Month: November 2011

This May be the Most Powerful OWS Video Yet

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Following the blatant police brutality via pepper spray at University of California, Davis, the Chancellor Linda Katehi held a press conference, where hundreds (at least) of Occupy Davis protesters showed up outside, and demanded to be heard.

After cowering in the building for hours, she finally came out, and the protesters lined the path to her car with arms linked, and sat silently as she walked past as a mark of disdain:

This is a powerful video, and my guess is that Katehi discovered the limits of her deodorant on her little stroll.

I don’t think that she’s going to serve out the full term of her contract.

Well, I Never Expected to See This in a Trader Joe’s Parking Lot

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Click for full size


I did not “butt check” the seats


Not a great job of parking


The name plate is clear here


Interior looks well laid out


Big honking cooling fans


It looks rather conventional from the front


An environmental performance sticker


The fact that it is basically a Lotus chassis shows

Yep, it’s a Tesla Roadster.

I guess that people with more bucks than brains.

I just could not bring myself to take a $107,000.00 (!) sports car to the grocery store.

I’m just not a car guy, I guess.

Rachel is Right, Cain Has Punk’d Us All

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Because, as entertaining as the Republican presidential primary, aka “the Clown Show,” is, our man Herman takes this to a whole new level of assholitude:

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has suggested that the Taliban are playing a role in Libya’s new government, adding another foreign policy misstep to his stumbling campaign.

The week opened with Cain struggling to answer whether he supported US president Barack Obama’s foreign policy in Libya. He ended it trying to blame reporters for the moment, which was captured on video and quickly spread around the internet.

Cain’s critics seized on Monday’s incoherent answer as the latest evidence that he is unprepared to be the party’s nominee. On Friday, Cain gave his critics more grist for their increasingly substantial mill.

“Do I agree with siding with the opposition? Do I agree with saying that Gaddafi should go? Do I agree that they now have a country where you’ve got Taliban and al-Qaida that’s going to be part of the government?” Cain asked reporters in Orlando, Florida. “Do I agree with not knowing the government was going to – which part was he asking me about? I was trying to get him to be specific and he wouldn’t be specific.”

(emphasis mine)

Seriously, the Taliban?  The Taliban is inflitrating the government of Libya?

I guess that must be because Afghanistan is located right next to Libya.

Jeebus, they are 2½ hours apart.  That’s two and one half freaking time zones apart!

They don’t even border on the same freaking time zone.

I’m with Rachel Maddow. This is not primarily a Presidential campaign, it is performance art:

If You Believe in His Hope and Change, You Are Deluded

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Because financial fraud prosecutions have fallen even further under Obama than under Bush:

During the first 11 months of the 2011 fiscal year, the federal government filed 1,251 new prosecutions for financial institution fraud. If that pace continues, TRAC projects a total of 1,365 prosecutions for the fiscal year. That’s less than half the total a decade ago.

The decline in these new cases stands in contrast to the government’s broader approach to federal criminal prosecutions. Federal prosecutions for other crimes have grown tremendously, with the number of total new prosecutions filed for all federal crimes nearly doubling over the last decade:

(emphasis original)

As you can see, federal prosecutions have skyrocketed:

But prosecutions for financial fraud have fallen.

If you were wondering whether or not Obama was a willing captive of Wall Street, this should disabuse you of this.

The only hope here is to play on his weakness and cowardice to force him to do the right thing, because it’s clear that his better angels lie with the Vampire Squid.*

*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.

Deja Vu

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Congress is looking at declaring pizza a vegetable:

The Obama administration’s push to limit the starchy vegetables and tomato paste served to millions of children at school each day was derailed by lawmakers this week, in effect enabling school cafeterias to continue offering pizza and french fries.

………

The proposal also would have nixed the favorable treatment granted to tomato paste. Currently, an eighth of a cup of tomato paste is credited with as much nutritional value as half a cup of vegetables and thus counts as one vegetable serving. That enables food makers to better market their pizzas to schools.

………

Ordinarily, these type of issues would be hashed out as the USDA gathers comments from the public while finalizing the proposal. But several lawmakers made an end run around the process. They added amendments to block the two changes, on starchy vegetables and tomato paste, to agriculture spending bills moving through the Senate and House.

Late Monday, Senate and House negotiators reconciled the differences between their two spending bills and unveiled the final version, which included language to halt the potato and tomato paste changes.

Just like Ronald Reagan declaring ketchup, but the tomato(e)* is a fruit.

I’m expecting to see a Mr. Fusion powered DeLorean back on the big screen.

*It’s an homage to J. Danforth Quayle, who has more brains and common sense than any of the current ‘Phant hopefuls.

Karl Marx is Laughing

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Because Congress is less popular than Communism:

There is a deeper message, which is that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell has managed to take an institution which already held in low esteem, and absolutely trash it.

While the “very serious people” in the Democratic Party think that this is a political advantage, they are wrong.

You see, the foundation of conservative electioneering is the idea that government does not work, and as much as they might damage themselves in the short term, they are, in the long term, undermining the very idea that government can regulate the banksters, keep the poor from starving, protect us in the work place, and provide healthcare for the rest of us.

While someone like John Boehner may be too gin soaked and stupid to consciously understand this, he, and His Evil Minions™, do understand that constant gridlock and dysfunction plays to their strengths, and that it’s a lot easier than doing something constructive.

Yeah, This is a Vote of Confidence in the JSF

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The US Marines have decided to buy Harriers from the UK to extend the life of their fleet:

Britain has agreed to sell all of its 74 decommissioned Harrier jump jets, along with engines and spare parts, to the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps – a move expected to help the Marines operate Harriers into the mid-2020s and provide extra planes to replace aging two-seat F-18D Hornet strike fighters.

Rear Adm. Mark Heinrich, chief of the U.S. Navy’s Supply Corps, confirmed the two-part deal Nov. 10 during a conference in New York sponsored by Bank of America Merrill Lynch in association with Defense News.

Heinrich negotiated the $50 million purchase of all Harrier spare parts, while Rear Adm. Donald Gaddis, the U.S. Navy’s program executive officer for tactical aircraft, is overseeing discussions to buy the Harrier aircraft and their Rolls-Royce engines, Heinrich said.

The US Marine Corps does not seem to be completely sanguine about Lockheed-Martin meeting schedule, even the new schedule which slides IOC another 2 years to the right.

This is Literally the Worst Idea I Have Ever Heard

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The Department of Justice is seeking to expand anti-hacking laws to make it a criminal offense to violate the terms of a click-through license on a web site:

A commonly invoked anti-hacking law is so overbroad that it criminalizes conduct as innocuous as using a fake user name on Facebook or fibbing about your weight in a Match.com profile, one of the nation’s most respected legal authorities has said.

This came to prominence when the DoJ decided to prosecute the infamous (and unsuccessful) Lori Drew Myspace cyberbulling prosecution.

And the Response of the USDepartment of Justice?

In fact, quite the opposite: Downing and the Justice Department want to expand the law’s scope and impose harsher sentences on cybercriminals.

As CNET reported, the Justice Department is after an expansion of its powers under CFAA because of what happened when the agency attempted to prosecute Lori Drew, a Missouri mother who created a phony MySpace account to harass her 13-year-old neighbor, who later committed suicide. Drew was in 2008 convicted under CFAA of felony conspiracy and three counts of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization.

What you have to understand here is that the goal of the DoJ is to have another “arrow in their quiver”.

They want to have a world where everyone can be criminally prosecuted for something, because that way, they can go after anyone that they find inconvenient.

The fact that the Obama DoJ is in full throated support of this is why I refer to him as the “The Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever”.

When you give the state security apparatus the power to manufacture criminality, which is the desire of most agents of the state security apparatus, you create a blueprint for tyranny.

I Will Write No More About Penn State, No More, Forever

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Because I can add absolutely nothing to what Charlie Pierce has said:

It was midway through the pregame prayer session that the gorge hit high tide. There is always something a little nauseating in large spectacles of conspicuous public piety, but watching everyone on the field take a knee before the Penn State-Nebraska game, and listening to the commentary about how devoutly everybody was praying for the victims at Penn State, was enough to get me reaching for a bucket and a Bible all at once. It was as though the players and coaches had devised some sort of new training regimen to get past the awful reality of what had happened. Prayer as a new form of two-a-days. Jesus is my strength coach. Contrition in the context of a football game seemed almost obscene in its obvious vanity.

…………

If that blights Joe Paterno’s declining years, that’s too bad. If that takes a chunk out of the endowment, hold a damn bake sale. If that means that Penn State spends some time being known as the university where a child got raped, that’s what happens when you’re a university where a child got raped. Any sympathy for this institution went down the drain in the shower room in the Lasch Building. There’s nothing that can happen to the university, or to the people sunk up to their eyeballs in this incredible moral quagmire, that’s worse than what happened to the children who got raped at Penn State. Good Lord, people, get up off your knees and get over yourselves.

…………

This is a searing, and completely relevant, indictment of the hypocrisy surrounding the response of Penn States, and its apologists.

Read the whole thing.

Payback’s A Bitch

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Case in point, the official drive to recall Koch sucker Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has officially begun, and right now the polls show a majority supporting kicking his sorry ass out:

Gov. Scott Walker has lost support among his Republican base, according to a poll released Tuesday that shows a majority of respondents want to recall him from office.

The Wisconsin Public Radio/St. Norbert College Survey was released the same day that Democrats, labor unions and others, angry over his moves to curb union rights, began circulating petitions to get the 540,000 signatures needed to force a recall election next year.

The poll showed that 58 percent of respondents believe Walker should be recalled from office. That compares with 47 percent who said in April that he should be recalled.

The growth in support for a recall came, surprisingly, from Republicans. In the spring, only 7 percent of Republicans supported recalling Walker but that grew to 24 percent in the fall. Support among Democrats held mainly steady at 88 percent in the spring and 92 percent in the fall.

Let’s be clear: The recall effort is not a done deal.

They have to collect 540,000 signatures in just 60 days for Walker, and smaller numbers for the State Senators that they are targeting, and the Republicans are in full whine mode over this, complaining that this is an “abuse” of the law.

Case in point, Wasuau Senenator Pam Galloway, who bleated that, “I don’t know why I am being recalled. I haven’t broken any laws.”

Ma’am, you are being targeted for recall because you are a jerk who does not represent the interests of her constituents. That’s what the law is for, we have the criminal justice system to handle corruption.

If I were collecting signatures for this, I would be seeing how to get people who are part of the “Occupy” movement involved.

So,the Sweep Against the Occupy Movement is in Process

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Or maybe done.

Culminating with a police assault on Zuccotti Park, mirrorring the actions in Portland, Oakland, Albany, and Salt Lake City.

It was a classically classy affair, with Police dressed for the apocalypse, and journalists being detained as they attempted to record the whole sordid affair.

We also have the Mayor of Oakland admitting that the mayors coordinated the crackdown on a conference call, which appears to have been coordinated by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security:

Over the past ten days, more than a dozen cities have moved to evict “Occupy” protesters from city parks and other public spaces. As was the case in last night’s move in New York City, each of the police actions shares a number of characteristics. And according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.

The official, who spoke on background to me late Monday evening, said that while local police agencies had received tactical and planning advice from national agencies, the ultimate decision on how each jurisdiction handles the Occupy protests ultimately rests with local law enforcement.

According to this official, in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present.

If you don’t think that the control freaks that are Barack Obama and his administration were setting this up, and took steps to ensure that it happened when Obama was out of country.

This is all about comforting his Wall Street buddies, while attempting to co-opt the Occupy movement.

Olbermann goes to town on Bloomberg, but avoids the elephant in the room (Obama):

I’d Say Pass the Popcorn, but I Think That This is Just Theater………

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*Which is why I’m not going with the MJ popcorn GIF

Talk about mangling a metaphor, huh?*

But that’s the way I see the reports that the CFTC will be auditing all futures firms, in the hopes of preventing the theft co-mingling of funds that MF Global did under John Corzine:

Federal regulators have ordered an audit of every American futures trading firm to verify that customer money is protected, a move that comes after roughly $600 million in client funds were discovered to be missing from MF Global, the bankrupt brokerage firm once run by Jon S. Corzine.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal regulator searching for the missing money at MF Global, will audit many of the nation’s largest futures commission merchants, according to a person briefed on the decision. Exchanges like the CME Group will examine smaller firms to ensure they are keeping customer money separate from company money, a fundamental rule on Wall Street.

The futures commission also announced on Thursday that it had formally opened an investigation into MF Global, a largely symbolic move that indicated the seriousness of the case. The agency has already issued subpoenas to MF Global and its auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, but the commission had to vote before announcing a full-scale investigation.

“The commission has determined it is in the public interest to confirm the existence of this particular investigation,” the agency said in a statement.

The thing here is that what MF Global did may be considered legal by regulators, as Jesse notes (BTW, he’s been on this like white on rice):

This is most likely a distortion of the principle known as ‘rehypothecation‘ in which a broker can use customer positions and holdings as collateral pledged for a margin loan for the purpose of securing funding from a third party to service that loan.

The principle at play here may be closer to a type of droit du seigneur, in which any assets you have posted at a futures brokerage may be used at will by the broker for their own purposes without regard to any customer obligations. It depends on the extent to which MF took customer assets and leveraged them.

In a way it is just making the unbalanced relationship between Wall Street and its customers official.

It means that customers are bearing hidden counterparty risks on assets to which they thought they had a clear title, such as Treasuries, and foreign currencies, and warehouse receipts for precious metals.

It means that brokers can go beyond the mere provision of funding for loss, and use customer accounts to fund their own leveraged speculation under exemptions duly granted by their ‘regulators.’

(emphasis mine)

Basically, what it means is that MF Global was allowed to use customer funds as collateral, without telling the customers, and without sharing any of the profits derived from this leverage.

What is going to happen here is that no one (except perhaps Corzine, since he’s clearly a Democrat) will see any serious jail time, and there will be no change in the rules, because, after all the system must be preserved, which is pretty much a mantra of both the professional staff at the various regulatory agencies and the White House.

As to preserving the existing system, it is merely a system of rent-taking, and if we were to take it down completely, and replace it trained elephants doling out loans, we’d probably do better, because elephants, at least, work for peanuts.

Why You Should Tell Your Local Public Radio Station to Go Pound Sand During Pledge Week

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In the latest case, we have Warren Olney, the host of “On Point,” equating homosexuality with child rape:

Allegations of child sex abuse have destroyed the carefully cultivated image of Penn State’s football team and brought down the university’s administration. They’ve also exposed once more the vulnerability of children, when a sexual predator can hide behind the façade of an institution bent on protecting its reputation. Foster children were assigned to former coach Jerry Sandusky’s care, even though charges against him were investigated for years. Today, Penn State’s Board of Trustees expanded its probe into the cover-up. With 500,000 children desperate for loving homes, we look at efforts to widen the pool of available parents. Should gays and lesbians qualify?

That’s Olney’s lede from his show on gay foster parents.

And then he lets an anti-gay bigot, Jerry Cox of the Arkansas’ Family Council, which has been designated as a hate group by the SPLC, spew his filth without challenging his cherry picking and outright lies.

But Warren Olney still has a job, while Lisa Simeone, an entertainment reporter, got fired for being a spokesman for a Occupy Wall Street Group, and now NPR has dropped its distribution of World of Opera produced by WDAV in an attempt to get her fired from that show.

Yep, you got it. They are trying to get an entertainment reporter fired, and shut down an opera show.

To be fair, On Point is distributed by PRI, not NPR, though PRI was weaseled big time on this, “Thank you for contacting Public Radio International. We share your concern. Although PRI does not have editorial control over the show -we distribute the program and KCRW produces-once we heard the program yesterday, we began having discussions with the editorial staff of To the Point, and those discussions will continue.”

The problem is that public broadcasting suffers from Barack Obama syndrome:  It sees liberals as a captive audience to be belittled and scorned in an attempt to suck up to to right wingers who will hate them anyway.

If you give, they will continue to do this, so when they call, write back, and say that balance does not involve sanctioning hate speech and leaving outright lies unchallenged.

As it stands today, Warren Olney is still secure in his job, and NPR is still trying to get Lisa Simeone fired, so public broadcasting is not is not an institution for “mindful human beings,” to quote Ronald Reagan, Jr. on Dick Cheney.

I’m not saying that these people are inherently evil, but they are so weak that they are willing allies of evil.

APKWS Certified for Marine UH-1Y

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Which means that the modified 2.75″ (70mm) rocket, is likely to be purchased by the Corps as a lower cost, and lower blast, alternative to the Hellfire. (background here)

In a related development, the US Navy is looking at arming the Firescout UAVwith the APKWS as well:

Northrop Grumman Corporation has started work outfitting the U.S. Navy’s MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned helicopter with the Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System (APKWS) laser-guided 70mm rocket. Such an armed unmanned platform will provide naval platforms, specifically the Littoral Combat Ship an autonomous engagement capability highly suitable for littoral warfare.

Photo: U.S. Navy

This light weight precison guided weapon is in production for the Navy since 2010. Arming the FireScout with the guided rocket will enable the unmanned helicopter flying off Littoral Combat Ships to engage hostile targets independent of air support from carrier groups or shore based aircraft.

“By arming Fire Scout, the Navy will have a system that can locate and prosecute targets of interest,” said George Vardoulakis, Northrop Grumman’s vice president for tactical unmanned systems. “This capability shortens the kill chain and lessens the need to put our soldiers in harm’s way.”

The original offensive capibility of the LCS was the now-canceled Non Line Of Sight (N.L.O.S.) Precision Attack Missile (P.A.M.), a 40km range missile with an 8 kg warhead.

This has been replaced with the much smaller 3.5 mile range Raytheon Griffin, which is best described as a “Pea shooter”, with a warhead about as powerful as a man portable ATGW.

What this means is that the LCS had effectively no meaningful capability as either a surface combatant or to support ground forces. (In the latter case, the ship would be in range of man portable missiles and medium anti-aircraft artillery)

By hanging a 2.75 in rocket on a Fire Scout the LCS will have a marginally capable offensive capability.  The APKWS does not have a particularly large warhead, but with the UAV as a launch platform, the ship will at least be able to put some distance between itself and its potential opponents.