Pass the Popcorn

Real estate developer Nate Paul, whose corrupt relationship with suspended and facing an impeachment trial in the Texas Senate Attorney General Ken Paxton, has been arrested on fraud related charges.

This is not a surprise.  Paxton has been using his position as Attorney General to protect Paul, and himself, for the past 8 years.

Now that Paxton's corrupt hands have been pried from the levers of power, it seems to me that a lot of people are making the effort to ensure that he does not get the chance to to further pervert the enforcement of the law.

Federal prosecutors have brought charges of making false statements to financial institutions against the businessman at the center of the allegations swirling around Ken Paxton, the impeached attorney general of Texas.

The man — Nate Paul, a real estate investor in Austin and a donor to Mr. Paxton’s campaign — appeared in shackles before a magistrate judge for 30 minutes on Friday morning, wearing a blue shirt, faded jeans and sneakers. He did not enter a plea, and was allowed to go home after the hearing.

Prosecutors accused Mr. Paul of exaggerating the value of his assets, telling mortgage companies and credit unions that he had more money that he actually did.

Mr. Paul was arrested Thursday afternoon by the Travis County Sheriff’s Office on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to jail records.

An eight-count felony indictment by a federal grand jury, unsealed Friday morning, alleges that Mr. Paul lied about his liabilities, his liquidity and the balance in his bank accounts, and that he falsified documents to obtain millions of dollars in loans that he would have otherwise been unable to obtain.

………

Mr. Paul has had legal troubles at least since 2019, when F.B.I. agents raided his 9,175-square-foot home and his downtown offices in connection with an inquiry whose specifics they declined to disclose at the time. Investigators for a Texas House committee revealed last month that Mr. Paul had asked his friend Mr. Paxton to help him learn more about that federal investigation, a request that may have violated the state’s public records laws. And since the F.B.I. raid, Mr. Paul has been embroiled in a number of lawsuits and bankruptcy proceedings.

Mr. Paul’s appeal for help from Mr. Paxton is the aspect of the case that has attracted the most scrutiny. Investigators and whistle-blowers who spoke up about what they perceived to be abuse of power in the attorney general’s office said that Mr. Paxton arranged a meeting between Mr. Paul and the local district attorney’s office, and later appointed a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Paul’s allegations about law enforcement abuses, even though members of Mr. Paxton’s staff raised concerns that those actions might violate the rules of the office.

If Mr. Paul is smart, he needs to flip on Paxton, sooner rather than later.

Otherwise, he will be sharing a cell with Donald Trump.

Well, This is a Surprise

The Supreme Court just upheld the voting rights act and allowed a case against Georgia Alabama to proceed.

I am surprised.

What's more, John Roberts, a man who has spent his career trying to restrict voting rights, authored this decision.

I am very surprised.

Clarence Thomas went postal in his dissent.

I am not surprised at all.

Then John Roberts called out Clarence in the footnote on page 18 of the majority opinion. (PDF)

He just called him an idiot in the circuitous way that Supreme Court opinions do:

The principal dissent complains that “what the District Court did here is essentially no different from what many courts have done for decades under this Court’s superintendence.” Post, at 47 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). That is not such a bad definition of stare decisis.

(emphasis mine)

To translate this into less arcane English, what Roberts is saying, "Justice Thomas, you are engaging in a screed is against judicial precedent.  You are a complete idiot."

The Supreme Court’s 5–4 decision in Allen v. Milligan on Thursday, which found that Alabama’s congressional map violates the Voting Rights Act’s ban on racial vote dilution, sends two clear messages. First, a bare majority of the court—Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the three liberals—believes that the VRA still plays a meaningful role in maintaining a multiracial democracy (or is willing to defer to Congress’ judgment on the matter). Second, that same majority of the court does not look kindly upon red states’ race to shred decades of precedent in an effort to wipe out the voting power of Black Americans. Roberts’ opinion for the court has a broader meaning that reaches far beyond this case: Red states cannot pressure the court into rewriting the VRA for no reason other than their shameless, brazen desire to elect more white Republicans.

Milligan revolves around Alabama’s current congressional map, which GOP legislators drew after the 2020 census. Black residents make up nearly one-third of the state’s population, but lawmakers gave them a majority in just one of the state’s seven congressional districts. They did so by drawing a single, snaking district that captured most Black communities, then dispersing the remainder of Black voters throughout majority-white districts. The obvious purpose was to ensure that Black Alabamians could only have a real opportunity to elect one representative of their choice.

This tactic is plainly illegal under Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits voting laws (including redistricting plans) that have a racially discriminatory effect, meaning a disparate impact on Black voters. In January 2022, a three-judge district court struck down the map, finding that it illegally diluted the votes of Black Alabamians. But the Supreme Court swiftly halted that decision on the shadow docket. Its order split 5–4 (with Kavanaugh in that majority), and though Roberts dissented, he objected only to the majority’s use of the shadow docket to overhaul precedent, and was open to narrowing Section 2 in the future. After SCOTUS’ intervention, it seemed inevitable that the conservative supermajority would use Milligan to eviscerate what remains of the Voting Rights Act.

But it didn’t! In fact, it did the opposite, vigorously reaffirming the ongoing importance and validity of this portion of the VRA in the face of ceaseless GOP attacks. Roberts’ opinion for the court on Thursday traced the history of racist voter suppression after the Civil War, leading up to the initial passage of the VRA in 1965. He explained how, in 1980, the Supreme Court held that the law barred only discriminatory intent, not effect—a decision that “produced an avalanche of criticism, both in the media and within the civil rights community.” Roberts wrote that some lawmakers were wary that an “effects test” (which measured impact rather than intent) would require a “quota system” or “racial proportionality” in districting, raising equal protection concerns. And so Congress settled on a bipartisan, “hard-fought compromise,” which amended Section 2 to require that the electoral process be “equally open to participation” by all racial groups.

I think that this decision, and Roberts' not particularly subtle dig at Thomas, is his way of saying, "If you weren't such a stupidly corrupt f%$#, we would have killed the Voting Rights Act deader than a door nail."

I don't know whether this is driven by a need to protect the court, or by annoyance at Thomas over the inconvenience that he has caused Roberts, but the Chief Justice does seem to be showing a bit of pique here.

It's Thursday

And initial unemployment claims hit the highest rate in nearly 2 years, 261,000 up 28,000, while the less volitile 4-week moving average by 7,500 to 237,250.

Continuing claims fell by 37,000 to 1.757 million, but this does not include this week, so I would expect the continuing claims number to go up rather significantly next week.

I think that we are already in a recession, but that it won't be called this year, though it may be backdated to this coming September or so.

Then again, my predictions are pretty worthless.

What a Surprise

The federal monitor of the Rikers' Island jail has reported that the man that Eric Adams appointed to head the New York City jail system is covering up wrongdoing.

This is not a surprise.  Eric Adams is arguably the most corrupt mayor of New York City in recent memory.  (Giuliani's corruption was largely post his time as mayor)

Adams has been appointing corrupt and incompetent cronies to positions of power, (at least when he is not appointing his relatives), and this was a foreseeable consequence of his becoming mayor:

A year and a half into Louis A. Molina’s tenure as New York City correction commissioner, the federal monitor overseeing the Rikers Island jail complex on Thursday took direct aim at his leadership, saying that the violence there remained unabated and that officials were hiding information about it.

“The commitment to effective collaboration, as evidenced by the department’s recent performance, has deteriorated,” the monitor, Steve J. Martin, wrote in a report filed in federal district court. “The department’s approach to reform has recently become characterized by inaccuracies and a lack of transparency.”

“These problems have grave consequences for the prospect of reform and eliminating the imminent risk of harm faced by incarcerated individuals and staff,” he added.

………

Thursday’s monitoring report was issued as Mr. Molina was facing intense pressure to turn around one of the worst crises to grip Rikers Island in decades. Appointed by Mayor Eric Adams in January 2022, Mr. Molina inherited chronic absenteeism that had peaked during the coronavirus pandemic and soaring rates of violence and neglect at the jail complex.

More recently, he has had to battle calls for a federal takeover of Rikers Island, avoiding that fate last year in part by promising in federal court to follow a plan to enact reforms.

As scrutiny of his department has intensified, Mr. Molina has taken steps that limit the public release of potentially damaging information, revoking a jails oversight panel’s unrestricted access to video footage from Rikers Island and reversing his predecessor’s policy of notifying the public when deaths occur in custody.

………

The clawing back of information from the public and failure to report deaths and serious injuries have drawn criticism, including from the City Council speaker, Adrienne Adams, who said in a statement last week that the council was considering “legislative solutions to address this administration’s backtracking on transparency and undermining of oversight.”

In a news conference after touring the Rikers Island facilities on Wednesday, Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, and Brad Lander, the comptroller, said that they would formally call for a federal takeover of the complex.

Thursday’s monitoring report sounded an even more urgent alarm than the one issued in May, concluding that “the current state of affairs in the jails remains alarming, not just for the rampant violence and frequency with which force is used, but also because of regression in the department’s management.”

………

Still, citing the findings of the monitor’s recent reports, advocates for people detained at Rikers Island were renewing their calls for a federal judge to strip Mr. Molina of control over the Correction Department and appoint a receiver to oversee the jails.

They said that Mr. Molina has obstructed the jail’s oversight bodies’ ability to know what’s happening on the inside, inflaming tensions and causing concern that problems were being hidden.

“This administration has not only wrought horrific levels of violence in the jails, but is increasingly authoritarian in seeking to shield its abuses from judicial and public oversight,” Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society, said in a statement on Thursday, adding that reforming the jails should be “placed in the hands of a trustworthy, independent entity that can do what the Department of Correction is unwilling or unable to do.”

"Increasingly authoritarian," is the brand that Eric Adams chose to win election.

This is why we are seeing brutality and coverups both in the NYPD and in the NYC correction system.

Not Celebrating until the Yellow Jumpsuit Is Not a Photoshop

Trump has been indicted on 7 counts by a grand jury in Florida, including violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy.

There may be more counts coming, both from the Florida and the Washington, DC grand juries.

Full details of the indictments have not been forthcoming, so I don't have much to sa.

I hope that this sticks, but I would not bet on it.

Still Cannot Make Planes

It looks like, Boeing has found yet ANOTHER manufacturing problem with the 787.

It appears that they are screwing up the shims again:

Boeing said Tuesday it has discovered yet another manufacturing quality flaw on the 787 Dreamliner — this time in an attachment fitting on the horizontal tail, referred to as the stabilizer — that will delay deliveries of the jet as mechanics work to fix the defect.

“We are inspecting 787s in our inventory for a nonconforming condition related to a fitting on the horizontal stabilizer,” Boeing said in a statement. “The inspections and required rework will affect timing of near-term 787 deliveries.”

The statement added that the defect in the tail is “not an immediate safety of flight issue and the in-service fleet may continue to operate.”

It’s the latest in a long and very expensive litany of 787 quality woes.

The affected attachment fitting is provided by a supplier and installed on the horizontal tail at Boeing’s manufacturing facility in Salt Lake City.

The defect is a small, paper-thin gap in the attachment, Boeing said. Such gaps are typically plugged using a filler known as a shim. The shims in the attachment were incorrectly sized so that the gap exceeded the five-thousandths of an inch allowable in the specification.

In April, Boeing discovered a flawed fitting inside the vertical tailfin of a different jet, the 737 MAX. In that case, “a nonstandard manufacturing process” affected two out of eight fittings that attached the tailfin to the fuselage.

To be fair, it's not that Boeing CAN'T make planes, it's that it CHOOSES not to, because it would divert money from its stock options.

I give you this anonymous account from Naked Capitalism:

Assembled in SC. My son tells me every damn last one of ’em has to be taken to Everett for rework. Honest to Pete. The stories I’ve heard from my husband’s uncle (89) who did 36 years at Boeing as an Engineer and my son’s recent two-stint experience working at the Fredrickson Plant right here near Tacoma, then training in Everett, then another stint in Renton. Then a couple my husband and I met. A couple in the 5th wheel next to us, the husband retired after 30+ years. Lots of parts coming in bad, the whole financialization. He directly saw, felt knew the impacts. This plane company is a manufacturing sh%$-show. David Calhoun needs a required unpaid two year internship working on the line in Renton.

(%$ mine)

Management does not care.  They get their stock options, and the hell with the rest.

Sauce for the Gander

Well to be fair the US is right to feel threatened.

Look how close China put its country next to all these US military bases pic.twitter.com/XdpdpJEQHa

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) February 28, 2023

Yeah, this

It appears that China has established an electronic surveillance installation in Cuba.

All things considered, this is not a surprising development.

The US state security apparatus has been attempting to overthrow the government in Havana for over 60 years, and Biden has done relatively little to return to the (slight) rapprochement between the US and Cuba during the Obama administration.

Continued sanctions have done more to preserve the Cuban regime than any support from the USSR, Russia, or China ever has:

Cuba’s deal to allow China to set up an electronic surveillance facility on the island in exchange for cash is the latest high-stakes twist in decades of strained relations with the U.S. as Havana struggles with its worst economic crisis since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The agreement has echoes of Cold War tensions that have long marked Cuban relations with the U.S. In 1962, Cuba allowed the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles on the island, just 90 miles from the Florida coast, almost sparking a nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers. For years the Soviets operated a large eavesdropping facility at the Lourdes military base near Havana, which was shut down after the breakup of the U.S.S.R.

………

The Cuban Foreign Ministry denied it had made any agreement for a Chinese surveillance facility in Cuba, saying the report was “untrue and unfounded.”

It really is remarkable just how self destructive and stupid the US foreign policy "Blob" is.

Their predilection for own goals is astonishing.

Welcome to Hell, Here is Your Accordion

Pat Robertson has died at the age of 93.

Just a brief rundown of his greatest, hits. 

• Gay people and abortion caused 911.
• Haiti deserve the earthquake that devastated the country.
• Feminist force people to become lesbians.
• Feminists kill babies.
• Feminists practice witchcraft.
• Abortion caused Hurricane Katrina.
• Gays and Muslims are Nazis.
• Towels in Kenya transmit AIDS.
• Called non-Christians, "Termites." 
• Called Hindus "Demonic."
• Supported war criminal Charles Taylor.
• Established charities that were for his personal benefit.
• Called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro.
• Accused gays of deliberately spreading AIDS.

After 93 years, he has finally done something to make the world a better place, by leaving it.

Tweet of the Day

As part of the merger, the PGA will control holes 1-8 and 12-18.

The Saudis do 9-11.

— James Hesky (@JamesHesky) June 6, 2023

This is in reference to Prince Bonesaw of the House of Saud buying out the Professional Golf Association and merging it with their LIV golf tournament, of course.

The joke is cold as f%$#.

The joke is also funny as f%$#.

What Is He Hiding?

For some reason, Mr. subliminal: hiding his corruption Clarence Thomas has decided to delay releasing his disclosures for last year.

I'm thinking that the Pro Publica exposé of his blatantly corrupt and unethical behavior has him spooked, and he is hoping to get a Republican in the White House before any potential reckoning.

Given the current scrutiny being applied to his behavior, it is unlikely that he can argue that he was just listening to his lawyer, or fellow justices at this point, so he's holding off until the heat is off: (Of course, Alito is doing the same thing)

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has asked for more time to file annual financial disclosures after criticism that he did not report luxury travel and real estate deals with a Texas billionaire and Republican donor.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. also asked for an extension as he has done in previous years. Both requests were confirmed by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on Wednesday, the same day that disclosure reports filed by their court colleagues were posted on the court system’s website.

The reports, covering activity in 2022 and detailed below, show that the justices earned thousands of dollars from teaching; received payments for books they wrote; and accepted free travel to lecture at legal conferences, including in Italy and Scotland.

Only one justice reported gifts: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who joined the court last June, disclosed a $1,200 congratulatory flower arrangement from Oprah Winfrey and a $6,580 designer outfit she wore in photos for a Vogue magazine piece.

The Supreme Court is under increasing pressure from Democratic lawmakers and transparency advocates to strengthen disclosure rules and adopt ethics guidelines specific to the justices after news reports revealed Thomas’s undisclosed real estate deals and private jet travel, and raised questions about the recusal practices of both conservative and liberal justices.

Thomas’s 2022 filing was highly anticipated after ProPublica reported on the justice’s financial dealings with his close friend and benefactor, Texas business executive Harlan Crow. Instead, Thomas will have up to 90 additional days to submit his filing, which could include updates related to his finances from past years.

"Highly anticipated," is an understatement.  It's major news, at least for reporters on the corruption beat.

As to reporters on the Supreme Court beat, I'm pretty sure that they have gone native.  (I'm talking to you Nina Totenberg)

If you could cross a great white shark, a wolverine, and a forensic accountant, that would get us the right person to deep dives on the financial statements of every federal judge in the country, including the justices.  (There are less than 900, so it would only take a few years)

Quote of the Day

The Pitchmen Who Made Out like Bandits on Crypto — Leaving Mom-And-Pop Investors Holding the Bag — Are Precisely the Same People Who Are Beating the Drum for AI Today.

—Cory Doctorow

Mr. Doctorow is correct.

Much like Crypto, there is no, "There," there.

You have some pattern recognition, and nothing that meaningfully resembles intelligence, and the solution of the snake-oil salesmen is to continue to shove more dubious data at dubious, "Machine learning," algorithms, and hope, as the joke goes, that there is a pony at the bottom of this pile of sh%$:

It didn’t happen.

The story you heard, about a US Air Force AI drone warfare simulation in which the drone resolved the conflict between its two priorities (“kill the enemy” and “obey its orders, including orders not to kill the enemy”) by killing its operator?

It didn’t happen.

The story was widely reported on Friday and Saturday, after Col. Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, USAF Chief of AI Test and Operations, included the anaecdote in a speech to the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) Summit.

But once again: it didn’t happen:

“Col Hamilton admits he ‘mis-spoke’ in his presentation at the FCAS Summit and the ‘rogue AI drone simulation’ was a hypothetical “thought experiment” from outside the military, based on plausible scenarios and likely outcomes rather than an actual USAF real-world simulation,” the Royal Aeronautical Society, the organization where Hamilton talked about the simulated test, told Motherboard in an email.

The story got a lot more play than the retraction, naturally. “A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”

Why is this lie so compelling? Why did Col. Hamilton tell it?

Because it’s got a business-model.

………


Tech critic Lee Vinsel coined the term “criti-hype” to describe criticism that incorporates a self-serving commercial boast. For years, critics of Facebook and other ad-tech platforms accepted and repeated the companies’ claims of having “hacked our dopamine loops” to control our behavior.

These claims are based on thin, warmed-over notions from the largely deprecated ideas of behaviorism, which nevertheless bolstered Facebook’s own sales-pitch:

………

If the problem with “AI” (neither “artificial,” nor “intelligent”) is that it is about to become self-aware and convert the entire solar system to paperclips, then we need a moonshot to save our species from these garish harms.

If, on the other hand, the problem is that AI systems just suck and shouldn’t be trusted to fly drones, or drive cars, or decide who gets bail, or identify online hate-speech, or determine your creditworthiness or insurability, then all those AI companies are out of business.

Take away every consequential activity through which AI harms people, and all you’ve got left is low-margin activities like writing SEO garbage, lengthy reminisces about “the first time I ate an egg” that help an omelette recipe float to the top of a search result. Sure, you can put 95 percent of the commercial illustrators on the breadline, but their total wages don’t rise to one percent of the valuation of the big AI companies.

………

The story that AI sophistication is on a screaming hockey-stick curve headed to the moon lets companies who replace competent humans with shitty algorithms claim that we are simply experiencing a temporary growing pain — not a major step towards terminal ensh%$tification.

 (%$ mine)

This yet another scam from Silicon Valley. 

Unless and until, the company founders who create these fraudulent businesses, and more importantly the VCs who execute their pump and dump frauds using these fraudulent businesses, are prosecuted criminally, this will continue.

This is not sustainable, and the longer wait, the more destructive, and disruptive, the final reckoning will be.

Maybe They Are Just Pissed Off?

On a number of occasions here, I have said, "Do not f%$# with corvids,  (Crows and Ravens) because they are extremely intelligent, engage in sophisticated actions as a group, including multi-generational vendettas, etc.

It looks like, I will need to add this recommendation to orcas, (Killer Whales) who have taken to sinking boats off of the coast of Spain.

I'm not sure whether this is as a result their pod members being killed by fishing nets, or by the extremely aggressive Spanish fishing practices (strip mining in the ocean), but something has definitely gotten them angry:

In the early morning Thursday, killer whales smashed into a sailboat off the southern coast of Spain, puncturing its hull and damaging its rudder. Spanish authorities raced to save the sinking vessel, according to Reuters, but it was in such disrepair it had to be towed ashore.

It wasn’t the first attack by an orca, or killer whale, off the coast of Spain and Portugal this year. And it may not be the last time one chews a rudder or crashes into a hull. Normally, killer whales aren’t considered dangerous to humans. But pods of killer whales have done serious damage to boats in the region about a dozen times already this year, according to the Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atlántica, or GTOA, a research group studying the region’s killer whales, part of a rise in attacks first observed in 2020.

Stories and videos of the attacks widely shared on social media have turned the orca into a meme. After the marine mammals struck some fancy yachts, some observers are calling the strikes concentrated around the Strait of Gibraltar, where the whales congregate in the spring and summer, an act of anti-capitalist solidarity from “orca comrades” and “orca saboteurs.” For others, the series of strikes is eerily similar to a scene in James Cameron’s latest “Avatar” movie, “The Way of the Water.”

So what is happening? The scientists studying the whales themselves aren’t entirely sure, either. But they have two leading ideas:

Yeah, the two theories are that the whales are just roughhousing, which I find unlikely since they target things like rudders which are calculated to disable boats, or vengeance.

………

Orcas off the Iberian Coast like to follow fishing vessels to snag bluefin tuna before fishermen can reel them in, putting the aquatic mammals at risk of being struck or entangled. Scientists have seen killer whales in those waters with fishing lines hanging from their bodies.

So it is possible, López Fernandez said, an orca had a bad run-in with a boat in the past, and is now teaching other killer whales how to attack vessels as well. The team suspects a female adult named White Gladis may be the one doing so.

López Fernandez emphasized we don’t have enough information to know the real reason behind the attacks yet. Even assuming the second theory is true, “we don’t know what that triggering stimulus could have been,” he said.

Stealing their food, injuring and killing their loved ones, what could possibly motivate them?

Set up a marine sanctuary and give them some space.

After a few years, they will probably mellow out a big.

Quote of the Day

I think my greatest usefulness lies in what I've had the opportunity to demonstrate -that the most "hopeless" criminal in existence can be salvaged; that he's worth salvaging, on both humanitarian and hard-headed social grounds. Retributive justice and the execution chamber aren't the answer. In seeking a solution to the crime problem, I believe that vision can and should be substituted for vengeance. I'm convinced that there is much that is narrow and negative and wrong in society's attitude toward and treatment of the man who is said to be at "war" with it, and who often is at war with himself.

—Caryl Chessman

For those of you who do not know who Caryl Chessman was, he was a criminal, and a nasty one at that.

He had a record of robberies, assaults, and serial rape, and he was sentenced to death for kidnapping under California's "Little Lindburgh Law" for kidnapping his victim, he dragged her about 22 feet out of the car before raping her.

Acting as his own attorney, the trial was 15 years before Gideon v. Wainwright, he managed to put off the execution for a dozen years.

While in prison, he wrote 4 bestselling books and dozens of articles, all dealing with the carceral process, and calls for clemency were made by such luminaries as Eleanor Roosevelt, Pablo Cassals, Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, William Inge, Norman Mailer, Dwight MacDonald, Christopher Isherwood, Carey McWilliams, Billy Graham, and Robert Frost.

He was a violent criminal, and he was a remarkable thinker, and a remarkable writer.

One wonders what he could have done if his life before crime, and his during his (very) numerous encounters with the law were a little bit more humane.

Stating the Obvious

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has made the call, and listed Moms for Liberty as a hate group.

They did so because Moms for Liberty IS a hate group.

It only took about 30 months, the group was founded at the beginning of 2021, so maybe next time the SPLC should act more quickly:

Moms for Liberty, the far-right parental group known for protesting at school board meetings, has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "hate group" for the first time ever.

Moms for Liberty, which recently said it knows liberal groups are spying on its activities because it's doing the same thing to them, is among 12 parental groups added to the SPLC's list of hate groups, according to USA Today.

"The Southern Poverty Law Center is for the first time labeling Florida-headquartered Moms for Liberty and 11 other right-wing 'parents' rights' groups as extremist groups in its annual report, released today," USA Today wrote.

I'd like to think that this would make other groups less likely to associate with them, but my guess would be that this will actually raise their standing among the right-wing.

Way too many people need to find a group to hate to validate their own empty meaningless lives.

This is Not a Surprise

A study at Political Research Quarterly shows that the political right is far more antisemitic than the political left.

This is not a surprise, particularly when one considers that the strident support of Israel exhibited by the Christian fundamentalism is all about the Jews dying in fire.  (It's a "The Rapture" thing)

To be fair, right wing support of Israel is also being driven by hatred of Arabs and Muslims as well:

A new study is casting doubt on the idea, held by some but not most American Jews, that antisemitism is just as prevalent on the far left as it is on the far right. Though far more American Jews consider the far right as the greater antisemitic threat, some academics and Jewish leaders have embraced horseshoe theory — the idea the opposite ends of an ideological spectrum are similar — and applied it to antisemitism.

………

A paper published in June in the journal Political Research Quarterly found that anti-Jewish beliefs are far more popular in right-wing circles, particularly among young people.

The results show that “there’s a problem on the young right,” said study author Eitan Hersh, an associate professor of political science at Tufts University. “It’s very interesting and, I think, concerning that we have this rare form of prejudice that is more common among young people and old people. It’s kind of shocking because if you look at other forms of prejudice, like racism, sexism, anti-gay attitudes, they’re just way higher among older people than younger people.”

For the study, a survey was sent to 3,500 American adults, 2,500 of them between the ages of 18 and 30. Respondents were asked to reply to a series of questions, such as whether they believe Jews are more loyal to Israel than the U.S.; if it’s appropriate to boycott Jewish-owned businesses to protest Israeli policies, and whether Jews have too much power. They were also asked questions to test for a double standard. For instance, one question would ask whether Jews who want to participate in activism must first denounce Israeli actions against Palestinians, and then a similar question was posed about Muslims denouncing a Muslim country’s actions.

………

He noted that antisemitic attitudes in young people were more prevalent in those who identify as Catholic, which could be a reflection of the growing “tradcath” or traditionalist Catholic movement, which openly condemns liberal reforms adopted by the Catholic Church and contains splinter groups that are often antisemitic.

………

Hersh said his hope is that this new data can be used to construct better, more efficient strategies for combating antisemitism.

Yeah, more efficient strategies.

How about going after the right wing to prevent terrorism.

 

Not a Surprise

Eric Adams ran for Mayor of New York promising a return to police impunity and law breaking, particularly against minorities and the economically disadvantaged. 

It should come at no surprise then that, police are returning to their lawless racist ways.

A fish rots from the head:

The New York Police Department’s anti-crime units are still stopping, frisking and searching too many people unlawfully — almost all of them people of color — despite assurances from Mayor Eric Adams that new policies and training would end the practice, according to a new report by a court-appointed monitor.

The monitor, Mylan L. Denerstein, filed a report in federal court in Manhattan on Monday detailing what she described as unlawful policing. Ms. Denerstein, whose position was created in 2013 after a court ruled the Police Department’s use of stop and frisk was unconstitutional, is assigned to oversee the units, which have a history of targeting Black and Hispanic people.

Earlier versions of the units were responsible for a disproportionate number of police shootings, and they were disbanded in 2020. Mr. Adams reinstated and renamed them after he took office last year, but critics were skeptical that they could be run without racially profiling young men of color, as previous units had.

Almost all of the stops made by the rebranded “neighborhood safety teams” analyzed in the report — 97 percent — were of Black or Hispanic people, and 24 percent of the stops were unconstitutional. Of 230 car stops included in the sample, only two appear to have turned up weapons, the report said.

Better training for cops will not get us better cops, much like diversity training does not produce make workplaces less discriminatory.

CONSEQUENCES produce changes of organizational culture, by which I mean firings, demotions, and prosecutions.

Unless and until you convince the racists and bullies in your organization that they face a real danger of personal consequences, they will not make meaningful changes in their behavior.

Old School. Literally

It appears that the academy is so concerned about students using "Clippy on Steroids" that they are returning to oral exams.

Nice to see the hallowed halls of academia running scared:

When the pandemic closed classrooms in March of 2020 and forced remote teaching, a top engineering student at the University of California, San Diego, anxiously expressed concern to a professor that her classmates would cheat, bend the class curve and lower her grade.

Prof. Huihui Qi considered the dilemma and introduced a testing method with a 2,000-year-old record that is today largely ignored: oral exams.

“The students were nervous,” Qi said. “None of them had taken exams like this before.”

That initiative led to a three-year research experiment which has now stretched across 7,000 oral exams. It comes as a wave of professors around the world are experimenting with oral exams to improve teaching and learning and to discourage cheating.

Qi believes the exams can push students past rote memorization, prompt them to think on their feet and reveal a student’s conceptual understanding of the subject matter better than most written exams. They are also very hard to hack.

They have one downside though, they are much harder to fob off on graduate teaching assistants, so the professors have to work harder.

Seems like a win-win to me, though I am sure that Professors frantically looking to publish papers in order to preserve their careers might disagree.

That Rabbit's Got a Mean Streak a Mile Wide!

Killer Rabbits

So, a Medieval historian were looking threough a manuscript, and found a 440 year joke list among the text.

The humor was somewhat ribald (no big surprise), including things like incontinence (no big surprise), binge drinking (again, no big surprise), and killer rabbits. 

Killer Rabbits?  What in the name of Monty Python?

Were the members of Monty Python a part of some sort of secret comedy society that has existed in the shadows at at Oxbridge for over 500 years?

Seriously, this is the only explanation:

It’s around the year 1480, and a wandering English bard walks into a bar. What does he say to the crowd of drunken peasants gathered inside?

A series of irreverent jokes about incontinence, killer rabbits and binge drinking, according to new literary research. The study, published in the Review of English Studies on Wednesday, found that a medieval tome known as the Heege manuscript is no ordinary notebook, but actually includes the comedy script of an unnamed traveling entertainer, otherwise known as a minstrel. The revelation means the manuscript provides, perhaps for the first time, a direct glimpse into the long-forgotten oral tradition of English minstrel acts.

These comedy routines are the medieval equivalent of late-night talk shows, said James Wade, the Cambridge University expert behind the study. The manuscript was probably transcribed around 1480 in England’s Midlands region by Richard Heege, a family tutor; literary experts previously considered its contents to be of uncertain origin.

“It gives us a glimpse into live comedy and entertainment in the Middle Ages that would otherwise be lost,” Wade said, noting some of the similarities between the minstrel’s jokey style and comedy that remains popular today.

………

The performer’s jokes paint a lively picture of late-medieval English humor, inverting everyday scenes for comic effect and frequently showing peasants and kings being stung by their own stupidity or greed.

In one pamphlet, titled “The Hounding of the Hare,” dimwitted peasants set out to hunt rabbits. In the chaos and confusion of the chase, the hunters end up preying on each other instead. The scene is so topsy-turvy that one of the peasants becomes terrified that the rabbit will murder him, rather than the other way around.

At one point, the tale goes like this (all stories here translated by Wade from Middle English):

Jack Wade was never so sad as when the hare trod on his head in case she would have ripped out his throat.

(emphasis mine) 

This is F%$#ing spooky.

Linkage

• Health Insurance Claim Denied? See What Insurers Said Behind the Scenes (ProPublica) You are entitled to every message, email, etc.  Could be useful.
• Monopolizing turds (Cory Doctorow) How the FDA has granted exclusivity in the world of fecal transplants, raising prices.
• Mortality Among US Veterans Admitted to Community vs Veterans Health Administration Hospitals for COVID-19 (JAMA Network) Short version: privatized VA services are more likely to kill you.
• Supreme Court term: William Rehnquist's anti-integration legacy is about to get worse. (Slate) William Renquist was actively supporting segregation while on the court.  Not a surprise.
• Trump Is Bad Because He's Similar To Other US Presidents, Not Because He's Different (Caitlin Johnstone) There was a lot of continuity in terms of US policy, particularly foreign policy, that was profoundly destructive.
• US looking to Japan to buy TNT for Ukraine artillery: report (The Hill) The US is running out of TNT for artillery shells.  Perhaps a return to federal armories, which would provide surge capacity for things like bullets, artillery shells, etc. should be considered.  The current arrangement does not provide for the exigencies of near peer high intensity warfare.
  

America's finest news source:

And in a Spectacular Own Goal

One of the most decorated soldiers in Australian history, Ben Roberts-Smith, was accused of murder and other war crimes in a series of stories in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Canberra Times, and filed a defamation suit against the papers and the reporters.

Given the state of Australian deformation laws, which hew fairly close to their English antecedents, tend to favor the the plaintiffs, but the corporal forgot the most important rule of defamation cases, don't be blatantly guilty of what you came is deformation:

A defamation case by war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith against three newspapers has been dismissed, after a judge found defences of substantial or contextual truth had been established over alleged unlawful killings and bullying.

The Victoria Cross recipient sued The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Canberra Times and three journalists in the Federal Court over a series of stories published in 2018.

Mr Roberts-Smith said they contained false allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan, bullying of his former Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) colleagues and domestic violence against a woman in a Canberra hotel room.

Publisher Nine Entertainment relied on a truth defence, and both sides called current and former SAS witnesses.

Justice Anthony Besanko on Thursday ruled the publisher had established the substantial truth of the imputations linked to allegations of unlawful killings in Afghanistan, and had established the contextual truth of imputations linked to allegations of bullying and domestic violence.

A second imputation of bullying was also found to be substantially true.

Oops.

His reputation has been destroyed, but on the basis of what has been shown, I think that the Australian military establishment should take a far closer look at the behavior of Roberts-Smith and his unit with an eye toward making the investigation a criminal one.

Nakedly Corrupt and Partisan

The Supreme Court in a nutshell.

The latest ruling, where the court ruled that an employer can sue a union for losses caused by a strike, (Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters) is yet another case of the conservative 6 on the Supreme court running roughshod over the law and precedent.

It should be noted that this case went 8-1, and that the ruling was by no means as expansive as it could have been, and how Alito and Thomas indicated it should have gone in their concurrences, but they are showing where this is eventually going:

Today’s US Supreme Court ruling in the Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters case was a blow to workers—but not quite the knockout punch hoped for by the Chamber of Commerce. Despite the court’s 8-1 decision favoring the employer, the justices made a relatively narrow ruling, rather than a broad one weakening the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) even further. In the future—the near future—labor will not be so lucky as to lose this lightly, and workers should get ready to fight what’s coming.

First, the good news, such as it is: Today’s decision leaves intact a long-held legal doctrine known as the Garmon preemption, and therefore keeps the NLRB as the decision-maker on what constitutes “reasonable precaution” in worker strikes. Cheerleaders for free enterprise were hoping to replace that long-established federal jurisdiction with state-level tort law. Those cheerleaders didn’t get all they wanted today.

The bad news—a harbinger of the future—is on full view in Justice Samuel Alito’s concurring opinion, where he makes clear that he is ready and willing to kill Garmon as soon as the court can get a better case with which to achieve this Chamber of Commerce objective. He’s joined by the other hard-core anti-labor ideologues on the court—Justices Thomas and Gorsuch—in a second concurring opinion, revealing their hands clearly so we can count: Three Justices are ready to totally eviscerate the NLRB as part of their determined campaign to gut the administrative state. Agency by agency, they’re progressing when they get the chance, as we saw this court do just last week to the Environmental Protection Agency, all but stripping it of any power at all to enforce the Clean Water Act.

This statement of motivations is incomplete, Alito and the rest of the conservatives on the court want to effectively outlaw labor unions in the United States.

………

Glacier has its origin in a 2017 contract dispute between Teamsters Local 174 and five cement companies in the Seattle area, led by Glacier Northwest. Drivers whose trucks still had concrete in them when a strike began took what they assert was “reasonable precaution,” notifying management that they had left the trucks running so the drums would continue rotating and the concrete would not harden and destroy the trucks. Because the company failed to make any contingency plans around the strike, however, the concrete had to be offloaded and left to harden rather than delivered to customers. That should have been the end of it. But, nearly four months later, Glacier sued Local 174 in state court—not at the NLRB—alleging tortious damages from the destruction of concrete during the strike.

On its face, Glacier is about whether the Teamsters Union owes money to a Washington concrete company. But the real purpose of pushing this case was to upend nearly 100 years of legal precedent and congressional intent by stripping power from the NLRB, the federal agency charged with protecting workers’ rights to collective action at work.

It's clear to me that the court is setting the table to eviscerate union rights in the United States.

It's that the court wants to return to the Lochner Era, where any ability of the government to provide for the public good is suborned to a made up "Freedom of Contract".

Much like Roosevelt in the 1930s, we need to slap down this legislation from the bench.

Good News

The EFF points us to the news that, for the first time ever, a judge has ruled that the border patrol cannot search cell phones without a warrant.

I don't know if this will survive the inevitable appeal, but, for as long as this remains in force it is a good thing:

With United States v. Smith (S.D.N.Y. May 11, 2023), a district court judge in New York made history by being the first court to rule that a warrant is required for a cell phone search at the border, “absent exigent circumstances” (although other district courts have wanted to do so).

EFF is thrilled about this decision, given that we have been advocating for a warrant for border searches of electronic devices in the courts and Congress for nearly a decade. If the case is appealed to the Second Circuit, we urge the appellate court to affirm this landmark decision.

The Border Search Exception as Applied to Physical Items Has a Long History

U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) asserts broad authority to conduct warrantless, and often suspicionless, device searches at the border, which includes ports of entry at the land borders, international airports, and seaports.

For a century, the Supreme Court has recognized a border search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, allowing not only warrantless but also often suspicionless searches of luggage and other items crossing the border.

The number of warrantless device searches at the border and the significant invasion of privacy they represent is only increasing. In Fiscal Year 2022, CBP conducted an all-time high of 45,499 device searches.

The Supreme Court has not yet considered the application of the border search exception to smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices that contain the equivalent of millions of pages of information detailing the most intimate details of our lives—even though we asked them to back in 2021.

I've always thought that a password escrow service that requires the assent of a lawyer would help, but a court ruling limiting the authority of CBP to do this is even better.

Support Your Local Police

A New York City police officer is suing, claiming that he was reprimanded and retaliated against for ignoring the "Get out of Jail Free" cards issued by the police union.

Of course he was.  Impunity is the goal of every police union, and many police officers:

An NYPD officer faced bullying and angry threats from his colleagues for ignoring police union "courtesy cards" used by family and friends of cops to skirt traffic tickets, according to a new lawsuit.

Officer Mathew Bianchi sued the city and a police captain last week in federal court, arguing that his superiors retaliated against him for his stance against the "corrupt" cards.

The NYPD's five unions pass out courtesy cards each year to members, who then give them to family and friends to use as what critics describe as a "get out of jail free" pass for minor infractions such as traffic tickets.

When cops such as Bianchi don't heed the cards, they can face angry calls — or worse — from their colleagues and superiors, the lawsuit contends. “This is not only corrupt but it’s a safety issue,” Bianchi wrote in a complaint quoted in the lawsuit.

………

At one point, Bianchi pulled over a woman who happened to be friends with the NYPD's Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, the lawsuit states. Afterward, Bianchi was removed from the traffic unit, passed over for a promotion and told his ticket "p----- off someone very high up," according to the complaint.

Bianchi contends that the courtesy cards are not only unfair and let unsafe to motorists repeatedly off the hook, but also lead to more traffic stops for New Yorkers who aren't white because cops in the traffic unit are expected to issue a certain number of tickets: a quota.

"As a result of the quota policy and the unwritten rule that you cannot write tickets to civilians with Courtesy Cards police officers are forced to disproportionately ticket minority drivers as they are less likely to possess the Courtesy Cards or have affiliations with law enforcement," the lawsuit states.

This is every police department in the nation, and it is wrong, and corrosive to to a civil society.

When people say it's just "A few bad apples," they forget the the rest of the saying, "Spoils the barrel."

For the Love of God, Let This be True

I'm not sure if this is a performance review or an exit interview. If it were the former, it probably became the latter.

Original TikTok video here, but they autoplay, so I'm doing it this way.

Needless to say, this is, to quote Dickens, this is, "True . . . as turnips is. It was as true . . . as taxes is. And nothing's truer than them."

If Sally Quinn Hates It, I Am for It

There are all sorts of asshole neighbors.

You have the ones who play their music too low, the ones who leave their trashcans on the curb, the ones whose lawns look crappy (like me), the ones who terrorize their neighbors with guns, etc.

On the other hand, I fully approve of the asshole neighbor in Georgetown in the District of Columbia who has, erected statues of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee on his front yard in the tony DC neighborhood:

The thing about putting a pair of 10-foot metal Transformers statues outside your townhouse in the most picturesque district of the nation’s capital is that the neighbors are going to have opinions.

And on Prospect Street in Georgetown, they were not pleased.

The statues — Bumblebee and Optimus Prime, two of the good guys from the long-running “Transformers” movie franchise — appeared in January 2021 outside the white-brick home of Newton Howard, a cognitive scientist and machine-learning expert with ties to the intelligence community.

He had ordered them from a factory in Taiwan to the tune of more than $25,000 each. Where large brick planters had once blended in with the local aesthetic, there was now something akin to outsider art by way of an anonymous welder and Hollywood’s reinterpretation of 1980s toys.

Plenty of people love the statues, which resemble invaders from the future, in a neighborhood that does its best to hang on to its cobblestone past. Students at nearby Georgetown University can’t get enough. Neither can tourists: The Transformers statues have their own entry on Google Maps as a place of interest, with 4.9 stars. “The best part of visiting Georgetown,” one reviewer declared.

………

But some of his neighbors are less enthusiastic, and the critics of his notion of a Georgetown-appropriate sidewalk display have been trying to get rid of Bumblebee and Optimus Prime for more than two years.

………

A rich guy with loud cars is one thing, a known story. The Transformers were something else altogether. They quickly became a flashpoint in Georgetown, and on the internet, after the local news site DCist reported on the efforts of Dr. Howard’s neighbors to get the statues removed.

Sally Quinn, the author and longtime Georgetown resident, said she was firmly in the anti-Transformers camp. “I think they’re really ugly,” she said. “Some people may like them. You know, everybody’s taste in art is different. But that’s not the point.”

"Author and longtime Georgetown resident," huh?

More like former Washington Post society reporter, and widow of Ben Bradlee, who has described her dinner parties as a, "Form of sacrament."

She is literally the avatar of fake DC.  

There is a real DC you know, but it's never written about, because it's not rich, and it's not white, and it doesn't hold dinner parties like Sally Quinn.

The point, she continued, was historical preservation: “People come to Georgetown because it’s Georgetown. It’s a beautiful, quaint village.”

But the author Kitty Kelley, who said she has lived in the neighborhood for “two husbands,” or since 1977, sent Dr. Howard a handwritten card in support of his sidewalk flair.

One of these women has a sense of perspective and a sense of humor. 

I'm with Kitty Kelley, and I cannot f%$#ing believe that I just f%$#ing said that.

Good Question

Over at The Nation, they ask an important question, "If Ken Paxton’s Staff Can Do It, Why Can’t Dianne Feinstein’s?"

This is a legitimate question.  It is clear that Dianne Feinstein* is not (as) corrupt and evil like Ken Paxton, but Ken Paxton's staff was far more ethical and far more concerned with the needs of the constituents than any of Feinstein's staff.  (Except of course for the former staffer who filmed himself smoking a joint at Feinstein's desk as an exit interview)

I get it.  The staff is engaging in the worst cosplay of Weekend at Bernie's ever, but this is not a movie, this is the US Senate.

These folks should never get another job in politics, but they probably have had their prospects improved by their malfeasance:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been in office since 2015, and since 2015 he has been one of the most destructive forces in American law. He’s used his office as a Republican wish-fulfillment machine, trying to win through conservative courts the policies that Republicans cannot win at the ballot box. It was Paxton who organized a red-state challenge to the Affordable Care Act in 2018, trying to get Obamacare declared unconstitutional (he lost). Paxton also led the 2018 challenge to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and brought it all the way to the Supreme Court (he lost). And he challenged Obama’s Clean Power Plan in 2017 (he won). During the Trump administration, he turned his attention toward reproductive rights, and he’s been at the forefront of trying to implement Texas’s bounty-hunter law, which punishes anyone who tries to help pregnant people in Texas receive an abortion. So far, during the Biden administration, he’s sued the administration more than 50 times, mainly over Biden’s immigration policies and student debt-relief programs. For Paxton, there is simply no difference between the law and his conservative political agenda.

Paxton has also been one of the most corrupt public officials in America in recent years. He has been under indictment since 2015 for securities fraud. But he has managed to use his status as attorney general, and a number of procedural tricks, to evade facing trial on those charges. We’re talking about a man who once hopped into a getaway truck, driven by his wife, to avoid a subpoena compelling him to testify in an abortion case. His wife, by the way, is a state senator.

………

Given Paxton’s apparent popularity with Texas voters, I was surprised to see that the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to impeach him last week and put him on leave from his duties pending trial in the Texas Senate. The vote was 121-23. You don’t often see Republicans turn on one of their own like this.

The credit for this shocking turn of law before party has to go to Paxton’s staff. His own employees sounded the alarm on the misdeeds that led to his impeachment.

………

We members of the public tend to treat political staffers as nameless, faceless functionaries who exist only to serve their famous bosses. We don’t expect them to exercise their own moral judgment, and we often give them a pass when they silently and dutifully serve even the most evil and corrupt public officials. Sure, the president’s staffers often become famous, but most people cannot name a single person who works for Clarence Thomas or Josh Hawley or Ron DeSantis, and when those staffers pop up later in some other government role or run for office in their own right, most people don’t hold their prior service against them. We act like political staff cannot be held responsible for the decisions of their bosses.

In reality, the staff is complicit in the policies and decisions of the officeholder they serve, and they know what’s really going on long before the public or ProPublica do. And political staffers, collectively, have a whole lot of power. They are the people who have the option to speak truth to power—or to become mere cheerleaders for the worst instincts of their bosses.

Instead of being complicit in Paxton’s apparent corruption and abuse of power or silent witnesses to it, Paxton’s staff chose to speak out. That’s crucial. A person like Paxton cannot exist without the tacit consent and professional aid of many other people. And, too often, those people justify looking the other way either because of their personal careerist goals, or their supposed dedication to the larger political agenda of the people they work for.

To put it another way: We’re lucky that the people who worked for Paxton are not like the people who work for California Senator Dianne Feinstein. Her failing health prevents Feinstein from doing her job as a leader in a representative democracy. She is being propped up, literally, by her staff. Seeing her wheeled around like this, appearing barely cognizant of where she is or what she’s being asked to do, is tragic in a way that borders on farce.

For wildly different reasons, both Paxton and Feinstein are unfit for their elected offices. Paxton is unfit because he’s a corrupt-o-fascist who couldn’t even find a benefactor wealthy enough to own a superyacht. Feinstein is unfit because she’s not compos mentis—which I believe is Latin for “let’s just make sure she’s comfortable”—and has been unable to participate in basic Senate business for several months. To be clear, there’s no moral equivalency here: Feinstein is a dedicated public servant who got very old and very incapacitated; Paxton is a power-hungry repeat bad actor who got caught. But operationally, neither person should have the jobs that they do. Paxton’s staff knew it, and I promise you Feinstein’s staff knows it too.

………

The bottom line is that Ken Paxton would not have been impeached but for the willingness of people who worked for him to go public with the truth. Dianne Feinstein will not be replaced until the people who work for her are willing to do the same thing.

Feinstein's staff are an embarrassment to themselves, the Senate, and the Democratic Party.

^*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers, though we have never met, either in person or electronically.

Not a Surprise

When the Pentagon selected Lockeed Martin to make the JSF, Lockheed Martin got them to make sure that the program that would be the Hotel California for support and logistics. (You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.)

It's no surprise that the Pentagon is looking to pay $½ Billion to get out of the logistics roach motel:

The F-35 program office wants $500 million so that it can harness technical data that will make it easier for the military services to manage F-35 spare parts instead of having to rely on prime contractor Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s F-35 program executive said today.

In order for the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy to set up an organic supply chain, the services need “provisioning and cataloging data” associated with various parts, Lt. Gen. Eric Fick told lawmakers at a House Armed Services readiness subcommittee hearing.

“We have the rights to that data. It’s not a matter of data rights, it’s matter of data delivery — and being able to have that data delivered is going to cost money,” he said. “And that money is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of about half a billion dollars, divided amongst the services.”

………

The debate on F-35 technical data rights have been a sticking point in negotiations between the Pentagon and Lockheed in recent years, as the department has shifted its focus to lowering the sustainment cost of the aircraft. When the F-35 program was conceptualized more than two decades ago, it was structured under a “Total System Performance Responsibility” approach that gave Lockheed an unprecedented amount of power to manage the sustainment of the aircraft.

It should be noted that Israel demanded, and got, better access to this data than did the US military, because the Pentagon, and L-M were concerned that if Israel was not in early on acquiring the platform, it would adversely sales worldwide.

“As a result, the government did not procure technical data that the government could eventually use, as needed and depending upon the circumstances, to promote vendor competition and increase government control over specific elements of sustainment,” the Government Accountability Office wrote in a report on F-35 sustainment released today.

 ………

When it became clear that the TSPR [Total System Performance Responsibility] model was inflating costs, the Pentagon began shifting to a hybrid approach where the Defense Department took additional responsibility for sustainment functions like storing or transporting parts.

It was always going to inflate costs.

This is a redux of the Lead System Integrator acquisition model that was so disastrous that Congress actually banned the the process.

Something important to note here, this is not incompetence, it is corruption.  This result, excessive cost and lack of operational capability, was foreseeable, but it was equally foreseeable that generals would get cushy and remunerative sinecures after they retired, so they did what Lockheed-Martin wanted.

First Friday of the Month

Not bad


Still very low


The worst jobs got the biggest pay increase


Looks like IT is a bunch of lemings jumping off a cliff.*

So, we have the monthly jobs numbers, with non-farm payrolls increasing by 339,000, hourly wages increasing by 4.3% year over year, and the unemployment rate increasing by 0.3% to 3.7%, which is still pretty damn low:

Hiring surged this spring, the latest sign the U.S. economy maintains momentum in the face of rising interest rates and complicating the Federal Reserve’s decision over whether to pause rate increases this month.

U.S. employers added a seasonally adjusted 339,000 jobs in May and the prior two months’ payrolls were revised up by nearly 100,000, the Labor Department said Friday. Workers gained more than 1.5 million jobs in 2023, more evidence of economic vitality, including robust consumer spending and a stabilizing housing market.

I calling the, "Stabilizing housing market," a dead cat bounce. 

As the saying goes, "If dropped from a sufficient height, anything can bounce, even a dead cat."

………

The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 3.7% in May, still near historic lows but an uptick from April’s 3.4%, the Labor Department said. Average hourly earnings grew a solid 4.3% in May over the prior year, similar to annual gains in March and April.

………

The average workweek fell to 34.3 hours, the lowest since April 2020 near the start of the pandemic. As a result of fewer hours worked, average weekly earnings advanced at a slower rate than hourly earnings, and gains have cooled since the start of the year.

Falling workweek is a pretty good indicator of a slowdown. 

The first thing that a business cuts when they see a downturn is hours.

The labor-force participation rate, the share of Americans who are working or actively seeking jobs, remained flat in May at 62.6% and below the February 2020 prepandemic level of 63.3%. That partly reflects the aging U.S. population. Among workers age 25 to 54, the participation rate rose to 83.4%, a level last touched in 2007.

Yes, it "Partly" reflects the aging workforce, and "Partly" reflects possibly tens of millions of people disabled by long Covid.

On the other hand, the fact that something over ½ million workers are out of the workforce because they areare dead pushes the participation number higher, because the denominator has gotten significantly smaller.

I expect the beatings from the Federal Reserve to continue, with 250 basis point (¼%) rate increases continuing through at most of next year.

^*Yes, I know, lemmings don't actually jump off of cliffs, in the Disney film White Wlderness, director James Algar literally threw the rodents off of a cliff for dramatic effect.

We Can Use My Dad's Barn and Put On a Musical!

After a couple of bigoted parents threatened the school board and administrators in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a high school canceled a play, Marian, or The True Tale of Robin Hood, a, "A gender-bending, patriarchy-smashing, hilarious new take on the classic tale, adapted for performance by teen actors for family audiences."

What could the kids do?

Well, they raised money, found a venue, and put on the play anyway.

It's the feel good story of the day, and yes, it does invoke some classic 1930s musicals starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland:

Sydney Knipp, 16, tiptoed to stage’s edge and peered around the black curtain at the nearly 1,500 people waiting for the play to start. It was the largest audience she had ever seen.

In a few minutes, Sydney was supposed to stride before them, braids streaming, to deliver the opening monologue as Alanna Dale in “Marian, or The True Tale of Robin Hood,” a gender-bending take on Sherwood Forest’s beloved bandit.

Dotted among the crowd, Sydney saw, were security personnel in bulletproof vests. At the entrance, theatergoers were submitting to bag checks and a metal detector wand. Behind Sydney stood Fia, her 14-year-old sister, costumed as Much the Miller’s son.

Sydney and Fia, and their characters, were the reason for the security — the reason this play was happening not at school but at an outdoor theater in the girls’ hometown. Alanna confesses her love for a woman in the 16th scene. Much declares they are nonbinary two scenes later. The LGBTQ storylines drew complaints from parents, spurring Carroll High School to cancel “Marian” in February out of concern for students’ safety.

Concerns for student's safety, my ass.  They were capitulating to terrorists.

But the cast of two dozen teenagers decided to put the play on anyway. Now, on a chilly evening in late May — after raising almost $84,000, booking Foellinger Theatre and whirling through 2½ weeks of late-night rehearsals squeezed between Advanced Placement exams and finals — it was opening night for a show adults had warned them not to do.

This is how you do this.

Never give in to terrorists.

Support Your Local Police

In Atlanta, SWAT raided the protest bail fund, arrested at least 3 people, and charged them with material support for terrorism.

This looks like something straight out of Jim Crow and the Red Scare:

On Wednesday morning, a heavily armed Atlanta Police Department SWAT team raided a house in Atlanta and arrested three of its residents. Their crime? Organizing legal support and bail funds for protesters and activists who have faced indiscriminate arrest and overreaching charges in the struggle to stop the construction of a vast police training facility — dubbed Cop City — atop a forest in Atlanta.

In a joint operation with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, or GBI, Atlanta cops charged Marlon Scott Kautz, Adele Maclean, and Savannah Patterson — all board members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund — with “money laundering” and “charity fraud.”

The arrests are an unprecedented attack on bail funds and legal support organizations, a long-standing facet of social justice movements, according to Lauren Regan, executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center.

“This is the first bail fund to be attacked in this way,” Regan, whose organization has worked to ensure legal support for people resisting Cop City, told me. “And there is absolutely not a scintilla of fact or evidence that anything illegal has ever transpired with regard to Atlanta fundraising for bail support.”

While the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has been a crucial resource for activists facing harsh repression for their involvement in Stop Cop City, the nonprofit predates the movement and has been providing bail funds, jail support, and assistance with legal representation for Atlanta activists since the 2020 Black liberation uprisings. 

………

A public statement from the GBI said that “[a]gents and officers executed a search warrant and found evidence linking the three suspects to the financial crimes.” The warrants for all three arrestees cite “records and reports of certain currency transactions” and “fraudulent, misrepresenting, or misleading activities regarding charitable solitations.” (“Solitations” is, of course, not a word, but the apparent misspelling of the word “solicitations” appears on all three arrestees’ warrants.)

A more detailed arrest warrant for Patterson notes that the alleged “money laundering” charge relates to reimbursements made from the nonprofit to Patterson’s personal PayPal account for minor expenses including “gasoline, forest clean-up, totes, covid rapid tests, media, yard signs and other miscellaneous expenses.” Targeting the organizers with a militarized SWAT raid based on such expenditures only clarifies the desperation of law enforcement agencies in going after the movement.

………

Kautz, one of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizers arrested on Wednesday, had previously shared numerous reflections with The Intercept on the Atlanta cops’ extreme repressive tactics. He noted that the indiscriminate arrests and use of state domestic terrorism charges against protesters represented “an unprecedented level of repression” and a “strategy of blatant malicious prosecution.”

………

Organizing bail funds and legal support for protesters facing charges, however serious, is a decades-old social justice movement practice. As the Atlanta Community Press Collective noted on Twitter, “When Dr. King was held in Birmingham Jail, churches and community groups including the NAACP came together to fund his $4000 bail – the equivalent of $39,000 today.” 

This is deeply corrupt and repugnant on so many levels.

It also seems to be based, at least in part, on a lie: (sorry for the Reason link)

………

The warrants hang on the contention that Defend the Atlanta Forest is "a group classified by the United States Department of Homeland Security as Domestic Violent Extremists." Law enforcement has used this claim for months, charging 19 protesters in February with domestic terrorism charges even though nine were only accused of misdemeanor trespassing. According to Grist, "a DHS spokesperson denied that the federal agency classifies any specific groups with this term."

But the warrants justify the arrests based on this supposed classification, apparently deeming any payments or reimbursements as material support for terrorism. In one example, Maclean was reimbursed $228.29 to "move the jail support hotline to a new plan" and add "two (2) phone lines." In another, "Patterson was reimbursed via her personal PayPal account" $6,657.59 in 26 payments over nearly two years. "These payments were for various expenses such as gasoline, forest clean-up, totes, covid rapid tests, media, yard signs and other miscellaneous expenses." 

This is nakedly corrupt, but given the Supreme Court's affection for qualified immunity, I don't expect to see any prosecutions for law enforcement misconduct.

It's Thursday

Initial claims rose by 2,000 to 232,000 for the week ending May 27, and the 4 week moving average fell to 229,500, and continuing claims were steady at 1.8 million.

No clue as to what this means.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Don't Get Your Hopes Up

Thanks, Keith, for the Heads Up

I am referring, of course to allegations that Trump was caught on tape discussing non-imminent US plans to invade Iran.

Apparently, he was having a conversation with some ghost writers, probably for Mark Meadows.

Claiming that he had the document, where then Chairman of the JCS Mark Milly had given him a document of the plans to invade Iran.

Apparently, it was a massive affair involving huge numbers of troops.

It is reported that Trump bragged about how secret the documents were, and he may have waved the papers in front of his face.

Technically, even the existence of such a document is a serious state secret.

In reality, that there is an office in the Pentagon that plans, and routinely updates, plans to invade Iran, the DPRK, Venezuela, and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick is known.

If the description of the tape is real, it does show that Trump knew that he was handling classified documents, which goes to prove intent, but I still don't think that it's enough for the DoJ to invoke the Espionage Act.

Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.

The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. On the recording, Trump’s comments suggest he would like to share the information but he’s aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records, two of the sources said.

CNN has not listened to the recording, but multiple sources described it. One source said the relevant portion on the Iran document is about two minutes long, and another source said the discussion is a small part of a much longer meeting.

………

Prosecutors have asked witnesses about the recording and the document before a federal grand jury. The episode has generated enough interest for investigators to have questioned Gen. Mark Milley, one of the highest-ranking Trump-era national security officials, about the incident.

The July 2021 meeting was held at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with two people working on the autobiography of Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows as well as aides employed by the former president, including communications specialist Margo Martin. The attendees, sources said, did not have security clearances that would allow them access to classified information. Meadows didn’t attend the meeting, sources said.

If this happened at Bedminster, I would suggest that they pick up the phone and talk to Niitek in Dulles, Virginia.

They have some remarkably advanced ground penetrating radars.  Just the thing to scan Ivana Trump's grave.  (Also, who the f%$# buries their ex wife on a golf course unless the coffin includes incriminating evidence)

Meadows’ autobiography includes an account of what appears to be the same meeting, during which Trump “recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency.”

The document Trump references was not produced by Milley, CNN was told.

I get it.  If Trump were just some schmoe, he'd already be sitting in a SuperMax cell awaiting trial.

But we are dealing with a DoJ, and an administration, who are obsessed with a return to normalcy and the, "Norms," so I do not expect to see him in the dock for the foreseeable future.

I would be delighted to be wrong, but I think that the powers that be are too invested in the precedent of Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon to allow this to happen.