San Bernardino DA Uses the Chewbacca Defense

The San Bernardino district attorney is now saying that the work iPhone of Syed Farook may contain some unstoppable magic malware that can destroy all life on earth:

The San Bernardino District Attorney told a federal judge late Thursday that Apple must assist the authorities in unlocking the iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the two San Bernardino shooters that killed 14 people in a killing rampage in December. The phone, which was a county work phone issued to Farook as part of his Health Department duties, may have been the trigger to unleash a "cyber pathogen," county prosecutors said in a brief court filing.

"The iPhone is a county owned telephone that may have connected to the San Bernardino County computer network. The seized iPhone may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino's infrastructure," according to a court filing (PDF) by Michael Ramos, the San Bernardino County district attorney.

The development represents the first time any law enforcement official connected to the investigation provided an indication, other than links to possible co-conspirators, of what the authorities might discover on the phone. The district attorney's position comes a week after Jarrod Burguan, the San Bernardino police chief, said there was a "reasonably good chance that there is nothing of any value on the phone." James Comey, the FBI director, said Feb, 21 that "Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn't."

The county declined to directly comment. A spokesman, David Wert, told Ars in an e-mail that "The county didn't have anything to do with this brief. It was filed by the district attorney." The DA's office, which did not immediately respond for comment, followed up with a statement to Ars, saying that there is a "compelling governmental interest in acquiring any evidence of criminal conduct, additional perpetrators, potential damage to the infrastructure of San Bernardino County, and in protecting the California Constitutionally guaranteed due process rights of the victims, deceased and living, arising from state crimes committed on December 2, 2015."

Jonathan Zdziarski, a prominent iPhone forensics expert, said in a telephone interview that the district attorney is suggesting that a "magical unicorn might exist on this phone."

OK, it might not be an apocalyptic computer virus, it might just be a "magical unicorn", or some other mythical beast, like a moderate Republican or a humble Frenchman.

This is a level of mendacity that should have the judge issuing sanctions against the DA.  (Some jail time would be nice)

About F%$#ing Time

This guy is in custody now too

It looks like the the FBI is finally going after people who threatened federal officers at the Bundy ranch:

FBI agents have been busy today. Another one (possibly two) of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s sons was arrested, this time in Utah. According to what David ‘Davey’ Bundy’s wife told The Salt Lake Tribune today, her husband was arrested just after 7:00 a.m. Thursday at the site of the house the Millard County contractor is building for his family just south of Delta.

Marylynn Bundy said she was told of her husband’s arrest by a worker who was blocked from getting to the house by law enforcement.

“I think they are just trying to get all the Bundy men locked up, so they can raid their homes,” Marylynn Bundy said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nevada confirmed to the paper that a charging document had been filed against Bundy, but said that it was sealed and the feds did not confirm his arrest.

The feds are busy making arrests today. After his role in the armed standoff in Nevada almost two years ago at the Bundy ranch, tea party activist Jerry DeLemus was arrested on nine federal charges today. He’s also the husband of Rep. Susan DeLemus, a crazy-time New Hampshire Republican lawmaker and co-chair of the state’s “Veterans for Trump” coalition.

………

UPDATE: The Idaho Statesman just reported that, “Eric James Parker, 32, and Steve Arthur Stewart, 36, both of Hailey, O. Scott Drexler, 44, of Challis, and Todd Engel, 48, of Boundary County were taken into custody, U.S. Attorney for Idaho Wendy Olson said.”

“This investigation began the day after the assault against federal law enforcement officers and continues to this day,” U.S. Attorney for Nevada Daniel Bogden said in a release. “We will continue to work to identify the assaulters and their role in the assault and the aftermath, in order to ensure that justice is served.”

The wheels of justice do grind slowly, but it appears that they grind sure.

Jim Webb, How About a Nice Hot Cup of Shut the F%$# Up?

And he wonders why no one supported his Presidential run.

I think that being a clueless narcissistic asshole, even by the standards of politics, might have had something to do with it:

Former Democratic presidential candidate Jim Webb won’t be voting for Hillary Clinton, but he hasn’t ruled out casting his ballot for Donald Trump.

………

"I would not vote for Hillary Clinton,” Webb said on MSBNC's "Morning Joe."

When asked whether he'd vote for Trump, Webb said he wasn't closed to the idea. “I'm not sure yet. I don't know who I'm going to vote for,” he said.

He said Clinton would simply continue President Barack Obama’s policies, but that with Trump, things would change — but he's not convinced it would be for the better.

“If you're voting for Donald Trump, you may get something very good or very bad,” Webb said. “If you're voting for Hillary Clinton, you're going to be getting the same thing.”

There is something seriously wrong with that guy

For Sanders Supporters Who are Silver Lining Types

First, note that the primaries are structured that all of Clinton's strong states will be done by mid March.

Basically, the southern states, the ones that won't vote for a Democrat, are relatively early in the process:

I'm keeping this short to put a very simple idea into your head. Because of the way the Democratic Party voting calendar is structured this year, Clinton's largest lead will occur on March 15. After that, most of Sanders' strongest states will vote.

What this means is simple:

• Hillary Clinton will grow her lead until the March 15 states have voted.

• Bernie Sanders will erase that lead — partly or completely — after March 15.

• How much of Clinton's lead he will erase depends on your not buying what the media is selling — that the contest is over.

• In most scenarios where Sanders wins, he doesn't retake the lead until June 7, when five states including California cast their ballots.

March 15 is the Ides of March; a good way to remember the date. The message — gear up for a battle after the Ides of March, and don't let the establishment media tell you what to think. They won't be right until the last state has voted.

If you want to stop reading here, this is all you need to know.

………

Bottom line — Super Tuesday is upon us, and what's bad for Sanders supporters on March 1 is going to look worse for a few weeks. Stay heartened. Whatever the result in March, this isn't over until June, after Sanders' best states have voted as well.

(Emphasis Original)

This is not surprising. Both of the party establishments have attempted to front load the the south, the Republicans because they double down on racism, and the Democrats because they want to forestall the liberal wing of the party. (Super Tuesday was largely a product of the right wing of the right wing of the Democratic Party.)

This raises an interesting question, "Does Sanders have the resources go to distance?"

The answer is clearly, "Yes."

In fact, it is very likely that Sanders has more Cash on Hand than Clinton does:  (Note that this does not include Super PAC money, but that money does not go as far, because it cannot be targeted as flexibly)

Hillary Clinton raised $30 million in February and has $31 million on hand, her campaign announced on Wednesday — far less than Bernie Sanders.

………

Her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, raised $43 million in February, with $6 million of that coming on Monday. Sanders' campaign has not announced its cash on hand, but as of the end of January, he had nearly $15 million in the bank.

Sanders Raised $20 million to Clinton's $15 million in January.

So, Sanders raised $63 million in the first two months of the year, and Clinton raised $37 million, and she has $31 million cash on hand, and we can be reasonably certain that the Sanders campaign has a lower burn rate than Clinton, because she is employing a lot of high powered consultants, and has a far more extensive fundraising apparatus.

Assuming the same spending rates, and Hillary and Bernie would be neck and neck in cash on hand.

My guess is that Bernie is a few million ahead, and Hillary's big donors are running into campaign finance limits, so the Sanders campaign can take this to the convention.

Deep Thought

You Can't Buy an Election, but You Can Rent It.

No citation, because this one is a Matthew G. Saroff original.

What Happens When You Bring in a Finance Type to Shake Things Up

First, the break everything, and then they get fired:

Simon Newman, the Mount St. Mary’s University president who astonished many with a brutal remark, inspired some to a new vision for the university, and set off an intense national debate about academic freedom, will step down effective immediately.

Karl Einolf, the dean of the Richard J.Bolte, Sr., School of Business at the university will serve as acting president, the board of trustees announced Monday night.

The change came after weeks of turmoil at the country’s second-oldest Catholic university, which faced questions from its faculty, alumni and national groups — including the organization that provides the crucial accreditation for the university — over its future direction and leadership. Some saw it as a clash between those open to change and those mired in tradition. Others felt it had become a debate over the very soul of the university: Catholic or corporate?

………

Newman came to the Maryland campus in 2015 with plans for sweeping changes, such as boosting enrollment, shoring up the university’s finances and raising its national profile. His blunt business manner — he had been in the financial industry for his entire career — was welcome to some and jarring to others. Several people were abruptly fired and escorted off campus, and retiree benefits were cut in the fall. But the real turmoil began this year after the student newspaper, the Mountain Echo, reported that Newman had planned to cull struggling freshmen early in the semester, before a federal reporting deadline, to improve the university’s retention rate.

No students left the school as a result of the survey, but Newman’s remarks after some faculty members expressed concerns about the plan shocked many; he said a professor was thinking of the students as cuddly bunnies but that they had to drown the bunnies, “put a Glock to their heads.”

When two professors were subsequently fired — one with tenure, one who had been the adviser to the Echo — many interpreted it as retaliation for opposing Newman’s policies despite the administration’s denial that it was retribution.

………

There was another fear, as well: The Mount’s accreditation was just reaffirmed in June, with its next scheduled review report in 2020. But this month the Middle States Commission on Higher Education requested “a supplemental information report, due March 15, 2016, addressing recent developments at the University which may have implications for continued compliance with Requirement of Affiliation #9, Standard 4 (Leadership and Governance), Standard 6 (Integrity), Standard 8 (Student Admissions and Retention), and Standard 10 (Faculty).”

This sh%$ is what happens when you hire someone whose qualifications basically consist of being a parasite from the finance industry.

Sick of Those Windows 10 Update Messages?

JR at the Stellarparthenon BBS came up with the following to turn it off:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
"DisableOSUpgrade"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GWX]
"DisableGWX"=dword:00000001
I haven't tried it myself, but feel free to try this out.

You past this into a text document, and give it the .reg extension, and it will run when you double click on it.

Who Knew?

Marco Rubio's jokes about Trump's dick size are not a low point in Presidential campaigning. It turns out that it it goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson:

………

As a matter of fact, Jefferson was well aware of the political salience of the well-timed tiny-dick joke because he used them himself, in the ferocious campaign of 1800.

As the challenger in 1800, his goal was to topple the incumbent. His critique of President John Adams included the accusation that he was "a hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."

And, of course, old Martin Van Buren campaigned by accusing William Henry Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe, of being "a man who wore corsets, put cologne on his whiskers, slept on French beds, rode in a British coach, and ate with golden spoons from silver plates." Which is sort of an implied dick joke from a more civilized time. And thus do we discover that, in yet another vital element of being a political candidate, Marco Rubio comes up…well…short.

I loves me some history.

Quote of the Day

But Washington is freaking out about Trump in a way they never did about Bush. Why? Because Bush was their moron, while Trump is his own moron. That's really what it comes down to.

—Matt Taibbi

Read the rest of the article, but this bit is the synthesis of all that the Republicans fear about Trump.

Not a Great Night for Sanders

Right now, he appears to have won Vermont, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Oklahoma, and Clinton won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, and Vairginia.

She also got about twice as many delegates.

Trump won all but four of the states on the 'Phant side, with Cruz winning Texas and Oklahoma, and Rubio winning Minnesota, and Vermont being too close to call.

We are no hearing a clamor for Bernie to leave the race from the pundits, despite the fact that the Democratic side of the Race is closer than the Republican side, and no one is suggesting that other Republicans capitulate to Trump.

I just love our punditocracy works.

As an aside, Sanders is crushing it on fundraising, raising $20 million in January and $42 million in February, and appears to be outpacing Clinton, with a far lower burn rate, so he can continue to run until the convention.

Snark of the Day

Democrats Always Prove the Commies Right

—Fredrik deBoer

Read his whole post, but he has a list of things where his communist friend's predictions proved right:

I’m regularly accused of believing things that I’ve never said and don’t believe. That’s largely a facet of the fact that, on the internet today, arguing with people is really a matter of misrepresenting what they’re saying and then attacking the misrepresentation. One of the most constant of these is that I say “both parties are the same.” I’ve never said that. Ever. In my life. But over time, the claims of friends who do say that have been vindicated over and over again.

By that I mean something very simple: my communist friends who really do say that the two parties are the same make predictions about politics. My Democrat friends do the same. Looking back at the times when the two groups have clashed, the commies have been right literally 100% of the time.

I get accused of being a “Naderite,” though in fact I voted for Gore in the first election I was old enough to vote in. (I’ve come to regret that decision over time.) The Democrats said that left-wing critics of the party would be welcomed into the fold; the commies told me that the Democrats hate the left and always would. The commies were right. The Democrats told me that anti-Iraq war voices would be an important slice of the party in the debates to come. The commies told me Democrats and their representatives in the media would engage in redbaiting eliminationism like we’d never seen before. The commies were right. The Democrats told me that a candidate like Howard Dean, who at the time was running as an explicitly left-wing challenger to the Democrat establishment, would have a great chance at the nomination; my commie friends said that the Democrats and their surrogates in the media would destroy Dean. The commies were right.

He's right, but kind of depressing.

Still, it's a good read.

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Really Needs to be Fired

Even if you ignore her tenure at the DNC, which is marked by incompetence, careerism, and biased, her history in supporting the most egregious examples of abusive consumer is a reason to force her retirement.

In November, she voted to allow car dealers to discriminate against minorities:

Before Thanksgiving, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz helped push through congress a bill that would allow automobile dealers and auto finance companies to discriminate against minority and unsophisticated car buyers by charging them more in fees and interest rates.

The Reforming CFPB Indirect Auto Financing Guidance Act that Wasserman Schultz voted for would basically let lenders and dealers ignore Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rules that bar dealers and auto finance companies from charging unsophisticated borrowers who are mostly minorities hundreds of dollars more in excessive interest and fees on car loans regardless if the car buyer has excellent credit.

The National Automobile Dealers Association or NADA is pushing this bill because they realized that after dusting off an old marketing book from Wells Fargo, that their members could easily widen their profit margins by adding stealth fees and charging higher interest rates to unsophisticated minority consumers who are just happy they can own a new car.

The bill is, as Brian O’Connor at the Detroit News points out, “a repulsive layering of racism wrapped in consumer rip-offs wrapped in a layer of lies and stuffed with lots and lots of campaign cash.”

Like an old sub-prime mortgage, the auto finance company sets a minimum interest rate on car loan made through a dealer, and the dealer can then hike the interest rate to 2.5 percentage points or more with the lender kicking in back end points equaling 1% to 3% of the sale price of the car to the dealer and the salesman. This similar to what used to be called Yield Spread Premiums in lending. In other words, NADA wants and what Wasserman Schultz endorses is really ghetto loans for cars.

And now she's tring to hamgstring the CFPB's attempts to regulate the worst practices of the payday lending industry:

One of the benefits of America’s unusually stingy welfare system is that it allows our domestic payday-loan industry to thrive. Since the safety net is too threadbare to catch the working poor when they fall on troubled times, payday lenders are able to charge them exorbitant interest on subsistence loans. Nationally, the average interest rate on a payday loan is a stellar 390 percent.

But Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is dead set on sapping all of the dynamism out of the payday-loan industry. The CFPB is about to issue new regulations on payday lenders that are aimed at preventing borrowers from falling into a vicious (or viciously profitable) cycle where they take out high-interest loans just to make the interest payments on their previous high-interest loans. Fortunately, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is co-sponsoring a bill that would gut the CFPB’s regulations and allow payday lenders to keep profiting off the desperation of the impoverished.

According to a memo obtained by the Huffington Post, Wasserman Schultz is trying to rally congressional Democrats around a bill that would delay the CFPB’s new rules for two years and nullify those rules in any state that adopts its own payday-lending law, like the DNC chair’s own home state of Florida.

The key thing about such state laws is that they’re likely to be much kinder to the profits of payday lenders than what the CFPB is crafting. In Florida, the average interest rate on a payday loan is still 304 percent, according to Pew Charitable Trusts. What’s more, 76 percent of all payday loans in the state are turned loans — loans taken out to pay back another loan — according to Americans for Financial Reform. Thus, Florida’s law has left the highly profitable vicious cycle of payday borrowing intact.

………

With such brave legislators leading the Democratic Party, it’s difficult to understand how Bernie Sanders can get so mad at the “Establishment.”

H/t Naked Capitalism, where they also note that DWS recently signed onto a letter to the CFPB asking for an exemption for credit unions and banks smaller than $10 billion from consumer protecting regulations.

Seriously.  What is wrong with the Democratic Party?

I kind of understand how one might be tempted to make use of an evil person's evil, but Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is to incompetent that her evil servs no one.

If she were were in a James Thurber novel, the Todal would have Gleeped her by now.^*

Support Tim Canova, who primarying her.

^*The 13 Clocks. Just go read it.

Well, This Explains Why She Married Me

At some point during Lansdowne's production of Little Shop of Horrors, Sharon lost her keys.

That was Saturday night.

She remembered putting them in her coat pocket, but somehow they had fallen out.

For the past 2-1/2 days, she has been frantically retracing her steps, and tearing apart the house and the car in an attempt to find her keys.

She found them today.

They were in her coat pocket.

It appears that she had put them in her zipper pocket so that they would be safer, and then she forgot that she had done so.

This is a fail on par with marrying me.

Posted via mobile.

How Scalia's Death Makes the World a Better Place

Without Scalia on the court, business have lost a staunch defender of a business's right to defraud its customers, and so they are settling with plaintiffs:

Dow Chemical Co (DOW.N) agreed to pay $835 million to settle a decade-long lawsuit on price fixing, saying it had less chance of winning its petition at the Supreme Court after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

Dow, which is in the process of merging with Dupont (DD.N), said on Friday it decided to settle, without admitting any wrongdoing, citing "growing political uncertainties due to recent events within the Supreme Court."

The chemicals company was found liable by a federal jury in Kansas in February 2013 in the class-action lawsuit, which alleged Dow had conspired to artificially inflate polyurethane prices.

………

Justice Scalia died earlier this month. The next justice could tilt the balance of the nation's highest court, which was left with four conservatives and four liberals.

"While Dow is settling this case, it continues to strongly believe that it was not part of any conspiracy and the judgment was fundamentally flawed as a matter of class action law," the company said in a statement on Friday.

While we think of Scalia as a culture warrior, his role as the leading opponent of consumer protection and corporate accountability on the court has arguably hurt more people than anything else that he has done.<sup>*

*</sup>Except, of course for Bush v. Gore, but, as that opinion notes, it doesn't count.  It never counts.

Another TTP/TTIP Talking Point Shown to be a Lie

One of the claims made by the supporters of current and pending trade deals is that the US has never been sued through the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process, with the implication that such a suit will simply never happen.

Not so much:

A $15 billion lawsuit by the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline against the US government shows the serious threat to democracy posed by special privileges for investors, a new report has said. TransCanada is suing under investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to demand damages following rejection of the controversial pipeline due to its climate impact.

Keystone illustrates how the increasingly common ISDS clauses, that are contained in the draft EU-Canada trade agreement (CETA) and the proposed EU-US deal (TTIP), can be used to undermine climate action, the report by T&E, Friends of the Earth Europe and Sierra Club stated.

Last year US president Barack Obama denied permission to build the US-stage of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have transported crude oil from Canada’s tar sands to American refineries, as it was not in the interest of national security and would have undercut America’s climate leadership. TransCanada’s lawsuit is under chapter 11 of NAFTA, which allows multinational corporations to sue governments if they feel they have not been treated as a domestic company would have been.

TransCanada has reportedly invested $3.1 billion in the project but is seeking five times this amount in damages. It will be able to launch its case as early as May 2016. A three-judge tribunal will issue a ruling, which cannot be appealed to any national court. It can award damages but not force the US to grant permission for Keystone to be built.

The ISDS process as currently practiced is a morass of corruption and opacity.

It's underlying philosophy is that government has no rights to protect the common good, and that any lost profits as a result is a taking.

It is a perverted and evil thing.

Quote of the Day

Clinton talks of possibly decades-long occupations and orderly regime changes, yet somehow Sanders is the fantasist.

—Marcy "Emptywheel" Wheeler

Clinton's foreign policy positions are kind of like Dick Cheney's, only without Cheney's warmth and charisma.

Snark of the Day

Finding a Republican operative with character is like finding a Syrian moderate.

—Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism.

Huh. It Appears that He Can Talk

Clarence Thomas just just asked his first questions in a Supreme Court oral argument in 10 years. I am thinking that the absence of Scalia has something to do with this.

My guess is that he is confused, because Scalia is no longer there to tell him what to think:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for the first time in a decade, asked questions from the bench during oral arguments, according to reporters present at Monday's Supreme Court hearings. His questions pertained to the rights of domestic abuse offenders to have a gun, in a case considering a federal law banning convicted abusers from owning guns.

The 10-year anniversary of the last time the conservative justice asked a question came just this month. In the period, however, Thomas did make a comment from the bench, but it was not a question. He has said that he would prefer to end oral arguments at the Supreme Court.

It appears that he was asking questions that had nothing to do with the actual issues raised by the litigants, so I am wondering if this exercise in "got from a Cracker Jack box judging" is an homage to the memory of Scalia, who frequently raised issues not brought forward by the litigants, and on many occasions assuming facts not in evidence. (Scalia's Hobby Lobby opinion is a particularly egregious example)

This Ain't Just About Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. It's Also About Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

That's gonna leave a mark

Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), who is generally considered someone to watch in the Democratic Party, has resigned from the Democratic National Committee to endorse Bernie Sanders:

Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat of Hawaii, resigned as a vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee on Sunday in order to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for president.

The endorsement came a day after Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary in South Carolina by a huge margin — she captured nearly 74 percent of the vote — in a signal of her support in the South right before several other Southern states vote in Tuesday’s primaries.

Ms. Gabbard explained her decision in a video on YouTube in which she said that, as a military veteran, she wanted the United States to avoid “interventionist wars of regime change.”

“As a veteran of two Middle East deployments, I know first hand the cost of war,” said Ms. Gabbard, one of the first female combat veterans to serve in Congress. “I know how important it is that our commander-in-chief has the sound judgment required to know when to use America’s military power and when not to use that power.

This is a harsh, and IMNSHO justified critique of Clinton's blithely bellicose foreign policy, but I have to think that a lot of this is that she no longer wants to deal with Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Just to remind you, Wasserman-Schultz banned Gabbard from the debate audience for calling for more debates, so I am inclined to think that part of this is being driven by her no longer wanting to work with the hacktacular DWS.

Based on various statements from the Beltway media, I get the sense that it is not only Representative Gabbard who is getting sick of Wasserman-Schultz.

The DNC chair appears to be high handed, self absorbed, and threatened by competence around her, and that is a toxic mix in any organization.

Too Funny

It appears that during the last Republican debate, when everyone was calling everyone a c*cksucker, whoever was doing the closed captioning threw up his hands in despair:

Last night's Republican brawl at recess was best summed up by some anonymous soul working at the closed-captioning desk at CNN who clearly was completely fed up with the idiotic proceedings on stage and decided to let the hearing-impaired citizens of the United States of America know that he was. (In fact, I hope that the hearing-impaired citizens of the United States of America know how lucky they were last night.) This wasn't a political debate. This was a pissing contest among men who are worried about the size of their dicks.

(Unintelligible yelling)
Would you have trusted any of these clowns with the nuclear codes? (Maybe John Kasich, but only if there were absolutely no other option, Curly Howard being dead and all.) I wouldn't trust any of them to park my car.

(Unintelligible yelling)

What was your favorite moment? Was it Dr. Ben Carson's contention that the "fruit salad of their lives" are dangling precipitously on "the abyss of destruction?  What did he mean? Who knows? The mind of Dr. Ben Carson is not the mind of an ordinary man. The mind of Dr. Ben Carson is on loan from a curiosity shoppe somewhere on the moons of Saturn.

Perhaps I should start playing the Republican Debate Drinking game, because it does sound entertaining, if not particularly informative.

How Convenient

Normally, when one says that a Congressman is in bed with lobbyist, it is meant as a metaphor.

Not this time:

Congressman Bill Shuster from Pennsylvania, the Chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the lawmaker behind pro-airline legislation like this 2014 bill to remove any transparency from advertised airfares — and whose top campaign contributors are United and American Airlines — has admitted today to being in a romantic relationship with a top lobbyist for the airline industry.

A lengthy report from Politico shines a light on the too-close-for-comfort relationship of Shuster and Shelley Rubino, VP for global government affairs for Airlines for America (A4A), an industry trade group whose members include the aforementioned United and American, along with other top Shuster donors like FedEx, UPS, and Atlas Air Worldwide.

And when you look at which politicians have most benefited from A4A’s contributions, Shuster is right at the top of the list, at $16,700 for the 2014 election cycle. That’s more than A4A gave to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Not bad for a Congressman who represents a largely rural section of Pennsylvania.

“Ms. Rubino and I have a private and personal relationship, and out of respect for her and my family, that is all I will say about that,” said Rep. Shuster, who was recently divorced, in a statement to Politico.

The Congressman says his office has “a policy that deals with personal relationships that cover my staff and myself. This was created in consultation with legal counsel and goes further than is required by the law. Under that policy, Ms. Rubino doesn’t lobby my office, including myself and my staff.”

Even if the agreement prevents Rubino from lobbying Shuster directly, she is not prohibited from lobbying the dozens of other members of his powerful committee or their aides.

Legal experts say there is no apparent violation of House ethics rules going on here.

It does appear that the news of Congressman Shuster's application of applied kinematics to Ms. Rubino has, temporarily at least, put the kibosh on privatizing air traffic control:

The House Republican leadership is shelving plans to pass an overhaul of the Federal Aviation Administration, a major blow to House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, according to multiple senior aides

Instead, the House will revert to a short-term extension of the FAA's authority while "the Transportation Committee will continue their work on this transformative legislation," a leadership aide said Thursday. The FAA must be renewed by the end of March.

………

The bill was also a priority for Airlines for America, the lobby that represents every mainline U.S. air carrier except Delta. Shuster is very close with A4A, as it is known, and dates one of its top lobbyists. POLITICO reported that earlier this week, Shuster spent time lounging in Miami with Nick Calio, A4A's leader, and Shelley Rubino, the group's vice president and his girlfriend. The trip came days after Calio testified before Shuster's committee.

I gotta figure that the house leaders realized that this story was blowing up, and decided to put it on hold.

This is a good thing.

Air Traffic Control should not be placed in private hands, particularly when those hands are largely those of the 4 remaining large airlines, who are, after all, Shelly Rubino's clients.

Not a Surprise

Japan has started engaging in a policy of negative interest rates, where you pay the bank for the privilege of storing your money.

It's supposed to encourage people to spend money, because it creates a kind of a doppelganger of inflation to encourage consumption.

It appears that the only spending that this is encouraging is for safes to store cash in:

The Japanese are spending—but not in a way that is likely to strengthen the country’s economy.

Following the Bank of Japan’s decision to lower interest rates below zero in January, many consumers have reportedly rushed to hardwares store in search of one thing: safes.

Negative interest rates mean customers effectively pay a fee for parking cash in banks, so Japanese citizens are beginning to hoard yen, according to the Wall Street Journal, and they need somewhere to put it.

Sales of safes have doubled from the same period a year earlier at chain hardware store, Shimachu, according to the Journal. The chain has already sold out of one model worth $700. Others savers are considering more unconventional storage spaces.

“In response to negative interest rates, there are elderly people who’re thinking of keeping their money under a mattress,” Mariko Shimokawa, a Shimachu saleswoman told the Journal.

But hoarding cash is exactly what the Japanese central bank wants to avoid.

Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda lowered rates to -0.1% for certain deposits on Jan. 29. The idea was to prop up the economy and increase inflation by encouraging consumers to spend and borrow while discouraging banks from keeping large reserves.

Officials have already noticed the increase in safe sales. The issue of cash hoarding was brought up in a parliamentary hearing Monday, with opposition lawmaker Katsumasa Suzuki saying that the increase in safe sales suggested a “vague sense of unease,” the Journal reported.

Central banks have been using quantitative easing, essentially printing money, and it hasn't worked, because the newly printed money has been handed to the banks, who either use it to shore up dodgy loans, or park it in the deposit accounts of those central banks so that they can make money on the spread between their interest payments and their interest income.

Here's an idea:  Print the money and give it to ordinary people, or drop it from a helicopter, as Ben Bernanke has suggested.

Once people pay off their loans, they will spend the money, and the banks will have to find new business to replace their usurious consumer loans.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!! (On Saturday)

Still no commercial bank failures this year, but we have the 5^th credit union failure of the year, ​Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Hospital Federal Credit Union, ​of Huntington, ​WI. (Full list)

I do not know why credit unions are failing so much more often than commercial banks, the last bank failure was about 5 months ago.

If my reader(s) have any insights, I would appreciate hearing from them.

The People Have Spoken, the Bastards!*

Hillary Clinton crushed Bernie Sanders in South Carolina:

Drawing overwhelming support from the African-American voters who deserted her here eight years ago, Hillary Clinton won her first resounding victory of the 2016 campaign in South Carolina on Saturday, delivering a blow to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont as their fight turns to the 11 states where Democrats vote on Tuesday.

After supporting Barack Obama in 2008, black voters, who will be the dominant force in the coming Southern primaries, turned out in droves for Mrs. Clinton here. They chose her over Mr. Sanders by more than six to one, while white voters narrowly favored her as well, according to exit polls.

………

This time it was Mrs. Clinton who emerged from the first southern primary with a clearer path to the nomination. With 99 percent of the vote counted, Mrs. Clinton won 73.5 percent, to 26 percent for Mr. Sanders. Turnout was about 370,000, according to Edison Research — modest compared with the 532,000 ballots cast in the Clinton-Obama primary race here in 2008, and well below the record 743,000 votes cast in South Carolina’s Republican primary last Saturday, which Mr. Trump won.

Some observations:

• She beat him by nearly 3 to 1, so Sanders lost this ugly.
• There was not a whole bunch of voter enthusiasm. Turnout was low.

I think that the Sanders campaign needs to work on its ground game in general, and its GOTV effort in particular.

Bernie's demographic trends younger, and it is difficult to get younger voters to show up at the ballot box.

I was hoping for Sanders to stay within single digits, so I has a sad right now.

^*Not my quote, it comes from the inestimable Dick Tuck.

Charlie Played the Lead in Little Shop of Horrors Tonight

He played Seymour Krelborn.

He did a very good job, and his portrayal was remarkably dark, at least as compared to my recollections of the original Broadway show that I saw many decades ago.

He mentioned to me that he was channeling his middle school experiences, and I saw that.

He and Natalie clearly got their singing voices from my mom, because neither my wife or I can carry a tune.

Emails: Flint water warnings reached gov's inner circle

Another email dump, and now we have proof that the Governor's senior staff knew of the problems with Flint's water over a year before they acknowledged the problem

Two top advisers to Gov. Rick Snyder urged switching Flint back to Detroit’s water system in October 2014 after General Motors Co. said the city’s heavily chlorinated river water was rusting engine parts, according to governor’s office emails examined by The Detroit News.

Valerie Brader, then Snyder’s environmental policy adviser, requested that the governor’s office ask Flint’s emergency manager to return to Detroit’s system on Oct. 14, 2014, three weeks before Snyder’s re-election.

Mike Gadola, then the governor’s chief legal counsel, agreed Flint should be switched back to Detroit water nearly a year before state officials relented to public pressure and independent research showing elevated levels of lead in the water and bloodstreams of Flint residents.

“To anyone who grew up in Flint as I did, the notion that I would be getting my drinking water from the Flint River is downright scary,” Gadola wrote. “Too bad the (emergency manager) didn’t ask me what I thought, though I’m sure he heard it from plenty of others.”

………

Brader’s email alludes to festering concerns about how the chlorine used to kill the bacteria outbreak was causing the formation of a harmful disinfection byproduct known as trihalomethane, a carcinogen that can increase the risk of cancer, liver, kidney and central nervous system problems.

“Specifically, there has been a boil water order due to bacterial contamination,” Brader wrote. “What is not yet broadly known is that attempts to fix that have led to some levels of chlorine-related chemicals that can cause long-term damage if not remedied (though we believe they will remedy them before any damage would occur in the population).”

Two months later, the Department of Environmental Quality issued a Safe Drinking Water Act violation to Flint for the high levels of trihalomethanes in the water. Flint violated the law twice more until coming into compliance on Sept. 2, 2015, state records show.

Despite the staff concerns about the city’s brownish water quality, Snyder’s staff never took a recommendation to him that Flint be switched back to Detroit water until the following October.

The Governor was not told because he made it clear that he did not want to be told.

We need to see some depraved heart murder prosecutions.

F%$# the Mouse

You know, now that Mickey has stopped palling around with Michael Eisner, Disney has really gone to the dark side:

The Walt Disney Company has a reputation for lobbying hard on copyright issues. The 1998 copyright extension has even been dubbed the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” by activists like Lawrence Lessig that have worked to reform copyright laws.

This year, the company is turning to its employees to fund some of that battle. Disney CEO Bob Iger has sent a letter to the company’s employees, asking for them to open their hearts—and their wallets—to the company’s political action committee, DisneyPAC.

In the letter, which was provided to Ars by a Disney employee, Iger tells workers about his company's recent intellectual property victories, including stronger IP protections in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a Supreme Court victory that destroyed Aereo, and continued vigilance about the "state of copyright law in the digital environment." It also mentions that Disney is seeking an opening to lower the corporate tax rate.

"With the support of the US Government we achieved a win in the Supreme Court against Aereo—an Internet service claiming the right to retransmit our broadcast signals without paying copyright or retransmission consent fees," writes Iger. "In the coming year, we expect Congress and the Administration to be active on copyright regime issues, efforts to enact legislation to approve and implement the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, tax reform, and more proposals to weaken retransmission consent, to name a few."

The source who provided the letter to Ars asked to remain anonymous, and they were bothered by the assumption that anyone who worked for Disney would agree with the company's political positions on tax, trade, intellectual property, and other matters.

"It just seems insensitive to folks that support the company but don't necessarily support all of its priorities," the source said. "Especially for something like TPP, which I view as particularly controversial. We do have a company position, but there's going to be a wide variety of opinion [within the company]."

………
The Disney letter has language explicitly reassuring employees that their jobs won't be affected by their decision whether or not to give to DisneyPAC.

"Your contribution is important to all of us, but I want to emphasize that all contributions are voluntary and have no impact on your job status, performance review, compensation, or employment," writes Iger. "Any amount given or the decision not to give will not advantage or disadvantage you."

If you believe that Disney won't be making a list and checking it twice, you still believe in Santa Claus.

This isn't a United Way drive, this is a demand to employees that they give to an organization promulgating Disney's interest.

As I said at the start, f%$# the mouse.

Very Long, Read Anyway

How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable by the invaluable Matt Taibbi.

If  Mark Ames' 2004 essay, "Spite the Vote," gave us the big picture on Trump's appeal in a moment of prognostic brilliance, Taibbi's article explains the specifics, and the specific dangers.

He also makes a very good argument that Clinton is precisely the sort of candidate who will lose to him in the general.

I gotta look into Alyiah to Israel for my family and me. 

President Trump. 

I do not like that, Sam I Am.

Honestly, this is the Nicest Thing that Taibbi Says About the Morning Joe Crew In the Whole Article

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski should be herded into a rocket and shot into space for their brown-nosing of Trump

Honestly, it makes his savaging of Tom Friedman look like a walk in the park.

Go read.

Quote of the Day

Over at the LGM blog, notes that  Hans "Der novotenführer" Spakovsky is claiming that, "Voting is for Dead Republicans, Not Living African-Americans."

Von Spakovsky, whose entire career can be boiled down to 4 words, "Keep n*****s from voting," is now suggesting that Scalia's preliminary ballots should be counted as final.

But that is not the quote of the day.  The quote of the day comes from Warren Terra in the comments of another post: 

The joke here is of course that the delightfully named Hans Von Spakovsky has built a career as the country’s leading advocate of rejecting would-be voters on spurious grounds; now he’s got an actual corpse, and he wants to let it vote.

They really have no shame at all.

Finally, Someone Confronts Hillary About It.

Just Desserts at a Fundraising Dinner

I could call Hillary's endorsement of the penal state in the early to mid 1990s the "Elephant in the Room", but given the attendant political symbology, it wouldn't clarify the issue.

Bill Clinton was campaigning for president, and when he was campaigning for reelection, both he and Hillary Clinton acritively demonized black popular culture, see the "Sista Soulja Moment", particularly with regard to young black men.

Their crime bill was an abomination, and Hillary was blithely talking about "super predators" as a code word for young urban black males.

A black lives matter protester shelled out $500 for a fundraising dinner, and got in Clinton's face about her history:

Two activists with the Black Lives Matter movement interrupted a private fundraising event in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday night, demanding that the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton account for language she used as first lady about the need to “bring [at-risk youth] to heel”.

First reported by the Huffington Post, the protest began after Clinton told attendees about the need for police body cameras to stem police violence against members of the public. At this point, activist Ashley Williams stepped forward and unfurled a banner reading: “We have to bring them to heel.”

The banner’s text refers to a speech Clinton made in 1994 in support of her husband’s crime bill, the passage of which has since been criticized as having expanded the prison system and imposed unduly harsh sentencing on non-violent offenders.

“I’m not a super-predator, Hillary Clinton,” Williams said once Clinton turned around and noticed the sign, paraphrasing another line from the then first lady’s speech. “Will you apologize to black people for mass incarceration?”

Williams told the Huffington Post that she and another protester made a $500 donation to the Clinton campaign to attend the event, held in a private residence with roughly 100 attendees. Williams was eventually removed from the fundraiser by secret service agents.

Her eventual response, "Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today," is a non-apology apology.

What's more it is further reduced in meaning in that she delivered this message only in writing.

There is a problem with what you said 20 years ago. 

The bigger problem was that you actively promulgated a racist trope because it helped Bill's reelection campaign.

It is a very sad part of your history, and any apology needs to come from your mouth, and not from a memo dashed off to one of your pet journalists.

Britain, You're Grounded!

This pro-Brexit video is beyond words.

That's it, out of the gene pool.



H/t Boing Boing.

Sandoval to Obama: Drop Dead

It appears that Obama's attempt to spelunk his way into a supreme court nominee has failed, because Republican Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval's having none of it.

You know, this whole prenegotiating bit, where he offers concessions before negotiations start, is really pretty damn stupid.

You would have though that Barack would have learned by now that this is stupid, and all it does is demoralize your power base.

It almost makes me long for President Trump.

Anarchy in the UK

Your musical accompaniment

David Cameron has set June for a referendum on Britain leaving the European Union:

The UK will vote on whether to remain in the EU on Thursday 23 June, Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

The prime minister made his historic announcement in Downing Street after briefing the cabinet.

He said he would be campaigning to remain in a reformed EU - and described the vote as one of the biggest decisions "in our lifetimes".

Ministers immediately divided up into the leave and remain camps as the campaigns got under way in earnest.

Fasten your seat-belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

The Official Hat of Team Obama

A Spelunking Helmet for Frequent Cavers

There are reports taht Barack Obama is considering Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval as a Supreme Court appointment:

The White House is considering picking the Republican governor from Nevada to fill the current vacancy on the Supreme Court, scrambling political calculations in what is expected to be a contentious confirmation battle in which Senate Republicans have pledged to play the role of roadblock.

President Obama is weighing the selection of Brian Sandoval, a centrist former federal judge who has served as governor since 2011, according to two people familiar with the process. Though the review process is in its initial phases and it is unclear whether the governor could ultimately emerge as the president’s pick, even the prospect of his nomination poses a difficult dilemma for Senate Republicans who have promised not to consider any nomination before November’s elections.

Here's the kicker though, it turns out that Sandoval has explicitely called Obamacare unconstitutional:

The Washington Post reports that the White House is vetting Brian Sandoval, the Republican governor of Nevada who once labeled President Obama’s signature health law “unconstitutional,” as a possible nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Sandoval previously served as a federal district judge, the lowest rank of judges who receive lifetime appointments, for just under four years. He resigned to run for governor in 2009.

Though the Post claims that “Sandoval is increasingly viewed by some key Democrats as perhaps the only nominee President Obama could select who would be able to break a Republican blockade in the Senate,” the second-ranking Senate Republican poured cold water on this idea almost immediately after the Post’s report went live. According to Politico’s Burgess Everett, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) “says [it] doesn’t make a difference if Sandoval is the nominee.”

The fact that Obama would consider naming Sandoval is surprising, given the governor’s past statements on the Affordable Care Act. In his first State of the State Address in 2011, Sandoval said that “many aspects of the law are unconstitutional” and he pledged to “continue to fight to have them overturned.” He later personally signed briefs filed in the Supreme Court arguing against the law’s constitutionality and claiming that the Supreme Court “should hold the ACA invalid in its entirety.”

It’s worth noting that, after losing this case, Sandoval did agree to implement provisions of the law, such as its Medicaid expansion. Nevertheless, if Sandoval’s position had prevailed in the Supreme Court, Obamacare would have completely ceased to exist.

I understand that Obama is looking for items to bolster his legacy, and getting another Supreme Court justice confirmed by the Senate would be a feather in his cap, but Sandoval is only 52, and would likely be on the court for more than 25 years.

I understand your need to do your PPUS (Post Partisan Unity Schtick), and I know that you really want to appoint another justice, but it's not worth it if you have to appoint a bad justice.

Reasons that People Don't Trust Her

This hed says it all:

45 Times Clinton Pushed the Trade Bill She Now Opposes

She needs to own who she is and what she has done.

In this case, she helped negotiate the TPP and TPIP.

What an Unbelievably Transparent Cop-Out

This is why, if Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, she is likely to get beaten by Donald Trump:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton again refused to release transcripts of her paid speeches to big banks, telling a CNN town hall audience Tuesday night that she will only release her transcripts if her Republican opponents release theirs.

“Earlier tonight, I asked Senator Sanders: Will you give your transcripts of speeches?” said host Chris Cuomo. “He said he doesn’t have the bank speeches. If he can find any of the speeches that he did give for money, he will gladly give the transcripts up. So: Will you agree to release these transcripts? They have become an issue.”

Clinton replied: “Sure, if everybody does it, and that includes the Republicans.”

She continued: “Because we know they have given a lot of speeches.” She then went on to offer a defense of her Wall Street regulatory plan.

And she asked: “Why is there one standard for me, and not for everybody else?”

Because you are claiming that you are not in Wall Street's pocket, and the Republicans are in Wall Street's pockets as an article of faith?

Because you have made a specific claim that you told them to "Cut it out"?

Because you got over a half a million dollars for your speeches?

Because that answer makes you look like a whiny self-entitled jerk.

Because you are f%$#ing running for f%$#ing President of the f%$#ing United f%$#ing States?

Even if you believe Hillary Clinton's argument that she is likely to be more successful at getting things through Congress, which means that you have to ignore the fact that Bernie did more in the House and Senate than she did, this means that she is pretty damn near hopeless as a candidate.

She is the Martha Coakley of Presidential campaigns.

Letting her get the nomination likely to make Donald Trump President.

It Appears that we are Having a Spot of Rain

Lots of wind too.

Posted via mobile.

Headline of the Day

Hillary Clinton's Latest Attack on Bernie Sanders Sounds a Lot Like Mitt Romney:

Fresh off a vindicating win in Saturday's Nevada caucuses, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton found herself embroiled in a controversy over remarks denigrating rival Bernie Sanders' policy proposals as "free everything" — an attack, critics charge, that echoes Republican talking points.

The former secretary of state actually delivered the jab on Thursday, as polls showed her locked in a tight contest with Sanders in the Silver State. But the remarks didn't receive widespread attention until late this weekend, after Clinton defeated Sanders by more than 5 percentage points.

Speaking at a campaign rally, Clinton said, "I'm not just making speeches and not just promising free this and free that and free everything." The line was widely interpreted as a dig at Sanders' proposals for tuition-free public college and a single-payer, Medicare-for-All health system.

A familiar refrain? For many listeners, Clinton's remarks evoked memories of Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, both patrician Republicans who came under fire for comments suggesting that Democrats sought to curry favor with voters by offering free benefits.

I think that there is a lot more of the "Hillary Rodham Goldwater Girl" from 1964 in her than I had previously realized.

Depraved Heart Murder

The Governor of Michigan can now be shown to have studiously ignored the outbreak of Legionnaires Disease in Flint, Michigan:

It was the Fourth of July, a warm summer night in 2014, but Tim Monahan was shivering in a thick blanket as he watched fireworks from his front yard here. By the next afternoon his temperature had shot to 104.6, and doctors at the hospital he had checked into puzzled over what was wrong.

Two days later, they had an answer: Legionnaires’ disease, a virulent form of pneumonia caused by a type of bacteria that can multiply in water systems. Mr. Monahan, now 58, was given antibiotics and eventually recovered, but his case turned out to be at the leading edge of a Legionnaires’ outbreak that sickened at least 87 people in the Flint region, killing nine of them, from June 2014 through October 2015.

State officials still say they cannot conclusively link the outbreak to Flint’s contaminated water supply, partly because sputum cultures were not collected from patients. But the possibility of a link was raised in internal government emails as early as October 2014, and state officials did not inform the public of the outbreak until last month.

The Legionnaires’ cases started popping up as Flint residents were complaining about the foul-smelling, discolored water flowing into their homes after the city switched to a new water source, the Flint River, in April 2014. Soon they were reporting rashes and stomach ailments, and whistle-blowers eventually pointed to alarming levels of lead in the water supply and in children’s blood.

An examination of government emails, and interviews with people who survived Legionnaires’ and relatives of those who died, shows the government response to the Legionnaires’ outbreak followed the same pattern that prevailed throughout the Flint water crisis: a failure to act swiftly to address a dangerous problem or warn the public.

Even as more residents became critically ill with Legionnaires’ disease, and some died, the officials remained mired in jurisdictional battles, according to emails released by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the health department in Genesee County, which includes Flint. Some at the state level seemed more concerned about following bureaucratic protocol, and not raising public alarm, than protecting residents.

People were dying, and they knew it, and they deliberately did nothing.

It's depraved heart murder.