Anyone Surprised that the Vegas Gunman are Tied in with Camp Bundy?

Roll Tape!

The Secretary of the Interior has observed that alleged terrorists Jerad and Amanda Miller spent time at the Clive Bundy ranch, or as Wonkette notes, "Oh Look Some Bundy Ranchers Did A Vegas Spree Killing, For Freedom."

The Bundies have been tryinb very hard to pretend that the Millers were never a part of the protest, but see the tape of Mr. Miller on the Bundy Ranch.

There is a point where right wing American Caucasian entitlement crosses the line to terrorism, and the Millers, and to my mind the Bundys and their fellow travelers are both over that line.

An aggressive investigation of everyone involved with threatening law enforcement and BLM personnel is necessary.

A Mobbed Up Bank is the Least of His Problems

Pope Francis just fired the whole board charged with overseeing the Vatican bank, the Financial Information Authority (AIF):

Pope Francis has removed the entire board of the Vatican's financial watchdog in his latest attempt to rehabilitate the troubled Vatican bank.

Two years before they were due to step down, the five Italians heading the Financial Information Authority (AIF) have been replaced with a more international group of experts, including one woman.

The change follows reports of clashes between the board members and the body’s Swiss director, René Bruelhart, an anti-money laundering expert.

The new members are Marc Odendall, who manages and advises philanthropic organisations in Switzerland, Juan Zarate, a Harvard law professor who was a security adviser to President George Bush, Joseph Yuvaraj Pillay, former managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and Maria Bianca Farina, the head of two Italian insurance companies.

………

Pope Benedict XVI created the watchdog in 2010 to supervise and regulate the widely discredited Vatican bank – which is officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) – and prevent it being used for money-laundering and for terrorism.

But when Bruelhart, who cleaned up Liechtenstein’s banking system, arrived as director in 2012 he encountered resistance to the reforms from an old guard.

The group reportedly wrote to Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin earlier this year complaining that they were being kept in the dark, after Bruelhart’s arrival.

Reformist members of the Curia had urged Francis to bring in professionals with a global perspective who could work with the Swiss lawyer.

………

And in January he sacked all but one of the five cardinals in the commission that supervises the Vatican bank.

The Vatican Bank is clearly a big can of worms, but compared to Irish Orphanage scandal which includes hundreds of surreptitiously buried bodies and involuntary medical experiments:

It gets worse. One week after revelations of how over the span of 35 years, a County Galway home for unwed mothers cavalierly disposed of the bodies of nearly 800 babies and toddlers on a site that held a septic tank, new reports are leveling a whole different set of charges about what happened to the children of those Irish homes.

In harrowing new information revealed this weekend, the Daily Mail has uncovered medical records that suggest 2,051 children across several Irish care homes were given a diphtheria vaccine from pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome in a suspected illegal drug trial that ran from 1930 to 1936. As the Mail reports, “Michael Dwyer, of Cork University’s School of History, found the child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for commercial use in the UK.”  There is no evidence yet – and there may never be – that any family consent was ever offered, or about how many children had adverse effects or died as a result of the vaccinations. Dwyer told the Mail, “The fact that no record of these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London, suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to government, municipal authorities, or the general public. However, the fact that reports of these trials were published in the most prestigious medical journals suggests that this type of human experimentation was largely accepted by medical practitioners and facilitated by authorities in charge of children’s residential institutions.” In a related story, GSK — formerly Wellcome — revealed Monday on Newstalk Radio that 298 children in 10 different care homes were involved in medical trials in the ’60s and ’70s that left “80 children ill after they were accidentally administered a vaccine intended for cattle.”

Irish Minister of State for Training and Skills Ciaran Cannon has called for a public inquiry into the treatment of the children and their deaths.  The archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has also called for an investigation, adding that it should be free of Catholic Church interference. “We have to look at the whole culture of mother and baby homes; they’re talking about medical experiments there,” he told RTE Radio this weekend. “They’re very complicated and very sensitive issues, but the only way we will come out of this particular period of our history is when the truth comes out.” And a spokesman for GSK said the latest revelations, “if true, are clearly very distressing.”

This is not even the first time information on these kinds of vaccine trials has come to light. In 2010, the Irish Independent uncovered how children born in the homes were subjected to a single “four-in-one” vaccine trial without their mothers’ permission. The children often didn’t even know what they’d been subjected to until well into adulthood. Appallingly,  Ireland had no laws regarding medical testing on humans until 1987. Mari Steed, who was born at the Bessborough home in the ’60s, told the Sunday Independent, “We were used as human guinea pigs.”

Yes, very distressing. 

Seriously, I don't think that Francis could live long enough to drain this swamp.

I don't think that he could live long enough to drain this swamp if he became Pope when he was 12 ……… And his dad was Methuselah.

Deep Thought

1000 Words on Anthropogenic Climate Change Denial:



H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

I am a F&@#ing Moron

The Cornish pastys did not cook properly last night.

They just were not getting done.

This morning, it hit me:  the recipe called for them to be cooked at 210° (165° with a convection oven).

Only the recipe is METRIC, not English, so 210°/165° C is 410°/330° F.

So I will be taking my not particularly cooked pastys from the fridge and putting it in the oven at the appropriate temperature.

Posted via mobile.

Trying New Things………

Cornish (Devonian) pastys just went into the oven.

First time I've ever tried them.

I used a very basic recipe (PDF).

To the Americans out there, "Swede" is Rutabaga.

We will see how it goes.

Filling (beef, swede, potatoes, and onions with salt and pepper) seems pretty simple, but I am concerned about the theoretically but not really as simple crust (flour, water, various fats, salt).

As an FYI, the oldest record of a pasty is in neighboring Devon, not Cornwall, so, notwithstanding the EU's Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) designation of the savory pastry.

Theater Night

As a result of our connection with the  Open Space Arts community theater, we scored some tix for the stage version of Sister Act at the Hippodrome, so Sharon and I are having a theater date.

Posted via mobile.

BTW, While We are on the Whole Bergdahl Thing………

That the homecoming party for Bowe Bergdahl because of violence from the right wing knuckle draggers:

The controversy over whether the U.S. should have traded five members of the Taliban for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl reached all the way to Hailey, Idaho, on Wednesday, as the soldier’s hometown canceled its celebration of his freedom amid threats and security worries.

………

Hailey Mayor Fritz Haemmerle told the Los Angeles Times that the town had been deluged with calls and letters of complaint that it was honoring a deserter. The event had been intended as a private celebration, he said, but the organizers decided it was too provocative considering the bitter national dialogue.

“The police chief is aware of the types of people who have threatened to come up and protest this thing,” Haemmerle said. “We’re a town of 8,000 people. The last thing we want is trouble.”

So Haemmerle said he asked the chief to talk to the organizers.

“For better or worse, there are people who blame Bowe for the deaths of other soldiers who searched for him. If that’s true, it’s just tragic,” he said. “We don’t need any more people to get hurt. I don’t think Bowe’s family needs that. It’s not in anyone’s best interests.”

(emphasis mine)

So, the wingers were threatening violence over a private party for parents and relatives to celebrate their son coming home.

All because it was a black Democrat that got him home.

These folks are one open carry incident away from becoming actual terrorists.

You Cannot Make this Sh%$ Up

Oliver "Arms for Hostages" North is criticizing the Obama administration for paying a ransom:

As the right’s outrage over Bowe Bergdahl’s release grew, Chris Hayes joked, “We should definitely get Oliver North to weigh on this one, for maximum absurdity.”


Chris, of course, was kidding. But we were reminded a day later that in this farcical political environment, it’s awfully difficult to joke about things that are likely to be real.

Newsmax host and former Republican congressman J.D. Hayworth added his voice today to the growing right-wing outrage over the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in a prisoner exchange with the Taliban, and what better person to discuss the situation with than Oliver North!

North demanded that the media ask the Obama administration if there was “a ransom, a fiscal, financial, money transaction,” with the Taliban as part of the deal. “Was there a ransom paid? Did the government of the United States, either directly or indirectly, finance a terrorist organization?”

Oliver North, helping push the political world closer to “maximum absurdity,” also took his concerns to Fox News’ Sean Hannity last night.

………

But even putting that aside, in what universe does Oliver North enter this debate with a straight face?

I realize that it’s become impolite in some circles to point out scandals that rocked Ronaldus Magnus’ White House, but the Reagan administration illegally sold weapons to Iranians in order to secure the release of American prisoners, then used the money to illegally finance a war in Central America. Reagan himself assured the American public that the allegations weren’t true, and those assurances turned out to be the opposite of the truth.

Un dirty-word believable.

The Onion has become completely redundant.

25 Years Ago Today

The most famous news photo of the 1980s


The long shot


A ground level shot about a minute earlier (on the left side between the two trees in the background)

The Tienanmen massacre.

That's all been swept under the rug, and to the degree that anyone in China thinks about it, it's in the context of a highly restrictive media environment which mischaracterizes the events of that day.

One wonders when the people who did this will be made accountable through either the justice system or via the judgement of history.

If these guys are any indication:



It won't ever happen.

Well, at Least Someone Has Put the Fear of God into the NRA

Following the National Rifle Association's declaring the Texas open carry maniacs weird, said maniacs organized a mass destruction of their NRA cards, and the NRA responded by folding like a bunch of overcooked cauliflower:

The National Rifle Association is walking back its statement criticizing gun activists who carry loaded assault weapons in public as a form of protest, with the NRA's top lobbyist apologizing and calling the statement "a mistake."

In recent months Open Carry Texas and several other gun activist groups have made headlines for openly carrying loaded assault weapons in public and into restaurants in the Dallas area. This tactic of attempting to "normalize" open carry of rifles has spectacularly backfired, as gun violence group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America has persuaded several restaurant chains where open carry rallies were staged to ask customers not to bring firearms into their businesses.

On June 2, Mother Jones reported on a statement on the NRA's website that criticized the open carry protests as "downright weird" and suggested that the practice was "downright scary" to onlookers and "counterproductive for the gun owning community." The Mother Jones report was widely circulated in media as it was an aberration from the NRA's typical absolutist position on firearm issues. Open Carry Texas called the NRA's statement "disgusting and disrespectful" and some gun activists cut up their NRA membership cards.

The NRA's top lobbyist, Chris Cox, appeared on the NRA's radio show Cam & Company on June 3 to repudiate the NRA's article criticizing the open carry movement. Cox said that the statement was "a mistake" and that "it shouldn't have happened," adding "our job is not to criticize the lawful behavior of fellow gun owners." Cox also blamed the statement on a "staffer" who Cox said "expressed his personal opinion." Referencing media interest in the statement, Cox termed it a "distraction."

I'm beginning to think that we should start having people of color showing up at NRA meetings and maybe NRA headquarters, doing open carry.

See what that does to the state of their underwear.

How Much of a F%$#tard Gun Fondler do You Have to Be to Have the NRA Call You a F%$#tard Gun Fondler?

Well, now we know:

The nation’s staunchest defender of the Second Amendment has told gun activists in Texas who insist on carrying assault-style rifles in public places to knock it off.

In a statement issued late last week, the National Rifle Association (NRA) called out so-called “open carry” groups in Texas that have been frightening restaurant customers and motorists by approaching them while carrying AK-47s and AR-15s.

The NRA applauded Texas for a “robust gun culture,” but noted that a number of activists had “crossed the line from enthusiasm to downright foolishness.”
“Now we love AR-15s and AKs as much as anybody, and we know that these sorts of semiautomatic carbines are among the most popular, fastest selling firearms in America today,” the statement said. “Texas, independent-minded and liberty-loving place that it is, doesn’t ban the carrying of loaded long guns in public, nor does it require a permit for this activity. Yet some so-called firearm advocates seem determined to change this.”

“[I]t is a rare sight to see someone sidle up next to you in line for lunch with a 7.62 rifle slung across his chest, much less a whole gaggle of folks descending on the same public venue with similar arms,” the NRA continued. “Let’s not mince words, not only is it rare, it’s downright weird and certainly not a practical way to go normally about your business while being prepared to defend yourself. To those who are not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to oneself or one’s cause, it can be downright scary.”

(emphasis original)

Seriously, this like that classic moment in Iron Man 3, when one of the henchmen says, ""Honesty, I hate working here they are so weird!" and runs away.

My Daughter the Concert Promoter

For her 17th birthday party, Natalie decided to throw a fund raising concert for the Open Space Arts community theater troupe.
She got 3 bands, Silent Society (shown), Winter Hill, and 3PM, printed tickets, arranged for PR and food, etc.
I am managing to grill, cooking hotdogs and veggie burgers.

Posted via mobile.

It's Never Easy

I've become an admin at the Stellarparthenon BBS, and there are some problems, so I am hip deep in figuring out what exactly is wrong.

Later dudes.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!!

And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

9. Slavie Federal Savings Bank, Bel Air, MD

Full FDIC list

And here are the credit union closings.  I've redone the whole list, because I screwed up at some point this year, and missed some credit union closings, counted assisted mergers, which I shouldn't have, and accidntaly counted a bank twice:

1. Bagumbayan Credit Union, Chicago, ​IL, ​1/21/2014
2. St. Francis Campus Credit Union, ​Little Falls, ​MN, ​2/14/2014
3. Parsons Pittsburg Credit Union, ​Parsons, ​KS, ​3/21/2014
4. Mayfair Federal Credit Union, ​Warminster, ​PA, ​3/31/2014
5. Health One Credit Union, ​Detroit, ​MI, ​5/16/2014
6. Life Line Credit Union, ​Richmond, ​VA, ​5/23/2014

Full NCUA list

So, here is the graph pr0n with last few years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

What P.Z. Meyers Said

He wrote a post complaining about business as usual at the Democratic Party titled, "Democrats: You suck.

His experience is that, following making a small donation to a Democratic candidate for office, he has been bludgeoned into something approaching PTSD from their repeated fund raising requests:

………

……… At least I think that’s what they’re doing; I now look at the incoming source, and if it’s the Democrats, I don’t bother to pick up. And here I am, entirely sympathetic to that party (if dissatisfied with their conservatism), and I have a conditioned aversion now.

I’ve had enough. I can learn. And the moral I have learned is to never donate to the Democratic party.

Who’s the idiot behind this campaign? Is it actually working for them?

Do Republicans do the same thing to their donors, or do they just scam them with things like gold coins and quack cures?

America's Finest News Source Nails It ……… Again

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

………

At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

Seriously, what the f%$# is wrong with us?

The Koch Suckers Win in Ohio

They just got a bill passed in Ohio ending their renewable power initiative:

As renewable energy production has surged in recent years, opponents of government policies that have helped spur its growth have pushed to roll back those incentives and mandates in state after state.

On Wednesday, they claimed their first victory, when Ohio lawmakers voted to freeze the phasing-in of power that utilities must buy from renewable energy sources.

The bill, which passed the Ohio House of Representatives, 54 to 38, was expected to be signed into law by Gov. John R. Kasich, who helped negotiate its final draft.

It stands in marked contrast to the broad consensus behind the original law in 2008, when it was approved with virtually no opposition, and comes after considerable disagreement among lawmakers, energy executives and public interest groups.

………

Eli Miller, Americans for Prosperity’s Ohio state director, backed by the billionaire industrialists David H. and Charles G. Koch, called the proposed law “a prudent step” to re-examine standards that could be a “potential impediment to job creation and job growth here in the Buckeye State.”

Seriously, the Kochs are a cancer on American society in general, and American politics in particular.

Linkage

• Madness Posing as Hyper-Rationality: OMB’s Assault on Effective Regulation (New Economic Perspectives) The free market mousketeers continue to destroy us all
• GooBing Detroit Google Street View documenting the decay of a city.
• It’s Easier To Get A Gun Than A Vibrator In Georgia (Crooks and Liars)  Not The Onion
•  The year of living more dangerously: Obama's drone speech was a sham (The Guardian)
• REVEALED: The head of Omidyar Networks in India had a secret second job… Helping elect Narendra Modi  (PandoDaily) Because the rabid Hindu nationalist with ties to anti-Muslim pogroms is good on ecommerce

Have a medley of Lewis Black:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

Maybe the Taxi Business Needs to be Changed, but Until Uber is Out of the Picture, It Won't Happen

There are a whole host of issues of regulation, liability, etc., but the Objectivist Randroids at Uber are the sort of people who should be kept out of the business, because they are corrupt to the core:

It’s been pretty widely publicized here in San Francisco that Uber has just moved into fancy new office space at 1455 Market.

………

In any case, what has attracted slightly less publicity is the fact — mentioned only in passing by Re/Code — that on the same day, Uber opened a second office, on Vermont Street in Potrero. According to Uber’s blog…

We’ve heard a lot from our Uber SF partners about wanting easier ways to reach our team including parking and streamlined access to the office. With a new dedicated driver center in Potrero Hill, we are aiming to better connect with our partners and help make getting started with Uber, attending office hours and safety education processes more seamless.

Euphemistically called a “driver center,” one Uber driver told us the second office is actually more of a decoy: allowing the company to fulfill its promise to be more accessible to drivers without, you know, actually having them make Uber’s real office look untidy.

So the way of dealing with issues with drivers, things like insurance, liability, and complaints, is to hide from them.

The way to deal with customers is price gouging, and explicitly violating the law.

The founder of Uber is big into Ayn Rand, a woman who wrote that the philosophy of a serial killer who strangled and dismembered a little girl, was an inspiration to her.

If a company founder demonstrates compete contempt for the very concept of business ethics, and the company is in a consumer centered business, regulatory easements are simply not justified.

This is Prize

I don't hear a single here

An indy band needed to raise money for their tour, and the payments received from Spotify weren't cutting it.

They came up with a remarkably innovative way to monetize the streaming service:

Last month, indie band Vulfpeck wanted to go on tour. Like most indie bands, though, they didn't have the money. With streaming dominating the industry and music streaming giant Spotify paying a grand $0.007 per stream (Vulfpeck sights it at $0.005), it didn't look like they'd be making money anytime soon. Spotify had been promising they'll start paying more — just as soon as they grow their Premium user base from 6 million to 40 million. In short: never.

So scrappy soul band Vulfpeck came up with a plan of their own.

They uploaded 10 tracks of silence to Spotify under the name Sleepify. Then, they put out this video, urging fans to stream the album on repeat while they slept. The band pledged to use the royalty revenue they racked up to fund a tour, where all shows would have free admission. And it worked.

Short version, the netted over $20K before Spotify sent a C&D for violating their TOS,^* but they have the folding green to tour.

I will note that while musicians compare about the rates for streaming, they typically compare it to selling an album, which a user can listen to many times, to a single streamed song listened to once.

Of course, bands have been f%$#ed by the middlemen since ……… forever ……… And the real question is how a model that disintermediates between them and the fans.

^*E-I-E-I-O

This is an Interesting Theory of Why the Obama Administration F%$#ed Homeowners

I was thinking that Obama (About Geithner, I know) was captured by the banksters.

Well, Bob Kuttner thinks that is an artifact of Obama trying to distance himself from his skin color:

I've been very critical of Obama and I think his administration's handling of mortgage relief was a disgrace, but I will offer a more charitable interpretation of why the administration turned its back on the victims of the mortgage bust. Race is still such a divisive issue that America's first black president did not dare to look as if he was extending special help to blacks.

I disagree with the thesis.

I think that Obama is not so much Black as he is Crimson (Harvard) as are the banksters, and nothing binds like those old school ties.

I Had an Epic Day at Work Today

I generally embargo anything that happens at work, on the theory that it's my employer's business, and with a few exceptions, blogging about is just not a good idea.

However, what happened today breaks this embargo:

John at work came in limping today.

He had a Brown Recluse bite on his leg, and he said that the doctor had prescribed steroid and Sulfa drugs (probably Dapsone).

I told him that he should drink lots of water, because Sulfa drugs tend to accumulate in the kidneys.

Then as I was walking away, I turned and said:

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

You know where this is going, don't you...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

I'm an Engineer, not a Doctor, Dammit!!!!!!

I haz a happy!

Tweet of the Day

I don't know why I wasn't invited, I'm great at weddings... @KimKardashian @kanyewest
— George RR Martin (@GeorgeRRMartin_) May 25, 2014

I think that I pulled something laughing.

H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

I'm Not Sure What I Can Say About the Santa Barbara Shootings

But I do agree with the response of Richard Martinez, the the father of one of the victims, Chris­topher Michaels-Martinez, makes a powerful and heartfelt statement

He’s asking members of Congress to stop calling him to offer condolences but nothing more for the death of his only child, Chris­topher Michaels-Martinez, who was killed in the rampage Friday in Santa Barbara, Calif.

“I don’t care about your sympathy. I don’t give a s--- that you feel sorry for me,” Richard Martinez said during an extensive interview, his face flushed as tears rolled down. “Get to work and do something. I’ll tell the president the same thing if he calls me. Getting a call from a politician doesn’t impress me.”

Saying that “we are all to blame” for the death of his 20-year-old son, Martinez urged the public to join him in demanding “immediate action” from members of Congress and President Obama to curb gun violence by passing stricter gun-
control laws.

“Today, I’m going to ask every person I can find to send a postcard to every politician they can think of with three words on it: ‘Not one more,’ ” he said Tuesday. “People are looking for something to do. I’m asking people to stand up for something. Enough is enough.”

Of course the small number of people who possess a lethal juxtaposition of small penisises and revenge fantasies have immediately jumped on the grieving father, because they are deeply evil ratf%$#s.

Rahter unsurprisingly, Joe the Plumber led the hit parade:

I am sorry you lost your child. I myself have a son and daughter and the one thing I never want to go through, is what you are going through now. But:

As harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.

I am not particularly surprised that this is not the worst thing said so far, but the worst thing said so far actually stunned me:

F%$# him. He is a piece of shit. His tragedy sucks, but he blamed me for it and wants to take away my rights. The guy is trying to take away my rights to protect my family. F%$# him every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

(%$# mine)

This is Todd Kincannon, who is perhaps the perfect demonstration about how the people who have been drawn to the NRA's increasing insanity are a priori (in a Kantian sense) unsuited to possess anything more dangerous than a plastic spoon,

I know that there are responsible firearm owners out there, but the folks that the NRA speaks to are not in that group.

I would add that it appears that the shooter was closely tied into the pick-up artist/mens rights community, which is a group of people who make furries seem sane.

Lean In, My Ass!

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's COO, is due to speak at Harvard.

Harvard is also landlord at Hilton DoubleTree Suites, where management is engaged in an aggressive anti-union drive.

The union asked Sandberg to host a "Lean In", she turned them down:

With Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg coming to town next week, a group of housekeepers, nightclub servers, and other employees of a Boston hotel are trying to turn her now-famous campaign for empowering women in their favor as they move toward forming a union.

Unite Here Local 26, which is organizing workers at the Hilton DoubleTree Suites hotel near the Charles River, said it wanted to enlist Sandberg’s help after facing resistance from Hilton and receiving no encouragement from Harvard University, which owns the property where the hotel is located.

So, the union decided, why not appeal to the author of the bestseller “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead”?

Organizers asked Sandberg to meet with the hotel’s female workers. They started an online petition calling for her to become involved in their cause. And they created leaflets depicting the book’s cover, with faces of housekeepers replacing Sandberg’s, and a message that reads, “Sheryl Sandberg, will you lean in with the women of Harvard’s hotel?”

The Facebook chief operating officer, who is scheduled to deliver a Class Day address at Harvard Wednesday, has sent word she does not have time to host a “Lean In circle” with the hotel employees. Undeterred, the workers are planning to hand out the leaflets during Sandberg’s speech in Harvard Yard.

(Emphasis Mine)

Note that a "Lean In Circle" would probably take less time than the inevitable parties and meetups that are a part of her speaking gig.

I guess that "leaning in" means being born to well to do parents, going to Harvard, becoming an acolyte of Lawrence Summers, etc.

When a commitment to "equality" is juxtaposed with an indifference to labor organizing rights, there is no commitment to equality, which is why, "Sandberg has been criticized for creating a movement aimed at financially well-off women."

Memorial Day Cookout Blogging

We came back from the SCA event yesterday, an we were concerned about whether the chicken we brought there, but did not cook, was good.

We (actually Sharon) looked at it and adjudged it not lethal, but as a precaution, I marinated it, because the high acidity will kill anything lurking there.

So, last night, I made a marinade of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, soy sauce, mustard, cayenne pepper, some unsweetened cocoa, brown sugar, molasses, garlic, ginger, and some other herbs and spices I can not recall as I write this.

I let it all marinade over night, and then I put the chicken in the bullet smoker (the one pictured is much higher end than what I use) and used the marinade in the water pan to add some flavor.

Once the chicken was done, I took the contents of the water pan, now marinade and drippings, and reduced it to sauce consistency.

I then put the sauce on the chicken, and caramelized it under the broiler.

It got fairly good reviews from the family.

Just Returned from an SCA Event Near Richmond

Natalie, our daughter, received an award the Hippocampus (Sea Horses, not the region of the brain associated with memory), an award given to children for service.

It was well deserved, but out was too much driving to get down there.

I think that I need ass transplant.

Posted via mobile.

Our Dysfunctional Pentagon

Winslow Wheeler at War is Boring makes an interesting point about the sequestration games that the Department of Defense is engaging in: Iit is systematically cutting cheaper and more effective programs in favor of expensive systems:

There has been a short-sighted eagerness in some news articles and commentaries to disparage two actions by the House Armed Services Committee in the Fiscal Year 2015 National Defense Authorization Act.

The HASC seeks to retain in the military force structure the Air Force’s A-10 Warthog close support aircraft and the Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington. The Air Force and the Navy want to retire these systems prematurely, thereby seeming to save money.

But the longer-term game being played is to smooth the way for far more expensive, truly unaffordable, replacements the Air Force and Navy have cued up. And in the case of the A-10, the older, cheaper alternative is the inestimably more effective one.

Like, I said, it's not about defending our nation, it's about our Generals getting lucrative post retirement consulting gigs.

That old Iron Triangle.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!!

Another bank failure, the first time we have had two in a week in a while.

8. Columbia Savings Bank, Cincinatti, OH

Full FDIC list


So, here is the graph pr0n with last few years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

Michael Kinsley Comes Out in Favor of Stalinism

In a New York Times review of Glenn Greenwald's latest book, Kinsley declares that it must be the government, and not the journalist, who determines when a sensitive information can be published:

The trouble is this: Greenwald says that Snowden told him to "use your journalistic judgment to only publish those documents that the public should see and that can be revealed without harm to any innocent people." Once again, this testimony proves the opposite of what Greenwald and Snowden seem to think. Snowden may be willing to trust Greenwald to make this judgment correctly — but are you? And even if you do trust Greenwald's judgment, which on the evidence might be unwise, how can we be sure the next leaker will be so scrupulous?

The question is who decides. It seems clear, at least to me, that the private companies that own newspapers, and their employees, should not have the final say over the release of government secrets, and a free pass to make them public with no legal consequences. In a democracy (which, pace Greenwald, we still are), that decision must ultimately be made by the government. No doubt the government will usually be overprotective of its secrets, and so the process of decision-making — whatever it turns out to be — should openly tilt in favor of publication with minimal delay. But ultimately you can't square this circle. Someone gets to decide, and that someone cannot be Glenn Greenwald.

This is not a problem, this is a free press, and one of the consequences of this is that stuff that the government does not want to be pubic knowledge will be public knowledge.

Shorter Michael Kinsley, "Journalism, Schmournalism, we need better stenographers."


H/t Gawker.

We've Always Been at War with Eastasia

If there is anything more Orwellian than the Pentagon refusing to reveal who we are at war with.

Note that this was in a hearing about extending the Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) where the Pentagon refused to say with whom we are fighting.

So they are asking for an authorization to make war while refusing say who they are making war with, and why we are making war with them.

This is a miasma of the most profoundly disturbing visions of both Orwell, and Kafka.

Linkage

• AT&T Plans to Start Screwing You Over in 2018 (Mother Jones) Not a surprise, they are the phone company, they don't care, they don't have to, but they basically admitted in regulatory filing over the DirectTV merger.
• Tim Geithner Lays into FDR for Not Working with Hoover (Matt Stoller) Because all Hoover asked for in return was that FDR do nothing to fix the Depression.
• How do we prevent the next Tim Geithner? (Mathbabe) By electing a President who doesn't bring the retread usual suspects in as his/her cabinet.
• Keith Alexander: NSA Makes The Entire Internet Weaker To Protect You From Terrorists (Crooks and Liars)

What if The Matrix ran on Windows XP:

Deep Thought

H/t Neo at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Why Yes, the NSA is a Tool of the Oligarchy, Why do You Ask?

Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ryan Devereaux take another dive in lake Snowden, and discover that the NSA intercepts every single mobile phone call made in the Bahamas:

The National Security Agency is secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio of virtually every cell phone conversation on the island nation of the Bahamas.

According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the surveillance is part of a top-secret system – code-named SOMALGET – that was implemented without the knowledge or consent of the Bahamian government. Instead, the agency appears to have used access legally obtained in cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to open a backdoor to the country’s cellular telephone network, enabling it to covertly record and store the “full-take audio” of every mobile call made to, from and within the Bahamas – and to replay those calls for up to a month.

SOMALGET is part of a broader NSA program called MYSTIC, which The Intercept has learned is being used to secretly monitor the telecommunications systems of the Bahamas and several other countries, including Mexico, the Philippines, and Kenya. But while MYSTIC scrapes mobile networks for so-called “metadata” – information that reveals the time, source, and destination of calls – SOMALGET is a cutting-edge tool that enables the NSA to vacuum up and store the actual content of every conversation in an entire country.

………

In addition, the program is a serious – and perhaps illegal – abuse of the access to international phone networks that other countries willingly grant the United States for legitimate law-enforcement surveillance. If the NSA is using the Drug Enforcement Administration’s relationship to the Bahamas as a cover for secretly recording the entire country’s mobile phone calls, it could imperil the longstanding tradition of international law enforcement cooperation that the United States enjoys with its allies.

“It’s surprising, the short-sightedness of the government,” says Michael German, a fellow at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice who spent 16 years as an FBI agent conducting undercover investigations. “That they couldn’t see how exploiting a lawful mechanism to such a degree that you might lose that justifiable access – that’s where the intelligence community is acting in a way that harms its long-term interests, and clearly the long-term national security interests of the United States.”

Once again, we see why intelligence agencies, particularly those in SIGINT, can never do decide woh to target, because they will take it all, damn the consequences.

When you let them run their own agendas, they are a clear and present danger to our national security interests.

One critique though, they buried the f%$#ing lede:

But the NSA documents don’t reflect a concerted focus on the money launderers and powerful financial institutions – including numerous Western banks – that underpin the black market for narcotics in the Bahamas. Instead, an internal NSA presentation from 2013 recounts with pride how analysts used SOMALGET to locate an individual who “arranged Mexico-to-United States marijuana shipments” through the U.S. Postal Service.

They captured every cell phone call in a jurisdiction known for money laundering by tax evaders, organized criminals, arms dealers, and other illegal activity, and they are only going after people who are mailing pot to people who are mailing baggies of pot back home.

Think about it for a moment.

Spend billions on these capabilities, and then choose not to go after transnational criminals and tax dodgers .

Your tax dollars at work.

What Sherrod Brown Says

As opposed to buying into the Republican meme that has us throwing momma from the train, the distinguished gentleman from Ohio is suggesting that Democrats should be running on increases in the social safety net:

Word has it that Democrats are set to take a shellacking in the 2014 elections, in part because midterm electorates tend to be older and whiter. So what if Dems campaigned on expanding Social Security, rather than allowing themselves to get drawn into another debate over how much to cut the program?

There’s a hook for this looming: The coming battle over disability insurance, which is a part of Social Security.

Dem Senator Sherrod Brown, a member of the Finance Committee, tells me that GOP Senators have requested hearings into Social Security Disability Insurance this summer. Dems expect Republicans to attack the program as wasteful and fraudulent, in part because conservative media have already done so, and in part because at least one GOP proposal in recent days took aim at the program.

Brown says Dems should seize this occasion to get behind a proposal that would lift or change the payroll tax cap, meaning higher earners would pay more, while adopting a new measure for inflation that would increase benefits for all seniors. Instead of getting drawn into debates about “Chained CPI” and other entitlement cuts, Brown says, Dems should make the case that stagnating wages and declining pensions and savings demand an expansion of social insurance.

Good politics, and good politics.

Needless to say, the "Very Serious People," in the Democratic Party will hate this idea, because, they are afraid that it might piss off the rich donors who pay their salaries.

It's the Iron Law of Institutions, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself." (Emphasis original)

WE Just Got Fracked

A new analysis of what was previously considered the largest shale oil formation in the United States has just shrunk by 96%:

Federal energy authorities have slashed by 96% the estimated amount of recoverable oil buried in California's vast Monterey Shale deposits, deflating its potential as a national "black gold mine" of petroleum.

Just 600 million barrels of oil can be extracted with existing technology, far below the 13.7 billion barrels once thought recoverable from the jumbled layers of subterranean rock spread across much of Central California, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said.

The new estimate, expected to be released publicly next month, is a blow to the nation's oil future and to projections that an oil boom would bring as many as 2.8 million new jobs to California and boost tax revenue by $24.6 billion annually.

The Monterey Shale formation contains about two-thirds of the nation's shale oil reserves. It had been seen as an enormous bonanza, reducing the nation's need for foreign oil imports through the use of the latest in extraction techniques, including acid treatments, horizontal drilling and fracking.

The energy agency said the earlier estimate of recoverable oil, issued in 2011 by an independent firm under contract with the government, broadly assumed that deposits in the Monterey Shale formation were as easily recoverable as those found in shale formations elsewhere.

We are not going to frack our way into energy independence.

The problems that California is not like Texas, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, etc.  It is highly seismically active, and  this action has chopped the shale layer into isolated little pieces.

You have Problem with Corporate Communist Capitalism®©™, Comrade?

North Carolina continues its trip off the deep end.

The Republicans who have control of the state are decided to make it a felony to reveal what fracking oil companies are pumping into people's drinking water:

As hydraulic fracturing ramps up around the country, so do concerns about its health impacts. These concerns have led 20 states to require the disclosure of industrial chemicals used in the fracking process.

North Carolina isn't on that list of states yet—and it may be hurtling in the opposite direction.

On Thursday, three Republican state senators introduced a bill that would slap a felony charge on individuals who disclosed confidential information about fracking chemicals. The bill, whose sponsors include a member of Republican party leadership, establishes procedures for fire chiefs and health care providers to obtain chemical information during emergencies. But as the trade publication Energywire noted Friday, individuals who leak information outside of emergency settings could be penalized with fines and several months in prison.

"The felony provision is far stricter than most states' provisions in terms of the penalty for violating trade secrets," says Hannah Wiseman, a Florida State University assistant law professor who studies fracking regulations.

The bill also allows companies that own the chemical information to require emergency responders to sign a confidentiality agreement. And it's not clear what the penalty would be for a health care worker or fire chief who spoke about their experiences with chemical accidents to colleagues.

Seriously.

The Repubicans are beginning to give authoritarian corporatism a bad name.

This is a Good Day for Schadenfreude

Dinesh D’Souza has just pled guilty to using straw donors in violation of campaign finance laws:

Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza entered a guilty plea Tuesday to a charge that he used straw donors to make $20,000 in illegal contributions to Republican Senate candidate Wendy Long in 2012, officials said.

The unexpected guilty plea came on the same day the trial for the strident critic of President Barack Obama was set to open in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The single felony count D’Souza admitted guilt on carries a maximum prison sentence of two years, but the plea agreement D’Souza’s lawyers reached with the government says sentencing guidelines applicable to the case call for a sentence of 10 to 16 months.

Judges are not required to sentence defendants in accordance with the guidelines, but usually do. Both sides reserved their rights to argue for a sentence outside that range and D’Souza’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman indicated he plans to ask Judge Richard Berman not to send D’Souza to prison.

The plea deal calls for dismissal of a second charge D’Souza faced if he went to trial: causing Long to file a false report with the Federal Election Commission. That carried a potential sentence of up to five years behind bars.

Atrios has noted that he is feeling far less schadenfreude about this than he expected, despite his being, "One of America's Worst Humans."

Me not so much.

This is the guy that has never grew up beyond tacky College Republican guerrilla theater that had classmate Timothy Geithner asking him, "how it felt to be such a dick."  (And that is ignoring his rather idiosyncratic marital life)

This really could not happen to a more contemptible human being.

Because Our Government Has Been Completely Captured by the Banksters

James Kwak asks, "Why Is Credit Suisse Still Allowed to Do Business in the United States?"

Thia has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.

On a slightly less glib level, Kwak wonders why, if the financial markets are all better, and the banks insist that they are not to big to fail, why we cannot see fit to suspend the banking license of a foreign bank that has spent decades defrauding the American government.

The fundamental point is that if Credit Suisse really is solvent, then there are no losses that have to be absorbed by someone else (other financial institutions or taxpayers). If its assets really are worth more than its liabilities, then it must be possible to close down the bank without harming anyone else (except shareholders), given enough time. The whole point of capital regulation is to make sure that this can always be done. People would lose their jobs, but the whole premise of the financial sector is that it is providing useful services, which means that those jobs would be recreated elsewhere in the industry (except for the jobs based on tax fraud, which should go away for good).

Our finance system is not just corrupt, it is criminogenic.

We gotta figure out a way to shut this all down in an orderly manner, and replace it with something, you know, sane.

Bummer of a Birth Mark, Bob

In a completely that unsurprising move, District Judge James Spencer has ruleddisgraced former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell's trial should proceed:

Virginia’s former governor Robert McDonnell, once a rising star in the Republican Party, failed to persuade a U.S. judge to throw out federal corruption charges against him and his wife, Maureen.

U.S. District Judge James Spencer in Richmond, Virginia, ruled today that U.S. prosecutors sufficiently supported their charges in the McDonnells’ indictment and that the case against them, scheduled for trial in July, should move ahead. Spencer also rejected the couple’s request that their cases be separated.

The McDonnells are accused of accepting vacations, loans, private plane rides and other benefits in exchange for using the governor’s office to benefit businessman Jonnie Williams, who at the time headed Star Scientific Inc. (STSI) and was trying to promote the dietary supplements made by the Glen Allen, Virginia-based company.

I half expect that the jury to, "Find the defendants incredibly guilty," to quote Mel Brooks.