This is the Least Surprising News of the Day

I haven't had a whole lot to say about Ray Rice beating his fiancee (now wife).

It's pretty straightforward: You do not hit hit your significant other, ever.^*  That is all that needs to be said.

But the burgeoning scandal erupting from the months long coverup by the NFL requires a bit more analysis:

A law enforcement official says he sent a video of Ray Rice punching his then-fiancée to an NFL executive five months ago, while league executives have insisted they didn't see the violent images until this week.

The official played The Associated Press a 12-second voicemail from an NFL office number on April 9 confirming the video arrived. A female voice expresses thanks and says: "You're right. It's terrible."

“We are not aware of anyone in our office who possessed or saw the video before it was made public on Monday. We will look into it.

”- NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy

Hours after the report Wednesday, Goodell announced former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III will conduct a probe into how the league pursued and handled evidence as it investigated claims against Rice.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said in a statement that the investigation will be overseen by owners John Mara of the New York Giants and Art Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Goodell said that Mueller will have access to all NFL records and will have full cooperation from league personnel.

The law enforcement official, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, says he had no further communication with any NFL employee and can't confirm anyone watched the video. He said he was unauthorized to release the video but shared it unsolicited because he wanted the NFL to have it before deciding on Rice's punishment.

The NFL has repeatedly said it asked for but could not obtain the video of Rice hitting Janay Palmer -- who is now his wife -- at an Atlantic City casino in February.

Just as an FYI, John Mara and Art Rooney, the guys running this "independent" investigation, are Goodell's biggest boosters among the owners, and have many social and business connections.

I am so completely unsurprised by this.

For all their faux piety about the integrity of the sport,  it's all about protecting them and theirs.

One wonders what low level functionary that they will find to throw under the proverbial bus.

^*Various sporting activities, and certain forms of private entertainment by mutual consent (hopefully with a safe word) are excepted from this.

Andrew Cuomo is Such a Classy Guy

As expected, Andrew Cuomo won the primary, though Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu did a lot better than expected, polling at about 35%, far more than the 20% that was anticipated, so it was a bit of a black eye for Cuomo, and pretty much ensures that he will not be the VP pick in 2016.

Cuomo did not even bother having a victory party continuing his policy of not acknowledging Ms. Teachout's, but he topped this when we found out that Zephyr Teachout unable to call him to concede because he refused to give her a number to call:

As expected, Governor Andrew Cuomo won New York's Democratic primary on Tuesday night, but the success of his Mean Girls–esque strategy of ignoring rival Zephyr Teachout is still up for debate. With 90 percent of precincts reporting, Cuomo had 61 percent of the vote to Teachout's 35 percent (with comedian Randy Credico at 4 percent). That's not exactly the landslide Cuomo was looking for, and the governor embarrassed himself through his ridiculous efforts to avoid acknowledging the Fordham Law School professor, even when she was standing two feet away from him.

Apparently, Cuomo kept up the act straight through primary night. He did not hold a victory party (which would have suggested he participated in a primary), and Teachout was reportedly unable to concede to the governor with a phone call, as he wouldn't give her his number.

 Really classy, Andy, really f%$# classy.

F%$# Me, I Agree With Mitch McConnel

Yes, his motives are suspect, but when he calls for Congressional approval for the new war in Iraq, he's right:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Tuesday that President Barack Obama should seek congressional approval for the U.S. strategy on ISIS.

"The view of myself and most of my members is the president should be seeking congressional approval, period, for whatever he decides to do because that's the way you hear from those of us who represent everyone in the country," the Kentucky Republican said.

McConnell stressed that Obama must come up with a plan and present it to Congress. He signaled "broad support" for U.S. action against the group.

"That's the way you get congressional support. I've said — when Elizabeth Warren begins to sound like Dick Cheney, you know that there's pretty broad bipartisan support here for dealing with this group of terrorists."

He's right.

I would actually go further, and say that a formal War Powers Act resolution.

This may be simple political posturing on the part of the Senate Minority Leader, but the ability to declare war was vested in the legislative branch for a reason.

Chuck Todd is Toast

On Meet the Press yesterday, newly minted host Chuck Todd interviewed Barack Obama.

It did not go well:

As he says, you've got to be on it, paying attention to every word. Watch him nail Chuck for missing four separate mentions of Syria before telling the President he hasn't heard him mention Syria.

Chuck Todd has just sounded the death knell of his gig as a host.

I give him 6 months.

Hostility and criticism is one thing, but I do not think that NBC News can deal with his being a punch line.

It's not gonna end when Letterman retires, because Stephen Colbert is replacing him.

It's kind of like Joe Biden said, "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence -- a noun, a verb, and 9/11," of Rudy Giuliani.

Lamest Man in Massachusetts New Hampshire

Scott Brown, of course, who, after losing to Elizabeth Warren, went to work for a law and lobbying firm, got his tits in a bundle with Lawrence Lessig who put out a flyer that criticized Brown as a lobbyist.

The Scott Brown campaign sent a cease and desist letter to Lessig's campaign finance reform PAC:

Former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown has attempted to revive his political career by running for Senate in New Hampshire. But in the final days before his September 9 primary, he's squaring off against another opponent — Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig, who advocates against money in politics. Lessig's Mayday PAC endorsed Brown's GOP primary challenger Jim Rubens, and is now sending out a mailer calling Brown a "Washington lobbyist."

The mailer led to an angry response from the Brown campaign. "This is a flat-out lie. Scott Brown is not nor has he ever been a lobbyist. Ever," campaign manager Colin Reed wrote, calling on Lessig to "immediately cease and desist with the mailer in question."

In response, Lessig posted the letter on his blog, and linked to an article from The Hill about Brown joining the Boston office of "Nixon Peabody, a law and lobby firm." The firm itself said Brown would work on "business and governmental affairs," including those related to "the financial services industry." Lessig writes:

Yes, according to the Senate, Scott Brown isn't a "lobbyist." But I submit to anyone else in the world, a former Senator joining a "law and lobbying firm" to help with Wall St's "business and governmental affairs" is to make him a lobbyist. Because to anyone else in the world, when you sell your influence to affect "business and governmental affairs," you are a lobbyist.

You would think that a man who is a lawyer who has spent much of his life as a public figure would understand just what it means to be a public figure after New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which required actual malice or a reckless disregard for the truth for libel and defamation suits.

Of course, in the process of making this demand, the hapless former Cosmo centerfold has served to generate publicity for the flyer.

See, "Streisand Effect, The".  (Heh)

Well, the New York Primary Results Should Be Coming In Soon

So I just wanted to note that Cuomo is going full arm breaker mode on endorsements: (Yes, it is a New York Post link, but Andrew Cuomo has deliberately cultivated an image of tolerating no dissent)

Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio used threats and intimidation in recent days to block prominent Democrats from backing leftist law professors Zephyr Teachout and her running mate, Tim Wu, in Tuesday’s primary, party insiders have told The Post.

The largely successful pressure has been especially intense to stop endorsements for Wu, who is given a real chance of defeating conservative-turned-“progressive” former upstate Rep. Kathy Hochul, Cuomo’s running mate for lieutenant governor, insiders said.

“Cuomo and de Blasio were pulling out all stops, making it clear that anyone who even considers endorsing Teachout or Wu will pay a big political price,” said a prominent Democratic activist.

“Cuomo especially is obsessed with Wu because he clearly thinks Wu has a chance to win, which would be a disaster for him,” the activist continued.

City Council members were told that pet projects would be endangered if they back either Teachout or Wu, said a source close to the council. “You wouldn’t believe how much we were intimidated and muscled,’’ said one.

I still do not think that Teachout has a chance (WU does), but it is nice to see Andrew Cuomo sweating.

I do hope that, if the report is accurate, (NY Post, after all) that de Blasio actually got something BIG for going to the mat for a governor who clearly loathes him and his agenda.

Quote of the Day

David Cameron can’t help the No campaign – he’s less popular in Scotland than Windows 8

About the Scotland independence referendum

—The Guardian, or Charlie Brooker, I'm not sure who writes their headlines.

Either Mr. Brooker, or some anonymous editor has written a f%$#ing brilliant hed.

A Quick Announcement

I really don't give the proverbial flying f%$# in a rolling doughnut about any Apple product announcements.

Never been a fan of their products, and absent a major technological breakthrough, unlikely since Apple is about taking new technology to the mass market, not creating new technology, I will continue not to care.

What Dan Froomkin Says

He asks the obvious question, why when we are looking at going back to war in Iraq, why have all of the discussions about this been about the politics, and not the merit, of the decision:

President Obama has started describing his new strategy to confront the Islamic State, and despite it being a mishmash of wishful thinking and perpetual militarism, the focus of the Washington elites in the press and elsewhere has been almost entirely on the optics: Is he overcoming the perception that he wasn’t doing enough? What will the political reaction be?

The question we should be asking, as I noted on Friday, is: Why the hell does he think it has any chance of working?

………

His plan calls for stepped-up airstrikes, inevitably leading to civilian casualties; for the kind of Middle-Eastern diplomatic needle-threading that has consistently eluded him in the past; for a political miracle in Iraq; and, despite all the precedent to the contrary, for American-trained indigenous military forces that actually fight.

Despite all the cause for skepticism, however, the press coverage of his remarks was largely stenographic — with the aforementioned overlay of politics and optics.

This is the discussions that we get when Obama is talking about involving us in a war that will last at least 3 years.

Seriously.

We're going to war again, for an extended period, and all that anyone appears to be concerned about is the f%$#ing optics:

All that leaves me pondering this question: Is Obama’s new plan something he genuinely believes in? Or does he recognize it’s stupid, and is just doing it for the optics?

There’s a dismal precedent for the latter option: His decision to extend what he knew was a dead-end war in Afghanistan for two years because of the bellicose promises he’d made in order to look tough during his first political campaign. That time, he traded about 1,300 American lives for optics.

Who knows what the trade might be this time?

You know, Obama's sated foreign policy philosophy, "Don't do stupid sh%$," appears to be in abeyance, and this is not a good thing.

Former Bushie Enmeshed in Money Laundering Probe

I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

Zalmay Khalilzad's wife's bank account has been frozen by Austrian authorities:

A U.S. probe into alleged money laundering by Zalmay Khalilzad has led Austrian authorities to freeze a Vienna bank account linked to the former presidential envoy to Afghanistan.

Khalilzad, who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, allegedly transferred $1.4 million to his wife’s bank account in Vienna, Austrian magazine Profil reported today, citing court documents. The money came from oil and building contracts in Iraq and the United Arab Emirates that allegedly violated U.S. laws, U.S. investigators told their Austrian counterparts, according to the papers cited by Profil.

Austrian court spokeswoman Christina Salzborn confirmed the documents’ authenticity in a telephone interview. Christian Bielesz, the lawyer for Khalilzad’s wife, Cheryl Benard, confirmed that the account was frozen and an investigation under way.

The U.S. had asked Austrian authorities not to seize Benard’s account, Bielesz said in a phone interview. A decision on whether to unfreeze the account is expected “quite soon,” he said.

The documents alleging the misconduct were part of a cache of papers retrieved from a garbage bin earlier this year by a Vienna-based blogger. Austria’s courts have instructed workers to take better care of sensitive information, Salzborn said.

Of course, the response of the judge is to criticize the bank for allowing money laundering to be found by a pesky blogger.

Needless to say, Khalilzad is likely neither to face prosecution, nor to have the accounts seized, because, well, the you can be sure that there is someone on the other side of the aisle who wants to get rich the same way, and they need to lube that revolving door for their turn.

I'm beginning to think that we are living in the last days of the Roman Empire.

Victoria Nuland's Husband Calls for More War

Robert Kagan's latest screed is reactionary, shows no learning curve, and treats brown people as objects, so it was published on the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Short version is, "Yadda Yadda, Munich, Nazis, appeasement, Neville Chamberlain."

Normally, I would say, who cares what he thinks, but his wife, Victoria "F%$# the EU" Nuland, is the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, so one might surmise that he has more influence over our foreign policy than your average Wall Street Journal nutjob.

Welcome to the Handmaiden's Tale

We are now throwing mothers in jail for getting their daughters an abortion:

A Pennsylvania woman has been sentenced to up to 18 months in prison for obtaining so-called abortion pills online and providing them to her teenage daughter to end her pregnancy.

Jennifer Ann Whalen, 39, of Washingtonville, a single mother who works as a nursing home aide, pleaded guilty in August to obtaining the miscarriage-inducing pills from an online site in Europe for her daughter, 16, who did not want to have the child.

Whalen was sentenced on Friday by Montour County Court of Common Pleas Judge Gary Norton to serve 12 months to 18 months in prison for violating a state law that requires abortions to be performed by physicians.

………

Matthew Bingham Banks, Whalen’s lawyer, previously told Reuters criminal prosecutions of this kind were not common.

Whalen told authorities there was no local clinic available to perform an abortion and her daughter did not have health insurance to cover a hospital abortion, the Press Enterprise newspaper of Bloomsburg reported.

Her daughter experienced severe cramping and bleeding after taking the pills and Whalen took her to a hospital hear her home for treatment, the newspaper said.

The closest abortion clinic to Whalen’s home is about 74 miles away in Harrisburg.

The right wing woman haters are chuckling about this right.

First, they make it impossible to get a abortion by legal means, and they they start prosecuting when desperate women do desperate things.

Such is the way of the ISIS of the American body politic.

Keith!!!!!!!!

Olbermann is still limiting himself to matters of sport, but sometimes there is a case where he gets to do one of his special comments in everything but name.

This is a really good one:

Linkage

• Mirable Dictu! Florida Activists Help Depose Terrible Foreclosure Judge (naked capitalism) Depose, as in defeat for reelection.
• 5 reasons to suspect that Jesus never existed (Salon) A subject about which I do not care.
• Ayn Rand's Capitalist Paradise Is Now a Greedy Land-Grabbing Sh%$storm (Gawker) What can you expect from acolytes of an author who wrote The Virtue of Selfishness? (H/T JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS)
• Politico Magazine does a remarkably sloppy hit piece on Glenn Greenwald, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt (The Washington Post)
• Man Breaks 5 Min for new Beer Mile (Flotrack) You have to have a 12 Oz beer of at least 5% alcohol each ¼ mile lap. This did it in 4 minutes 57 seconds. Impressive.

Yet Another Reason to Hate Andrew Cuomo

It turns out that the Republican coup in the New York State Senate was aided by hizzoner the Governor:

Andrew Cuomo has always been careful to maintain a plausible-looking deniability when it comes to his role in keeping his own party out of power in the State Senate.

Whenever he’s been asked about his involvement in the creation of the controlling Republican-Independent Democratic coalition, Cuomo has shrugged and suggested that it’s not the governor’s place to get involved in that sort of thing.

“This is an internal legislative matter,” he has said.

It’s on this basis that Cuomo has been able to put distance between himself and the coalition at opportune times—such as, say, when the Working Families Party threatened to endorse someone else for governor earlier this year. And it’s this distance that has allowed him (presumably) to keep a straight face as his running mate, Kathy Hochul, attempts to bolster her own Democratic credentials ahead of the Sept. 9 primary by complaining that the Senate coalition didn’t achieve enough for progressives.

But now, multiple sources with deep knowledge of the IDC and Republican conferences’ dealings confirm that in fact the governor was not a passive observer during the formation of the coalition. He was “deeply involved,” they say, and “absolutely” encouraged the marriage that allowed the Republicans to remain in leadership even after the election of a Democratic majority. Furthermore, they say, the governor was a key player after the coalition launched, privately offering advice about tactics and messaging.

………

But while the governor did not originate the idea of an actual coalition, sources say he and his staff were active in “nudging” it along behind the scenes.

The governor’s interest, say knowledgeable sources, was ensuring that Republicans had control over the agenda in the Senate, so that he wouldn’t be handing over power to New York City Democrats.

“The governor and [top aide] Larry [Schwartz] made it very clear they wanted the IDC to work with the Republicans to run the Senate,” one source explained.

Another recalled that there were “many, many conversations” between Schwartz, Cuomo and Republican leaders. The governor frequently expressed frustration with Democratic Senate leaders, and complained that he couldn’t work with them.

Before the coalition was announced, Cuomo privately made the IDC feel more comfortable working with Republicans and assured them they “wouldn’t get crucified,” or be “left out to dry” if they made the move.

This is not a surprise.

Cuomo was implicitly supportive of the renegade Democrats in the state senate, and now we see evidence of direct collusion.

He so deserves to lose his primary race.

The Talibaptists Have Seized the USAF

The Airforce is refusing to allow an athiest airman to reenlist unless he includes "Under God" in his oath:

An unnamed airman in the United States Air Force wants to continue to serve his country. Yet, the Air Force reportedly told him that his service is unwanted unless he swears an oath that concludes with the religious affirmation “so help me God.” According to the Air Force Times, the airman crossed out the words “so help me God” when he signed his reenlistment contract. He was subsequently told that he must either swear this religious oath or leave the service.

In justifying this decision, an Air Force spokesperson pointed to a federal law, which requires “[e]ach person enlisting in an armed force” to take an oath that concludes with the four words this airman finds objectionable. He did agree to the other portions of the oath, which includes a promise to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and to “obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me.”

This is clearly unconstitutional, as there is exhaustive judicial precedent saying that the government cannot coerce a person to profess belief, but this does not matter to the Air Force.

The US military in general, and USAF in particular, have been infiltrated by right wing Evangelicals looking to create an "Army of God", and this is just an early consequence.

Here is the Military Religious Freedom Foundation's take on this is well worth reading as well.  In particular, they note that the legislation in question which the Air Force is siting to exclude this airman allows for a simple affirmation:

Regrettably, this truly horrific scenario is indeed the case within the United States Air Force (USAF). Just the other day, the USAF public affairs office at the Pentagon informed the world that “Reciting ‘So help me God’ in its official reenlistment and commissioning oaths is a statutory requirement under 10 U.S.C. §502“. In short, you had better repent and swear your oath to “God” or be gone. Interestingly, that just cited U.S. Code provision (which the Air Force is pathetically using to support its “sorry, our hands are tied” position of abject cowardice here) also makes it clear that armed forces members may “affirm”, in lieu of swearing, this enlistment or commissioning oath. When one “affirms” such an oath of office, there is NO need to “swear” to “God” to do so. Such is the very distinction between “swearing and affirming.” 10 U.S.C. §502 allows either to be done by the enlisting or commissioning Air Force member. The USAF’s transparent duplicity and specious motivations for basing its new decision to force service members to swear to God are dangerous, disingenuous and despicable.

Your mouth to ……… Well, you get the idea.

Sounds Like the Tories are Freaking Out Over the Scottish Referendum

They set it up as an all or nothing vote, specifically leaving an option for autonomy of the Scottish independence referendum, and now that the polls are showing independence having a (small) lead, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has issued a statement saying that they intend to increase autonomy:

A last-minute all-party plan to devolve further powers to Scotland over tax, spending, welfare and a host of other areas will be unveiled in the next few days, George Osborne has said.

The announcement came after a YouGov poll showed the yes side taking a narrow lead, spreading fears at Westminster of a constitutional crisis.

The chancellor detailed the plans – the product of backroom talks – saying they would be unveiled in the next few days with a clear timetable for implementation in the event of a no vote. The offer is similar to the last-minute package offered to Quebec by the Canadian government in 1995, that staved off a vote for separation.

All the major political parties have presented different offers of further devolution, but there has been no agreement between them on far they should extend.

The announcement of the package also represents a shift away from the negative tone of the previous no campaign to a positive offer of the benefits of staying inside a United Kingdom. Many polls show support for wider devolution but there has been a lack of clarity about what it represents in practice.

The political parties said it was unlikely the joint statement would set out detailed new powers beyond those already promised, but focus on a credible timetable and process for the transfer to come about. The three parties have already issued a joint statement of further transfer of powers in June but, judging by the latest polls, this may have had little effect.

No specifics, of course, because they really do not want to allow Scotland to have authority on taxes and social welfare programs, because this would provide a nearby case study for the futility of benefit and tax cuts, but it appears that political reality is that some sort of retreat is essential for the Conservatives to defeat this referendum.

Still, I would not trust them do keep their word if I were a Scotsman who had to make up his mind about how to vote.

Time for Another Blogger Ethics Panel

Noted intelligence reporter Ken Dilanian, who has written on intelligence issues for both the LA Times and Associated Press, has been revealed to have pre cleared his stories with the CIA:

A prominent national security reporter for the Los Angeles Times routinely submitted drafts and detailed summaries of his stories to CIA press handlers prior to publication, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.

Email exchanges between CIA public affairs officers and Ken Dilanian, now an Associated Press intelligence reporter who previously covered the CIA for the Times, show that Dilanian enjoyed a closely collaborative relationship with the agency, explicitly promising positive news coverage and sometimes sending the press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication. In at least one instance, the CIA’s reaction appears to have led to significant changes in the story that was eventually published in the Times.

“I’m working on a story about congressional oversight of drone strikes that can present a good opportunity for you guys,” Dilanian wrote in one email to a CIA press officer, explaining that what he intended to report would be “reassuring to the public” about CIA drone strikes. In another, after a series of back-and-forth emails about a pending story on CIA operations in Yemen, he sent a full draft of an unpublished report along with the subject line, “does this look better?” In another, he directly asks the flack: “You wouldn’t put out disinformation on this, would you?”

Dilanian’s emails were included in hundreds of pages of documents that the CIA turned over in response to two FOIA requests seeking records on the agency’s interactions with reporters. They include email exchanges with reporters for the Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other outlets. In addition to Dilanian’s deferential relationship with the CIA’s press handlers, the documents show that the agency regularly invites journalists to its McLean, Va., headquarters for briefings and other events. Reporters who have addressed the CIA include the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius, the former ombudsmen for the New York Times, NPR, and Washington Post, and Fox News’ Brett Baier, Juan Williams, and Catherine Herridge.

The money quote on this is, "Of course, journalists routinely curry favor with government sources (and others) by falsely suggesting that they intend to amplify the official point of view. But the emails show that Dilanian really meant it."

Read the rest, but basically, not only did act as a CIA stooge, he uncritically regurgitated CIA lies about things like civilian drone strike casualties.

H/t Gawker.

Deep Thought

Link

Sucks to be British Petroleum Right Now

Bummer of a birth mark, BP

A federal judge has ruled that not only was BP negligent,  BP was grossly negligent in the Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill.

This has the effect of increasing their fines by a factor of 4:

In the four years since the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 workers and sent millions of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has spent more than $28 billion on damage claims and cleanup costs, pleaded guilty to criminal charges and emerged a shrunken giant.

But through it all, the company has maintained that it was not chiefly responsible for the accident, and that its contractors in the operation, Halliburton and Transocean, should shoulder as much, if not more, of the blame.

On Thursday, a federal judge here for the first time bluntly rejected those arguments, finding that BP was indeed the primary culprit and that only it had acted with “conscious disregard of known risks.” He added that BP’s “conduct was reckless.”

By finding that BP was, in legal parlance, grossly negligent in the disaster, and not merely negligent, United States District Court Judge Carl J. Barbier opened the possibility of $18 billion in new civil penalties for BP, nearly quadruple the maximum Clean Water Act penalty for simple negligence and far more than the $3.5 billion the company has set aside.

Note, however, even at $18 billion, that is less than last year's profits, which were just under $24 billion.

It ain't enough.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!!

No banks this week, but the 8^th credit union of the year, Louden Depot Community Credit Union of ​Fairfield, ​IA.

Here is the Full NCUA list.

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

In A Choice Between the Two Religions of Texas, the Christian Right Goes with Bigotry

It is said that that there are two religions in Texas: Jesus and football.

The Dallas Cowboys, whose defense was pathetic last year, decided to add openly gay defensive end Michael Sam to their practice squad, and all hell breaks loose:

Right-wing Christians plan to protest the Dallas Cowboys signing of Michael Sam, the first openly gay NFL player.

The outside linebacker was cut last week by the St. Louis Rams, which had drafted him in the seventh round out of the University of Missouri, and picked up by the defense-starved Cowboys.

He will join the team’s practice squad if he passes a physical exam.

The move angered anti-LGBT Christians, who had threatened to boycott the Rams before Sam was released.

“We cannot just stand idly by as Christian values and morals are trampled,” said Jack Burkman, the GOP lobbyist working to keep Sam out of the NFL. “We will do whatever we can to preserve family values in this country.”

Burkman has drafted legislation barring gay players from the NFL, but his brother said his efforts were a publicity stunt to draw clients to his lobbying firm.

“I think the idea that he is pushing legislation that is just hurtful and ridiculous is just plain stupid,” said Jim Burkman, an anesthesiologist who is openly gay. “He is not a legislator and he can’t really push legislation. I don’t think there are any cosponsors for a bill. It is just an attention grab and a media grab to pander to those folks who pay him to lobby on their behalf.”

I'm about to say something that I never believed that I would ever say: Thank you Jerry Jones for doing the right thing.

I feel dirty now.

The Jobs Numbers Suck.

Nonfarm payrolls rose by 142,000 in August. Generally improvement in the employment situation starts at about 200,000:

American employers hired fewer workers than forecast in August and the jobless rate dropped because people left the workforce, bolstering those on the Federal Reserve who want to be more deliberate in removing monetary stimulus.

The 142,000 advance in payrolls was the smallest this year and followed a revised 212,000 gain in July, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington. The reading was lower than the most pessimistic estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent last month from 6.2 percent, reflecting a drop in joblessness among teenagers as well as the decline in labor participation.

………

The median projection in the Bloomberg survey of 91 economists called for a 230,000 increase in August payrolls. Estimates ranged from increases of 190,000 to 310,000 after a previously reported 209,000 July gain. Revisions to prior reports subtracted a total of 28,000 jobs from overall payrolls in the previous two months.

The participation rate, which indicates the share of working-age people in the labor force, decreased 0.1 percentage point to 62.8 percent, matching the lowest since 1978.

Basically, this just sucks.

Law Enforcement Technology Used to Steal Celebrity Pix

This is we should not create technology allow for unlimited access to our private affairs by the state security apparatus. Because whatever technologies they develop will end up in the hands of criminals:

As nude celebrity photos spilled onto the web over the weekend, blame for the scandal has rotated from the scumbag hackers who stole the images to a researcher who released a tool used to crack victims’ iCloud passwords to Apple, whose security flaws may have made that cracking exploit possible in the first place. But one step in the hackers’ sext-stealing playbook has been ignored—a piece of software designed to let cops and spies siphon data from iPhones, but is instead being used by pervy criminals themselves.

On the web forum Anon-IB, one of the most popular anonymous image boards for posting stolen nude selfies, hackers openly discuss using a piece of software called EPPB or Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker to download their victims’ data from iCloud backups. That software is sold by Moscow-based forensics firm Elcomsoft and intended for government agency customers. In combination with iCloud credentials obtained with iBrute, the password-cracking software for iCloud released on Github over the weekend, EPPB lets anyone impersonate a victim’s iPhone and download its full backup rather than the more limited data accessible on iCloud.com. And as of Tuesday, it was still being used to steal revealing photos and post them on Anon-IB’s forum.

“Use the script to hack her passwd…use eppb to download the backup,” wrote one anonymous user on Anon-IB explaining the process to a less-experienced hacker. “Post your wins here ;-)”

Apple’s security nightmare began over the weekend, when hackers began leaking nude photos that included shots of Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and Kirsten Dunst. The security community quickly pointed fingers at the iBrute software, a tool released by security researcher Alexey Troshichev designed to take advantage of a flaw in Apple’s “Find My iPhone” feature to “brute-force” users’ iCloud passwords, cycling through thousands of guesses to crack the account.

If a hacker can obtain a user’s iCloud username and password with iBrute, he or she can log in to the victim’s iCloud.com account to steal photos. But if attackers instead impersonate the user’s device with Elcomsoft’s tool, the desktop application allows them to download the entire iPhone or iPad backup as a single folder, says Jonathan Zdziarski, a forensics consult and security researcher. That gives the intruders access to far more data, he says, including videos, application data, contacts, and text messages.

You can be sure that whatever the NSA is using is light years ahead of this, and that at some point in the next 5 years, it will be available in the criminal underground, along with whatever back doors the NSA has managed to put into our network infrastructure.

DC Circuit Will Hear Obamacare Subsidy Case En Banc

After a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in which Federalist type Neander-Conservative were the majority, ruled against subsidies for states that used the federal insurance exchanges, the DoJ asked for a hearing from the full court, an en banc hearing.

Well the court has agreed to this hearing, and they have stayed the decision of the original panel:

A vital part of the federal health care law will get a new review before the full bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In a two-page order released Thursday, a majority of the eleven-member court granted the Obama administration’s request to consider en banc the legality of subsidies being given to consumers to help them afford health care insurance, if they shop for it at a federal marketplace (“exchange”). Such exchanges exist in thirty-four states, and nearly five million consumers have already received subsidies.

By granting further review of the controversy, the en banc court wiped out a three-judge panel’s two-to-one ruling on July 22 finding that such subsidies under the Affordable Care Act can only be provided to those who seek insurance on an exchange directly operated by a state government — a potentially crippling blow to the new law. Only sixteen states have set up exchanges.

By granting further review, the D.C. Circuit has raised the chances that the administration will win in that court, as it did previously in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. If there is then no conflict among appeals courts on the question, that could reduce the chances that the Supreme Court would feel a need to step in. However, the issue is pending in other lower courts, so a conflict remains a possibility.

In the en banc hearing, unlike the original hearing, will not be stacked with partisan hacks, so it's pretty much certain that they rule as the 4^th Circuit.

The question now is whether the Supreme Court is going to hear this case.

And Now the Cops are Ratting Out Christie's Bridge Scandal

Props to the The Bergen Record for their coverage of Bridgegate.

Today, they revealed that senior staff at the Port Authority Police were aiding the bridge closures, and the rank and file cops are talking:

On the second day of the George Washington Bridge lane closures last year, a Port Authority police officer stationed at a gridlocked intersection picked up the two-way radio in his patrol car. The closures were creating “hazardous conditions” on Fort Lee’s streets, he told fellow officers according to his own account, and the lanes needed to be reopened.

“Shut up,” a Port Authority police supervisor at the bridge allegedly replied, instructing the officer not to discuss the apparently secret operation over an open radio channel.

That exchange, as described by officer Steve Pisciotta and involving the highest-ranking officer at the bridge, Deputy Inspector Darcy Licorish, is included in a summary of the recollections of nearly a dozen rank-and-file police officers that was provided to lawmakers investigating the lane closures, according to documents obtained by The Record.

The accounts of 11 officers at the bridge during the week of the closures share common threads and provide vivid new details about how the operation was put into effect on a Monday morning nearly a year ago.

………

The instructions about the new lane configuration, many of them said, were delivered at roll call before the morning rush hour on the first day by Police Lt. Thomas “Chip” Michaels, who grew up with Governor Christie in the town of Livingston. He told the officers not to touch the traffic cones choking the number of access lanes out of Fort Lee from three down to one, according to the officers.

Later that morning, officers said they saw Michaels driving David Wildstein — the Port Authority executive who ordered the closures and also grew up with Christie — around Fort Lee’s gridlocked streets.

………

Several immediately heard gossip in a police break room that the closures were part of a dispute between Christie and Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, who had declined to endorse the governor for re-election. The officers described the resulting traffic as “horrible” and “horrific,” and at least one urged a reversal of the operation, only to get warnings that his remarks over the radio were “inappropriate,” according to his attorney. It’s the first indication that police charged with patrolling the bridge recognized and notified superiors of the chaos being caused by the lane closures.

The summary, written by the legislative panel’s attorney Michael W. Knoo and based on an interview with the officers’ attorney Dan Bibb, renews questions about the role of some Port Authority police officers in what appears to have been an exercise motivated partly by politics.

The Record also obtained separate summaries of informal interviews with the two police supervisors at the bridge at the time, Michaels and Licorish. Those interviews were conducted prior to the one given on behalf of the 11 rank-and-file officers and do not address some of the allegations regarding the instructions – and warnings – the officers say they received.

………

Some of the 11 rank-and-file officers at the bridge, however, described the supervisors as ordering them not to voice opposition to the lane closures as they were happening.

Perhaps the most explosive anecdote was provided on behalf of Pisciotta, a 12-year officer who is typically one of the first to arrive at the bridge before the morning rush hour, according to the summary. Pisciotta’s attorney said his client, who had worked at the bridge for over five years, recognized early on that the closures were causing traffic safety problems and aired his concern over the radio on the second day, according to the summary.

………

Licorish “replied to Pisciotta by radio, telling him to ‘shut up’ and that there could be no further discussion of the lane closures over the air,” according to Pisciotta’s attorney.

Michaels and a police sergeant then “visited him in person at his post to tell him that his radio communication had been inappropriate,” the attorney said.

A second officer, Angela Tait, said she witnessed both exchanges, according to the summary.

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg, of Teaneck, who is co-chairwoman of the legislative panel, said the summaries indicate that “law enforcement was in on this whole thing.”

“It was bad enough that it was the Port Authority and people close to the governor, but now you’ve got the people who are responsible for keeping us safe,” she said. “Any time you have law enforcement involved in a political operation, that’s very troubling.”

Bibb, who is representing the 11 officers, also told the lawmakers’ attorney that many of the officers have already been interviewed by federal investigators, who are conducting a criminal probe. Bibb provided the legislative panel a summary of what the officers stationed at the bridge would say if subpoenaed to appear before the committee and testify under oath, according to the memo, dated Aug. 27.

Seriously, the lower level cops have both gone to the union, and gone public about this.

This is like peeling an onion, but someone is clearly making onion rings out of this, hopefully the US Attorney.

Rick Perry is Toast

This story predates Governor Perry's indictment by about 4 months, but this goes straight from abuse of power to outright bribery:

Aides to Gov. Rick Perry offered Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg continued employment in the district attorney's office if she resigned her elected post following a drunk-driving arrest, officials familiar with the offer said Thursday.

The offer came after Perry threatened and then vetoed $7.5 million in funding for the office's anti-corruption unit, known as the Public Integrity Unit, because Lehmberg had refused to step down.

But several officials and sources told the Express-News that Perry — through intermediaries — offered various options to Lehmberg to entice her resignation, culminating in promises to restore funding to the unit, another position in the District Attorney's office, and selection of her top lieutenant to serve as the new district attorney.

The offer was explicit; “they were clear,” the elected official said.

Something that Rachel Maddow has always said is that if you want to look at local corruption, you need to check the local press, in this case, The San Antonio News Express.

This is an explicit quid pro quo, but if you read the national press, it's pundits complaining about the criminalization of ordinary politics.

It isn't. It's a classic bribery attempt.

Governor Ultrasound is Completely Fornicated

After just 17 hours deliberation, despite having an epic set of instructions from the judge, the jury found former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell  and his wife Maureen of every major charge:

A federal jury on Thursday found former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, guilty of public corruption — sending an emphatic message that they believed the couple sold the office once occupied by Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson to a free-spending Richmond businessman for golf outings, lavish vacations and $120,000 in sweetheart loans.

After three days of deliberations, the seven men and five women who heard weeks of gripping testimony about the ­McDonnells’ alleged misdeeds unanimously found that the couple conspired to lend the prestige of the governor’s office to Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in a nefarious exchange for his largesse.

The verdict means that Robert McDonnell, the first governor in Virginia history to be charged with a crime, now holds an even more unwanted distinction — the first to be convicted of one.

He and his wife face decades in federal prison, although their actual sentences are likely to fall well short of that. U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer set a sentencing hearing for Jan. 6.

The former governor, a onetime Republican rising star considered for the 2012 vice-presidential nomination, was convicted of all 11 corruption-related counts brought against him. In a small victory, he was acquitted of lying on loan documents.

………

It was a stunning outcome for the couple, all the more so because in December, McDonnell declined to accept a plea agreement in which he would have been found guilty of just one felony count of lying on a loan document, according to people familiar with the case. Maureen McDonnell would have faced no charges.

He was unbelievably guilty, and he somehow figured that he would get out of it, so he now faces many more years in jail, and he sold the mother of his  children down the river.

I'm not surprised. 

He thought that he was on the proverbial "Mission from God" only, unlike the Blues Brothers movie, he wasn't joking.

It's the same cycle as one sees in ancient Greek tragedies: Koros to Hubris to Ate to Nemesis.  (Success to arrogance to madness to comeuppance)

Republicans Aren't Even Trying to Appear Non Corrupt Anymore

Last night, Democratic Senate Candidate Chad Taylor withdrew from the race for US Senate:

Kansas voters have lost a chance to vote for a Democratic senator this fall — and Republicans could pay the price.

Chad Taylor’s stunning decision Wednesday to withdraw from the U.S. Senate race forced partisans and analysts to recalculate the potential outcome of the Kansas contest.

The consensus: Longtime incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts is in serious trouble, and the GOP’s chances of controlling the Senate could suffer as a result.

“It’s extraordinary. It’s stunning. It’s shocking,” said Stu Rothenberg, a nationally known political analyst. Roberts “is still going to be the favorite, but the fact that those of us in Washington who look at races actually have Kansas on our radar is a significant development.”

After surviving a brutal GOP primary in August, Roberts — and other Republicans — were counting on a four-way election to split his opposition, giving the veteran a chance to win in November with less than a majority of votes.

The likelihood of that outcome tumbled dramatically Wednesday when Taylor quit.

A recent poll found remaining independent candidate Greg Orman leading Roberts by 10 points in a one-on-one matchup. The Olathe businessman enjoyed the same margin in a different mid-August poll.

Chad Taylor was in 3^rd place, and Dems in Kansas are focused on the governor's race, so it makes sense to do this.

Senator Roberts nearly lost the primary to a doctor whose hobby was posting gunshot victims' X-Rays on Facebook, and so his going from 2 opponents to one is a very big deal, as the poll numbers show.

In going from a 3 person to a 2 person race, Pat Roberts gains just 1% against Greg Orman, while he picked up 10% and Taylor was still behind in the polling, so from a tactical perspective (Orman would likely caucus with the Dems) it makes sense for everyone involved.

Of course, this story is not complete.  After contacting the Secretary of State's office, and getting explicit instruction on withdrawing from the race, but Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach is trying to invoke the heretofore not used in a Senate race no backsie rule:

Chad Taylor doesn’t want to be in the race for U.S. Senate, but he’s going to remain on the ballot at least for now.

Taylor, the Democratic nominee for Senate and district attorney of Shawnee County, submitted a formal letter to the Secretary of State’s Office to withdraw his candidacy on Wednesday, the deadline to drop out of the race.

Political analysts said his withdrawal would give a boost to independent candidate Greg Orman against U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts in November. But Secretary of State Kris Kobach announced Thursday afternoon that Taylor must remain on the ballot.

A few hours later, Taylor announced plans to challenge that decision, saying that Assistant Secretary of State Brad Bryant had assured him he met all the requirements to withdraw.

“I specifically asked Mr. Bryant if the letter contained all the information necessary to remove my name from the ballot. Mr. Bryant said, ‘Yes,’ affirming to me, and my campaign manager, that the letter was sufficient to withdraw my name from the ballot,” Taylor said in a statement

Kris Kobach has been at the forefront of the Republican efforts to keep Blacks and Hispanics to vote, and he's on Senator Roberts' steering committee, but it appears that the words "ethics" and "recusal" are not in his vocabulary.

This ratf%$# makes Katherine Harris look like a responsible public servant.

But having a completely corrupt partisan in charge of the election is not enough for the national Republican party, so they have brought in national political operatives to run the Roberts campaign:

National Republicans on Thursday moved to take control of the campaign of Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas by sending a longtime party strategist to the state to advise him, a day after his hopes for re-election and those of his party for taking control of the Senate were threatened by the attempted withdrawal of the Democrat in the race.

………

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is sending Chris LaCivita, who has served as a political troubleshooter in past Republican campaigns, to counsel Mr. Roberts and help oversee his campaign. The committee will also seek to hire a local lawyer in any legal challenge against Mr. Taylor, who had tried to drop off the ballot on the last day candidates were allowed to do so.

Just when I think that Republican politics can't get any more repulsive, they exceed my own low expectations.

The Revolving Door Spins Again

A Russian bank targeted by US sanctions, has hired Trent Lott and John Breaux as lobbyists:

Gazprombank GPB (OJSC), a Russian bank targeted with sanctions by President Obama over the Ukraine crisis, has hired two former U.S. senators to lobby against those sanctions, according to a new disclosure filed with the Senate.
Gazprombank is controlled by Russia’s state-owned energy company Gazprom, the country’s largest gas producer; it supplies about a third of Europe’s natural gas.

In a filing submitted Friday and effective that day, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and former Senator John Breaux, D-La., are listed as the main lobbyists under the Gazprombank account for the firm Squire Patton Boggs, lobbying on “banking laws and regulations including applicable sanctions.”

Truth be told, the fact that these two are lobbying for Gazprombank is not the real problem, it is the fact that they never went home, and are now paid obscene amounts of money as employees of Squire Patton Boggs (BTW, the Boggs in the name of the firm is Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr., son of Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr., former House Majority Leader).

More back loaded bribery of our elected officials.

Talibaptists Do Not Get Irony

On Hannity (of course) J. Crewe clothes horse turned Duck Dynasty ZZ Top impersonator Phil Robertson declared that we must convert ISIS to Christianity or murder them:

Then, Robertson arrived at the most controversial part of the interview, saying of the Islamic State: “You either have to convert them, which I think will be next to impossible. I’m not giving up on them but I’m just saying, either convert them or kill them.”

As near as I can figure out, the only difference between Mr. Robertson and ISIS is that the ISIS militants are better dressed.

James Foley was Tortured Before Being Beheaded Because We Tortured

Dan Froomkin, in a post on the continuing efforts by the US state security apparatus to use redactions on the Senate torture report to conceal the nature torture, gives us this tidbit:

Feinstein also agreed with [NBC reporter Andrea] Mitchell’s suggestion that Islamic militants in Syria tortured Americans — including journalist James Foley, who was reportedly waterboarded before being beheaded — in a “rebuke” to the U.S. for its own use of torture during the Bush administration.

“The United States military has always prevented any kind of torture or waterboarding because they felt that then, whatever the enemy was, would come back and do it to our people,” she said. “In this case, the enemy came back and did it to one of our citizens.”

So, torture does not work, and it gets our guys tortured.

BTW, it's clear that the CIA is attempting to change the conclusions of the report through supposedly security related redactions:

Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein expects the executive summary of her staff’s long-awaited report on the torture of American detainees to be ready for public release before the end of September, she said in an unaired segment of her “Meet the Press” interview this weekend (starts at 10:25 of the video).

The torture report, which was five years in the making, was sent to the White House for declassification in April. But the exhaustive redactions that Obama administration officials sent back in early August included such things as the elimination of pseudonyms, apparently to make the report too confusing to follow, and the blacking out of copious supporting evidence, such as proof that information derived from torture actually came from other intelligence sources.

“What we are engaged in is working with the administration to see that the redaction is such that it does not destroy the report,” Feinstein told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “If you redact the evidence — heavily — then we cannot sustain our findings. We will not put out a report that does not enable us to sustain our findings. And I believe that that is understood.

………

People who have seen the report’s executive summary have told reporters that it discloses abuse that was more brutal, systematic and widespread than generally recognized — and presents extensive evidence that officials most closely linked to the torture regime lied to others inside the CIA and the Justice Department, as well as to Congress and the public, about what they were doing, what they had done, and what it accomplished.

The evidence is quite clear at this point:  The CIA is actively obstructing the oversight process, and as such, it should have no input whatsoever in clearing the Senate Intelligence Committee's report.

Obama should, but won't, remove the security review process from the CIA, so the Senate Committee should do release it on it's own, as its right under statute.

Russia and Ukraine Hammer Out Deal

I really don't think that this can be cast as anything but a setback for both NATO and the Ukraine, but if this deal holds the shooting should stop, which is a good thing:

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced a plan to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine that would entrench rebel gains there and hand a significant defeat to Ukrainian leaders who have sought to regain full control of the territory of their nation.

Putin said that he and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had agreed on the broad outlines of a seven-point peace settlement that would at least temporarily freeze the conflict on the ground. He specified no major concessions for the rebels and instead insisted on a large-scale Ukrainian military pullback and the introduction of international monitors to ensure that fighting does not resume.

Poroshenko did not specifically address the “Putin plan,” as it was dubbed by the Kremlin, but he said that the time had come to end the conflict.

“The first task is peace,” Poroshenko said in a statement. “Today at 5 a.m. I spoke to President Putin about how we can stop this horrible process. There is no denying that people must stop dying.”

Both leaders said that they hoped peace talks could start Friday.

The apparent concessions to Russia dealt a further blow to Ukrainian aspirations to escape the orbit of the nation to which they were once joined as part of the Soviet Union. Months of pro-European protests in Kiev ended in February with the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych. Russia quickly moved to annex the Crimean Peninsula in response. The Europe-friendly Poroshenko was elected in a landslide victory in May, but his popularity has been damaged by the grueling conflict in the east, where ­Russian-backed rebels have claimed important swaths of territory.

Just weeks ago, Ukrainian forces appeared close to defeating the rebels. But since early last week, the rebels have made rapid, renewed strides against the Ukrainian military after Kiev reported a large-scale Russian incursion into southeastern Ukraine. The Kremlin denies aiding the rebels, although rebel leaders have said that Russian soldiers were using vacation time to fight on their side.

That last bit, the whole, "I'm a soldier, so I'm, going to war on vacation," is the very epitome of a "Busman's Holiday."

Victoria Nuland's Neocon folly is just the gift that keeps on giving.

Please! Please!! Please!!! Please!!!! Please!!!! Make it So!!!!

It looks like Amazon will be relaunching the TV series "The Tick" with Patrick Warburton as a web based program:

Critically-acclaimed superhero parody only lasted nine episodes on Fox in 2001

“Spoon!” Patrick Warburton may soon revive one of his most beloved, and obscure, characters. The “Rules of Engagement” and “Family Guy” star is set to reprise his role as “The Tick” in an Amazon pilot, an individual with knowledge of the deal confirmed to TheWrap.

For nine episodes in 2001, Warburton brought to life Ben Edlund's lunatic superhero parody “The Tick.” Based on a comic book, “The Tick” animated series ran for three successful seasons on Fox Kids in the mid-1990s. It didn't fare as well in live-action and in prime time, despite near universal critical acclaim.

I so want this to happen!

This Whole Naked Picture Thing

I'd love to see naked pictures of Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton, but only if they voluntarily do some sort of performance in the nude.

Otherwise, it is squicky. I want to see naked women who want to be naked.

Of course, there is an adult naked picture of me that  might still be in existence.

It was the mid-1980s, and my then girl friend wanted a naked picture. (The non digital kind)

I do not know if she still has it, but for the love of God, if you do, do not punish the world with it.

………

I'm over-sharing, aren't I.

As an aside, I would add one sort of technical thing: I would not trust the crowd in general, and Apple's cloud in particular, but if you are going to use the cloud to back up your stuff, not only should the stuff be password protected, but it should also be encrypted as well, both to protect yourself from hackers, competitors, and from the NSA.

Least Surprising News of the Day

Eric Cantor gets is back loaded bribe, because, after fighting financial reform tooth and nail, he will now make millions of dollars at a Wall Street firm:

Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), who resigned last month after losing renomination to an underfunded college professor, spent much of his 13-plus years in the U.S. Congress advancing the agenda of Wall Street investment firms. This week, he announced that he will be joining a Wall Street investment bank as its new vice chairman.

Cantor will be joining Moelis & Co., the investment bank said, to “provide strategic counsel to the Firm’s corporate and institutional clients on key issues,” to “play a leading role in client development,” and to “advise clients on strategic matters.” The announcement press release praised Cantor as a “leading voice on the economy and job creation,” who worked in Congress “to lower taxes, eliminate excessive regulation, strengthen small businesses, and encourage entrepreneurship.” The deal reportedly includes a $1.4 million signing bonus and at least a $2 million annual compensation package.

Moelis and Co. will not get a value of $2 million a year from Eric Cantor, but that is not the purpose of their offer to him.

The purpose of their offer to him is to show people who are still in Congress that, if they play nice with the banksters, then when they retire, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, they will be set for life.

It's the proverbial offer they cannot refuse.

Andrew Cuomo is Terrified Right Now

First the New York Times declines to endorse the in the Democratic primary (they pretty much said that they would endorse Zephyr Teachout if she had a chance of winning), and then they endorse Teachout's running mate, Timothy Wu for Lieutenant Government.

This makes things complex:

The conventional wisdom is that Teachout cannot win, but she can pose problems, both for Cuomo’s perception as an all-powerful and invulnerable politician and for the havoc her running mate, Columbia law professor Tim Wu, could cause if he defeats Cuomo’s handpicked running mate, Erie County’s Kathy Hochul.

A Wu victory resulting in a Cuomo-Wu ticket in November would block Cuomo from counting votes won in the general election on several other ballot lines where the incumbent and Hochul already are on the line, such as the Working Families Party.

It's still about as likely that Andrew Cuomo would lose the general as it is that he would lose the primary, which is to say about as likely as the proverbial snowball's chance in hell.

There is actually a report that Cuomo may dump his running mate, Kathy Hochul. (Warning it is a New York Post link.)

BTW, if there is anyone who deserves to lose the next primary in New York State than Andrew Cuomo, it is Kathy Hochul:

There is a race for lieutenant-governor in which Tim Wu, the champion of net neutrality, is running against Cuomo's handpicked candidate, a true Blue Dog horror named Kathy Hochul, a former congresscritter whose last days in Washington were highlighted by her staying around the Capitol to vote in favor of a move by the lunatic Darrell Issa to cite Eric Holder for contempt in the Fast And Furious mini-non-scandal.

And from the Times endorsement:

……… boasted repeatedly that she had voted many times against "Obamacare."(H)er willingness to shift politically does not suggest she would offer any kind of independent judgment. Nor does her record give any real clue about what would happen if she took over as governor."

She also had a 100% rating from the NRA while she was in Congress.

Andrew Cuomo chose her for one reason: as a gigantic f%$# you to the states liberals.

The state's liberals should return the gesture.

Handmaid's Tale. It's their goal. It's ALWAYS been their goal.*

In Texas (why is it AWAYS Texas), a personal tragedy for a scared young girl is made a full metal jacket exercise of police and Christofascist excess:

Parents in Texas are upset after police reportedly “swarmed” a Texas high school because a girl may have had a miscarriage in one of the bathrooms.

KDFW reported that a school custodian notified the principal at Woodrow Wilson High School after finding a “possible fetus” in one of the bathroom stalls on Friday.

The principal contacted police, who “swarmed” the school, according to KTVT.

“I seen a helicopter and I was really worried,” one student recalled.

Parent Christine Kerry was outraged that she had not been notified as to why so many police had been deployed to the school.

“I got out of my car and specifically asked, ‘What’s going on, and is it safe for these kids to be out here?’” she said. “And I was told to go away.”

………

Dallas Police Department’s Child Abuse Unit detectives were investigating to find out who may have abandoned the fetus. The person involved was being considered a “suspect.”

“We’re reviewing video, talking to the teachers, trying to determine if anybody has any knowledge of any student that may have had something going on in their life, and pray,” Dallas Police Major John Lawton said.

Alan Elliott of Baby Moses Dallas explained to KDFW that the mother could have avoided any criminal charges if she had taken advantage of Baby Moses laws by carrying the child to term, and then dropping it off at a safe baby site like a fire station.

“And that’s a happy ending when that happens, because the baby is safe, the mother is protected from any sort of prosecution, so it’s a win-win for both of them,” Elliot noted.

However, it was not immediately clear how far along the pregnancy was, and the cause of the possible miscarriage was not known.

And the cops are already treating it as a crime scene, because maybe a poor, scared girl, might have taken RU-486 or some similar drug to terminate a pregnancy.

This is all about punishing some poor, scared, teen because she tried to assert autonomy over her body.

These people just hate fear women, and their sexual power.

Please, can we give Texas back to Mexico?

^*H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for the title.

Light Blogging Tonight

We are getting all the rain that California needs, all at once, with high winds & thunder & lightning.
The power is out.

Posted via mobile.

[on edit] Power back on at 9:27pm

Arbitration is a Corrupt Fraud

This little story of the corruption that is a feature, not a bug, of the arbitration process has made it to the New York Times:

Five years ago, Sean Martin, a registered representative at Deutsche Bank Securities in New York, saw something troubling on his trading desk.

A few of his colleagues, he said, were letting preferred hedge fund clients listen in on confidential market commentary by the firm’s analysts before their views were made public. He alerted his superiors and was almost immediately given a negative review, a first in more than 10 years at the firm, he said. His bosses also removed him from the group he’d been working with and cut his compensation.

Mr. Martin, who continues to work at Deutsche Bank, said he believed that he was being punished for reporting misconduct and took the one avenue of redress that was open to him. In August 2012, he brought an arbitration case against the firm, contending retaliation and asking to recover his lost earnings. As is typical in the financial industry, his employment contract required that any dispute between him and his employer go through private arbitration, not the courts. Mr. Martin’s matter is being heard by three arbitrators associated with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a self-regulatory organization that operates the largest dispute resolution forum in the securities industry.

But Mr. Martin’s experience with arbitration, both he and his lawyer say, has raised questions of fairness in the process. The three-member panel hearing his case has barred him from testifying about certain crucial aspects of what he saw at Deutsche Bank and disallowed the introduction of documents that bolster his claims. This led his lawyer to conclude that the panel was not interested in specifics of the behavior at the heart of his accusations — and to ask a state court to step in.

“When I filed this arbitration, I expected that Finra would resolve the dispute between Deutsche Bank and me in a fair way,” Mr. Martin, 41, said in a statement provided by his lawyer. “I was surprised and disappointed when the arbitrators refused to listen to important parts of what I wanted to say and rejected or redacted my exhibits. I can’t see how a dispute can be fairly resolved if one party is not even allowed to tell their side.”

………

“How can a panel of arbitrators for the regulator justify not hearing evidence of wrongdoing?” asked Robert Kraus, a partner at Kraus & Zuchlewski in New York, who represents Mr. Martin. “It is completely upside-down.”

………
But Mr. Kraus, worried that his client would not get a fair hearing, last week filed a motion in New York State Supreme Court asking to stay the arbitration hearings. Arguments are on the docket for Wednesday in Manhattan. If the judge grants Mr. Kraus’s request, the court will hear arguments on whether the arbitrators should be removed.

………

Mr. Kraus said he did not take the decision lightly to file his request with the court. He said he’s had success in other Finra arbitrations over the years but that this case was different.

“Unlike other hearings where you question a ruling here and there, these arbitrators repeatedly excluded evidence that lies at the heart of our case,” Mr. Kraus said. “From time to time, you get these panels that go off the rails, and then the question is how do you remedy that?”

This is not surprising.

The private arbitration system is inherently corrupt.

The continued employment of arbitrators is dependent upon satisfaction the firms, and not the employees of customers, so their rulings invariably favor the big corps, at the expense of due process for the little guys.