Least Surprising News of the Day

Many lawmakers and aides who crafted financial regulations after the 2008 crisis now work for Wall Street

Hoocoodanode?

Cynthia Nixon Did Not Win, but Neither Andrew Cuomo

With the active support of Andrew "Rat Faced Andy" Cuomo, the "Independent Democratic Conference" caucused with Republicans in the state senate, allowing the Republicans to run that chamber, and allowing the Governor to thwart any efforts that might upset his owners donors.

They were nearly completely wiped out in the primaries tonight, and it was Nixon's focus on this issue, particularly with regard to Cuomo's perfidy on the whole affair, was a large part of this:

Years of anger at a group of Democratic state senators who had collaborated with Republicans boiled over on Thursday, as primary voters ousted nearly all of them in favor of challengers who had called them traitors and sham progressives.

The losses were a resounding upset for members of the Independent Democratic Conference, who outspent their challengers several times over, but also a sign that the impatient progressive fervor sweeping national politics had hobbled New York’s once-mighty Democratic machine, at least on a local level.

The most high-profile casualty was Senator Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, the former head of the I.D.C. In that role, he was for years one of Albany’s most powerful players, sharing leadership of the chamber with his counterparts in the Republican conference and participating in the state’s secretive budget negotiations.

But on Thursday, he was defeated by Alessandra Biaggi, a lawyer and former aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, after a campaign in which Ms. Biaggi cornered Mr. Klein into spending nearly $2 million — more than 10 times what she spent — since January, an astonishing sum for a state legislative race. (Cynthia Nixon, in her bid against Mr. Cuomo, spent less.)


“If this doesn’t prove that political currency is people over money, I do not know what does,” Ms. Biaggi said at her victory party. “We have now cut the head of the I.D.C. snake.”

Mr. Klein did not appear at his watch party.

Also defeated were five other former I.D.C. members: Senator Tony Avella in Queens; Senator Jose Peralta in Queens; Senator Jesse Hamilton in Brooklyn; Senator Marisol Alcántara in Manhattan; and Senator David Valesky in Syracuse. The only former I.D.C. members to survive the primary were Senator Diane Savino, of Staten Island, and Senator David Carlucci, of Rockland County.

In another high-profile race, Senator Martin Dilan, who was not part of the I.D.C., was defeated by Julia Salazar, a 27-year-old democratic socialist whose candidacy energized young voters in swaths of gentrifying Brooklyn, despite near-constant controversy in the final weeks of the campaign.

“This is a victory for workers,” Ms. Salazar said standing atop a staircase in front of her voters at a party in Bushwick. “This is a victory for all of you, who every day have knocked on doors and have had meaningful conversations with our neighbors about these issues.”

The Democrats still need to pick up a seat, as Simcha "Shande Far Di Goyim" Felder will almost certainly caucus with the Republicans again, but I think that they can manage that,

As much as it pains me, I think that I have to quote Matt Yglesias:

Nixon, it should be said, really took one for the team here. 

No real politicians wanted to run a hopeless race, she stepped up, pushed Cuomo left on issues, shed light on the IDC situation and contributed meaningfully to their defeat. 

 Not bad work at all.

On the down side, Cuomo beat Nixon by 30 points, and Letita James beat Zephyr Teachout in the AG primary.  (Teachout had promised to aggressively investigate Cuomo, and James appears to be joined at the hip to Cuomo)
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1040433354229907456

Tru Dat

The good folks at Naked Capitalism came across this post mortem of what is now 8 years of electoral failure by the Democrats, and concludes that a lack of vision, and a complete unwillingness to stand for everything have led to the ongoing rout of the party.

The party establishment has refused to do anything even remotely like an analysis of what went wrong, so these folks did, and they say what I've been saying since about 2010.

People will vote for a bad something over a not-bad (good is too strong a word) nothing:

Executive Summary

Sample of Findings

The Party’s Base

• Aggregated data and analysis show that policies, operations and campaign priorities of the national Democratic Party undermined support and turnout from its base in the 2016 general election. Since then, the Democratic leadership has done little to indicate that it is heeding key lessons from the 2016 disaster.

• The Democratic National Committee and the party’s congressional leadership remain bent on prioritizing the chase for elusive Republican voters over the Democratic base: especially people of color, young people and working-class voters overall.

• After suffering from a falloff of turnout among people of color in the 2016 general election, the party appears to be losing ground with its most reliable voting bloc, African-American women. “The Democratic Party has experienced an 11 percent drop in support from black women according to one survey, while the percentage of black women who said neither party represents them went from 13 percent in 2016 to 21 percent in 2017.”

• One of the large groups with a voter-turnout issue is young people, “who encounter a toxic combination of a depressed economic reality, GOP efforts at voter suppression, and anemic messaging on the part of Democrats.”

• “Emerging sectors of the electorate are compelling the Democratic Party to come to terms with adamant grassroots rejection of economic injustice, institutionalized racism, gender inequality, environmental destruction and corporate domination. Siding with the people who constitute the base isn’t truly possible when party leaders seem to be afraid of them.”

• The DNC has refused to renounce, or commit to end, its undemocratic practices during the 2016 primary campaign that caused so much discord and distrust from many party activists and voters among core constituencies. • Working to defeat restrictions on voting rights is of enormous importance. Yet the Democratic National Committee failed to make such work a DNC staffing priority.

The full autopsy is here.

The malefactors of the party are on the run right now, even if the number of primary defeats are relatively small.

I hope that  the pressure is kept up in 2020, because the party establishment is definitely running scared.

Linkage

• These Officials Let 9/11 Happen (War Is Boring) We are talking about incompetence, not malice, and then these folks went onto torture, and they now run the intelligence establishment.
• Gaius Publius: Big Oil Seeks Billions from U.S. Government to Protect It From...Climate Change (naked capitalism) Specifically, they are asking for billions to protect them from increased flooding in Houston and other coastal cities.
• For 24% of rural Americans, high-speed internet is a major problem (Pew Research Center) Only 24%.  Us broadband sucks.
• Breaking the blockchain: Major projects shelved as hype fades (Financial News) Still no applications for the technology, even among hackers, beyond crypto-currency scams.
• Call for atheism to be included in religious education (The Guardian) Religious instruction is part of the UK curriculum, and now some are calling for atheism to be included.  My mom suggested that bible handouts in public schools needed equal time for Marxist tracts on atheism 40 years ago.  I approve.
• An outside view: Famous abusers seek easy forgiveness. Rosh Hashanah teaches us repentance is hard (the inner walls) My brother has an essay on repentance and forgiveness, and how this is not, and should never be, and easy thing.

Daniel Ellsberg on why Julian Assange is a Journalist, and should not be prosecuted:

Why Does This Guy Have a Job?

In a Congressional district that is important for Democrats if they want to retake the house, Rep. Henry Cuellar, nominally a, "Democrat", is raising money for the Republican:

Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat, had breakfast on Tuesday with an embattled Republican colleague, Rep. John Carter.

But this wasn't just a friendly bipartisan chat over huevos or chorizo at San Antonio's Mi Tierra Cafe.

This was a campaign fundraiser for Carter, who is badly in need of cash as he fights for political survival against former Air Force combat pilot MJ Hegar. Ticket prices ranged to $2,700 and Cuellar didn't just attend. He also encouraged others to donate.

Congressmen cross party lines to write and pass bills, and Cuellar and Carter have worked together for years. But it's highly unusual for a lawmaker in one party to help a colleague from the other to keep his job. It's especially remarkable given that Democrats are angling for a "blue wave" potent enough to dislodge lawmakers who, like Carter, have held safe seats for years.

………

"Sadly, this is far from out of character for Cuellar," wrote the liberal Daily Kos, which noted that Cuellar votes with President Donald Trump more than any Democrat in Congress.

………

As a member of the Texas House, he supported then-Gov. George W. Bush for president in 2000. Bush's successor, Rick Perry -- now the energy secretary -- named him secretary of state, Texas' chief election officer and the governor's emissary on Mexico and border affairs.

………

As The Dallas Morning News has documented, Cuellar has a long history not just of bipartisan cooperation but of going out of his way to provide political aid to members of the other party. 

Cuellar is in a district that has a PVI of D+9, and this ratfF%$# was renominated without any opposition in the primary.

There is a difference between a conservative Democrat and a disloyal Democrat, and Cuellar is the latter.

Nothing will come of this in the party, because he is good at raising money, his PR flack is quoted saying that, "The congressman is a member in good standing [of the DCCC] and has not only paid his entire dues for this Congress but he is also advanced his dues for the next Congress."

He raises money that pays the unelected consultants who keep losing elections, so he is safe from the party leadership.

F%$# that.

Quote of the Day

Cuomo beats Rahm for "worst Democratic politician in America" and I'm including any that happen to be in prison now.

—Atrios

Mr. Black is talking about the fact that "Rat Faced Andy" Cuomo is refusing to do a photo-op on the subway because he thinks that it is not a dynamic enough image for him.

In related news, Andrew' Cuomo's push to unveil the Mario Cuomo bridge before the primary election may destroy the new bridge:

A piece of the old Tappan Zee Bridge became destabilized Friday, creating “a potentially dangerous situation," which caused state officials to call off plans to open the Westchester-bound span of its replacement, the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.

Matthew Driscoll, the executive director of the New York State Thruway Authority, said engineers disassembling the Tappan Zee feared the destabilized piece of the old bridge could fall.

“Given its proximity to the new completed span, out of an abundance of caution, motorists will remain in the current traffic configuration until a thorough evaluation by Tappan Zee Constructors is complete,” Driscoll said Saturday morning.

It’s unclear when the new eastbound span will open.

“The second span is finished and ready to open to traffic as soon as the Thruway Authority is assured there is no risk to the new span,” he added.

The discovery prompted the Coast Guard to close the navigational channel under the bridge and the traffic shift already underway was canceled late Friday.

Seriously, this is the guy running on his successes as an executive?

His only skill is moral degeneracy.

Tweet of the Day

This is priority 1 of the power elite, to shame debtors, to humiliate debtors, to create a moral opprobrium against debt for the lower classes. Meanwhile the rich can use bankruptcy and strategic default all they want. https://t.co/Koi1BcaEqs

— David Dayen (@ddayen) September 12, 2018

Why some sensible people are getting to the point where they just want to see the world burn.

Capitalism increasingly resembles the fever dreams of Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker.

Amazon is Evil, Part Many

Amazon applied for a patent that would literally put its workers in cages.

Following a mild media sh%$ storm, they are now saying that this was, "A bad idea," and that they would never do this.

Yeah, right:

No one ever said working at Amazon was a relaxed experience. The e-commerce giant is well known for its taxing workplace culture, but putting warehouse workers in cages seems a bit extreme, even for Amazon.

But a patent, granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to Amazon in 2016, would make that dystopian cubicle a reality. The patent shows a cage built for a human working in robot work zones, a small work station atop a robot trolley like the kind already used in Amazon warehouses to move shelving. The patent was highlighted in a study by two artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, New York University distinguished research professor Kate Crawford and director of the research lab Share Foundation Vladan Joler. In their analysis, Crawford and Joler noted “an extraordinary illustration of worker alienation, a stark moment in the relationship between humans and machines.”

When the study was reported by news outlets including The Seattle Times, there was (predictable) blowback on social media. Amazon senior vice president of operations Dave Clark even weighed in on Twitter, explaining that even “bad” ideas are submitted for patents, and that the company has no plans to implement the cages.

Yeah, right.

They are saying, "Never," but I am hearing, "And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen!

In the ongoing corruption trials involving members of the Baltimore City police department, it has been revealed that Baltimore police officers routinely carry toy guns to plant on people when they shoot them:  (I missed this revelation when it came out 9 months ago)

Last week, the beginning of an explosive corruption trial involving eight members of Baltimore's elite Gun Trace Task Force revealed that a handful of Baltimore cops allegedly kept fake guns in their patrol cars to plant on innocent people—a failsafe they could use if they happened to shoot an unarmed suspect, the Baltimore Sun reports.

Detective Maurice Ward, who's already pleaded guilty to corruption charges, testified that he and his partners were told to carry the replicas and BB guns "in case we accidentally hit somebody or got into a shootout, so we could plant them." The directive allegedly came from the team's sergeant, Wayne Jenkins, the Washington Post reports. Though Ward didn't say whether or not the tactic was ever used, Detective Marcus Taylor—another cop swept up in the scandal—was carrying a fake gun almost identical to his service weapon when he was arrested last year, according to the Sun. 

………

But the BB gun testimony is particularly disturbing in light of 12-year-old Tamir Rice's death in 2014, the 13-year-old in Baltimore who was shot twice by cops in 2016 after he allegedly sprinted from them with a replica gun in his hand, and the 86 people fatally shot by police in 2015 and 2016 who were spotted carrying toy guns.

Think about that if you are ever on a jury, or a grand jury, investigating a shooting by a cop.

Linkage (Rosh Hashanah Edition)

I queued this up for a post a few days ago.

• Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America (Institute for New Economic Thinking) on the Koch's favorite economist, James Buchanan, "His philosophy is so stark that even young libertarian acolytes are only introduced to it after they have accepted the relatively sunny perspective of Ayn Rand. (Yes, you read that correctly)."
• John McCain & The Uniparty's Funeral For Itself (Alpha News) A welcome antidote to the hagiography,"McCain’s political career was one disgrace after another, one betrayal of what he told his Arizona constituents that he would do followed by another."
• Good News! New Jersey Trashes VAM! (Diane Ravitch) New Jersey has lowered test scores from 30% to 5% of teacher evaluations, which should reduce the teaching to the test bullsh%$.
• The Impact of Chief Diversity Officers on Diverse Faculty Hiring (National Bureau of Economic Research Spoiler, no effect, but, on the brighter side, you get another highly paid do-nothing administrator.
• How Big Pharma Was Captured by the One Percent (The New Republic) The story of Bayh-Dole and the privatization of public publicly funded research.
• Alleged Lobster Embezzlement Is Most New England Crime Ever (Grub Street) No comment necessary.

If only the Australian Government were so honest:

Rule Number 1 of Telcos: They Will F%$# the Consumer Whenever They Can

Rule number 2 is: GOTO 1

Case in point, wireless carriers got caught throttling Netflix and Youtube:

Anyone holding out hope that the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of net neutrality rules wouldn’t affect their internet better brace for some bad news. New research from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Northeastern suggests that all of the major U.S. telecom companies have been throttling traffic to and from apps like Netflix and YouTube. That means customers are getting lower quality video, because the internet service providers say so.

The data that backs up this startling claim comes from over 500,000 tests that looked at more 2,000 ISPs worldwide. Everything was collected through an app called Wehe, developed by the researchers, that has been downloaded by over 100,000 people. This amounts to one of the largest studies of its kind. Verizon appears to be the biggest culprit with 11,100 instances of what the researchers call “differentiation,” most of which involves throttling. AT&T was spotted treating traffic differently 8,398 times, and they identified T-Mobile doing it almost 3,900 times.

Need a few more stats to get angry? The throttling observed through the Wehe app was not minor. Bloomberg gives an example of a recent test wherein “Netflix speeds were 1.77 megabits per second on T-Mobile, compared with the 6.62 megabits-per-second speed available to other traffic on the network at the same time.” That’s about one third as fast. David Choffnes, one of the researchers behind the Wehe app, says YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, and NBC Sports have been throttled in similar ways.

………

None of this means that big telecom companies will change how they’re operating. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile all told Bloomberg that these instances of differentiation simply meant that they were managing internet traffic. “And people probably don’t notice because the video still streams at DVD quality levels,” Bloomberg reports. “If you want high-definition video, you can pay more, the carriers say.”

………

We don’t know what will happen next in that fight, but one thing does look very clear. Given the opportunity, it looks like big telecom companies can and will throttle internet traffic, unless their customers pay more money. Extrapolated over time, this principle could fracture the internet as we know it into fiefdoms and walled gardens, where only the rich get access to certain information and services. If this sounds like a bad idea, you can email Ajit Pait at this address.

I think that the best solution is public ownership of telecommunications services, but I tend to be fairly far along that philosophical axis, so YMMV.

The Mistake Jet Abides

It looks like there will be another delay for the f-35:

The troubled $1.5 trillion F-35 program is not ready to begin the critical combat-testing phase, the Pentagon’s testing director said in a previously undisclosed August memo obtained by the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). That decision marks another setback in the development of the Pentagon’s largest acquisition program.

The memo, issued on August 24, 2018, says the program has not met the necessary entry criteria to begin the crucial combat-testing phase called Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E). It comes on the heels of the revelation, reported first by POGO, that program officials have been trying to make it appear as though the program has completed the development phase, by altering paperwork to reclassify potentially life-threatening design flaws to give the appearance of progress rather than actually fixing them.

This has gotten to be a remarkably routine thing:  The aircraft experiences problems, so the program managers move the goal posts.

It's no way to develop a successful weapon system.

Also, Not a Surprise

Conservative economists are wrong, minimum wage increases improve the lot of workers with little or no change in employment:

The minimum wage increases that started four years ago in SeaTac are spreading across the country, but economists continue to study – and disagree about – the impact of the new policies on pay and jobs.

The latest look at increased wage floors in six U.S. cities, including Seattle, finds that food-service workers saw increases in pay and no widespread job losses. That reinforces the conclusions that the same group of University of California, Berkeley, researchers reached in 2017 after studying the impact just in Seattle.

This time, the Berkeley researchers examined Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Chicago and Washington, D.C., where minimum wages at the end of 2016 – the end of the study period – ranged from $10 to $13.

“We find that they are working just as the policymakers and voters who enacted these policies intended,” said Sylvia Allegretto, co-author of the report and co-chair of Berkeley’s Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. “So far they are raising the earnings of low-wage workers without causing significant employment losses.”

This is the latest in a series of studies showing the same effects, but it won't change the minds of the Freshwater (conservative) economists, because they are even more impervious to reality than the economics field as a whole.

Not a Surprise

Since Amazon's takeover of Whole Foods, the lot of its employees has deteriorated.
There have been benefit cuts, layoffs, and the implementation of a new centralized inventory system that has led to empty shelves and crushed worker morale.

Think of it as the, "Amazon Way," transferred from their hellhole warehouses to the local grocery store.

Now there is an aggressive effort to unionize, which is not a suprise

From the moment that Whole Foods sold out to Amazon, it was clear that the lip service that the grocer had paid to treating its employees well was, to quote Ron Zeigler, "Inoperative":

A group of workers at Whole Foods Market is leading an effort to establish a union for the Amazon-owned company’s 85,000+ workforce.

In a letter addressed to Whole Foods employees, the group — members of Whole Foods’ cross-regional committee — wrote that they are “concerned about the direction” of Whole Foods in an Amazon era. The letter outlines several demands, including a $15 minimum wage for all employees, 401k matching, paid maternity leave, lower health insurance deductibles and more.

“We cannot let Amazon remake the entire North American retail landscape without embracing the full value of its team members. The success of Amazon and [Whole Foods] should not come at the cost of exploiting our dedication and threatening our economic stability,” they wrote.

………

The letter, which calls out both Jeff Bezos and Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey directly, says there will “continue to be layoffs in 2019 and beyond as Amazon aims to aggressively trim our labor force before it expands with new technology and labor models.”

Since the Amazon acquisition, several hundred Whole Foods workers have been laid-off as Amazon infuses “Whole Foods with its efficient, data-driven ethos,” per The Wall Street Journal. Shoppers, however, have saved millions as a result of the shake-up.

………

Here’s the full letter, obtained by New Food Economy.

Well, Now We Know What it Takes for Alex Jones Banned from Twitter

Because he just got banned from Twitter.

Twitter is not being particularly forthcoming about the proverbial straw that broke the proverbial camel's proverbial back, but I think that what got Dorsey to stop protecting him was that, he finally had to meat Jones in meat space:

A peanut gallery of three white supremacists and conspiracy theorists are watching Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testify before Congress Wednesday.

All three have been banned from major social media platforms for violating their rules — and they’re using today’s hearings to confront them, and to try to force members of Congress to stand by them.

Alex Jones, a well-known internet conspiracy theorist, sat in the audience at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing to “face his accusers,” referring to Sandberg and Dorsey. Also in the front row at the hearing was internet troll Charles Johnson; Twitter banned him from the site permanently after he threatened to “take out” a Black Lives Matter activist. Present on the Hill as well was Laura Loomer, an alt-right activist who alleged that the shootings at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, were staged; she has been suspended from Facebook and Twitter in the past.

That's Jones on the right, and Dorsey on the left, and, rather inexplicably, a glass-hole^* wearing a congressional staffer (see the name tag) and a really tall guy in between them.

So the reason that Alex Jones is gone from Twitter, is not for doxxing the families of victims of mass shootings and forcing them to move, and not for calling for violence against people, it is for coming within about 2 meters of Jack Dorsey, and as a very rich man, Dorsey wants to remain apart from such unpleasantness.

Jack Dorsey is an asshole ……… standing next to a glass-hole.

^*Someone out there is still wearing Google Glasses, and they are known as glass-holes.

OK, this is Evil, Even by the Standards of ICE

In North Carolina, ICE has convinced the USA to subpoena voting records every county board of elections in the eastern half of North Carolina.

Among other things, this might have the effect of revealing actual votes in early voting and absentee ballots:

Immigration authorities want North Carolina elections officials to turn over nearly a decade’s worth of voting records by the end of the month.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina subpoenaed records Friday from the state board of elections and 44 county elections boards in the eastern part of the state. A meeting notice from the board says the subpoena came at the request of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Among the state records from Jan. 1, 2010 through Aug. 30, 2018 that were requested: all voter registration applications, federal write-in absentee ballots, federal post card applications, early-voting application forms, provisional voting forms, absentee ballot request forms, all “admission or denial of non-citizen return forms,” and all voter registration cancellation or revocation forms.

………

Wake County, one of the 44 counties in the Eastern District’s jurisdiction, received its subpoena Friday via fax. Documents requested from the county are: “Any and all poll books, e-poll books, voting records, and/or voter authorization documents, and executed official ballots (including absentee official ballots), that were submitted to, filed by, received by, and/or maintained by the Wake County Board of Elections from August 30, 2013 through August 30, 2018.”

The state board said the request for “executed official ballots” for the 44 counties includes more than 2.2 million ballots that are traceable to the voters who cast them. These are ballots that were cast by mail or at early voting, according to the board. Those ballots have an identifying number on them. The request includes more than 3.3 million ballots that cannot be traced to individuals who voted on Election Day.

………

Gary Sims, the director of Wake County’s board of elections, said his staff has not begun to gather the data requested nor has it responded to the subpoena. The state and counties must appear in court with the documents in Wilmington on Sept. 25 at 8 a.m.

They are asking for 5 years of voting records, including ballots that can be tied to individual voters.

This is wrong on so many levels, it boggles the mind.

While there has been no public comment from the US Attorney, the nature of this court order clearly implies this is being driven by electoral, and not immigration, considerations.

This stinks to high heaven.

Kisses and Squeezy Hugs

Natalie is giving a speech in class, and she wanted to use one of the poems that my dad had written.

She read a couple and one was about shopping, and all I could think of was, "Kisses and squeezy hugs."

Cue the wavy flashback camera thing:

Many, many years ago, my mom sent my dad to the grocery store with a shopping list.

At the bottom were two items, "Kisses and Squeezy Hugs."  (I bet you can see where this is going)

About an hour and a half later, he frantically called my mom from the store.

He could not find the squeezy hugs. (He thought that it was one of the new brands of cereal out there)

According to family lore, it took at least 15 minutes for my mom to stop laughing, and explain to my clueless dad that, "Kisses and Squeezy Hugs," were not items on the shopping list, but a romantic note that spouses sometimes leave for each other.

I guess that every family has stories like this, and I've been thinking about ours a lot lately.

She'll be Back

The fraudulent blood test company Theranos is liquidating:

Theranos has told its investors that the company will wrap up, paying "unsecured creditors its remaining cash," according to The Wall Street Journal.

The company's dissolution comes months after its top two executives, ex-CEO Elizabeth Holmes and former President Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, were federally prosecuted for criminal wire fraud.

Theranos, with Holmes at the helm, had claimed that it could run a slew of physiological tests with a simple pin-prick of blood. That assertion turned out to be false.

As Ars reported previously, in March 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil charges against Holmes, Balwani, and Theranos, alleging that they had committed "massive fraud." The SEC accused them of obtaining $700 million in investments by orchestrating an "elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance."

This is not a surprise.

I recalled that she came from money, she does, the  Fleischmann’s yeast fortune, as I confirmed on Wikipedia, but I found something else that was surprising:

Holmes was born in Washington, D.C. Holmes' father, Christian Rasmus Holmes IV, was a vice president at Enron

That's right, Enron.

Maybe that should have been a hint to the people who were so fascinated by her story.

I need to make it clear that her father was not involved in any of the accounting irregularities that brought down Enron, but one would have thought that it would have rung a bell among the clueless investors who showered her with millions billions.

Still, I do not expect her to see any jail time, she's from money, and she's white, so I expect a slap on the wrist, and maybe some probation and community service.

Dump Nancy

Nancy Pelosi has decided that she will do her damnedest to re-institute pay-go, which will once again make advancing any meaningful Democratic Party agenda nearly impossible.

In addition to the fact that this is horrible policy, this sort of pandering to rich beltway pundits bullsh%$ that led to the Democratic Party losing the House, the Senate, the White House, and something like 2/3 of the state houses in the nation:

In the first outline of the legislative agenda House Democrats would pursue if they take the majority in November, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has made the public a big promise, vowing to handcuff her party’s progressive ambitions, including in the event that a Democratic president succeeds Donald Trump, by resurrecting the “pay-go” rule that mandates all new spending is offset with budget cuts or tax increases.

………

Forcing budget offsets for every piece of legislation would make it more difficult for Democrats to pass a host of liberal agenda items, from “Medicare for All” to tuition-free public college. It continues a trend of Democrats caring far more about deficits than Republicans, constraining the activist impulses of liberal policymakers while giving conservatives free rein to blow giant holes in the tax code.

According to Axios, Pelosi “is committed to reviving” pay-go, which she instituted as a standing rule upon taking over the House in 2007. Though she waived the rule to pass the economic stimulus bill responding to the Great Recession, most of the other major legislative initiatives of the early Obama era — including the Affordable Care Act — were paid for. In 2010, Obama took this even further by signing the Statutory Pay As You Go Act. It enables presidents to enforce across-the-board cuts if Congress violates the rule.

A note here:  Given that the Supreme Court ruled that the line-item veto bill was an unconstitutional violation of the separation power in 1998s, the Pay as You Go Act is also likely unconstitutional.

Pelosi’s planned legislative package for the beginning of a potential House takeover would include establishing ethics and lobbying reforms, lowering the costs of health insurance premiums and prescription drugs, and spending $1 trillion for infrastructure investment. The latter two would cost money, and under pay-go it would all have to be offset.

That’s not necessarily a problem — liberals have plenty of ideas for how to raise revenue. But it puts them in a box, having to propose tax increases that Republicans gleefully broadcast. Meanwhile, Republicans, unconcerned with deficits, get to play Santa Claus, without having to match tax cuts with anything unappealing.

………

Progressives have grown incensed by Pelosi’s insistence on budget neutrality. “The pay-go thing is an absurd idea now, given the times and given what’s already been done to curry favor with corporate America,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., said to The Hill in June. He argues that, unlike Republicans who are happy to cut taxes by $1.5 trillion without offsets, Democrats would try to solve nagging problems with unnecessary shackles. Grijalva called it “irresponsible to try to tie up Congress’s ability to respond to economic downturns or, in the current discussion, to slash programs.”

A new vanguard of economists in Washington, including former Bernie Sanders staffer Stephanie Kelton, has argued that under modern monetary theory, public spending is only constrained when the economy is running at full capacity and inflation starts to rise — which is not remotely the case today. Public deficits, she points out, are just another way of talking about private surpluses. She has warned of the dangers of balanced budgets that take money from the hands of ordinary people, and has made some headway inside Washington. Kelton has been involved in strategy sessions with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and remains close to Sanders, who would chair the Budget Committee if Democrats take the Senate. But Pelosi has been unmoved.

In a statement, Kelton said that “pay-go is a self-imposed, economically illiterate approach to budgeting.” Republicans, she said, know this, which is why “they have unabashedly used their power to expand deficits and, hence, deliver windfall gains for big corporations and the already well-to-do.”

She continued, “Instead of vowing budget chastity, Democrats should be articulating an agenda that excites voters so that they can unleash the full power of the public purse on their behalf.”

I'm increasingly of the opinion that the Democrats won in 2006 and 2008 was in spite of Pelosi's complete lack of ideology as leader of the House Democrats, not because of it.

Seriously, to paraphrase someone who was not Tallyrand, he appropriated the quote, "She has forgotten nothing, and she has learned nothing."

Another Democratic Primary Upset Blowout

Ayanna Pressley  destroyed 20+ year Congressman Michael Capuano in the Massachusetts primary yesterday:

Ayanna Pressley didn’t just beat Rep. Michael Capuano, she buried the incumbent Democrat by double digits in the district he has represented for more than 20 years.

With more than 100,000 primary ballots counted in the state’s deep-blue 7th District, the 44-year-old Boston city councilor received 58.6 percent of the vote. Capuano, meanwhile, took home 41.4 percent of the vote. The 66-year-old congressman barely even carried his hometown of Somerville, which had propelled him into Congress two decades earlier.

“If you’re serious about running a grassroots campaign, you don’t just pick and choose where you think you can run a strong race or where you think you have a base of support,” Alex Goldstein, a senior adviser to the Pressley campaign, said Wednesday. “You try to change the map everywhere.”

………

Before the election, Pressley spoke of the need to expand the electorate. As NBC News reported, the 102,067 total votes cast in Tuesday’s election dwarfed — and sometimes more than doubled — the turnout in Capuano’s previous uncontested primaries. Even in 2006, when Gov. Deval Patrick, a Milton resident, was on the primary ballot, the turnout reached only 85,051. 

It is said that Democrats hate their base, and Republicans fear their base.

If the pressure is kept up, and progressives are not convinced to keep their powder dry, we're going to see some well deserved fear in the party establishment.

About that NY Times OP/ED

I've generally found Chris Hays to be a bit glib and shallow, but his analysis of this now viral New York Times opinion piece by a senior official inside the White House is spot on:

The op-ed is an attempt to take out an insurance policy for the GOP and conservatism if and when things get much much worse. It's a very public hedge meant to preserve the reputation of the GOP's entire political and governing class.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 5, 2018

This editorial is an effort at ass-covering.

The English Language Can Be Magic

I usually find the English language painfully boring, but then I found out someone invented a term for "fear of palindromes" and it's... aibohphobia.

WHO DID THIS

— Aria Vega (@heavenlyav) September 1, 2018

This is beautiful.

What a Pathetic Punk

If you ever want to see a portrait of cowardice, just watch Brett Kavanaugh slink away from the parent of a Parkland shooting victim:

When the father of a school shooting victim held out his hand to Donald Trump’s nominee for the supreme court on Tuesday, Judge Brett Kavanaugh looked at him, then turned without saying a word and walked out.

“I put out my hand and I said: ‘My name is Fred Guttenberg, father of Jaime Guttenberg, who was murdered in Parkland,’ and he walked away,” Guttenberg said in an interview with the Guardian.

The moment was captured in dramatic photographs, as well as on video from several different angles. In a statement after the incident, a White House spokesman said that “an unidentified individual” had approached Kavanaugh as he was preparing to leave for the confirmation hearing’s lunch break and that “before the Judge was able to shake his hand, security had intervened”.

 “If you watch the video, you see that’s not the case, ” Guttenberg said. “What the White House said was not true.”

Kavanaugh made eye contact with him “long enough for me to say who I was”, Guttenberg said. “He could have absolutely shook my hand and said: ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ I mean – if nothing else.”

He's a miserably excuse for a human being completely lacking in decency.

In other words, the very modern model of the modern Republican judicial nominee.

Adios Mother F%$#er

It looks like Chicago will be ridding itself of a parasitic infestation known as Rahm Emaneul:

In a stunning decision, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Tuesday morning that he will no longer seek a third term in office, signaling the end to what has been a tumultuous – and at times transformative – eight years in office.

With First Lady Amy Rule by his side, an emotional Emanuel said the time simply had come to write a new chapter in their lives together.

“I’ve decided not to seek re-election,” Emanuel said. “This has been the job of a lifetime, but it is not a job for a lifetime.”

Emanuel’s decision marks a dramatic political reversal, as for the better part of the last year he had said he would run for a third term. The mayor, long a prolific fundraiser, had already reeled in more than $10 million toward a bid for a third term.

Either he has realized that his political future in Chicago is done, because he tried to cover up a murder by police to help with his reelection bid:

Emanuel weighed the decision as the murder trial of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke is scheduled to begin this week, a high-profile case that is sure to bring about fresh scrutiny of his handling of the Laquan McDonald police shooting, in which Van Dyke shot the teen 16 times in October 2014 as he walked down a Southwest Side street holding a small folding knife.

For most of 2015, Emanuel fought in court not to release police video of the shooting, arguing the matter was still under investigation. When a judge ordered Emanuel to release the video in November 2015, then-Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez filed murder charges against Van Dyke on the same day Emanuel made the video public.

The controversy led to a federal civil rights investigation of the police department, accusations of a City Hall cover-up and weeks of street protests that called for Emanuel’s resignation. It also left Emanuel saddled with deep unpopularity among African-American voters, a demographic that he performed strongly with in his previous campaigns for mayor.

Or he is facing an indictment.

Given his fundraising prowess, and his overweening ego, I do not think that he would not believe that he could not turn his political fortunes around in the next 6 months, the election is in February.

The trial should be long over by then.

I'm hoping to see him being frog marched out of his posh Ravenswood home in handcuffs.

You have Got to be F%$#ing Kidding

There is a company out there that is marketing a cryptocurrency miner as a home heater.

Reality has completely outdone the human capacity for satire:

French startup Qarnot unveiled a new computing heater specifically made for cryptocurrency mining. You’ve read that right, the QC1 is a heater for your home that features a passive computer inside. And this computer is optimized for mining.

While most people use laptops, back in the golden days of computer towers, you could heat a room with a couple of desktop computers. And heat is still one of the biggest challenges when you’re building a data center. You have to cool thousands of computers that run 24/7.

Qarnot started thinking about edge computing for data centers back in 2010. The company has built three generations of computing heaters with multiple CPUs and sold them to construction companies looking for heaters for their new buildings.

………

And now, the company is selling its first devices to end users directly. The company thinks it’s the perfect use case for cryptocurrency mining. The QC1 features two AMD GPUs (Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX580 with 8GB of VRAM) and is designed to mine Ethers by default.

You can set it up in a few minutes by plugging an Ethernet cable and putting your Ethereum wallet address in the mobile app. You’ll then gradually receive ethers on this address — Qarnot doesn’t receive any coin, you keep 100 percent of your cryptocurrencies.

………

But that’s where the Qarnot QC1 stands out and could be the crypto miner we’ve all been waiting for. Mining has become increasingly harder if you have to pay the electricity bill. But you still need to heat your home during those cold days of winter. So why not mine at the same time. 

Seriously?  This is the most insane consumer heating technology since Ford Motor Company marketed the Pinto as a 4 passenger portable stove.

Oh My God, Think of the Children!

The New Yorker holds a festival every year.

It's you standard exercise in pseudo-intellectual mental masturbation, so all the deep thinkers, people like, "John Mulaney, Judd Apatow, Jack Antonoff and Jim Carrey."  (In case you are wondering, this is me mocking the whole enterprise.)

Well, the editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick, decided that it would be a good idea to invite white supremacist Steve Bannon, and the cancellations rained down like cluster bombs in Yemen:

Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, will no longer appear as a headliner at this year’s New Yorker Festival, David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, announced in an email to the magazine’s staff on Monday evening.

The announcement followed several scathing rebukes and high-profile dropouts after the festival’s lineup, with Mr. Bannon featured, was announced. Within 30 minutes of one another, John Mulaney, Judd Apatow, Jack Antonoff and Jim Carrey said on social media that they would be pulling out of scheduled events at the festival. Right around the time when Mr. Remnick announced the cancellation of Mr. Bannon’s participation, Patton Oswalt did the same.

………

In Mr. Remnick’s email to his staff, he said that even New Yorker staff members had expressed discomfort at the decision to invite Mr. Bannon to be interviewed at the festival.

Gee, you think?

How does someone who is too stupid to cut his own meat end up editing the New Yorker anyway?

Tweet of the Day

Woodward is sometimes an unreliable narrator and his sources are always self-serving. But in this case, his sources are also not well in the head, casting more than usual doubt on accuracy.

— Dan Froomkin (@froomkin) September 4, 2018

This is pretty much my take on Woodward's book about Trump as well

Woodward has always practiced a sort of journalism that has worked on the private agendas of his sources, and pretty much every one of his sources is from the Trump administration, which means that, by definition, they are a morass of bigotry, psychoses, idiocy, and malice.

Under such circumstances, a sense of perspective, and the ability not to miss the forest for the trees, is important, and Woodward is lacking here.

What frightens me is that his latest freak show may be soft pedaling reality as a result.

Today in Weird

Source if the leak

The leak in the space station was some screw-up with a drill who tried to hide his mistake:

Last week, a pressure leak occurred on the International Space Station. It was slow and posed no immediate threat to the crew, with the atmosphere leaving the station at a rate such that depressurization of the station would have taken 14 days.

Eventually, US and Russian crew members traced the leak to a 2mm breach in the orbital module of the Soyuz MS-09 vehicle that had flown to the space station in June. The module had carried Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev, European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, and NASA's Serena M. Auñón-Chancellor.

The crew on the station was in no danger, and, over the course of several hours, Russian engineers devised a fix that involved epoxy. A preliminary analysis concluded that the vehicle is safe for return to Earth (the orbital module detaches from the small Soyuz capsule before entry into Earth's atmosphere).

The drama might have ended there, as it was initially presumed that the breach had been caused by a tiny bit of orbital debris. However, recent Russian news reports have shown that the problem was, in fact, a manufacturing defect. It remains unclear whether the hole was an accidental error or intentional. There is evidence that a technician saw the drilling mistake and covered the hole with glue, which prevented the problem from being detected during a vacuum test.

“We are able to narrow down the cause to a technological mistake of a technician. We can see the mark where the drill bit slid along the surface of the hull,” Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, told RIA Novosti. (A translation of the Russian articles in this story was provided to Ars by Robinson Mitchell). “We want to find out the full name of who is at fault—and we will.”

………

In this case, the technician used glue instead of epoxy. As the Soyuz hull is made from an aluminum alloy, it could have been properly repaired on Earth by welding, had the technician reported the mistake.

The Soyuz manufacturing issue represents another significant problem for the Russian space agency's suppliers and its quality control processes. Already, the manufacturer of Proton rockets, Khrunichev, has had several serious problems that have led to launch failures. Rogozin was recently installed as the leader of Roscosmos to try to clean up corruption and address these kinds of issues.

Seriously, this sh%$ is rocket science, and everyone screws up.  You own it, and the Russians know how to use a TiG welder just as well as anyone else, and the fix along with post weld inspections, should not have taken more than a couple of hours.

Bondo is not an option in space.

One Way to Deal With Limited Launcher Capacity

Israel is looking at advanced propulsion technology to maximize the capability of what are necessarily small reconnaissance satellites:

Israel is working to sharpen its eyes in space, enlisting Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to improve the optical and radar payloads of the spy satellites serving the nation’s intelligence community.

The company is developing a new generation of satellites for even more complex missions, using nanosatellite production and electric propulsion concepts.

………

In addition to the imagery, Doron says the low weight and a unique set of reaction wheels in IAI’s satellites enable them to capture more usable images of an area of interest in every pass. Special reaction wheels also enable Israeli satellites to carry a smaller amount of hydrazine gas, usually used to enable the satellite’s maneuvers in space and to keep it at the designed altitude.

An ion thruster or drive is a form of electric propulsion used for spacecraft. It creates thrust by accelerating positive ions with electricity for satellites with optical and synthetic aperture payloads. The resolution will be improved, and the way the images are processed on the ground also will be enhanced with very advanced ground stations.

Reaction wheels are basically gyroscopes, and it means that there is no propellant expired to change orientation.

They are also looking at adding electric propulsion for orbital maneuverability:

To further prolong the life of full-size Israeli satellites, the division is evaluating the use of electric propulsion to replace the use of hydrazine. The system will use xenon gas to operate on thrusters, he says. According to Doron, the use of xenon will enable the satellite to orbit the Earth at a lower altitude but give it enough power to correct any loss of altitude that will be caused by greater friction with the atmosphere.

An ion thruster or drive is a form of electric propulsion used for spacecraft. It creates thrust by accelerating positive ions with electricity for satellites with optical and synthetic aperture payloads. The resolution will be improved, and the way the images are processed on the ground also will be enhanced with very advanced ground stations.

An ion drive provides much less thrust than a rocket or a thruster, but it's ISP (basically fuel economy) is far greater, with about 250 seconds for a thruster, and 3000 seconds for an ion thruster, which means a lot more delta-V with a lot less propellant, which means greater maneuverability and greater time on station.

The Law, in its Infinite Majesty………

There is now a bill on Governor Jerry Brown's desk, and given his corporatist bent, he will to sign it, that passes PG&E's liability for the wildfires onto its rate payers:

A bill requiring customers to bail out PG&E for liabilities stemming from the 2017 Northern California fires is now on the governor's desk awaiting his signature.

SB901 passed both houses late Friday night. The controversial part of the bill addresses the wildfires, including those that burned in the North Bay.

Cal Fire investigators determined that 11 of the fires were caused by PG&E. They have turned those cases over to the corresponding District Attorney's offices. PG&E could be on the hook for millions -- even billions -- in damages.

"Before we know what PG&E's liabilities are, we've already given a bailout and that's wrong," said State Sen. Jerry Hill. "What we voted on last night was to allow PG&E, if they are negligent and can't afford to pay that liability, we will pass that cost onto ratepayers, make them pay for it," Hill said, referring to PG&E customers.

What a surprise:  once again PG&E has proved that bribing public officials gives a better return investments in safety and technology.

The law is only for poor people.

Chickens Coming Home to Roost

Russia will not be renewing its contract to deliver US astronauts to the International Space Satation:

Russia’s contract to ferry NASA astronauts to the International Space Station aboard Soyuz rockets will end in April, Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov told reporters on Friday.

The expiration piles additional pressure on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to restore its capability to shuttle U.S. crew members back and forth to the orbiting lab. The space agency is contracting with Boeing Co. and SpaceX to develop new vehicles to transport astronauts, but the work has been plagued by delays.

NASA has relied on Russia since retirement of the space shuttle in 2011 ended U.S.-controlled access to the space station. Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration have touted the commercial program’s importance to ending that reliance, especially as diplomatic relations between the nations have deteriorated.

A Soyuz flight planned for April 2019 “will complete the fulfillment of our obligations under a contract with NASA related to the delivery of U.S. astronauts to the ISS and their return from the station,” Borisov said at the Energia Rocket and Space Corp., reported by TASS, Russia’s official news agency.

"Please give me a lift, you evil bastard," is probably the least effective way to hitchhike into space ever.

Sympathy for the Chocolatier

Nestle, the company that has pushed baby formula on the poor all over the world, resulting in malnutrition and death from tainted water, is now saying that it's just too damn hard to keep track of slave labor:

One of the world's largest food and drink companies has warned proposed legislation requiring big business to report on their efforts to combat modern slavery could hit consumers' hip pockets.

Companies operating in Australia with an annual turnover of $100 million or more would be required to annually report on the risks of modern slavery within their business and the actions they've taken to address those risks under the federal government's draft Modern Slavery Bill 2018.

The reports would have to cover issues related to human trafficking, slavery, sexual servitude and child labour within businesses' operations and supply chains.

Nestle, owner of more than 2000 brands in 189 countries, has told a senate committee that Australia's proposed mandatory reporting requirements could add "cost and time" to businesses and suppliers "which will need to be borne somewhere".

Capitalism at its finest.

Linkage

• WaPo Uses Photo of McCain with Nazi to Praise His 'Human Rights' Work (FAIR) McCain had a long history of photo-ops with monsters and terrorists while he tried to promulgate a neoliberal foreign policy.
• The time has come to nationalise auditing (Tax Research UK) It's a proposal for the UK, but the idea has merit everywhere.
• Officers Lose Their Evidence After Turning A Medical Emergency Call Into A Warrantless Search Party (Techdirt) Law enforcement screws up basic rules of search and seizure because they want to.
• McCain’s funeral was a disgusting exercise in historical revisionism (The Unbalanced Evolution of Homo Sapiens) Yeah, pretty much. The DC NPR stations was literally carrying the service live. I am sick of the hagiography.
• New Study Finds That NCLB Got Small and Diminishing Returns (Diane Ravitch) No Child Left Behind is a disaster, and it was designed to be: School privatization is its end goal.

My favorite song of Paul Simon, his paean to cynicism and detachment, Kodachrome:

How It's Supposed to be Done

Following their successful strike, Oklahoma Teachers have decimated their opponents in the state legislature:

For nearly a decade, Republican officials have been treating ordinary Oklahomans like the colonial subjects of an extractive empire. On Governor Mary Fallin’s watch, fracking companies have turned the Sooner State into the earthquake capital of the world; (literally) dictated policy to her attorney general; and strong-armed legislators into giving them a $470 million tax break — in a year when Oklahoma faced a $1.3 billion budget shortfall.

To protect Harold Hamm’s god-given right to pay infinitesimal tax rates on his gas profits (while externalizing the environmental costs of fracking onto Oklahoma taxpayers), tea party Republicans raided the state’s rainy-day funds, and strip-mined its public-school system.

………

Mary Fallin rode a wave of fracking dollars to reelection in 2014, while her GOP allies retained large majorities in both chambers of the legislature. With no organized opposition to counter the deep pockets of extractive industry, Republican officials could reasonably conclude that working-class Sooners had no material interests that their party was bound to respect.

But then, Oklahoma teachers decided to give their state a civics lesson. Inspired by their counterparts in West Virginia, Oklahoma teachers went on strike to demand long-overdue raises for themselves, more education funding for their students, and much higher taxes on the wealthy and energy companies — to ensure that those first two demands would be honored indefinitely.

They won one out of three. Despite the fact the teachers had no legal right to strike — and that the Oklahoma state legislature requires a three-fourths majority to pass tax increases of any kind — the teachers galvanized enough public support to force Fallin to give an inch. As energy billionaire (and GOP mega-donor) Harold Hamm glowered from the gallery, Oklahoma state lawmakers passed a tiny increase in the tax on fracking production (one small enough to leave Oklahoma with the lowest such tax rate in the nation), so as to fund $6,100 raises for the state’s teachers.

The strikers were pleased, but unappeased. They promised to make lawmakers pay for refusing to finance broader investments in education with larger tax hikes. “We got here by electing the wrong people to office,” Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, told the New York Times in April. “We have the opportunity to make our voices heard at the ballot box.” Hamm and his fellow gas giants (almost certainly) made an equal and opposite vow — that those few Republicans who held the line against tax hikes of any kind would not regret their bravery.

Last night, Oklahoma’s GOP primary season came to an end — and the teachers beat the billionaires in a rout. Nineteen Republicans voted against raising taxes to increase teacher pay last spring; only four will be on the ballot this November. As Tulsa World reports:
Republican voters handed out more pink slips to House members Tuesday.

Six of 10 GOP incumbents involved in runoffs were turned out and a seventh narrowly survived, as perhaps the most extraordinary primary season in state history drew to a riotous conclusion.

Between the first round on June 26 and Tuesday’s final results, a dozen incumbents — all Republicans, and all but one of them House members — lost primary or runoff races.

Such turnover is unprecedented for any recent decade, let alone year, and seemed to mark a dramatic shift in the Oklahoma Republican Party.

Each of those defeated Tuesday had, in some manner, earned the wrath of public education supporters during last spring’s occupation of the state Capitol.

………

Oklahoma’s historic primary season was no aberration. Last year, Democrats in the Sooner State won a series of special election upsets by speaking to popular outrage over disinvestment in education. In Kentucky this past May, a public school teacher defeated the state’s Republican House Majority Leader Jonathan Snell in a GOP primary. Snell had been considered a rising star in his party, and a protegé of Mitch McConnell. But he decided to spearhead a push to slash teachers’ pensions. So Kentucky teachers expelled him from office.

In Wisconsin, Scott Walker is facing the toughest challenge of his tenure — from the Democratic superintendent of the state’s schools. As the Koch brothers’ favorite governor falls behind in the polls, Walker has rebranded himself as “the pro-education” candidate. Meanwhile, back in Oklahoma, Mary Fallin’s 19 percent approval rating is giving Democrats a serious chance of reclaiming the Sooner State’s governor’s mansion this fall.

………

And last night in Oklahoma, teachers left the GOP’s House caucus covered in debris.

The lesson to be learned here is that it is better to be feared than it is to be liked.

The Last Time We Did This, We Created Al Qaeda

An anonymous source at the White House has stated that they will do whatever they can to continue the civil war, and hence the misery, in Syria.

If this sounds familiar, this is exactly the same policy promulgated by Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski when they decided to foment a civil war in Afghanistan, which directly led to the formation of Al Qaeda, and indirectly to the 9/11 attacks:

As the Syrian tragedy lurches toward a bloody final showdown in Idlib province, the Trump administration is struggling to check Russia and the Assad regime from an assault there that U.N. Secretary General António Guterres warns would be a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

The administration’s efforts are so late in coming, and so limited, it’s hard to muster much hope they can reverse seven years of American failure. But at least the administration has stopped the dithering and indecision of the past 18 months and signaled that the United States has enduring interests in Syria, beyond killing Islamic State terrorists — and that it isn’t planning to withdraw its Special Operations forces from northeastern Syria anytime soon.

“Right now, our job is to help create quagmires [for Russia and the Syrian regime] until we get what we want,” says one administration official, explaining the effort to resist an Idlib onslaught. This approach involves reassuring the three key U.S. allies on Syria’s border — Israel, Turkey and Jordan — of continued American involvement.

(emphasis mine)

Note that the author of this piece, David Ignatius has been a tool of the CIA for his entire career, and the US state security apparatus in general, and the CIA in particular, has been agitating for regime change since the start of unrest in Syria, and they are unwilling to let it go.

Once again, I return to this quote about the intelligence establishment:

It is not the story of men and women who have a better and deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of us.

Damn!

After sleeping in today, the first thing I thought to do was to call dad ant tell him that I had won a cooking competition.

Dad was always very proud of his culinary chops, and I think that the news would have tickled him pink.

But he's gone now.

Here's Hoping that He'll Burn for This

The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that a grand jury will be empaneled to investigate Kris Kobach's refusal to properly rocess voter registrations as Secretary of State:

The Kansas Supreme Court is allowing a citizen-initiated investigation of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to proceed. The grand jury investigation will focus on whether Kobach, a champion for restrictive voting laws and anti-immigrant policies, mishandled voter registration information in the 2016 election, the Lawrence Journal-World reported on Friday.

Kobach narrowly defeated Jeff Colyer last month to become the Republican nominee for Kansas governor in this November’s election. He will now have to run for office while being investigated for whether his office was “grossly neglectful with respect to their election duties,” and engaged in “destroying, obstructing, or failing to deliver online voter registration.” Kobach denies the allegations.

The call for the investigation of Kobach began in 2016 with a petition from Steven Davis, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for state house in 2016 and 2018. Davis alleged that Kobach intentionally failed to register voters who tried to do so online in 2014. His petition was initially rejected by a state district court due to a lack of evidence. He filed a new petition in August 2017 after the Kansas state legislature allowed people to appeal petitions that are rejected.

The district court rejected Davis’ petition again, but a Kansas appeals court reversed the district court in June by ruling that it mistakenly required “specific allegations of a crime, when only general allegations are required by the statute.” On Friday, the Supreme Court denied Kobach’s request to review the appeals court decision, meaning that a grand jury will be summoned.

This is going on while Kobach is running for Governor.

I don't know if it will bear any fruit, but at the very least, it should make him a bit more circumspect about misusing his powers as Secretary of State to tilt the election in his favor.

Deep Thought

In court at Trial by Fire, where various awards were given, I was sitting in front of a couple who had two pugs.

It was hot, so the dog was panting, and the dog seemed to be asthmatic, so he sounded like a steam locomotive.

Typing with 9 Fingers

I spent this afternoon at the SCA event Trial By Fire, a competition in which cooks attempt to produce, and document, historical dishes under "Pennsic War"  (camping conditions).

You have 4 hours to do the cooking, using things like camp stoves, etc.

I have doing this competition for about 10 years, back when it was just an informal thing done in someone's back yard.

This time, I had found recipes (see below) in 3 (Main Dish, Grain, and Dessert) of the 4 categories (also veggie).

2 of the three dishes I did with charcoal on a sheet of expanded metal on cinder blocks that is on site, and in the process, I thoughtlessly moved a brick that I was using to put my camp oven above charcoal, and ended up with a blister on my right index finger tip, which is having me type 9-fingered now.

Things did not go exactly as planned, and I arrived about 40 minutes late to the event, which meant that I had to set up my workspace, and then start cooking with about 15% of the time already gone.

Luckily, two of the dishes were quick to make, and the last one had a lot of idle time, so I managed to get all of them to the judges in the nick of time.

I was shocked when my grain dish, Lombard Rice, won the grains category, a first for me.

Then, they announced that I had won the "Grand Master", overall award, and I was completely dumbstruck.

It appears that my main dish, Sour Lamb Stew, kicked some serious culinary ass.

I had a lot of fun, but I'm wiped, and I'll probably feel this tomorrow

Recipes after break:

Well, This Sucks

The EU just passed its new Copyright Directive, and it is a complete horror show.

Cory Docterow has the skinny on this:

Today, in a vote that split almost every major EU party, Members of the European Parliament adopted every terrible proposal in the new Copyright Directive and rejected every good one, setting the stage for mass, automated surveillance and arbitrary censorship of the internet: text messages like tweets and Facebook updates; photos; videos; audio; software code -- any and all media that can be copyrighted.

Three proposals passed the European Parliament, each of them catastrophic for free expression, privacy, and the arts:

1. Article 13: the Copyright Filters. All but the smallest platforms will have to defensively adopt copyright filters that examine everything you post and censor anything judged to be a copyright infringement.

2. Article 11: Linking to the news using more than one word from the article is prohibited unless you're using a service that bought a license from the news site you want to link to. News sites can charge anything they want for the right to quote them or refuse to sell altogether, effectively giving them the right to choose who can criticise them. Member states are permitted, but not required, to create exceptions and limitations to reduce the harm done by this new right.

3. Article 12a: No posting your own photos or videos of sports matches. Only the "organisers" of sports matches will have the right to publicly post any kind of record of the match. No posting your selfies, or short videos of exciting plays. You are the audience, your job is to sit where you're told, passively watch the game and go home.

At the same time, the EU rejected even the most modest proposals to make copyright suited to the twenty-first century:

1. No "freedom of panorama." When we take photos or videos in public spaces, we're apt to incidentally capture copyrighted works: from stock art in ads on the sides of buses to t-shirts worn by protestors, to building facades claimed by architects as their copyright. The EU rejected a proposal that would make it legal Europe-wide to photograph street scenes without worrying about infringing the copyright of objects in the background.

2. No "user-generated content" exemption, which would have made EU states carve out an exception to copyright for using excerpts from works for "criticism, review, illustration, caricature, parody or pastiche."

………

The mandate to filter the Internet puts a floor on how small the pieces can be when antitrust regulators want to break up the big platforms: only the largest companies can afford to police the whole net for infringement, so the largest companies can't be made much smaller. The latest version of the Directive has exemptions for smaller companies, but they will have to stay small or constantly anticipate the day that they will have to take the leap to being copyright police. Today, the EU voted to increase the consolidation in the tech sector, and to make it vastly more difficult to function as an independent creator. We’re seeing two major industries, both with competitiveness problems, negotiate for a deal that works for them, but will decrease competition for the independent creator caught in the middle. What we needed were solutions to tackle the consolidation of both the tech and the creative industries: instead we got a compromise that works for them, but shuts out everyone else.

This is a complete sh%$ show, and it's driven by the coverage by newspapers in the EU who believe that the underpants gnomes will make them a profit if this abomination gets passed.