Remember last night when I said Jon Stewart was dropping the S-word without it being bleeped?
Well, you can see it here, Chaos on Bullsh%$ Mountain:
Truth be told, this is the most polemic I’ve ever seen him, but that’s got to leave a mark!
Year: 2012
Nice Try Scotty
Looks like little Scotty Brown was trying to avoid his first debate with Elizabeth Warren, using an upcoming Senate vote as an excuse.
Well, Harry Reid felt your pain:
Majority Leader Harry Reid abruptly scrapped votes in the Senate on Thursday so Sen. Scott Brown could participate in a high-profile debate with Elizabeth Warren in Boston.
“No more votes today,” Reid (D-Nev.) said on the floor. “It’s obvious to me what’s going on. I’ve been to a few of these rodeos. It is obvious there is a big stall taking place. One of the senators who doesn’t want to debate tonight won’t be in a debate. While he can’t use the Senate as an excuse, there will be no more votes today.”
Well played, Senator Reid.
It’s streaming on WBZ and on CSPAN-3.
In the first few minutes, Scotty is harping on her family history (the whole “part Cherokee and Delaware” thing).
He is coming across a really, really pissy.
He’s sputtering.
What the F%$#
OK, I was just watching The Daily Show, and Jon Stewart said sh%$.
This wouldn’t be unusual, except for the fact that they didn’t bleep him.
They didn’t bleep him a lot, and they didn’t bleep Pink in her song.
When did the word sh%$ stop being bleeped on Comedy Central?
My Hero of the Day
I got nothing to add but, “hurray!”
Iranian Woman Beats the Crap Out of Cleric for Telling Her to Cover Up
A cleric in Iran went crying to the country’s state-run Mehr News Agency after a run-in with a woman who responded to his repeated requests to cover up by kicking the crap out of him.
While walking to a mosque in the northern city of Shahmirzad, Hojatoleslam Ali Beheshti says he encountered a “badly covered” woman, and proceeded to “politely” order her to correct her outfit.
“You, cover your eyes,” the woman reportedly responded. He then told her again to cover up, at which point she decided she’d had enough.
“Not only didn’t she cover herself up, but she also insulted me,” the cleric told Mehr. “I asked her not to insult me anymore, but she started shouting and threatening me. She pushed me and I fell to the ground on my back. From that point on, I don’t know what happened. I was just feeling the kicks of the woman who was beating me up and insulting me.“
Groan!
Seen on facebook.
Chicago Teachers’ Strike Over
Technically, the strike is just suspended, but I can’t see the teachers hitting the line again:
The Chicago Teachers Union’s House of Delegates decided this afternoon to end the city’s first teacher strike in 25 years and return more than 350,000 students to the classroom Wednesday.
The voice vote was taken after some 800 delegates convened at a union meeting hall near Chinatown to discuss and debate a tentative contract. Union leaders had already signed off on the agreement with Chicago Public Schools.
“We said we couldn’t solve all the problems. . .and it was time to suspend the strike,” CTU President Karen Lewis said at a news conference after the vote.
One hopes that Rahm gets taken down at the next election.
To the degree than anyone lost, it was Emanuel, and here’s hoping that he gets taken down at the next election.
He’s a f%$#ing bully who never seems to muster the guts to use it on the other side, and he’s yet another case of an incompetence failing up.
He’s Dick Cheney minus one finger tip.
This is Cool
An Ancient Roman mosaic was found beneath a farmer’s field in Turkey:
A giant poolside mosaic featuring intricate geometric patterns has been unearthed in southern Turkey, revealing the far-reaching influence of the Roman Empire at its peak.
The mosaic, which once decorated the floor of a bath complex, abuts a 25-foot (7-meter)-long pool, which would have been open to the air, said Michael Hoff, a University of Nebraska, Lincoln art historian and director of the mosaic excavation. The find likely dates to the third or fourth century, Hoff said. The mosaic itself is an astonishing 1,600 square feet (149 square meters) — the size of a modest family home.
Cameras are Everywhere, Mitt
Mother Jones has found a video of Mitt Romney in a private meeting with his millionaire supporters:
During a private fundraiser earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support President Barack Obama. He dismissed these Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, who don’t assume responsibility for their lives, and who think government should take care of them. Fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in November, Romney replied:
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.
Romney went on: “[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
Mother Jones has obtained video of Romney at this intimate fundraiser—where he candidly discussed his campaign strategy and foreign policy ideas in stark terms he does not use in public—and has confirmed its authenticity.
I don’t think that calling 48% of the country, and probably more than 60% of its senior citizens, moochers, is a death blow, if just because there has been so much bad ink over the past few weeks, whether it was his stumble on foreign policy, or the reports that his campaign staff is at each others’ throats. that it’s hard to tell which disaster will actually gain traction.
H/t Cthulhu at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Punk’d
Former Miss America, That Explains It
Well, it looks like the Gretchen Carlson got punked by an aspiring COMEDIAN:
Fox News host Gretchen Carlson cut an interview short on Monday morning after her guest, a so-called “former Obama supporter” and recent college graduate, didn’t seem to comprehend her questions or his reason for being on the show.
While it’s not clear what was going on with the man, identified as Max Rice, he didn’t seem to understand how television interviews work, offered insincere answers to Carlson’s questions, and even awkwardly hit on her.
“Hello Miss USA,” he said after being introduced. “It’s an honor. I wish I could see you.”
“Miss America, but close enough,” she corrected him.
“Miss America,” Rice said. “Miss Universe in my book, in my book.”
“Now, tell me your story,” Carlson prompted. “You believed in the hope and change of President Obama until you voted for him. Now, tell me the next…”
“Oh, I was a huge Obama supporter in 2008,” he replied. “I met him in third grade. I met him when I was little. What’s your question?”
“And why now are you supporting Mitt Romney?” she asked.
“Why am I supporting Mitt Romney? Well, it’s actually a funny story,” he began. “I lost a basketball game to a friend of mine… he’s a huge supporter of this show.”
Several seconds of silence followed. “Okay, so it sounds like you’re not being very serious about…” Carlson began.
“Oh, I’m also disappointed in the direction Obama has taken this nation,” Rice injected. “I will be casting my ballot for Mitt Romney.”
………
“They were just casting a part in a show,” Rice told the progressive website RawStory.com. “The first thing that shocked me is that they were that desperate to find someone that fit that category. What they were seeking is someone who voted for Obama in 2008, then somewhere in the last four years got disenfranchised and now is a huge Romney supporter. But I feel like anyone who fits that mold would also dis Romney at the same time. So, they just couldn’t find anyone. They’re in New York City, so they had to go find a kid in Chicago.”
Earlier this year, “Fox & Friends” aired a nearly-four-minute video about President Obama’s first term, drawing the ire of critics who say it looked, felt and sounded like a political attack ad.
I am very amused.
Additionally, I actually learned something here.
It always seemed to me that there was a “fish out of water” aspect to Ms. Carlson that seemed familiar, and now I get it.
It’s the Phyllis George all over again.
One final note, see Max Rice’s speech as president of his senior high school class. It’s prize
For those of you who don’t remember Ms. George, she was a sportscaster for a number of years with CBS sports after winning the 1971 Miss America pageant.
She had the broadcasting thing down, but she was always a bit off.
In particular I remember her wondering on air why they kept talking about a big NFL trade rumor.
She knew broadcasting, but she just didn’t get sports, or at least Football.
Carlson is the same way. She is thoroughly competent at presenting herself on camera, but she simply does not get news.
h/t cz
Happy New Year
Rosh Hashanah tonite.
So, for the next 2 days, light posting.
Posted via mobile.
Football, Ameraca’s Manly Sport
H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Least Surprising Data Point: Of The Day
Using OCC data, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Columbia Business School, Ohio State University, and the University of Chicago crunched the numbers to find the number of unnecessary foreclosures, and 800,000 homes were foreclosed on that should not have been:
But while evidence of these problems was pervasive, it was always hard to quantify the damage. Just how many more people could have qualified under the administration’s mortgage modification program if the banks had done a better job? In other words, how many people have been pushed toward foreclosure unnecessarily?
A thorough study released last week provides one number, and it’s a big one: about 800,000 homeowners.
The study’s authors — from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the government’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Ohio State University, Columbia Business School, and the University of Chicago — arrived at this conclusion by analyzing a vast data set available to the OCC. They wanted to measure the impact of HAMP, the government’s main foreclosure prevention program.
What they found was that certain banks were far better at modifying loans than others. The reasons for the difference, they established, were pretty predictable: The banks that were better at helping homeowners avoid foreclosure had staff who were both more numerous and better trained.
Unfortunately for homeowners, most mortgages are handled by banks that haven’t been properly staffed and thus have modified far fewer loans. If these worse-performing banks had simply modified loans at the same pace as their better performing peers, then HAMP would have produced about 800,000 more modifications. Instead of about 1.2 million modifications by the end of this year, HAMP would have resulted in about 2 million.
That’s still well short of the 3-4 million modifications President Obama promised when he announced the program back in early 2009. But it’s a big difference, and a reasonable, basic benchmark against which to compare the program’s failings.
………
The report does not identify these poor performing banks, but it’s not hard to ID them. A “few large servicers [have offered] modifications at half the rate of others,” the authors say. The largest mortgage servicers are Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citi.
Bank of America in particular (the largest of all the servicers when HAMP launched) has been far slower to modify loans than even the other large servicers, as other analyses we’ve cited have shown.
These are the banks that we bailed out, either directly, or by bailing out their counter parties, and they responded by f%$#ing home owners, and by extension, the the real estate market and the entire country.
This is why not prosecuting the banksters was such a bad thing. People who know that they have impunity, and know it, it does not produce ethical, or competent, behavior.
This Ain’t About the Free Market
The news that BAE and EADS are in merger discussions has very little to do with the market or market efficiencies.
It’s about EADS purchasing an entry in the the US market, one which BAE purchased when it bought United Defense, Tracor, LMCS, LMAES, etc.
Ironically, BAE sold its 20% share in EADS about 6 years ago.
The reality is that the defense market is essentially a monopsony, with governments in general, and the US government in particular serving as a single buyer, though with this merger the other end of the dynamic is heading more towards monopoly as well.
Thus, I find the protestations by BAE management that the French and German governments must not have the ability to exert realistic shareholder rights, together they own about 45% of EADS, to ring a bit hollow:
BAE Systems has insisted it will walk away from talks with EADS unless the combined European champion in aerospace and defence was allowed to operate as a normal company without political interference.
BAE is also insisting that the combined entity’s defence business would have to be based in the UK if the plan, news of which was leaked on Wednesday before the structure was finalised, is to go ahead.
Gee, a defense contractor must be kept free of political influence?
This deal is all about creating an entity that can manipulate the politics to its own advantage.
The insistence that the French and German governments sell out, if they didn’t they would have about a 27% stake in the merged firm, is all about the company being able to whipsaw governments with promises, or threats, about defense jobs.
They are Still Flying Camberras?
And it appears that they are crucial to the efforts in Afghanistan:
They’re 49 years old, ugly and owned by NASA, not the Pentagon. But two modified WB-57F Canberras are now among America’s most important warplanes. With anonymous-looking white paint jobs, the Canberras have been taking turns deploying to Afghanistan carrying a high-tech new radio translator designed to connect pretty much any fighter, bomber, spy plane and ground radio to, well, pretty much any other fighter, bomber, spy plane and ground radio. That makes the former Air Force reconnaissance planes, originally transferred to the space agency for science missions, essential hubs of the American-led war effort.
With the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node system, or BACN, the WB-57s act as Star Trek-style universal translators, passing data between planes and troops and finally bringing to life the Pentagon’s decades-old dream of speedy, information-propelled, networked warfare. “It orbits high up and basically receives various platforms’ datalink data, then translates all that data and redistributes it in a fused manner back to different platforms in the operating area,” Aviationintel’s Tyler Rogoway told ace aerospace blogger David Cenciotti.
“BACN bridges the gaps,” manufacturer Northrop Grumman boasted.
This is an artifact of how the Pentagon buys stuff.
You see, instead of trying to deal with a serious problem, lack of proper interoperability between systems, they come up with a ridiculously over ambitious system, the now canceled JTRS, that never had a realistic possibility of meeting its overambitious requirements.
So now we are resorting to cobbled together electronics on an airframe that first flew almost 70 years ago.
Interesting Labor Law Ruling in Wisconsin
It overturned Scott Walker’s revocation of collective bargaining rights.
He declared that it violated the home rule provisions of the Wisconsin state constitution, as well as the 1st amendment.
I don’t expect this to stand on appeal, but I’m an engineer, not a lawyer.
Doctors: Someone Else Who Did it All By Themselves
Except for the inconvenient fact that the federal government covers about 90% of the cost of medical residencies:
So let me get this straight. Currently, the Federal government fund about 90% of the cost of training new doctors at a cost of $12 billion per year? The health care industry itself only picks up 10% of the cost?
I would love to know how this state of affairs got to where it is. I can’t think of another major profession – other than those that are exclusively government professions (military, police, firemen, etc.) where the government pays such a huge amount of training costs for its key personnel. It’s actually kind of mind-boggling.
Yet another case of Randian Übermenschen who simply picked themselves up by their own bootstraps, I guess.
H/t Atrios.
It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!
My bad, in the crush of Charlie’s Bar Mitzvah last week, I missed a bank failure, and there was one this evening to, so here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
- First Commercial Bank, Bloomington, MN
- Truman Bank, St. Louis, MO
The rate has definitely slowed over the past 2 years.
So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):
Charlie is in Hog Haven
His 7×7 and his 8×8 Rubik’s type (Sheng Shou brand actually) arrived in the mail today.
(on edit)
Jeebus! They are huge.
Posted via mobile.
And Torture Becomes the New Norm in the Classroom
One of the problems with “looking forward” on torture and not prosecuting peopel is that it makes torture a normative activity more generally.
Now we are seeing it being used on our children in our schools:
In my public school 40 years ago, teachers didn’t lay their hands on students for bad behavior. They sent them to the principal’s office. But in today’s often overcrowded and underfunded schools, where one in eight students receive help for special learning needs, the use of physical restraints and seclusion rooms has become a common way to maintain order.
It’s a dangerous development, as I know from my daughter’s experience. At the age of 5, she was kept in a seclusion room for up to an hour at a time over the course of three months, until we discovered what was happening. The trauma was severe.
According to national Department of Education data, most of the nearly 40,000 students who were restrained or isolated in seclusion rooms during the 2009-10 school year had learning, behavioral, physical or developmental needs, even though students with those issues represented just 12 percent of the student population. African-American and Hispanic students were also disproportionately isolated or restrained.
Joseph Ryan, an expert on the use of restraints who teaches at Clemson University, told me that the practice of isolating and restraining problematic children originated in schools for children with special needs. It migrated to public schools in the 1970s as federal laws mainstreamed special education students, but without the necessary oversight or staff training. “It’s a quick way to respond but it’s not effective in changing behaviors,” he said.
State laws on disciplining students vary widely, and there are no federal laws restricting these practices, although earlier this year Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote, in a federal guide for schools, that there was “no evidence that using restraint or seclusion is effective.” He recommended evidence-based behavioral interventions and de-escalation techniques instead.
The use of restraints and seclusion has become far more routine than it should be. “They’re the last resort too often being used as the first resort,” said Jessica Butler, a lawyer in Washington who has written about seclusion in public schools.
We did experience this with Charlie on occasion, though not to this degree.
When you look at this, or the relentless use of Tasers by police departments, when the circumstances do not involve any need to protection of either the target of the public, but rather inconvenience.
It’s More than Just Jobless Thursday
But let’s start with the fact that initial jobless claims jumped to 380,000, though tropical storm Isaac may have contributed to those numbers.
The bigger news is that the Federal Reserve has officially begun the 3rd round of quantitative easing (QE3):
The Federal Reserve opened a new chapter Thursday in its efforts to stimulate the economy, saying that it intends to buy large quantities of mortgage bonds, and potentially other assets, until the job market improves substantially.
This is the first time that the Fed has tied the duration of an aid program to its economic objectives. And, in announcing the change, the central bank made clear that its primary reason was not a deterioration in its economic outlook, but a determination to respond more forcefully — in effect, an acknowledgment that its incremental approach until now had been flawed.
The concern about unemployment also reflects a significant shift in the priorities of the nation’s central bank, which has long focused on inflation. Inflation is now running below the Fed’s 2 percent annual target. But with the unemployment rate above 8 percent, the Fed’s policy-making committee suggested Thursday that it might tolerate a period of somewhat higher inflation, promising to maintain stimulus efforts “for a considerable time after the economic recovery strengthens.”
“The weak job market should concern every American,” the Fed’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said at a news conference. The goal of the new policies, he added, “is to quicken the recovery, to help the economy begin to grow quickly enough to generate new jobs.”
The need for new stimulus reflects the disappointing condition of the American economy, which continues to struggle between crisis and prosperity three years after the official end of the recession. More than 20 million Americans cannot find full-time jobs. Median household income has declined. The housing market remains depressed.
You know, you guys should have been running around with your hair on fire a few years ago.
Of course, with interest rates at the zero bound, the people who are supposed to do this is the Congress, because fiscal stimulus works better under these situation, but between the gutlessness of the Democrats, and the active sabotage of the economy by the Republicans, it’s not like there is going to be any help from that end.