This is Quite Frankly, Nuts.

Haaretz has a long article in which their reporter interviews his Gaza sources who have managed to escape the carnage and get to Egypt.

Needless to say, these are people who are, or were, privileged by the standards of Gaza, and as such they were heavily tied in tothe goings on of the government in Gaza.  (Quite a few of them were members of Fatah)

The article is a fairly long read, and the shocking headline, "Hamas Actually Believed It Would Conquer Israel. In Preparation, It Divided the Country Into Cantons," is ⅔ of the way down.

I had always figured that Hamas was motivated by producing responses from the Israeli government that would end up harming themselves more than the Islamist group, but it appears that the leadership in Gaza are delusional in addition to their other unpleasant characteristics:

………

He [Sufyan Abu Zaydeh] met with [Hamas Gaza chief] Sinwar on many occasions. Their talks, he says, dealt mainly with the economic aid, consisting of funds from the United Arab Emirates, that Dahlan – who himself went into exile in Abu Dhabi in 2011, where he became close to the ruler, Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan – sent to the inhabitants of Gaza, principally for projects in the Jabalya and Khan Yunis refugee camps. "We founded many projects and awarded study scholarships totaling millions of dollars to young people," Abu Zaydeh says. "Hamas had a vested interest in this, because in practice we made things easier for them. That's the reason they didn't harass us."

………

I asked Abu Zaydeh whether he had ever thought that Hamas was capable of perpetrating horrors like those of October 7. "If you had asked me," he replied, "I would have answered like any Israeli intelligence officer: It's inconceivable that this is what they're planning. I would not have believed that they would not take into account what would happen to them on the day after."

He adds, "There were many statements by Hamas before October 7, and we in Fatah would laugh. For example, someone from Hamas wrote on Facebook: 'Remember, in another few months the al-Qassam men will get to Ashkelon, enter the jail and free all the prisoners.' That was the atmosphere. It was hard for us to grasp that they believed that with 3,000, 5,000 or even 10,000 armed militants they would conquer Israel. That's insane. But when you believe that God is sending you to do his bidding, there's no one to argue with. The signs were out there the whole time."

Indeed, Abu Zaydeh is well aware that for the past two years the Hamas leadership had been talking about implementing "the last promise" (alwaed al'akhir) – a divine promise regarding the end of days, when all human beings will accept Islam. Sinwar and his circle ascribed an extreme and literal meaning to the notion of "the promise," a belief that pervaded all their messages: in speeches, sermons, lectures in schools and universities. The cardinal theme was the implementation of the last promise, which included the forced conversion of all heretics to Islam, or their killing.

In a militant speech Sinwar delivered in 2021, after the IDF's Guardian of the Walls operation in Gaza, he made it clear that he was preparing for a broad war. "We stand before an open confrontation with the enemy, who is stubbornly insisting on transforming the battle into a religious war," he screamed into the microphone. "We must be ready to defend Al-Aqsa. Our whole nation needs to be ready to march in a 'raging flood' in order to uproot this occupation from our land."

But outside the hard core of the Hamas leadership, talk of an apocalyptic showdown was considered no more than a pipe dream in Gaza, nonsensical prattle that was intended to serve the PR purposes of Sinwar and his group, in order to divert public discussion away from the distress of Gazans. The group's madness was apparent to many. In fact, anyone who watched the Hamas television channel, heard Sinwar's speeches or followed his colleagues on Twitter, could have understood that a process was underway in Gaza of preparing people for a large-scale military operation. Yet only a few realized that these were not just fantasies, but a concrete ambition that would be translated into a concrete plan.

………

Iyad [a pseudonym] is well acquainted with Hamas and its leadership, and they with him. A few years ago, during a meeting with Sinwar, the latter crowed about Hamas' achievements and showed him and a few others their vast tunnels project in Gaza. "He said they had invested $250 million in order to put Gaza under the ground," Iyad relates. "I told him he was crazy."

Already then, he says, he knew that Hamas had gone off the deep end. When they started talking about "the last promise," he too didn't think it was serious. But in 2021, his opinion changed. By then Iyad realized that this wasn't some off-the-wall idea propounded by a coterie of "wild weeds," but that the entire leadership had been taken captive by the Sinwar group's deranged idea of an all-out battle. They had an orderly plan and they believed they were fulfilling a divinely ordained mission.

"So strongly did they believe in the idea that Allah was with them, and that they were going to bring Israel down, that they started dividing Israel into cantons, for the day after the conquest."

Iyad describes an astonishing event, which demonstrates the scale of the madness in Hamas. "One day, a well-known Hamas figure calls and tells me with pride and joy that they are preparing a full list of committee heads for the cantons that will be created in Palestine. He offers me the chairmanship of the Zarnuqa committee, where my family lived before 1948."

The Arab village of Zarnuqa lay about 10 kilometers southwest of Ramle; today the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of Rehovot stands on its land. Iyad was being informed that he would lead the group that would be in charge of rehabilitating the Ramle-Rehovot area on the day after the realization of "the last promise."

Iyad says he was flabbergasted. "You're out of your minds," he told the Hamas person, and asked him not to call him again.

Iyad's account may sound wacky, but it will not surprise those who know what went on in "The Promise of the Hereafter Conference," which was held on September 30, 2021, a few months after the end of Operation Guardian of the Walls. The event, which was held in the Commodore Hotel on the Gaza seashore, discussed in great detail the deployment ahead of the future management of the State of Palestine, following its "liberation" from Israel.

The conference was funded by Hamas and organized by the organization's Kanaan Obeid. Obeid, who is not a member of the military wing and seems to be a bland, unthreatening administrator, is considered the progenitor of the idea that prepared the hearts of the Hamas leaders and the residents of Gaza for the "Judgment Day" takeover of Israel. He is currently imprisoned in Israel, having been captured as he tried to flee to the south of the Gaza Strip.

Kanaan Obeid at "The Promise of the Hereafter" conference. "We have a registry of the numbers of Israeli apartments and institutions ... and we have no choice but to get ready to manage them," Obeid told the conference.

In a written speech that Sinwar sent to the conference, the organization's leader hinted that the campaign for the complete conquest of "the state of the Zionists" was "closer now than ever before." He averred that "victory is nigh" and that the "full liberation of Palestine from the sea to the river" is "the heart of Hamas' strategic vision… To this end, we are working hard and making many efforts on the ground and deep below it, in the heart of the sea, and in the heights of the heavens... We [can already] see with our eyes the [imminent] liberation and therefore we are preparing for what will come after it..."

………

So detailed were the plans that participants in the conference began to draw up list of all the properties in Israel and appointed representatives to deal with the assets that would be seized by Hamas. "We have a registry of the numbers of Israeli apartments and institutions, educational institutions and schools, gas stations, power stations and sewage systems, and we have no choice but to get ready to manage them," Obeid told the conference.

………

More specifically, the issue of a brain drain was discussed. "Educated Jews and experts in the areas of medicine, engineering, technology and civilian and military industry should be retained [in Palestine] for some time and should not be allowed to leave and take with them the knowledge and experience that they acquired while living in our land and enjoying its bounty, while we paid the price for all this in humiliation, poverty, sickness, deprivation, killing and arrests," the conference's concluding statement asserted.

The participants discussed the establishment of political apparatuses and decided that, "An announcement will be addressed to the United Nations declaring that the State of Palestine has succeeded the occupation state and will enjoy the rights of the occupation state." They also assumed that the new state would inherit the border agreements with Egypt and Jordan, "as well as the economic zone delimitation agreements with Greece in the eastern Mediterranean, the passage and shipping rights in the Gulf of Aqaba, etc." Because the shekel's value was likely to be reduced to "zero," they would recommend to Palestinians that they to convert all their savings "into gold, dollars or dinars."

………

Because of this, the [Unnamed Fatah] senior figure says, he was not in the least surprised by Hamas' attack last October. "I knew where it was going, once Sinwar seized power and removed all his opponents," he says. "If you're talking about a blunder, the release of Sinwar from prison in Israel [in 2011] is the forefather of your blunder. You [in Israel] talk about Hamas all the time, and don't understand that it's Sinwar. As long as he's breathing, he manages things, and he is an insane fanatic." He notes that while Sinwar was "in prison in Israel, he only became more extreme, to the point where he believes truly and sincerely that he is 'the helper of the prophet Mohammed.'"

(emphasis mine)

While the existence of leaders with a screw loose has much historical precedent, Stalin's paranoia and brutality, Mao's messianic view of himself, Pol Pot, King George III, and (of course) the every single one of the Hapsburgs, having someone actually in charge, as opposed to being a figurehead, with this level of delusion is profoundly concerning.

I'm not sure how one can negotiate with him or his acolytes.

Where I Want to Go on Vacation

Yoshida Village, Shimane Prefecture, Japan.

They have a vacation package where you spend a couple of days smelt steel, specifically tamahagane, the steel that is traditionally used in their swords.

I also want to hit Sri Lankha to participate in a wind driven "monsoon" furnaces recreation.

I am the dullest man on the face of the earth.

Headline of the Day

Cybertruck Deliveries Halted Due To Car Being A Big Piece Of Sh%$ That Doesn't Work 

—Defector (%$ mine)

This about the latest debacle from the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™, where they had to halt shipments and physically recall the vehicles, because the accellerator pedal cover kept coming off and wedging the "Throttle" to the full position.

Seriously, for a guy who claims that he, "Know(s) more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive on earth," this seems to be mindbogglingly stupid.

Fly Airbus

Yet another Boeing whistle blower, this one still alive, has alleged that he was pressured to ignore safety.

We need to start arresting senior managers:

Plane bodies made by Boeing's largest supplier regularly left the factory with serious defects, according to a former quality inspector at the firm.

Santiago Paredes who worked for Spirit AeroSystems in Kansas, told the BBC he often found up to 200 defects on parts being readied for shipping to Boeing.

He was nicknamed "showstopper" for slowing down production when he tried to tackle his concerns, he claimed.

………

He was accustomed to finding "anywhere from 50 to 100, 200" defects on fuselages - the main body of the plane - that were due to be shipped to Boeing, he said.

"I was finding a lot of missing fasteners, a lot of bent parts, sometimes even missing parts."

Like bolts on door plugs, I guess.

Support Your Local Police

It appears that the New York Police Department has decided that it has issues with police officers "Juicing", i.e. abusing anabolic steroids.

The mayor, a former police officer who generally takes the cops side on everything, and the chief of police, have decided to tighten the regulations, requiring that in addition to a prescription from their personal doctor, which has been a part of the contract for over a decade, they now have to provide the medical information to the NYPD's Office of the Supervising Chief Surgeon.

I guess that there was widespread use of various pill mills by officers, but the Police Benevolent Association doesn't care, so they sued to preserve their right to induce psychotic rages and cancer.

New York City’s largest cop union is suing Police Commissioner Edward Caban and Mayor Adams for implementing a new “zero tolerance” policy on NYPD officers using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs, the Daily News has learned.

In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday, lawyers for the Police Benevolent Association alleged the previously undisclosed policy flies in the face of a legal agreement the union entered into with the city in 2011.

The 2011 contract prohibited officers from ingesting or possessing any anabolic steroid or other forms of human growth hormones without a medical prescription. However, the old standard didn’t require officers to run any such prescription by their NYPD district surgeon before starting to use it.

The new protocol — which was enacted on Dec. 26, 2023, and described in an internal memo reviewed by The News as a “zero tolerance drug policy” — beefs up the old rule by affirming that officers must “immediately notify their district surgeon” of any steroid prescription they receive and provide “all supporting medical documentation” to the surgeon backing up the need for the drug.

………

The PBA’s lawsuit alleges the new protocol is illegal because it “unilaterally” revokes the 2011 standard without bargaining. The union says it is not challenging the prohibition on illegal steroid use.

No, they just want to make sure that any cop can go to a "Dr. Feelgood" who would write a prescription scrip on a roll of toilet paper.

Yes, steroid abusing cops is a good thing according to the PBA.

Adding to the List

I am referring, of course to my list of "They Who Must Not Be Named."

This list is for entities who I have decided are simply never going to be worth my comment on them.

For the first time, I have added a non-human entity to the list, and rather surprisingly it has no ties to artificial intelligence.

I have added RFK Jr.'s brain worm to my list, though I might continue to discuss the worm as a world health issue, as it appears to be a rather common condition.  (Best guess at this is that it is a form of tapeworm, and this is a fairly common condition in the tropics called Taeniasis which effects millions)

I will continue to comment on the various inanities and insanities of the both his Presidential campaign and his other endeavors, such as his antivaxx advocacy, but the worm I see as little more than a justification for a profoundly lazy joke at his expense.

If I am going to make a joke about RFK Jr. it won't involve the above, it will probably be nastier, and more difficult, though I will do my best not to make a joke involving Sirhan Sirhan.

Speaking of Carbon Capture

It appears that that the impact of tree planting as a carbon capture technique has been grossly overstated.

Not a surprise:

Reforestation efforts to restock depleted forests are important for addressing climate change and for both capturing and restoring carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere. These types of solutions to mitigate carbon emissions are critical after 2023 proved to be the warmest year on record. However, some models have been found to be inaccurate.

New research from Michigan State University has found the carbon removal potential of some reforestation models have been over exaggerated — and not by a small factor — but by as many as three times of a factor. The goal set by the Paris Agreement in 2015 for countries to limit their global warming to 1.5 degrees is now close to being surpassed.

Runsheng Yin is a professor in the Department of Forestry in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, where he specializes in the evaluation of ecosystem services, ecological restoration and general natural resource economics and policy. Yin has published new research identifying that carbon-capture models have not factored in what happens to the timber after trees are logged.

“The climate crisis is heightening, with 2023 representing the warmest year on record,” Yin said. “Nature-based solutions have an important role to play in helping us stem the worst impacts of climate change — but rigorously assessed methods to reliably offset and reduce greenhouse gas emissions could not be more urgent. As the practice becomes increasingly monetized, it is crucial that the accounting is done accurately.”

Dr. Yin, as the practice becomes increasingly monetized, the incentives for fraud and deception increase.

Expecting a market solution to anthropogenic climate change is a mirage.

Well Deserved Award

ProPublica has been awarded a public service Pulitzer for its expose of rampant corruption at the Supreme Court.

It does appear though that unlike Thomas Nast taking down Boss Tweed, nothing is coming of this:

ProPublica won the prestigious public service Pulitzer Prize for what the judges described as “groundbreaking and ambitious reporting that pierced the thick wall of secrecy surrounding the Supreme Court to reveal how a small group of politically influential billionaires wooed justices with lavish gifts and travel, pushing the Court to adopt its first code of conduct.” The prize is given to the staff of a news organization that performed “meritorious public service.” It is the seventh Pulitzer Prize for ProPublica.

The Pulitzer Board also recognized a collaboration between The Texas Tribune, ProPublica and FRONTLINE as a finalist in the explanatory reporting category. The investigation provided a detailed analysis of the deeply flawed law enforcement response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The designation is ProPublica’s 17th Pulitzer finalist in 16 years.

ProPublica’s “Friends of the Court” series uncovered the biggest ethics scandal to hit the Supreme Court in the modern era. Reporters Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, Alex Mierjeski, Brett Murphy and Kirsten Berg pierced decades of judicial secrecy and uncovered major gifts to justices from a small set of politically influential donors.

The series began a national conversation about ethics and judicial reform of the Supreme Court. In response to ProPublica’s reporting, the court announced in November that it had unanimously adopted the first ethics code in its 234-year history. Justice Clarence Thomas for the first time acknowledged that he should have reported selling real estate to billionaire Harlan Crow in 2014, writing in his annual financial disclosure form that he “inadvertently failed to realize” that the deal needed to be disclosed. Thomas also disclosed receiving three private jet trips from Crow, two of which ProPublica had already reported. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to authorize subpoenas of Crow and conservative legal activist Leonard Leo as part of its ongoing effort to investigate ethics lapses by justices. 

A bit of a bone to pick here:  What is happening at the Supreme Court is not, "Ethical lapses," it is blatant and rampant corruption.

Of Course They Did

As I have noted a few times before, the whole carbon credit economy is an exercise in regulatory arbitrage and fraud.  This time it's Shell Oil that sold millions of dollars worth of fraudulent carbon credits:

Shell sold millions of carbon credits tied to CO₂ removal that never took place to Canada’s largest oil sands companies, raising new doubts about a technology seen as crucial to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

As part of a subsidy scheme to boost the industry, the Alberta provincial government allowed Shell to register and sell carbon credits equivalent to twice the volume of emissions avoided by its Quest carbon capture facility between 2015 and 2021, the province’s registry shows. The subsidy was reduced and then ended in 2022.

As a result of the scheme, Shell was able to register 5.7mn credits that had no equivalent CO₂ reductions, selling these to top oil sands producers and some of its own subsidiaries. Credits are typically equivalent to one tonne of CO₂.

I am not surprised that the snollygosters in the Alberta government has gone all in on fraudulent carbon credits.

They have staked their economic future on tar sands, which are arguably more polluting than coal, so they are desperate to produce the illusion that those activities are eco-friendly.

They are not.

Snark of the Day

[Ohio State University President Ted] Carter has a vested interest in propagating Bitcoin, which, again, is the fake internet currency preferred by drug dealers, money launderers, pedophiles, and a host of other cybercriminals.

—The Rooster, on how Ohio State University President Ted "Slapshot" Carter chose a commencement speaker who spent his time hawking Bitcoin and admitting that he wrote his speech while tripping balls.

The short version of this is that  "Slapshot" sits on the board of a crypto mining firm, so he chose said drug addled crypto evangelist.

This guy, by which I mean the college President, should be fired immediately.

He should be fired out of a cannon and into the sun.

Read the article and its companion articles.  They are hysterically funny, or at least they are hysterically funny to someone who did not have it happen to them.

About F%$#ing Time

It appears that after years of broken promises and bald-faced lying, the DoJ has opened up an investigation into Tesla for securities fraud and wire fraud.

What Elon has been doing since ……… Well basically since leaving high school has been lying through his teeth worse than the worst used car salesman out there.

While the law makes allowances for puffery, so, unlike the plot device in the 1980 film Used Cars, you cannot be prosecuted for making obvious exaggerations like, "We have miles of cars," his statements on self driving, along with the staged videos allegedly demonstrating this capability, are clearly an attempt do deceive. (Also the solar shingles and the diesel powered supercharger stations, but I digress)

Here's hoping that they frog march him out of his offices in hand cuffs:

U.S. prosecutors are examining whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by misleading investors and consumers about its electric vehicles’ self-driving capabilities, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems assist with steering, braking and lane changes - but are not fully autonomous. While Tesla has warned drivers to stay ready to take over driving, the Justice Department is examining other statements by Tesla and Chief Executive Elon Musk suggesting its cars can drive themselves.

U.S. regulators have separately investigated hundreds of crashes, including fatal ones, that have occurred in Teslas with Autopilot engaged, resulting in a mass recall by the automaker.

Reuters exclusively reported the U.S. criminal investigation into Tesla in October 2022, and is now the first to report the specific criminal liability federal prosecutors are examining.

Investigators are exploring whether Tesla committed wire fraud, which involves deception in interstate communications, by misleading consumers about its driver-assistance systems, the sources said. They are also examining whether Tesla committed securities fraud by deceiving investors, two of the sources said.

………

Tesla videos demonstrating the technology that remain archived, on its website say: "The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself."

A Tesla engineer testified in 2022 in a lawsuit over a fatal crash involving Autopilot that one of the videos, posted in October 2016, intended to show the technology’s potential and did not accurately portray its capabilities at the time. Musk nevertheless posted the video on social media, writing: “Tesla drives itself (no human input at all) thru urban streets to highway streets, then finds a parking spot.”

………

Musk has repeatedly promised self-driving Teslas for about a decade. "Mere failure to realize a long-term, aspirational goal is not fraud," Tesla lawyers said in a 2022 court filing.

………

Prosecutors scrutinizing Tesla’s autonomous-car claims are proceeding with caution, recognizing the legal hurdles they face, the people familiar with the inquiry said.

They will need to demonstrate that Tesla’s claims crossed a line from legal salesmanship to material and knowingly false statements that unlawfully harmed consumers or investors, three legal experts uninvolved in the probe told Reuters.

U.S. courts previously have ruled that “puffery” or “corporate optimism” regarding product claims do not amount to fraud. In 2008, a federal appeals court ruled that statements of corporate optimism alone do not demonstrate that a company official intentionally misled investors.

Yes, but knowingly lying about your progress is fraud, and concealing information from regulators is a criminal conspiracy.

I don't expect him to go to jail, he's too rich for the wheels of our justice system to grind the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ to dust, but I can dream.

……… Doesn't Mean That They Aren't Out to Get You

US oil companies colluded with Saudi Arabia to keep oil prices high.

How about some arrests, regulators?

I’m at the Google antitrust closing arguments, and I’ll have some thoughts on that soon. But today’s piece is about some bombshell evidence that just came out on a giant post-Covid conspiracy in the oil industry. And I do mean giant, because there’s now evidence that price-fixing in the oil industry alone may single-handedly be responsible for a little over a quarter of the total inflationary increase in 2021.

………

Last Sunday, I wrote a piece alleging that U.S. shale oil producers colluded with the Saudi government from 2021-2023 to drive up gas prices. That essay was based on some reporting I had done, as well as a complaint from a savvy Kansas City class action law firm, Sharp Law, with special expertise in oil. The theory was that American producers, after a bitter price war from 2014-2016, got tired of competing on price with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or the OPEC oil cartel, and at some point from 2017-2021, decided to join the cartel and cut supply to the market. This action had the affect of raising oil prices, costing oil consumers something on the order of $200 billion a year.

Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission released evidence confirming that collusion played a serious role in hiking oil prices at that time. Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield, a leader in the fracking field, “exchanged hundreds of text messages with OPEC representatives and officials discussing crude oil market dynamics, pricing and output.” Sheffield was explicit about his goal, saying that “if Texas leads the way, maybe we can get OPEC to cut production. Maybe Saudi and Russia will follow. That was our plan,” he said, adding: “I was using the tactics of OPEC+ to get a bigger OPEC+ done.” He talked to shareholders, publicly threatened rivals, and ultimately achieved output cuts across the industry regardless of price. “Even if oil gets to $200/barrel,” he said, “the independent producers are going to be disciplined.”

The independent producers should be disciplined.  Jail time would be nice, but flogging would be even better.

The Fix is In

Federal "Judge" Aileen Cannon has placed an indefinite hold on the Trump classified docukmennts case.

I'm not surprised, she is a MAGAt stooge, but I am disappointed:

Donald Trump’s Florida trial for allegedly mishandling classified documents and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them has been pushed back indefinitely, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon ruled Tuesday, increasing the chance that the former president’s ongoing New York criminal trial may be the only one to happen before the November election.

The judge had originally set the Florida trial date for late May, but that has seemed unlikely for months, with Cannon still needing to make decisions on a number of key legal issues before a jury can hear the case.

At a scheduling hearing in Florida on March 1, Trump’s lawyers pushed to start the classified documents trial after the presidential election, in which he is the presumptive Republican nominee. Prosecutors urged Cannon to pick a date in early July.

………

In her ruling Tuesday, Cannon said there are many complicated legal rules and deadlines surrounding the use of classified evidence in public criminal trials that need to be considered before she picks a new court date.

………

In her order Tuesday, Cannon rescheduled a number of pretrial deadlines that parties will have to meet. The latest deadline is a CIPA-related one and a scheduling conference July 22 — which means the trial cannot happen before then.

………

On individual rulings, Cannon has so far generally sided with the government. She rejected two of Trump’s motions to dismiss the case and ruled for prosecutors on key CIPA-related decisions that could have changed the contours and direction of the legal proceedings.

But when it comes to timing, her decisions have hobbled prosecutors’ efforts to move forward quickly. They want the trial to occur before the election but have not explicitly argued that the November election is an event they are considering.

"Judge" Cannon corrupt as hell, but we knew that when Trump first nominated her.

Still Can't Make Planes

It looks like inspections were skipped on a large number of 787 Dreamliners being produced at their South Carolina factory. (Link free until May 14)

Don't worry though, it was only inspections to ensure that the wings won't fall off: 

Boeing must inspect undelivered and in-production 787s to ensure some steps in the aircraft’s assembly were done correctly after learning that required tests to validate the work were recorded as complete but never conducted.

A Boeing employee in the company’s South Carolina 787 final assembly facility “saw what appeared to be an irregularity in a required conformance test in wing-body join,” Scott Stocker, 787 vice president & general manager said in an April 29 email to employees that revealed the issue. The employee told his manager, who alerted “executive leadership,” the email said.

Boeing “quickly reviewed the matter” and determined “several people had been violating company policies by not performing a required test, but recording the work as having been completed.”

The manufacturer also “promptly” told the FAA, Stocker said.

Yeah, sure, that's the ticket!

………

“It brings the entire production certificate (PC) into question,” said one former FAA official with extensive aircraft certification experience. “A PC is really an expression of trust. Considering all the [Boeing issues] bubbling up ... the FAA may have no choice but to assume the falsification is widespread.”

Boeing cannot be trusted?  Hoocoodanode?

Oh, Hell

It's not certain, but it appears that the Israeli assault on Rafah has begun.

At the very least, troops have moved into key positions seizing control of the crossings to Egypt:

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that its tanks had entered Rafah in southern Gaza and had seized control of the city’s critical border crossing with Egypt in what it called a limited operation to eliminate Hamas fighters and infrastructure that had been used to attack and kill four Israeli soldiers on Sunday.

The incursion did not appear to be the long-anticipated full-scale invasion of Rafah, a city crowded with about a million Palestinians, which Israel’s allies have been working to avert by pushing for a cease-fire deal.

………

The Israeli military said it had killed about 20 people in Rafah, describing the dead as Hamas militants.

Hamas said it had fired on Israeli soldiers on Tuesday at another vital aid crossing, near Kerem Shalom, along Gaza’s southern border with Israel. The Israeli military said that four mortar shells and two rockets had been launched toward Kerem Shalom from Rafah but that no injuries or damage were reported.

………

The Israeli drive into Rafah came after a dizzying day on Monday, when the Israeli military ordered about 110,000 people to evacuate parts of the city; Hamas said it had accepted a revised cease-fire proposal; and Israel said it was carrying out “targeted strikes” in eastern Rafah.

………

Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said he visited troops near Rafah and that the operation there would continue until the last Hamas brigade in the city was destroyed “or until the return of the first hostage to Israel.”

I have no idea where this is going, but I don't think that its going to be good for anyone.

Another Contempt Fine?

Seriously, just throw his flabby orange ass in jail for a few days.

I am sure that he would get the point:

“I find you in criminal contempt for the 10th time.”

The fourth week of Trump’s hush-money trial kicked off on Monday with Judge Juan Merchan once again ruling that the former president violated his court-imposed gag order, fining him $1,000 and warning him that continued violations could result in jail time. Merchan first found Trump in contempt of court last week, fining him $9,000 for nine gag-order violations flagged by prosecutors.

“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent,” Merchan told Trump on Monday. “The last thing I want to do is to put you in jail. You are the former president of the United States, and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for you.”

“Of course, I am also aware of and concerned about the broader implications,” Merchan continued. “The magnitude of such a decision is not lost on me. But at the end of the day, I have a job to do. … So as much as I do not want to impose a jail sanction. That I will, if necessary.”

With all due respect Judge Merchan, it's f%$#ing necessary!

This is why Gerald Ford was a worse president than Richard Nixon.  He created a culture of impunity for the very powerful that is the touchstone for the inside the Beltway crowd.

About F%$#ing Time

A software company is facing lawsuits over its AI program, which is used to identify potential suspects.

It refuses to reveal its algorithm, but nonetheless claims to be well over 90% accurate.

This sh%$ needs to end:

Law enforcement agencies and prosecutors from Colorado to New York have turned to a little-known artificial intelligence tool in recent years to help investigate, charge and convict suspects accused of murder and other serious crimes.

But as the software, called Cybercheck, has spread, defense lawyers have questioned its accuracy and reliability. Its methodology is opaque, they’ve said, and it hasn’t been independently vetted. 

………

The tool’s creator, Adam Mosher, has said that Cybercheck’s accuracy tops 90% and that it performs automated research that would take humans hundreds of hours to complete. By last year, the software had been used in nearly 8,000 cases spanning 40 states and nearly 300 agencies, according to a court decision that cited prosecutors in a New York case that relied on the tool.

In the New York case, a judge barred authorities from introducing Cybercheck evidence last year after having found that prosecutors hadn’t shown that it was reliable or well-accepted, the decision shows. In another ruling last year, an Ohio judge blocked a Cybercheck analysis when Mosher refused to disclose the software’s methodology.

………

In a motion filed last month in a fatal robbery in Akron, Ohio, defense lawyers representing two defendants charged with murder demanded that Mosher provide the software’s proprietary code and algorithm.

In the April 10 filing, the lawyers also made an alarming series of allegations: Mosher lied under oath about his expertise and made false claims about when and where the technology has been used.

………

At a hearing last summer, Mosher testified that the software’s conclusions in the case were 98.2% accurate, according to the filing, which doesn’t provide additional details about how that accuracy rate was calculated.

At the hearing, Mosher said his software has never been peer-reviewed, the filing says, noting that he provided the same testimony in an earlier case in Akron.

………

According to the defendant’s April 10 filing in the Akron homicide prosecution, Cybercheck doesn’t preserve the data it uses to create or locate cyber profiles.

This guy is skeevy as hell.

Anyone in law enforcement who uses this is a malignancy on the face of Justice in the United States.

How Are They Still in Business?

If you hear that a game publisher is doing something and user hostile, what name comes to mind?

For me, it's Sony, between their inflicting rootkits on users, massive data breaches, price fixing, shutting down libraries which were promised to be eternal, lame proprietary technologies, etc.

The latest case is the Steam game Helldivers 2, which stunned many people, including Sony executives when it became a breakout hit.

So, Sony decided to require players to join the players to join the Play Station Network so that they can upsell all their new customers.

Well, in response to massive player outrage, Sony has reversed this decision.

Helldivers 2 PC players can continue doing their part for Super Earth, sans Sony logins.

Sony's plan for its surprise hit co-op squad shooter—now the most successful launch in Sony's nascent PC catalog—Helldivers 2, was to make its players sign in with PlayStation Network (PSN) accounts before it launched in early February, even if they purchased the game through the Steam store.

Sony and developer Arrowhead didn't enforce PSN logins during its frenetic launch and then announced late last week that PSN accounts would soon be mandatory. Many players did not like that at all, seeing in it a sudden desire by Sony to capitalize on its unexpected smash hit. Some were not eager to engage with a network that had a notable hack in its history, others were concerned about countries where PSN was not offered, and many didn't take Sony at its word that this was about griefing, banning, and other moderation. Because of the uneven availability of Steam and PSN, Helldivers 2 was delisted in 177 countries on Steam over the weekend as Steam worked through refund requests.

The pushback made an impression, and now Sony has announced that account linking "will not be moving forward." In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Sunday night addressed to Helldivers fans, the official PlayStation account wrote that the publisher had "heard your feedback" and was "still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable."

Translation:  We tried to f%$# our users, and the users f%$#ed us back harder.

This seems to happen fairly frequently with Sony.

I am Late on Bank Failure Friday

We had the first bank failure of the year, Republic First Bank in Philadelphia, PA.

Here is the  Full FDIC list.

What is interesting is that it appears that this is the 3rd bank that the bank President, Vernon Hill has run into the ground, and he has a long history of self dealing, nepotism and straight out weirdness.

Why has he not already been banned by the FDIC or the SEC?

Vernon Hill’s Commerce Bancorp was about to open its first New York City branch in 2001 when his wife, Shirley, called wanting to know whether dogs could be allowed inside.

Shirley Hill, also the branch designer, had been stopped from bringing the couple’s Yorkshire terrier, Sir Duffield, into other banks.

Vernon Hill, the bank’s founder and chief executive, declared it “just another stupid bank rule” and launched a campaign to encourage dogs to visit Commerce.

Hill, now 78 years old, thought a lot of bank rules were stupid. At the three different lenders he ran over the past 50 years, he wanted to upend how consumers bank.

Oh, boy, what a departure from those stodgy old dull bankers.

This is not a good thing.  We want our bankers to be dull.

The exciting ones get bailed out by the FDIC.

………

But the rules also had a way of catching up to Hill. He was fired from Commerce after regulators complained about conflicts of interest, including paying his wife’s design firm millions of dollars for architecture and marketing services. He left Metro Bank in the U.K. when an accounting scandal erupted.

Where the F%$# were regulators?  He has a long track record of corruption or incompetence, probably both, dating back to at least 2007.

His latest project, Republic First Bancorp in Philadelphia, was seized by regulators last weekend, after shareholders had ousted Hill in a last-ditch effort to save the bank. 

Republic First, which did business as Republic Bank across the mid-Atlantic region, was the fourth notable banking collapse since the start of 2023. In the wake of the failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and the similarly named First Republic, Republic First came under pressure for some of the same missteps. 

Each tried to grow quickly but found itself overexposed to risks as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. Fixed-rate securities they bought plummeted in value at the same time customers left to chase higher deposit payouts.

It appears that it's always someone else who is left holding the bag, in this case, the US tax payers by way of the FDIC.

This guy is a looter with a good sales pitch.  Why he is not under criminal investigation right now is beyond me.

God Help Me

Every year, our HR department looks for a good deal on health insurance.

This year, they settled on Cigna (Fuck Cigna), which, among other things, has been accused of pressuring doctors reviewing cases to simply reject them without doing any meaningful review.

I always knew that Cigna (Fuck Cigna) sucked, and here is some more confirmation:

In late 2020, Dr. Debby Day said her bosses at Cigna gave her a stark warning. Work faster, or the company might fire her.

That was a problem for Day because she felt her work was too important to be rushed. She was a medical director for the health insurer, a physician with sweeping power to approve or reject requests to pay for critical care like life-saving drugs or complex surgeries.

She had been working at Cigna for nearly 15 years, reviewing cases that nurses had flagged for denial or were unsure about. At Cigna and other insurers, nurses can greenlight payments, but denials have such serious repercussions for patients that many states require that doctors make the final call. In more recent years, though, Day said that the Cigna nurses’ work was getting sloppy. Patient files that nurses working in the Philippines sent to her, she said, increasingly had errors that could lead to wrongful denials if they were not corrected.

………

Some of her colleagues quickly denied requests to keep pace, she said. All a Cigna doctor had to do was cut and paste the denial language that the nurse had prepared and quickly move on to the next case, Day said. This was so common, she and another former medical director said, that people inside Cigna had a term for these kinds of speedy decisions: “click and close.”

“Deny, deny, deny. That’s how you hit your numbers,” said Day, who worked for Cigna until the late spring of 2022. “If you take a breath or think about any of these cases, you’re going to fall behind.”

………


During Day’s final years at Cigna, the company meticulously tracked the output of its medical directors on a monthly dashboard. Cigna shared this spreadsheet with more than 70 of its doctors, allowing them to compare their tally of cases with those of their peers. Day and two other former medical directors said the dashboard sent a message loud and clear: Cigna valued speed. (ProPublica and The Capitol Forum found these other former Cigna doctors independently; Day did not refer them.) One of Day’s managers in a written performance evaluation called the spreadsheet the “productivity dashboard.”

………

As ProPublica and The Capitol Forum reported last year, Cigna built a computer program that allowed its medical directors to deny certain claims in bulk. The insurer’s doctors spent an average of just 1.2 seconds on each of those cases. Cigna at the time said the review system was created to speed up approval of claims for certain routine screenings; the company later posted a rebuttal to the story. A congressional committee and the Department of Labor launched inquiries into this Cigna program. A spokesperson for Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chair of the congressional committee, said Rodgers continues to monitor the situation after Cigna shared some details about its process. The Labor Department is still examining such practices.

………

Cigna rejected the assertions that denying cases was an effective way of working faster. “Even if medical directors were incentivized to review more claims — which they are not — it makes no sense to suggest that this incentivizes denials; it would be far quicker to approve all claims,” the company spokesperson wrote. The insurer said that denials take more time because they require a deeper review of clinical data, potentially requesting additional reviews by senior clinical directors, drafting denial letters and possibly phoning the treating physicians.

But another doctor who had worked at Cigna also said that denying a request for payment was far quicker than approving one since the nurses served up language that could be used to justify the denial. That former Cigna medical director said, “Sometimes you just have to accept the nurse and click and close if you had too much work.” (That doctor asked not to be named because they feared repercussions if they commented publicly.)

And now Cigna (Fuck Cigna) is my insurer for the next 12 months.

Socialized medicine now.

 

Son of Orion

NASA is working on a new propulsion system which promises a nearly 20 fold increase in ISP over chemical rockets and thrust levels in the tens of thousands of pounds by technologies used to detonate thermonuclear warheads.

Short version is that nuclear fusion at levels well below break even still generate a lot of neutrons, and these induce fission, which generates a plasma providing thrust. 

It sounds a lot like the Orion program from the early 1960s, which involved dropping nuclear bombs out the back of a spacecraft to shove it along its course:

Engineering research outfit Howe Industries is working with NASA to develop a new plasma-based propulsion system that might help solve the problem of moving around the solar system faster with bigger payloads.

Early studies suggest the pulsed plasma rocket (PPR) propulsion system could produce up to 100,000 N [22,481 lbf] of thrust within a 5,000-second impulse.

The concept has been developed from an earlier Pulsed Fission-Fusion (PuFF), but is smaller, simpler, and less expensive, according to NASA.

"The exceptional performance of the PPR, combining high [specific impulse] and high thrust, holds the potential to revolutionize space exploration. The system's high efficiency allows for manned missions to Mars to be completed within a mere two months," NASA said.

PuFF relies on fission-ignited fusion systems that have already been proved in thermonuclear weapons. But instead of a bomb, the aim is to produce a controlled jet of plasma.

These are indeed impressive numbers with the  ISP numbers on par with other high ISP propulsion systems like ion drives.

That being said, it seems to be an awfully bumpy ride.

This is My Shocked Face

BF Borgers, the accounting firm which audited Donald Trump's Truth Social Media firm prior to its IPO, has been banned from conducting further accounting worked and fined $14,000,000.00 by the SEC.

Trump and his Evil Minions™ used a phony auditor to approve their phony numbers before their very real IPO?

Say it ain't so:

The auditor for former president Donald Trump’s media company was charged with “massive fraud” Friday by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused the firm of being a “sham audit mill” whose failures put investors at risk.

The auditor, BF Borgers, and its owner, Benjamin Borgers, agreed to a permanent suspension from accounting work and to pay $14 million in civil penalties, federal regulators said.

The SEC said its review of the firm’s audits found “deliberate and systemic failures” in more than 1,500 filings from January 2021 through June 2023. That period was before Trump Media & Technology Group went public, suggesting that its filings were not among those investigated as part of the review.

Trump Media, which owns Truth Social, saw its share price slide 5 percent Friday morning.

………

Trump Media said in an SEC filing last month that Borgers had served as its accounting firm before the company went public in March, auditing Trump Media’s financial statements for 2022 and 2023. In March, the Trump Media board also approved Borgers as its auditor for its upcoming 2024 report.

Borgers conducted the audit of Trump Media’s 2023 financial statement, which said the company lost more than $58 million last year and generated about $4 million in revenue. In that statement, Borgers said it had served as Trump Media’s auditor since 2022.

………

Nearly every Borgers audit that was examined as part of the oversight board’s inspections between 2019 and 2022 contained a “deficiency,” and in some cases multiple errors, the board’s inspection reports show.

Among its repeated errors, the Financial Times found in a review of Borgers’ filings last month: the spelling of the firm’s own name.

You hire a corrupt accounting firm, and even they tell you that you are losing almost $15.00 for every $1.00 in revenue?

The real numbers must be a complete sh%$ show.

Also, the fact that they cannot spell their own name falls firmly into the category of things that would be too over the top if presented as satire.

Justice Denied

Following a jury deadlock, a mistrial has been declared in the lawsuit against the contractor CACI for torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib.

Our military tortured people there, and CACI requested the torture, but some of the jurors thought that CACI was indemnified through the, "Borrowed Servant Doctrine," which in this case means an employment leasing agency is not responsible for damages caused by those employees under the direction of their clients.

So, CACI was claiming that the Army ordered them to cooperate with torture, and since the Army has sovereign immunity, no one can get sued.

As Joseph Heller might have put it, "Catch 22."

A judge declared a mistrial Thursday after a jury said it was deadlocked and could not reach a verdict in the trial of a military contractor accused of contributing to the abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq two decades ago.

The mistrial came in the jury’s eighth day of deliberations. The deliberations went far longer than the trial itself.

The eight-member civil jury in Alexandria deadlocked on accusations the civilian interrogators who were supplied to the U.S. Army at Abu Ghraib in 2003 and 2004 had conspired with soldiers there to abuse detainees as a means of “softening them up” for questioning.

The trial was the first time a U.S. jury heard claims brought by Abu Ghraib survivors in the 20 years since photos of detainee mistreatment — accompanied by smiling U.S. soldiers inflicting the abuse — shocked the world during the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Reston, Virginia-based CACI had argued that it wasn’t complicit in the detainees’ abuse. It said that its employees had minimal interaction with the three plaintiffs in the case and that any liability for their mistreatment belonged to the government, not CACI.

Multiple jurors told The Associated Press that a majority of the jury sided with the plaintiffs, but they declined to give an exact numerical breakdown among the eight-member panel.

The jury sent out a note Wednesday afternoon saying it was deadlocked, and indicating in particular that it was hung up on a legal principle known as the “borrowed servants” doctrine.

CACI, as one of its defenses, has argued it shouldn’t be liable for any misdeeds by its employees if they were under the control and direction of the Army.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers tried to bar CACI from making that argument at trial, but Brinkema allowed the jury to consider it.

Because, of course she did.

The fix was in.

………

During the trial that began April 15, lawyers for the three plaintiffs argued that CACI was liable for their mistreatment even if they couldn’t prove that CACI’s interrogators were the ones who directly inflicted the abuse.

They argued that the interrogators had entered into a conspiracy with the military police who inflicted the abuse by instructing soldiers to “soften up” detainees for questioning.

The evidence included reports from two retired Army generals, who documented the abuse and concluded that multiple CACI interrogators were complicit in the abuse.

Those reports concluded that one of the interrogators, Steven Stefanowicz, lied to investigators about his conduct, and that he likely instructed soldiers to mistreat detainees and used dogs to intimidate detainees during interrogations.

………

CACI officials initially had serious doubts about his ability to work as an interrogator, according to evidence introduced at trial. An email sent by CACI official Tom Howard before the company sent interrogators to Iraq described Stefanowicz as a “NO-GO for filling an interrogator position.”

CACI initially sent Stefanowicz over to Iraq not as an interrogator but as a screener, but he testified that the Army — desperately short of interrogators at a prison with a rapidly expanding population — promoted him to interrogator within a day of his arrival.

Trial evidence showed that CACI defended the work of another of its interrogators, Dan Johnson, even after the Army sought his dismissal when photos of the Abu Ghraib abuse became public, and one of the photos showed Johnson questioning a detainee in a crouched position that Army investigators determined to be an unauthorized stress position.

You know the old saying, "No justice, no peace, know justice, know peace."

Unless and until the senior figures who directed and in many profited from torture are held to account, those who follow them will be encouraged to engage in similar malfeasance.

Another "Centrist" Democrat Gets Indicted

As I have noted many times, so-called "Centrist" Democrats have little motivating them beyond careerism, and the lust for money and power.

One of the more egregious cases of this is Congressman Henry Cuellar, who has has just been indicted for taking bribes from multiple sources, along with his wife:

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) and his wife allegedly accepted $600,000 in bribes from an oil company controlled by the Azerbaijan government and a bank headquartered in Mexico, according to a federal indictment unsealed in Texas on Friday.

The 68-year-old congressman and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, are accused of setting up front companies that entered into sham contracts with the bank and the Azerbaijan government, the indictment said. Through their lawyer, they denied wrongdoing.

His wife is named Imelda?  ROFL!  How many shoes in the closet?

The 54-page indictment details a bold corruption scheme in which Cuellar — who co-chairs the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus — allegedly promised to wield his power as a U.S. congressman to advocate for his benefactors.

To Azerbaijan, he pledged to influence legislation related to the country’s conflict with neighboring Armenia, insert favorable language into committee reports on economic aid programs and deliver a pro-Azerbaijan speech on the House floor, the indictment says. To the Mexican bank, Cuellar allegedly promised to pressure executive branch officials to back off money laundering enforcement practices that threatened the bank’s business interests and to support legislation that would block regulation of the payday lending industry, which has been accused of exploiting poor Americans.

He's pond scum, and I hope that he's convicted and sent to jail.

Good News

Despite an aggressive push by the Orthodox Jewish community in New York, the requirement for all private schools in the state to offer equivalent education in subjects like, English, math, science, and social studies remains on track for the school year starting in September.

This is an unalloyed good. 

Far too many students leave the Yeshiva system basically lacking the basic skills required to function in the greater society, which is something that Judaism eschews.

They end up on the public dole, and do little beyond studying Torah.

This is not only a drag on society, it is forbidden by Jewish law, as noted in Pirkei Avot 4:5, "On studying Torah, "Rabbi Zadok said: do not make them a crown for self-exaltation, nor a spade with which to dig."

A push to delay when private schools must demonstrate that they offer adequate secular education failed to make it into New York state budget legislation, three state senators told Shtetl.

Despite the behind-the-scenes campaign to extend the timeline by at least one year, all New York private schools will still be expected to demonstrate during the 2024-2025 school year that they offer education that is “substantially equivalent” to public school education in subjects like math, science, English, and social studies, as part of a New York State Education Department regulation that passed in 2022.

The budget bill that includes education was one of the last parts of the budget to be released. The state’s budget was due on April 1, but that deadline is often missed as lawmakers seek to use the budget to address policy issues.

The substantial equivalency negotiations were part of what caused the delay, the Albany Times Union reported. According to that news outlet, Governor Kathy Hochul’s office may have hoped that by extending the deadline, it could help preferred candidates win U.S. congressional races in districts with large Haredi communities, including ones currently represented by congress members Pat Ryan, Mike Lawler, and Anthony D’Esposito.

Hochul really is a horror show. She makes me nostalgic for the days of Andrew "Rat Faced Andy" Cuomo ……… almost.

………

A push to delay when private schools must demonstrate that they offer adequate secular education failed to make it into New York state budget legislation, three state senators told Shtetl.

Despite the behind-the-scenes campaign to extend the timeline by at least one year, all New York private schools will still be expected to demonstrate during the 2024-2025 school year that they offer education that is “substantially equivalent” to public school education in subjects like math, science, English, and social studies, as part of a New York State Education Department regulation that passed in 2022.

………

The substantial equivalency negotiations were part of what caused the delay, the Albany Times Union reported. According to that news outlet, Governor Kathy Hochul’s office may have hoped that by extending the deadline, it could help preferred candidates win U.S. congressional races in districts with large Haredi communities, including ones currently represented by congress members Pat Ryan, Mike Lawler, and Anthony D’Esposito.

One hopes that the Yeshivas will be forced to comply, as opposed to simply being the subject of reports outlining their noncompliance.

This Is Giving Me Nightmares

link

Headline of the Day

Electile dysfunction causes outbreak of performance politics in Commons

—The Guardian

It's a commentary on how the Tories have entered the silly season over their (quite justifoied) election fears.

The Tories are really flailing, but not to worry Keir Starmer and the rest of the Blairites intend to replace them with the Tory wing of the Labour Party.

Looks Like the Fed Might be Getting Wait it Wants

We had a positively anemic jobs report in April, with non farm payrolls growing only by 175,000, which is a little bit below what is needed to account for growth in the labor market.

The unemployment rate also rose by 0.1% to 3.9% (U3).

I'm sure that the sado monetarist rat-f$#@s at the Federal Reserve are congratulating themselves over the pain that they are causing:

Hiring in the US slowed in April with the workforce adding another 175,000 jobs and wage growth slowing.

The news cheered investors hoping that a cooling labor market will prompt the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates – which have been driven to a 20-year high as the US fights stubbornly high inflation. All the major US markets rose on the news.

I think that their spell check is broken, they spelled, "Psychotic narcissistic evil greenheads," as, "Investors." 

......

Wage gains in April – which are also closely watched by the Fed – were also lower than forecast, increasing 3.9% from a year earlier after rising 4.1% in March.

Well, that IS good news. (Not)

I am unimpressed with both the economy and the whole idea of an independent central bank.

Posted via mobile.

Good Point

There should be no amnesty, as was called for by the self-serving and perfidious Emily Oster, for medical and other professionals who were directly responsible for the unnecessary deaths of tens of millions of people as a result of the Covid pandemic.

People who advocated for a herd immunity scheme in which they knew that at a minimum hundreds of thousands of people would die, should be shunned, and not made pundits:

I can’t stop thinking about the essay No, Young Adults Should Not Live in Fear from Coronavirus by Drs. John Mandrola and Andrew Foy, two so-called “medical conservatives”. It was written on December 29th, 2020 in response to a research letter titled All-Cause Excess Mortality and COVID-19–Related Mortality Among US Adults Aged 25-44 Years, March-July 2020, which found that 4,535 COVID deaths were recorded among young adults during the pandemic’s first 5-months.

Many people were sad that 4,535 young people had died from COVID in such a short time, especially considering there had been just 4.49 million confirmed cases of COVID by the end of July 2020.

These “medical conservatives”, however, were unperturbed by thousands of dead young people. They castigated those who were concerned, decrying their “fearsome messaging.” “The infection fatality rate for young adults is quite low,” they said reassuringly. They sought to numb their readers by encouraging them to focus on the tens of millions of young adults who hadn’t died of COVID, while ignoring that the vast majority of them had yet to contract it. They wrote:

We offer four reasons why this study and OpEd do not support the claim that young adults should live in fear from the virus…

An excess of 12,000 deaths sounds bad, but Professor Don Boudreaux, from George Mason University, has noted that there are nearly 88 million people in this age group. Thus, the individual risk for a person this age is found by dividing 4,560 (the number dead from COVID19 in this study) by 88 million. This equates to a 0.0052% risk of dying from COVID19.

 

Of course, anything that kills young people can be made to sound trivial by dividing it by 88 million. The individual risk of dying at all is low for young people.

………

However, despite knowing that COVID killed 4,535 young adults in just 5-months and that only a relatively small percentage had been infected, these doctors told them their “fear of death” was misplaced. Moreover, they chose to convey this incautious message at the start of the pandemic’s deadliest wave- COVID killed 95,000 Americans in January 2021- and two months earlier, a CDC report found that infections in young people invariably spill out into the wider community. It found:

Younger adults likely contribute to community transmission of COVID-19. Across the southern United States in June 2020, increases in percentage of positive SARS-CoV-2 test results among adults aged 20–39 years preceded increases among those aged ≥60 years by 4–15 days.

………

Of course, all this was reflects what actually happened. There would have been many more such tragedies had hundreds of millions of young people, none of whom were vaccinated in December 2020, lived with zero fear of COVID, as “medical conservatives” instructed them.

………

Yet, for some inexplicable reason, these doctors- and there are many like them- feel perfectly entitled to pontificate about risks that fall well short of their own threshold of concern. Incredibly, the same doctor who wrote No, Young Adults Should Not Live in Fear from Coronavirus also wrote an error-filled article titled Vaccine-Induced Myocarditis Concerns Demand Respect, just 6-months later. He wanted his readers to “respect” the thing that wouldn’t kill them, but not to “fear” the thing that might.

………

However, it seems to me that once a doctor has minimized literal death for young people, they’ve forfeited their right to be taken seriously when they sanctimoniously demand we “respect” a rare, usually mild vaccine-side effect. Indeed, once a doctor has minimized a disease that killed 45,000 young people and seriously injured many more, they’ve forfeited their right to be taken seriously when they opine on any topic less consequential than this.

They have proven themselves to be unreliable and malicious.

Their opinions on public health should be given no more consideration than those of a rabid dog on quantum mechanics.

Ka-Ching!

I got my first payout from Google Adsense since 2015, 9 years ago.

Before that, I think that it was late 2013, and before that I would get a $100.00 or so payout every 9 months or so.

While my page count is down somewhat from  the 2010 or so, it's not down by 1500%, but my ad revenue is.

While admittedly anecdotal, and a small data set, I think that this does give a picture in which the advertising intermediaries are increasingly extracting more and more money while delivering less and less, because the monopolized advertising market is gamed for the benefit of Google, Amazon, and the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™.

To quote Cory Doctorow, "Put bluntly, the problem isn’t Big Tech stealing publishers’ content; it’s that Big Tech is stealing publishers’ money." (emphasis original) 

Break them up.

Please note: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers.

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

Headline of the Day

Japan Will Use AI to Find out What Bears Do in the Woods

—The Register

Well sh%$. What is it that bears do in the woods?

Time for the Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Once again, initial unemployment claims in the US were below estimates, flat at 208K, as opposed to the consensus forecast of 212K claims, and continuing claims were also flat, at 1.774 million claims, so the job market remains tight (spoiler, with over a million workers dead and at least as many suffering long-Covid disability, that is how the math works.).

Meanwhile, productivity fell, which is an indicator of an economic slowdown of some kind.

The number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, was also unchanged at a seasonally adjusted 1.774 million during the week ending April 20, the claims report showed.

Low layoffs were reinforced by a separate report from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas showing U.S.-based employers announced 64,789 job cuts in April, a 28% drop from March. So far this year, companies have announced 322,043 job cuts, down 4.6% from the same period last year.

The claims data have no bearing on April's employment report, which is scheduled to be published on Friday. Nonfarm payrolls likely increased by 243,000 jobs in April after a gain of 303,000 in March, according to a Reuters survey of economists. The unemployment rate is forecast unchanged at 3.8%.

A third report from the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistic showed nonfarm productivity, which measures hourly output per worker, increased at a 0.3% annualized rate in the first quarter after rising at a 3.5% pace in the October-December period. The government on Friday corrected productivity data from 2019 through 2023 due to a computation error.

I really do not expect tomorrow's unemployment numbers to clarify much.

Of Course They Did

The Federal Reserved has decided not to cut rates again, because they want wage growth to, "slow down."

Looking at all the stock buybacks, dividend hikes, and outrageous pay packages, I'd say that "Greedflation" is more of a problem, but what do I know:

The Federal Reserve acknowledged a recent setback in its inflation fight but said it was more likely to keep interest rates at their current level for longer than to raise them again.
Officials held their benchmark federal-funds rate steady Wednesday at a range between 5.25% and 5.5%, the highest in two decades and a level it reached last July, following a run of economic data that revealed simmering price pressures in the economy.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicated that the bar to cut interest rates had gone up, but that the bar to hike rates was even higher.

“It’s likely to take longer for us to gain confidence that we are on a sustainable path” to lower inflation, Powell said. He said he expected inflation would resume its decline this year, but added, “my confidence in that is lower than it was.”

At the same time, he said, for officials to put hikes back on the table, they would need persuasive evidence that higher interest rates weren’t bringing down inflation. “That’s not what we think we’re seeing,” Powell said. “That will be a question that the data will have to answer.”

In the run-up to Wednesday’s announcement, investors had been squirrelly over the prospect that Powell might entertain rate hikes. Stocks moved higher after Powell said he thought rate hikes were unlikely, but then they reversed course as investors digested his comments. 

It's really pretty simple, They have no problem with what Roosevelt called, "The malefactors of great wealth," robbing the rest of us blind, but if wages keep up with inflation, it's the end of the f%$#ing world.

F%$# that.

The Finns are so Law-Abiding

That just one guy was responsible for more than half of the crime reported in the Scandinavian nation.

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

A cyber-thief who snatched tens of thousands of patients' sensitive records from a psychotherapy clinic before blackmailing them and then leaking their files online has been caged for six years and three months.

The district court of Länsi-Uusimaa, Finland, sentenced Aleksanteri Kivimäki, 26, on Tuesday for crimes against the Vastaamo center and those in its care, which included more than 20,000 extortion attempts.

Specifically, a judge last month found Kivimäki guilty of 9,231 counts of aggravated dissemination of information infringing on individuals' private lives, 20,745 counts of aggravated attempted blackmail, and 20 counts of aggravated blackmail. The former CEO of Vastaamo has already received a three-month suspended sentence for failing to protect his clients' data.

Kivimäki's extortion spree seemingly triggered so many complaints to the police, it caused Finland's reported crime figures to skyrocket in a week, going beyond more than double the usual rate.

(emphasis mine)

And they claim that millennials don't work hard.

The Not-So-Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

As Keith Olbermann had an anecdote on his Countdown podcast , where he described briefly dating Laura Ingram.

The interesting bit was not the dating, but the fact that she revealed to him that what Hillary Clinton called the, "Vast right-wing conspiracy," attempting to get Bill Clinton impeached for a blow job was not vast.

It was not much more than a dozen people.

Now the good folks at Mother Jones have discovered that only a few billionaires are funding almost the entirety of the right wing political edifice.  (I guess that they have an edifice complex)

It ain't a dozen.  It's four people, so they could play a game of bridge and no one would be left out:

In early 2021, Stephen Miller—former White House senior adviser to Donald Trump and architect of the 45th president’s hopeful second-term mass deportation agenda—announced his next venture: America First Legal (AFL).

Paraded as “the long-awaited answer to the ACLU,” AFL fights for Trumpist values in the legal system. And the group is prolific: In its three years of existence, AFL has taken on more than 100 legal actions—between lawsuits filed, complaints lodged with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and court briefs written, according to the Washington Post.

………

The strategy has worked. In 2022, AFL brought in $44 million. Its revenue shot up by nearly 600 percent compared with the previous year. But less scrutinized has been how AFL has secured its haul. More than 60 percent of its funding came from a little-discussed entity: the Bradley Impact Fund. In 2022, Bradley doled out more than $27 million to AFL, according to the organization’s most recent available tax filing.

And AFL is far from the only culture-war donation the Bradley Impact Fund has dispensed.

That same year, according to tax filings, Bradley gave $7.8 million to Turning Point USA and $1.8 million to Project Veritas, the conservative outfit founded by provocateur James O’Keefe that mounts sting operations. The year prior, both organizations ranked at the top of the fund’s list of recipients, receiving $7.4 million and $2.1 million, respectively. (Before 2019, such contributions were limited to a few thousand dollars.) Another group to benefit from the fund has been America’s Future—led by Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn—which received a $500,000 gift in 2022.

Over the last few years, the Bradley Impact Fund has experienced massive growth, emerging as one of the key bankrollers of the coterie of organizations and apparatchiks hoping to create institutions that carry out Trump’s ideological agenda. In the process, Bradley fuels the culture wars and undermines faith in democracy by stirring election denialism—all while keeping its donors secret.

Created in 2012, the Bradley Impact Fund is a donor-advised fund (DAF) “aligned” with the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has a long history of conservative influence and, of late, has become a source of money for organizations pushing Republicans to change election laws. Donor-advised funds, such as the Bradley Impact Fund, collect donations from various contributors and then make often untraceable gifts to other organizations. An increasingly popular charity tool—receiving a quarter of all individual giving in the United States—DAFs offer donors “multiple layers of anonymity,” explains Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of the investigative watchdog Documented.

DAFs operate like private foundations but are classified as public charities. This allows the funds to give money without the same transparency requirements. And the donors, who can recommend where their contributions should go, are still awarded the publicly subsidized tax breaks associated with charitable giving.

 ………

This work is being enabled by an extraordinarily small universe of donors. Bradley boasts about cultivating a network of contributors across 44 states. But more than 75 percent of contributions to the Bradley Impact Fund in 2022 came from just four sources, according to an audited financial statement filed with the California Department of Justice that the nonprofit research organization Accountable US shared with Mother Jones.

(Emphasis mine)

The Bradley Impact Fund received roughly $108 million in contributions and grants that year, including three donations of $36 million, $20 million, and $18 million, respectively. At least another $12 million came from a different donor-advised fund, DonorsTrust, the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement. By its own admission, DonorsTrust is a convenient conduit for benefactors wishing to provide “gifts funding sensitive or controversial issues.” (In an email, Lawson Bader, president and CEO of DonorsTrust, declined to comment on the reasons behind the grant to the Bradley Impact Fund, saying the implementation of the gift is left to the recipient. “Grants from one DAF provider to another are infrequent and certainly not nefarious,” he added.)

We need to find out who these entities are, and name and shame them.

Also, we recognize that every billionaire is a policy failure, and that increasing inequality is an existential threat to our society.

More generally, charity law needs to be changed to prevent this sort of opacity in funding.

Snark of the Day

In Russia, the party of Marx and Engels has one leader embalmed and horizontal in Red Square; and a stone’s throw away in the State Duma, the current leader, Gennady Zyuganov, embalmed and vertical.

—John Helmer, waxing rhapsodic about the pleasures of May Day in Moscow

He's right, you know.

Happy Real Labor Day

The one in September was created to make workers forget about this day in the United States.

This day commemorates the state sanctioned Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in which police opened fire on strikers, and later strike organizers were executed in kangaroo courts.

People were murdered to prevent the 40 hour work week by elements of the state.