Month: January 2011

Delay Sentenced to 3 Years in the Slam

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Schadenfreude, sweet schadenfreude!

And 10 years probation on money laundering and conspiracy charges.

The only cloud to this silver lining is that his active work on behalf of human traffickers in the Northern Marianas, creating what was for all intents and purpose a consequence free zone for slavery and forced prostitution, is not a part of this sentence.

I may be a bad person for doing a happy dance about this, but then I am a bad person, because I am doing a happy dance.

The desire for retributive justice is something that is a nearly universal human characteristic, and it is only through conquering our baser animal instincts through the application of higher order thought, and empathy, but I guess that I am simply not so evolved.

Needless to say, the fact that I am unevolved will come as no surprise to those who know me well.

Obama Wants to Nuke the Whales

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MAnother Wikileaks gem, it appears that the Obama administration was preparing to go after the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s tax status to placate the Japanese and their whaling obsession:

Japan and the US proposed to investigate and act against international anti-whaling activists from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as part of a political deal to reduce whaling in Antarctic waters.

Four confidential cables from the US embassy in Tokyo and the state department in Washington, released by WikiLeaks, show US and Japanese diplomats secretly negotiating a compromise agreement ahead of a key meeting last year of the International Whaling Commission, the body that regulates international whaling.

The American proposal would have forced Japan to reduce the number of whales that Japan killed each year in the Antarctic whale sanctuary in return for the legal right to hunt other whales off its own coasts. In addition, the US proposed to ratify laws that would “guarantee security in the seas” – a reference to acting against groups such as Sea Shepherd that have tried to physically stop whaling.

The US proposal was eventually shot down by Britain and the EU in June 2010, but the cables show that the Sea Shepherd group had become a political embarrassment to Japan after stopping its whaling fleet reaching its annual quota of whale killed for several years.

It simply buggers my mind. What next? Are they going to be biting the heads off of kittens?

Seriously, for all the low expectations that I had for Barack Obama, I didn’t expect that they would stun and amaze the way that Bush and His Evil Minions™ did on a regular basis, but here I am, staring at the screen with an expression on my face resembling that of a cow that just stepped on its own udder.

<Facepalm>

I Knew This in 1968

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It has been announced a new study has shown that male circumcision reduces cervical cancer risks for their partners:

Circumcising men can reduce cervical cancer risk in women, a new study shows.

The study involved more than 1,200 HIV-negative, heterosexual couples living in Uganda, where circumcision of male adults is increasingly encouraged as a means of slowing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Half the men received the surgical procedure at enrollment and the other half were scheduled for circumcision after their participation in the trial ended.

Two years later, the female partners of the men who remained uncircumcised were more likely than the partners of the circumcised men to be infected with human papilloma virus (HPV) types most often associated with cervical cancer.

When I was about 6 years old, I remember discussing the correlation between uncircumcised partners and cervical cancer, though that was prior to the understanding of the correlation between HPV and cervical cancer.

This has been known for something like 100 years.

Jenny McCarthy Can Kiss My Shiny Metal Ass*

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Steven Wakefield’s now discredited paper in Lancet claiming a tie between autism and vaccines is now more than just a zealot doing bad science.

Brian Deer of the British Medical Journal reveals that it was outright fraud:

In the first part of a special BMJ series, Brian Deer exposes the bogus data behind claims that launched a worldwide scare over the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, and reveals how the appearance of a link with autism was manufactured at a London medical school.

………

Unknown to Mr 11, Wakefield was working on a lawsuit, for which he sought a bowel-brain “syndrome” as its centrepiece. Claiming an undisclosed £150 (€180, $230) an hour through a Norfolk solicitor named Richard Barr, he had been confidentially 8 put on the payroll two years before the paper was published, eventually grossing him £435 643, plus expenses.

(emphasis original)

Now the question is when he goes to jail for fraud, though if I were the prosecutor, I would add felony murder to the bill of indictment as well.

*Jenny McCarthy is a big antivaxxer.

If Jews Run the Media,They Are Not Competent

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Specifically, they report the story of an Agunah (Literally “Chained Woman) and the resulting protests directed at the ex-husband of a woman who refuses to grant here a religious divorce, a “Get”, which under Jewish law means that they are still married:

This should have been a good New Year’s for Aharon Friedman, a 34-year-old tax counsel for the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee. He spent time with his 3-year-old daughter, and could have been thinking about the influence he will have starting Wednesday, when his boss, Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, becomes chairman of the powerful tax-writing committee.

Instead, Mr. Friedman, an Orthodox Jew, finds himself scrutinized in the Jewish press, condemned by important rabbis, and attacked in a YouTube video showing about 200 people protesting outside his Silver Spring, Md., apartment on Dec. 19. They were angered by Mr. Friedman’s refusal to give his wife, Tamar Epstein, 27, a Jewish decree of divorce, known as a get.

What a surprise, a Republican is being a selfish asshole.

While I do understand that he has issues with the custody arrangement, using the get as a way to extract concessions is beneath contempt.

That being said, I am aware of a number of these cases, and while I strongly object to these enforcement of these medieval (actually pre-medieval) religious statutes, I am aware that this happens dozens, if not hundreds of times a year.

What got to me was this paragraph:

Mr. Friedman and Ms. Epstein have been civilly divorced since April and share custody of their daughter, but they are still married according to Jewish law. And without a get neither he nor Ms. Epstein can remarry within the faith. She is considered an agunah, or chained woman.

(emphasis mine)

If the Jews run the New York Times, they are incompetent, because it misses two points:

  • First, if Mr. Reiedman gets civilly remarried, and has a child, a likely thing for a 34 year old Orthodox Jew, the child will not be a mamzer, who would be forbidden from marrying other Jews, while any child that Ms. Epstein has will be a mamzer. (3500 year old religious law is such a joy, huh?)
  • Second, it is possible for Mr. Friedman to get a rabbinical ruling allowing him to take a 2nd wife, while Ms. Epstein cannot.
    • This has been done in some cases where a wife is in a persistent vegetative state, or completely delusional, since a get cannot be granted under those conditions, it requires the knowing receipt of the get by the wife, so permission for a “2nd” wife has been given with the the “1st” wife continue to be financially supported by the husband.
    • In this case though, a rabbi approving a 2nd marriage is basically zero.

This makes the conditions of the Agunah unjust and unfair to the woman in the conflict. It is not, nor has it ever been, an equal imposition on both spouses, and a small amount of research should have made this unfortunate state of affairs quite clear.

Clearly, I need to contact the local president of my ZOG chapter and pass my complaint up the chain.

J-20 Video Pr0n

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What is with those huge landing gear doors?

Yep, someone got some (remarkably high quality) video of the J-20 doing taxi tests.

As an aside, the recent outpouring of “surreptitiously” snapped photos and videos of the new Chinese fighter prototype indicate that this is something that they really want us to see.

Well, If I Had Been Ignored for 2 Years, I’d Quit Too

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Paul Volcker, arguably the person in the administration most strongly for enhanced regulation of financial institution, is leaving the administration:

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker plans to leave his role as head of a panel of experts advising President Barack Obama on the economy, sources familiar with the decision said on Wednesday.

The departure of Volcker, 83, from the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board is among a series of changes Obama is planning to announce soon.

The decision to leave the board was Volcker’s.…

Seeing as how he was generally ignored, and his initiatives, like the Volcker rule were, at best, used as political talking points, it’s no wonder.

If I weren’t someone with my tongue so far up the banks’ rectums that I tasted tonsils (see Summers, Lawrence and Geithner, Timothy), and I were an economic adviser to the Obama administration, I wouldn’t have made it past 2 months, much less 2 years.

It’s Jobless Thursday

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Initial unemployment claims rose by 18,000 to 409,000 last week, though the 4-week moving average fell by 3,500 to 410,750, with continuing claims fell by 47K to 4.103 million, and I can’t seem to find the data on extended claims.

In related, and rather surprising news, payroll processor ADP is predicting that private employment increased by 297,000 last month.(!)

If true, this is good news, though I’ll wait for the official data tomorrow.

Facebook to Buy Time-Warner in a Multibillion Dollar Stock Deal

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Not really, but the obvious parallels between the dot-bomb mania of the late 1990s, and this bit of Vampire Squid* inspired pump and dump, Goldman Sachs is investing money in, and creating a (completely fictitious) market cap for Facebook of around $50 billion.

Karl Denninger says that it’s a scam, and that whoever invests in after Goldman will be left holding the bag, while William Cohan at the New York Times runs the numbers:

Despite the high price of its investment, Goldman sees in Facebook a business bonanza, a nearly perfect nugget of investment-banking opportunities. First, Goldman’s cost of capital is close to zero — as a bank holding company, it can borrow from the Federal Reserve at negligible interest rates — so any capital gain it makes on its venture in Facebook will be sheer profit. Second, Goldman has almost certainly locked up the role of lead manager of the inevitable Facebook initial public offering.

Fees for underwriting public offerings are generally about 7 percent of the value of the stock sold. Facebook could easily sell $2 billion of stock or more, generating fees to Goldman and the other underwriters of at least $140 million. The other benefit for Goldman in leading the public offering — aside from major bragging rights — is that it can use its marketing, sales and distribution muscle to make sure the value of Facebook at the time of the offering exceeds the $50 billion valuation at which Goldman invested.

Goldman has also won from Facebook the right to offer an additional $1.5 billion of the company’s stock to its private-wealth clients. According to The Times, Goldman will be creating a “special purpose vehicle” to sell the stock to its wealthy clients and then will charge them a 4 percent initial fee plus 5 percent of any profits. While on paper it seems that these high rollers would be foolish to invest in Facebook at such a lofty valuation, they will still most certainly feel increased loyalty to Goldman for making such an exclusive opportunity available to them. On top of it all, there is the increased likelihood that Goldman will get to manage a good portion of the $12 billion fortune belonging to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, for yet more fees.

Seriously, we bailed out those contemptible f%$#s for this?!?!?

By way of perspective, DC at the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS noted:

  • Facebook is worth more than, Starbucks ($25 billion market cap)
  • Facebook is worth more than United, American, Delta, JetBlue, and Southwest Airlines combined (About $32 billion combined market cap)
  • Facebook is worth about 25 times more than the New York Times Company
  • Facebook is bigger than Target’s market cap ($43 billion)
  • Facebook is worth about twice as much as Dell ($26.5 billion market cap)
  • Facebook is worth more than Viacom, which owns MTV and Comedy Central ($28 billion market cap)
  • Facebook is worth more than Campbell Soup and General Mills combined ($34.4 billion combined market cap)
  • Facebook is worth more than Boeing ($48.7 billion market cap)
  • Facebook is worth five times more than Netflix, the stock darling of 2010 ($9.3 billion market cap)
  • Facebook is worth more than Nokia, the world’s biggest cellphone company ($39.5 billion market cap)

All this for a company that doesn’t really sell anything, and has a revenue stream that is rather opaque.

Facebook is still privately held, which implies that they really don’t want people to look under the hood until someone really stupid hands them a lot of money.

*Alas, I cannot claim credit for the bon mot describing Goldman Sachs as a, “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” This was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.

When Does Antonin Scalia Start to Wear a White Robe?

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He is now saying that absent legislation, there is a private right to discriminate against women:

The equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not protect against discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation, according to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

In a newly published interview in the legal magazine California Lawyer, Scalia said that while the Constitution does not disallow the passage of legislation outlawing such discrimination, it doesn’t itself outlaw that behavior:

Seriously, when then Assistant Attorney General wrote that William Renquist wrote that “A judge who is a “strict constructionist” in constitutional matters will generally not be favorably inclined toward claims of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs,” he wasn’t kidding.

A strict constructionist is a judge who prejudges cases to benefit the powerful and corrupt.  They are results based jurists, and the depressing thing is that Scalia is arguably only the 4th most insane member of the court right now, after Roberts, Alito, and Thomas.

1:40:24 Well Spent

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First, an admission: While I saw the first 3 Star Wars movies, that is episode 4, 5, and 6, I only saw Revenge of the Sith among the prequels.

I was visiting my ‘Rents in 2007, and as a family thing, we all watched episode 3, and my reaction was a big Meh.

I actually found it a bit more disappointing than Return of the Jedi, which was surprising, since I’ve seen about 15 minutes of The Phantom Menace in dribs and drabs, the dialogue drives me to change the channel after about 45 seconds.

In any case it gives me the opportunity to review the review of the movie on Red Letter Media, and “Harvey Plinkett” is a genius.

There is some profoundly disturbing humor in the review (3 parts, at link), but this is a cogent and truly intelligent review of The Revenge of the Sith as cinema, and arguably packs more in it’s a bit more than an hour and a half than your average college level film course.

This is someone who loves cinema, and can use Citizen Kane (Which he admits is unfair) as well as the first three Star Wars Movies (I call that fair) to show just how poorly done and pedestrian  SW III is.

It is entertaining, even though it is over half as long as the movie being critiques (100 min vs 140 min).

It’s delivered in a sort of Ben Steinesque creepy monotone, but that contributes to the enjoyment.

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Have you heard the latest thing that conservatives are seizing on to accuse Barack Obama of being a godless secret-Muslim socialist Negro?

Well it appears that Barack Obama’s speaking positively of the Latin phrase E Pluribus Unum, on the seal of the United States since 1792, has given them a new reason to be shrill:

The culture wars have a new battlefield, thanks to a letter this week from the Congressional Prayer Caucus to President Obama. To the religious right, the motto “E Pluribus Unum,” which has been part of the fabric of American democracy since it was emblazened on the national seal in 1782, has become a controversial, anti-God statement. See the Congressional Prayer Caucus letter:

http://forbes.house.gov/UploadedFiles/National_Motto_Letter_to_President.pdf

Obama referred, innocently enough, to the motto “E Pluribus Unum” in a recent speech, pointing out that the Latin phrase, first adopted by the Founders, means “out of many, one.” This beautiful motto perfectly captures the spirit of pluralistic America, where one country is formed out of many states, and where one people – the American people – are formed from a melting pot of immigrants from all around the world.

Out of many, one. Indeed, the wisdom of the Founders, in enscribing “E Pluribus Unum” on the Great Seal of the United States, can’t be questioned.

Or maybe it can. As the above letter shows, to Rep. Michele Bachmann and others on the Congressional Prayer Caucus, Obama’s reference to “E Pluribus Unum” borders on unpatriotic. They say he should instead be promoting the motto “In God We Trust,” which was adopted as the official national motto at the urging of religious conservatives in 1956, during the McCarthy era and at the height of the Cold War Red Scare.

Well, I get why they object to the phrase E Pluribus Unum. First, it’s another hammer to use against a figure that they clearly see as an uppity (*insert epithet here*), and second, the basic idea of E Pluribus Unum is the acceptance is that people who are different from them, either in philosophy, theology, or pigmentation, are legitimate Americans, which fulfills them with horror.

They are really deeply repulsive human beings.

Gee, You Think?!?!?!

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After it was revealed that something like ½ of the top flight academic economists have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wall Street, and then enthusiastically endorsed the policies of deregulation and “financial innovation” which lined their patron’s pockets, it now appears that the members of the American Economic Association are considering adopting a code of ethics.

Let’s see

  • Stanford Business Prof. Darrell Duffie wrote a book on Wall Street regulations without mentioning that is on the board of Moody’s
  • Laura D’Andrea Tyson, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, business school UC Berkeley, is a director of Morgan Stanley.
  • Richard H. Clarida, Columbia: executive vice president at the bond behemoth Pimco
  • R. Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School: director of MetLife
  • Frederic S. Mishkin, Columbia Business School: high priced consultant to Wall Street Firms
  • Martin S. Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University: former board member, American International Group
  • Larry Summers
  • Larry Summers
  • Larry Summers
  • Larry Summers

Why would anyone think that economists might need a small dose of ethics?

David Zurawik is the Dumbest Muthahf%$#er on the Face of the Earth

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And considering the fact that he is the Baltimore Sun‘s TV critic, which means that he had to beat out other TV critics, this is a big hurdle to jump.

You see Zurawik was commenting on the fact that former CBS reporter, and former CNN anchor John Roberts, a generally well respected journalist, was moving from CNN to Fox, largely because Fox was willing to base him in the same town as his fiancee.

When all is said and done, I can agree that this was generally a net plus for Fox in terms of journalism, considering the fact that “Biff the Wonderdog” would be an improvement over the likes of Britt Hume, but then he unleashes this corker:

The channel doesn’t need more ratings magnets — it has all of them any cable channel needs right now. What Fox needs to do is continue to add journalistic strength and depth as it did in October with Juan Williams.

Yes, he said that the man who vehemently defended Clarence Thomas against accusations of sexual harassment while not revealing that he himself was accused of sexual harassment is a paragon of Journalist Strength and depth.

This is a guy who had an interview with George W. Bush, and said, on camera, that he prayed for him.

If this is what David Zurawik calls journalist strength and depth, I am Edward F%$#ing Murrow