I Want This So Much

I came across this on Facebook, and I willing to kill a small woodland creature to get it.

This is epic.

Gee, You Think?

Unnamed former Israeli intelligence officials are now saying that the US unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal was a mistake.

As an aside, those officials, and their boss at the time Binyaman Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) were the ones lobbying hardest for the US to ditch the deal.

A growing number of former Israeli security officials are publicly faulting their government for opposing a nuclear deal negotiated in 2015 between Iran and world powers, and warning that economic sanctions on Iran are not deterring it from dangerously advancing its nuclear program.

While Israel had applauded President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the accord in 2018, these former officials have concluded that his “maximum pressure” policy built primarily on sanctions has failed to prevent Iran from increasing the quantity and quality of its enriched uranium.

With negotiations over reviving the nuclear accord now struggling in Vienna, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has been echoing the ominous rhetoric of his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, and accusing Iran of using “nuclear blackmail” as a bargaining tactic by escalating its uranium enrichment.

But former Israel security officials are increasingly critical of the role Netanyahu played in opposing the original agreement and urging Trump to abandon it. These officials say the accord was imperfect but that the alternative has been worse.

This was foreseeable.  The implementation of savage sanctions merely gave them the opportunity to crack down on domestic opposition and empowered the most radical in their government, much the same as 60 years of sanctions against Cuba has.

The US foreign policy establishment devalues the value of the United States keeping to its agreements and overvalues the effect of sanctions, and has for decades.  There is no learning process.

Damn

Michael Nesmith, known for his time as lead guitarist for the "Pre Fab 4" aka The Monkees, as well as for being instrumental in the creation of music videos, has died at age 78. 

The Monkees were a big part of my childhood, and I need to rewatch their movie, Head, and watch his movie, Elephant Parts.

Also, his mother has my undying gratitude for inventing Liquid Paper.  My life would be impossible without it:

Monkees singer and guitarist Michael Nesmith, a pop visionary who penned many of the group’s most enduring songs before laying the groundwork for country rock with the First National Band in the early Seventies, died Friday from natural causes. He was 78.

“With Infinite Love we announce that Michael Nesmith has passed away this morning in his home, surrounded by family, peacefully and of natural causes,” his family said in a statement. “We ask that you respect our privacy at this time and we thank you for the love and light that all of you have shown him and us.”

Nesmith was known as the Monkee in the green wool hat with the thick Texas drawl, and the writer of songs like “Mary, Mary,” “Circle Sky,” “Listen to the Band,” and “The Girl I Knew Somewhere.” But he raged behind the scenes that the group didn’t have creative control of its albums, and in 1967 led the successful rebellion against record producer Don Kirshner. The group would subsequently release Headquarters and other albums created largely on its own.

………

Nesmith spent the rest of the Seventies recording under-the-radar solo albums. In 1977, he promoted his single “Rio” with a clever music video that got a lot of play in Europe and Australia, turning the song into a minor hit. It gave him an incredible idea. “[I realized that] radio is to records as television is to video,” he told Rolling Stone in 2013. “Then it was like, ‘Of course!’ and thus MTV was born. I just took that idea and put together some programs and sent it over to Warner Bros. and so forth. Next thing you know, there it was.”

………

His life changed forever in 1980 when his mother, Liquid Paper inventor Bette Nesmith Graham, died and left him her substantial fortune. He used the money to invest in a series of businesses along with movies like Repo Man and Tapeheads. He didn’t participate in the Monkees reunion tours of the Eighties, leading to the false impression he was ashamed of his pop past.

“Quite the contrary,” he told Rolling Stone in 2013. “It was a nice part of the résumé. It was fun for me and a great time of my life. I mean, where do you want be in the Sixties except the middle of rock & roll, hanging out with the scene? London was an absolute blast, and so was L.A. back then. There was so much going on back then.”

 A part of my childhood has gone.

6.8% Expect the Hand Wringing to Intensify

I am referring, of course, to the 6.8 % year over year inflation reported for November.

It's really not about inflation:  If these people thought that government spending was driving this, they they could cut the defense budget, which dwarfs Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" agenda.  They just want to keep the poors miserable.

Biden Condemns Kellogg's Threat to Fire Strikers

Biden may not walk the proverbial walk that often, but in his statement of support for strikers at Kellogg's plants across the nation, he is walking the walk now, and not "both-siding" the issue, as I am sure his former boss would:

President Biden on Friday waded into a strike involving 1,400 employees at four Kellogg plants, whom the company said it planned to permanently replace after workers voted down a proposed contract this week.

“I am deeply troubled by reports of Kellogg’s plans to permanently replace striking workers,” Mr. Biden said in a statement, adding that “permanently replacing striking workers is an existential attack on the union and its members’ jobs and livelihoods.”

The strike began on Oct. 5 and has largely focused on the company’s two-tier compensation system, in which employees hired after 2015 typically receive lower wages and less generous benefits than veteran workers. Many veteran Kellogg workers, who the company says earn about $35 per hour on average, believe that adding lower-paid workers puts downward pressure on their wages.

………

On Tuesday, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, which represents the workers, said its members had “overwhelmingly voted” against the deal. In response to the result, Kellogg said that it would “hire permanent replacement employees in positions vacated by striking workers.”

Kelloggs is trying to replace 1400 striking workers. Millennials & Gen Z flooded the jobs postings with fake applications and crashed the system. This is what solidary looks like. #StrikeMas #1u pic.twitter.com/OOMh3CFOX5

— Liz Shuler (@lizshuler) December 10, 2021

Noyce!

This is a good move, but even better is the fact that that Redditors have taken to spamming the Kellogg's scab application website, taking the page down:

Reddit users are flooding the Kellogg Company's job portal with fake applications after the company recently announced it will replace its striking union workers with new permanent employees. The spammers say they stand in solidarity with the strikers.

In a Reddit post in the r/antiwork subreddit, one user by the name of 'BloominFunions' listed the job portal sites for the four hiring plants, encouraging users to apply for the listings in hopes of clogging the system with fabricated applications.

As of Friday, the Reddit post has been upvoted more than 62,000 times.

"It's time to clog their toilet of an application pipeline," the user wrote. "This is your chance to apply for your 'dream' job."

In descriptions of the job listings posted, Kellogg specifically notes that prospective workers would be hired to fill positions from employees on strike.

To quote Aesop, "In union there is strength."

Quote of the Day

I think the fact that the Fox news studio doesn't get firebombed weekly (not advocating this!) is proof that "antifa" doesn't actually control our finest cities.

—Duncan "Atrios" Black on the completely hypocritical freakout that Fox News has had over their Holiday Tree^* catching fire.

There have been people on Fox comparing the tree catching fire to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The duplicitous sanctimony and the breathless fear mongering over poorly wired lights is truly pathetic.

^*Gotta support that whole war on Christmas thing.

Starbucks Employees Win Buffalo Union Election

At least 1, and possibly 2, of the three stores that held elections voted to unionize.

A group of baristas at the Elmwood Starbucks store in Buffalo, New York voted to unionize, becoming the first of the coffee chain giant’s 9,000 corporate-owned stores in the country to do so.

The election was a landslide victory for the union with 19 workers voting in favor and eight workers voting against unionizing at the Elwood Starbucks store in Buffalo. The union lost the election at a second location, known as Camp Road, where workers voted 12-to-8 against unionization.

A third election at the Starbucks’ airport location in Buffalo has not been called yet. Fifteen workers voted in favor of unionizing and nine workers voted against the union, but seven votes were challenged by the parties and will be reviewed by the National Labor Relations Board. The union needs a majority of votes to win that store. 

This would have been unthinkable 2 years ago.  The world has changed for the better, and I hope that it stays changed.

Republican Family Values

Former "19 Kids and Counting" reality TV star, and right wing Christo-Fascist stalwart, Josh Duggar has been found guilty of possession of child pornography.

Former reality TV star Josh Duggar was found guilty of receiving and possessing child pornography, an Arkansas jury decided on Thursday. He faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count.

During the trial, which started Nov. 30, prosecutors presented evidence of a computer at Duggar’s used-car dealership in Springdale, Ark., that they said Duggar used to access explicit photos and videos of young children being sexually abused. Experts testified that the computer was split into two operating systems, one for business and a “hidden” one for the illegal material, the Associated Press reported. A senior crime forensic analyst said the password for the secret side was similar to passwords Duggar had used in the past.

………

In 2015, the tabloid In Touch Weekly uncovered police reports that said Duggar was accused of molesting multiple girls when he was a teenager. Jim Bob and Michelle confirmed he had inappropriately touched four of his younger sisters and a babysitter, but after a “very stern talk” from a police officer and a trip to counseling, he was not charged.

In a pretrial hearing last week, a family friend of the Duggars testified that Duggar admitted to her in 2003 that he had molested four girls, the AP reported. Duggar’s lawyers filed a motion to keep the testimony out of the trial, but it was rejected by a judge who said, “The prior-act evidence is probative of defendant’s sexual interest in underage children and his propensity for exploiting young girls.”

This runs rampant in followers of reactionary religious cults like the Duggars:

………

The show became a hit as viewers were fascinated by the self-described “very conservative” family. While details such as their marriage rituals made headlines (the older kids “courted” would-be spouses with chaperones, and weren’t allowed to kiss before the wedding), the show glossed over the more extreme aspects of their belief system. For example, they followed the home-school teachings of the patriarchal-centric Christian organization Advanced Training Institute, which former students have described as a “cult” and exploitative.

I wonder why it took so long to catch him.  This guy has been out as a child molester for nearly 20 years.

It's Jobless Thursday!

And for the second time in 2 weeks, initial unemployment claims fell to a multi-decade low. 

I think that this is indisputably good news, but I have to figure that something is screwed up with the seasonal adjustments:

A strong economic recovery and persistent labor shortage pushed jobless claims to their lowest level in more than half a century last week, just 18 months after the pandemic prompted six million workers to file for unemployment in one week.

First-time claims for unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, fell to 184,000 in the week ended Dec. 4, the lowest level since September 1969, the Labor Department said Thursday. The previous pre-pandemic [should say post] low of 194,000 was recorded late last month.

………

Economists say the low number partly reflects seasonal adjustments that have been thrown off balance by the pandemic’s disruptions, but that the broader downward trend is firmly in place.

Recent warm weather in parts of the country could also have delayed the seasonal layoffs of construction workers, which pushed down the overall number last week, said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at MFR, Inc. Once the weather turns cold and those workers stop working, the layoff numbers should climb slightly, he said.

One hopes that Omicron won't knock the pins out from the recovery.

Snark of the Day

“My dad used to say that when you wrestle with a pig, you both get muddy and the pig likes it,” Gascón said, before clarifying that he didn’t mean to insult law enforcement.

—George Gascón in response to insults thrown at him by ferociously corrupt L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

I'm not sure if his dropping the "P-word" was intentional, but George Gascón just called out one of the worst lawmen in the nation very nicely.

Tweet of the Day

 

The once-future president is reduced to shilling self-help videos https://t.co/L5DWqVjpUs

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) December 8, 2021

I honestly don't know what is funnier, this bit of classic snark, or the heads exploding on Twitter in response.

Worst Statue in America Taken Down

I'm not sure if the removal of this statue is a bigger move for racial justice or for aesthetics, because the Nashville Nathan Bedford Forrest statue has been taken down:

The Confederacy has fallen. Again.

A notorious statue of Confederate general and early KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest that has stood beside I-65 in Crieve Hall for more than two decades has now been removed. The statue — a frequent subject of mockery and vandalism — was sculpted by Jack Kershaw. Though visible from the interstate, the eyesore sat on the private Hogan Road property of a man named Bill Dorris, who once said of Kershaw, “As an artist, mediocre.”

Dorris died a little more than a year ago and made national headlines for designating a $5 million trust to his border collie Lulu upon his death. (You read that correctly, yes.) A source at the time told the Scene that the estate was valued at closer to half a million dollars.

As reported Tuesday morning by NewsChannel 5’s Nick Beres: “The executor of the will ordered for the statue removed early Tuesday morning. … It will be held in storage and possibly be put up for sale. For now, the flags will remain at the site.”

Bill Dorris had to be a truly dedicated bigot to put up something that profoundly ugly on his property.

 

Failing the Test: Getting Nailed on the Boards

That is a lead in to an archeological find in Cambridgeshire, where they have found found evidence of a crucifixion using spikes.

It is not generally known, but most crucifixions were done with rope:  The death comes from suffocation being driven by hanging from one's arms collapsing the chests:

Found at the site of a future housing development in Cambridgeshire, the near 1,900-year-old skeleton at first did not seem particularly remarkable.

Aged 25 to 35 at the time of death, the man had been buried with his arms across his chest in a grave with a wooden structure, possibly a bier, at one of five cemeteries around a newly discovered Roman settlement at Fenstanton, between Roman Cambridge and Godmanchester.

But once his remains were removed to a laboratory in Bedford, a grisly discovery was made – a nail through the heel bone that experts now say is the best physical evidence of a crucifixion in the Roman world.

Nails used for crucifixion – the method of capital punishment by which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden beam and left to hang until death – are a rare find, most likely because the victims would not often have received proper burial and, contrary to popular views, it was commonly carried out using rope.

But after prolonged analysis crucifixion was established as the only likely explanation, and the first details of the extraordinary find are reported on Wednesday in British Archaeology magazine.

This is kind of cool.  Creepy as hell, but cool, at least if you are into archeology.

Wrong Khalid Aedh al-Otaibi

The man arrested in Paris on suspicion of being one of Jamal Khashoggi's murder has been released.

He was A Khalid Aedh al-Otaibi, not THAT Khalid Aedh al-Otaibi.

So, we still have no signs of any sort of accountability for Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud and his Evil Minions^™.

Bummer.

And the Great Resignation Continues

In October, 4.2 million workers quit their jobs.

Obviously, part of this is the fact that people can find other jobs, but part of this is a change in attitude about people's relationship with their employer.

I'm wondering if this is just a blip, or a generational change.  

I'm hoping the latter, because American management has been sucking the marrow from their workers using the dregs of employee loyalty:

Some 4.2 million Americans quit their jobs in October as churn in the labor market continued to mark the economic recovery nearly two years into the pandemic, according to a report released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The number of people who left jobs for other opportunities in October made up 2.8 percent of the workforce, the BLS said in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. In contrast, the survey found 11 million job openings, only slightly less than the record from July.

A record 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in September. Workers took advantage of the surge in job openings across the country. August’s numbers, at 4.3 million, were also a record at the time. In contrast, in February 2020, before the big wave of pandemic-related layoffs began, 2.3 percent of workers quit their jobs — underscoring that the October data remains extremely elevated.

………

The high quits numbers are a reflection of what is perhaps the most worker-friendly climate in decades, as workers have the ability to sort through near-record levels of job postings, and many employers are hungry to hire. Many employers have moved to raise wages or offer generous signing bonuses to attract employees.

 More of this.  Labor needs to get more and capital less, said your Pinko blogger.

Tweet of the Day

This is epic:

This is wonderful… pic.twitter.com/M4vS5YN2uv

— Shane Matthew Neave (@shane25873) December 8, 2021

Recursive art. You gotta love it.

Pass the Popcorn

French police have arrested Khalid Alotaibi, who is allegedly one of the hit squad who murdered Jamal Khashoggi.  Representatives of the House of Saud are claiming that they have the wrong Khalid Alotaibi,

If this is in fact the correct Khalid Alotaibi, and he is facing extradition to a Turkey, one wonders just how loquacious he might become:

The French police arrested a Saudi man on Tuesday in connection with the assassination of the dissident writer Jamal Khashoggi, but French authorities warned that they were still verifying his identity.

A French judicial official confirmed that the man, identified as Khalid Alotaibi, 33, was arrested at the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport north of Paris on the basis of an international arrest warrant issued by Turkey, just before he was to board a flight for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

A man by that name is accused of being a member of the team that killed Mr. Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

The arrest could reignite the international intrigue caused by the killing at a time when Saudi Arabia and its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, are seeking to leave it behind and rebuild their international reputation.

A Saudi official, however, said the arrest was a case of mistaken identity.

“Media reports suggesting that a person who was implicated in the crime against Saudi citizen Jamal Khashoggi has been arrested in France are false,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity per Saudi rules. “Those convicted of the crime are currently serving their sentences in Saudi Arabia.”

And if you believe that, I have London Bridge to sell you in Arizona.

If the man arrested turns out to be the suspect, France could extradite him to Turkey to face charges there.

There are very few positive outcomes from a sentence that includes the phrase, "Turkish Prison". 

I really hope that this guys sings like the proverbial canary.

July? F%$#ing July?

If an obvious case of contempt of Congress cannot be heard by a court for 8 months, it is clear that contempt of Congress means nothing, and that the law is an ass.

Also, the judge is a Trump appointee, and the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division, and then as Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General under Trump, so we are getting more Federalist Society bullsh%$ from this one.

The claims made from Bannon's legal team that they will turn this into a circus have, unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, been accommodated:

A federal judge on Tuesday set a July trial date for Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump White House adviser indicted last month for refusing to testify before the Jan. 6 congressional committee.

In scheduling the trial for July 18, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols settled one early legal battle. But he deferred ruling on whether Bannon can make documents turned over by the Justice Department in his case public even if they are not relevant to his litigation — a move supported by news organizations citing First Amendment grounds.

At a combative hour-long hearing, Nichols refereed a case the former Trump aide has vowed to turn into a legal brawl, pledging after he was charged to make it “the misdemeanor from hell” for President Biden, his administration and top Democrats.

………

Prosecutors proposed a one-day trial in April to answer what they suggested was an open-and-shut question of whether Bannon, 67, was guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress — each punishable by at least 30 days and up to a year in jail if convicted — for refusing to testify and turn over documents after receiving a Sept. 23 congressional subpoena.

………

Bannon’s defense countered by asking Nichols for a 10-day trial in October — beginning just before next year’s midterm congressional elections. They predicted filing a blizzard of pretrial motions in July to dismiss the case and dig out internal communications from the House, White House and Justice Department to expose what they called a political vendetta behind the “unprecedented” decision to criminally charge an adviser to a former president who had invoked executive privilege.

While reluctant to say he was splitting the difference, Nichols called an October trial “too slow” and an April date unrealistic, noting that whether the defense arguments “have merit or not, they still have to be decided.”

“Seven or eight months is still a long time in the arc of a criminal case,” Nichols said, but appropriate given how many pandemic-backlogged trials and Jan. 6 Capitol riot defendants are ahead of Bannon on the judge’s calendar.

The trial should take only a day, the fact of the case are undisputed, but I expect Bannon's lawyers to slow walk this as much as possible, and I expect it to be appealed up to the Supreme court, unless, of course, Democrats lose the house in 2022 (probably, they ain't playing to win) in which case the whole matter gets dropped.

Not Enough Bullets

Well, now we know what he looks like

2nd mortgage website better.com's CEO just laid off 900 employees via a zoom call, and complained that, "The last time I did it, I cried."

It turns out that someone put out the Zoom video on social media, and people have noted that his entire career has been a miasma of dubious accounting and (at best) barely legal self dealing.

Why am I not surprised that they got much of their VC funding from Softbank?  Softbank's choices seem to over-represent companies that:

• Treat their employees like sh$%.
• Have highly dubious business practices.
  

For all the complaints people have about "Cancel Culture", I'd love to see his ass canceled all the way into 5 to 10 years in club fed:

Managing a business during the plague years has been tough for many, but one plucky CEO has found a clever and efficient way to execute such an unpleasant task: fire 900 workers at once in a Zoom meeting.

In an exercise completely devoid of sensitivity, Better.com CEO Vish Garg gathered around 900 of his staff onto a five-minute Zoom call during the month of Christmas to tell them their jobs were officially nonexistent.

"If you are on this call, you are part of the unlucky group being laid off. Your employment here is terminated, effective immediately," the CEO said.

His empathy-averse approach next saw Garg tell the newly unemployed that this was not the first time he had conducted such layoffs, and that it's not an easy job.

"The last time I did it, I cried," lamented The CEO Who Stole Christmas, as seen in the video below that swiftly leaked.

………

But Garg wasn't done. According to Twitter reports, he then went into another meeting with the survivors, where he complained that the terminated employees were dragging the company down.

Pro-business outlet Fortune magazine reported Garg still had enough steam that week to write anonymous blog posts in which he publicly accused the former employees of "stealing" from their colleagues and customers by being unproductive.

Seriously, does anyone do due diligence any more?

This guy has so many red flags that he looks like the banner of the USSR

Doesn’t This Make Their Patent Invalid?

One of the issues in patent waivers on vaccines is that it appears that the drug companies are claiming that even with a patent waiver, other companies lack the trade secrets to make the vaccines.

Here is the proverbial money quote:

The issue of trade secrets continues to be the sticking point preventing a consensus. Proponents of including trade secrets within the scope of any IP waiver argue that it will not be possible to replicate some of the vaccines on the basis of the information disclosed in the patents alone.

This appears to be a declaration that the patents are invalid, because one of the reasons that companies get patents is because they are supposed to provide sufficient information for, "A notional person skilled in the art to carry out that claimed invention."

It's part of the deal to get an exclusive license to the idea for the invention: if you want the subsidy of exclusivity, you must reveal your invention to the world.

The technical term is Sufficiency of Disclosure, and failure to do so means that the patent is invalid and unenforceable.

Why were they granted these patents in the first place if their applications were incomplete?

Moo!!!!

Soon to be former Congressman Devin Nunes will resign from Congress at the end of the year to helm Donald Trump's latest scam social media venture. 

Techdirt's headline is one for the ages:

Devin Nunes Retires From Congress To Spend More Time Banning Satirical Cows From Trump's New Social Network

Anybody up for an epic party? #DevinNunesIsAnIdiot pic.twitter.com/OgBqLvg3l7

— Devin Nunes’ cow 🐮 (@DevinCow) December 6, 2021

Moo!

In case you are wondering, in an amazing demonstration of the "Streisand Effect," Devin Nunes sued Twitter in an attempt to unmask parody accounts, "Devin Nunes Cow," and "Devin Nunes Cow's Mom," much to the amusement of everyone, except perhaps for Mr. Nunes.

In a bit of a Monday afternoon surprise, Rep. Devin Nunes has announced that he's retiring from Congress this month to become the CEO of Trump's new media company, Trump Media & Technology Group -- a company which apparently now has tons of money in the bank (even if from sketchy sources) but also is facing a newly revealed SEC investigation that might require someone who actually understands this stuff, rather than a very thin-skinned politician who sues people who criticize him.

Note to Devin: you can't sue the SEC for defamation.

There's all sorts of speculation about why Nunes would do this now. He's actually a pretty powerful Congressional representative, and in line to be in charge of some very powerful committees if, as is widely expected, the Republicans retake control over the House next year. But, he might also see the writing on the wall. Earlier in his career he was winning elections by a pretty wide margin, but the last two elections have actually been pretty tight. And, with California going through its redistricting process, he may have realized there was a high likelihood he'd lose next time around. Also, we know that watchdog groups have asked for an investigation into some of Nunes' activities.

And, then, of course, there are all the many, many frivolous lawsuits he's filed over the last few years, with the first one remaining the most notable and the most ridiculous: suing a satirical cow that made fun of Devin Nunes online. The fact that he'd sue a satirist for making fun of him does not suggest someone who believes very strongly in free speech.

Republicans are impervious to charges of hypocrisy, because much like the honey badger, they don't give a sh%$.

I look forward to his getting shafted and cheated out of his money by Donald Trump.

Washington Post OP/ED Editor Fred Hiatt Has Died

He died of cardiac arrest at the age of 66. 

My condolences to his family, but given the fact that he had a predilection for hiring conservative columnists whose "facts" were routinely proved wrong by the Washington Post newsroom, and his knee jerk for wars of choice that made John Sidney McCain III look like a peacenik, I would expect an improvement in the quality of punditry at the paper in the not too distance future.  (Admittedly an incredibly low bar)

Duncan Black named Hiatt the first runner up of his wankers of the decade in 2012, and I agree with that assessment.

Miami and New York City are in a World of Hurt

The Biden administration is going after the use of real estate to launder money, particularly the use of cash-only purchases of high end property.

Given that any independent evaluation of such purchases in New York and Miami would show that dodgy real estate purchases at the high end are firmly in the double digit percentages, tThere are indications that over 25% of all transactions in Miami Dade county were suspicious, this is going to knock the pins out from both markets.

As to the dirty money, I expect it to head to London: (Money laundering is a core skill set of the City of London)

The Biden administration has called for public comment on ways to reduce corruption in the US real estate market, as part of a broader effort to stamp out illicit financial activity.

The White House is paying particular attention to all-cash transactions in commercial and residential real estate, which senior officials warned were often conducted through shell companies and used to launder money.

It has proposed a nationwide expansion of reporting requirements that currently apply to all-cash purchases of residential properties valued at $300,000 or more in 12 metropolitan areas.

………

Ahead of crafting any regulation, the government is seeking input on which types of real estate should be subject to scrutiny, the dollar value threshold, the geographic scope of the rules and who should be subject to reporting requirements, among other queries.

Specific feedback will lead to more targeted reforms and will help to “minimise the burden” on the real estate industry, a senior administration official said.

Seriously, target them all.  You want to maximize the burden.

Money laundering is one of the core drivers for unaffordable housing in the US.

The high prices payed by corrupt actors flow down to the bottom of the real estate market.

Tekeli Li!!!! Tekeli Li!!!!

Data center class cabling is
a pay-me-now or pay-me-later proposition. Anybody who has spent time around a data center / comm center knows there are two choices for wiring. Ultra clean or this. When you involve 3 engineers and 2 hours to locate a single cable, neat is cheap. pic.twitter.com/rVYvSYwicV

— Bob (@trebuchet_guy) December 6, 2021

This is haunting.

Linkage

• Renault Assures Everyone Its Flying Car Is Totally Real (Jalopnik) A Renault 4 body on a quad copter.
  
• The Great Escape (The American Prospect) A decent perspective on the "Great Resignation".
  
• Clinton Foundation donations plummet 75% (Axios)No one feels the need to buy favor from future President Hillary Clinton, though this article studiously ignors this fact.
  
• Making Sense of Recipes for Amulets and Natural Magic, Kabbalistic Style (Marginalia Included) (The Recipes Project) Recipes I WON'T be trying out.
  
• How Old Is Zimbabwe’s Famed ‘Big Tree’? (Atlas Obscura) It's a Baobab tree, so not sure how Antoine de Saint-Exupéry would feel about it.
• How We Created the Most Detailed Map Ever of Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution (ProPublica) Great shoe leather journalism.
  
• Auto Workers Win Direct Democracy in Referendum (Labor Notes) As part of the consent decree from their corruption investigation, the UAW had to have a referendum on direct election of its officers.  Direct election won.
  
• Chris Cuomo Faced Sexual Misconduct Accusation Before CNN Fired Him (New York Times) A disgraceful coda to a disgrace.
  
• History TikToker Sparks Debate Saying Ancient Rome 'Didn't Exist' (Insider) The stupid, it burns.
  

 Have some food pr0n, specifically smoked brisket confit:

I Knew That This Would Happen Eventually

It looks like we are about to see the first SPAC driven implosion, and BuzzFeed will be taking it on the chin as a result.

A Special Purpose Acquisition Company is a publicly traded company with lots of investor cash, but no actual business that it conducts.  Instead, it will buy a private company, and so take that private company public without any of the due diligence and reports that would ordinarily be required by regulations.

Buzzfeed's take from its IPO has just been significantly downgraded as a result of many of the SPAC investors pulling their money out:

BuzzFeed Inc. will raise roughly $16 million from its public listing, after the blank-check company it is merging with suffered a wave of investor withdrawals, according to a securities filing and people familiar with the situation.

BuzzFeed in June announced plans to go public through a merger with 890 5th Avenue Partners Inc., a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Also called a blank-check company, a SPAC raises money and lists on a stock exchange with the sole intent of merging with a private firm to take it public.

About 94% of the $287.5 million the SPAC raised has been withdrawn by investors, leaving the digital-media outlet with the remainder, according to the securities filing.

BuzzFeed also raised $150 million in convertible note financing as part of the SPAC deal.

………

The reduced cash proceeds could put pressure on BuzzFeed’s balance sheet. The company has previously said the merger would put it in position to pursue acquisitions and bring in high-quality executives. The deal is financing the acquisition of Complex Networks Inc., a digital publisher that specializes in streetwear, music and pop culture. BuzzFeed agreed to acquire HuffPost last year. BuzzFeed projected robust revenue growth when it announced the SPAC deal, saying sales would rise about 25% annually through 2024.

………

SPAC mergers have exploded, in part because the company going public can make business projections that aren’t allowed in traditional initial public offerings.

Many other companies that have pursued SPAC deals have suffered high withdrawals in recent months amid a share-price slump for startups that go public this way.

Since investors in SPACs don’t know what type of deal the SPAC will do, they are allowed to withdraw their money before mergers are completed.

Since the end of July, the average SPAC has lost about 60% of its money before its deal goes through, up from roughly 25% in the first seven months of the year, data from SPAC Research show.

It should be noted that the SEC is already cracking down on this financial gimmick, because what is happening to Buzzfeed is the exception, not the rule, and the only ones who make money are the banksters.

I expect (hope?) to see some SPAC managers arrested for fraud in the not too distant future.

Bob Dole Dead at 98

The former Republican Senate leader has died of complications of lung cancer.

A lot of people have expressed some fondness for him, but I recall his total nastiness as President Fraud's VP pick in the 1976 Presidential campaign, and that view has not changed.

To quote Reason magazine, in the best headline that they ever wrote, (I know, low bar) I always saw him as, "Nixon without the charm."

And the EU Gets Serious About the Gig Economy

At the core of gig economy firms has been their willingness to use regulatory arbitrage (cheating) and labor arbitrage (wage theft) to generate revenue.

It appears that the EU is looking to shut those doors:

Companies that run food delivery and ride-hailing apps are concerned that the European Union will push for gig workers to be considered employees rather than self-employed under a forthcoming proposal aimed at bolstering their labor rights.

The draft European Commission proposal, seen by Bloomberg, would apply to any company that controls digital workers’ performance by determining pay, controlling communication with customers, or offering future work based on previous performance -- a move that would be sure to hit companies like Uber Technologies Inc., Deliveroo PLC and Bolt Technology OU if implemented.

These workers would have the “rebuttable presumption of employment,” according to the draft, which would mean there is an employment arrangement no matter how the contract is worded.

………

Platforms that rely on gig work are pushing back against the commission’s plans, which they argue risk putting food delivery workers and drivers out of work. They warn against stricter rules like those implemented by Spain, which prompted Deliveroo to pull out of the country and cost thousands of food delivery workers their jobs.

I'm not sure if it cost thousands of food delivery workers their jobs, or if it cost thousands of food delivery workers their Deliveroo jobs.

If the operation was profitable, as opposed to a VC funded loss leader nose under the tent, these people found equivalent, and probably BETTER jobs with other delivery services.

……….

One goal of the commission’s final proposal is to ensure workers are properly classified to proect their rights and allow them to access social security schemes, a commission spokesperson said, without commenting specifically on the draft proposal. The EU is also pushing for more transparency over the apps’ algorithms, as well as data on the apps and their workers.

Good.  More openness regarding the algorithms and the employment status of their workers is a good thing.

If these companies cannot exist under those conditions, let me quote P.C. Hodgell, "That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be."

 

Bummer of a Birthmark, Fredo

In news that should surprise no one, Chris "Fredo" Cuomo has been fired by CNN.

This was the right choice.  He weaponized his position as a CNN anchor to aid his brother's defense of sexual harassment charges.

There are a lot of ways that you can support your family members without making a full frontal attack on the integrity of journalism, and Cuomo did not choose any of these:

Just four days after announcing that he would be indefinitely suspended from the network, CNN has terminated its star host Chris Cuomo following an investigation conducted by a law firm that it said had turned up “additional information” about him.

Cuomo was suspended by CNN on Tuesday, a day after documents released by New York Attorney General Letitia James showed that he was more extensively involved in helping to defend his brother, then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), against allegations of sexual misconduct than he had acknowledged — either publicly or to CNN management.

………

In a statement on Saturday evening, the network said that it had “retained a respected law firm” to review Cuomo’s involvement in his brother’s crisis-management efforts and that “in the process of that review, additional information has come to light. Despite the termination, we will investigate as appropriate.”

The network did not say what that “additional information” related to.

This is the money quote from the article:

Most significantly for his role at CNN, the documents showed that Cuomo leaned on his journalistic sources to glean information about forthcoming articles that could negatively impact his brother and his futile fight to keep the governorship.

“When asked, I would reach out to sources, other journalists, to see if they had heard of anybody else coming out,” he told investigators, referring to the potential for additional women to accuse his brother of misconduct.

In particular, Cuomo called around to find out about the timing for an article published by New Yorker writer Ronan Farrow, though he didn’t call Farrow directly. When asked by investigators whether he had informed CNN management about his outreach regarding the Farrow article, he acknowledged he had not, arguing that it was “business-as-usual” for a journalist to check in with peers about impending articles.

In one message released as part of the investigation, Cuomo informed a top aide to the governor, Melissa DeRosa, to that he had a “lead” about a woman who had accused his brother of improper behavior at a wedding.

He abused his position to benefit his brother.  His firing is completely justified.

I hope that the staff on his show keeps their jobs though.

They Didn't Do This Already?

It appears that when negotiating settlements with corporate wrong-doers, the Department of Justice has not considered earlier law breaking by the firms.

So a company negotiating on its first offense, and one that is negotiating for its twenty first offense, would be treated exactly the same.

This now eschewed policy seems to be to be a recipe to encourage bad actors to keep acting badly:

Companies looking to resolve with the Justice Department criminal violations such as bribery should prepare for a very thorough review of their prior sins, officials said Wednesday.

Justice Department leadership has said the agency will step up enforcement against white-collar criminals, including by taking a harder look at corporations with long histories of prior offenses.

Officials on Wednesday defended the new stance on corporate recidivism, which drew skepticism from white-collar defense lawyers gathered at an annual conference on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The law, which prohibits the payment of bribes to foreign public officials, is one of the Justice Department’s highest-profile white-collar enforcement programs, garnering billions of dollars in corporate fines in recent years.

………

The pushback stems from an October announcement by the Justice Department’s second-in-command, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who said that prosecutors would begin considering all prior wrongdoing by corporations when deciding how to resolve a case, not just misconduct similar to the issue at question in the latest probe.

Speaking during a separate session on Wednesday, Joseph Warin, chair of law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP’s litigation department in Washington, D.C., said the Justice Department was holding companies to too high of a standard.

“These are big organizations and try as you might to get it right, there’s gonna be misconduct. That’s what’s troubling us,” he said. “One of our clients has three million employees…that’s bigger than every city but eight or nine in the United States.”

“If I plead guilty to an environmental crime, which often are strict liability [crimes], and then we have a kickback scheme in a whole different business unit, why does that lap over into that consideration?” he asked.

If I drive drunk, should the fact that I burgled 15 houses be considered?  

Of course it does.

………

The scrutiny of corporate repeat offenders is just one of the changes the Justice Department is making to its white-collar crime enforcement program. Ms. Monaco said in October that the department had convened a corporate crime advisory group to consider other changes.

I would consider adding a formal admission of guilt to any settlements, and holding senior executives responsible for those actions.

It's patently clear that corporations have been allowed to engage in criminal acts without serious consequences, and given that the current models of corporate government make corporations indistinguishable from psychopaths, it means that corporations have been encouraged to engage in criminal acts.

Damn, This is F%$#ed Up and Sh%$

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of Ethan Crumbly, who murdered 4 people at Oxford High School in Michigan for involuntary manslaughter.

It appears that they knew of their son's intentions, and refused to take any action, or alert the authorities

The search for James and Jennifer Crumbley has been taken over by the U.S. Marshals Service, authorities announced Friday evening.

Working with the Oakland County Sheriff's Office, marshals were continuing an hours-long manhunt for the parents of Ethan Crumbley, the 15-year-old student who is accused of the Oxford High School shooting that killed four fellow students and injured seven others. The search for the couple started hours after charges were pressed against them in connection with the incident.

Late Friday, the U.S. Marshals issued "Wanted" posters and offered rewards of up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of either Crumbley.

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald announced four involuntary manslaughter charges each for the Crumbleys earlier Friday and they were expected to be arraigned by video Friday in 52-3 District Court in Rochester Hills. They did not show.

BTW, I don't mean just that they were somehow willfully blind to Ethan's status, I mean that they advised him to cover up, knew specifically that he intended to "go postal" that day:

As news broke Tuesday of a mass shooting at Oxford High School, the mother of the teen suspect sent her son a text message.

"Ethan, don't do it," Jennifer Crumbley wrote.

This and other new, disturbing allegations emerged Friday about the deadly rampage, as charges were leveled against the teen's parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley. Their son, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, is accused of gunning down his classmates at Oxford High School on Tuesday.

The parents are now each facing four counts of involuntary manslaughter. The crime is a 15-year felony, officials said.

………


Officials have said the couple's son, Ethan Crumbley, brought a gun to school on Tuesday and methodically fired at fleeing students. Four were killed and seven others injured, including a teacher.

………


[Oakland County Prosecutor Karen] McDonald said James Crumbley purchased the 9mm Sig Sauer SP 2022 used in the shooting at a gun store in Oxford on Nov. 26. She said a store employee confirmed Ethan Crumbley was with his father at the time.

She said social media posts by the teen that day show the handgun along with the caption: "Just got my new beauty today." The next day, McDonald said, one of Jennifer Crumbley's social media posts read: "Mom and son day testing out his new Christmas present."

The day before the shooting, a teacher at the high school observed the teen searching ammunition on his cellphone during class and she reported it to school officials, officials said. Jennifer Crumbley was contacted through voicemail and email about her son's search, but school officials received no response from either parent, McDonald said.

McDonald said Jennifer Crumbley exchanged text messages with her son about the incident that day, writing: "LOL, I'm not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught."

So the manslaughter charges do not appear to be prosecutorial overreach. 

Welcome to Donald Trump's America.  (Both parents are major MAGAts.)

Update: They have now been taken into custody.

 

The Unders "Win"

In November, the non-farm payroll increased by only 210,000, less half than what was forecast.

Unemployment fell to 4.2%, but I am inclined to think that this is an artifact of the fact that more people no longer searching for jobs, which means that they are no longer counted:

Hiring slowed last month amid Covid-19 uncertainties, but people returned to the labor force in droves in a sign the tight labor market could be loosening.

The U.S. economy added a seasonally adjusted 210,000 jobs in November—the smallest gain since last December and a marked slowdown from an upwardly revised increase of 546,000 in October, the Labor Department said Friday. Almost 600,000 people joined the workforce, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.2% from 4.6%.

The payrolls number, which comes from a Labor Department survey of businesses, offered an unusually large divergence from data from a separate survey of households also released Friday that showed strong progress in employment.

That survey showed that 1.1 million more people were employed in November than in October. The labor-force participation rate rose to 61.8%, the highest level since March 2020 at the start of the pandemic.

I rather expect the number to go up when the data is updated in about a month, but not up to the 573,000 forecast earlier.

Also, there appears to be some real problem with the statistics, as evidenced by the divergence between business and household surveys.

What can I say but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯?

Past Its Sell By Date

It appears that people are sick and tired of the collection of anti-Trump grifters known as the Lincoln Project.

After years of big paydays, sexual harassment scandals, incredibly stupid stunts, and a negative impact on the races that they have been involved in, it appears that people have started to notice they are about as useless as tits on a bull:

It was the darling of the resistance for savagely attacking Donald Trump. But now, everyone keeps rolling their eyes at the Lincoln Project and fears they may be clearing a path for the former president’s reemergence.

The outside political organization headed by disaffected Republicans and other top Democratic operatives has experienced caustic blowups, internal disputes over beach house-level paydays, and disturbing allegations involving a disgraced co-founder. A recent campaign stunt evoking the march on Charlottesville to close the Virginia governor’s race earned them near universal scorn. And one of the organization's most recognized members is facing blowback for rooting for another Trump nomination on grounds that he’d be the easiest Republican to beat in the general election.

“Read the room,” said Zac Petkanas, a Democratic strategist and former senior aide to Hillary Clinton. “They sound like me in 2016.”

………

But a year after delighting liberals with their insistence on bringing guns to a gunfight, operatives across the spectrum now say the group is, at best, ineffective and prodigal, at worst, counterproductive. In particular, fellow never-Trumpers and moderate Republicans have recoiled at Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson’s recent encouragement of a Trump presidential run in 2024.

………

The post-Trump presidency has been a more difficult era. The group was rocked by the allegations that co-founder John Weaver sexually harassed young men, and finger-pointing over the fallout has lasted for months. A law firm, Paul Hastings LLP, hired by the Lincoln Project found “no evidence that anyone at The Lincoln Project was aware of any inappropriate communications with any underage individuals at any time prior to the publication of those news reports.” Critics have questioned the independence of that inquiry.  

I'm surprised that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) has finally to wise up to these incompetent corrupt ratf%$#s.  There are so many incompetent corrupt ratf%$#s in the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) who keep failing up.

Was Benjamin Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) Involved?

It's been known for years that the Israeli hacking firm NSO has been hacking good people on behalf of some profoundly bad actors for years, which makes me wonder why Israel has finally moved to rein in the company.

Certainly, recent revelations have made the firm toxic:

Well, it's been yet another hilarious couple of days for Israel's NSO Group. I mean, not so much for NSO, which is currently sitting at the center of a raging dumpster fire of its own creation. But just because NSO isn't laughing doesn't mean it's not funny.

For years, it sold spyware to whoever wanted it. Those customers used the powerful phone exploits to target journalists, activists, dissidents, and high-ranking government officials.

Some of this had already been exposed by security researchers like Canada's Citizen Lab before the bombshell dropped: a list of 50,000 alleged NSO malware targets. NSO denied having anything to do with the list, but report after report tied its spyware to abuse by government agencies and quasi-political leaders like kings and princes in the United Arab Emirates, one who used the malware to hack the phone of his ex-wife and her lawyer.

France's President, Emmanuel Macron, was one of those on the target list obtained by journalists. This prompted the President (and other French government officials) to acquire new phones. Because of this, the French government has decided it won't be requiring the services of NSO in the future.

………

That takes one customer off the list for NSO. The Israeli government -- after years of ignoring NSO's sales to human rights violators -- has further limited the company's market base, removing nearly two-thirds of the countries on its approved purchasers list.

………

The same can be said for the Israeli government, which has been aware of these troubling allegations about NSO for just as long, but instead chose to urge on sales to human rights abusers, rather than discourage NSO from pursuing business relationships with governments that were always going to end up abusing the powerful malware. Due to this close relationship, NSO's problems are also Israel's problems, which is likely why even the Israeli government is trying to distance itself from the country's most toxic asset.

My theory is that they kept the heat off during the Benjamin Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) era because there was some sort quid pro quo between him and the spyware firm, which led to Israeli authorities looking the other way.

I have no evidence at all to support this, but it smells right to me.

Today in Awesome

Some people manning the cash registers are getting anti-work messages on their register tapes because people or persons hacked into those devices:

Someone or multiple people are blasting “antiwork” manifestos to receipt printers at businesses around the world, according to people who claim to have seen the printed manifesto, dozens of posts on Reddit, and a cybersecurity company that is analyzing network traffic to insecure printers.

“ARE YOU BEING UNDERPAID?” one of the manifestos read, according to several screenshots posted on Reddit and Twitter. “You have a protected LEGAL RIGHT to discuss your pay with your coworkers. [...] POVERTY WAGES only exist because people are ‘willing’ to work for them.”

On Tuesday, a Reddit user wrote in a post that the manifesto was getting randomly printed at his job.

“Which one of you is doing this because it’s hilarious,” the user wrote. “Me and my co-workers need answers.”

There are countless similar posts on the r/Antiwork subreddit, some of which have this same manifesto. Others have different messages with the same sentiment of worker empowerment. All of them suggest that the reader of the message check out the r/antiwork subreddit, which has exploded in size and influence over the last several months as workers begin to demand their worth and organize against abusive workplaces. 

“Stop using my receipt printer dudes. Although hilarious, I’d like it to stop,” one Reddit post read. Another one read: “I’ve received about 4 different messages at random times over the last week at work. Very inspiring, encouraging, and fun to see my bosses face when he has to rip them off the printer.”

If I did Reddit, I'd be on  r/antiwork.

This is funny as hell.

It's Jobless Thursday

Initial unemployment claims rose to 220,000 last week. 

The prior week's historically numbers was likely a statistical aberration resulting from seasonal adjustments.

The number of people filing new claims for unemployment benefits remained near pandemic lows last week as employers continued to hold on to their workers in a tight labor market.

Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, totaled a seasonally adjusted 222,000 for the week that ended Nov. 27, the Labor Department said Thursday. The data followed the prior week’s report showing the lowest number of new claims in 52 years.

Seasonal adjustments contributed to last week’s low number, with the sharp decline likely overstating the amount of progress in the labor market’s return to pre-pandemic levels.

This week’s report lowered the four-week moving average, which smooths out statistical volatility, to 238,750. The four-week average has continued to drift downward since September, after a brief uptick related to the surge from the Delta variant of Covid-19.

………

The steady decline in claims this fall reflects employers eagerly trying to hire and retain workers who are quitting jobs at a record rate. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal estimate that the November’s jobs report, to be released Friday, will show that the U.S. economy created 573,000 jobs last month, following a gain of more than 500,000 in October.

As always, I'll take the under.

………

The overall U.S. employment total remains nearly 3% lower than before the pandemic, with roughly four million fewer workers. That is due to a combination of older workers retiring and prime-age workers only slowly returning to the labor force because of pandemic-related issues such as inadequate availability of child-care services and fear of infection, economists say.

There are still about 4 million missing workers, and some of them are never coming back,

The path forward is unclear to me.

Quote of the Day

When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks. Gangsters. Now you're a hacktivist. Which I would probably be if I was 20. Shuttin' down MasterCard. But there's no look to that lifestyle! Besides just wearing a bad outfit with bad posture. Has WikiLeaks caused a look? No! I'm mad about that. If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that. Get a look! I'm not judging what they do; I hope they don't shut me down.

—John Waters in the Wall Street Journal in 2012

Baltimore has given us Old Bay Seasoning and John Waters, which makes it the greatest city in history.

BTW, this is the most epic example of an older guy extolling the virtues of young activists while criticizing their fashion sense that I have ever seen.

Roe v. Wade is Toast

That's my assessment of where the Supreme Court is on this issue.  They are either going to gut the protections of Roe, or they will completely reverse, in which case, birth control will become illegal in a number of states.

This could have fixed this years ago with Congressional legislation, but cowardice and careerism won out over the public good.

Chris Cuomo and Pete Rose

Following revelations regarding how he coordinated aggressively with his brother former New York Governor Andrew "Rat-Faced Andy" Cuomo, Christopher "Fredo" Cuomo has been suspended.

He should be fired, and he should never get another job in journalism, for the same reason that Pete Rose was banned for life by Major League Baseball, and will never be in the Hall of Fame.

It's not Cuomo's violation of journalistic ethics that that demands his permanent exile from journalism, it's the fact that he used his position and his clout as a journalist big wig to aid in this effort to help his brother, which makes this an offense against journalism.

Pete Rose, of course, was banned for betting on Baseball, but he was banned FOR LIFE because as manager of the Cincinnati Reds, he called around to other managers to get information about their games that day so that he could make safe bets to offset his other (non-baseball) bets.

Much in the same way that Rose weaponized Baseball to launch an assault on the integrity of Baseball, Cuomo weaponized journalism to launch on the integrity of journalism.

He needs to go:

The star CNN anchor Chris Cuomo was suspended indefinitely by the network on Tuesday after new details emerged about his efforts to assist his brother, Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor of New York, as he faced a cascade of sexual harassment accusations that led to the governor’s resignation.

Chris Cuomo had previously apologized for advising Andrew Cuomo’s senior political aides — a breach of traditional barriers between journalists and lawmakers — but thousands of pages of evidence released on Monday by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, revealed that the anchor’s role had been more intimate and involved than previously known.

“The documents, which we were not privy to before their public release, raise serious questions,” CNN said in a statement on Tuesday. “When Chris admitted to us that he had offered advice to his brother’s staff, he broke our rules and we acknowledged that publicly. But we also appreciated the unique position he was in and understood his need to put family first and job second. However, these documents point to a greater level of involvement in his brother’s efforts than we previously knew.

“As a result, we have suspended Chris indefinitely, pending further evaluation,” the network added.

………

In scores of emails and text messages between Mr. Cuomo his brother’s inner circle, he repeatedly offered advice — “Please let me help with the prep,” he texted a senior aide in March — and made efforts to track down the status of pending articles at other news outlets, including Politico and The New Yorker, that concerned allegations of sexual harassment by Andrew Cuomo.

At one point, the governor’s former top aide, Melissa DeRosa, asked the anchor if he could check his “sources” about a rumor that Politico was working on an article that included additional accusations. “On it,” Chris Cuomo responded.

Ms. James’s report also included a text from Mr. Cuomo to Ms. DeRosa sent a few days after a woman, Anna Ruch, told The New York Times that Andrew Cuomo had made an unwanted advance toward her at a wedding in New York City. “I have a lead on the wedding girl,” the anchor wrote in the text.

………

According to the documents, Ms. DeRosa texted Mr. Cuomo in mid-March to ask if he knew the status of an article about his brother by the New Yorker investigative reporter Ronan Farrow. “Story not ready for tomorrow,” Mr. Cuomo replied. Asked by investigators, he said he had obtained that information by reaching out to a “fellow journalist who works with Ronan a lot.”

He needs to be done as a journalist, just like Janet Cook, Jayson Blair, and (unfortunately to a slightly lesser degree) Stephen Glass were.

BTW, Atrios probably had the best snark about the whole sordid affair:

And the point here isn't simply, "oh, well, family is family, you can sympathize a bit," it's "since you can sympathize a bit, it seems a bit harsh for the man to be suspended from his job." This is "there should be no consequences for people who are, in many ways, qwhite like me."

(emphasis mine) 

Atrios is commenting on all the "elite" journalists who are wring their hands against the "harsh" actions taken by CNN against Cuomo. (In this case, NY Times lifer Clyde Haberman)

There is a belief among the elites in journalism, and in many other fields, that accountability is only for the little people.

Headline of the Day

Otter-ly Adorable Climate Change Warriors May Save California's Coastal Ecosystems

—Atlas Obscura

It's an interesting article about how otters almost insatiable appetite for sea urchins, which have been laying waste to California kelp forests.

Also, cute otters!