F%$# Me, I Agree with Chuck Hagel

He was generally clueless as a Senator and as Secretary of Defense, but his statement that the US focus on deposing Bashar al Assad is crippling us diplomatically and militarily is spot on:

The US has backed itself into a corner by insisting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad be removed from power before the Obama administration will work with Russia and Iran to fight the Islamic State group, former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said.

“We have allowed ourselves to get caught and paralyzed on our Syrian policy by the statement that ‘Assad must go,’” Hagel said at a Wednesday event hosted by the Atlantic Council.

Russia and Iran have said they are willing to join with the US in fighting ISIS, but not at the expense of Assad, a longtime regional ally for both nations. The US continues to insist that no serious discussions on working with those two nations can occur until Assad is removed.

………

The focus on Assad, Hagel indicated, has clouded the situation.

“Assad was never our enemy. A brutal dictator? Yes. There are a lot of brutal dictators out there. I’m not for brutal dictators. But we should have learned from Saddam Hussein and Gadhafi, you can take a brutal dictator out but you better understand what you may get in return,” Hagel said. “Let’s get to this platform of stability.”

Our policy is incoherent.

Arguably it has been as incoherent under Obama as it was under Bush, notwithstanding their claims of having, "Don't do stupid sh%$," as a central tenet.

This is not a problem of any particular Presidential administration.  It is a problem with the commonly accepted foreign policy beliefs, a sort of Council of Foreign Relations consensus, that is dysfunctional and delusional.

This is Some Seriously Sick Sh%$

A left wing Israeli activist, Ezra Nawi, was caught on tape boasting that he turned information about Arabs who were looking to sell land to Jews over to the Palestinian security services, and boasted that these people were tortured and killed:

A prominent Israeli campaigner for Palestinian rights was recorded saying that he helps Palestinian authorities find and kill Palestinians who sell land to Jews.

The recording was aired Thursday by the television program Uvda of Israel’s Channel 2. In it, Ezra Nawi, a Jewish far-left activist from the Ta’ayush group, is heard speaking about four Palestinian real-estate sellers, whom Nawi said mistook him for a Jew interested in buying their property.

“Straight away I give their pictures and phone numbers to the Preventive Security Force,” Nawi is heard saying in reference to the Palestinian Authority’s counterintelligence arm. “The Palestinian Authority catches them and kills them. But before it kills them, they get beat up a lot.”

In the Palestinian Authority, the penal code reserves capital punishment for anyone convicted of selling land to Jews. This law, which Palestinian officials defended as designed to prevent takeovers by settlers, has not been implemented in Palestinian courts, where sellers of land to Jews are usually sentenced to several years in prison. However, in recent years several Palestinian have been murdered for selling land. Their murders have remained unsolved.

He has since been arrested on evidence that he was attempting to lure an Israeli Arab realtor to a village near Hebrone where he would be taken into custody by PA state security forces:

Many in Israel’s left have been trying to disassociate themselves from Ezra Nawi, the activist who was secretly taped on a Channel 2 news program Uvda bragging about sending Arab land brokers to certain torture if not death in the hands of the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security service (selling land to Jews is an act of treason under PA law). Those who defended him quickly became the new pariahs of Israel’s mass and social media. Then came a follow-up report Monday night showing Nawi was on the payroll of Breaking the Silence and Rabbis for Human Rights.

………

Meanwhile, right-wing journalist Shai Glick, who filed a police complaint regarding Ezra Nawi’s activities, reported a conversation with an investigating police officer who told him the Arab land broker Nawi was conspiring to hand over to the PA is an Israeli citizen. Nawi and several other activists were attempting to invite this Israeli citizen to the Arab village of Yatta, south of Hebron, where PA police would be waiting to arrest him.

This last revelation probably explains why Nawi hightailed it to Ben Gurion International, to catch a flight to anywhere else, when police caught him and took him in for questioning. It’s starting to sound like conspiracy to commit murder, which Israel frowns on, regardless of one’s political conviction.

Nawi's lawyer is claiming that he was leaving the country to visit friends in Europe,  and that he had checked with law enforcement before booking the flight, and given the sh%$ storm that has blown up around him, I could see he wants to get out.

I understand that Ezra Nawi he feels passionately about Palestinians and their demands for a homeland, but this is a classic case for quoting Freidrich Nietsche, "If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

If you want to lead a consistently ethical life, it's generally a good idea to avoid behavior that might invoke a Nietsche quote.

It's pretty much an indicator that you have lost your way.

Haberdashery Advice Requested

It's been near the single digits in the morning and evening lately, and so the walk to and from the Metro station to work is less pleasant, so I need to cover my head.

I turned to the family expert on all things hat related, my daughter.

I sent her the following text:

Since you are the expert, I need advice.

It's getting cold, and I need a hat to keep warm.

Clearly it must also be silly, because ……… Dad.

Suggestions?

So, now I throw this out to the internet: Hat, must be warm and thoroughly silly.

Photographs appreciated.

Ricky Gervais Is a National Treasure, I'm Just Not Sure Which Country

Withess this exchange with Mel Gibson at the Golden Globe Awards:

Ricky Gervais keeps pushing. Joking about what a loon Mel Gibson is hardly rare in Hollywood circles, but Gervais decided to do it just as he was introducing him.

“A few years ago I made a joke about Mel Gibson getting a bit drunk and saying a few unsavory things,” Gervais said. “We’ve all done it. I wasn’t judging him, but now I find myself in the awkward position to introduce him again. Listen I’m sure its embarrassing for both of us and I blame NBC for this terrible situation, Mel blames … well we know who Mel blames.” That’s right, Gervais was clearly calling out Gibson’s history of anti-semitism.

“Listen, I still feel bad about it,” Gervais continued. “Mel’s forgotten all about it. That’s what drinking does. I want to say something nice about Mel before he comes out: I’d rather have a drink with him in his hotel tonight than Bill Cosby.”

When Gibson came out, it wasn’t clear if the two were going to embrace or start throwing punches.

“I love seeing Ricky every three years because it reminds me to get a colonoscopy,” Gibson offered.

One reason I don't watch awards shows is because 95% of the time they are boring as sh%$ to me.

The other 5% of the time, I see evidence of how they are wittier than I will ever be, and it's depressing.

I Did Not Expect This

It appears that the Bernie Sanders campaign employs no fund raising staff, Hillary Clinton, in contrast, has over 30 dedicated full time staffers working this:

It’s no secret that Bernie Sanders is raising tons of money, but that fact that he’s doing it without a finance team is highly unusual.

Bernie Sanders loves to talk about the fact that he doesn’t have a super-PAC backing his campaign. But the true state of his fundraising strategy is even more astonishing than that: The Sanders campaign doesn’t have a finance team.

And that’s a big deal.

Every competitive presidential campaign in recent election cycles has had team of people exclusively dedicated to finances: figuring out how much money the campaign needs, putting together a plan to get that money, and then making it all come together.

It’s considered a fundamental part of a modern presidential campaign, right up there with having a team to deal with the press. But Sanders may be changing that.

Call it a reinvention of campaign funding, but the Vermont senator has shown so far that a campaign can operate just fine without a fleet of green-visors counting the cash.

“I’ve never heard of a presidential campaign, even a minor party presidential campaign, that didn’t have a fundraising team,” said one campaign finance attorney. “But, OK if it’s working.”

And, judging by Sanders’s latest fundraising numbers, it is.

This is a positive thing for a number of reasons.  Not only does this reduce his burn rate, 30 staffers full time raising cash probably cost something north of 60 Grand a month, but also because the fundraising profession is an entry point for the most repulsive people in public service (See Emanuel, Rahm, and Wasserman-Schultz, Debbie).

I really like this guy.

My Thoughts Following David Bowie's Death

Live Version

I never bought any of his albums or singles, but my favorite song of his is Putting out a Fire from the 1982 movie Cat People.

I saw it, but was not particularly impressed. I preferred the original 1942 movie, which is widely viewed as a classic.

Most of my experiences with Bowie as an artist were as an actor.

I saw him in the 1976 film, The Man Who Fell to Earth, which was a his cinematic debut, and quite literally the worst cinematic experience in my life.

It was boring, pretentious, confusing, ponderous, and dull.

Looking back, I am left the question, "How the f%$# can you cast David Bowie as an alien, and completely f%$# it up?"

By the same token he was also in one of my favorite films, the Tony Scott's criminally unappreciated The Hunger, a stylish film starring Bowie, Susan Sarandon, and Catherine Deneuve.

It is a stylish vampire film that eschews many of the cliches, and it is unbelievably hot. (Watch it)

Of Labyrinth, one of Jim Henson's few fizzles, the less said the better.

I do see a parallel between his music career and his theatrical career, in that he never seemed to settle on a personae.

Both in music and in film, he was a sort of character actor, where he reveled in changing who he was in public.

Any of the music and cinema buffs out there, feel free to tell me that I am full of it.

Deep Thought

Sometimes, I think that I make too many Monty Python references.

Then I realize that there is no such thing as too many Monty Python references.

No, the FBI Won't Investigate Questionable Pension Fund Deals

It appears that pensioners have finally begun to realize private equity and its ilk are robbing their funds blind while underperforming the market, but I predict that their calls for an investigation of private equity and hedge fund  practices will go largely unanswered:

Diane Bucci and her fellow retired Rhode Island schoolteachers were angry about a deal last year to cut their promised retirement benefits. For 28 years, the elementary school teacher devoted between 7 and 9 percent of her paycheck to the state’s pension system. In return, the 72-year-old had been promised a consistent cost-of-living increase to make sure her retirement stipend kept pace with inflation. Now, though, state officials were trimming her check in the name of replenishing the depleted pension fund.

There was, however, a sliver of hope — or so it seemed: If the pension system could generate better investment returns and amass 80 percent of the money needed to pay current and future retirees, the annual cost-of-living increases would return.

“There was a lot of unrest and anger among teachers, but at that point we buckled down and focused on how we could get to solvency,” said Bucci, who is on the board of the 700-member Rhode Island Retired Teachers Association. “So even though we aren’t Wall Street experts, we just started to ask questions about how the pension fund was managed, and what it was invested in. That’s when we realized the fees we’ve been paying to the investment companies were the problem.”

Those levies — which hit $79 million last year — were the product of the state’s recent investment strategy. Following a controversial national trend, Rhode Island pension officials led by then-General Treasurer Gina Raimondo shifted roughly a quarter of the state’s pension portfolio into high-fee hedge funds, private equity firms and other so-called “alternative investments.”

The shift by Raimondo, a Democrat who is now governor, has generated big revenues for Wall Street firms, but only middling returns for a $7.6 billion pension fund on which more than 58,000 current and future retirees rely.

When Bucci and the members of her organization began asking questions about those results, they learned of a federal review showing that roughly half of all private equity firms are charging hidden fees, and they saw a hedge fund industry whose returns have failed to keep pace with the stock market. When they dug deeper, they stumbled onto an even more disturbing revelation. What they found, they say, is evidence that some investors can obtain special rights that may let them secretly siphon money from the state pensioners’ retirement savings.

The retirees are now petitioning federal law enforcement officials to investigate whether the widely used provisions are violating laws designed to make sure all investors are treated fairly. In a letter sent last month to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI, the retirees’ adviser — former SEC investigator Edward Siedle — pointed out that some of the firms managing Rhode Island pension money claim the right to offer different fee rates, inside information and cash-out rights to some investors but not to others.

Raimondo f%$#ed her pension fund, and she did so knowingly, both because they are "people like her" (Ivy league graduates) who are supposed to be "exceptional", and because she knows that this behavior gets her a 7 figure payday at the end of the rainbow.

It's corrupt tribalism, and it's harming our country.

It's the Right Thing to Do, but I'm Sure That This Feels lIke the Back of the Hand

Barack Obama Obama will not endorse a Presidential candidate in the primaries.

This is not unexpected.

Attempting to influence the selection of their successor is generally a losing proposition for a sitting president.

Still, I imagine that Hillary Clinton is a bit disappointed.

First Tor News Site

Rather unsurprisingly, it's the not-for-profit news organization ProPublica:

The so-called dark web, for all its notoriety as a haven for criminals and drug dealers, is slowly starting to look more and more like a more privacy-preserving mirror of the web as a whole. Now it’s gained one more upstanding member: the non-profit news organization ProPublica.

On Wednesday, ProPublica became the first known major media outlet to launch a version of its site that runs as a “hidden service” on the Tor network, the anonymity system that powers the thousands of untraceable websites that are sometimes known as the darknet or dark web. The move, ProPublica says, is designed to offer the best possible privacy protections for its visitors seeking to read the site’s news with their anonymity fully intact. Unlike mere SSL encryption, which hides the content of the site a web visitor is accessing, the Tor hidden service would ensure that even the fact that the reader visited ProPublica’s website would be hidden from an eavesdropper or Internet service provider.

“Everyone should have the ability to decide what types of metadata they leave behind,” says Mike Tigas, ProPublica’s developer who worked on the Tor hidden service. “We don’t want anyone to know that you came to us or what you read.”

Of course, any privacy-conscious user can achieve a very similar level of anonymity by simply visiting ProPublica’s regular site through their Tor Browser. But as Tigas points out, that approach does leave the reader open to the risk of a malicious “exit node,” the computer in Tor’s network of volunteer proxies that makes the final connection to the destination site. If the anonymous user connects to a part of ProPublica that isn’t SSL-encrypted—most of the site runs SSL, but not yet every page—then the malicious relay could read what the user is viewing. Or even on SSL-encrypted pages, the exit node could simply see that the user was visiting ProPublica. When a Tor user visits ProPublica’s Tor hidden service, by contrast—and the hidden service can only be accessed when the visitor runs Tor—the traffic stays under the cloak of Tor’s anonymity all the way to ProPublica’s server.

I don't think that this is the start of a trend, as near as I can figure out, there is no way to monetize a Tor node through advertising, though I imagine that the classified ad section would be ……… different ……… and I am sure that the FBI would find this very interesting.

The Taste of Blairite Tears Is So Sweet

Following weeks of backbiting and sabotage from his front benchers, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is cleaning house, and the whining has reached a crescendo:

Jeremy Corbyn has launched a strong defence of his controversial frontbench reshuffle, saying it has made Labour “stronger, more diverse and more coherent” as he insists he can lead the party to general election victory.

Writing in the Observer after a turbulent week, Corbyn says his election as leader in September reflected a “deep-seated desire for change and a new direction in our politics” which, unsurprisingly, some in the party are finding difficult to adjust to. In terms that may alarm some of his MPs, who fear he is trying to bypass the parliamentary party over issues such as the renewal of Trident, he makes it clear that he will shape new policies through the “democratic participation of our own hugely expanded party and supporters”.

In a call for loyalty, Corbyn says the Tories under David Cameron are engaged in a systematic attempt to undermine democracy and that this must be challenged by Labour. He argues that new rules on voter registration, attempts to cut the number of parliamentary seats and slash funding for Labour amount to an unprecedented attack on democratic rights and freedoms.

However, his attempts to impose unity will come under further strain on Sunday when an MP appointed to head a key policy review on tax credits and child poverty will resign on BBC TV, in protest at being branded by the leadership as part of a “rightwing clique”.

After three frontbenchers quit in protest at Corbyn’s reshuffle, Alison McGovern, MP for Wirral South, will launch a bitter attack on John McDonnell, Corbyn’s close ally and shadow chancellor, who said last week that the pressure group Progress, which she chairs, is full of people with “hard-right” conservative views.

Her appearance on the BBC’s Sunday Politics will also fuel a row that has erupted between Labour and the BBC over its coverage of the reshuffle, and comes as tensions over Corbyn’s attempts to change party policy on Trident reach new heights.

Oh you poor delicate flowers.

Corbyn fired back in The Guardian, noting just that Cameron is attempting to systematically dismantle all opposition in the UK, both on a political and a policy level.

It won't matter for New Labour.

They honestly think that the Conservatives running the country is better than having a Labour Party that actually gives a sh%$ about ordinary people.

After all, they have to think about their post politics career working for the City of London, Britain's financial industry.

Bank Failure Friday, 2015 Wrap

The year in review was good, only 8 bank failures and 13 credit union failures, the final one being First Hawaiian Homes Federal Credit Union​, of Hoolehua​, HI.

That's the fewest since I started keeping track in 2010.

It was also a weird, because it's the first time that credit unions out failed banks, and they did so by over 50%.

It's a small sample size, but it's still weird.

The count for both remains at 0 so far for 2016.

Disney To Lucas, Go Cheney Yourself

Han Shot First

George Lucas is not a fan of the latest Star Wars movie.  In interviews, he has noted that they ignored his story treatments, and likened their treatment of the franchise to white slavery, though he has disavowed the whole "white slavery" bit.

Well, Disney just put the original theatrical releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi out as a new Blu Ray release:

Every few months, rumors arise that the original Star Wars Original Trilogy - as in the one where Han Solo shoots Greedo, not the other way around - is finally coming to Blu-ray, remastered for your HD television. It’s the sort of thing that Star Wars fans the world over have been clamoring for since George Lucas released the Special Edition on DVD back in 2004. Those fans – and just, well, film purists with a general respect for the history of movies – don’t much care for the updated movies and their CGI Jabba the Hutts and CGI musical numbers and ghost Hayden Christensens. They want to see what these movies looked like when they were originally released, matte lines and all, only with a noticeable upgrade in the audio-visual quality. Not too much to ask for, right?

Unfortunately, Lucas has famously refused to release remastered versions of the unaltered originals. He’s pretty stuck on the idea that the most recent Special Edition – there’ve been three at this point – is the truest version, the most accurate representation of his vision, and that no other iteration need be released to the public ever again. There was some renewed hope that he might loosen his grip on the movies when he sold Lucasfilm to Disney, but some four years on and there’s been no movement on the matter. At least, not officially, not yet.

Star Wars Original Unaltered Trilogy Coming to Blu-Ray

But there is a new glimmer of hope. John Landis – who directed Animal House, An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places, and more – was recently at Universal Studios in Orlando to talk about the newly installed Halloween Horror Nights American Werewolf in London maze. When asked whether or not he’d ever considered updating American Werewolf with modern effects a la the Star Wars Special Edition (which is an insane thing to ask because those werewolf effects are amazing and horrifying to this day), he said:

First of all, [the studio] wouldn’t let me. George owns his movies, so he can do what he wants … My personal opinion is George hurt his movies by doing what he did. However, George said to me, ‘But they’re my movies.’ I thought, ‘That’s fair.’

Did you know Disney, by the way, is putting out the original Star Wars the way it was? So Disney, they’re like, money on the floor.

So you’re probably wondering: “Why would John Landis have any inside information on whether or not Disney was releasing the theatrical editions?” That’s a good question. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he just heard this rumor – like we’ve all heard this rumor, time and again - and passed it on as though it were fact. It’s worth noting, however, that Landis and Lucas are close friends. They came up together in the same group of filmmakers. Lucas offered Landis the directing job for Howard the Duck, which Landis wisely passed on. Landis put Lucas in Beverly Hills Cop III, a movie probably just as bad as Howard the Duck. Which means it’s entirely possible that he got his information from a very inside source – George Lucas himself.

I hope that this is true.

I have a tendency as an engineer to fiddle beyond when the design is done, to the detriment of the end product, budget and schedule. 

I spend a lot of time fighting against this in my work.

I call it George Lucas syndrome, for obvious reasons.

I see nothing wrong with a creators original vision, and perhaps some commentary, back story, and deleted scenes in a DVD package, but the fact that Disney is prying this from his cold stiff fingers is a good thing.

How the Internet of Things Will Actually Be Used

It will be invading our privacy and discrimination, all while presenting it as a benefit to the consumer.

You might want to check out this bit of propaganda from the insurance industry courtesy of the Washington Post, and imagine what they would do if they knew what food was in your fridge, or how often you drink, or what you set your thermostat to.

The term to describe this is "dystopian":

For years, insurance companies have used estimates of your annual mileage to determine your car insurance rates. But with recent changes in technology, insurers now have an unprecedented ability to judge your actual driving habits. Armed with detailed data on how often you slam on the brakes and what times of day you're on the road, insurance companies are increasingly relying on precise, technological means of assessing risk — and using that information to set your monthly premiums.

Liberty Mutual, the country's third-largest property-and-casualty insurer, took the latest step in that direction Monday when it announced a partnership with Subaru. Beginning later this year, Subaru drivers who have paid for the automaker's Starlink infotainment system will be able to download an app to their cars that notifies them when they are accelerating too aggressively or braking too hard.

The app is part of Liberty Mutual's RightTrack program, which gives drivers a 5 percent discount on their rates for enrolling and additional discounts up to 30 percent for heeding the app's guidance on driving safely.

Liberty Mutual, which began offering RightTrack in 2012, isn't the only insurer to embrace usage-based insurance — a tactic that draws on a person's real-world driving behavior to gauge his accident risk. Progressive, Allstate and State Farm operate similar programs, too.


.………

But as more Americans begin buying high-tech, connected cars that can talk to the Internet, other analysts say the rise of usage-based insurance raises uncomfortable questions for consumers and insurance companies alike.

"Don't assume this is always going to be a way to lower your rates," said Karl Brauer, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book. "It could be used against you to raise your rates long before you ever have an accident."

Although many insurance companies say that agreeing to be tracked can only result in a discount, not a rate hike, those terms could always change in the future, Brauer and other analysts say. And people who drive safely one year but more riskily the next could effectively see their rates rise when an insurer decides to grant a smaller discount than before.

Then there's the matter of consumer privacy. How long insurance companies can hold onto your data, and whom they can share it with, depends on each firm's policies as well as state or local regulations. Insurers would also have to obey court orders for user data.But as more Americans begin buying high-tech, connected cars that can talk to the Internet, other analysts say the rise of usage-based insurance raises uncomfortable questions for consumers and insurance companies alike.

"Don't assume this is always going to be a way to lower your rates," said Karl Brauer, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book. "It could be used against you to raise your rates long before you ever have an accident."

Although many insurance companies say that agreeing to be tracked can only result in a discount, not a rate hike, those terms could always change in the future, Brauer and other analysts say. And people who drive safely one year but more riskily the next could effectively see their rates rise when an insurer decides to grant a smaller discount than before.

Then there's the matter of consumer privacy. How long insurance companies can hold onto your data, and whom they can share it with, depends on each firm's policies as well as state or local regulations. Insurers would also have to obey court orders for user data.

………

Consumers who don't want to be tracked don't have to sign up. But when such programs become more common, opting out could serve as a "red flag" to insurance companies, according to Renee Stephens, vice president of U.S. auto quality for J.D. Power and Associates.

Insurers find behavioral monitoring attractive because it provides them with a clearer picture of the entire risk pool. By understanding better how each driver behaves, companies can design insurance plans that match a person's risk more accurately and determine how much coverage a given driver requires.

Yes, just trust the insurance companies with your data, allow them to apply opaque algorithms to their systems, and the consumer will always benefit.

Yeah, sure, and Donald Trump does not have a comb over.

The insurance companies will use this to f%$# us like a drunk sorority girl.

Straight from Seditious Conspiracy to Bad Parody

It appears that the Y'all Qaeda folks out in Oregon have been raising some cash from their fellow travellers.

One of the guys appears to have drunk most of the proceeds:

………

Can we all just calm down? Can we all stipulate that there is a difference between an "ISIS-inspired" crime and an actual terror plot? Can we accept the possibility that a crook might seek to aggrandize his banal crimes with some geopolitical, religious filigree? Can we look for relief in the fact that the seditious claque out in Oregon is coming apart in the most hilarious ways?

Joe Oshaugnessy, an Arizona militiaman, has been actively seeking volunteers through social media to join the occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge…Jon Ritzheimer, the Arizona militiaman known for organizing anti-Muslim rallies and fundraising through his "Rogue Infidel" site, went to see Oshaugnessy at the motel and found him drinking there, according to Maureen Peltier, a disabled National Guard woman who claims to be the group's official spokeswoman. Peltier said Ritzheimer had confirmed that Oshaugnessy had kept the money he had raised through social media for himself and had spent at least some of it on a drinking binge.

It really is the Whiskey Rebellion!

This level of schadenfreude may have deleterious health effects, kind of like how hypotonic overhydration (excess water consumption) can.

So be careful.

Quote of the Day

In their own distinct ways, Snyder and Emanuel are perfect examples of what happens when politicians base their entire public careers on the principle that the people who elect them can be trusted to do only that. Once they elect you, their job is to sit down, shut up, and take what comes. The difference is that Snyder seems a bit more likable than Rahm Emanuel. So is a gaboon viper. That doesn't matter a damn any more.

—Charlie Pierce on Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel

I Thin that I am Brewing Something

Low grade, and I feel like something that the cat dragged in.

Light posting tonight.

Posted via mobile.

TransCanada, Calm Down and Have a Piping Hot Cup of Shut the F%$# Up

Everyone's favorite oil spill pipeline company is suing the United States for stopping the pipeline:

TransCanada said on Wednesday that it would seek $15 billion in damages over the Obama administration’s decision to cancel the company’s Keystone XL pipeline project.

The company is taking the unusual step of suing through the North American Free Trade Agreement, calling the decision “arbitrary and unjustified.” The Canadian business also filed a lawsuit in Houston asking that the decision be overturned.

“TransCanada has been unjustly deprived of the value of its multibillion-dollar investment by the U.S. administration’s action,” the company said in a statement. “Rather, the denial was a symbolic gesture based on speculation about the (false) perceptions of the international community regarding the administration’s leadership on climate change.”

Seriously, just stop whining.

What a Complete Prat

It appears that the head of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schults, is casting about for the a scapegoat to excuse her lack of success.

Her latest choice is to blame those millennial and generation X women for being too "complacent":

Q: Do you notice a difference between young women and women our age in their excitement about Hillary Clinton? Is there a generational divide?
DWS: Here’s what I see: a complacency among the generation of young women whose entire lives have been lived after Roe v. Wade was decided.

Needless to say, she has pissed a lot of activists who the Democrats are going to need this November.

I would also note that in this same interview, she doubled down on opposing medical marijuana, and repeated the canard that it is a gateway drug, while denying the actual role of pharmaceutical opiates, further demonstrating her complete cluelessness on the issues.

In any case, We've also had repeated calls for her to be fired. (See here, here, and here)

Given her history, particularly when she refused to support Democratic candidates when they were opposing Cuban American Republicans, and was at best tepid at supporting the Walker recall in Wisconsin, I'm not sure why she ended up in charge of the DCCC.

She is and remains a useless careerist who leaves a trail of carnage wherever she goes.

She shouldn't be dog catcher.

The Elmer Gantry of Home Schooling

Christofascist and home schooling leader Bill Gothard has been accused of rape and covering up rape by his staff:

Ten women on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Bill Gothard, who for decades was a major force in the conservative Christian homeschooling movement, charging him and leaders in his ministry with sexual abuse, harassment and cover-up.

Gothard, who urged Christians to shun things like short skirts and rock music, is accused of raping a woman. The same woman says she was raped by one of the ministry’s “biblical counselors.”

The lawsuit is part of a battle between dozens of women and the Institute in Basic Life Principles, which was until recently an influential homeschooling ministry, and its charismatic leader Gothard, who urged Christians to focus on their “biblical character” and have large families. Gothard has never been married.

Gothard, 81, resigned from the ministry in 2014 after more than 30 women had alleged that he had molested and sexually harassed women he worked with, including some who were minors.

Reached by phone on Wednesday, Gothard said he has not seen the lawsuit and denied allegations that he had raped one woman. “Oh no. Never never. Oh! That’s horrible,” he said. “Never in my life have I touched a girl sexually. I’m shocked to even hear that.”

Gothard denied sexually harassing women. “That really is not true,” he said. “I’d rather hold off to comment until I see what’s in the lawsuit.”

………

Gothard’s ministry was once a popular gathering spot for thousands of conservative Christian families, including the Duggar family from TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting.” Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute conferences, where families would learn from Gothard’s teaching, were popular among homeschooling families. He has also rubbed shoulders with Republican luminaries like former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

Wednesday’s lawsuit includes an undated letter in which Gothard allegedly wrote to the women who were accusing him. “I was very wrong in holding hands, giving hugs, and touching their hair and feet. I was also wrong in making statements that caused emotional turmoil and confusion,” the letter reads, describing what he did as “sin.”

In Wednesday’s interview, Gothard declined to confirm or deny whether he had written the letter. “I need to get more facts here, okay?”

………

Although Gothard resigned, his affidavit makes clear he intends to return to the ministry he started in 1961.

The specifics are pretty horrific:

The lawsuit in DuPage County Circuit Court in Illinois, where IBLP’s headquarters is located, charges that IBLP, its employees and board members received reports of sexual abuse, sexual harassment and “inappropriate/unauthorized touching” from women and girls. But, the women allege, the defendants never reported the “potentially criminal allegations” to law enforcement authorities or the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services as required by state law.

One of the Jane Doe plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleges that she was raped by her father and other relatives and says she was sold by her father through human trafficking when she was a minor. She said she reported the abuse and trafficking to IBLP staff, which failed to report to authorities.

When people believe that God is on their side, as opposed to worrying if they are on God's side, corruption is the most common result.

Still, this is kind of shocking.

It makes the Borgia Pope look like an amateur,

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!?

It appears that law enforcement is allowing the members of the white privilege performance art acting troupe occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon to come and go as they please to get groceries and booze:

Their supplies look to be dwindling and militia men who overtook the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon have pleaded with sympathizers to send food, but law enforcement tell TPM that the men are free to resupply on their own.

"Right now, they are allowed to come and go as they want," says Bill Fugate, a spokesman for the Oregon State police.

The unknown number of militia men involved in the stand off are calling themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom. The group sent an alert message to supporters Monday asking for snacks as they are holed up in the refuge center, but authorities confirm that they are free to drive to the grocery store and pick up snacks.

Fugate says that to his knowledge, law enforcement are "not monitoring what they are doing."

This isn't a protest involving an occupation of a federal building, it's a f%$#ing ski lodge weekend.

I understand the desire not to escalate the situation, but this is obscene.

I am Calling a Boosted Fission Device

The DPRK has claimed to detonate a Hydrogen Bomb, but the seismic evidence would indicate otherwise:

The bold claim by North Korea on Wednesday that it had detonated a hydrogen bomb appeared to fizzle under the intense scrutiny of U.S. physicists and nuclear weapons experts.

The explosive power detected by earthquake sensors around the world was much weaker than would be expected from a hydrogen bomb, experts said.

“It was not very big,” said Philip Coyle, the former director of nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site and a longtime U.S. national security official.

An exhaustive investigation into the test, including sampling air for telltale radioactive particles and studying seismic shock waves, will take weeks. The analysis is likely to confirm the size of the detonation, the type of radioactive fuel it used, how the fuel was produced and the sophistication of its design.

U.S. experts initially estimated the power of the underground explosion was as small as 6 kilotons, less than the atomic bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.

Some basic technical information: There are 3 types of nuclear weapons:

• Pure Fission
• Boosted Fission
• Thermonuclear

Fission bombs use Uranium or Plutonium to create a bomb.

Boosted fission weapons use small quantities of the isotopes of Hydrogen deuterium and tritium and achieve a minimal amount of fission, but allows for a greater percentage of fusion fission for a given amount of material because the small amount of fusion emits a large number of neutrons, increasing the reaction.

Among other things, a boosted fission weapon can be a lot smaller than a pure fission device.

Thermonuclear (Teller-Ulam) weapons typically have three stages:

• A boosted fission primary which has a mirror to focus its energy on
• A mixture of deuterium and tritium which fuses on a large scale, and releases neutrons which
• Initiate fission in a depleted (U-238) jacket

A pure fission weapon is typically in the 20 kiloton range.

A boosted fission weapon weapon could go up to an upper limit 1 megaton.

The first thermonuclear weapon, "Mike" was 10 megatons, and the largest one ever detonated was the Soviet Tsar Bomba, which was designed to achieve 100 MT, but only achieved 50 MT because the depleted uranium jacket was omitted to reduce fallout.

Theoretically, there is no limit on the size of a Teller Ulam device.

So, on to the analysis.

The first thing to note is that, much like making watches, it is tougher to make a small bomb than it is a large one, so it is highly unlikely that any true thermonuclear weapon would be under a megaton.

Second, it is likely that the DPRK is looking at miniaturizing their weapons, and a boosted fission device would achieve this.

Third, for one to have a practical thermonuclear weapon, you need to have a boosted fission first stage, otherwise, you end up with something like "Mike" which weighed over 80 tons. (Mike used a boosted fission trigger, it was just f%$#ing huge as a result of being the first such device, the fact that it used liquid deuterium, and the associated support and measurement equipment).

So, my not so expert opinion:

• It's a big deal, but applies to any nuclear test.
• It was probably a test of a boosted fission device.
• It was likely a fizzle, as the seismology shows a relatively low yield.

So, yes, this is a big f%$#ing deal, and I would suggest that a formal exchange of ambassadors and diplomatic recognition, which was agreed to in 1994, might be a good counter move.

In the mean time, I am sure that China, Russia, the US, Japan, and South Korea are analyzing the information, and sampling the air in the region to get more specifics.

Excessive Schadenfreude May Cause Dizziness, Euphoria, and a Sense of Smug Satisfaction

So now both Donald Trump and Ann Coulter have gone birther on Ted Cruz.

First, the Donald:

Donald Trump cast doubt on Republican candidate Ted Cruz’s eligibility for the presidency on Tuesday, on the basis that he may not be a natural-born US citizen.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Trump said the fact that Cruz was born in Canada was a “very precarious one for Republicans because he’d be running and the courts may take a long time to make a decision. You don’t want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head.”

The Republican frontrunner went on to claim a “lot of people are talking about … the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport.”

Cruz, whose campaign declined to comment, was born in Calgary in 1971. Although his father Rafael was not an American citizen at the time, his Delaware-born mother, Eleanor, was. Article II of the US constitution requires that “no person except a natural born Citizen … shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

And from the Dennis Rodman of Republican spokesbimbos, we have:

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter, who once dismissed birthers as "cranks," suggested Wednesday that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) may be ineligible for the presidency because he is not a “natural born citizen."

In a series of tweets, Coulter, an ardent anti-immigration advocate, suggested that Cruz was not a "natural born citizen," a requirement to run for President outlined in the Constitution:

I'm amused.

Your Law Enforcement Misconduct Update

First, we have former (Yay!) Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia, who went postal on Sandra Band, has been indicted for perjury and fired by the Texas DPS:

The state trooper who arrested Sandra Bland, the 28-year-old African-American woman who was found dead three days later in her Waller County jail cell, has been indicted on perjury charges, a special prosecutor said.

Hours after the decision was announced, the Texas Department of Public Safety said it was initiating termination proceedings against Brian Encinia, the 30-year-old trooper who last July stopped Bland for failing to signal a lane change and arrested her.

The announcement came late Wednesday afternoon at the courthouse in Hempstead, about 50 miles northwest of Houston, during the grand jury's fourth meeting since it was convened this fall to deliberate the circumstances around Bland's arrest and incarceration.

Darrell Jordan, one of five special prosecutors, said the grand jury's indictment stemmed from a statement the trooper made in a one-page affidavit he filed in Bland's arrest, in which he said he pulled her out of her Hyundai Azera to "further conduct a safe traffic investigation."

Well, that was fairly clearly a lie, and it was material, which is the basic definition of perjury.

Meanwhile, in my hometown of Baltimore, the prosecution continues apace, with Officer William Porter, whose trial ended in a hung jury, being ordered by a judge to testify at the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson, Jr.:

In an unprecedented move, Judge Barry G. Williams ordered Officer William G. Porter on Wednesday to testify at the upcoming trial of a fellow city officer charged in the death of Freddie Gray.

Porter's attorneys immediately said they would seek an injunction to block the ruling.

Williams said he found himself in "uncharted territory" but felt the law was "clear." He granted Porter a type of immunity that allows his charges to stand, but which precludes his testimony in the trial of Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr. from being used against him.

Legal experts — and Williams — said the ruling was unprecedented for a criminal defendant with pending charges.

Williams also warned prosecutors that calling Porter as a witness could have serious implications for their ability to retry him. Porter's trial on manslaughter and other charges ended last month in a hung jury, and he is scheduled to be tried again in June.

"The second he testifies, that may change the game," Williams said.

After Williams issued the ruling, defense attorney Gary Proctor leapt to his feet and told Williams he intended to appeal to the Court of Special Appeals on Thursday to block prosecutors from calling Porter to testify.

Should Williams' ruling stand, Porter would not be able to invoke the Fifth Amendment and would have to testify or face the threat of contempt and jail time.

I think that the strategy here is to force him to testify in the hope that some of the other officers get angry enough to roll in him, and under those circumstances, the first guy to make it to the prosecutor's office wins, and everyone else loses.

Also, the prosecution has let slip some elements of its strategy, and it appears that they will be attempting to prove that Gray was the victim was of a "Rough Ride" where officers use abrupt maneuvers to throw a detainee around a car to punish him:

The idea has long been floated that Freddie Gray might have been given a "rough ride" — a practice in which police transport vans are intentionally driven erratically to harm unbuckled, handcuffed detainees.

Now prosecutors have signaled for the first time that they may adopt the theory in the case against Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr., the driver of the van in which they say Gray suffered a fatal spinal cord injury. Goodson faces second-degree depraved-heart murder charges in a trial that begins with jury selection Monday.

Prosecutors have notified Goodson's attorneys that they intend to call expert witness Neill Franklin, a retired Baltimore police officer and Maryland state trooper who has testified in Annapolis on policing, to talk about "retaliatory prisoner transportation practices." Legal experts said that refers to what is colloquially known in Baltimore as a "rough ride."

"That is a retaliatory, sort of 'teach the guy a lesson' move," said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor and an expert in use of force by police.

Both the defense and prosecution are barred by a gag order from discussing the case, and retained witnesses are not allowed to discuss their intended testimony.

Here is the kicker:

Gray was unbuckled, handcuffed, placed in leg shackles and driven around West Baltimore for about 45 minutes before he was found unconscious and not breathing in the back of the van when it arrived at the Western District police station.

There is no reason for it take 45 minutes to get him to booking.

I am sure that the defense will attempt to provide an alternate theory for this, but there is no justification for going on a joy ride with a detainee in the back.

Larry Wilmore and Trevor Noah Just Experienced the Comedy Rapture

Kind of like Norman Rockwell ……… On Acid

Because the crack smoking, peeing in public, murder threatening, formerMayor of Toronto, Chris Farley wannabee Rob Ford has announced his candidacy for Mayor of Toronto:

Smoking crack, urinating in public and threatening murder might each be the kind of behaviour you’d expect to put an end to any politician’s career.

But Rob Ford, the former mayor of Toronto, seems to be the exception to the rule. And if he has his way, he might once again represent Canada’s largest city.

During a Twitter exchange on Wednesday, Ford was asked if he planned to return to office.

“I’ll be on the ballot running for Mayor in 2018,” Ford replied.

………

But after months of speculation, Toronto police found the recording, and Ford was forced to admit that he had smoked crack – probably during a “drunken stupor”. Yet he refused to resign.

Over the following months, Ford’s behavior only grew more erratic, and stories of his previous behavior started to emerge.

In 2003, he called a colleague at a city council meeting a “slithering snake” who “should be back in his cage where he comes from”. A year earlier, while discussing a public meeting on the possibility of a homeless shelter in his district, he asked: “why don’t we have a public lynching?” and he was thrown out of a Maple Leafs hockey game after getting in a fight with fans while drunk.

In October 2013, he was spotted urinating in public behind an Etobicoke public school. The following month, during a raucous debate, Ford barreled over an elderly politician, Pam McConnell, knocking her to the ground. Also during that month, a video was released of the politician in a dining room raging about killing someone while apparently high, staggering and slurring.

This guy is comedy gold, and if he is elected, the people of Toronto are stupid beyond belief.

Bad Day at the Big Casino

In China, they had to halt trading on the exchanges following a massive selloff, with oil hitting a 7 year low and the Dow dropping by almost 1½%:

China accelerated the devaluation of the yuan on Thursday, sending currencies across the region reeling and domestic stock markets tumbling, as investors feared the Asian giant was kicking off a virtual trade war against its competitors.

Trading on China's stock markets were suspended for the rest of the day, for the second time this week, as a new circuit-breaking mechanism was tripped less than half an hour after the open.

The People's Bank of China again surprised markets by setting the official midpoint rate on the currency at 6.5646 yuan per dollar, the lowest since March 2011.

That was 0.5 percent weaker than the day before and the biggest daily drop since last August, when an abrupt near 2 percent devaluation of the currency also roiled markets.

And:

Wall Street experienced another mini panic attack on Wednesday after North Korea claimed to successfully test a hydrogen bomb. The markets were already being spooked by the financial and economic turbulence out of China and the latest plunge in oil prices below $34 a barrel.

The Dow dropped 252 points, closing below 17,000 for the first time since mid-October. The S&P 500 fell 1.3% and the Nasdaq lost 1.1%.

It marks the Dow's worst start to a trading year through three days since 2008. The index also fell 276 points on Monday due to worries about China.

If the economy and the markets continue in this direction, get used to saying President Trump.

Good Riddance, Reptile*

Steve Israel, former Blue Dog who became the head of the Democratic Campaign Congressional campaign committee, and used his position to avoid challenging vulnerable Republicans when he wasn't trying to rebuild the Blue Dog Caucus, is retiring:

Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington) won’t seek re-election to a ninth term in November in order to spend more time writing his second book, he said Tuesday.

The Democrat, who has held the seat since 2000, said in a statement, “It is time for me to pursue new passions and develop new interests, mainly spend more time writing my second novel.”

He said he is “looking forward to spending more time home and frequenting my beloved New York diners. Simply put, it’s time to pass on the torch.” He will complete his term and retire at the end of the year.

Any guesses on how long before he gets a lobbying gig with a seven figure salary for dictators, polluters, or despots?

I'll take the under on 2 months after he leaves office.

^*FWIW, Nancy Pelosi, when she made him of the DCCC, she admiringly noted his "Reptilian Tendencies."

And Now, Even the Rich People are Throwing Rahm Emanuel Under the Bus

Since emails came out revealing the Rahm Emanuel administrations aggressive efforts to manage and suppress information on the Laquan McDonald shooting, Rahm's old friends, basically rich corrupt people from whom he has raised money from over the years, have been avoiding him like the plague.

One of his very good friends, they have vacationed together and Rauner was a former client of Emanuel's, was wingnut, gazillionaire, and now Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner how has announced that he would sign a bill allowing for a recall vote for the Chicago Mayor:

Fresh from a Saharan Desert holiday where he says he and his family rode camels and slept in tents, Gov. Bruce Rauner did nothing Monday to quell the shifting sands beneath Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Rauner told reporters he would sign a bill allowing Chicago voters to recall their mayor from office if it reaches his desk.

The governor also said he was “very disappointed” in Emanuel and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez over their handling of Chicago police misconduct cases.

………

Asked about state Rep. La Shawn Ford’s legislation that would allow Chicago voters to attempt recall the mayor, Rauner said he hasn’t studied the bill but based on what he’s been told about it, “I would sign that bill.”

The governor went on to say that he would also be “broadly supportive of the recall concept in general for all elected officials in the state. … That would be the best bill to pass.”

6 months ago, I would not have predicted the degree to which his power base, once thought to be unassailable, to have collapsed like this.

It's gone from a crazy guy on the street corner rant to an implosion in a very short time.

Additionally, it appears that people appointed after the sh%$ hit the fan have absolutely no interest whatsoever in having his back:

The new chief of the agency that looks into shootings by Chicago police officers says she wants to hear out an investigator who was fired by her predecessor last July after refusing orders to change findings that the cops were at fault in several cases.

Sharon Fairley, acting chief administrator of the Independent Police Review Authority, last month reached out to the investigator, Lorenzo Davis, a former Chicago police commander.

“I’d like to hear about his side of what happened,” Fairley said at a news conference Monday afternoon. “I look forward to that conversation and I think that that will be happening soon.”

Davis’s lawyer, Torreya Hamilton, said an attorney with the city’s Law Department called two weeks ago to set up the meeting. Hamilton said Davis, who is suing the city for wrongful termination, is eager to meet with Fairley. The sides have not yet set a time and place.

Fairley, a former federal prosecutor appointed a month ago by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, said she also wants to examine the work that got Davis fired.


………



WBEZ revealed Davis’s termination and his resistance to orders by IPRA superiors that he change findings about at least a dozen incidents, all shootings or alleged excessive-force cases.

Davis said Monday evening he would welcome Fairley’s review of his findings. “I’d like to be present when she does it,” he said. “It’s better to review a report with the person who wrote it.”

………

Fairley’s predecessor, Scott M. Ando, was forced out as IPRA’s chief administrator after heading the agency since 2013. Ando, a former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent, filled several key IPRA posts with former sworn law-enforcement officers, including two other former DEA agents, a WBEZ investigation found.

Fairley did not directly criticize Ando’s hiring but said the agency needs “stronger independence.”

“I was a prosecutor for eight years, where my job was to collect evidence and then make the call,” said Fairley, who worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago. “That’s what I’m planning on doing here.”

Fairley also insisted she is independent from Emanuel despite a pile of email messages that show coordination between his aides and IPRA in recent years.

“Yes, I’m in communication with the mayor’s office,” Fairley said. “They’ve been very helpful in helping me get situated here but they have not tried to direct my activities or tell me what to do. I don’t have any pressure on me from the mayor to conduct an investigation any particular way.”

Fairley serves at the pleasure of Rahm Emanuel.

The fact that she is subtly dismissive of the Mayor's office is significant.

I'm hoping that Rahm ends up recalled, and in jail, and it actually looks like these outcomes are no longer outside of the range of possibility.

White Privilege Performance Art

That is Josh Marshall's description of the terrorists in Oregon, and I think that it is brilliant.

I Can Haz Impeachment?

I used to say that Antonin "Fat Tony" Scalia would die by choking on his own bile.

It turns out that I was wrong.

It appears that bile and resentment have driven him insane:

Government support for religion is not only justified by the Constitution, it was the norm for hundreds of years and it helped the United States become a free and prosperous nation, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday in Metairie.

Speaking before a small crowd at Archbishop Rummel High School, Scalia delivered a short but provocative speech on religious freedom that saw the conservative Catholic take aim at those who confuse freedom of religion for freedom from it.

The Constitution's First Amendment protects the free practice of religion and forbids the government from playing favorites among the various sects, Scalia said, but that doesn't mean the government can't favor religion over nonreligion.

That was never the case historically, he said. It didn't become the law of the land until the 60s, Scalia said, when he said activist judges attempted to resolve the question of government support of religion by imposing their own abstract rule rather than simply observing common practice.

If people want strict prohibition against government endorsement of religion, let them vote on it, he said. "Don't cram it down the throats of an American people that has always honored God on the pretext that the Constitution requires it."

BTW, it appears that the first thing to go is a sense of irony, because he unironically quotes Charles de Gaulle insulting the United States:

Citing a quotation attributed to former French President Charles de Gaulle, Scalia said "'God takes care of little children, drunkards and the United States of America.'" Scalia then added, "I think that's true. God has been very good to us. One of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor."

Seriously, He's lost it.

I do understand that technically impeachment is for "high crimes and misdemeanors", but the juxtaposition of batsh%$ insane and just does not give a flying f%$# in a rolling doughnut, particularly when he has no interest at all in recusing himself on cases where he has explicitly stated that his mind is already made up.

This ain't the first time.

One Conflict That I Want to See Resolved with a Maximum of Bloodshed

It appears that the Bundy clan, in what seems like a never ending quests to intimidate the federal government have occupied a federal building in a dispute over a poaching trial

This is not a conflict that the government can deescalate. These folks goals is to use the threat of violence to get as much as they can, and then they will go to explicit violence.

This is an insurrection, and a fair number of the fellow travelers are not ready for this, but every time the government backs down, this movement picks up supporters and momentum.

It is not a question as to whether the US government will have to go after them with lethal force, but when.

Sooner is better than later here:

A group of armed anti-government activists remained encamped at a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon on Sunday evening, vowing to occupy the outpost for years to protest the federal government’s treatment of a pair of local ranchers set to report to prison Monday.

The occupation of a portion of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, about 30 miles southeast of Burns, Ore., began a day earlier, after a small group of men broke off from a much larger march and rally held on Saturday evening

The armed occupation is being led by Ammon Bundy, an Idaho rancher whose father, Cliven Bundy, led an armed standoff with federal agents in Nevada in 2014 and who has described his supporters as “militia men.”

“Those who want to go take hard stand, get in your trucks and follow me!” Ammon Bundy declared to rally-goers at the conclusion of Saturday’s event, according to several people who were in attendance. Not long afterward, the group had taken over the federal wildlife preserve.

Harney County Sheriff David M. Ward said authorities from several law enforcement organizations were monitoring the ongoing incident.

“These men came to Harney County claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers,” Ward said in a statement Sunday. “When in reality these men had alternative motives, to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States.”

Organizers of the rally say several hundred attended the procession through Burns, Ore. — a ranching town of less than 3,000 residents — in a show of support for Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven Hammond, 46, who in the conclusion of a decades of clashes with the federal government were sentenced last October to serve five years in prison.

Prosecutors accused the Hammonds of committing arson on federal land in 2001 and 2006. The men and their attorneys argued that the fires had been set  on their own property — once to prevent the spread of an invasive species of plant and once in attempt to prevent the spread of a wildfire — and had inadvertently burned onto public lands. But prosecutors said the fires were set in attempt to destroy evidence that the Hammonds had been illegally hunting deer on the federal lands.

This needs to be shut down before it metastasizes, if it hasn't already done so.

As an aside, I think that we need to minimize the private use of federal land in the west, because history shows that people who derive public benefit for their private benefit are inclined to go to extremes to cling to their undeserved windfall.

Just look at the behavior of the 2^nd Estate around the time of the French Revolution.  They did more to create the Reign of Terror than any other segment of society.

Our Man in Ankara

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, when discussing the advantage of a stronger Presidency for Turkey invoked the alleged efficiencies of the government of Adolph Hitler, and now he is trying to walk it back:

The Turkish presidency said on Friday comments by President Tayyip Erdogan about the system of governance in Hitler's Germany had been misinterpreted and that he had not suggested it was an example of an effective presidential system.

Asked on his return from a visit to Saudi Arabia late on Thursday whether an executive presidency was possible in Turkey while maintaining the unitary structure of the state, Erdogan said: "There are already examples in the world. You can see it when you look at Hitler's Germany.

"There are later examples in various other countries," he told reporters, according to a recording broadcast by the Dogan news agency.

I'm not particularly surprised.

There seems to be an awful lot of admiration of Hitler baked into Islamist politics in the Middle East, and Erdoğan is very much an Islamist.

Unfortunately, our state security apparatus cannot look at anything beyond the fact that he's good to foreign capital, so we set ourselves up for another foreign policy clusterf%$#.

We're Apple, We Don't Care. We Don't Have To.

We don't care, we don't have to … we're Apple.

Apple is being sued by Apple 4S users because the pushed an upgrade that rendered their phones about as useful as a third tit:

Lawyers in New York have filed a class action lawsuit against Apple, saying that the iOS 9 operating system upgrade slowed their older iPhone 4S handsets into uselessness.

"Plaintiff and other class members were faced with a difficult decision: use a buggy, slow device that disrupts everyday life or spend hundreds of dollars to buy another smartphone," reads the lawsuit spotted by Apple Insider.

When iOS 9 was released in September, the operating system was supposed to fix many of the faults of its predecessors. But the owners of more than 100 iPhone 4S handsets claim Apple knew the new OS would be virtually unusable on the older hardware but released it anyway to force people to upgrade.

To add insult to injury, Apple won't allow the aggrieved users to uninstall iOS 9 and go back to simpler times. So 4S owners are left stuck with sluggish screens, hanging apps, and lousy touch use, the lawsuit claims.

Apple's internal testing must have shown these effects while the operating system was being developed, but Cook & Co nevertheless advertised the new operating system's benefits without warning of obsolescent hardware, the plaintiff's lawyers argue.

………

One suspects Apple's response will be "well what did you expect?" The iPhone 4S runs a 32-bit A5 processor and packs 512MB of DDR2 RAM, compared to the iPhone 6S's A9 64-bit core with the M9 coprocessor and 2GB of DDR4 memory. Expecting similar performance ignores certain technical realities.

Actually, the scenario here is pretty straightforward.

Apple pushed an upgrade to inadequate hardware that could not handle it.

Either they did not do appropriate testing, or they did the testing, but decided that they could force users of old phones to upgrade.

In either case, Apple could have provided a downgrade option, or warned of the issues before the release, but they don't give a sh%$.

Class action lawsuits are the corporate ecosystem's way of making you give a sh%$.

What it Means to Have Meaningful and Achievable Goals

Notwithstanding all the reports from western that the Russians are somehow or other are immersing themselves into a quagmire, a military analysis of the Russian campaign in Syria has concluded that their campaign is well conceived and likely to achieve its goals at a relatively low cost:

Three months into his military intervention in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved his central goal of stabilizing the Assad government and, with the costs relatively low, could sustain military operations at this level for years, U.S. officials and military analysts say.

That assessment comes despite public assertions by President Barack Obama and top aides that Putin has embarked on an ill-conceived mission in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that it will struggle to afford and that will likely fail.

"I think it's indisputable that the Assad regime, with Russian military support, is probably in a safer position than it was," said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity. Five other U.S. officials interviewed by Reuters concurred with the view that the Russian mission has been mostly successful so far and is facing relatively low costs.

………

Yet since its campaign began on Sept. 30, Russia has suffered minimal casualties and, despite domestic fiscal woes, is handily covering the operation's cost, which analysts estimate at $1-2 billion a year. The war is being funded from Russia's regular annual defense budget of about $54 billion, a U.S. intelligence official said.

………

Putin has said his intervention is aimed at stabilizing the Assad government and helping it fight the Islamic State group, though Western officials and Syrian opposition groups say its air strikes mostly have targeted moderate rebels.

The western response to the Russian intervention, which, BTW, is actually legal under international law because the sovereign government of Syria has requested the aid, is completely incoherent.

Case in point, the absurd and self contradictory statements by the head of Human Rights Watch: On December 25 of this year he said that the killing of Zahran Alloush is an attempt to eliminate any moderate opposition, while on December 30 of this year, he claimed that the initial release of Alloush from prison in 2011 was an attempt to taint the opposition with a jihadist brush.

Note that the Russians are also supporting the Kurds, while the NATO forces are both supporting the Kurds (most of NATO) and bombing them (our NATO "allies"the Turks)

The Russian strategy appears to be effective because their goals are limited, and not self-contradictory:

Rather than pushing back the opposition, Russia may be settling for defending Assad's grip on key population centers that include the heartland of his minority Alawite sect, said the U.S. intelligence official.

Russia is taking advantage of the operation to test new weapons in battlefield conditions and integrate them into its tactics, the intelligence official said. It is refining its use of unarmed surveillance drones, the official added.

"The Russians didn't go blindly into this," said the U.S. intelligence official, adding that they "are getting some benefit out of the cost."

………

Vasily Kashin, a Moscow-based analyst, said the war is not financially stressing Russia.

"All the available data shows us that the current level of military effort is completely insignificant for the Russian economy and Russian budget," said Kashin, of the Center for Analyses of Strategies and Technologies.

"It can be carried on at the same level year after year after year," he said.

Compare this to the US policy:

• Support regime change in Syria with a goal of a democratic and secular replacement.
• Support for Saudi and Turkish efforts supporting Sunni Salafist Jihadi forces,which included the creation of ISIS.
• Opposition to ISIS, the declaration that they are of a significant threat to the US, and supporting a massive air campaign against them.
• Support of Kurdish forces fighting ISIS.
• Allowing Turkish attacks against those same Kurdish forces by Turkey.
• Supporting "moderate" rebels that collapse as soon as they end up in conflict with Jihadi rebels.  (Said support ends up in ISIS hands)
• Demanding the removal of the Assad regime.
• Demanding that government remains intact in some form.

This is the stupidest big of mind f%$#ery since Johnson and Kennedy's "Best and Brightest" believed that they could win the war in Vietnam.

Basically, the Russians are following Barack Obama's stated policy, "Don't do stupid sh%$," and Barack Obama is ignoring ignoring this policy, which is why their strategy appears to be gaining traction, and ours does not.

H/t Moon of Alabama.

Wishing You a ………

Hippo	Gnu	Yarrr!!!!

Happy new year, everyone.

It's a tradition.