Today in Schadenfreude

The New York State ethics panel has announced that Andrew Cuomo may have to forfeit the millions of dollars he received for his "memoir" about his handling of Covid.

It appears that he was granted a waiver on the basis of a promise that he would write on his own time without the use of state resources, and he lied about both of these conditions:

Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo could be forced to forfeit millions of dollars that he earned from his 2020 pandemic memoir after a state ethics board on Tuesday voted to revoke its authorization for the book.

The Joint Commission on Public Ethics accused Mr. Cuomo of essentially obtaining approval under false pretenses, including breaking his promise not to use state resources toward completion of the memoir.

“Contrary to the representations made on behalf of Governor Cuomo and not disclosed to the commission, state property, resources and personnel, including staff volunteers, were used in connection with the preparation, writing, editing and publication of the book,” according to a resolution that was approved by a 12-to-1 vote.

The commission also noted several misrepresentations in Mr. Cuomo’s request for the ethics commission’s approval, including the nature of the book’s subject matter and how far along the project was at the time of the request. It also noted that the full financial details of the deal and contract had been withheld from the panel.

Legal experts said that the governor would most likely have the opportunity to reapply to the board for its approval; if the board rejected Mr. Cuomo’s application, it could order him to surrender book profits or face separate penalties.

In a statement, Mr. Cuomo characterized the decision as “the height of hypocrisy” and “a political game,” reiterating that any staff who assisted with the book project did so on their own time.

………

For months, Mr. Cuomo refused to divulge how much he had been paid by his publisher, Crown, even as investigators scrutinized whether he had illegally used state resources to write and promote the book.

………

The state attorney general’s office is investigating Mr. Cuomo’s use of state resources for the writing and editing of his book. The New York Times and others have reported that top aides were involved with the production of the manuscript, even attending meetings with the publisher — a possible violation of state law that forbids the use of public resources for personal gain.

Oh the humanity.

This is a right and proper rat-f%$#ing for a right and proper rat.

Linkage

• Portugal makes it illegal for your boss to text you after work in 'game changer' remote work law (Euronews) I envy people living in civilized nations.
  
• Politico Recognizes Union, Extending Wave of Media Labor Wins (Bloomberg) Politico got bought out, and the new owners cut off 401(K) matching through an oversight. . Oops proved not to be s sufficiently engaged response/
  
• Woolly soldier memorial unveiled as Armistice Day tribute by ‘Knitting Banksy’ (Largs and Millport Weekly News) This was a full size soldier done in yarn, which is pretty awesome.
  
• Justice Department Sues Uber Over Charging Wait-Time Fees for Disabled People (Wall Street Journal) Uber gets more contemptible by the day.
  
• You can't hide from your cat, so don't even try (Live Science) I am completely not surprised by this.
  
• All The Guys From Mean Girls Are Gay (Buzzfeed) Every single one has come out since the movie came out.  They were all cast as hawt heterosexuals.
  
• Man swapped his wife's 'aggressive' cat for a lookalike six years ago (Daily Mail Online) That's just wrong, and I had RP the Cat to deal with.

Too Extreme for Qanon:

We Knew That He Asshole When He Ran for President

And now Ex-CEO Howard Schultz has compared the Starbucks "Family" to Holocaust Prisoners. in support of the coffee giant's anti-union effort.

First, I don't think that this a particularly effective argument, and second, if I had never heard of you before, I would know that you are a truly sh%$ty person from just that analogy: 

In an apparent last-ditch attempt to convince workers to vote against a union campaign at three Starbucks stores in the Buffalo area, Howard Schultz, the company’s former CEO and largest shareholder, gave a speech to workers that drew parallels between working at his company and the experiences of prisoners in rail cars headed to Nazi concentration camps in Poland and Germany.

Schultz noted that in the rail cars, only a few prisoners received blankets and had to share them with five people. A rabbi who told Schultz the story on a trip to Israel said that Schultz should share his blanket, he said.

“Not everyone, but most people shared their blanket with five other people,” Schultz, who noted that he is Jewish before sharing the story, said. “So much of that story is threaded into what we’ve tried to do at Starbucks is share our blanket.”

The metaphor, seemingly, was an attempt to explain that Starbucks has built an unparalleled corporate culture over the last 50 years that both he and employees could be proud of. During the 45-minute speech, Schultz lamented the state of politics and also talked about innovations in coffee making and his vision for employees. (Schultz has shared this anecdote when speaking with shareholders.)

I'm not surprised.  At one point he asked the Seattle Parks Department for permission to put a driveway for his home through a park, and used that permission to wall the public out of the park.

I am not surprised that he would use this narrative to attempt to deny his employees dignity, prosperity, and security.

He is a truly contemptible human being, and a shanda fur die Goyim.

Great News, but It Doesn’t Sound That Way

Seriously, if someone told you that they had found venomous sharks in the River Thames in London, you would think that they were talking about a US sequel to Sharknado, but this is actually happening, and it's a good thing, because it shows that life is finally returning to the long dead waterway:

In 1957, the Thames was declared as “biologically dead” due to the extreme levels of pollution it suffered from - but over 60 years of environmental and conservation work has seen life return to its waters.

According to the first ever State of the Thames Report by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the Thames is now home to the likes of sharks, seals, seahorses and more.

………

According to the ZSL, the report found that the “overall picture was bright for nature, with evidence of an increase in a range of bird species, marine mammals and natural habitats such as carbon-capturing saltmarsh”.

Surprising species which now live in the Thames include “seahorses, eels, seals and even sharks”.

………

The ZSL found that “tope, starry smooth hound and spurdog” sharks are now living in the Thames.

A tope shark (scientific name: galeorhinus galeus) can grow up to six feet long and can weigh up to 48kg. You can identify a tope shark by its grey upper body, white belly, two dorsal fins and a distinctive notched tail, according to The Wildlife Trusts.

These sharks feed on a variety of fish as well as crustaceans and even cephalopods if the opportunity presents itself.

Tagging studies have shown that tope sharks tagged in the UK have later been found as far away as the Canary Islands.

The tope shark is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list, and is classified as a “priority species” under the UK Post-2010 Biodiversity Framework.

The starry smooth hound (scientific name: mustelus asterias) is a small species of shark which can grow up to four and a half feet, with a maximum weight of 4.8kg. The starry smooth-hound is identified by the scattered white dots around its top, fin and tail.

This species of shark feed primarily on the likes of crabs, lobsters and small, bony fish.

Finally, the spurdog shark (scientific name: squalus acanthias) is a slender shark which can grow up to three feet long, with an average lifespan of up to 70 years.

The spurdog shark gets its name from the spines found in front of its dorsal fin. It uses these spines to defend itself by circling into a bow and then striking at a predator.

It is one of the few venomous fish found in UK waters, as the spines secret a venom which can cause symptoms like swelling and discomfort in humans.

Other identifiable features of the spurdog shark is its pointed snout, big eyes, grey/brown colouring and rows of white spots down its sides.

This is completely positive news.  The only thing that could make it better would be if Boris Johnson were to take a swim in the Thames.

Funny How It's Only an Issue Now

There have been problems with the Washington, DC jail for decades, filthy conditions, inadequate food and water, brutal guards, etc., but only now that the white insurrections are detained there has anyone suggested that things be fixed.

No one cares unless it's happening to wypipo:

For several months, a few dozen men being held without bail in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol have loudly and repeatedly complained about conditions at the District of Columbia jail.

Some, through their lawyers, have raised concerns about threats from guards, standing sewage, and scant food and water. A federal judge recently held top jail officials in contempt after they delayed prompt medical care for a Capitol defendant in their custody. Just last week, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, visited the jail and later likened the rioters inside to “prisoners of war,” suggesting that they had been mistreated because of their politics.

None of these allegations of neglect came as a surprise to local Washington officials, many of whom have complained about conditions at the jail for years. Still, at a public hearing this week, some expressed frustration that, despite longstanding problems at the jail, it took the arrival of a small group of out-of-town — and largely white — defendants to finally get anyone to care.

“Recent reports about squalid conditions in the district jails are unfortunately not new,” Karl A. Racine, Washington’s attorney general, said at the hearing. Mr. Racine went on to say that “concerns about conditions at the jail received little attention until they were raised by mostly white defendants accused of perpetrating the Jan. 6 insurrection.”

………

The judge, Royce C. Lamberth, tried to get officials at the jail to accelerate the process of providing medical records to Mr. Worrell’s lawyer and after a number of delays, he angrily held the officials in contempt. As part of his contempt decision, Judge Lamberth recommended that the Justice Department investigate conditions at the jail to determine whether the civil rights of any other Jan. 6 defendants had been violated.

Within days, the U.S. Marshals Service, which oversees federal detainees, opened an inquiry into the jail and soon determined, among other things, that there were sewage and water leaks inside and that corrections officers often antagonized their charges, sometimes withholding food and water for “punitive reasons.”

These problems have been known to the authorities for a long time, but when the well off and white are treated like the poor and the black, it's somehow a travesty of justice.

Privilege much?

The Enemy, Not the Opposition

In response to the indictment of Steve Bannon for contempt, Republicans are threatening future political retribution, claiming that this is a sign of a politicized Department of Justice.

Once again, I will quote Robert Graves putting words into Germanicus Caesar's mouth, with the Republicans fulfilling the role of the Teutonic Tribes:

Spaniards can be impressed by the courtesy of the conqueror, French by his riches, Greeks by his respect for the arts, Jews by his moral integrity, Africans by his calm and authoritative bearing, but Germans are impressed by none of these things. They must be struck into the dust, struck down again as they rise. Struck again while they lie groaning, while their wounds still pain them; they will respect the hand that dealt them."

—Germanicus Caesar, Roman general
(15 B.C.- 19 A.D.)

These are not people that you can reason with.  I'm not sure how to excise this sort of political nihilism from the Republican Party, but as a good start, you need to actually prosecute their crimes, as opposed to, "Looking forward, not back," as was suggested by our generation's Warren G. Harding.  That only makes this worse:

Republicans are rallying around former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon after his indictment on charges of contempt of Congress on Friday, warning that Democrats’ efforts to force Bannon to comply with what they say is an unfair subpoena paves the way for them to do the same if they take back the House in 2022.

………

Bannon is expected to turn himself in to law enforcement Monday ahead of a court appearance that afternoon. Democrats and a handful of anti-Trump Republicans argue that the indictment was necessary to enforce subpoenas issued by the Jan. 6 committee to Trump associates who are resisting cooperation and to witnesses summoned by other congressional panels.

Many GOP leaders, however, are seizing on Bannon’s indictment to contend that Democrats are “weaponizing” the Justice Department, warning Democrats that they will go after Biden’s aides for unspecified reasons if they take back the House majority in next year’s midterm elections, as most political analysts expect.

………

Democrats argue that the doctrine of executive privilege — intended to shield confidential communication between a president and his advisers — was never meant to apply to the kind of information the committee is now seeking. The panel is exploring conversations between Bannon and Trump that occurred when Bannon held no government position. And committee members say they are interested in interactions related to an insurrectionary attack on the U.S. Capitol, not in talks involving legitimate government business.

More broadly, they say that far from being political, the Jan. 6 committee is investigating an effort to overturn a legitimate election, including an attack on Congress that resulted in five deaths and injuries to some 140 law enforcement officers. Nine Republicans joined all House Democrats in voting to hold Bannon in contempt last month.

But many Republicans are dismissing such distinctions, and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) issued an especially direct payback threat.

………

On Saturday, Trump released a statement excoriating Republican members of Congress who had voted to either pass Biden’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan or hold Bannon in contempt, or in some cases both, listing the lawmakers individually and promising to support anyone who runs primary campaigns against them.

This is a natural consequence of nearly 50 years of sweeping political crimes under the rug in the name of "healing" and "unity", and it desperately needs to end. 

It will only end when crimes against the state are aggressively and universally prosecuted.

"I Think We Should Throw Those Books in a Fire"

The Spottsylvania County, Virginia school board decided to ban "sexually explicit" books, which in this case, it means anything about LGBTQ people.

This is not particularly newsworthy, but two members of the school board called for these books to be burned, which is both notable and completely bat-sh%$ insane:

The Spotsylvania County School Board has directed staff to begin removing books that contain “sexually explicit” material from library shelves and report on the number of books that have been removed at a special called meeting next week.

The directive came after a parent raised concerns at the School Board’s meeting Monday about books available through the Riverbend High School’s digital library app.

………

The board voted 6–0 to order the removal. Berkeley District representative Erin Grampp was not in attendance for the vote on that issue.

Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the removed books burned.

“I think we should throw those books in a fire,” Abuismail said, and Twigg said he wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”

………

Twigg said he would like to broaden the criteria for identifying objectionable books.

“There are some bad, evil-related material that we have to be careful of and look at,” he said, without elaborating.

"Evil related material," huh?

Unfortunately, too many people from the sane end of the body politic look at people like Abuismail and Twigg, and their response is, "In spite of the harshness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face, I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word."

These people are not the opposition, they are the enemies of the Republic.

Changed from the Before Times

While initial unemployment claims have now fallen into the high normal range from the before times, the post pandemic quit rate remains at unprecedented levels.

American employers have been exploiting residual employee loyalty for decades, but that well appears to have run dry:

 A record 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in September, as workers took advantage of the surge in job openings across the country, a sign of how labor market imbalances continue to complicate the economic recovery 20 months into the pandemic.

The number of people quitting in September constituted 3 percent of the workforce, according to a monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics survey released Friday. That number is up from the previous record, set in August, when 4.3 million people quit their jobs — about 2.9 percent of the workforce. In February 2020, before the big wave of pandemic-related layoffs began, 2.3 percent of workers quit their jobs.

I have been wondering what would happen when the American tradition of inhumane management would finally exhaust the goodwill of the workforce.

It looks like we are about to find out.

Also, I wonder what happens if some sort of socialized medicine is instituted, and the tie between employment and health insurance is severed.  Sh%$ty employers will be devastated.

Deep Thought

"He wanted to be remembered as a learner, not a master."

That is deep as hell.

No, Not Suspect at All

When interviewed by investigators, former New York Governor Andrew "Rat Faced Andy" Cuomo spent much of his timd arguing over the defintion of terms like, "Date," "Girlfriend," and "Butt."

This sort of rhetorical hair splitting is not consistent with a witness who is being forthright, to put it mildly:

Three months after Attorney General Letitia James’ office issued a scathing report detailing sexual harassment by Andrew Cuomo, her office on Wednesday released transcripts of interviews with the former governor and 10 women involved in the inquiry.

The more than 2,300 pages of interviews offer a glimpse into how Cuomo and top aides interacted with underlings — and how he pushed back on the 11-hour, mid-July interrogation by a former federal prosecutor and a workplace misconduct attorney.

Despite denying the allegations, Cuomo resigned in August under threat of impeachment by the state Legislature. He was charged late last month with a misdemeanor sex crime stemming from an allegation he forcibly touched an aide in the Governor’s Mansion.

In his interview, a defiant Cuomo questioned the motivations of the investigators hired by James’ office to conduct the inquiry, offering meandering answers or obtuse responses, while flexing his legal acumen.

………

Like his former boss [Bill Clinton], Cuomo deployed a similar tactic with investigators hired by James’ office, questioning at great length the definition of “girlfriend” and “date” when asked about a former actress he had been rumored to be seeing who resembled aide Lindsey Boylan.

………

On a separate occasion, investigators asked Cuomo if he ever intentionally touched any woman on the butt, which he denied. They asked if he ever touched a woman “near the butt,” which prompted Rita Glavin, Cuomo’s lawyer, to request a definition of what “near the butt” means.

“Do you understand where a human’s butt is? And anywhere near there?” Cuomo was asked.

“Well, ‘near the butt’ now becomes an expansive area,” he replied.

I don't think that Cuomo will ever see the inside of a jail cell, but it is clear that his political career is over, which is an unalloyed good for the people of the great state of New York.

US Air Force Covered Up Mass Killing of Civilians

In yet ANOTHER instance of the Pentagon covering up incidents that are negligent at best, and war crimes at worst, we have now discovered discovered that the Air Force bombed a crowd of women and children in Syria, killing more than 70, and then they covered it up:

In the last days of the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, when members of the once-fierce caliphate were cornered in a dirt field next to a town called Baghuz, a U.S. military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank.

Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors.

It was March 18, 2019. At the U.S. military’s busy Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, uniformed personnel watching the live drone footage looked on in stunned disbelief, according to one officer who was there.

“Who dropped that?” a confused analyst typed on a secure chat system being used by those monitoring the drone, two people who reviewed the chat log recalled. Another responded, “We just dropped on 50 women and children.”

An initial battle damage assessment quickly found that the number of dead was actually about 70.

The Baghuz strike was one of the largest civilian casualty incidents of the war against the Islamic State, but it has never been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. military. The details, reported here for the first time, show that the death toll was almost immediately apparent to military officials. A legal officer flagged the strike as a possible war crime that required an investigation. But at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike. The death toll was downplayed. Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. And top leaders were not notified.

The Defense Department’s independent inspector general began an inquiry, but the report containing its findings was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike.

………

Even in the extraordinary case of Baghuz — which would rank third on the military’s worst civilian casualty events in Syria if 64 civilian deaths were acknowledged — regulations for reporting and investigating the potential crime were not followed, and no one was held accountable.

This is a feature, not a bug.
 
Until and unless a dedicated agency is created to investigate and prosecute these incidents, one that operates completely outside of the military chain of command, we will continue to have these incidents and the resulting cover-ups.

Today in Corporate Liability Washing

If there is a truism in our society, it is that the the current structure of corporations creates an environment where wrong-doing is not punished, either at the corporate level or the personal level.

A case in point is Amazon's reliance on sub-contractors, who they literally manage to the second, to avoid liability issues for unsafe practices.

Well, someone was severely injured by an over worked (not)Amazon driver trying to meet quotas, and they are suing, claiming that the algorithms that Amazon requires them to use were largely responsible for the accident.

Weakening the liability wall between large corporations and the smaller corporate contractors that they direct would be a very good thing:

Ans Rana was in the back seat of his brother’s Tesla Model S when they stopped behind a disabled car just before 9 p.m. on Atlanta’s busy Interstate 75. Seconds later, a blue Amazon.com Inc. delivery van slammed into them from behind—mangling the rear of the car and sending Rana, his brother and father to Wellstar Kennestone Hospital. Rana bore the brunt of the collision, suffering life-changing brain and spinal-cord injuries.

………

In June, Rana filed a lawsuit in Georgia state court, alleging that Amazon is liable for the accident. Central to the complaint: the algorithms, apps and devices the company uses to manage its sprawling logistics operation.

Amazon says it isn’t legally culpable because the driver worked for Harper Logistics LLC, one of thousands of small businesses launched in recent years specifically to deliver Amazon packages. By focusing on the key role played by the algorithms, Rana’s attorney, Scott Harrison, is looking to prove that the company controls the operation, managing everything from how many packages drivers must deliver to whether they should be kept on or fired. Demonstrating Amazon isn’t just a customer of Harper Logistics, but actually manages it from afar, is critical to any attempt to put the e-commerce giant on the hook for Rana’s medical bills and a lifetime of diminished earnings.


Amazon closely tracks delivery drivers’ every move, the lawsuit states, including “backup monitoring, speed, braking, acceleration, cornering, seatbelt usage, phone calls, texting, in-van cameras that use artificial intelligence to detect for yawning, and more.” If drivers fall behind schedule, Amazon employees send text messages “complaining that a certain driver is ‘behind the rabbit’ and needs to be ‘rescued’ to ensure that all the packages on Amazon’s route are delivered in compliance with Amazon’s unrealistic and dangerous speed expectations.”

Most commercial vehicle injury lawsuits are settled quietly between attorneys and insurance carriers. Rana’s case stands out for the severity of his injuries and his legal team’s argument that Amazon’s technological hold over its delivery partners makes it culpable in the crash. The team wants greater visibility into how Amazon’s machines control drivers to bolster its case that the company is responsible. Such court disclosures would expose Amazon’s secretive algorithms to greater public scrutiny. Amazon wants the court to seal any such information, arguing its technology should qualify as protected trade secrets. Proving the company is responsible for the crash is far from assured because the laws on employment vary from state to state and courts have gone both ways, said Andrew Elmore, a University of Miami law professor. “The question is whether Amazon is vicariously liable as an employer because of the control it has over the driver,” he said. “It had a lot of control, and it could be held liable.”

………

The lawsuit also names [Driver Bryan] Williams, Harper Logistics and the delivery business’s insurance provider, Old Republic Insurance Co., all of whom declined to comment through their joint attorney, Paul Trainor. Williams, who made about $15 an hour, presumably lacks the financial wherewithal to pay damages. Harper Logistics doesn’t have many assets that could be liquidated to pay a judgment. Amazon delivery businesses don’t even own their vans; they lease them. Amazon, which is expected to generate sales of $472 billion this year, is a much richer target.

Amazon lease vehicles to its, "Delivery Service Partners," operates the apps that tell those drivers where and how to go, requires that cameras be in installed in the vehicles, uses these cameras to surveil the drivers, monitors their drivers' performance, and tells their "Partners" when a driver should be fired.

Amazon created this corporate structure specifically to evade responsibility for the carnage that it creates by demanding performance standards that cannot be met while operating safely.

Amazon does not care, it figures that it's asset poor contractors carry the risk for this reckless behavior.

Amazon, and its senior executives should be held criminally liable for their behavior.

Headline of the Day

The Main Driver of Inflation Is a Murderous Maniac in Riyadh

—The Intercept

It appears that the House of Saud is working with the rest of OPEC to keep oil supplies low because Biden has not yet had a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud.

Personally, I think that Biden should arrange a meeting, but not with him, but with Kamala Harris.  Their positions are equivalent, and it would probably be humiliating for the the Saudi psychopath:

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is enacting revenge on Democrats in general and President Joe Biden specifically for the party’s increasingly standoffish attitude toward the kingdom — by driving up energy prices and fueling global inflation.

Biden himself seemed to allude to this at a town hall event with CNN last month, during which he attributed high gas prices to a certain “foreign policy initiative” of his, adding, “There’s a lot of Middle Eastern folks who want to talk to me. I’m not sure I’m going to talk to them.”

Biden was making a not-so-veiled reference to his refusal to meet with the crown prince and acknowledge him as Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler due to his role in the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October of 2018. The move came after Biden vowed during a debate with President Donald Trump to make MBS, as he’s known, “a pariah” and represented a stark departure from Trump’s warm relations with the desert kingdom and the crown prince.

………

In June 2018, heading into the midterms, Trump requested that Saudi Arabia and its cartel, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, lower energy prices by increasing output, and the kingdom complied. Prices bottomed out in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic, and usage sank to record lows. Prices surged once the pandemic waned and the economy reopened, and this August Biden requested that OPEC again increase output.

This time MBS refused, angry at having yet to be granted an audience with Biden and contemptuous of the U.S. pullback from the war in Yemen. As one of his first pieces of business, Biden had ordered the end of American support for Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s war, though caveated it by barring only the backing of “offensive operations.” Saudi Arabia nevertheless received it as a grievous blow.

 It is clear that MBS is a dangerous and self-destructive figure, and it is also clear that the absolute monarchy in Riyadh is going to fall sooner rather than later.

The only question is how orderly such a transition will be, and how peaceful it will be, and with MBS calling the shots, it's going to make the Russian Revolution look like a tea party.

There really isn't anything that the US can do to prevent or manage this transition, so the only option now is a greater distance from the House of Saud.

Finally

Steve Bannon, insurrectionist, political garbage man, and portrait of Dorian Gray, has been indicted on criminal contempt of Congress by the Department of Justice.

Honestly, I am surprised.  I did not think that Attorney General Merrick Garland would do this, given his inclination to flee from even spurious accusations of politics:

Stephen K. Bannon, a onetime senior aide to former President Donald J. Trump, was indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday on two counts of contempt of Congress, after his refusal to provide information to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Mr. Bannon, 67, had declined last month to comply with subpoenas from the committee seeking testimony and documents from him. The House then voted to hold Mr. Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress.

After holding Mr. Bannon in contempt, the House referred the matter to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington for a decision on whether to prosecute him.

Mr. Trump has directed his former aides and advisers to invoke immunity and refrain from turning over documents that might be protected under executive privilege.

………

The politically and legally complex case was widely seen as a litmus test for whether the Justice Department would take an aggressive stance against one of Mr. Trump’s top allies as the House seeks to develop a fuller picture of the actions of the former president and his aides and advisers before and during the attack on the Capitol.

………

The grand jury’s decision to indict Mr. Bannon also raises questions about similar potential criminal exposure for Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff.

Indeed it does, but my money is on Garland not pursuing Meadows, because, unlike Bannon, he was still a White House staffer when he attempted to overthrow the US Government.

………

After the referral from the House in Mr. Bannon’s case, F.B.I. agents in the Washington field office investigated the matter. Career prosecutors in the public integrity unit of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington determined that it would be appropriate to charge Mr. Bannon with two counts of contempt, and a person familiar with the deliberations said they received the full support of Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

“Since my first day in office, I have promised Justice Department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law, and pursues equal justice under the law,” Mr. Garland said in a statement.

“Today’s charges reflect the department’s steadfast commitment to these principles,” he added.

………

It is unusual for the department to bring contempt charges against government officials who refuse to comply with subpoenas. The last person charged with criminal contempt of Congress, Rita M. Lavelle, a former federal environmental official under President Ronald Reagan, was found not guilty in 1983 of failing to appear at a congressional subcommittee hearing. She was later sentenced to jail for lying to Congress.

Let us also remember that Ann Gorsuch Burford, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch's mommy, was also cited for contempt, and I expect these charges to go all the way to the Supreme court, and I'm pretty sure that he will see no need to recuse himself.

As an aside, the Department of Justice has generally been refusing to enforce contempt of Congress referrals for well over a decade.

It seems to me that Congress should pass a law giving itself the right to prosecute using private counsel, because the Department of Justice simply won't challenge an assertion of privilege by a sitting President these days.

Google Ads Strikes Again

I have no idea what algorithm Google™ Adsense™ is using, but it seems to me that it is pretty clear that neither I, nor my reader(s), would be particularly fertile ground for the right wing freak show that is the OAN cable network.

Of course, the sort of things that I watch, old Perry Mason and Barney Miller reruns, probably don't have advertisers clamoring for my eyeballs.

You would think, what with the extensive spying on all of us, the Chocolate Factory would do a better job of making effective ads from the data that they have collected.

Of course, as with all of my commentary regarding ads on the site, this disclaimer applies:

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^™.

If Even This Inbred Prat Saw It Coming

Yes, Henry Charles Albert David Montbatten-Windsor, aka Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, warned the head of Twitter about the January 6 insurrection ahead of time.

If this guy, a guy whose ties to the zeitgeist of the American body politic are somewhat tenuous, saw it coming, how did people whose business was to understand this miss this?

Prince Harry said he warned Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey that his social-media platform was allowing a coup to be staged ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

“Jack and I were emailing each other prior to January 6, where I warned him that his platform was allowing a coup to be staged. That email was sent the day before and then it happened, and I haven’t heard from him since,” Prince Harry said Tuesday while speaking on a panel at RE:WIRED, a conference hosted by technology magazine Wired.

A Twitter spokesman wouldn’t confirm whether Mr. Dorsey received an email from Prince Harry.

The Duke of Sussex during the conference criticized social-media companies for not doing enough to restrict misinformation and hate speech, including YouTube and Facebook. “I’m not on social media,” he said. “Until things change, that’ll remain the same.”

Actually, the answer is fairly simple:  On the part of law enforcement, their racism and their political affinity to the MAGA crowd led them to ignore obvious signs, while on the part of social media, it was wilful blindness stemming from the profit motive.

"We Don’t Want Any More Black Pastors Coming in Here"

A defense lawyer at the Ahmaud Arbery trial just said the quite part out loud, claiming that black pastors in the audience are jury tampering.

Nope, no racist dirt-bags here:

An attorney for one of the three men accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery complained in court on Thursday about the attendance of the Rev. Al Sharpton at the trial, claiming that the presence of “high profile members of the African American community” could been seen as an attempt to “pressure” or “influence” the jury.

“Obviously, there’s only so many pastors they can have,” William “Roddie” Bryan attorney Kevin Gough said in court on Thursday afternoon. “If their pastor’s Al Sharpton right now, that’s fine, but then that’s it. We don’t want any more black pastors coming in here—or other—Jesse Jackson, whoever was in here, in here earlier this week, sitting with the victim’s family trying to influence a jury in this case.”

“I think the court can understand my concern about bringing people in who really don’t have any ties to this case, other than political interests, and we want to keep politics out of this case,” Gough added, later.  “So I’m asking the court to take appropriate steps to make sure that the gallery—which is already limited in this case—isn’t being utilized for a purpose that could be viewed as improper.”

Gough asked the judge to keep “these people” out of the courtroom, a request that was summarily denied.

(emphasis mine)

"These people," huh?

Mindless racial hatred really is at the core of the case, isn't it?

Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Would Agree

In negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA, Iran is demanding guarantees that the US will not unilaterally abrogate the treaty, and guarantees from the Europeans that they will not comply with unilateral US sanctions.

This is rather unsurprising, given the US record on upholding treaties in general, and it's unilateral violation of the JCPOA in particular.

Given that the US attitude toward to international its international mirrors that of Ernestine the Telephone Operator, "We don't care.  We don t have to.  We're the phone company."

The US is simply not a credible participant in international agreement:

Iran requires a commitment that the US will not again leave the nuclear deal signed with world powers in 2015, the country’s new chief negotiator and deputy foreign minister has told the Guardian.

Ali Bagheri Kani also said that talks in Vienna between Iran and other signatories had failed to reach agreement on a means of verifying that US sanctions had both been lifted and had a practical impact on trade with Iran.

“We need verification, and this remains unresolved. It is one of the issues that remains not finalised. It is not enough for the ink to be put on the agreement,” he said. Bagheri Kani did not rule out an independent body being responsible for verification.

The Vienna talks are due to recommence at the end of the month after being suspended by Iran, after the June election of a new hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi. Bagheri Kani is touring European capitals to set out the Iranian negotiating position.

Iran has said it will not take its own steps back into full compliance with the deal until verification of US actions has been secured. Iran has been increasing its uranium stockpile and use of advanced centrifuges beyond the limits set in the deal. It has limited the access of the UN nuclear inspectorate.

Defending his demand that the US give a guarantee that it will comply with the agreement, Bagheri Kani said: “This is about an agreement not a policy. If there is a peace agreement between two states, it has the effect of a treaty. This is international law. It is not intended that domestic laws of the US can prevail over an international agreement. That is against international law.”

He added he wanted European powers to give their own guarantees that they will trade with Iran, regardless of the US position, possibly by using a blocking statute nullifying the effect of US sanctions on European firms that trade with Iran.

It's easy to blame this on Donald Trump's decision to violate the agreement, but this is actually symptomatic of the US foreign policy establishment, aka "The Blob", which has promulgated the idea that the myth of American exceptionalism in order to run roughshod over international agreements.

The US is simply not a credible partner in any negotiations with an adversary absent external mechanisms to enforce compliance.

It's Jobless Thursday!!

Though the numbers were actually released yesterday because of the Veterans Day holiday, and we have two data points, first, initial unemployment claims fell slightly, maintaining a level of job losses which is generally in line with pre-pandemic numbers.

What is not at a pre-pandemic level is inflation, which is now over 6% year over year.

Most concerning is the spike in housing costs, which is driven, at least in part, by what Keynes called. "Disruptive capital flows," from private equity's buying binge.

Unfortunately, the Federal reserve, is likely to overreact and tank the economy.

Quote of the Day

If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything

—Anatol Lieven at Responsible Statecraft

He is talking about the US non-involvement in the most recent Nagorno Karabakh conflict, and he is talking about lessons in foreign relations, and notes that the ability to face uncertainty with measured inaction is, "The most important [lesson] of all is the one expressed to me by a Chinese official (in a different context) many years ago." 

When one looks at some of the most egregious foreign policy failures in modern US history, Libya comes to mind in particular, it seems that things have been done because of a vague feeling that, "Something had to be done," as opposed to actually knowing what the f%$# actually should be done.

Much of what passes for US foreign policy seems to be about, "Maintaining our world leadership position," without regard to actually advancing US interests.

I Am Living in Interesting Times

And not in a good way.

Everything seems to be OK now, but last night was a complete cluster-$#@.

As the old saying says, "All skill is in vain when an angel pees in the barrel of your rifle."

On a Related Note

We have someone agreeing with my brother, Bear Who Swims, in that they are seeing Europe heading toward a shooting war in the relatively near term.

As I've said before, I expect a breakdown of the EU and a cold war, but this guy is predicting that the US is in decline because of Afghanistan, (I disagree, but only because I see Afghanistan as a symptom and not a cause of the decline) and that without US forces to guarantee the peace, the Europeans will start shooting at each other once again.

I'm more of the Gwyn Dyer school of thought, that asymmetries in power develop over time in Europe, and so every century of so, war breaks out as a mechanism to redefine the power balance on the continent:

The notion that history has nothing to teach us is one of the most pervasive beliefs in modern industrial society. It’s also one of the most misguided. Sure, we’ve got all these shiny new technological trinkets, and we love to insist to ourselves that this means we’re constantly breaking new ground and going where no previous society has ever gone before. Clinging to that fond delusion, we keep on making mistakes that were already old when bronze swords were high tech, and flailing helplessly when the usual consequences yet again land on top of us.

The shambolic end of the US occupation of Afghanistan earlier this autumn is a case in point. The self-satisfied gooberocracy that runs the United States these days talked itself into believing that the hard-earned lessons of the Vietnam war didn’t matter any more, and sent American soldiers blundering into a country that earned the name “the graveyard of empires” long before the United States was a twinkle in Ben Franklin’s eye. It wasn’t just Vietnam that the slackjawed warlords of Washington ignored, of course. The Russians had their own messy experiences in Aghanistan, so did the British, so did half a dozen great Asian empires, and so did Alexander the Great. None of that made any difference, because the political class in the US had convinced itself that the past didn’t matter.

Back when the invasion first happened, wags suggested that “Kabul” is how you pronounce “Saigon” in Pashto, and of course they were quite right. Having refused to learn from their history, four US administrations duly repeated it, right down to the humiliating final scenes of helicopters on rooftops and victorious insurgents parading with captured US military hardware. It remains to be seen whether Afghanistan will turn into the graveyard of our empire. A hundred years from now, I suspect, historians will consider the collapse of American power in Afghanistan as the point at which the United States crossed the subtle line that separates “decline” from “fall,” but we’ll see.

………

Yet learning from the lessons of history is just as unpopular in European capitals as it is in Washington DC. The response to the Afghanistan fiasco is hardly the best example of this. The one that stands out most forcefully in my mind just now is the way that the European Union is busy setting the stage for the next great European war.

………

That, of course, was the context in which the European Union was born. It started out very small, as an agreement between France and West Germany governing the steel trade, and metastasized from there into today’s sprawling and sclerotic bureaucratic mess. The resemblances between the EU, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire are striking: similar jerry-rigged and cumbersome structures of governance, similar awkward attempts to force a union among nations with wildly different cultures, institutions, and histories, similar rising spirals of conflicts between component entities with irreconcilable interests, none of which ever quite got resolved. All that’s needed now is a spark—EU officials being thrown out a window in Prague, say, or a spray of bullets on the streets of Sarajevo—to send the continent tumbling down a familiar slope toward war.

………

That’s a problem because there are two very good ways to make war happen. The first is to be arrogant, blustering, and unwilling to compromise. The second is to be militarily weak. The European Union is both. It does not seem to have occurred to anyone in Brussels that one of these days, when EU officials order one of the nations in its sphere of influence to shut up and do as it’s told, the nation in question might respond in the time-honored way by mobilizing its army and settling the matter by force. Several flashpoints in eastern and southeastern Europe are potentially close to that. The last few times that happened in the Balkans, of course, the United States was available to do the heavy lifting—but those days, again, are over now.

As an aside, I need to note that the author, John Michael Greer, is arguably the most bellicose contemporary Druid that I have ever heard of.

………

It’s not the era between the wars, however, that comes to mind most forcefully just now. It’s the Europe of the Belle Epoque, the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth: the last era when people of good will across the European subcontinent insisted that war was the outdated relic of an older and more barbarous time, that the treaty arrangements that had stayed in place since the last round of cataclysmic European wars would surely prevent anything of the kind from happening again, and that the close economic ties uniting the nations of Europe would stop any general European war in its tracks. They were wrong, and millions of people died because they were wrong. Their equivalents today will turn out to be just as wrong, because they’ve bought into the most pervasive fallacy of our time, the serenely foolhardy conviction that history has no lessons to teach, every shift in social conditions is permanent, and a pendulum can only swing in one direction.

I would also note that in the run-up to the first world war, titans of finance were desperately building up international ties between the countries that would become belligerents, which is rather similar to how the EU functions today.

I don’t think the next general European war is imminent, for what it’s worth. If things follow the usual pattern, there will be wars on the periphery first, most likely in the Balkans, while tensions build between the larger nations of the subcontinent. We still probably have some years left before alliances form, positions harden, military spending soars, and nations get locked into a collision course. My readers in Europe, however, might be well advised to look into how their recent ancestors survived the last few rounds of European bloodshed, and keep in mind that they or their children may have to repeat the same exercise. My readers in the United States, to the extent that they can spare the time from the convulsions of an imperial state in extremis, might be equally well advised to keep a wary eye on the other side of the Atlantic, and resist the temptation to get drawn into European quarrels. We’ll have quite enough to deal with over here.

I'm not going to try to predict where the spark that breaks up the EU will begin, but it does seem to me that the Viceroys in Brussels are spectacularly poorly suited to such an eventuality.

They Have Learned Nothing, and they Have Forgotten Nothing

After creating mass suffering, the near collapse of healthcare systems in Greece, Ireland, and Italy, all while bailing out German banks, it looks like Brussels will be inflicting austerity on the EU again.

Seriously, the EU seems to between between German sado-monetarism and Belgian colonial governance:

Much has been said about the supposedly “unprecedented” fiscal measures deployed by the EU during the pandemic. This was supposed to be the start of something new: the birth of a new post-austerity era.

But, although it seems to have slipped the minds of the EU’s finance ministers at their meeting yesterday in Brussels, the truth is that the scope of the bloc’s support package has been wildly overblown. The IMF puts the EU’s discretionary fiscal stimulus at a paltry 3.8% of GDP — a figure dwarfed by the massive discretionary fiscal stimulus of 25.5% of GDP in the US.

The same chasm between narrative and reality can be seen with the much-vaunted Europe-wide “recovery fund” known as Next Generation EU (NGEU). Despite the fanfare, it amounts to barely 5% of the EU’s GDP. What’s more, the funds will be disbursed over the course of six years, resulting in, at best, a fiscal expansion of around 1% of GDP on average between 2021 and 2024. And that’s compared to a GDP loss for the EU as a whole of around 15% just in 2020.

Predictably, the funds come with very strict troika-like conditions attached. They are conditional on compliance with the European Commission’s infamous country-specific recommendations, which in the past have consistently demanded that governments cut public spending — especially on social expenditure (particularly pensions), healthcare and unemployment benefits. This is ultimately what the NGEU is all about: increasing Brussels’s control over the budgetary policies of member states and strengthening the EU’s regime of technocratic and authoritarian control. It’s the EU doing what the EU does best.

So overall we can say that the pandemic has not resulted in any radical rethinking of policy at the European level. Neither has it resulted in any structural change. Indeed, the old fiscal rules are set to be reinstated in 2023. Even though there’s much talk of “reforming the EU’s fiscal rules”, the truth is that everyone knows that serious treaty reform is off the table — as Valdis Dombrovskis, executive vice president of the European Commission, has repeatedly stated.

They nearly blew up the EU last time, and they are going back for a second dose of cruelty.

This is going to get a lot worse.

Dafuq?

Dennis Prager: "During the AIDS crisis, can you imagine if gay men and intravenous drug users...had they been pariahs the way the non-vaccinated are? But it would've been inconceivable" pic.twitter.com/GQsOq4X63u

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) November 8, 2021

It should be noted that at the height of the AIDS epidemic, Dennis Prager equated homosexuality and bestiality, so it's not like he wasn't front and center of the demonization of gays in the 1980s.

F%$# him with Cheney's dick.

Tweet of the Day

an internship at the white house will be amazing on your resume. 😳

— Monica Lewinsky (she/her) (@MonicaLewinsky) July 14, 2019

It's nice that she came out on the other side safe, sane, and funny as hell.

Also, this is the best answer for, "What was your worst career advice."

Linkage

• Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes accused of bilking Betsy DeVos' family out of $100 million (Salon) The Amway scammers got scammed by the Theranos scammers.  At least there is symmetry. 
• Enough is Enough: The Criminal Case Against Mark Zuckerberg (Matt Stoller) A short list of the crimes includes insider trading, price fixing, wire fraud, and securities fraud.
• A loan is income plus basis (interfluidity) A good discussion about how a tax on billionaires,Can be structured to avoid prevent avoidance.
  
• Baby Shark song used as ‘torture’: Oklahoma jail inmates sue sheriff, officers, county (Washington Post) The allegations are that this was played at deafening levels while the prisoners were handcuffed in stress positions.  These guys need to be in jail for the rest of their lives
  
• Inside the fast-food workers’ rebellion at a McDonald’s in Bradford, Pa. (Washington Post) More mass resignations from the poorly treated.
• Mattel remote job listing says boss can make ‘unplanned visits’ (NY Post) Because if you cannot make your employees miserable, is it really managing?

How Jurassic Park should have been:

A Story Near and Dear to My Spleen

I founded a non-profit, a 501(C)3 some years back, and while I have severed tied with it, it is still an ongoing organization. 

For a number of reasons, largely the fact that I've always felt that I kind of played the IRS regulations get the educational charity status,  (I felt that in a just world, it should have been a 501(C)7, a non-profit but not tax exempt membership organization) I have been sensitive to the use and abuse of tax exempt status, where you see things like multi-million dollar remuneration packages for senior management who have no concept of charity.

So I find it heartening when I see that non profit hospital chain Tower Health has been denied a property-tax exemption for three hospitals that they acquired in Chester County hospitals because they decided to run those hospitals primarily for the benefit of its upper management.

The school districts sued after they tried to take the hospitals off of the property rolls after Tower bought them out.

A Chester County judge rejected Tower Health’s bid for property tax exemptions for Brandywine, Jennersville, and Phoenixville Hospitals, saying those operations had become too similar to for-profit companies and didn’t deserve to be free of property taxes.

The decision strikes another blow to Tower, which vowed to appeal as it struggles to reverse large losses. It represents a rare loss for any nonprofit hospital.

The ruling also shows how health care is becoming more complicated and far removed from its philanthropic roots, at least according to one judge.

The 44-page decision came a week after a Montgomery County judge ruled in favor of Tower’s application for a property-tax exemption for Pottstown Hospital, reflecting the messiness in Pennsylvania of determining nonprofit property tax exemptions based on a jumble of state laws and legal precedent.

………

The case presents an occasion for appellate courts and legislatures to review property-tax exemptions in the health-care industry, Sommer said, and “to perhaps acknowledge that the existing tests, no matter where found, can no longer be applied to health care entities in the United States and particularly in Pennsylvania.”

The Philadelphia region is home to dozens of nonprofit hospitals, most of which are parts of complex businesses and bear little resemblance to the old model of hospitals supported by community largesse.

Experts said the decision could lead to changes in how requests for property-tax exemptions for nonprofit hospitals are evaluated.

………

A lawyer who represents school districts and municipalities in similar cases disagreed. “This is a very well-reasoned opinion,” said Pamela A. Van Blunk, who has offices in Swarthmore and Yardley.

For the three school districts in this case, Avon Grove, Coatesville, and Phoenixville, the nonprofit Tower Health’s purchase of the three hospitals from Community Health Systems Inc., a for-profit, meant the potential loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes.

………

Sommer found that the three hospitals did not qualify for property-tax exemption for three main reasons: They do not provide enough free services, the hospitals’ businesses are too intertwined with doctors at for-profit practices, and they don’t operate free of private profit motives because of how they structure executive compensation.

………

Under Pennsylvania Supreme Court precedent, an organization must “operate entirely free from private profit motive” in order to qualify for property-tax exemption.

Sommer found that bonus plans mostly tied to financial performance disqualified the hospitals from tax exemption. “It was very clear from the testimony of all witnesses that the health system was set up to be profitable and to reward executives at all levels when it was,” Sommer said. 

BTW, when Judge Sommer talks about executive compensation being a for-profit model, he ain't kidding:  The chief executive of Tower Medical, Clint Matthews, who used his disastrous acquisition spree to bulldoze his board into inflating his already inflated salary package:

Before his dream of expanding Tower Health went bust, then-chief executive Clint Matthews was offered a compensation deal that included base pay of about $1.15 million and a bonus of $331,500 for the mergers he was about to engineer. He rejected it as “a bit light.”

The Tower board came back with a new offer. In the end, it agreed to increase his base pay by $100,000 ― and to bump the bonus by $73,500.

………

Documents in a Montgomery County court case decided last week explore Matthews’s ambitious acquisitions and his relentless push for high compensation ― a drive that a struggling school system in the area served by his network, Pottstown School District, claimed undercut Tower’s very claim to be a nonprofit.

………

The school district’s lawyers quote a Tower board member as saying that Matthews, 68, the chief executive of nonprofit Tower since 2012, was annoyed by “the suggestion that the best way to optimize his income was getting great results and maxing out bonus opportunities.” The lawyers also quote Matthews himself as saying he was unconcerned about the “optics” of his pay.

By 2018, his compensation had hit $2.3 million, up $700,000 in just two years. Tower cut it back somewhat as the system’s financial troubles grew.

………

When Matthews was gearing up for the hospital acquisitions, his simultaneous complaints about his pay did not sit well with Meg Mueller, a banker and Tower board member.

Mueller found it troubling that Matthews compared himself to executives at larger, successful systems even though Tower had yet to purchase the other hospitals, much less successfully integrated them, a court filing said.

………

As losses mounted and Tower struggled to halt a downward financial spiral, Matthews retired abruptly in February, leaving new management, mostly outside consultants, to unravel much of what he and a compliant board had done.

We really need to limit the pay for tax exempt organizations.  I would suggest the salary of the President of the United States, $400,000.00 a year.

Multi-million dollar salaries for charity executives, and college football coaches, are not justifiable for a charity.  

It runs counter to the stated purpose or a charitable organization, and, as studies of high remuneration have shown, they actually result in reduced performance.

Not Adding to the List

I am NOT adding Joe Biden's farts to my list of They Who Must Not Be Named, because I simply cannot ignore public farts.

What can be said about Matthew G. Saroff but that he has a, "Slight flaw in his character."

What can I say, but, "OK, Boomer."

He is supposed to be committed to reducing emissions – but when President Joe Biden produced a little natural gas of his own at the COP26 summit, it was audible enough to make the Duchess of Cornwall blush.

An informed source has told The Mail on Sunday that Camilla was taken aback to hear Biden break wind as they made polite small talk at the global climate change gathering in Glasgow last week.

'It was long and loud and impossible to ignore,' the source said. 'Camilla hasn't stopped talking about it.'

You know, I don't care what Camilla has to say, or Charles, or Elizabeth, or any of the Royals.

We fought a war not to give a sh%$ about them over 200 years ago.

Headline of the Day

Nominating Rahm Emanuel to Be Ambassador to Japan Suggests We Don't Like Japan

—Charlie Pierce in Esquire

Seriously.  There is literally no one less qualified to be Ambassador to Japan.

He does not know the language, he has no exposure to the culture, and he is rude, abusive, incompetent, and LOUD.

It's kind of the antithesis of Japanese culture:

Rahm Emanuel is a pestiferous lout who kept getting hired by Democratic administrations, where he took as his main job pissing off the party’s base. He then got elected to Congress, where he did very little, and then he got elected mayor of Chicago, where his most notable accomplishment was to be accused of covering up the police killing of Laquan McDonald. Along the way, he alienated anyone who came within a 25-mile radius of his smirk. Nevertheless, the current administration nominated him to be ambassador to Japan in a move that made some observers wonder if this country was yet over Pearl Harbor.

But thank the attentive Deity, there came Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, of the Dickensian senatorial firm of Merkley and Markey. Senator Jeff and Senator Ed both voted against Emanuel’s nomination. It went through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee despite their opposition, which Merkley explained quite clearly in his statement accompanying his vote.

If he gets appointed, it will be with Republican votes.

Also, if he gets appointed, he will f%$# it up, just like he has for every other thing that he has done in his life.

It's the Stupid Season

Yes, I know what you are thinking, isn't EVERY season the stupid season?

Well, the answer is probably yes, but this is the particularly stupid season.

This time, the Republicans are throwing hissy fit because Big Bird tweeted that he got a vaccine.

Why the hell does anyone pay attention to these clowns?

Talk about going straight fromt he sublime to the ridiculous:

Your favorite friendly oversized avian just got the jab, and literally everyone has thoughts on the matter.

I got the COVID-19 vaccine today! My wing is feeling a little sore, but it'll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy.

Ms. @EricaRHill even said I’ve been getting vaccines since I was a little bird. I had no idea!

— Big Bird (@BigBird) November 6, 2021

While most responses have been positive, right wing politicians like Ted Cruz have propelled the Big Bird tweet to center stage, calling the vax status the latest form of "government propaganda." To which, we must remind you, Ted Cruz himself is vaccinated.

People are literally calling Big Bird a communist, which is absurd, as Big Bird is clearly an Anarcho Syndicalist.

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

Still no commercial bank failures this year, but the Pomona Postal Federal Credit Union, of Pomona, CA was placed into conservatorship.  (Here is the list for credit union failures for 2021) 

I still do not understand why credit unions are failing and commercial banks are not.

I'm wondering why this is so.

Tweet of the Day

pic.twitter.com/KGDSLWZbZG

— Lynda Fette (@FetteLynda) November 7, 2021

Not much that I can add to this.

Violent, Lethal, Poorly Trained, and Poorly Supervised

The New York Times took a look at fatal police stops, and found that time and time again, the police engaged in activity that put themselves in danger, which then justified the use of deadly force.

Basically, people who are not ready to be cops do stupid sh%$, and as a result, someone dies, generally not the cops.

And these people remain police despite their incompetence:

An expired registration. A stolen bottle of vodka. A candy wrapper tossed out the window. A warrant for drug charges.

A New York Times visual investigation reviewed footage from 120 vehicle stops over the last five years in which police officers killed motorists who were not brandishing a gun or knife or being pursued for violent crimes.

We found a striking pattern. In dozens of incidents, footage shows, officers made tactical mistakes that put themselves in positions of danger — walking into the path of a car, reaching into a window, jumping onto a moving vehicle — then used lethal force to defend against that danger.

Criminologists call this “officer-created jeopardy.” But it often goes unexamined in deadly-force cases. 

"Often goes unexamined?"  More like never.

Folks who do this have likely done this many times before they finally kill someone, and yet they remain on the force.

Cops who behave recklessly and incompetently should be fired, and they almost never are.

As Well They Should

Just got back from the centrist rally. Amazing turnout. Thousands of people holding hands and chanting “Better things aren’t possible”

— Getting Some Rest (@InternetHippo) July 1, 2017

While we are on the topic of right-wing Democrats sabotaging the party's future, it appears that the successful efforts to strip paid leave out family leave of the "Build Back Better" bill may cost them a lot of women votes.

Well, duh.

Democrats risk disappointing female voters by cutting out a major expansion of paid family and medical leave from a compromise social policy bill.

President Biden campaigned on extending paid leave to working women and men and initially proposed 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave as part of his sweeping domestic agenda.

But the proposal was whittled down to four weeks and eventually cut entirely from the package because of opposition from centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

Advocates see the development as a major setback, particularly as women face more difficulty reentering the workforce as the nation claws its way out of the pandemic-induced economic crisis.

Female voters will be critical to Democratic hopes in the midterm elections and some see a risk that cutting out the provision could dampen support.

………

An Oct. 27 memo from Democratic polling firm Lake Research Partners commissioned by the National Partnership called paid leave a “crucial component” of Biden’s plan because of its popularity. It cites polling showing that 87 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and 43 percent of Republicans favor paid leave.

Heaven forbid that the Democrats do something that actually makes things better.

This is overwhelmingly popular, and its popularity would only increase once it comes into force, but the, "We can't do good things for people," crowd has spoken.

………

Some advocates are holding out hope that the measure could still be inserted back in the package.

The Dems just passed the infrastructure bill, and without that leverage, the BBB bill will only get worse.

It's bad policy to drop family leave and childcare, and even worse politics, but wankers gotta wank.

And They Cave to the Conservatives

In response to a completely meaningless "promise" from house conservative Democrats, the House has passed the infrastructure bill without the stimulus bill.

The promise involves CBO score, and possibly the alignment of the stars, so I have no confidence in their promise:

The U.S. House on Friday night passed a bipartisan physical infrastructure bill but didn’t bring the Build Back Better Act to the floor — sending just one half of President Joe Biden’s two-pronged economic agenda to the White House, with only a pledge that conservative House Democrats will vote for the party’s broader social infrastructure and climate package at a later date.

………

Due to the intransigence of a few right-wing House Democrats who made last-minute demands for additional fiscal information that could take weeks to obtain, and the acquiescence of Pelosi and Biden, a planned floor vote on BBB was shelved and reduced to a “rule for consideration,” which was approved in a party-line vote of 221-213. Prior to that, BIF passed by a tally of 228-206, with 13 House Republicans joining most Democrats in supporting the measure.

Because it wasn’t accompanied by a real vote on BBB, six progressives — Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — voted against BIF.

“Passing the infrastructure bill without passing the Build Back Better Act first,” Omar said in a statement, “risks leaving behind child care, paid leave, healthcare, climate action, housing, education, and a roadmap to citizenship.”

………

Even though analyses of spending and revenue conducted by the U.S. Treasury Department, the White House, and the Joint Committee on Taxation have found that BBB is paid for and may actually reduce deficits, a small group of conservative House Democrats on Friday insisted on seeing an official score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) before they would vote for BBB.

Given the razor-thin margins in Congress, Democrats can afford only three defections in the House and none in the Senate to pass BBB through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process. Meanwhile, it could take the CBO weeks to produce a score, and there is no guarantee that the holdouts will be satisfied with the results, which are notoriously arbitrary and unreliable, according to experts.

That's the point.

They want to kill the bill, because they get campaign donations, and eventually comfortable post-retirement sinecures, from Wall Street types.

This is why Democrats will get hammered in 2022:  Because they never deliver on their promises.

Hopefully This Gives Them Enough Time to Jail Bibi

For the first time in 3 years, the Israeli Knesset passed the first budget in three years.

While I'm not conversant in the minutiae of Israeli politics, I do know that this is important, because a failure might have meant the loss of a confidence vote, which might have put Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) back in power, and again forestalled his prosecution for corruption:

Israel approved the country’s first national budget in more than three years early Thursday, a milestone in the new government’s efforts to stabilize its grip on power and a setback to former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to topple the coalition that ousted him four months ago.

The predawn action — following three days of debate, an overnight voting marathon and a four-hour filibuster — gives Israel its first fiscal framework since 2018, raising hopes that the country may finally be emerging from an unprecedented period of political tumult and stalemate.

Exhausted lawmakers whooped and hugged following the final passage of the $195 billion funding plan by a two-vote margin at 5:30 a.m.

………

Bennett’s fractious coalition of rival parties had faced a deadline of Nov. 14 to approve a 2021 budget or be automatically dissolved. Recent infighting among coalition members, who include right-wing, centrist, liberal and Arab lawmakers, had prompted speculation that Israel’s governing crisis would continue with the fifth national election since 2019.

………

Analysts had warned that Israeli governance was going further adrift with each passing month without a budget. Department funding has been largely frozen and long-range planning at a standstill even as the country faced the pandemic, an economic downturn and shifting military challenges around the region. On the eve of the vote, Israel’s central bank urged lawmakers to act now, emphasizing the “tremendous economic importance” of the moment.

But for the right-wing parties that lost power in the summer, derailing the budget was their best chance to fulfill Netanyahu’s pledge to “be back soon.” The long-serving prime minister was criticized for allowing the budget process to falter for years as he clung to office. Late last year, he blocked action on the budget, allowing him to dissolve a power-sharing agreement with Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

Here is hoping that the prosecutors will get off their duffs and put Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) in the dock.

In addition to being as corrupt as f%$#, Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) is, and will always be, a threat to the continued existence of the Jewish State.

This Should Get Interesting

Because of the ongoing supply chain issues, a number of companies are unable to meet demand, and they are considering cutting back on advertising.

What is interesting here is that they are likely going to be conducting a real world experiment as to the effectiveness of advertising.

What happens if some of these companies find out that the return on advertising is not what was promised?

If we see major pullbacks in , the economic ripples from this could be interesting:

The global supply-chain crisis is spreading to Madison Avenue.

Many companies have been struggling for months to get products to consumers, as they face shortages in everything from raw materials to labor to cargo containers, among other problems. Some are questioning whether it makes sense to promote products they can’t adequately stock.

“It’s not wise to drive demand when shelves are bare,” said Susan Cantor, chief executive officer of branding firm Sterling Brands.

Chocolate giant Hershey Co. and household-goods manufacturers Kimberly-Clark Corp. and Church & Dwight Co. in recent days said they cut back on ad and marketing spending in the third quarter because of supply-chain issues.

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Church & Dwight, the consumer-product company behind the Arm & Hammer and OxiClean brands, said Friday that it pulled back on third-quarter marketing for products most affected by the shortages, especially household products. The New Jersey-based company said it expects supply-availability issues to begin to abate in the first half of 2022 for most of its brands.

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“I think large media organizations are going to see short term significant impacts in these categories until the supply-chain issues right themselves, which should be early in 2022,” Mr. Wagenheim said in an email. Some digital publishers are planning for ad spending to shrink by at least 5% in the fourth quarter compared with their previous projections, according to media executives.

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Ad-holding companies, which work on behalf of big advertisers, appear largely unaffected so far by the supply-chain bottlenecks.

Given how our society is completely permeated by advertising, and the possibility that there would be a pullback from the current state of affairs fills me with glee.

The Overs Win

The consensus was that the Non Farm Payroll (NFP) would increase by 450,000 last month.  It was 531,000.

This is unambiguously good news:

The U.S. labor market sprang back to life in October after a summer slowdown, with employers briskly adding jobs and nearly 200,000 women joining the labor force.

The economy churned out 531,000 new jobs last month, the biggest gain in three months, the Labor Department said Friday. Restaurants, consulting firms and factories all boosted hiring, suggesting broad strength across the economy. Nationwide job growth was also stronger in August and September than previously estimated, with new data boosting employment over that period by 235,000 jobs.

The unemployment rate fell to 4.6% in October from 4.8% a month earlier, and is down by more than half a percentage point in just two months.

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The U.S. still has four million fewer jobs than in February 2020, the month before the pandemic shut down much of the economy, and the unemployment rate remains higher than the pre-pandemic level of 3.5%. But Friday’s report showed the economy rebounding from the summer wave of the Delta variant, a highly contagious strain of Covid-19. Employers say they are eager to hire and are raising wages as they compete over a depleted pool of workers.

That shortage may be easing. About 180,000 female workers aged 16 and older joined the labor force in October, as Covid-19 cases declined and schools reopened. Economists say women have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic because many work in fields that involve human interaction, such as teaching. While the gain in female workers last month was modest, it boosted hopes that more workers on the sidelines would rejoin the search as virus cases continue to fall, offices and childcare facilities reopen and more children become vaccinated.

This is unambiguously good news.

Spitballing at the rate of the required growth in the NFP to keep up with workforce growth, about 150,000, and the current rate of increase over the past year, we should be back to the before times level of employment in late 2022.