-day breakthrough: the movie projector.

………

It's a conceptual framework that has remained relevant over the ensuing decades. The Learning Channel (TLC) revived Connections for two subsequent seasons in 1994 and 1995. And now Curiosity Stream has taken up the mantle, keeping everything we loved about the original series—including its legendary host. This time around, Burke explores such links as the death of Rene Descartes in 1649 and virtual reality, for instance, or Napoleon's toothpick and Nielsen TV ratings. And he's still an active participant, jumping into a sensory tank with dolphins for an episode connecting outbreaks of syphilis in the French aristocracy to nano fabrication and its implications for the value of things.

"Increasingly today, change happens too fast for most of us to handle," Burke said. "Connections shows how this happens: because when things come together in new ways, 1+1= 3. The connective approach offers a way to second-guess that process—and predict the future." Ars spoke with Burke to learn more.

I so want to see this, and I hope that he does not put Descartes before the horse.

Paging Eric Arthur Blair

Eric Arthur Blair
Aka George Orwell

In response to the explosion of Long Covid related disability, the Census Bureau is proposing to redefine disability in order to obscure the reality that the pandemic is still ongoing and dire.

I believe that the technical term for this used by public health experts is, "Bullsh$#." 

I wrote about this 1½ weeks ago, but this article details the profoundly negative effects of this bit of hypocrisy than the Ecch (Tweet) that I quoted:

The U.S. Census Bureau may soon change the way one of its nationwide surveys asks about disability. But alarm bells are ringing for many researchers and activists, because the proposed change would dramatically decrease the official number of people in the United States who are considered disabled.

“Disabled people are already underserved,” says Scott Landes, a sociologist at Syracuse University who studies disability. Altering the way the Census Bureau gathers disability statistics, he argues, will generate “inaccurate information.” In an 18 October letter, he and other disability researchers and advocates called for the Census Bureau to reconsider.

The change concerns a section of the bureau’s annual American Community Survey (ACS), which serves as an important source of demographic, social, and economic data. The ACS uses a set of six yes-or-no questions—related to difficulty with hearing, vision, and other functions—to determine disability status. A respondent who answers “yes” to any of those questions is counted as disabled. Many state and federal programs rely on ACS data when allocating funding, and the data are used to evaluate whether disabled people are being given equal opportunities when it comes to things like housing, education, and health care. But the ACS is also a vital resource for researchers. “It certainly has the ability to drown out a lot of better designed sources of disability data,” says Jaime Seltzer, a disability activist and researcher at Stanford University who uses the data for her own work on chronic fatigue syndrome. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Seltzer says many are also using the data for research on Long Covid.

Now, bureau officials are recommending replacing those questions with a set developed by the Washington Group on Disability Statistics, a United Nations–convened organization that creates disability data collection tools for censuses and national surveys. The agency’s Decennial Statistical Studies Division made the recommendation at a 21 September meeting of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee (CSAC). The Washington group’s method, known as the Washington Group Short Set on Functioning (WG-SS), also consists of six questions that cover the same topics as the ACS questions. Instead of answering “yes” or “no,” however, respondents rate their level of difficulty on each function by choosing one of four options ranging from “no difficulty” to “cannot do at all.”

Compared with the current questions, the WG-SS will “capture information in a manner that reflects advances in the measurement of disability,” an agency spokesperson said in an emailed statement. But it would also reduce the prevalence of disabled people in the U.S. to 8%, down from the ACS’s current estimate of 14%, bureau statisticians reported at the September CSAC meeting. This decrease has to do with how the WG-SS defines “disability,” as Washington group protocol states that only those who indicate “a lot of difficulty” or “cannot do at all” for one or more of the questions should be categorized as disabled.

 If you believe this, then I have some swampland in Florida to sell you.

This is a political move, not a scientific one.

BTW, that 6 percent difference, that's about 19 million people, and a significant portion of those are people who would otherwise be a part of the workforce.

………

Bonnielin Swenor, who serves as director of the Johns Hopkins University Disability Health Research Center, says the change would have “massive consequences for a group that is already struggling, pleading, begging for our data to be collected in a more robust way.” Swenor, who served as the lead author of the 18 October letter, also says asking respondents to rank their difficulty level “entrenches a hierarchical view of disability” that implies some within the disabled community are less deserving of accommodations than others.

That's a feature, not a bug.  They want a return to normalcy, and they are determined to get it if it kills every person in the United States.

………

Neither method is perfect, however. Both the ACS and WG-SS questions do a poor job of accounting for people with psychiatric and chronic illnesses, says Jean Hall, director of the Institute for Health and Disability Policy Studies at the University of Kansas. To alleviate this gap, Hall and her colleagues developed the National Survey on Health and Disability (NSHD), which allows respondents to describe and self-categorize their disability type. In a recent study she and her colleagues found that the ACS questions failed to identify nearly 20% of people who reported disabilities to the NSHD, and the WG-SS missed 43%. Switching to the WG-SS would mean “going from a measure that’s not great to one that’s much worse,” she says.

You can comment on this for about a month though:

The proposed change will be open for public comment until 19 December, although the National Advisory Committee, which advises the Census Bureau on policy and research issues, will discuss initial comments on 16 November. Landes hopes policymakers will listen to the voices of disabled Americans and not move forward with the change. “The power of the disability community is strong,” he says. 

Pass the Popcorn

6 days ago, NYC Mayor Eric Adams' 25 year old (!) chief fund raiser had her house raided by the FBI.

Today, the FBI seized Mayor's phones and other electronics devices.

Here's hoping that he follows the path of his predecessor Jimmy Walker.  (Corruption investigations, resignation, fleeing the country)

F.B.I. agents seized Mayor Eric Adams’s electronic devices early this week in what appeared to be a dramatic escalation of a criminal inquiry into whether his 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers.

The agents approached the mayor after an event in Manhattan on Monday evening and asked his security detail to step away, a person with knowledge of the matter said. They climbed into his S.U.V. with him and, pursuant to a court-authorized warrant, took his devices, the person said.

………

The surprise seizure of Mr. Adams’s devices was an extraordinary development and appeared to be the first direct instance of the campaign contribution investigation touching the mayor. Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, said on Wednesday that he is so strident in urging his staff to “follow the law” that he can be almost “annoying.” He laughed at the notion that he had any potential criminal exposure.

Well, if he says that he's law abiding, there is no need for further investigation. (Not)

………

Mr. Adams responded to news of the raid by abruptly returning from Washington, D.C., where he had only just arrived for a day of meetings with White House and congressional leaders regarding the migrant influx, an issue he has said threatens to “destroy New York City.”

On Wednesday, he said his abrupt return was driven by his desire to be present for his team, and out of concern for Ms. Suggs, who he said had gone through a “traumatic experience.”

Well that is some prime bull sh%$ there.

………

This is not the first time Mr. Adams or people in his orbit have attracted law enforcement scrutiny. In September, Eric Ulrich, Mr. Adams’s former buildings commissioner and senior adviser, was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, on 16 felony charges, including counts of bribetaking and conspiracy.

In July, Mr. Bragg indicted six people, including a retired police inspector who once worked and socialized with Mr. Adams, on charges of conspiring to funnel illegal donations to the mayor’s 2021 campaign.

Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, frog-marched out of Gracie Mansion in handcuffs.

Local Pol Goes Full Maryland

Former Baltimore, Maryland States Attorney Maryland Mosby was found guilty of 2 counts of perjury.

She lied on forms to get Covid relief to buy a home in Florida.

Before that, then Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh was convicted of corruption charges related to selling her self-published children's book.

Before that, then Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon was convicted of corruption charges related to stealing over $3,000 in gift cards intended for poor families.

Do you see a thread here?  I do.

It's all incredibly skeevy, and incredibly low rent.

This is some seriously low rent corruption.

I get that the state that gave us Spiro Agnew, Marvin Mandel, Ruthann Aron, and Stevenson Archer can't always swing for the fences, but lately this has been some pretty penny-ante corruption.

Step up your game.  At least 6 figures, or, as in the case of Aron, hire a hitman.

Dixon, Pugh, and Mosby are an affront to Maryland's proud history of corruption.

The next corrupt pol needs to bring their A-game.

It’s a Good Thing That Pro-Palestinian Protesters Are Not at All Antisemitic

Letter from McGill Principal (click to enlarge)Because otherwise, advertising a rally at McGill College in Montreal to be held on the 85th anniversary of Krystalnacht with flyers showing people breaking windows would be completely beyond the pale. (Pale of Settlement, maybe?)

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

I am sure that many, probably most of the pro-Palestenian protesters are not antisemitic, but if you tolerate this sh%$, you are complicit:

………

Earlier Thursday, McGill University’s principal stepped up security on campus, saying he was “deeply concerned” for the safety of students over what he described as antisemitic promotional posters for the rally.

“The poster features an image of a group of individuals kicking and breaking glass windows,” said Deep Saini, principal and vice-chancellor of McGill.

“Publicizing an event through allusions to destruction of property is troubling,” Saini added, noting the rally was also planned on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

(emphasis mine)

To paraphrase an old German saying, "If there's a virulent antisemite at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, then you got a table with virulent antisemites." (U kannst nicht mit den Nazis ins Bett gehen ohne ein Nazi zu werden.)

Yeah, No Surprise

A study has shown that there there is no evidence of Iran and Hamas coordination cyber hacking activities during the run-up to October 7.

This is not a surprise.  If Hamas had coordinated with Iran in any way, it would have gotten back to Israel faster than if they had emailed it directly to David "Dadi" Barnea, (דוד "דדי" ברנע) head of the Mossad. 

Hamas understands operational security and practices it aggressively:

There’s no sign that Iranian hackers attacking Israeli targets have coordinated with Hamas in that war, new Microsoft research out today concludes. Instead, the Iranian attacks have been opportunistic in their approach, the researchers say.

Media outlets have focused some attention on whether Iran worked with Hamas in advance of its Oct. 7 attack, when Hamas militants killed 1,400 people and took around 240 other people hostage. But at least in cyberspace, among hackers connected to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the answer seems to be “no,” per Microsoft.

“Microsoft does not see any evidence suggesting Iranian groups (IRGC and MOIS) had coordinated, pre-planned cyberattacks aligned to Hamas’ plans and the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7,” according to a summary of the research that the company plans to present at the CYBERWARCON conference today. “Observations from Microsoft telemetry suggest that, at least in the cyber domain, Iranian operators have largely been reactive since the war began, exploiting opportunities to try and take advantage of events on the ground as they unfold.”

Unlike US clients, see the roll-up of CIA assets by China in the teens as a result of compromised electronic communications, Hamas takes this sh%$ seriously.

I really do hope that the cowboys at Langley are watching and trying to learn spycraft lessons from this, but they probably aren't.

Tweet of the Day

Haven’t they suffered enough?

— Tom Arnold (@TomArnold) September 25, 2023

Tom Arnold is a funny guy.

Not only is this funny, he's taking a shot at himself, which is always a classy move.

It's Thursday, So Jobless Numbers

So, initial claims fell slightly and continuing claims rose to the highest level since April last week, while the less volatile 4-week moving average of initial claims rose.

The Federal Reserve is getting the recession that it so desperately wants.

Recurring applications for US unemployment benefits rose for a seventh straight week, adding to evidence that the labor market is cooling.

Continuing jobless claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving unemployment benefits, increased to 1.83 million in the week ended Oct. 28, the highest since mid-April, according to Labor Department data out Thursday.

Initial claims ticked lower to 217,000 in the week ending Nov. 4. The four-week moving average, which smooths out some of the volatility in the weekly data, rose to 212,250.

………

The recent pickup in continuing claims suggests unemployed workers are increasingly having a harder time finding new jobs. Demand for workers is retreating from unprecedented pandemic levels and the unemployment rate now stands at the highest level in nearly two years.

………

On an unadjusted basis, initial claims rose to 213,132. Filings increased the most in California and New York, and fell in Oregon. Unadjusted continuing claims for the latest reporting week saw the biggest increases in California, Michigan and Washington. 

I think that the unadjusted number is more important, because the adjustments have not reflected the loss of something like a million workers from the non-farm payrolls from death and long Covid disability.

I expect these numbers to get a lot worse over the next few months.

This is Not Self Driving

Not withstanding its claims to have self-driving cars, Cruise needed direct human intervention roughly every 10 minutes.

This is not self driving, this is partially automated remotely operated cars, and they appear to have about the same reliability as a self-checkout register at the local Giant:

Two months ago, Kyle Vogt, the chief executive of Cruise, choked up as he recounted how a driver had killed a 4-year-old girl in a stroller at a San Francisco intersection. “It barely made the news,” he said, pausing to collect himself. “Sorry. I get emotional.”

To make streets safer, he said in an interview, cities should embrace self-driving cars like those designed by Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors. They do not get distracted, drowsy or drunk, he said, and being programmed to put safety first meant they could substantially reduce car-related fatalities.

Now Mr. Vogt’s driverless car company faces its own safety concerns as he contends with angry regulators, anxious employees, and skepticism about his management and the viability of a business that he has often said will save lives while generating billions of dollars.

………

Half of Cruise’s 400 cars were in San Francisco when the driverless operations were stopped. Those vehicles were supported by a vast operations staff, with 1.5 workers per vehicle. The workers intervened to assist the company’s vehicles every 2.5 to five miles, according to two people familiar with is operations. In other words, they frequently had to do something to remotely control a car after receiving a cellular signal that it was having problems. 

(emphasis mine)

This is not a self driving car, this is a lie.  This is actual fraud. 

Fake it till you make it might work for making juice, or rating the attractiveness of fellow students, but not for sending 2 ton death machines cruising public streets.

If we enforced criminal fraud statutes as they should be ⅓ of Silly-Con founders and CEOs would be in the dock right now.

H/t Atrios

They Should Be Frog Marched Out of Their Chambers in Handcuffs

A clerk of the court for the 5th Circuit of Louisiana revealed that the court refused to even read prisoners' appeals in direct violation of the law.

This might never have come out but for a suicide note written by staff director for the court Jerrold Peterson, who sent it to every judge, the judicial review board, and the New Orleans Times Picayune.

On a warm Monday morning in May 2007, as the secretaries and clerks began filing through the glass doors of the Louisiana 5th Circuit Court of Appeal, staff director Jerrold Peterson was inside his office with a 9 mm Beretta pistol. A letter he had written to the court’s eight judges was making its way to the chambers of Chief Judge Edward Dufresne Jr. Versions of that letter were en route to the Judiciary Commission, the panel responsible for investigating allegations of judicial misconduct, and to the Times-Picayune, the state’s most influential paper.

Peterson hoped the letter would unleash a massive scandal — one that he had helped perpetuate for more than a decade. Fifty-five years old, Peterson had long been a fixture at the courthouse, and he reminded the judges that he had kept their secrets, clearing contempt charges against their friends and fixing traffic tickets whenever they asked. But he focused his rage on one secret in particular: their handling of appeals sent to the court by prisoners who claimed they’d been unjustly convicted.

Louisiana requires that a panel of three judges review all such petitions — known as pro se petitions, a Latin phrase that means “for oneself.” But Peterson wrote that the judges had instructed him to ignore the law and dispose of the appeals on his own. Dufresne, he explained, signed off on the documents “without so much as a glance.”

The implications were staggering. Over 12 years, the 5th Circuit, which is responsible for reviewing challenges from trial courts in four parishes, had disregarded at least 5,000 pro se petitions from Louisiana prisoners, according to the court’s records. The inmates ranged from people convicted of murder to nonviolent offenders sent away for life. Many had limited education and struggled to present their arguments in the language of the courts. If Peterson’s accusations were true, none of the judges had ever laid eyes on their claims.

Peterson, who was known to keep his door open, didn’t answer the business services manager when she came by to tell him that Dufresne wanted to see him. The chief judge instructed her to have the head of security unlock the door. As he slid in his passkey, the sound of a gunshot echoed through the building.

A police detective arrived at the courthouse and found Peterson at his desk, slumped to one side, the Beretta still clutched in his right hand. The rest of the office, the detective wrote in his incident report, “seemed to be void of any further evidence.” When the officer searched the room a second time “for a final attempt to locate a possible suicide note,” Dufresne joined him. The chief judge didn’t mention that he had already read Peterson’s suicide letter. The detective, though, sensed something was amiss. In his report, he noted that Dufresne “appeared to be evasive.”

………

During a monthly meeting of the 5th Circuit’s judges in 1994, he proposed changing how the court handled criminal pro se petitions, also known as writs. The minutes note the proposal but only in passing; it’s sandwiched between a lengthy debate over plans to upgrade the court’s computer system and a discussion about renting a new office copier. Dufresne’s plan is described in two sentences: A three-judge panel would no longer rule on the petitions unless they were “special or unusual”; instead, Dufresne would oversee them himself.

“Administratively, it got somewhat cumbersome to have to select three-judge panels for every writ, because you’d get hundreds of them,” said Bryan Pedeaux, who was Dufresne’s longtime law clerk. “So Dufresne said, ‘Let’s see if we can somehow streamline the situation.’”

At the time, the 5th Circuit had the lowest caseload — and the lowest number of pro se petitions — of the state’s five appellate courts. In the year preceding the meeting, it reported 235 criminal pro se petitions, fewer than one-tenth of the statewide total. The 4th Circuit, which includes New Orleans, reported 1,031.

………

To create the appearance of a proper review, former staffers said Dufresne formed a “pro se committee,” which included three judges who agreed to lend their names to Peterson’s rulings. Whenever a judge on the committee retired, Dufresne appointed someone new. The nature of the pro se committee was an open secret at the courthouse. “I knew what they were doing, and I knew it was unconstitutional,” said one former clerk. “Everyone knew about it.”

In Louisiana, courts charge prisoners a fee for petitions — generally $50. Those costs are usually paid by parishes in which the defendants are convicted. By 1999, the 5th Circuit was charging $300. The money, paid by taxpayers, flowed into the 5th Circuit’s discretionary fund. In a period when the state’s criminal justice system was close to financial collapse, with some public defenders representing as many as 400 people at a time, records show that the 5th Circuit collected at least $1.7 million for the pro se petitions its judges did not read. Former 5th Circuit employees told me the judges spent the money on office furnishings, travel allowances — even for retired judges — and other perks the state didn’t cover. When asked about the fund’s expenditures, the 5th Circuit said it keeps financial records for only three years and could not provide an accounting.

………

None of the judges involved in the episode was disciplined. A few months after Peterson’s suicide, the 5th Circuit quietly adopted a new policy for handling pro se petitions: A panel of three randomly selected judges would now review them, as Louisiana law required. No one, however, alerted the men and women whose petitions the court had improperly rejected and who were in prisons across the state. 

They did this for years.

That these individuals are still members of the state bar, and in many cases still judges, is an abomination, even by the standards of the Louisiana justice system.

You Could See this Coming in 1845*

Following decades of covering up sexual abuse in their church, Southern Baptists reformers are incensed that the church filed an amicus brief in a Kentucky sexual abuse case supporting keeping the statute of limitations short.

They (IMNSHO correctly) see this as an attempt to indemnify themselves for their own wrongdoing.

For six months, almost no one took notice of the brief filed quietly by Southern Baptists in a case winding its way to the Kentucky Supreme Court.

At the center of the case is a woman whose father, a police officer, was convicted in 2020 of sexually abusing her over a period of years when she was a child. The woman later sued several parties, including the Louisville Police Department, saying they knew about the abuse and had a duty to report it. Now, the state’s highest court is considering whether sex abuse victims can have more time to sue “non-perpetrators” — institutions or their leaders that are obligated to protect children from such abuse.

None of it appeared to have anything to do with the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. But in April, lawyers representing the denomination filed an amicus brief opposing expansion of the statute of limitations for lawsuits against third parties, including religious institutions.

The brief, reported by The Louisville Courier-Journal in October, landed like a bombshell in Southern Baptist circles. The organization has spent the last several years grappling with revelations that its national leaders suppressed reports of abuse and resisted reform for decades. The brief, abuse survivors and those critical of the church say, offers the first clear look at the church’s true position on whether its leaders can be held accountable for abuse.

It has led to a flurry of blistering reactions and efforts by S.B.C. leaders to distance themselves from the brief, which they characterize as a decision driven by lawyers. The brief says that the denomination has a “strong interest in the statute-of-limitations issue” in the case, and argues that a 2021 state law allowing abuse victims to sue third-party “non-perpetrators” was not intended to be applied retroactively.

“I’ve never seen such unmitigated and justified anger among Southern Baptists,” said Russell Moore, the former head of the denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, who is now the editor in chief of Christianity Today.

………

States including California and New York have expanded the statutes of limitations for filing civil suits in abuse cases. About a dozen Catholic dioceses in the United States are currently in bankruptcy proceedings.

Victims and their advocates say that the brief undercuts the intentions of the thousands of local pastors and other delegates at the denomination’s annual meeting who have consistently supported reform efforts.

This is what corrupt religious institutions do when confronted with scandal.

Considering the origin of the sect, why would anyone be surprised by this?

Truth be told, I don't get a lot of this, organized religion is not a part of my heritage, I am a Jew.

^*That's the year that the Southern Baptists hived off from the American Baptists because they wanted their slaves.

Today in Epic Stupidity

Just another Yid, I guessSo, what idiot Kraut decided that it would be a good idea to remove Anne Frank's name from a kindergarten?

A proposal in a small German town to rename a public day care center that is currently named after Anne Frank has become the center of a fraught national debate in the country about antisemitism.

The plan to change the day care center’s name in the town of Tangerhütte, about 75 miles west of Berlin in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, has attracted widespread coverage in the German press and criticism from politicians and Jewish leaders over the past few days.

Over the weekend, a local newspaper, the Volksstimme, published a report that the day care center, which it said had carried Anne Frank’s name since the 1970s, would be renamed “World Explorer.”

The proposed change comes in an atmosphere of acute concern about rising antisemitism in Germany, following the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel and the subsequent Israeli bombardment of Gaza. Germany has long engaged in palpable national soul searching about the responsibility to remember the past given the country’s own history, including specifically about Anne Frank herself.

Frank was a young Jewish girl who became one of the most well-known victims of the Holocaust. She hid from the Nazis in a secret annex in a house in Amsterdam, but eventually was discovered and died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany toward the end of World War II.

According to the report in the Volksstimme, the impetus to change the name had come from parents and day care employees, with the new name thought to be more child friendly. The story of Anne Frank was difficult for children to understand and “parents with a migrant background would often not know what to make of the name,” the newspaper reported, citing school authorities. The director of the school was quoted as saying the school wanted a name “without political background.”

Whoever came up with this idea needs to be fired  ……… out of a cannon ……… and into the sun.

Linkage

• Pluralistic: A media literacy handbook for Israel-Gaza (Pluralistic) Opinion neutral advice on how to read the current news.
• The Crisis of Venture Capital: Fixing America’s Broken Start-Up System (American Affairs Journal) The problem is not that the system is dysfunctional, it's actually criminal.
• Quantitative errors in the Cochrane review on ‘Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses (arXiv) (Preprint, PDF) This take-down ignores dishonesty and corruption of the authors.  
• When Idiot Savants Do Climate Economics (The Intercept) How William Nordhaus took a position of complete ignorance on anthropogenic climate change and made it the dominant economic model.  Economics ain't called the dismal science for nothing.
• Cats have nearly 300 facial expressions (AAAS) Except for black cats.  Two eyes peering out from the Stygian darkness.
• 'A disembodied head walking about the sea floor on its lips': Scientists finally work out what a starfish is (Live Science) This is both horrifying and fascinating.
• Why was Daylight Saving Time created in America (QZ) The story is corrupt as hell.  No surprise.

John Oliver looks at McKinsey and Company:

Election Results

Both recreational marijuana and abortion won in Ohio tonight by double digit margins, despite the best efforts of Republicans to steal the election:

Ohio voters passed a state constitutional amendment Tuesday guaranteeing abortion rights and became the seventh state to side with reproductive rights since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

The amendment protects individuals’ decisions about abortion, pregnancy, contraception, miscarriage care and fertility treatment until fetal viability, around 22 to 24 weeks. Then the General Assembly would be allowed to regulate reproductive decisions. But women would still be allowed to get an abortion after viability if in the professional judgement of her physician it’s needed to protect her life or health.

And:

Ohioans voted to legalize recreational marijuana Tuesday, potentially setting up cannabis sales in dispensaries for adult use by late 2024.

The Associated Press declared that the proposal, state Issue 2, passed just after 9:30 p.m. Tuesday as the proposed state law was winning with more than 55% of the vote. With its passage, Ohio is now the 24th state to legalize recreational marijuana.

However, top state lawmakers suggested soon afterward that the Ohio General Assembly will consider changing parts of the law law, including altering its 10% marijuana tax rate, changing allowable THC levels, and redirecting at least some marijuana tax revenue to help pay for new county jails and law-enforcement training.

That last bit means that the Republican Gerrymander controlled state legislature will attempt to gut pot legalization despite the will of the voters.

Meanwhile in Virginia, right-wing nut-job Governor Glenn Younkin just got his ass handed to him by voters who are not amused by his attempts to cosplay the Handmaiden's Tale giving the Democrats control of both state houses:

Virginia voters resoundingly rejected Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s costly efforts to take control of the General Assembly in Tuesday’s elections, according to unofficial results — flipping the House of Delegates to Democratic control and preserving a blue majority in the state Senate that can block his conservative agenda and prevent Republicans from tightening limits on access to abortion.

Democrats’ sweeping victories amounted to a sharp setback for Youngkin as he seeks to raise his national profile as a potential last-minute presidential contender and seemed to fit with a national trend that saw Democrats rally around the issue of protecting abortion rights. In Ohio, voters decisively approved a measure to build abortion access protections into the state constitution, and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) won reelection after hammering his Republican opponent for supporting the state’s near-total ban on abortions.

About the only bad news from elections this far is that Maine's privately held utilities managed to spend a proposal for a state run power utility into oblivion, which lost by more than 2:1:

Maine voters on Tuesday rejected an effort to replace Central Maine Power Co. and Versant Power with a new electric utility overseen by an elected board, giving the unpopular utilities a political victory.

The no side of Question 3, the highest-profile referendum among the eight questions on Tuesday’s ballot, had 68 percent of votes to 32 percent for the yes side when the Bangor Daily News and Decision Desk HQ called the race at 10:03 p.m. Tuesday.

It was a political victory for CMP and Versant, whose parent companies poured nearly $39 million into saving their businesses in a campaign that was fronted by notable political figures. Our Power, the political group that backed the referendum, was outgunned financially, spending only $1.2 million over the course of their race.

The for profit utility model is, particularly following the deregulation in the early 1990s, corrupt, and does not serve the public.

Still, a good night.

Flaco on Walkabout

New York's favorite fugitive from custody, Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl, is going on walk about.

After thriving in Central Park he is heading to the East Village.

I'm actually a bit worried, the use or rat poison is more common outside of the parks, and that's his main diet.

Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl, whose February escape from the Central Park Zoo captured the public’s attention in New York and beyond, turned up in Manhattan’s East Village on Monday, about five miles from the wooded park area he had settled into since flying free.

Just before 5 p.m., Flaco, who had spent most of the past nine months in and around the park’s North Woods section, could be seen perched on a tree branch in a sculpture garden next to Kenkeleba House, an artists’ space on East Second Street between Avenues B and C.

About five minutes later, he swooped down, turned left and found a landing spot on a building on East Third Street, sitting placidly between two shrubs, silhouetted against the twilight sky. A few minutes later, he flew off again, headed east to points unknown.

It appeared to be the first significant foray outside the park for Flaco, who learned quickly how to fend for himself after fleeing the zoo, feasting on a steady diet of rats despite fears that his having lived his entire 13-year life in captivity had dulled his survival instincts.

We need to stop trying to get him back into the zoo, and find him a girl friend. 

It appears that there have been cases of Eurasian eagle owls and great horned owls breeding in captivity, so this could be achieved without the risk of introduction of (yet another) invasive species into the Americas.

We just need to find an inter-species owl dating service. (I'm afraid to Google that one)

Trump's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Trump testified at his fraud trial yesterday, and it did not go well, I'm not sure that it went worse for him than I would have predicted, but it was not pretty.

His lawyers have the worst job on earth, even if one does not consider the liklihood that he will stiff them on their fees:

He was belligerent and brash, unrepentant and verbose — regardless of the courtroom setting, he was the quintessential Donald J. Trump.

Within minutes of Mr. Trump’s taking the witness stand on Monday, his civil fraud trial in Manhattan devolved into a chaotic spectacle before a packed house. The former president lashed out at his accusers and denied their claims, even while conceding involvement in some of the conduct at the case’s heart.

Ranting and rambling as the courtroom pulsed with tension, Mr. Trump attacked New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, as a “political hack.” He derided the proceeding as “a very unfair trial.” And he scolded the judge overseeing the case, Arthur F. Engoron, for having decided before the trial that he had committed fraud.

“He called me a fraud, and he didn’t know anything about me!” Mr. Trump exclaimed from the stand, pointing at the judge, who flashed a grin.

………

“I would look at them, I would see them, and I would maybe on occasion have some suggestions,” said Mr. Trump, who began the day looking tired but soon grew animated.

Although the admission appeared to bolster the attorney general’s case, Mr. Trump, seated 30 feet from Ms. James, also sought to minimize the import of the financial statements, which he said he largely left to aides. He noted that they contained numerous disclaimers, making them essentially “worthless.” Banks paid little attention to them, he said, before promising, unprompted, that some of his bankers would soon testify in his defense.

………

He delivered an impassioned ode to his golf course near Aberdeen, Scotland, calling it an “artistic expression” and the greatest ever built. He assailed Justice Engoron: “The fraud is on the court, not me.”

The judge, who will determine the outcome of the case instead of a jury, repeatedly admonished Mr. Trump for not directly responding to questions from Ms. James’s team.

“You can attack me. You can do whatever you want,” Justice Engoron told him, “but answer the question.”

When the judge turned to Mr. Trump with a simple request — “please no speeches” — his words drew a smirk from the former president, who continued to meander. At one point, Mr. Trump interrupted Kevin Wallace, a state lawyer questioning him, with an “Excuse me, sir,” so that he could opine about what he would have done had he in fact wanted to inflate the value of his assets.

………

Frequently, Mr. Wallace drew Mr. Trump in with simple questions about whether he had depended on the banks to rely on his financial statements. Mr. Trump affirmed that he had, without seeming to realize that the question went to intent, a necessary element for Ms. James’s lawyers to show.

He also couldn’t resist exaggerating in exactly the fashion that has left him vulnerable to the attorney general’s claims. When asked how big his triplex in Trump Tower is, he at first provided the accurate answer, 11,000 square feet. Seemingly unable to stop himself, he then said 12,000. Then, he said 13,000.

Mr. Trump also said that he had directed his employees to drop the value of his Westchester County, N.Y., estate, Seven Springs, because he “thought it was too high,” another acknowledgment of his involvement in the financial statements.

………

But his expansive answers irritated the judge. As Mr. Trump spoke lovingly about Mar-a-Lago, calling it “beautiful” and a “success,” Justice Engoron looked up at the ceiling. The more Mr. Trump speechified, the more Justice Engoron rolled his eyes.

After Mr. Trump blurted that Aberdeen was the oil capital of Europe, Justice Engoron barked, “Irrelevant, irrelevant. Answer the question.”

In a criminal case, a jury or judge cannot hold a defendant's refusal to answer questions against him. But this case is civil, and the rules are different: A judge can make what is called a “negative inference” — a damning assumption about why a defendant won’t answer.

At one point Monday, the judge, fed up with Mr. Trump’s nonresponsive responses, threatened to excuse the former president from the stand and assume the worst about why he wouldn’t answer.

A pissed off judge in a non jury trial.  Here's hoping that the judge goes all Billie Ray Valentine* on Trump. 

Also, have I mentioned that his lawyers have the worst job in the world?

^*The Eddie Murphy character from Trading Places, "You know, it occurs to me that the best way to hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people."

Drip, Drip, Drip

Yisrael Hayom, an Israeli free tabloid founded and funded by Sheldon Aldelson as a house organ for Likud and Benjamin Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו), is calling for the current PM to resign and leave politics after the war ends.

This is like OAN calling for the execution of Donald Trump:

The once lockstep pro-Netanyahu newspaper Israel Hayom published an impassioned plea for the prime minister’s resignation on Tuesday, calling on the prime minister to “lead us to victory and then go,” marking a major shift in tone for an outlet widely believed to have been founded to support his political ambitions.

Denouncing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “non-stop political bickering while the war is raging” and the government’s “incendiary” rhetoric, Uri Dagon, the head of Israel Hayom's News Department, declared that the prime minister must step aside as soon as the current war with Hamas is won in order to prevent a return to the civil strife characterizing the nearly year-long campaign against the government’s controversial judicial overhaul.

Founded in 2007 by the late U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson, Israel Hayom has long served as a mouthpiece for the Netanyahu and his Likud party – to the degree that it became known as the “Bibiton,” a combination of the prime minister’s nickname and the Hebrew word for newspaper.

Netanyahu is done. 

I wish I were in Israel when he is finally sent to jail for corruption.  I'd be there golf clapping.

Headline of the Day

4 Men Finally Charged With Stealing Famous Golden Toilet Worth Nearly $6 Million Once Offered To President Trump

—Forbes on the theft of an art installation from the birthplace of Winston Churchill

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

The golden toilet was stolen from Blenheim Palace on September 14, 2019, shortly after 5 a.m. local time, according to the BBC. British police arrested seven people in the four years since the toilet was stolen, though only four were identified and charged. The toilet, titled “America,” was created by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan in 2016, according to the Guggenheim Museum. Cattelan said the artwork was a commentary on the “ever-increasing divide between the wealthy and the poor” in the U.S., according to the museum. The toilet was moved to Blenheim Palace in September 2019 just days before it was stolen.

………

The toilet was fully functional and available to guests at both Blenheim Palace and the New York-based Guggenheim Museum, where the toilet was first installed in 2016. Before the toilet was stolen, visitors to Blenheim Palace could reserve a three-minute appointment to use it. The Guggenheim Museum noted that more than 100,000 people waited in line to use the toilet, which was installed in one of the museum’s gender-neutral bathrooms. The toilet’s removal from Blenheim Palace—built in the 18th century—caused “significant damage and flood” to the building, according to the Associated Press.

The toilet has not been recovered.  It was likely melted down. 

I am stunned that some of my online British friends were not involved.

Speaking of Jailing Executives

The fact that semi-autonomous car service cruise, concealed the fact that the cars could not detect children.

This is not a semi-autonomous (requiring human intervention every 2½ minutes on average) car, this is cosplaying the 1975 Roger Corman/Paul Bartel film Death Race 2000:

In Phoenix, Austin, Houston, Dallas, Miami, and San Francisco, hundreds of so-called autonomous vehicles, or AVs, operated by General Motors’ self-driving car division, Cruise, have for years ferried passengers to their destinations on busy city roads. Cruise’s app-hailed robot rides create a detailed picture of their surroundings through a combination of sophisticated sensors, and navigate through roadways and around obstacles with machine learning software intended to detect and avoid hazards.

AV companies hope these driverless vehicles will replace not just Uber, but also human driving as we know it. The underlying technology, however, is still half-baked and error-prone, giving rise to widespread criticisms that companies like Cruise are essentially running beta tests on public streets.

………

The concerns over Cruise cars came to a head this month. On October 17, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it was investigating Cruise’s nearly 600-vehicle fleet because of risks posed to other cars and pedestrians. A week later, in San Francisco, where driverless Cruise cars have shuttled passengers since 2021, the California Department of Motor Vehicles announced it was suspending the company’s driverless operations. Following a string of highly public malfunctions and accidents, the immediate cause of the order, the DMV said, was that Cruise withheld footage from a recent incident in which one of its vehicles hit a pedestrian, dragging her 20 feet down the road.

………

Even before its public relations crisis of recent weeks, though, previously unreported internal materials such as chat logs show Cruise has known internally about two pressing safety issues: Driverless Cruise cars struggled to detect large holes in the road and have so much trouble recognizing children in certain scenarios that they risked hitting them. Yet, until it came under fire this month, Cruise kept its fleet of driverless taxis active, maintaining its regular reassurances of superhuman safety.

“This strikes me as deeply irresponsible at the management level to be authorizing and pursuing deployment or driverless testing, and to be publicly representing that the systems are reasonably safe,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor and engineer who studies automated driving.

(emphasis mine)

This is not just irresponsible, this is criminal.

We need to start frog-marching Cruise executives, and possibly executives of its parent company, General Motors, out of their offices in handcuffs.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

In the Ukraine, Major Gennadiy Chastiakov, a senior aide to Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian military General Valery Zaluzhny, was killed when a hand grenade among his birthday gifts exploded.

My first though was, "Great, another assassination," but it turns out that these grenades were actually intended as a birthday gift.

Who the f%$# gives live hand grenades as a birthday gift?

A close adviser to the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s army has been killed after a grenade amongst his birthday presents exploded, according to officials.

“Under tragic circumstances, my assistant and close friend, Major Gennadiy Chastiakov, was killed … on his birthday,” Gen Valery Zaluzhny posted on Telegram on Monday, saying that an “unknown explosive device detonated in one of his gifts”.

Chastiakov’s death was initially reported as a suspected assassination using a booby-trapped gift until further details emerged. Ukraine’s interior minister, Igor Klymenko, released a statement saying Chastiakov had been showing his son a box with grenades inside that he had received as a gift.

“At first, the son took the munition in his hands and began to turn the ring. Then the serviceman took the grenade away from the child and pulled the ring, causing a tragic explosion,” Klymenko said.

Police had identified a fellow soldier who gave the gift, said Klymenko, and seized two similar grenades. An investigation was under way.

Ukrainian police said the 13-year-old son was also seriously injured. Ukrainska Pravda reported Chastiakov’s wife as saying the grenade was in a gift bag her husband brought home. Some reports suggested the real grenade was amongst novelty gifts shaped to look like grenades.

So, a member of the Ukrainian military did not know the difference between a gag grenade and a real one?

I think there may be a minor problem with training and inventory procedures in the AFU.

The Ultimate Comfort Food

In honor of Sharon's* returning home from Memphis I made my family recipe baked spaghetti and cheese.

It's not high cuisine, and given Sharon's wheat sensitivity, I made a separate batch for her with rice pasta.

It's not particularly healthy, but it is home in a profoundly deep and meaningful way, at least for me, my family, and my brothers.

Recipe:

• 2-½ lbs. Spaghetti
• 2 lbs. American Cheese or Velveeta® (You might be able to substitute with a low moisture mozerella)
  
• 16 oz. Cottage Cheese

You can also add other cheeses, about 8 oz. Cheddar provides a nice flavor, and helps keep it from sticking by rendering fat out when it cooks.  

A bit of fresh mozzarella would probably be good too, though I am less sanguine about Swiss cheese (Emmentaler).

You cook the spaghetti no more than al dente,  and drain it.  You want it barely done or slightly underdone because it will take up moisture from the cheese during the cooking.

Then take the cottage cheese and put it in the pasta pot, and heat gently and melt all the cheese until you have a rather viscous sauce.

A non stick pan works, as does properly seasoned cast iron.

Then don gloves (otherwise, you will be picking cheese from under your finger nails for 3 days), and mix in the pasta until evenly distributed.

Cover the pot, and cook for about 45 minutes at 350°F (175°C), then remove the lid, and raise the temperature to 450° (235°C) and allow everything to crisp up for about 15 minutes.

Remove from oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes, since it is at a temperature approaching that at the heart of the sun,† then cut up and serve.

You can put sauce on it if you like, but I don't as I prefer the undiluted cheese and pasta explosion.

Unfortunately for my reader(s) this culinary experience has an intensely soporific effect, so I'm done for the night.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
^††No, it's not really that hot. Read a f%$#ing thermodynamics book. Better yet, don't. Thermodynamics text books suck.

More Knives Come Out for Bibi

Former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has released a report he drafted in 2016 warning against the sort of attack by Hamas that occurred on October 7.

Lieberman is not a part of the current government.  While he is a right wing nativist who hates Arabs, a position which he shares with Netanyahu, he is also fiercely secular, which Netanyahu, with his appointment of unqualified religious extremists to his cabinet, is not.

I hope that Netanyahu's political career is over, and I further hope that he ends up in prison for his blatant corruption:

In 2016, then-defense minister Avigdor Liberman drafted an 11-page document warning of Hamas plans to burst through the Gaza border, overrun communities in southern Israel, staging massacres and taking hostages, excerpts show.

The document, parts of which were published by the Yedioth Ahronoth daily this morning, eerily presages many elements of the October 7 onslaught and indicates that Israeli officials had been aware for several years of the potential for such a Hamas assault, but apparently did not take the warnings seriously enough.

That Saturday morning some 2,500 terrorists burst into Israel by land, sea, and air, killing over 1,400 people, a majority of them civilians, in their homes and at an outdoor music festival. Hamas and allied terrorist factions also dragged at least 239 hostages — including some 30 children — back to the Gaza Strip, where they remain captive.

“Hamas intends to take the conflict into Israeli territory by sending a significant number of well trained forces (like the Nukhba [commandos] for example) into Israel to try and capture an Israeli community (or maybe even several communities) on the Gaza border and take hostages,” Liberman wrote in the document, which was labeled top secret.

“Beyond the physical harm to the people, this will also lead to significant harm to the morale and feelings of the citizens of Israel.”

In an interview Saturday night, Liberman mentioned the document, saying he gave it to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in December 2016, warning that Hamas would attack in “precisely the way it did” on October 7 if its capabilities were not dismantled.

The Enemy, not the Opposition

There are differences of opinions in politics, and it is important to understand that this does not make someone your enemy, it merely makes them your opposition. 

That being said, certain acts do make them your enemy, such as insurrection and attempts to subvert elections.

Case in point, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who just just purged 26,000 voters in order to attempt to subvert a referendum on abortion rights.

This is not just short notice, early voting has already begun, so he has purged voting mid election:

Ohio’s Republican secretary of state quietly canceled the voter registrations of more than 26,000 voters in late September, less than two weeks before the deadline to register to vote in next week’s hotly contested abortion referendum in the state.

Voting rights advocates say the process lacked transparency and departed from Frank LaRose’s usual practice of alerting groups before removing registrations from the rolls. And it comes as LaRose campaigns hard against the 7 November constitutional amendment vote – when Ohio voters will decide whether to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution – as well as a vote on a separate measure to legalize marijuana.

“We are disappointed in the secretary of state’s office’s authorization of the voter purge while voting for the November election was already (and still is) under way,” Kayla Griffin, of the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said.

………

But it’s unusual to remove voter registrations this close to an election given the risk of disenfranchising people who intend to vote but simply missed the memo that they had been flagged for removal. In fact, if this was a national election rather than a state-level contest, what LaRose’s office has done would have been illegal. The National Voter Registration Act prohibits elections offices from systematically removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election.

Typically, voter removals in Ohio are scheduled in the summer to afford voters who are affected plenty of time to re-register. This time, the deadline to remove voters from the rolls came on 28 September, nearly a week after military and overseas absentee voting began on 22 September. LaRose had postponed the process before an 8 August special election to change the constitution. But the new date landed smack-dab in the middle of this current election fight.

Voting rights advocates also say the office did not follow its established – although not obligatory – practice of alerting voting rights groups ahead of the purge. The office would typically give “the entire list to groups like ours so that we could, one, make sure the list was accurate and two, contact voters”, said Jen Miller, executive director of Ohio’s League of Women Voters.

Once again, I think that we need to see aggressive criminal prosecutions of people who do this.

Consent decrees are all well and good, but unless and until we start prosecuting government officials who violate people's civil rights, this will continue to get worse.

Pass the Popcorn

It now appears that in addition to being delusional, he thinks that he was made Mayor of New York City by God, Eric Adams is a corrupt son of a bitch.

That is a reasonable implication from the news that the FBI just raided his fund-raising chief's home today.

Note that the term, "Corrupt son of a bitch," does not mean that Adams is necessarily violating anti-corruption, and probably anti-money laundering laws.

After all, former New York Senator Alphonse "Da Woim"  D'Amato spent his political career with his mentor and lackeys being jailed for some sort of corruption with a regularity that strongly implies that D'Amato knew of and tacitly approved of this corruption.

Given the nature of these allegations, alleged Turkish campaign donations and the like, it is highly unlikely that Adams was unaware of this.  More likely, he was just willfully blind, which is not a defense in such matters, just ask Sam Bankman Fried:

Federal prosecutors and the F.B.I. are conducting a broad public corruption investigation into whether Mayor Eric Adams’s 2021 election campaign conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign donations, according to a search warrant obtained by The New York Times.

The investigation burst into public view on Thursday when federal agents conducted an early-morning raid at the Brooklyn home of the mayor’s chief fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs. Ms. Suggs is a campaign consultant who is deeply entwined with efforts to advance the mayor’s agenda.

Investigators also sought to learn more about the potential involvement of a Brooklyn construction company with ties to Turkey, as well as a small university in Washington, D.C., that also has ties to the country and to Mr. Adams.

According to the search warrant, investigators were also focused on whether the mayor’s campaign kicked back benefits to the construction company’s officials and employees, and to Turkish officials.


The agents seized three iPhones and two laptop computers, along with papers and other evidence, including something agents identified as “manila folder labeled Eric Adams,” seven “contribution card binders” and other materials, according to the documents.

There was no indication that the investigation was targeting the mayor, and he is not accused of wrongdoing. Yet the raid apparently prompted him to abruptly cancel several meetings scheduled for Thursday morning in Washington, D.C., where he planned to speak with White House officials and members of Congress about the migrant crisis.

Instead, he hurriedly returned to New York “to deal with a matter,” a spokesman for the mayor said.

………

The warrant suggested that some of the foreign campaign contributions were made as part of a straw donor scheme, where donations are made in the names of people who did not actually give money. Investigators sought evidence to support potential charges that included the theft of federal funds and conspiracy to steal federal funds, wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy, as well as campaign contributions by foreign nationals and conspiracy to make such contributions.

Mr. Adams has boasted of his ties to Turkey, most recently during a flag-raising he hosted for the country in Lower Manhattan last week. The mayor said that there were probably no other mayors in New York City history who had visited Turkey as frequently as he has.

Nothing to worry about, the reputation of the Turkish polity for probity and rectitude, nothing untoward could possibly be going on.  (Not)

………

Ms. Suggs, 25, is the latest in a series of individuals tied to Mr. Adams who have attracted interest from law enforcement, including several connected to the mayor’s fund-raising efforts.

His chief fundraiser is 25?  So she was 23 at the time of his election?  

Well, isn't that ……… something.

In September, Eric Ulrich, Mr. Adams’s former buildings commissioner and senior adviser, was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, on 16 felony charges, including counts of conspiracy and bribetaking. Mr. Ulrich, as well as three others indicted at the time, helped organize a 2021 fund-raiser for Mr. Adams.

In July, Mr. Bragg indicted six individuals, including a retired police inspector who once worked and socialized with Mr. Adams, on charges of conspiring to funnel illegal donations to the mayor’s 2021 campaign.

………

In the past two years, Mr. Adams’s re-election campaign has paid Ms. Suggs nearly $100,000 for fund-raising and campaign consulting services via her company, Suggs Solutions, according to city records.

His first mayoral campaign paid her more than $50,000.

Ms. Suggs has also registered as a lobbyist. State records indicate that the East Broadway Mall, a Chinatown real estate concern, hired Ms. Suggs, via an intermediary, to lobby the mayor’s office and the City Council on its behalf in 2022.

Yeah, someone fresh out of college got a gig as a senior fundraiser got paid 50 Grand, and over the next two years got paid over 100 Gs?

Yeah, nothing hinkey there.

Sucks to be Zuck

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has extended Norway's ban on Facebook's use of personal data for advertisements across the entire European Union.

European officials have told Ireland's privacy watchdog to impose a ban on Meta's processing of personal data for behavioral advertising throughout the European single market within the next two weeks.

The decision follows a request in September from Norway's Data Protection Authority, Datatilsynet, that the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) extend Norway's countrywide ban on Meta's processing of personal data – via Facebook and Instagram – to the entire European Economic Area (EEA), which includes local non-EU states. This would dump a huge roadblock in the way of Meta's social networking plans.

And so it shall be done: the EDPB today told Ireland's Data Protection Authority (DPA) to roll out that ban across the single market. Ireland because Meta's European base is in Dublin.

"After careful consideration, the EDPB considered it necessary to instruct [the DPA] to impose an EEA-wide processing ban, addressed to Meta [Ireland]," said EDPB Chair Anu Talus in a statement. "Already in December 2022, the EDPB Binding Decisions clarified that [Meta's end-user] contract is not a suitable legal basis for the processing of personal data carried out by Meta for behavioral advertising."

Talus said the DPA found that Meta has failed to comply with orders imposed at the end of 2022. "It is high time for Meta to bring its processing into compliance and to stop unlawful processing," she said.

………

A few days ago, Meta debuted a no-ads subscription option for those in EU, EEA and Switzerland, claiming that a recent Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruling "expressly recognized that a subscription model, like the one we are announcing, is a valid form of consent for an ads funded service."

In a statement to The Register, Meta sounds surprised by the EDPB's data collection ban. The ads giant feels that if it asks users for consent, it'll be allowed to keep processing personal info for targeted advertising. How exactly it will get that consent is the issue.

Facebook's idea is that refusing to pay means consent.  To quote Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese, "F%$# you, pay me."

………

Datatilsynet welcomed the EDPB decision, stating that while it has been clear that Meta is breaking the law, the social network continued its data collection anyway.

"Enough is enough," said Tobias Judin, head of Datatilsynet's international section, in a statement. "After more than five years of violations of users' basic privacy protection, the Data Protection Council is now putting its foot down against Meta's lack of respect for the law."

The Norwegian Data Protection Authority also said it "strongly doubts whether Meta's proposed consent solution, which means that those who do not consent to behavior-based marketing must pay a fee, will be legal."

It should be noted here, as I have noted before, Facebook and Google style stalker-type advertising model is largely a scam.

It does not lead to increased sales.  What it does is allow advertisers to dig a moat around their businesses protecting them from new entrants, because these new entrants lack the extensive dossiers accumulated by the incumbents. 

Burn the stalker advertisers to the ground.

But No Criminal Prosecutions

Wage theft is theft, period, full stop. 

So, why is New York Attorney General Letitia James not criminally charging Uber and Lyft executives who cheated their drivers out of $328 million?

Seriously, the fine just makes a cost of doing business:

Uber and Lyft have agreed to pay $328 million after "cheating drivers out of hundreds of millions of dollars," New York Attorney General Letitia James' office said today. "Uber will pay $290 million and Lyft will pay $38 million into two separate settlement funds which will be entirely distributed to current and former drivers," the AG's office said.

The ride-hailing companies also agreed to provide sick leave and better pay to drivers going forward. "The settlements resolve multi-year investigations into Uber and Lyft, which found that the companies’ policies withheld hard-earned pay from drivers and prevented them from receiving valuable benefits available under New York labor laws," the announcement said, calling it the largest back-pay settlement in the NY AG office's history.

The AG's office estimates that over 100,000 drivers, most of whom are immigrants, will be eligible for payments. Notices will be sent to people who are eligible for payments, and links to claims forms are available here.

The AG's announcement has quotes from several New York Taxi Workers Alliance members, including Malang Gassama, a former driver for Uber and Lyft. "I’ve calculated that Uber and Lyft took at least $25,000 from my pay that they shouldn’t have in the form of sales tax and the Black Car Fund surcharge," Gassama is quoted as saying.

Here is the money quote from James:

From 2014 to 2017, Uber deducted sales taxes and Black Car Fund fees from drivers’ payments when those taxes and fees should have been paid by passengers. Uber misrepresented the deductions made to drivers’ pay in their terms of service, telling drivers that Uber would only deduct its commission from the drivers’ fare, and that drivers were “entitled to charge [the passenger] for any tolls, taxes or fees incurred,” though no method to do this was ever provided via the Uber Driver app. Lyft employed a similar method to shortchange drivers from 2015 to 2017, deducting a 11.4 percent “administrative charge” from drivers’ payments in New York equal to the amount of sales tax and Black Car Fund fees that should have been paid by riders. Uber and Lyft also failed to provide drivers with paid sick leave available to employees under New York City and New York state law.

Not enough.  Jail them.

 

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!

We have the 5th commercial bank failure of the year, matching the number of credit union failusres, Citizens Bank of Sac City IA.

It's a small bank, $66 million in total assets and $59 million in total deposits, but does put the total failures ahead of both 2019 and 2020, which each had 4.

So, here is the graph pr0n (FDIC only):

It's Called a Babysitter

The Trump kids  have all been called on to testify at the civil fraud trial of Donald Trump and the Trump Org.

Ivanka Trump asked to be excused from testify because she has school age kids and therefore cannot be expected to testify.  

The appeals court took about 3 minutes to call bull sh%$ on her effort to weasel out of testifying under oath:

Ivanka Trump’s argument that she should be spared giving midweek testimony in her father Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York because she is a busy mother of school-aged children in Florida was given short shrift by an appeals court.

The former president’s daughter, a senior adviser during his single term of office, asked the panel to set aside a ruling by a district court judge compelling her to testify next Wednesday, 8 November.

“Ms Trump, who resides in Florida with her three minor children, will suffer undue hardship if a stay is denied and she is required to testify at trial in New York in the middle of a school week, in a case she has already been dismissed from, before her appeal is heard,” her lawyers said in a legal filing on Thursday.

They also argued that Trump had not lived or worked in New York since 2017, and was therefore beyond the jurisdiction of the Manhattan civil court.

But in an expedited ruling on Thursday night, the appeals court offered a curt, 11-word response.

“Application for interim stay pending decision on the motion is denied,” the judges wrote.

 That is legalese for, "Stop smoking that sh%$, it makes you crazy."

Mandy Rice-Davies Applies*

The FBI, aka the bastard child of J. Edgar Hoover is claiming that ending their spying powers under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would lead to a catastrophe.

As the expiration date for the Feds' Section 702 surveillance powers draws closer, FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned a US Senate committee that his agents may not be able to stop the next major cyberattack if lawmakers allow the contentious spying authorization to lapse.

"It would be absolutely devastating if the next time an adversary like Iran or China launches a major cyberattack, we don't see it coming because 702, one of our most important tools, was allowed to lapse," Wray told the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Wray has previously said that 97 percent of the FBI's technical intelligence on malicious "cyber actors" in the first half of this year was obtained via Section 702 searches.

"Or with everything going on in the world, imagine if a foreign terrorist overseas directs an operative to carry out an attack in our own backyard, but we're not able to disrupt it because the FBI's authorities have been so watered down," he said Tuesday.

………

And while it's supposed to be used to fight crime and prevent terrorist attacks, it has also been abused by the FBI to conduct warrantless surveillance on US citizens including protesters, campaign donors, and elected officials.

The FBI has been abusing Section 702 since it was created.

The catastrophe that the FBI fears is that they will not be able to abuse the civil rights of Americans with impunity because it makes their jobs a little bit easier.

The contentious rule is set to sunset at the end of 2023 unless lawmakers renew — or reform — the FISA amendment. Meanwhile Wray and the rest of the intelligence community have been lobbying politicians to keep the snooping powers intact and renew Section 702, as it stands, before the year's end.

 Let it expire.  There is no reason to kow tow to the whims of lazy cops.

^*Well they would say that, wouldn't they?