Month: March 2012

Pat Robertson Wants Marijuana Decriminalized?

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No, seriously, I am not joking:

Of the many roles Pat Robertson has assumed over his five-decade-long career as an evangelical leader — including presidential candidate and provocative voice of the right wing — his newest guise may perhaps surprise his followers the most: marijuana legalization advocate.

“I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Mr. Robertson said in an interview on Wednesday. “I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.”

Mr. Robertson’s remarks echoed statements he made last week on “The 700 Club” the signature program of his Christian Broadcasting Network, and other comments he made in 2010. While those earlier remarks were largely dismissed by his followers, Mr. Robertson has now apparently fully embraced the idea of legalizing marijuana, arguing that it is a way to bring down soaring rates of incarceration and reduce the social and financial costs.

“I believe in working with the hearts of people, and not locking them up,” he said.

Mr. Robertson’s remarks were hailed by pro-legalization groups, who called them a potentially important endorsement in their efforts to roll back marijuana penalties and prohibitions, which residents of Colorado and Washington will vote on this fall.

All this while the Obama administration doubles down on the war on drugs.

Rev. Robinson isn’t any smarter than the Obama administration, but he also hasn’t been captured by government bureaucracies , and he doesn’t feel the need to outflank his political opposition by running to the right, so he actually can consider what is optimal policy.

If Pat Roberson can get this right, anyone can.

Schadenfreude, Irony, We Haz Them!

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The Koch Brothers are attempting to take over the Cato Institute, and its head, and much of the staff, are appalled.

The law seems straightforward, the Koch Brothers own at least half the shares in the institute, so they get to call the shots, which seems to be to turn it into a partisan think tank, as opposed to a libertarian sand box.

The response of the principals at Cato has been a remarkable exercise in self abnegation:

No. The irony here is that the nation’s preeminent libertarians—who ought to be exquisitely attentive to freedom of contract, institutional design, and observing the letter of the law—couldn’t get their rights right. They built this Streeling of libertarian thought, with its $20+ million annual budget and world-wide reputation, on a shareholding structure that is either actually or nearly under the control of people who do not share many of their values and have not for decades. The entire enterprise may well have been for years only one death away from Koch domination. If so many libertarians are now so worried about a Koch takeover, one has to ask, why have they spent so many years building a brand with an unshielded thermal exhaust port?

I must say, a week ago I would have said that I would have been willing to pay serious money to hear Ed Crane and his posse at the Cato Institute say something like:

Shorter Ed Crane: Our collective societal well-being is advanced when restrictions are put on the ability of property owners to do what they wish with their property. The Cato Institute itself, for example, is in a legal sense the private property of its shareholders. But its shareholders do not have the moral right to do what they wish with it. For the Cato Institute is not a mere legal instrumentality that three shareholders control and direct. Instead, what the Cato Institute is is a social trust, a Great Compact, a contract that makes a great chain between all libertarians dead, living, and yet unborn, in which all those committed to the collective intellectual project of libertarianism are stakeholders who have moral rights over the Cato Institute that completely trump the property rights that so-called “owners” of The Cato Institute may claim to have.

For such an argument would seem to have the potential for wider applicability…

While the schadenfreude is nice, James Grimmelmann observes that this entire dispute knocks out one of the primary philosophical underpinnings of Libertarian thought, the idea that contracts executed between people of reasonable intellect can handle such matters:

The answers are obvious, and completely understandable. Because few people knew about Cato’s unusual share-based ownership structure. Because those few who knew didn’t think the Kochs’ power play was a serious possibility. Because Cato was there, and so it made sense as a coordination point, whatever its weaknesses. Because each individual project made sense, regardless of the long term. Because they never even thought to ask. All completely human, all quite arguably reasonable, and all things any of us would likely have done in the same position. And yet the end result could well be to deliver one of the world’s most recognizably libertarian institutions into the hands of men who would use it for other purposes.

I could not tell you how many times I’ve encountered libertarian arguments about law that assume that individuals can and ought to use contracts to protect themselves against just this sort of contingency. Don’t worry about users clicking “I agree” to overreaching terms of service; if they truly cared about the terms, they’d negotiate for better ones. Don’t worry about people who refuse to buy health insurance; they’re making a rational choice for themselves. Don’t worry about minority shareholders, don’t worry about franchisees, don’t worry about all the other groups that find themselves on the wrong end of a bargain that always seems to tip against them in the long run—if they wanted better protections, they could and should have negotiated for them up front.

Except they don’t. They never do. And really. If the uber-libertarians of the Cato institute can’t watch out for themselves, what hope is there for the rest of us?

And so libertarianism is shown not to be just morally lacking, intellectually as well.

If the best libertarians in the world can get taken down like this, then the idea that contracts are a replacement for government is a lie.

But this is still some really yummy schadenfreude.

Of course, if the Koch’s win, now that the spat has gone public, much of the credibility of the organization will be destroyed in the process.

Heh.

Iceland Does it Right

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Not only are they prosecuting their banksters, they have put a former PM in the dock:

The trial of former Icelandic Prime Minister Geir Haarde, on charges of negligence over the 2008 financial crisis, has begun in Reykjavik.

Mr Haarde is thought to be the first world leader to face criminal charges over the crisis.

He rejects the charges as “political persecution” and has said he will be vindicated during the trial.

The country’s three main banks collapsed during economic turmoil and the failure of Icesave hit thousands.

With a population less than that of Baltimore City, Iceland seems to have cornered the market on both balls and common sense where the financial meltdown is involved than the other 6.8 billion of us.

Go figure.

Good News from the Ohio Primary

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Jean “Mean Jean” Schmidt lost the Republican primary for Ohio’s 2nd CD to political newbie Brad Wenstrup.

It’s a good thing, though she lost to someone who appears to be even more conservative.

The interesting thing is that a new super Pac, the Campaign for Primary Accountability, which dropped a significant chunk of change against her, mostly taking her to task for voting to increase the debt ceiling.

This same group also supported Kucinich against Kaptur, and is going after Jesse Jackson Jr. in Illinois, as well as Spencer “Insider Trading” Baucus (R-AL).

I’m inclined to think that they are a beard for right wingers. Both Kucinich and Kaptur are firmly liberal, but Kaptur was the more effective legislator, if just because Kucinich was so determinedly iconoclastic, and the wing-nuts hate anyone named Jesse Jackson.

Additionally, its founder, Eric O’Keefe is a winger and a Club for Growth puke, which further reiforces my suspicions.

The post Citizens United world of campaign finance is remarkably opaque.

Broken Window Theory of Financial Crimes

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Bill Black has a very interesting look at the “Broken Window” theory of law enforcement and how, and whether, it might be applied to financial wrongdoing.

For those of who are unfamiliar with the “Broken Window” theory of law enforcement:

James Q. Wilson was a political scientist who often studied the government response to blue collar crime. The public knows him best for his theory called “broken windows.” The metaphor was what happens to a vacant building when broken windows are not promptly repaired. Soon, most of the windows in the abandoned building are broken. The criminals feel little compunction against petty destruction because the building’s owners evince no concern for the integrity of their building. Wilson took social norms, community, and ethics seriously. He argued that as community broke down fewer honest citizens were active in monitoring and policing behavior. The breakdown in community was criminogenic – it led to widespread serious blue collar crime. He urged us to take even minor blue collar crimes and breaches of civility seriously and to demand that they be contained through social pressure and policing.

Wilson got a lot of credit for cleaning up New York City, where crime levels did drop, but they did elsewhere, so perhaps the theory is a bit overrated.

And it should be noted that Mr. Wilson specifically excluded white collar crimes.

I think that the operative word here is “white”.

As in pigmentation, and Wilson found “white crime” just fine:

In a book entitled, Thinking About Crime, Wilson argued that criminology should focus overwhelmingly on low-status blue collar criminals.

This book [does not deal] with “white collar crimes”…. Partly this reflects the limits of my own knowledge, but it also reflects my conviction, which I believe is the conviction of most citizens, that predatory street crime is a far more serious matter than consumer fraud [or] antitrust violations … because predatory crime … makes difficult or impossible maintenance of meaningful human communities (1975: xx).

I am rather tolerant of some forms of civic corruption (if a good mayor can stay in office and govern effectively only by making a few deals with highway contractors and insurance agents, I do not get overly alarmed)…. (1975: xix).

Wilson won’t say it, and cannot now, because he’s dead, and may not admit it to himself, but he’s tolerant of white collar, because “Broken Window” enforcement should only be used when it involves cops harassing poor people and/or minorities.

That’s why Wilson created a “get out of jail free” for the crimes of the upper class.

I’m inclined to believe that small crimes beget bigger crimes, and that this problem is worse among the privileged than it is among the poor and minorities.

As Prof. Black illustrates in his article, when the little things are let slide, you end up with things like liars loans, and blacklists of honest home appraisers, with executives engaging in wholesale looting of their own firms.

H/t Yves Smith.

1000 Words on the Republican Presidential POrimaries

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The Fix’s graphic says it all:

A quick run of the numbers says that Romney has won about 55% of all the delegates this far, and he’s a bit over 1/3 of the way to winning the nomination.

He needs about half of the remaining votes to win, as versus 2/3 for the Santorum.

The only reason that we are still seeing a race is because the press hates Romney worse than it hated Al Gore in 2012.

Really, absent a live boy or dead girl in his bed, Romney is the nominee, particularly when you consider the number of unelected delegates, congressmen and whatnot, who won’t vote for Santorum or Gingrich if you put a gun to head.

Yeah, It’s Super Tuesday

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At this late date, Ohio is still in play, but it looks like Mitt Romney will win.

In terms of delegate count, of course, Romney has won Ohio, since Santorum did not submit a full slate.

So the clusterf%$# continues for at least another week, because there was no blowout, which kind of surprises me, because, as I noted earlier today, Santorum is batsh%$ insane, and I would have figured that his past few weeks of going postal on birth control, along with Limbaugh’s recent self-immolation, would have played against him.

[Early Morning Edit]
Romney wins by 1% in Ohio, and Kucinuch loses the Primary to Kaptur.

It Sucks to be Scott Walker

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A federal judge has issued an injunction against Wisconsin’s voter ID law, so it’s now almost certain that his recall election will be free of his voter suppression tactics:

A Wisconsin law requiring voters to show photo identification to receive a ballot was temporarily blocked by a state judge after a civil rights group sued Governor Scott Walker over the measure.

Judge David Flanagan in Dane County yesterday ruled that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People demonstrated a probability of success in overturning the 2011 law and that a temporary injunction was necessary to prevent “irreparable harm.”

“If no injunction is issued, a clearly improper impairment of a most vital element of our society will occur,” Flanagan wrote in his order. “The duty of the court is clear. The case has been made.”

Democrats and Republicans are at odds over voting laws before the 2012 elections. Democrats say they are seeking to ensure voters’ access to the polls while Republicans such as Walker argue more needs to be done to prevent voter fraud. Similar suits claiming the Wisconsin law unconstitutionally burdens the rights of people including senior citizens and minorities are pending in state and federal court.

The ‘Phants are making noises about the primary, but what they really want to do is prevent minorities from voting in the Scott Brown recall.

It’s not gonna happen.

Well it might happen when it hits the Roberts Supreme Court, but that is at least a year away.

No One Owns Their House in the USA

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The fabrication of mortgage documents has gotten so bad that one of the most respected financial services consulting groups in the country, SolomonEdwardsGroup, has issued press releases explicitly offering falsified documents:

Reader Lisa N. pointed me to a troubling October 2010 press release by SolomonEdwardsGroup, a company that describes itself as a “national financial services consulting and staffing firm” about its remediation services for “significant loan documentation problems.” Alert readers will recognize that this is shortly after the robosiging scandal broke.

Here are the key parts of the press release:

SEG’s teams can also be rapidly deployed across the U.S., to help banks and servicers “scrub” files and determine which foreclosures may have been tainted by incorrect loan documentation and processing issues such as robo-signing….

For instance on a recent engagement, SEG quickly deployed a 25-person team to review a single-family loan portfolio containing 5,000 loans and within six weeks brought the portfolio into compliance with investor guidelines. During another recent engagement, SEG successfully completed the same type of project involving 20,000 single-family loans tainted by fraud allegations.

Needless to say, this sounds consistent to the charges we’ve heard from borrower attorneys and have even seen at trial: that of “tah dah” documents appearing suddenly in court that solved all the problems with the evidence presented. A not that unusual case occurred last week, in Kings County, New York, where in HSBC v. Sene, when the lawyers for the bank tried submitting two notes (borrower IOUs), the second attempting to remedy problems raised by the first one, each presented as the original. The judge not only ruled against the foreclosure but referred the case to the district attorney and the state attorney general.

…………

It was disconcerting to speak to someone who obviously thinks his firm is highly professional engaged in activities that include document fabrication, which is what creating allonges now amounts to. And the worst is I have no doubt SolomonEdwards is more careful than most firms in the industry. This confirms, as we have said repeatedly, that there was a massive failure in the industry to conform to the requirement of the legal agreements that it devised. And there is a very big business, now with a government seal of approval, in covering up that fact.

Seriously, over the past 20 years the banks have shredded the basic concepts of real estate law that took a thousand years to develop.

This law was created for one reason: to ensure that when someone bought the land, it could not be taken away by someone with a conflicting claim.

It’s all been destroyed.

Someone Remembers the Old Lesson: Do Not Let German Chancellors Run Europe

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To the accolades of his countrymen, Spanish Premier Mariano Rajoy has told Sarkosy and Merkel to go Cheney themselves:

The Spanish rebellion has begun, sooner and more dramatically than I expected.

As many readers will already have seen, Premier Mariano Rajoy has refused point blank to comply with the austerity demands of the European Commission and the European Council (hijacked by Merkozy).

Taking what he called a “sovereign decision”, he simply announced that he intends to ignore the EU deficit target of 4.4pc of GDP for this year, setting his own target of 5.8pc instead (down from 8.5pc in 2011).

In the twenty years or so that I have been following EU affairs closely, I cannot remember such a bold and open act of defiance by any state. Usually such matters are fudged. Countries stretch the line, but do not actually cross it.

…………

What is striking is the wave of support for Mr Rajoy from the Spanish commentariat.

This one from Pablo Sebastián left me speechless.

My loose translation:

“Spain isn’t any old country that will allow itself to be humiliated by the German Chancellor.”

“The behaviour of the European Commission towards Spain over recent days has been infamous and exceeds their treaty powers… these Eurocrats think they are the owners and masters of Spain.”

“Spain and other nations in the EU are sick and tired of Chancellor Merkel’s meddling and Germany’s usurpation – with the help of Sarkozy’s France and their pretended “executive presidency” that does not in fact exist in EU treaties.”

…………

The Latin Bloc is awakening.

The Germans don’t realize just how deeply disliked they are, and this has nothing to do with the unpleasantness from 70 years ago.

Politicians prime directive is to be reelected, and once they realize that calling Angela Merkel a c%$# sucker ensures electoral success, the pretty much everyone in Europe (except for Nicolas Sarkosy, who is desperately clinging to in what appears to be a vain attempt for politic survival) is going to start telling her to pound sand.

Eric Holder Argues that Assassination is Legal

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Jeebus. It’s now OK to murder an American citizen because the President says so:

Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday explained why it’s legal to murder people — not to execute prisoners convicted of capital crimes, not to shoot someone in self-defense, not to fight on a battlefield in a war that is somehow legalized, but to target and kill an individual sitting on his sofa, with no charges, no arrest, no trial, no approval from a court, no approval from a legislature, no approval from we the people, and in fact no sharing of information with any institutions that are not the president.

…………

By “government” Holder means the president, whether President Obama or President Romney or President Santorum or any man or woman who later becomes president, and nobody else. That one person alone is to decide what is appropriate and lawful and feasible. If the Vice President thinks it is feasible to capture somene, too bad for him. He should have gotten a better job if he wanted to be a decider. If the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court thinks preaching against the United States is not a capital offense, tough tamales. He shouldn’t dress in his bathrobe if he wants to be taken seriously. If the United States Congress objects that the president’s “surgical strikes” tend to kill too many random men, women, and children, well they know what they can do: Run for president! If the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings has objections, well — Isn’t that SPECIAL? And the American people? They can shut up or vote for a racist buffoon from the bad party.

…………

But you see, this is all OK, because Barack Obama is a good guy, so no countervailing government structures, or for that matter any public access to information needs to be allowed:

A consensus has emerged during the presidency of Barack Obama. His administration is increasingly regarded as the worst on issues related to freedom of information and transparency.

Today, Josh Gerstein of POLITICO has a story that gives voice to this emerging consensus, which more and more open government advocates hold despite the fact that the Obama Administration maintains it is committed to “openness.”

Gerstein’s story features a quote from a Washington-based lawyer “who’s been filing” Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests since 1978. The lawyer, Katherine Mayer, says, “Obama is the sixth administration that’s been in office since I’ve been doing Freedom of Information Act work. … It’s kind of shocking to me to say this, but of the six, this administration is the worst on FOIA issues. The worst. There’s just no question about it.”

Think about this for a second: This is all predicated on the idea that the Executive is a good guy who won’t abuse power, and so there is no need for checks and balances.

This is why I call Barack Obama the worst constitutional law professor ever.

Yes, Mr. Frothy Mixture is Nuts

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Charles Blow looks at Rick Santorum’s public statements and discovers that what drives him is his revulsion directed towards the sexual revolution of the 1960s:

Rick Santorum wants to bring sexy back … to the 1950s, when he was born.

That is because Santorum seems to have an unhealthy fixation with, and passionate disdain for, the 1960s and the sexual freedoms that followed.

To fully understand Santorum’s strident rejection of the 1960s, it’s instructive to recall a speech and question-and-answer session he gave in 2008 to a course on religion and politics at the Oxford Center for Religion and Public Life in Washington.

The speech was interesting, but the answers he gave to the questions that followed were truly illuminating.

In response to a question about the kinds of words he had heard “attached to religion and politics” during his years in the Senate, Santorum ventured off onto sex:

“It comes down to sex. That’s what it’s all about. It comes down to freedom, and it comes down to sex. If you have anything to do with any of the sexual issues, and if you are on the wrong side of being able to do all of the sexual freedoms you want, you are a bad guy. And you’re dangerous because you are going to limit my freedom in an area that’s the most central to me. And that’s the way it’s looked at.”

………

But let’s not let facts slow us down. Santorum, predictably, deflected back to sex:

“Woodstock is the great American orgy. This is who the Democratic Party has become. They have become the party of Woodstock. They prey upon our most basic primal lusts, and that’s sex. And the whole abortion culture, it’s not about life. It’s about sexual freedom. That’s what it’s about. Homosexuality. It’s about sexual freedom. All of the things are about sexual freedom, and they hate to be called on them. They try to somehow or other tie this to the founding fathers’ vision of liberty, which is bizarre. It’s ridiculous. That’s at the core of why you are attacked.”

The next question was: “Do you see any possibility for a party of Christian reform, or an influx of Christian ideas into this [Democratic] party?”

Santorum’s answer included what? That’s right: Sex!

Blow (heh) is implying that Santorum has an unhealthy fixation about sex.

I’ll be more specific. I think that Santorum is indicative of a strain of Republican thought that I saw a lot of when I was in the SGA Senate working alongside future Abramhoff : basically, they are really pissed, because they weren’t getting any during the sexual revolution.

I understand how it feels.  Not only was I a war-gaming/Dungeons & Dragons geek in high school, I founded the Woodrow Wilson High School war gaming club.

I was as likely to get laid in high school as I was to fly to the moon.

The thing is, I got over it, and not end up with a sociopathic need to tell women what to do with their bodies.

Mr Santorum, not so much.

Poenitentiam agite*

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In South Carolina, the Laurens County Republican Party is demanding that all of its candidates sign a pledge that they have not had premarital sex. This is kind of a surprise to me, since the way that Republicans propose marriage is to say, “You’re what?”:

Before you can join the Laurens County Republican Party in South Carolina and get on the primary ballot, they ask that you pledge that you’ve never ever had pre-marital sex — and that you will never ever look at porn again.

Last Tuesday, the LCGOP unanimously adopted a resolution that would ask all candidates who want to get on the primary ballot to sign a pledge with 28 principles, because the party “does not want to associate with candidates who do not act and speak in a manner that is consistent with the SC Republican Party Platform.”

Among the principles, according to Vic MacDonald & Larry Franklin of the Clinton Chronicle, is standard fare like opposition to abortion and upholding gun rights, as well as “a compassionate and moral approach to Teen Pregnancy” and “a high regard for United States Sovereignty.

I’m done for the night. This is just too f%$#ing weird for me.

*Oh, come on! Aren’t you aware of the Apostolic Brethren, or their successors, the Dulcinian movement, then you’ve read The Name of the Rose, or seen the movie version with Sean Connery? Seriously†

†OK, I admit it, I’ve just seen the movie, and this is the most obscure title I’ve ever put on a blog post, and I’m just f%$#ing with my reader(s). My bad.

What Is The Difference Between A Broker And A Psychopath?

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The answer appears to be, “psychopaths are much better for the rest of us“:

What makes individual stockbrokers blow billions in financial markets with criminal trading schemes? According to a new study conducted at a Swiss university, it may be because share traders behave more recklessly and are more manipulative than psychopaths.

Two weeks ago, yet another case of rogue trading shocked the financial world when UBS trader Kweku Adoboli was arrested for allegedly squandering some $2.3 billion with a risky and unauthorized investment scheme. The 31-year-old, who had been based in London for the Swiss bank, remains in jail. The bank’s chief executive Oswald Grübel, meanwhile, has resigned over the scandal — the third major embarrassment to rattle the institution in just a few years.

…………

According to a new study at the University of St. Gallen seen by SPIEGEL, one contributing factor may be that stockbrokers’ behavior is more reckless and manipulative than that of psychopaths. Researchers at the Swiss research university measured the readiness to cooperate and the egotism of 28 professional traders who took part in computer simulations and intelligence tests. The results, compared with the behavior of psychopaths, exceeded the expectations of the study’s co-authors, forensic expert Pascal Scherrer, and Thomas Noll, a lead administrator at the Pöschwies prison north of Zürich.

…………

“Naturally one can’t characterize the traders as deranged,” Noll told SPIEGEL. “But for example, they behaved more egotistically and were more willing to take risks than a group of psychopaths who took the same test.”

So, Dr. Noll, could you explain to me why we cannot, “characterize traders as deranged?”

It seems to me that if there is any lesson of the past few years, it is that traders are deranged.

Here’s Some Insanely Great Tech

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It looks like someone has come up with a method of simultaneously transmitting different signals in the same frequency:

A team of Italian radio boffins – and one Swede – have one-upped their pioneering countryman Guglielmo Marconi by demonstrating a method of simultaneously transmitting multiple signals on the same frequency.

“This novel radio technique allows the implementation of, in principle, an infinite number of channels in a given, fixed bandwidth, even without using polarization, multiport or dense coding techniques,” the team explains in a paper in the March issue of the New Journal of Physics.

If refined and commercialized, the technique developed by Fabrizio Tamburini and his team could radically increase the carrying capacity of today’s cramped bandwith of radio, television, Wi-Fi, and wireless telecommunications.

Essentially, it appears to be some sort of phase/geometry trick:

The breakthough achieved by Tamburini and his crew is based on adding orbital angular momentum to the signal-carrying mix, essentially twisting the directed signal in a way that offsets multiple signals in the same frequency.


The signal-spinning Venetian antenna

The team “spun” the signal in their successful demo by simply slicing one radius of a conventional parabolic antenna and raising one end of the slice above the other. Doing so gave the part of the transmitted signal from the elevated section of the antenna a small “head start” on the part from the lower segment.

The sent beam was then encoded with two separate signals timed to occupy opposite angles of the spin, and antennas were set up to receive each of them. Theoretically, much more discrete signal-slicing could fit more signals into the same transmitted frequency.

One beam, two signals received by antennas on either side of the signal’s centerpoint

Team member Bo Thide of Swedish Institute of Space Physics first conceived the orbital angular momentum idea in a 2007 paper focussed on radio astronomy, but in which he wrote that the concept “paves the way for novel wireless communication concepts.”

I’ve heard of some other techniques that will provide similar capabilities, and I would hope that if we do see a massive expansion in the carry capacity of wireless capacity, that much of this delta would be directed away from the incumbent carriers.

If there is any lesson to be learned about the history of data transmission, wired, and wireless, it is that incumbent monopolies, and near monopolies, are the enemies of innovation, not its source, because their profit margins are driven by preserving their monopolies.

Makes Matt Taibbi Look Like a Wimp

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“If you sit quietly at the edge of a river, eventually you will see the bodies of your enemies float by.”

—Mark “Chopper” Read

Matt Taibbi called Breitbart a Douche, but his former partner at the Russian newspaper The Exile, Mark Ames has a truly evocative take-down of said douche:

Last autumn, Andrew Breitbart picked a fight with me. Breitbart bragged to the world about how he was going to destroy me. Breitbart went after me on behalf of the Koch oligarchy, who’d launched a multimillion-dollar PR counter-offensive to smear journalists who investigated them, including Jane Mayer of the New Yorker. Breitbart got the contract on me, and he had no doubt in his little pea brained mind he was going to destroy me. Breitbart was so sure he was going to ruin me, he bragged about it to everyone. He even told a journalist to tell Taibbi, “Breitbart is about to destroy your former eXile partner Mark Ames.” He was gloating in-advance. Then the very morning he attacked me, I hit back. And he tucked tail and fled like a bitch.

Now Andrew Breitbart is dead. Gee, whod’ya think won that little war?

Tough question: Maybe we should ask Breitbart what he thinks. Oh shit, dang, turns out I can’t ask Breitbart. He’s, well—he’s not doing well, dealing with those “natural causes” and all.

And that’s just the first 3 ‘graphs.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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It’s a two week update, because of my mother-in-law entering hospital last week (she’s doing a lot better now).

And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Charter National Bank and Trust, Hoffman Estates, IL
  2. SCB Bank, Shelbyville, IN
  3. Central Bank of Georgia, Ellaville, GA <== Last week
  4. Home Savings of America, Little Falls, MN <== Last week
  5. Global Commerce Bank, Doraville, GA

Full FDIC list

And here are the credit union closings:

  1. A M Community Credit Union, Kenosha, WI

Additionally, the People for People CDCU​, in Philadelphia, which had been put under conservatorship in January, has been liquidated.

Full NCUA list

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

And here is the detail, since it is early in the year:

Our Military-Industrial Complex in a Nut Shell

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So, the USAF decides to buy a few dozen Global Hawk Block 30 drones to replace its existing inventory of U-2 spy planes, and finds out that they are more expensive and less capable than the 5y year old platform, so they are mothballing the drones:

It has been quite an expensive week for the US Air Force. Not only did Congress halt funding on a surveillance blimp project that they already invested $140 million in, but now the Pentagon says $3 billion worth of drones could be canned as well.

The United States military has already ordered a dozen unmanned surveillance drones at a combined cost of $3 billion, but realizing that the stealth, high-tech spy crafts aren’t as capable as the antiquated, old-school planes already in their arsenal, the Pentagon is pulling the plug in terms of acquiring any more.

In addition to ending the acquisition of Global Hawk Block 30 drones that the military had planned for, the Air Force will take the 18 they’ve already received, leaving them to hang around the hangar for now.

Air Force Gen. Norton Schwartz and Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told a Senate committee this week that between acquiring any more drones and maintaining upgrades and repairs on those and the ones already purchased, the military would practically go bankrupt. Gen. Schwartz says that the new plan will save the Pentagon $2.5 billion, but will also lead the Defense Department to let the $3 billion worth of surveillance drones already under their command to just collect dust from now on.

“This was a choice [where] we had an asset that can do the mission as it’s currently specified and could do it overall at much less cost,” Schwartz said before the Senate this week. “Sustaining the U-2 was a better bet.”

So, they spend billions on a system that is more expensive and less capable than its predecessor, and somehow or other, the contractor will sill get paid for the unusable crap that they delivered.

Signs of the Apocalypse: Rush Limbaugh Edition

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He has apologized for calling a 30-year old contraception advocate and law student a slut, and suggesting that she should post sex tapes to the internet:

US radio host Rush Limbaugh has apologised for calling a law student a “slut” for her views on contraception.

In comments on his radio show earlier this week, Mr Limbaugh suggested Sandra Fluke’s testimony to a US congressional committee made her “a prostitute”.

In a statement released on his website, Mr Limbaugh apologised to Ms Fluke “for the insulting word choices” and said he “did not mean a personal attack”.

I think it had more to do with something like a dozen of his sponsors dropping his white, flabby, pimpled ass.