Jeebus.

How the hell does someone shoot their way into the Washington Navy Yard?

Seriously, it's a secure area, and NCIS Protective Operations Field Office the folks who, manage "Protection details on six DoD/DoN High Risk Personal (HRP)."

What the heck is going on here.

Unlike the cable channels, I won't speculate on what is going on. I know nothing.

About my only insight on this, and it reflects very poorly on me, is that when things like this happen, I notice how easy my commute home is.

It's my strongest memory of 911 too.

My mind is odd.

I Want Those Motherf%$#ing Bigots off the Motherf%$#ing Internet

Particularly when it requires me to mention the antediluvian and almost completely useless Miss America Pageant:

Miss New York, Nina Davuluri, was crowned Miss America on Sunday evening in Atlantic City.

The 24-year-old Syracuse resident is the first ever winner of Indian heritage.

While Davuluri is proud of her heritage — even performing a Bollywood dance during Sunday's show and competing on a theme of “Celebrating Diversity through Cultural Competency” — many weren't pleased.

What should have been a happy occasion turned sour.

Following Davuluri's win, racist trolls took to Twitter to complain about the decision.

Seriously, could the racists shut up, so I can ignore Miss America again?

Things that Make You Shout out in Glee

Larry Summers is not going to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve:

Lawrence H. Summers, one of President Obama’s closest economic confidants and a former Treasury secretary, has withdrawn his name from consideration for the position of chairman of the Federal Reserve amid rising opposition from Mr. Obama’s own Democratic allies on Capitol Hill.

In a statement released by the White House on Sunday afternoon, Mr. Obama said he had accepted the decision by his friend even as he praised him for helping to rescue the country from economic disaster early in the president’s term.

“Larry was a critical member of my team as we faced down the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it was in no small part because of his expertise, wisdom and leadership that we wrestled the economy back to growth and made the kind of progress we are seeing today,” Mr. Obama said in the statement.

He added: “I will always be grateful to Larry for his tireless work and service on behalf of his country, and I look forward to continuing to seek his guidance and counsel in the future.”

Mr. Summers appeared to have been the White House’s favored candidate to succeed Ben S. Bernanke as chairman of the Fed, though Mr. Obama had repeatedly said he had not yet made a decision between Mr. Summers, Janet L. Yellen, who is a vice chairwoman of the Fed, or someone else.

But Mr. Summers’s reputation for being brusque, his comments about women’s natural aptitude in mathematics and science, and his decisions on financial regulatory matters in the Clinton and Obama administrations had made him a controversial choice.

Three Senate Democrats on the Banking Committee had come out against Mr. Summers’s nomination, meaning that the White House might have had to barter for as many as three Republican votes for him even to pass out of committee.

It ain't 3, it's 4, Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, and Jon Tester, who announced his opposition on Friday.

Summers withdrew his name because he cannot be confirmed.

Let's be clear here:  the American People won.

Obama desperately wanted to nominate Summers, despite the crescendo of opposition.

BTW, Lousy Fast this Yom Kippur

Charlie and I both had a hard time, while Sharon and Natalie did OK.

Not sure why.

Just When You Thought that the House of Saud Could Not Get Any More Vile

It turns out that they are sending death row inmates to fight in their war in Syria:

What is the role of Saudi Arabia in this proposal for a US military strike on Syria? It is not a question you will see asked much in the American media, but you should. Internationally there has been some coverage of the Saudi role, particularly the oceans of cash they’ve been lavishing on jihadist rebels for over a year. Rich Saudis like (now deceased) Osama Bin Laden and Saudi Intel Chief Prince Bandar are traditionally the biggest backers of radical Islamist groups in the world. President Assad continually noted in his interview with Charlie Rose that the Saudis were pouring their petro-dollars into Wahhabist Al-Qaeda linked rebels in Syria.

And now it is reported that the Saudi Arabian government is granting amnesty to death row inmates in exchange for them going to Syria to wage jihad.

Well, it seems some Saudi bureaucrats looked at the stalemate in Syria and came up with a way to think outside the box—and by “box” I mean “death row cell.” According to a story filed by A.I.N.A., an Iraqi Assyrian PR agency, the Saudi Ministry of Interior came up with a brand-new plague to inflict on Syria in 2012: “Let’s fly a bunch of death-row inmates over there and give them automatic weapons!” Seriously. Here’s the memo:

…we are in dialogue with the accused criminals who have been convicted with smuggling drugs, murder, rape, from the following nationalities: 110 Yemenis, 21 Palestinians, 212 Saudis, 96 Sudanese, 254 Syrians, 82 Jordanians, 68 Somalis, 32 Afghanis, 94 Egyptians, 203 Pakistanis, 23 Iraqis, and 44 Kuwaitis.

We have reached an agreement with them that they will be exempted from the death sentence and given a monthly salary to their families and loved ones, who will be prevented from traveling outside Saudi Arabia in return for rehabilitation of the accused and their training in order to send them to Jihad in Syria.

Please accept my greetings.

[Signed]

Director of follow up in Ministry of Interior

Abdullah bin Ali al-Rmezan

And we are on their side.

They are sending murders, rapists, and other criminals to fight for their Islamist forces in Syria, and we are on their side.

Think about that:  We are on their side.

You think that these guys care about the rules of war of the well-being of the Syrian people.

You know that everything is f%$#ed up and sh%$ when Putin is on the side of the angels.

A reminder:  We are on these guy's side.

Yom Kippur has Begun

For the next 25 hours:

• No food.
• No water.
• No internet.
• No kidding.

Buh Bye!

Voyager 1 is now officially in interstellar space:

By today’s standards, the spacecraft’s technology is laughable: it carries an 8-track tape recorder and computers with one-240,000th the memory of a low-end iPhone. When it left Earth 36 years ago, it was designed as a four-year mission to Saturn, and everything after that was gravy.

But Voyager 1 has become — thrillingly — the Little Spacecraft That Could. On Thursday, scientists declared that it had become the first probe to exit the solar system, a breathtaking achievement that NASA could only fantasize about back when Voyager was launched in 1977, the same year “Star Wars” was released.

………

The lonely probe, which is 11.7 billion miles from Earth and hurtling away at 38,000 miles per hour, has long been on the cusp, treading a boundary between the bubble of hot, energetic particles around the solar system and the dark region beyond. There, in interstellar space, the plasma, or ionized gas, is noticeably denser.

Dr. Gurnett and his team have spent the past few months analyzing their data, trying to nail down whether what they were seeing was solar plasma or the plasma of interstellar space. Now they are certain it was the latter, and have even pinpointed a date for the crossing: Aug. 25, 2012.

Kewl!

I Missed this on Tuesday

Incumbent Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes was soundly defeated in the primary by Ken Thompson.

The reason that I have an interest in what would ordinarily be a very local race is because there is a huge Haredim (ultra-orthodox Jewish) community, particularly the Satmar, and many of the leading rabbis threw their support behind him.

When juxtaposed with the very soft touch applied by to the Hynes' office toward the Orthodox community, the implication of an electoral quid pro quo is hard to avoid.

Thompson is saying that they will have a, "DA's office, where there will be one standard of justice for all, no matter where you come from, no matter how much money you have," which I think is a pretty obvious shot across the bow regarding the pattern of aggressive threats toward witnesses in the Haredi community.

As an aside, I think that Hynes had an inkling that he might lose, because we have some credible allegations that one of his assistants, the, "scandal-ridden A.D.A. Michael Vecchione," has been removing files from the office for the past few days, allegedly to prevent Thompson from reviewing them and referring them to the Bar or a court of law.

If Thompson can break the Omerta of the Orthodox community, it would be a very good thing.

What the F%##?!?!? Putin is the F%$#ing Voice of F%$#ing Reason on Syria

I read this OP/ED that he wrote for the New York Times:

Recent events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

He makes a number of trenchant points:

• Syria is not a battle for democracy, it is a power struggle where much of the opposition are foreign fighters driven by sectarian triumphalism..
• That much of the violence is fueled by foreign weapons supplies.
• The evidence presented so far by the White House is thin.
• Ignoring international law encourages nations to accumulates WMDs.
• Surgical strikes don't exist, you will kill innocents.
• American exceptionalism is a dangerous myth.

The reactions of America's chattering classes has been abject horror, particularly regarding the last point.

American exceptionalism does not exist, it's just an excuse of a people who have not seen war on their shores for 150 years to bring war to other people's shores.

I agree with them all, though I think that Charlie Pierce's take on this, that Putin is embracing and his Pwn493 (ownage) of America's needlessly bellicose foreign policy.

Read both Putin and Pierce.  (Pierce is way funnier, but Putin is a bit more substantive)

It's Jobless Thursday

The number of initial claims, 292,000, sounds good, but there were problems with the statistics:

Initial jobless claims fell to their lowest level last week since the spring of 2006, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Or not.

The reported figure, which estimated that jobless claims had dropped to 292,000, about 31,000 fewer than the week before, seemingly suggested that the economy was finally entering a self-sustaining recovery on the back of a healing job market.

The number, however, is unreliable, the government said, skewed by upgrades on two state computer systems that caused those states to underreport claims. The total number of initial jobless claims is almost certainly higher than reported, though nobody knows the scope of the mismeasurement at this point.

The data malfunction has called into question the accuracy of a major leading indicator, one scrutinized by investors, economists and policy makers alike. It also shined a light on the imperfect and often outdated systems that states and the federal government use to provide benefits to workers and cull data on the labor market and the broader economy — a situation that some experts warn might become even worse because of the $1 trillion in budget cuts spread over 10 years known as sequestration.

The Labor Department would not confirm which two states had issues or guess as to the scope of the mismeasurement. But Nevada confirmed that it had not reported complete claims data to the federal government because of a computer upgrade.

So basically, the numbers won't mean anything until next week, when the revision comes in.

The shortened Labor Day week probably skewed the numbers too, or at least made it harder for Nevada and a state to be named at a later date to get their act together with regard to the computer update..

Fracking Assholes Literally Think That They are Above the Law

And no, I am not invoking Battlestar Galactica.

I am referring to the hissy fit that drillers in Pennsylvania are having about being prosecuted for illegal dumping:

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane's decision to prosecute a major Marcellus Shale natural-gas driller for a 2010 wastewater spill has sent shock waves through the industry.

But environmentalists Wednesday hailed the prosecution of the Exxon Mobil Corp. subsidiary as a departure from the soft treatment they say the industry has received from Pennsylvania regulators.

………

Kane's office announced charges Tuesday against XTO Energy Inc. for discharging more than 50,000 gallons of toxic wastewater from storage tanks at a gas-well site in Lycoming County.

XTO in July settled federal civil charges over the incident by agreeing to pay a $100,000 fine and deploy a plan to improve wastewater-management practices. The consent decree included no admissions of liability.

The Fort Worth, Texas, drilling company, which Exxon acquired in 2010, said it had worked cooperatively with federal and state authorities to clean up the spilled waste, known as "produced water." XTO excavated and removed 3,000 tons of contaminated soil from the site.

"Criminal charges are unwarranted and legally baseless because neither XTO nor any of its employees intentionally, recklessly, or negligently discharged produced water on the site," XTO said in a statement.

Kane's office said it did not need to prove intent to prosecute the company for crimes. XTO is charged with five counts of unlawful conduct under the Clean Streams Law and three counts of unlawful conduct under the Solid Waste Management Act.

Industry leaders said the prosecution of a company for what they called an inadvertent spill creates a hostile business environment.

Because prosecuting criminals is constitutes a "hostile business environment."

YOU see, laws are only for the little people.

The official story from XTO also stinks to high heaven:

The XTO spill received very little public attention when it occurred.

A DEP inspector discovered wastewater leaking from an open valve on a storage tank during an unannounced visit to the Marquardt well site on Nov. 16, 2010. The wastewater spilled into a tributary of the Susquehanna River and also contaminated a spring. Pollutants were present in the stream for 65 days after the spill.

The grand jury's presentment does not say who opened the valves on the tank or why. XTO officials at the time suggested vandals might be responsible. But it noted that the drilling site had no secondary containment, little security, and no alarm system for leaks.

Yes, "vandals".

It's gotta be vandals, and not some corporate drone who decided that it made business sense to just dump the water, even if every now and again you get caught and have to pay a 100 Grand fine.

A tip of the hat, to Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane.

Motherf%$#er

DC Mayor Vincent Gray just vetoed the living wage bill:

Mayor Vincent C. Gray vetoed legislation Thursday that would force the District’s largest retailers to pay their workers significantly more, choosing the potential for jobs and development at home over joining a national fight against low-wage work.

Gray’s quandary is playing out in many U.S. cities, where local leaders who generally sympathize with worker causes are also eager to lure jobs and commerce for their constituents. Retailers, most notably Wal-Mart, have placed an increasing focus on urban expansion, while unions and advocates for workers have pushed measures like the District’s “living wage” bill as a valuable hedge against the proliferation of low-paying jobs.

The veto, which is unlikely to be overridden by the D.C. Council, clears the way for Wal-Mart to continue its entry into the District — plans years in the making that were thrown into question after lawmakers embraced the wage proposal this year.

Gray (D) announced his veto in a letter delivered to Council Chairman Phil Mendelson on Thursday morning. It explained his opposition to the bill and tried to soften the political consequences by disclosing his intention to seek a minimum-wage increase from all employers, not just large retailers.

In the letter, Gray said the measure was “not a true living-wage bill,” because its effect would be limited to “a small fraction of the District’s workforce.” He called the bill a “job-killer,” citing threats from Wal-Mart and other retailers that they would not locate in the city if the bill becomes law.

“If I were to sign this bill into law, it would do nothing but hinder our ability to create jobs, drive away retailers, and set us back on the path to prosperity for all,” he said.

In an interview, Gray did not say what minimum wage he would seek, except that any increase would be “reasonable” and would come after consultation with lawmakers and interested parties.

The whole "job killer" argument is bullsh%$.

The studies are fairly clear here.  Walmart does not create jobs, it takes jobs from smaller retailers, aggressively puts those workers on the public dole, and underpays them:

Earlier studies did not adequately deal with selection bias: i.e., the problem that when and where Walmart chooses to open new stores is not random, but tends to be correlated with other variables. Those confounding variables make it difficult to determine whether local employment outcomes are causally related to Walmart‘s entry, or to something else. I’ll skip the technical details, but suffice it to say Neumark and his co-authors devised a sophisticated methodology that accounts for the selection bias. Using data from over 3,000 counties, their results show that when a Walmart store opens, it kills an average 150 retail jobs at the county level, with each Walmart worker replacing about 1.4 retail workers. These results are robust under a variety of models and tests.

This sucks, and it likely that the override will fail.

Linkage

• Katee Sackhoff Geekgasm (Geek Magazine)
• Ex-FBI lawyer linked to surveillance abuses poised for federal judge post (The Guardian)
• Let's Please Stop Pretending That Obama is Reluctant to Take Military Action (Kevin Drum)
• Western Maryland Secessionists want 5 Western Counties to Go It Alone (Washington Post) The Crazy has reached the Free State.  I say we put fluoride in their water.  Maybe some lithium too.

2^nd City nails the Syrian war drums

Keith Olbermann Just Did a Special Comment

Even if he did not call it that.

It is about the Sochi Olympics and the Russian gay bashing laws:



I know that he said he wouldn't be doing politics anymore, only sports.

I guess that this is just sport.

Damn, that man can right write.

Quote of the Day

“The first thing I’m going to tell my successor,” Kennedy told guests at the White House, “is to watch the generals, and to avoid feeling that just because they were military men, their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.”

—Robert Dallek

Read the whole article.

The entire General staff was insane.

They wanted to drop nukes on everyone.

Stop the World, I Want to Get Off

Have you heard, in preparation with negotiations with the Russians over Syria, John Kerry is seeking advice from Henry Kissinger.

Yes, that Henry Kissinger.

The man who orchestrated our dropping more bombs on Cambodia than we had on Germany during WWII.

The man who did his level best to bring the murderous psychopath Agusto Pinochet to power.

The man who did his best to cover up the facts of the terrorist attack in Washington DC conducted by the Pinochet government. (Orlando Letalier assassination)

The man who sabotaged peace talks between North Vietnam and the US in 1968 for political advantage.

An avowed enemy of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, for whom John Kerry was the public face at a critical juncture.

And then there are the accusations that Kissinger was complicit in numerous crimes against humanity in much of Latin America.

This ……… is ……… ……… ……… ………

I have no words.

Remember that WSJ OP/ED Written by a Paid Agent of the Syrian Rebels?

I posted a link to this a few days ago.

Well, she just got fired for a non-existent PhD on her resume:

A young researcher whose opinions on Syria were cited by both Senator McCain and Secretary of State John Kerry in congressional testimony last week has been fired from the Institute for the Study of War for allegedly faking her academic credentials.

The institute issued a statement on its website concerning the researcher, Elizabeth O’Bagy:

The Institute for the Study of War has learned and confirmed that, contrary to her representations, Ms. Elizabeth O’Bagy does not in fact have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University. ISW has accordingly terminated Ms. O’Bagy’s employment, effective immediately.

O’Bagy and her op-ed drew scrutiny last week when the Wall Street Journal failed to disclose O’Bagy’s ties to an advocacy group backing the Syrian opposition and lobbying the U.S. government to intervene in Syria. The Journal was forced to post a clarification that “in addition to her role at the Institute for the Study of War, Ms. O’Bagy is affiliated with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a nonprofit operating as a 501(c)(3) pending IRS approval that subcontracts with the U.S. and British governments to provide aid to the Syrian opposition.”

What a surprise.  Another right wing "expert" is a fraud.

It Has Been 12 Years, Stop Waving the Bloody Shirt

It is not my intent to demean the feelings of people who suffered personal losses on September 11, 2001, but the rest of us have to attempt a modest return to sanity.

As I have noted before, we as a society have been driven to insanity by this, and it has convinced us  to commence destroying ourselves. (Read the book Wasp by Eric Frank Russell)

The deaths on 911 are less than:

• 14 weeks of firearms homicides.
• 4 weeks of suicides.
• 1 month of motor vehicle deaths.
• 6 Weeks of infant mortality.

As to the last item, think about how many of this children we could have saved by spending just one tenth of the roughly $4 Trillion spend on this.

It's normal to freak out after something like 911, but we are still freaking out 12 years later.

We need to chill out, and deal with the reality we have, not the reality we want to have.

Linkage

• CountZeroInterupt (A new blog from Vonners)
• Is Crowdsourcing On Decline? (Resilient Communities) To Paraphrase Yves Smith, Running out of Rubes 
• Better fathers have smaller testicles (Nature) Headline of the day.
• The new iPhone (New York Times) News I really do not give a sh%$ about.

H/t Old Pinko, who emailed me this.

Election Results

For New York Elections, Blazio has won the Democratic primary for mayor, but it won't be clear until morning if he got enough votes to avoid a runoff, while on the 'Phant side, Joseph Lhota has won by a sufficient margin to avoid a runoff.

Unfortunately, Spitzer lost in his race for Comptroller, because Wall Street managed to buy enough votes for his opponent Scott Stringer.

In Colorado, it looks like the NRA has successfully recalled the two state senators who helped pass the common sense gun laws there.

Bummer on Spitzer's loss and the NRA's victory. 

Yes, I Saw Obama's Speech………

What can I say, he has finished morphing into George W. Bush with a tan.^™

Now Mr. "I am against stupid wars," is arguing for a stupid war, and invoking the possibility that Syria will give WMDS to terrorists.

I am not surprised.

This war is about dick swinging over his "Red Line" comment.

(on edit)

The Best that Can Be Expected………

I guess it was inevitable that former TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky would have to find work.

Considering his background, taking a position in a large white shoe law firm tied in with finance was very likely and Jenner & Block appears to be much less evil than many of their competitors:

Neil Barofsky, the former prosecutor who brought transparency and accountability to the federal government’s 2008 bank bailout program as its first special inspector general, has joined Jenner & Block, a law firm based in Chicago, as a partner.

Mr. Barofsky, who was appointed by George W. Bush to oversee the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program in late 2008, was a Washington outsider whose periodic reports on the program questioned Treasury officials’ claims of its effectiveness. He and his office drew criticism at times from those officials, as a result.

Mr. Barofsky left his post in 2011 to teach at New York University’s law school. He also wrote “Bailout,” a scathing account of his time in Washington that highlighted the problem of regulators who he said were for the most part captured by the institutions they were supposed to police.

In an interview, Mr. Barofsky said that joining Jenner & Block was a natural next step because the firm specialized in helping government agencies and major corporations with in-depth investigations of problematic practices. Such investigations, he said, are similar to the work he did at TARP. In addition, unlike many other large law firms, Jenner & Block represents clients bringing suits against large financial institutions.

“I can bring my experience investigating large financial institutions and complex financial transactions to a place that doesn’t just do defense work in this area,” Mr. Barofsky said. “This is an opportunity in private practice to help improve governance and have a truth-seeking role.”

Well, we'll see how this goes, and he has done a real service in reporting on the corruption of the TARP as IG, and in his book about the experience, Bailout, which has probably earned him the undying enmity of Timothy Geithner, Eric Holder, and Barack Obama, and he deserves a lot of credit and a not inconsiderable payday, for that.

It's Not Like it Was Important, It's Just an Execution

So Florida Attorney General had a fundraising meeting, so she delayed an execution:

There is no graver responsibility and act of state government than an execution.

In Florida this week, a campaign fundraiser takes precedence.

Attorney General Pam Bondi persuaded Gov. Rick Scott to postpone an execution scheduled for tonight because it conflicted with her re-election kick-off reception.

"What's going on down there? It's ridiculous," said Phyllis Novick, the Ohio mother of one of Marshall Lee Gore's victims, when told Monday about the reason for the delay.

Gore, 50, raped, strangled and stabbed 30-year-old Robyn Novick in 1988 before dumping her body into a Miami-Dade County trash heap. Gore was also sentenced to die for the slaying of 19-year-old Susan Roark, whose body was found a few months later in Columbia County.

Gore was initially scheduled for execution in June, but the date was twice delayed because of legal skirmishes over Gore's sanity.

I have mixed emotions.

I oppose the death penalty, I see a delay to an execution as a good thing, but postponing an execution so that you can raise money?!?!

Damn, that is cold.

Linkage

• Goldman Sachs Announces They’re Blowing Up A Nursing Home And There’s Nothing Anyone Can Do About It (America's Finest News Source)
• County Board Votes To Secede From Northern California (TPM)
• If you use TOR, Update It, Older Versions are Not Secure (Errata Security)
• You know that OP/ED We Published?  The author is a paid lobbyist for the Syrian Rebels.  OOPS! (WSJ)

Link

I Did Not See This Coming………

Something else I did not expect, MoveOn's ad on this is not lame

I did not expect the Russians to announce that the Assad regime have come to a preliminary agreement to place their chemical arsenal under in the control of foreign monitors:

Russia opened up a possible diplomatic solution to the Syrian chemical weapons crisis on Monday with a pledge to persuade the Assad regime to hand over its chemical arsenal to international supervision to be destroyed.

Russia's new initiative was announced by its foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, hours after the US secretary of state, John Kerry, suggested that the Syrian government could avert punitive US air strikes in retaliation for an alleged chemical attack on 21 August, if it surrendered "every single bit" of its arsenal by the end of the week.

However, Kerry added that Assad "isn't about to do it", and the state department hastily issued a clarification saying that apparent ultimatum was "rhetorical" rather than a concrete bargaining position.

But Lavrov appeared to seize on the idea as a means of averting US military intervention.

"If the establishment of international control over chemical weapons in that country would allow avoiding strikes, we will immediately start working with Damascus," he said.

"We are calling on the Syrian leadership to not only agree on placing chemical weapons storage sites under international control, but also on its subsequent destruction and fully joining the treaty on prohibition of chemical weapons," Lavrov said after a meeting with his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moallem.

FWIW, the Syrians have appeared to welcome the proposal:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's foreign minister on Monday said he welcomed Russia's proposal that Damascus hand over control of its chemical weapons arsenal to international supervision to avoid US military action.

"I carefully listened to (Russian foreign minister) Sergei Lavrov's statement about it. In connection with this, I note that Syria welcomes the Russian initiative based on the Syrian leadership's concern about the lives of our nationals and the security of our country," Walid al-Muallem said in comments carried by Russian state news agency ITAR-Tass.

I am not one to favor the "eleventy dimensional chess" bullsh%$ put forward by the Obamabots out there, but this is a welcome development.

I'm not sure if it is luck or design.

The tough part will be insuring that the rebels get rid of their poison gas.

The Assad regime cannot be comfortable with disarming without that.

Of course, that would unmask the House of Saud's complicity in arming Jihadist rebels with chemical weapons, and I'm not sure that Prince Bandar bin Sultan would like to be labeled a war criminal.

Quote of the Day

The upshot is that it is now known that “the N.S.A. cannot be trusted on the issue of cyber security,” said Soghoian. He continued, “My sincere hope is that the N.S.A. loses its shine. They’re the bad guy; they’re breaking into systems; they’re exploiting vulnerabilities.” It’s conceivable that they have good intentions. And yet, Soghoian continued, “they act like any other hacker. They steal data. They read private communications.” With that methodology, how easy can it be, though, to give the agency the benefit of the doubt? As many have, Thomas Drake compared the worldview of what he calls the “rogue agency” to the total surveillance of George Orwell’s “1984,” in which the only way to escape was “to cower in a corner. I don’t want to live like that. I’ve already lived that and it’s not pleasant.”

—Matt Buchanan in The New Yorker

(Emphasis mine)

Hillary Will Not Be the Dem Nominee in 2016

I know that she seems invincible, but she seemed invincible in 2007, and her Iraq War vote killed her campaign.

Well, now she has strongly endorsed bombs for peace in Syria (king of like f%$#ing for virginity):

Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday endorsed President Obama’s call for military strikes against Syria and said “it would be an important step” if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad surrendered his stockpile of chemical weapons.

“The Assad regime’s inhuman use of weapons of mass destruction against innocent men, women and children violates a universal norm at the heart of our global order, and therefore it demands a strong response from the international community, led by the United States,” she said.

Clinton, a potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, made her first public remarks on Syria during a previously scheduled appearance at the White House. She said she had just come from a meeting with Obama, during which they discussed a proposal advanced by Russia to avert U.S. military strikes by having Assad turn over control of the country’s chemical weapons to international monitors.

She said that such a move would be important but that “this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction, and Russia has to support the international community’s efforts sincerely or be held to account.”

She also suggested that the Russian proposal came about only because of a “credible military threat by the United States.”

She's been coy about running, but anyone who votes for this clusterf%$# in not going to get the nomination, and she has learned her lesson.

I will say that my opinion of her has improved in the past few days, if just because her successor appears to be either batsh%$ insane, or a flat out liar, or both.

I think that this is a tell.  Clinton is not running. 

If she had been more reticent, and less explicit, she would have been position to thread the needle.

She chose not to, and it appears to me to be a conscious choice which flows from her not running for President.

I could be wrong though, my predictions usually are.

Alan Grayson Calls Out the So Called "Classified Briefing" Given to Congress

Alan Grayson writes an oblique, but blistering editorial in the New York Times:

The documentary record regarding an attack on Syria consists of just two papers: a four-page unclassified summary and a 12-page classified summary. The first enumerates only the evidence in favor of an attack. I’m not allowed to tell you what’s in the classified summary, but you can draw your own conclusion.

On Thursday I asked the House Intelligence Committee staff whether there was any other documentation available, classified or unclassified. Their answer was “no.”

The Syria chemical weapons summaries are based on several hundred underlying elements of intelligence information. The unclassified summary cites intercepted telephone calls, “social media” postings and the like, but not one of these is actually quoted or attached — not even clips from YouTube. (As to whether the classified summary is the same, I couldn’t possibly comment, but again, draw your own conclusion.)

………

We have reached the point where the classified information system prevents even trusted members of Congress, who have security clearances, from learning essential facts, and then inhibits them from discussing and debating what they do know. And this extends to matters of war and peace, money and blood. The “security state” is drowning in its own phlegm.

My position is simple: if the administration wants me to vote for war, on this occasion or on any other, then I need to know all the facts. And I’m not the only one who feels that way.

And then he follows this up with in interview with the Washington Post where he also says that he has been given no meaningful information, and adds to this the fact that he feels that Obama and his administration are not competent in managing their relationship with Congress:

When has the White House ever — ever — been able to turn around a vote? It hasn’t happened in the entire Obama administration; much less happened when the constituent mail is running 100-1 against. When nobody is paying attention, anything is possible. The president can offer you favors or employ moral suasion or enlist lobbies. But the public is watching and is extremely angry about the president’s position. In that kind of environment, the president doesn’t even have the tools.

BTW, the White House Chief of Staff has admitted as much, saying that this is not a court of law, but that it, "passes the common sense test."

The White House asserted Sunday that a "common-sense test" dictates the Syrian government is responsible for a chemical weapons attack that President Barack Obama says demands a U.S. military response. But Obama's top aide says the administration lacks "irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence" that skeptical Americans, including lawmakers who will start voting on military action this week, are seeking.

"This is not a court of law. And intelligence does not work that way," White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said during his five-network public relations blitz Sunday to build support for limited strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

"The common-sense test says he is responsible for this. He should be held to account," McDonough said of the Syrian leader who for two years has resisted calls from inside and outside his country to step down.

So Obama's Chief of Staff just said that Obama's Secretary of State was exaggerating the case.

Roll tape.



Title Corrected, note bit in italics.

How Ordinary People Can Do Heroic things………

Susan De Guardiolia has confronted the bureaucratic agents of tyranny, and she won:



Fundamentally, the routine expansion of what can only be described as a creeping police state can be stopped by citizens who know their rights.

You do not have to be a lawyer to do this.

You simply have to know a few things:

• Am I being detained?
• If the answer is no, leave.  If they refuse to answer, repeat the question, politely.
• If a policeman asks to search your belongings (including vehicle), then they need your consent to search.  Clearly state your refusal to consent.

Police officers will frequently make voluntary compliance appear mandatory. 

Know your rights.

Deep Thought

When a person commits a sin and does not turn in repentance, when that person forgets the sin, the Holy One remembers it.

When a person fulfills a commandment by doing a good deed, the Holy One remembers it.

When a person commits a sin and later turns in repentance, remembering the sin, the Holy One grants atonement, and forgets the sin.

When a person fulfills a commandment and ius constantly filled with self-praise because of it, the Holy One forgets it.

What a person forgets, God Remembers; what a person remembers, God forgets.

—Rebbe Shmelke of Nikolsberg

This was a note included in the margins of our Machzor^*, and was pointed out during Rosh Hashanah services today by the Rabbi.

It needs to be shared.

^*A specialized version of a Jewish prayer book that is intended specifically for Jewish High Holidays services. Link

Krugman Nails It

In accordance with Euro Zone requirements, France is taking steps to reduce its deficit.

The people who most strongly argue for "expansionary austerity"^*, are criticizing Frances steps, and Paul Krugman rightly takes them to task:

Simon Wren-Lewis looks at France, and finds that it is engaging in a lot of fiscal austerity — far more than makes sense given the macroeconomic situation. He notes, however, that France has eliminated its structural primary deficit mainly by raising taxes rather than by cutting spending.

And Olli Rehn — who should be praising the French for their fiscal responsibility, their willingness to defy textbook macroeconomics in favor of the austerity gospel — is furious, declaring that fiscal restraint must come through spending cuts.

………

But the larger point here, surely, is that Rehn has let the mask slip. It’s not about fiscal responsibility; it never was. It was always about using hyperbole about the dangers of debt to dismantle the welfare state. How dare the French take the alleged worries about the deficit literally, while declining to remake their society along neoliberal lines?

It should be noted that Robert Mundell, known as the "Father of the Euro", is also a big figure in supply side economics (aka Raganomics).

The Euro's academic and intellectual roots are dominated by people who have the dismantling of the social safety net as one of their important goals.

It is therefore no surprise that they are prosecuting their agenda by using austerity as a tool to do this, but the people who have to live in the Euro are their victims.

^*Much like sparkle ponies that sh%$ M&Ms, expansionary austerity does not exist.

Not Enough Bullets………

In the New York City Mayoral primary, Bill De Blasio, the New York City Public Advocate, is leading in all the polls.

In fact, he is leading by enough that, in a 9 candidate race, he has a shot to clear the 40% requirement in a runoff, is rather telling.

It is heartening that in the home of Wall Street an unabashed liberal appears likely to be the next Mayor of New York.

One of his central proposals is to, "Increase the city’s income tax on wealthy residents earning over $500,000, from 3.86 percent to 4.41 percent," (PDF) to fund universal preschool.

If you do the math, you will realize that this means an additional $2750.00 in taxes for someone earning a million dollars a year, basically chump change, particularly amongst the well to do in New York.

However, it appears the suggestion that the rich and very rich toss a few more pennies toward public resources has hurt the feeling of rich self absorbed assholes:

When New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio first proposed taxing the rich so every child in the city could attend all-day preschool, it was October and he had support from fewer than 10 percent of Democrats in polls.

Now he leads the pack. And some of the wealthy New Yorkers who’d pay more under his plan say it bewilders and offends them.

Oh, it offends them, their delicate feelings are hurt.

F%$# that.

“It shows lack of sensitivity to the city’s biggest revenue providers and job creators,” said Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a network of 200 chief executive officers, including co-Chairman Laurence Fink of BlackRock Inc. (BLK), the world’s biggest money manager.

I am so concerned that we are being insufficiently "sensitive" to the parasites from Wall Street.

E.E. “Buzzy” Geduld, who runs the hedge fund Cougar Capital LLC in the city and is a trustee of Manhattan’s Dalton School, where annual tuition tops $40,000, said de Blasio’s plan “is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard” and “not a smart thing to do.”

Yes, because someone who can afford $40,000.00 for a year at private school, will be absolutely destroyed by a 0.55% increase in their taxes on income over ½ a million dollars a year.

De Blasio first presented his tax plan to a quiet audience attending his Oct. 4 speech to the Association for a Better New York, a real-estate developers’ civic group. He called on them, as some of the city’s wealthiest individuals, to provide about $532 million for universal all-day pre-kindergarten and after-hours middle-school programs.

About 20,000 of New York’s 68,000 four-year-olds get city-funded full-day pre-kindergarten classes, with 38,000 enrolled in three-hour programs and 10,000 in none. The added pre-K slots would cost roughly $342 million, de Blasio said.

It's rather telling that George Soros has contributed to De Blasio campaign. I think that he earns a decent salary.

Additionally, that raving Bolshevik Ben Bernanke has endorsed increased pre-school and after school programs as well.

What a bunch or useless self-absorbed jerks.  I would call them schmucks, but a schmuck has a head.

Pass the Popcorn………

Pass the Popcorn

The NRA has joined with the ACLU's lawsuit against NSA surveillance of Americans. They are maintaining that it violates the law against maintaining a national gun registry:

The National Rifle Association has joined a lawsuit against the federal government's sweeping surveillance program, claiming the collection of phone records and other data violates First Amendment rights and amounts to an illegal gun registry.

In supporting the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit, the NRA on Wednesday filed a supporting brief arguing the National Security Agency's datamining "could allow identification of NRA members, supporters, potential members, and other persons with whom the NRA communicates, potentially chilling their willingness to communicate with the NRA."

The NSA's phone database would let the government track whether gun owners called the NRA, gun stores, shooting ranges or others.
The brief also says the database "could allow the government to circumvent legal protections for Americans' privacy, such as laws that guard against the registration of guns or gun owners," thereby creating an illegal "national gun registry."

The ACLU welcomed the gun group's support.

As strange as it sounds, I welcome the NRA's support as well.

This almost Makes Me Miss Condoleeza Rice

Some times, the stupid just just overwhelms me.

Normally, it's a group effort, but recently, John Kerry has been a on a particular reprehensible roll:

Secretary of State John Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee today that he "often" agrees with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, despite taking issue with his most recent column on the Syria conflict.

………

"So with all due respect to Tom Friedman, Who is Most Often Correct, on this occasion, it is absolutely vital that we send the message and deteriorate his capacity," Kerry concluded.

Seriously.

This almost makes me ………………

Hell, I need some better drugs to handle this sh%$.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

The owner of Lavabit, the now-shuttered secure email provider, has been told that he could be jailed for terminating his service:

The owner of an encrypted email service used by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden said he has been threatened with criminal charges for refusing to comply with a secret surveillance order to turn over information about his customers.

"I could be arrested for this action," Ladar Levison told NBC News about his decision to shut down his company, Lavabit LLC, in protest over a secret court order he had received from a federal court that is overseeing the investigation into Snowden.

Lavabit said he was barred by federal law from elaborating on the order or any of his communications with federal prosecutors. But a source familiar with the matter told NBC News that James Trump, a senior litigation counsel in the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va., sent an email to Levison's lawyer last Thursday – the day Lavabit was shuttered -- stating that Levison may have "violated the court order," a statement that was interpreted as a possible threat to charge Levison with contempt of court.

This can be interpreted in two ways: Either they are threatening to jail him for fighting a broad subpoena in court, or they are threatening him because he shut down the service because he refused to run it as part of an ongoing and broad surveillance of his customers.

In either case, this is contemptible, even if it is nominally legal.

Why I Left Texas

Because this song by Macklemore, American is way to close to the reality down there.

I did not want my kids to be Texans:

The Latest Snowden Release Does Not Surprise………

It appears that people at all levels of the US government do not trust Pakistan:

The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaeda, North Korea and Iran. But top-secret budget documents reveal an equally intense focus on one purported ally: Pakistan.

No other nation draws as much scrutiny across so many categories of national security concern.

A 178-page summary of the U.S. intelligence community’s “black budget” shows that the United States has ramped up its surveillance of Pakistan’s nuclear arms, cites previously undisclosed concerns about biological and chemical sites there, and details efforts to assess the loyalties of counter­terrorism sources recruited by the CIA.

Pakistan appears at the top of charts listing critical U.S. intelligence gaps. It is named as a target of newly formed analytic cells. And fears about the security of its nuclear program are so pervasive that a budget section on containing the spread of illicit weapons divides the world into two categories: Pakistan and everybody else.

The disclosures — based on documents provided to The Washington Post by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden — expose broad new levels of U.S. distrust in an already unsteady security partnership with Pakistan, a politically unstable country that faces rising Islamist militancy. They also reveal a more expansive effort to gather intelligence on Pakistan than U.S. officials have disclosed.

Not surprising.

We've heard this from a lot of different sources over the years.

For anyone to trust Pakistan, and particularly its military and intelligence services, would have to be a thoroughly deluded fool.

The Only Two Things You Need to Know About Larry Summers as Fed Chair

Item 1: He's controversial because he is such a horrifically bad choice:

The Washington Post's Neil Irwin looked this morning at what he sees as the many reasons the upcoming nomination of a new Federal Reserve chair became a circus, unlike past low-controversy nominations.

………

But among Neil's four factors, only one really matters at the margin: The White House appears poised to make a demonstrably bad choice for Fed Chair.

If Larry Summers withdrew himself from consideration, or the White House announced that it isn't going to pick him, the circus tents would pack up and we could all go home. The Fed Chair race would become uncontroversial and boring again, Business Insider's existence notwithstanding.

People oppose Summers for all sorts of reasons, but here are my two.

One is that while we don't know exactly where he (or Janet Yellen) would lead on monetary policy, I suspect Summers shares the White House's unhealthy lean toward tight money. It's particularly hard to figure out what Summers would do since he's not actually a monetary policy scholar.

The other is that I fear Summers would squander the comity and collaboration that make the Federal Reserve Board work, since he's had a tendency to do that at other institutions he's been tapped to lead.

Item 2: Wall Street, which has spent millions cultivating him, appears to be terrified at the prospect of Summers as Fed Chair:

The spreading expectation that President Obama will name Lawrence H. Summers to lead the Federal Reserve Board appears to be working against the central bank’s efforts to stimulate the economy.

The jitters even have some analysts betting that a Summers nomination could lead to slower economic growth, less job creation and higher interest rates than if the president named Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s vice chairwoman.

Businesses raising money and people buying homes and cars all have faced higher interest rates in recent months as the Fed’s campaign to suppress borrowing costs has faltered. The rise in rates reflects optimism that the economy is gaining strength, and an expectation that the Fed will begin to pull back later this year. But a wide range of financial analysts also see evidence of a Summers effect.

Many investors expected that Ms. Yellen would be nominated to replace Ben S. Bernanke as head of the central bank, a choice that would have sent a clear message of continuity. Instead, investors are now trying to anticipate how Mr. Summers might change the Fed.

The unease is the product of a little information and a lot of speculation. Mr. Summers, a Harvard University economist who served for two years as Mr. Obama’s primary economic adviser, has said little about monetary policy in recent years. Investors are left parsing a handful of comments in which he has expressed some doubts on the benefits and concern about the consequences of the Fed’s policies.

“People don’t know what Larry might do,” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of Pimco, the giant bond fund manager. “There’s a lack of a lot of information on Larry’s views. We don’t have enough information to make an assessment, just some second- and thirdhand accounts.”

Wall Street owns Larry Summers, but they don't want him to be Fed Chair.

The only thing to argue for him is cronyism and corruption.  Seriously.

If Obama nominates him, I am calling both of my Senators bring up his role in Andrei Schleifer's corruption in the market reforms in Russia.

Mission Creep Already?

Now we have Barack Obama saying that "limited and proportional strikes" will create Freedumb:

President Barack Obama said Tuesday that "limited, proportional" military strikes against Syria would degrade President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons capabilities and allow that nation to "free itself" from political conflict.

And we have John Kerry leaving an opening for boots on the ground:

Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday appeared to leave the door open to the U.S. deploying ground troops in Syria in the event the country "imploded, for instance."

“In the event Syria imploded, for instance or in the event there was a threat of a chemical weapons cache falling into the hands of somebody else and it was clearly in the interest of our allies — all of us, the British, the French, and others. I don’t want to take off the table an option that might or might not be available to the President of the United States to secure our country," Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, debating whether to authorize President Barack Obama's punitive strike in response to a reported chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime.

Asked by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), the ranking Republican on the committee, whether the secretary of state truly believed combat troops could be an option, Kerry walked the comment back by saying he was only "thinking out loud."

Yeah, like that is reassuring.

This is so going to turn into a complete cluster-f%$#.

Linkage

• Joe Lieberman Syria - Just Shut Up (Esquire) Charlie Pierce to Joe "You useless walking, bloodstained pile of casual death" Lieberman
• Obama is closer to Nixon than to MLK (Al Jazeera English)
• Chabad Of Eastern Massachusetts Applies For Medical Marijuana Dispensary License (FailedMessiah.com)

This is a first, a cat with a sense of shame: