Remember When I Said that Big Pharma was Fueling the Opioid Epidemic?

We now have accusations that drug companies bribed doctors to overprescribe Fentanyl:

Fentanyl is an incredibly potent opioid painkiller; it acts quickly and powerfully, but doesn’t last as long as others, meaning its medical application is limited. So if you’re a drug company trying to boost sales of your new fentanyl spray, how do you sell more of a product that very few people have a real need for? You could bribe doctors with paid “speaking engagements,” take them out and show them the “best nights of their life,” all so they write prescriptions for patients who probably shouldn’t be getting your drug.

This is according on an indictment [PDF] filed yesterday by the Justice Department against the former CEO and five other employees of Insys Therapeutics, makers of the Subsys brand fentanyl spray, a fast-acting form of the drug that was primarily intended for cancer patients experiencing high levels of pain that couldn’t be managed through more traditional opioids.

The DOJ alleges that, starting in 2012, former Insys CEO Michael Babich and his fellow defendants bribed and provided illegal kickbacks to at least ten physicians — mostly operators of pain clinics — in ten different states.

Clearly. the problem is that our regulatory solution does not have enough free market.

I'd like to see a sh%$ load of prosecutions.

So Not a Surprise………

Those "accidental" airstrikes on Syrian troops that sabotaged the cease fire negotiated between Russia and the United states in Syria was no mistake:

The summary report on an investigation into US and allied air strikes on Syrian government troops has revealed irregularities in decision-making consistent with a deliberate targeting of Syrian forces.

The report, released by US Central Command on 29 November, shows that senior US Air Force officers at the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at al-Udeid Airbase in Qatar, who were responsible for the decision to carry out the September airstrike at Deir Ezzor:

• misled the Russians about where the US intended to strike so Russia could not warn that it was targeting Syrian troops
• ignored information and intelligence analysis warning that the positions to be struck were Syrian government rather than Islamic State
• shifted abruptly from a deliberate targeting process to an immediate strike in violation of normal Air Force procedures

Last week Brig. Gen. Richard Coe, the lead US official on the investigating team, told reporters that US air strikes in Deir Ezzor on 17 September, which killed at least 62 – and possibly more than 100 – Syrian army troops, was the unintentional result of “human error”.

The report itself says that the investigators found “no evidence of misconduct” – but it is highly critical of the decision process and does not offer any explanations for that series of irregularities.

How the strikes killed off ceasefire deal

The strikes against two Syrian army positions were the pivotal event in the breakdown of the Syrian ceasefire agreement reached between the United States and Russia in September. Both Moscow and Damascus denounced the strikes as a deliberate move by the Obama administration to support the Islamic State group and cited the attacks as the reason for declaring an end to the ceasefire on 19 September.

I think that this shows very little doubt that the US military establishment, up to at least the commander in the theater, and probably up to the office of the Secretary of Defense, were actively sabotaging a decision of the President.

Heads should roll, but they won't.

Word

Over at Medium, Michael Tracey pithily observes that if fake news is a serious problem, then David Brock should be washing dishes for a living:\

I can’t help but notice that the new Washington Post-certified “master list” of “fake news” outlets does not include any of the media organs overseen by David Brock, one of the leading propagandists of the modern era. Why is this? Virtually everything that David Brock does would qualify as “fake news” under any objective criteria. He runs a bunch of websites that may seem to the naked eye to be legitimate “news” sources, but in reality are just Democratic Party / Hillary agitprop conveyor belts. This is well known and accepted, even by Hillary’s inner-circle, many of whom view Brock with suspicion.

Bountiful “fake news” can be found at the propaganda outlet Media Matters, the premier Brock-connected entity (he founded it). To take just one example, Eric Boehlert, the main public face of Media Matters, relentlessly denied over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign that Hillary was under criminal investigation. He denounced this notion as “fictitious,” and launched a relentless “targeted harassment” campaign against the New York Times for reporting otherwise. It turned out that Boehlert was 100% wrong and the NYT was 100% right — Hillary really was under active felony criminal investigation, from July 10, 2015 to July 5, 2016 and then again from October 28, 2016 to November 6, 2016. Those facts are no longer in dispute. Hence, wasn’t Boehlert promoting “fake news”? He was putting false, distorted information out onto the internet, thereby actively misinforming readers. If that doesn’t qualify as “fake news” — what would? Please explain why the term “fake news” would not apply to Boehlert’s conduct.

………

Bear in mind that the Brock apparatus is also responsible for paying online trolls to propagandize social media on Hillary’s behalf. This led to a very strange dynamic whereby those who took the brunt of pro-Clinton trolling onslaughts (as I did) could never be quite sure whether they were dealing with a genuine interlocutor, or someone who was trolling on Brock’s dime. Ironically, this Brock-enforced tactic was the essence of “gaslighting” — it made people question the reality of what was going on before them, and bred paranoia. Brock knowingly sought to inflict stress, confusion, and misinformation upon people who dared criticize the Clintons on Twitter, reddit, or wherever else. That was his explicit tactic. Where does this fall on the “fake news” spectrum? They were promoting a ton of fakery for the purpose of pushing a partisan political agenda.

(emphasis original)

Brock has been a "Scum", as Tracey describes him throughout his entire career, first for the fight, and then for the left, and he was embraced by the Clintons. which is yet another reason to hope that this Hillary Clinton's disastrous run for the presidency will lead to their, and their allies, forcible exit from the Democratic party establishment.

Linkage

• Backdoor accounts found in 80 Sony IP security camera models (PCWorld) We need regulation, and liability for the companies doing the "Internet of things".
• Revealed: Rio Tinto's plan to use drones to monitor workers' private lives (The Guardian) The Syfy show Incorporated is increasingly sounding like a documentary.
• Cat Hulbert: How I got rich beating men at their own game (BBC) Education of a poker player: A professional poker player who is a woman discusses how she gets in her opponents' heads.
• After Choi-gate (Jacobin) A good summary of Korean protests, with a focus on how Korea is still not good on its democratic institutions.
• What Does Modern Money Theory Tell us About Demonetisation? (The Wire) A good summary both of India's demonitization (it has pulled the bulk of its currency out of circulation) and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
• That Thing With Feathers Trapped in Amber? It Was a Dinosaur Tail (New York Times) Paleontology awesomeness of the month.
• Why “They’re Just Dumb Racists” is Liberalism’s Climate Denialism (Medium) Read this. Money quote:  The great gift of accepting that racism has a material factor which can cause it to explode — stagnation — is that then we can do something about it.

This should not be remarkable, but this self described, "Hillbilly from the Holler," gets it:

Another Right Wing Myth Demolished

One of the arguments for providing services and goods to people instead of money is that the direct provision of money leads to spending on bad things, think tobacco and alcohol.

It turns out that the opposite is true:

It is increasingly common for governments to give poor people money. Rather than grant services or particular goods to those in poverty, such as food or housing, governments have found that it is more effective and efficient to simply hand out cash. In some cases, these cash transfers are conditional on doing something the government deems good, like sending your children to school or getting vaccinated. In other cases, they’re entirely unconditional.

For decades, policymakers have been concerned that poor people will waste free money by using it on cigarettes and alcohol. A report on the perception of stakeholders in Kenya about such programs found a “widespread belief that cash transfers would either be abused or misdirected in alcohol consumption and other non-essential forms of consumption.”

The opposite is true.

A recently published research paper (paywall) by David Evans of the World Bank and Anna Popova of Stanford University shows that giving money to the poor has a negative effect on the consumption of tobacco and alcohol. Evans and Popova’s research is based on an examination of nineteen studies that assess the impact of cash transfers on expenditures of tobacco and alcohol. Not one of the 19 studies found that cash grants increase tobacco and alcohol consumption and many of them found that it leads to a reduction.

………

Why on earth would this be? Evans and Popova highlight several possibilities.

One, the cash transfers may change a poor household’s economic calculus. Before receiving the cash, any spending on education or health might have seemed futile, but afterwards, parents might decide that a serious investment in their children’s school was sensible. To make this happen, it might mean cutting back on booze and smoking.

………

Regardless of why, the idea that poor people will use any cash they get for cigarettes and alcohol has been laid to waste.

On a related note it turns out that cash transfers can be an order of magnitude more efficient than the direct provision of services:

Every year, wealthy countries spend billions of dollars to help the world’s poor, paying for cows, goats, seeds, beans, textbooks, business training, microloans, and much more. Such aid is designed to give poor people things they can’t afford or the tools and skills to earn more. Much of this aid undoubtedly works. But even when assistance programs accomplish things, they often do so in a tremendously expensive and inefficient way. Part of this is due to overhead, but overhead costs get far more attention than they deserve. More worrisome is the actual price of procuring and giving away goats, textbooks, sacks of beans, and the like.

Most development agencies either fail to track their costs precisely or keep their accounting books confidential, but a number of candid organizations have opened themselves up to scrutiny. Their experiences suggest that delivering stuff to the poor is a lot more expensive than one might expect.

Take cows. Many Western organizations give poor families livestock, along with training in how to raise and profit from the animals. Cows themselves usually cost no more than a few hundred dollars each, but delivering them -- targeting recipients, administering the donations, transporting the animals -- gets expensive. In West Bengal, India, for example, the nonprofit Bandhan spends $331 to get $166 worth of local livestock and other assets to the poor, according to a report by the rating agency Micro-Credit Ratings International. Yet even this program sounds like a bargain compared to others. In Rwanda, a study led by the economist Rosemary Rawlins found that the cost of donating a pregnant cow, with attendant training classes and support services, through the charity Heifer International can reach $3,000.

………

“Just give the poor cash” is an old refrain. What is new, however, is a burgeoning body of experimental evidence, produced by groups ranging from the nonprofit Innovations for Poverty Action to the World Bank, on how the effect of cash grants compares to that of in-kind donations. Recent studies have come to surprising conclusions, finding that typically lauded approaches to reducing poverty, such as educational and loan programs, are not so effective after all.

One of the best examples is microloans, small, short-term loans to poor entrepreneurs. By opening up credit to people who were too poor to borrow from banks, the logic went, microfinance would give the poor the jump-start they needed to escape their plight. Beginning in the 1990s, the microcredit movement took the development world by storm, leading to a Nobel Peace Prize for the Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank in 2006.

As you might guess, microloans don't show the results that grants do.

Neither do training programs, etc.

This is yet another reason why the Clinton's gleeful destruction of the US Welfare program is so deeply contemptible:  Not only did it make the poor worse off, it cost the rest of us more money to make the poor worse off.

I know a lot of people who hate this idea, and the studies that support it:  A lot of them have a job delivering cows to poor people.

In the US, They Get Lectured to, in the UK, They Get Fined

Pfiser and its distributor, Flynn Pharma, raised the price of an epilepsy drug by 2600%.

The UK authorities £84.2 million and £5.2 million respectively:

In September 2012, the amount the National Health Service (NHS) was charged for 100mg packs of anti-epilepsy drug phenytoin sodium went from £2.83 to £67.50 ($3.56 to $84.98), according to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). As a result of the price increase, NHS expenditure on the drug increased from about £2 million ($2.52M) a year in 2012 to around £50 million ($62.95M) in 2013.

The CMA has ordered the two companies involved, the US pharma giant Pfizer and UK-based distributor Flynn Pharma, to pay record fines of £84.2 million ($106.01M) and £5.2 million ($6.55M) respectively, and to reduce their prices for phenytoin sodium. Both have said that they will be taking legal action to overturn the decision.

Before September 2012, Pfizer sold the drug in capsule form to UK wholesalers and pharmacies under the brand name Epanutin, and the prices of the drug were regulated. That month, Pfizer sold the UK distribution rights for Epanutin to Flynn Pharma, which "de-branded" the drug. A spokesperson for the CMA explained in an e-mail to Ars what this meant in practice:

Prior to de-branding, Pfizer's prices were governed by the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS) which prevented any large prices increases. The PPRS applies only to branded products. After Flynn purchased the UK distribution rights from Pfizer, it de-branded the products. As de-branded (or genericised) products, the PPRS price controls did not apply, which allowed Flynn to charge whatever prices it wanted. De-branding did not have the consequence of increasing prices; rather it removed the PPRS restriction on Flynn increasing the prices.

Normally, we would expect competition to lead to the price of a generic product to fall. However, the characteristics of this drug—i.e. the constraints on switching patients to other drugs—mean that did not occur.

In response to the complaints of the pharm pig-felchers, CMA replied:

In response to this, the CMA spokesperson told Ars: "the fact that other companies may have been charging high prices does not entitle Pfizer and Flynn to charge excessive and unfair prices."

This is an attitude that is unthinkable in the United States.

If Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, and Keith Ellison, and their fellow travelers can make people think in terms of unfair and excessive prices, the battle is already half won.

The neoliberal "Washington consensus", which seems to be composed of equal parts Ayn Rand and hypocrisy, needs to be overthrown.

This Might Explain Anti-Establishment Votes for an Inverted Traffic Cone

Maybe all those people who voted weren't just deplorable racists.

Perhaps their lives are getting measurably worse.

Something is fundamentally broken in our society, as indicated by the fact that U.S. life expectancy declined last year:

For the first time in more than two decades, life expectancy for Americans declined last year — a troubling development linked to a panoply of worsening health problems in the United States.

Rising fatalities from heart disease and stroke, diabetes, drug overdoses, accidents and other conditions caused the lower life expectancy revealed in a report released Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics. In all, death rates rose for eight of the top 10 leading causes of death.

“I think we should be very concerned,” said Princeton economist Anne Case, who called for thorough research on the increase in deaths from heart disease, the No. 1 killer in the United States. “This is singular. This doesn’t happen.”

A year ago, research by Case and Angus Deaton, also an economist at Princeton, brought worldwide attention to the unexpected jump in mortality rates among white middle-aged Americans. That trend was blamed on what are sometimes called diseases of despair: overdoses, alcoholism and suicide. The new report raises the possibility that major illnesses may be eroding prospects for an even wider group of Americans.

………

The number of unintentional injuries — which include overdoses from drugs, alcohol and other chemicals, as well as motor vehicle crashes and other accidents — climbed to more than 146,000 in 2015 from slightly more than 136,000 in 2014. Public health authorities have been grappling with an epidemic of overdoses from prescription narcotics, heroin and fentanyl in recent years. Xu said overdose statistics were not yet ready to be released to the public.

I would note that at least one of those, "diseases of despair," overdoses is being driven by our regulators allowing Pharma to both misrepresent the benefits and risks of opioids and aggressively promote their dangerous products.

Monopoly rents, and the ability of the powerful to loot our society may be nearing the point where we experience something akin to the destruction of the Soviet Union.

I would also note that Obamacare doesn't seem to help, but that is not surprising: High deductible plans that are beloved of the experts, because it means that people have "skin in the game", have been shown not to produce the desired effect: Consumers shopping for cheaper healthcare.

Instead they lead to people avoiding early, and less expensive, medical interventions.

OK, This is F%$#ing Horrifying

A woman is apparently in such dire straits that she felt that she had to continue working as a taxi driver for Lyft while 9 months pregnant.

In fact, she felt that she had to continue working as a driver while in active labor.

What's more, the management at Lyft thought that this was a good thing.

Just in case you needed further evidence that neoliberalism is a dehumanizing dystopian nightmare pic.twitter.com/U3ZBNdOxje

— Luke Savage (@LukewSavage) December 7, 2016

This is truly awful.

I lack the adjectives to describe just how awful this is.

H/t naked capitalism

Linkage

• Putin didn’t undermine the election. We did. (Washington Post) Katrina van de Hauvel nails it while excoriating the paper publishing her OP/ED for mindless McCarthyism.
• Decades after Chernobyl disaster, engineers slide high-tech shelter over reactor (Ars Technica) Still sucking up resources after 30 years. The people handling the Fukushima Daiichi disaster take note.
• Government memo demanding end to Brexit leaks is leaked (The Guardian) Memo on fighting leaks is leaked. This is a losing battle, Ms. May.
• The Rich Can’t Save Us (Jacobin) After running the worst Presidential campaign in US history, (she lost to Trump, QED) the Hillary camp is still trying to get money from rich donors.  Also:  David Brock needs a boot to the ass.
• Brooklyn Prosecutor Forged Judges' Signatures On Wiretap Warrants To Eavesdrop On A 'Love Interest' (Techdirt) This is a lot more common than you think, and every time we role back protections, it gets worse.
• These Toys Don’t Just Listen To Your Kid; They Send What They Hear To A Defense Contractor (Consumerist) Don't worry, the magic of the market will protect you.

This animated GIF explains how our economy works:

I Can Only Conclude that Hillary Clinton Deserved to Lose

Diane Hessan worked the Hillary Clinton campaign, and she followed a few hundred undecided voters for the months before the election.

She went back through her notes, and discovered what the turning point was, and interestingly enough, it was when Hillary was at her most authentic and honest:

………

Last week, I reread all of my notes. There was one moment when I saw more undecided voters shift to Trump than any other, when it all changed, when voters began to speak differently about their choice. It wasn’t FBI Director James Comey, Part One or Part Two; it wasn’t Benghazi or the e-mails or Bill Clinton’s visit with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the tarmac. No, the conversation shifted the most during the weekend of Sept. 9, after Clinton said, “You can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.”

All hell broke loose.

George told me that his neighborhood was outraged, that many of his hard-working, church-going, family-loving friends resented being called that name. He told me that he looked up the word in the dictionary, and that it meant something so bad that there is no hope, like the aftermath of a tsunami. You know, he said, Clinton ended up being the biggest bully of them all. Whereas Trump bullied her, she bullied Wilkes Barre.

She told something like half the country that she loathed them, and for once they believed her.

She is an avatar of the that right-wing subset of the Democratic Party that believes that if your life is tough, it's because you were too lazy to get into Yale, and any issues that might have arisen from the increasing of multinational labor arbitrage, the assault on unions, deregulation, and the financialization of the economy is your own damn fault.

You can call it the DLC wing of the party, or the New Dem wing of the party, or the Blue Dog wing of the party, or the Bob Rubin part of the party, of Republican Lite.

I just call them a part of the problem.

Well, This is a Hoot

It appears that in discussions with the Republican Party leadership, representatives of the healthcare and insurance industries said that they Obamacare repealed and replaced with Obamacare:

The nation’s health insurers, resigned to the idea that Republicans will repeal the Affordable Care Act, on Tuesday publicly outlined for the first time what the industry wants to stay in the state marketplaces, which have provided millions of Americans with insurance under the law.

The insurers, some which have already started leaving the marketplaces because they are losing money, say they need a clear commitment from the Trump administration and congressional leaders that the government will continue offsetting some costs for low-income people. They also want to keep in place rules that encourage young and healthy people to sign up, which the insurers say are crucial to a stable market for individual buyers.

………

On Tuesday, Marilyn Tavenner, the chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a leading industry trade group, warned that the state marketplaces were already on unstable financial footing. Failing to continue the funding aimed at low-income Americans, she said, would have far-reaching consequences because the business would become much tougher for insurers.

………

Hospital groups also held a news conference on Tuesday to warn of what they said would be the dire financial consequences of a repeal if the cuts to hospital funding that were part of the Affordable Care Act were not also restored.

………

Ms. Tavenner did not give many details about her group’s positions, but she said its top priority was to stop the immediate threat of eliminating the subsidies for plans sold to low-income people. House Republicans have already sued to block these payments, and the lawsuit is now delayed. If the new administration chose not to defend the lawsuit, the money would disappear, and insurers would probably rush to the exits because fewer potential customers would be available.

Another of the industry’s concerns is ensuring that enough young and healthy people sign up to stabilize the market. Republicans have discussed eliminating one of the law’s main tools, the so-called individual mandate, a tax levied on those who do not enroll.

In talking with Congress, Ms. Tavenner said, her members are emphasizing the need for some alternative, especially after criticism by insurers that the penalty is not large enough to persuade enough people to enroll. “There’s not one magic solution,” she said. She pointed to some of the provisions in Medicare that encourage people to sign up before they become sick. And she discussed some options to ease how insurers price their policies to be able to offer plans that are less expensive to younger people.

She also argued that the insurers had no desire to return to the time before the law was passed, when people with pre-existing conditions were routinely denied coverage in the individual market.

So basically, they want the subsidies, marketplaces, and mandates, but apart from that they are fine with whatever is done.

Of course, subsidies, marketplaces, and mandates are Obamacare:  The rest is commentary.<sup>*

*</sup>Yes, I am applying a quote from Rabbi Hillel.

Not the Onion

Donald Trump has just chosen Linda McMahon as head of the Small Business Administration.

Why do I have to qualify this to say that this is not a parody?

Ummm....Because the former wrestling executive, and some time performer has graced us with performances like this:  (click through if the GIF doesn't animate).

She's shown kicking husband Vince McMahon in the cojones.  (It's fake, pro wrestling is fake, and if you observe carefully, you can see how they set up the whole stunt so that no one is actually hurt)

About the only thing that could make this worse, and more undignified, would if pro wrestling were real.

Hail Satan

How could I not invoke Monty Python?

In response to a Texas law requiring burial or cremation for fetuses, the Church of Satan is launching a campaign to have its supporters mail semen covered items to the governor and legislature:

Earlier this week, Texas officials finalized a set of rules requiring funeral services for fetuses in what many see as a transparent and particularly callous ploy to restrict abortion access in the state. In response, Satanic Temple spokesperson Jex Blackmore has announced plans to engage in a crass counter-attack.

Having mailed a ejaculate-covered sock to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, along with a handwritten note that says, "These r babies. Plz bury," Blackmore is publicly encouraging others to send Governor Abbott semen-encrusted materials of their own (or, for those wary of sending bodily fluids through the mail, items coated in non-seminal-but-semen-esque substances).

According to Blackmore, this campaign, which is evocatively titled "Cumrags for Congress," is meant to expose the absurdity of forcing people to treat fetal tissue as human remains. (Lucien Greaves, another spokesperson for the organization, tells Broadly that the campaign isn't officially endorsed or encouraged by the Satanic Temple.) "The concept of the state mandating a non-medical ritual as part of the abortion procedure is offensive and crude, essentially demanding that all citizens adopt the moral, philosophical opinion that fetal tissue is comparable to a living human," she tells Broadly. "Fetal tissue has the 'potential' to become a human, but is not a human yet, does not have consciousness, and cannot exist without the mother host." She points out that semen and ova have the potential to become human life, yet "we do not mourn every ejaculation."

I am not a usually big fan of guerilla theater, but the Church of Satan has been doing some magnificent trolling lately.

Not Sauce for the Gander, It Would Seem

In a move that should surprise no one who follows British politics, MPs have added due process protections to the draconian surveillance bill that is under consideration that only apply to ……… wait for it ……… MPs:

Politicians have exempted themselves from Britain's new wide-ranging spying laws.

The Investigatory Powers Act, which has just passed into law, brings some of the most extreme and invasive surveillance powers ever given to spies in a democratic state. But protections against those spying powers have been given to MPs.

Most of the strongest powers in the new law require that those using them must be given a warrant. That applies to people wanting to see someone's full internet browsing history, for instance, which is one of the things that will be collected under the new law.

For most people, that warrant can be issued by a secretary of state. Applications are sent to senior ministers who can then approve either a targeted interception warrant or a targeted examination warrant, depending on what information the agency applying for the warrant – which could be anyone from a huge range of organisations – wants to see.

But for members of parliament and other politicians, extra rules have been introduced. Those warrants must also be approved by the prime minister.

That rule applies not only to members of the Westminster parliament but alos [sic] politicians in the devolved assembly and members of the European Parliament.

Lovely:  Politicians are saying "Rule of law for me, but not for thee."

F%$# them with Cheney's dick.

How Utterly Proper

Hillary Clinton is going to be throwing a thank you party to her millionaire donors:

Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine are throwing a party at the Plaza hotel on Dec. 15 to thank those who donated millions to the campaign.

The party will be held in the Grand Ballroom on the third floor, to honor the Hillary for America finance leadership council.

Guests expected are big bundlers including Harvey Weinstein, Anna Wintour, Alan Patricof, Tory Burch and Marc Lasry.

One insider said, “Hopefully there’s no balconies so nobody can jump.”

Hopefully, there is a balcony, and they will ALL jump.

Your Awesome Fact of the Day

In a development that should surprise no one, this is a fact about the Gary Larson Cartoon The Far Side:

Stegosaurus is world-famous for its lime-sized brain and the quartet of nasty-looking spikes on its tail. A 1982 "Far Side" strip decided to have a little fun with the latter attribute. In that cartoon, we find an early human anachronistically lecturing his fellow cavemen about dinosaur-related hazards. Pointing at the rear end of a Stegosaurus diagram, he says “Now this end is called the thagomizer … after the late Thag Simmons.” Without meaning to, Larson’s strip plugged a gap in the scientific lexicon. Previously, nobody had ever given a name to the unique arrangement of tail spikes found on Stegosaurus and its relatives. But today, many paleontologists use the word “thagomizer” when describing this apparatus, even in scientific journals.

This is so full of awesome that there is a risk of injury.

Can We Give Them Back to Mexico?

Texas has spent hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in corporate welfare because of a typographical error in an obscure article:

What if Texas blew billions of dollars because someone misread an obscure business report 15 years ago?

n March, the Observer took a close look at the state’s largest corporate welfare program, the Texas Economic Development Act, which is meant to attract new business to the state by offering companies big breaks on their property tax bills. The program, often called “Chapter 313” after its place in the tax code, was born 15 years ago out of a fear that Texas was losing its competitive edge to Louisiana, Arizona and other states with generous incentives. As we wrote in March:

For years, Texas had been a perennial finalist for the Governor’s Cup, awarded annually by Site Selection magazine to the state with the year’s most million-dollar development projects. But by 2000, Texas had dropped to 37th.

That was a key piece of evidence used by proponents of the program to sway lawmakers. First cited at a committee meeting at the Capitol in 2001, the No. 37 ranking was later repeated by lawmakers, nonprofits and media outlets (including this one) dozens of times.

But according to a new Senate committee report, that number was wildly inaccurate.

………

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick included a review of the Chapter 313 program in his interim charges for the Legislature, and the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Economic Development released its findings in mid-November. The report is critical of the program for a number of reasons, but its greatest revelation is that Chapter 313 was initially sold to lawmakers on a lie — or, at least, a typo.

………

“The unavoidable conclusion,” according to the report, “is that the case for passing the largest economic development incentive program in the State’s history may have been based on the fear incited by a magazine’s typographical error.”

Of course, spending taxpayer money on rich people is a part of Texas' political DNA.

I wonder how much we would have to pay Mexico to take it back.

We Don't Need More Democrats, We Need Better Ones

In response to strategies to deal with Donald Trump and his nefarious agenda, Blue Dog/New Dem type Democratic members of the Senate are capitulating in advance:

While congressional Democrats were certainly slow to come to grips with Donald Trump’s election and therefore appeared hesitant to back the calls for resistance that flooded the streets in major American cities in the immediate aftermath, they’ve since embraced their role as the loyal opposition. But even as most Senate Democrats gear up for confirmation battles with a whole host of questionable Trump Cabinet picks, some of their Democratic colleagues are already willing to kowtow to the president-elect’s most fundamental decisions.

………

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown argued for a strategy of Democratic obstruction to a Trump agenda by pointing to Republicans’ past intransigence. “We’re going to help them confirm their nominees, many of whom are disqualified? It’s not obstruction, it’s not partisan, it’s just a duty to find out what they’d do in these jobs,” he said. Brown pointed out that Republicans have “been rewarded for stealing a Supreme Court justice,” referring to the nearly yearlong delay of hearings on President Obama’s nominee to succeed deceased Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.

Still, nearly all the five Democratic senators facing re-election in 2018 in states that strongly supported Trump — by 19 percentage points or more — apparently disagree with their more progressive colleagues and have rushed to signal their willingness to cooperate with the new regime.

“That’s just bullsh%$,” West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, [Whose daughter was (until it became public0 given a phoney degree and also runs Mylan which gouges people on EpiPens] whose state supported Trump by 42 percent, said of his fellow Democrats’ strategy of opposition. “I’m going to help [Trump] when I can. But I’m going to be holding him accountable when I need to,” he added.

 "When I need to," means "I will never hold him accountable."

North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp was quick to suggest that she is ready to work with Republicans on legislation to invest in “clean coal” technologies, as she praised a decision to boot oil pipeline protesters from Standing Rock. Heitkamp was one of the first Democrats to meet with the president-elect and his transition team at Trump Tower last week. Trump won North Dakota by more than 36 points and there’s speculation he is considering Heitkamp for secretary of agriculture or energy.

Supporting police brutality against Indian protestors forever. Gotta love it.

Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly, who is also up for re-election in 2018 and who represents a state that went for Trump by 19.3 percentage points, has already said he is ready to work with the incoming Trump administration on military mental health care issues, curbing the exodus of U.S. jobs to foreign countries and combating the opioid epidemic.

“We can’t just say ‘no’ because the idea comes from the other side of the aisle,” argued Montana Sen. Jon Tester last week. Tesler has long signaled a willingness to work with Trump. He chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee that failed to orchestrate his party’s wresting control of the upper chamber from the GOP.

In May, Tesler said about Trump that “he’s got some pretty goofy opinions, but hopefully we’ve got some stuff we can work on,” Tesler is now up for re-election in a state that preferred Trump by 20 points.

I have identified the differences between conservative Democrats and liberal (moderate)  Republicans:

A liberal (moderate) Republican will:

• Talk about the need to work across the aisle.
• Plead for moderation.
• Chastise his party for extremism.
• Sometimes vote against his party.
• When the vote is close, and it is important, he will vote with the Republicans.

A conservative Democrat will:

• Talk about the need to work across the aisle.
• Plead for moderation.
• Chastise his party for extremism.
• Sometimes vote against his party.
• When the vote is close, and it is important, he will vote with the Republicans.

So-called experts are puzzled as to why voters, "Vote against their own interests," for Republicans.

It's simple: With people like this in our party leadership, they know that we'll never deliver on promises to make their lives better.

Hell, Hillary Clinton's whole f%$#ing campaign was a promise not to make ordinary folks' lives better, and we saw how well THAT worked out.

Your Winnings, Sir

I'm shocked! Shocked! To find that gambling is going on this establishment


But their gold plated toilets are amazing^*



The Pentagon says that healthcare costs are killing it.  To paraphrase a phony Willy Sutton quote, that ain't where the money is

The Pentagon decided to look for waste and inefficiency in the Defense Department, and rather unsurprisingly, they found it.

Their response was to cover it up, because as Charlie Pierce pithily notes, "The only institution better than the Pentagon at poor-mouthing its luxurious budgets is Major League Baseball."

You know, if I were in the business of, "Draining the swamp," I would start in the places that a most obviously mixture of muck and water that risk sucking people under.

At the top of that list is that large funny shaped building across the Potomac from the Jefferson Memorial:

The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.

Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.

The report, issued in January 2015, identified “a clear path” for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology.

High-priced contractors is how DoD officials and General Officers insure that they have a comfortable retirement:  If you overpay private players for stuff you should do yourself, when it comes time to retire, you get a very respectable sinecure from those same contractors.

………

The data showed that the Defense Department was paying a staggering number of people — 1,014,000 contractors, civilians and uniformed personnel — to fill back-office jobs far from the front lines. That workforce supports 1.3 million troops on active duty, the fewest since 1940.

………

or the military, the major allure of the study was that it called for reallocating the $125 billion for troops and weapons. Among other options, the savings could have paid a large portion of the bill to rebuild the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal, or the operating expenses for 50 Army brigades.

But some Pentagon leaders said they fretted that by spotlighting so much waste, the study would undermine their repeated public assertions that years of budget austerity had left the armed forces starved of funds. Instead of providing more money, they said, they worried Congress and the White House might decide to cut deeper.

So the plan was killed. The Pentagon imposed secrecy restrictions on the data making up the study, which ensured no one could replicate the findings. A 77-page summary report that had been made public was removed from a Pentagon website.

………

Afterward, board members briefed Work. They were expecting an enthusiastic response, but the deputy defense secretary looked uneasy, according to two people who were present.

He singled out a page in the report. Titled “Warfighter Currency,” it showed how saving $125 billion could be redirected to boost combat power. The money could cover the operational costs for 50 Army brigades, or 3,000 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for the Air Force, or 10 aircraft-carrier strike groups for the Navy.

“This is what scares me,” he said, according to the two people present. Work explained he was worried Congress might see it as an invitation to strip $125 billion from the defense budget and spend it somewhere else.

………

In briefings that month, uniformed military leaders were receptive at first. They had long groused that the Pentagon wasted money on a layer of defense bureaucracies — known as the Fourth Estate — that were outside the control of the Army, Air Force and Navy. Military officials often felt those agencies performed duplicative services and oversight.

But the McKinsey consultants had also collected data that exposed how the military services themselves were spending princely sums to hire hordes of defense contractors.

For example, the Army employed 199,661 full-time contractors, according to a confidential McKinsey report obtained by The Post. That alone exceeded the combined civil workforce for the Departments of State, Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development.

As I noted above, these contracts are a part of the system of back end bribery that permeates our government:

1. Give goodies to contractors
2. Retire
3. Get a good paying not particularly rigorous job so that they next guy in your position knows which side his bread is buttered on.
4. ???
5. Profit!^†

At some point, this whole rotten edifice is going to collapse like a bunch of overcooked broccoli.

^*I would like to offer my sincere and heartfelt apology to whoever plays the tuba in the Marine Corps band: I was a bit drunk when I took a crap in it.
^†Underpants gnomes, dude, underpants gnomes. Get with the program.

This is the Stupidest Thing Written on US Politics This Year

Yes, I am aware that this is a very high bar to clear, but there is no competition here, Carol Felsenthal, writing for Chicago magazine, has made the most mind bogglingly moronic political analysis of this political season.

Baldrick would say that, "It's so cunning that you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel."

Blackadder would say, "Your brain for example- is brain's so minute ……… that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit."

Ms Felsenthal says that Rahm Emanuel should be made head of the DNC:

Not that he asked me, but here’s some advice for Rahm Emanuel: Run for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.

The new DNC chairman will be elected when all 447 members meet on February 24, but the auditions are on right now.

Get in the mix. Get out of Dodge. Leave behind the burden of running a city tortured by homicides that this year top 700 with a month to go. Leave behind the stubborn unpopularity with African Americans who make up one third of the city’s population. (Even before Laquan McDonald became a household name in Chicago, Rahm’s support among African Americans was eight percent.)

When I first read this, I thought that it was a joke.

I could not believe that anyone was that profoundly and deeply stupid.

If you read the comments, this opinion is nearly universally shared, with such comments as, "Why not Zoidberg?"

The article is garbage, but the comments are amusing.

Nothing to See Here, Move Along

We have a hung jury and a mistrial in the murder prosecution of Michael Slager because, it seems, that one of the Jurors could not bring themselves to vote to convict a white officer shooting a black man ……… ever:

A jury deadlocked Monday in the case of a former South Carolina police officer charged with murder after he was recorded on video last year firing a barrage of bullets at the back of Walter Scott, a fleeing driver, in one of the most high-profile shootings to rattle the nation in recent years.

“We as the jury regret to inform the court that despite the best efforts of all members, we are unable to come to a unanimous decision,” the jury wrote in a note that Circuit Court Judge Clifton Newman read aloud in the courtroom.

Newman declared a mistrial shortly before 3:40 p.m. and thanked the jurors for their “hard work in trying to reach a unanimous verdict in this case.” Prosecutors as well as attorneys for Michael Slager, the former officer, also thanked the jurors for their effort in the case. Several jurors wiped tears from their eyes as Newman made his announcement following more than 20 hours of deliberations.

It was the second time in a matter of weeks that a mistrial was declared in a case involving an officer charged with murder after being recorded shooting someone, following a similar outcome in Ohio last month. Prosecutors in South Carolina, echoing their counterparts in Ohio, vowed to seek another trial for Slager.

………

“I was scared,” Slager said during the trial, holding back tears. He described feeling “total fear that Mr. Scott was coming toward me.”

The video showed Scott’s back to the officer as he fired the fatal shots. Slager said that while he tried to subdue Scott, the driver had grabbed the Taser during a struggle over the device.

………

In the footage that captured Scott’s death, Slager could be seen placing an item — his Taser — near Scott’s body after the shooting.

Slager shot Scott repeatedly in the back, and as he was lyuing on the ground dying, he dropped his taser next to the body, much in the same way that cops have, since time immemorial, carried a throw away gun to make a bad shoot look good.

Not only is it clear that shooting was unnecessary, the perp was a cop which means that he has extensive training about the use of force.

Much like a boxer can be charged with assault with a deadly weapon for punching someone, a cop needs to be held to a higher standard in their application of violence.

BTW, here is the source of my one juror comment:

The jury’s foreman, the panel’s only black member, said in a separate note that the group was mostly in agreement that Mr. Slager should be convicted: “It’s just one juror that has the issues.” The foreman also said: “That juror needs to leave. He is having issues.”

Yeah, he was having issues convicting a white man for killing a black man.

This is disgraceful.

Linkage

• It will soon be illegal to punish customers who criticize businesses online (Ars Technica) The Consumer Review Fairness Act has been approved by both houses, and awaits Obama's signature.
• Adblock Plus wins its 6th court case, brought by Der Spiegel (Ars Technica) Der Speigel was trying to rule that going to the bathroom during Super Bowl ads is illegal.
• Magic mushroom ingredient psilocybin could be key to treating depression - studies (The Guardian) In related news, MDMA (Ecstacy) has been approved for clinical trials to treat PTSD.
• America is No. 1 at this — and it’s not something to brag about (MarketWatch) We excel at spam emails.
• The Definitive Collection of Thomas Friedman Takedowns (Jillian C. York) Hours of fun for the while family.

Here is an epic rant on Barack Obama. It's nice, but it should more generally address it it to whole corrupt edifice of the national Democratic party.

I Wonder How Brussels Will Coerce the Voters in Italy

Matteo Renzi, the latest technocrat Prime Minister to take power after the EU deposed Silvio Berlusconi, bet his career on a referendum on government changes in Italy and lost:

Matteo Renzi was roundly defeated in a referendum to change Italy’s constitution, marking a major victory for anti-establishment and rightwing parties and plunging the eurozone’s third largest economy into political chaos.

The prime minister conceded defeat in an emotional speech at his residence, Palazzo Chigi, and said he would submit his resignation to Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, on Monday afternoon.

“My experience in government ends here … I did all I could to bring this to victory,” Renzi said. “If you fight for an idea, you cannot lose.”

It was a not an unexpected defeat but it was nevertheless a humiliating one, with about 60% of Italians voting against the proposed reforms, which would have made sweeping changes to Italy’s constitution and parliamentary system. Pointing to the high voter turnout – about 68% of eligible voters cast ballots in the referendum – Renzi said the vote represented a “feast of democracy”.

………

The prime minister, who started his political career as the mayor of Florence and was the youngest-ever prime minister when he assumed office in 2014, made constitutional reform a central plank of his premiership and argued for months that the changes would make Italy more stable and likely to adopt tough-but-needed economic and labour policies.

For the uninitiated , the phrase, "Adopt tough-but-needed economic and labour policies," translates to "F%$# the ordinary working man like a drunk sorority girl."

And once again, the response of the ruling elites is to see how they can game the system to make sure that they don't have to face the fallout of their own failures, "The immediate task facing the current government – with or without Renzi – will be to pass a change in the electoral law that will make it far more difficult for either the Five Star Movement or the Northern League to win strong majorities in the parliament in the next election."

Once again, this is all about the "Brussel's Class" dividing up the spoils.

The EU has moved toward unification too quickly, it has decided that democratic opposition to its agenda is to be crushed, and the Germans are running the show.

It is a toxic and self-destructive mix, and it likely will force the collapse of the EU.

Yes

Over at FT, Gillian Tett asks, "Did Obamacare help Trump?"

The answer, of course, is yes, and it did Even If It Improved Medical Outcomes for one very simple reason:

Or to put it another way, Obamacare is not just a tale about healthcare and costs; it is also a story of people who feel trapped in a capricious system that they don’t understand, much less control. Little wonder, then, that Trump’s message about empowerment and fixing Obamacare turned out to be so popular this year. Now let’s see if he can deliver.

(emphasis mine)

This is typical of incrementalist "squish" progressives.

They create a program with overweening bureaucracy with extensive means testing, and create a system that is opaque and abusive to to its recipients.

For them, it's a win-win:

• They think that they can sell this to conservatives, because they ensure that all recipients are "deserving". (Note: this never happens)
• They create jobs for the professional class that is the base of the Obama/Clinton wing of the party.
• They create opportunities for private gain, which is an independent good according to their neoliberal worldview, because it will create market driven innovations.

Of course, this makes any of their programs about as pleasant as a trip to the DMV, and convinces the general population that government screws up anything.

When You've Lost the Forward………

The battle for the next head of the DCCC is heating up, and it appears that someone is concerned that Keith Ellison is jeopardizing their phony baloney jobs,^* because they are casting broad aspersions of antisemitism.

A number of outlets have called bullsh%$ on this most recently The Foreward, formerly known as the Yiddish Daily Forward, which declares that his so-called antisemitic speech is a result of deliberately deceptive editing:

If you’ve been following the uproar over Congressman Keith Ellison and his run for chairman of the Democratic National Committee, you might recall hearing about a 36-second audio clip containing a snippet of an Ellison speech that, according to his critics, proves he’s anti-Israel and shouldn’t get the job. You may even have listened to the clip and been left wondering exactly what it means.

If so, you’re in luck. The other 22 minutes of Ellison’s speech are now available for your listening pleasure. You can listen and make up your own mind.

Some background: The audio file captures Ellison, the first Muslim ever elected to Congress, addressing a 2010 campaign fundraising event for a fellow Muslim who was running (unsuccessfully) for the Virginia state legislature. Ellison is heard claiming that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is “governed” by “what’s good or bad” for a certain nation of 7 million. Translation: Israel’s welfare is a primary goal of American policy.

He goes on to say that American Muslims could wield their own influence on American policy if they got more involved in the political process. In other words, donate tonight and help the Muslim cause. More on that later.

………

I posted a piece on Friday morning dissecting various bits of evidence that Ellison’s critics cite to prove he’s anti-Israel, including the 36-second audio. I expressed skepticism about the case against him. Regarding the audio, I wrote that it could just as easily be understood as a description of plain fact: that Israel’s welfare ranks high among U.S. policy priorities and Muslims might have more influence if they were better organized. That Israel’s advantage is held up not for condemnation so much as emulation.

It’s worth noting that the first interpretation — the ADL’s reading — accords with the image of Ellison as an Israel-hater that’s popular in conservative Jewish circles. The second, more benign reading, on the other hand, jibes with the picture of Ellison portrayed by the Democratic leadership in Congress and virtually the entire leadership of the Jewish community in Ellison’s hometown of Minneapolis-St. Paul, where he’s consistently described as a friend and ally of the community and a supporter of Israel.

………

Well, on Friday afternoon I got an email from Steven Emerson. He wrote that there was no intention to leave the audience dangling, and that the full speech, audio and transcript, was about to be released. And sure enough, an hour later the full speech appeared on the project’s website. Click here to read and listen to the full 22-minute speech.

………

Fifth, in case anyone thought he was advocating extreme action, he’s calling for “public diplomacy.” He says it twice. And, he adds, crucially: “This is not to say that I don’t want the U.S. to be friends with Israel.” (Having trouble sorting out all the double and triple negatives? Hint: He just said he wants the U.S. to be friends with Israel. To what he thought was a closed audience of Muslim activists.)

He continues: “I just want the United States to have a lot of friends. And to be in a position with the friend to say — you are wrong and you must stop.” (That is, Israel is and will continue to be a friend, but friends don’t let friends drive drunk.)

Finally, here’s his most conspiratorial-sounding statement: “That country” — Israel — “has mobilized its Diaspora in America to do its bidding in America.” Sounds ominous, right? He’s accusing AIPAC of doing a good job. But now he draws the lesson he wants to drive home to Muslims: “The question is, with all of us here, we ought to be able to do at least as much. You understand what I am trying to say? That we got a lot of work to do.” That is, the Jewish community does effective work on its causes. Muslims should learn from them.

While this is not an official OP/ED of The Forward editors, it is from its former editor-in-chief, Jonathan Jeremy “J.J.” Goldberg.

Rather unsurprisingly, this is all about a battle power, control, and money among the party apparatchiks.

^*One of the most vociferous condemnations of Ellison have come from Clintonistas and other members of the Democratic Party Nomenklatura such as Clinton megadonor Haim Saban.

Quote of the Day

It is hard to think of an election defeat more singularly absent of important lessons, since the most important lesson of the election is glaringly obvious and shared by all sides: Don’t nominate Hillary Clinton for president again.

—Jonathan Chait

Wise words from what might have been the most clueless^* pundit of this election cycle.

^*There were certainly pundits writing stupider things, but I think that it was malice and self interest, not pure stupidity that drove them.

Light Posting Tonight

Someone hacked a BBS that I administer.

Gotta fix crap.

Clearly, Raising the Minimum Wage in Seattle was anAbject Failure

Two years after $15.00 an hour became the law in Seattle the city has experienced some of the strongest employment growth in the nation:

In light of a recent monthly release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), time for a quick trip to the glorious pacific northwest and the Seattle, WA area to revisit what’s been happening there in the wake of that city’s rising minimum wage.

………

Well, in the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett Metropolitan Division (MD), comprised of King and Snohomish Counties, BLS just reported (on November 30) this:

Now, as good as that news is (and it’s pretty impressive), it does represent a two county area and not just the city of Seattle proper. Some may recall that in many of his pieces on Seattle, [American Enterprise Institute Puke] Mark Perry very inappropriately used the even larger three-county Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), and I called him out on that.

Well, as luck would have it, we can actually drill down to the city of Seattle proper and take a look at its unemployment rate (among other things). So, how’s Seattle faring?

What's more, restaurant and hospitality employment is way up, exactly the opposite of what the right wingers predicted.

Once again, the conservatives are certain, determined, and wrong.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!

And we have another credit union closing, First African Baptist Church Federal Credit Union of Sharon Hill, PA the 15th closing of the year.  Here is the Full NCUA list.


This is profoundly odd.  There have been 3 times as many credit union failures as there have been bank failures.

Madeline Allbright, How About a Nice Warm Cup of Shut the F%$# Up?

Madeline Albright, the poster child for "liberal interventionism" has justheaded a task force that is calling for an occupation of Syria with US forces, because they find failed regime change such a good idea:

The United States should prepare to use greater military power and covert action in Syria to help forge a political settlement to end the country's civil war, according to a bipartisan report to be released on Wednesday.

Produced by a task force led by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a Democrat, and former U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, a Republican, the report amounts to a bipartisan rejection of President Barack Obama's decision to limit U.S. military engagement in the nearly six-year civil war.

Largely drafted before Republican Donald Trump's victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election, the paper, which has not been presented to Trump, makes a case for deeper U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

"Isolationism is a dangerous illusion," said the report, which was obtained by Reuters on Tuesday. It calls for outside nations to help wind down conflicts in Iraq, Libya and Yemen and back home-grown reform throughout the region.

Its key recommendation for Syria may be moot when Trump takes office on Jan. 20 if government forces seize eastern Aleppo, the opposition's most important urban stronghold. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been dramatically strengthened by Russian military support over the past 14 months.

"The United States should be prepared to employ air power, stand-off weapons, covert measures and enhanced support for opposition forces to break the current siege of Aleppo and frustrate Assad's attempts to consolidate control over western Syria's population centers," the report said.

Let me get this straight: They want to deploy US troops in support of al Qaeda, (there is no moderate opposition) because they are fixated on regime change.

These people are supposed to be foreign policy experts, but I wouldn't hire them as pastry chef.

Snark of the Day

MI AG Bill Schuette Is Always on the Wrong Side of History — So I Now Enthusiastically Back MI’s Recount

—Marcy "Empthwheel" Wheeler, who thought that the recount was a bad thing until the wingnut Michigan Attorney General filed suit against it.

Quote of the Day

Eco-system is a Silicon Valley euphemism for a cross-subsidised system.

Izabella Kaminska at FT Alphaville in a discussion of Uber.

It really does amaze me just how much of the Silicon Valley business model appears to be a Theranis style scam.

Chinese Appear to Have Very Long Range AAM in Test

On a Chinese Flanker Derivative


The background appears deliberately obscured


MBDA ASRAAM


Probable flight profile

We are now seeing reports, and pictures of a Chinese Su-27 derivative carrying what appears to be an enormous air to air missile: (Paid Subscription Required)

Last year, the U.S. Air Force was worried about the PL-15, a long-ranging Chinese missile that could reach U.S. fighters too far away to shoot back. Now the appearance of an even farther-flying Chinese weapon must be forcing the air force to wonder about the vulnerability of vital tankers and surveillance aircraft flying behind its fighters.

The latest Chinese weapon is comparable to a long-range surface-to-air missile in size and appearance and so can probably reach well over 200 km (120 mi.). With no aerodynamic surfaces except small tail fins to help turn its hefty bulk, it does not look suited for attacking a fighter that can maneuver sharply to avoid a hit. Instead, it seems far more likely to climb high on a ballistic trajectory and drop onto a big and sluggish target that can hardly do anything to get out of the way, such an airborne-early-warning (AEW) aircraft.

As an aside here, while maneuverability at the far extents of its range is probably limited, at slightly shorter ranges, say 30-50 km less than maximum range, it should still be at a high speed, at which point the control surfaces and body lift should generate significant maneuverability for an intercept.

Note that the aerodynamics appear to be similar to the (much smaller) ASRAAM, which is known to sustain something in excess of 50G.

If that is the mission, then the system is probably a supplement to—perhaps a backup for—the Avic Chengdu J-20, a big fighter that looks designed to penetrate an enemy fighter barrier with stealth and high speed to knock out support aircraft in the rear (AW&ST Nov. 7-20, p. 24). The same job could be attempted with a powerful but nonstealthy aircraft that lobbed weapons over the fighter barrier. Such an aircraft could be an Avic Shenyang J-16, a Chinese Flanker—such as the one in recent photographs revealing the weapon’s existence (see photo).

An anonymous user of a Chinese microblog service published the photos in November. There is always a chance of fakery—analysts have been tricked before by phony Chinese pictures—but the images not only look genuine, they also depict a weapon that makes sense for the Chinese air force. Just clear enough for good estimates of dimensions by reference to the J-16, the pictures were almost certainly released by the air force or, on its behalf, by the missile- or fighter-maker. This is the Chinese military’s idea of a press release.

………

Assuming equally energetic propellant, equally efficient trajectories and a modern, dual-pulse rocket motor or ramjet, PL-15 should greatly outrange the 3.7-m long, 178-mm thick Raytheon AIM-120 Amraam, prompting Carlisle to call for development of a longer-ranging U.S. weapon. The new Chinese missile seen on the J-16 is about 5.8 m long and 320 mm thick, and therefore about six times bigger than the Amraam.

It's also a a lot bigger than the last US VLR AAM, the AIM-54 Phoenix:

	AIM-54 Phoenix	Chinese VLRAAM
Diameter	380 mm (15 in)	320 mm (13 in)
Length	4 m (13 ft)	5.8 m (19½ ft)
Wing Span	910mm (36 in)	~650mm (26 in)
Weight	450 kg (1000 lb)	~700 kg (1550 lb)
Range	200 km (120 mi)	300 km (180 mi) (guess)
Speed	4700 km/h (3000 mph)	4700 km/h (3000 mph)

I am not sure if the missile would need advanced propulsion to achieve very long ranges.

The missile is likely intended to be launched at high speed and altitude, which means that simply using a slow and long burning motor may get the performance desired, though this would compromise short range (less than 20 km) performance.

The likely profile would have the the J-16 launching the missile in a climb at supersonic speeds at about 15 km.  The missile would them climb to 30-40 km, where air drag is less, and accelerating to around Mach 5.

It would then dive on the target, with an active seeker used for terminal guidance. (See picture)

This could be an effective deterrent, but it would have limited application:  The AIM-54 was used something less than 10 times in actual combat, with an 0% success rate.

I do agree that the primary targets would be tankers and AWACS type aircraft, so the use of some sort of very long range sensors for cuing would need to be a part of its effective deployment.

Fake News of the Day

One Last Humiliation: The CIA Just Bungled An Attempt To Drop A Piano On Fidel Castro’s Funeral Procession

It's funny because it's true.

I Couldn't Watch This Last Night

Last night Trevor Noah had right wing conservative Tomi Lahren.

It was a very polite conversation, and since Lahren is basically a blond shapley Rush Limbaugh without the charm, I got frustrated with the genial tenor, and watched Alton Brown macerate squashes or suchlike.

Today, I read glowing reviews of how thoroughly he destroyed her.

He really did. It kind of sneaks up on you, it's like watching Raymond Burr as Perry Mason, setting the witness at ease before making them confess to murder.

The first 5 minutes are hard, but it is worth it.

M

Tweet of the Day

Relax, @peterdaou. I put together this scientific peer reviewed analysis of the root causes for Hillary's loss so you didn't have to. Yw. pic.twitter.com/4q0kzj71LF

— Very Serious People™ (@TheXclass) December 1, 2016

H/t naked capitalism

Emblematic of the Failure of the Euro Left

French President François Holland has announced that he will not seek a second term.

This isn't surprising, considering the fact that polls right now are showing him to be less popular than Eurodisney.

The problem, and why the right wing nationalist parties are eating their lunch is that the European left refuses to be left any more.

Basically, they have bought into the EU and its associated institutions, (Particularly the Euro) lock, stock, and barrel, and these regimes have been explicitly designed to reduce social services and worker protections while increasing the inequality.

The focus on balanced budgets and unfettered free markets make it impossible to for social democrats to function as social democrats, and absent the ability to improve their constituents lives, they end up serving capital instead.

Harry S Truman said it best when he said, "Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time."

While there are left wing Euroskeptic left wing parties in Europe, most notably Die Linke in Germany, they are conspicuously absent from the governing process.  (I would argue that the "mainstream" parties work harder to distance themselves from these parties than they do the racist right wing.)

Even with his standing down, I do not expect the French Socialists to make it to the runoff for the Presidential elections, so the race will almost certainly end up between Thatcherite François Fillon and right wing populist  Marine Le Pen.

My condolences to the voters of France.

Linkage

• The FBI Hacked Over 8,000 Computers In 120 Countries Based on One Warrant (Motherboard) Live in obedient fear, citizen.
• Wells Fargo asks U.S. court to dismiss account scandal lawsuit (Reuters) They want to enforce a binding arbitration clause, but this is for accounts that their customers did not consent to, and so they did not consent to the binding arbitration clause. Just maroon all these guys on a desert island invested with carnivorous rats.
• Post-Election, How Do Women On Left Overcome Elite Feminism? (Shadowproof) I love me some Marxist dialectic here.
• Do Polygraph Tests Actually Work? (Priceonomics) No, it's primarily a tool to coerce confessions.
• Let's Colonize Titan (Scientific American Blog Network) Short version: With a dense atmosphere that blocks most cosmic radiation, you don't have to build underground.
• What Exactly is Zero-Knowledge in The Cloud and How Does it Work (Cloudwards) For a truly secure cloud, you have to have a cloud provider who holds none of the keys to your data, this is a primer and a list of providers.
• Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part One – Understanding Uber’s Bleak Operating Economics (naked capitalism) Part 1 of 4. Short version: Uber's business model is to use predatory pricing enabled by their funding to drive out competition, and once this is done, they collect monopoly rents.

The one thing you can't replace: