Month: April 2013

Contemptible Ratf%$# Decides Not to Run for Reelection

No Comments

Senator, and Glenn Quagmire impersonator, Max Baucus

I am referring, of course, to  short timer Senator Max Baucus, who has announced that he will not be running for reelection:

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), one of the most influential congressional figures of his era, announced his intention Tuesday to retire, a move that could produce sweeping changes in the political and legislative landscape over the next two years.

 The announcement could mark the beginning of one of the most consequential periods in Baucus’s long public career, because he pledged to devote the rest of his time in Washington to pursuing a comprehensive rewrite of the federal tax code, an effort that many see as key to breaking the fiscal gridlock that has paralyzed Washington in recent years.

BTW, if thie following paragraph does not fill you with dread, you have no soul:

That paralysis of taxes and spending has been a central feature of Obama’s presidency, and Baucus said that when the president called him Tuesday about his retirement, the talk quickly turned to tax reform. “They’re going to get tired of me,” Baucus said in an interview, adding that White House officials do not “know themselves where they are” on a strategy for ending the stalemate.

Because Baucus has been a cancer on the Senate in general, and Democratic Party in particular, and unencumbered by the potential for reelection, I think that he will try to f%$# the Democratic Party, and the country in any way he can.

After all, he has to be angling to get a cushy, and highly remunerative, gif from corporate America after he retires

As TPM reporter Brian Beutler pithily observes, it’s not just that he comes from a conservative state, and so has to hew right.   It is that he hews right except when the politics make it absolutely impossible for him to do so:

Some pols are more or less faithful party-men who stray on occasion during challenging electoral cycles. Baucus, by contrast, has amassed a remarkably consistent record of working at cross-purposes with the rest of his party whether politics in Montana have demanded it or not.

 He voted for the Bush Tax Cuts in 2001; then after securing re-election, and against the will of Democratic leadership, supported a Medicare prescription drug benefit that routed tax payer money through private insurers. He spent months and months behind closed doors with GOP lawmakers in 2009 in a futile search for bipartisan support for what became the Affordable Care Act. That quixotic effort dragged on well past the point at which party leaders believed it might pay off, and it delayed legislative action for so long that the bill nearly died when Democrats lost Ted Kennedy’s seat to Scott Brown in early 2010.

 ………

 A key exception to this track record is his long history of bucking GOP attempts to slash and privatize popular social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security. But viewed through the prism of his broader approach to politics, this seems more an idiosyncratic instance of liberal priorities lining up with Baucus’ venal decision making, than an expression of genuine commitment to the legacy of the New Deal and Great Society.

 By contrast, his recent votes against gun legislation and the Democratic budget are vintage Baucus. One can argue that this sort of “independent streak” might protect Montana Democratic candidates in the abstract. But polling on the specifics doesn’t really back up the view that Baucus needed to buck his party on these measures to remain viable. Which helps explain why Baucus’ fellow Montanan Jon Tester (whom, I should note as a caveat won’t be in cycle again until 2018) voted ‘yes’ on both occasions.

(Read the whole thing)

I would also note that he, and his staff leave a trail of slime all the way to K Street:

Restaurant chains like McDonald’s want to keep their lucrative tax credit for hiring veterans. Altria, the tobacco giant, wants to cut the corporate tax rate. And Sapphire Energy, a small alternative energy company, is determined to protect a tax incentive it believes could turn algae into a popular motor fuel.

 To make their case as Congress prepares to debate a rewrite of the nation’s tax code, this diverse set of businesses has at least one strategy in common: they have retained firms that employ lobbyists who are former aides to Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which will have a crucial role in shaping any legislation.

 No other lawmaker on Capitol Hill has such a sizable constellation of former aides working as tax lobbyists, representing blue-chip clients that include telecommunications businesses, oil companies, retailers and financial firms, according to an analysis by LegiStorm, an online database that tracks Congressional staff members and lobbying. At least 28 aides who have worked for Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, since he became the committee chairman in 2001 have lobbied on tax issues during the Obama administration — more than any other current member of Congress, according to the analysis of lobbying filings performed for The New York Times.

 “K Street is literally littered with former Baucus staffers,” said Jade West, an executive at a wholesalers’ trade association that relies on a former finance panel aide, Mary Burke Baker. “It opens doors that allow you to make the case.”

(emphasis mine)

Hopefully, former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who is popular and rather liberal by the standards of Montana politics.

Worst People in the World

No Comments

The modeling agents in Sweden tried to recruit models from an eating disorder clinic:

A well-known clinic in Sweden has managed to attract a following that stands outside the entrance, approaches patients, and … tries to recruit them to be models?

Indeed, while the United States struggles to keep women’s health clinic patients safe from vitriolic anti-abortion protesters, Sweden’s issue is based at the 1,700-bed Stockholm Center for Eating Disorders, the largest clinic of its kind in the country. Agents have been known to stand outside the clinic and approach teenage patients, offering the sometimes horrifically ill girls work as models because of their small size. These instances provide a shocking look into how shallow the modeling world is capable of being, caring only about young women’s physical attributes and not their health.

One of Sweden’s largest modeling agencies once approached a 14-year-old girl and handed her a business card, while another girl who was so sick she was in a wheelchair was interviewed by another agent right outside the clinic. These awful people care not for these girls’ poor health — you know, the reason they’re at the clinic — but instead for their proven ability to lose a lot of weight very quickly.

This is so deeply evil that it just buggers the mind.

Their mothers should have drowned these guys at birth.

So Not Surprised

No Comments

After well documented aggravated assaults against Occupy protesters, the DA has decided not to prosecute the thug cops who got caught on tape:

Two New York City police officials involved in separate incidents during the Occupy Wall Street protests won’t face criminal charges, according to a report from NBC News New York.

Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna (“Tony Baloney,” as he became known to Occupiers) and Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardona were investigated by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Bologna, who was immortalized in a hilarious Daily Show segment called The Vigilogna, was disciplined by the NYPD for pepper spraying two women who were caught behind mesh police netting during a demonstration in 2011. The department docked him 10 vacation days and reassigned him to Staten Island, but the DA has decided there’s not enough evidence to prosecute him on criminal charges.

Kaylee Dedrick — one of the pepper-sprayed women — filed a federal lawsuit against the NYPD and the officer.

The other incident, involving Cardona, was a few weeks later during an altercation with Occupy protester Felix Rivera-Pitre. The NYPD said that Cardona was sprayed in the face with an unknown liquid by a group of demonstrators and that Rivera-Pitre attempted to elbow Cardona in the face. Cardona is seen in the video below lunging at Rivera-Pitre. The protester said the attack was unprovoked and that Cardona punched him in the face, and tore an earring from his ear.

What a surprise.  Cops break the law in the service of the banksters, and the prosecutors no-bill.

You can see the videos at the link.

Good

No Comments

The Boston Marathon bombing suspect has been formally arraigned in front of a Federal Judge:

The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings was charged Monday with “using a weapon of mass destruction” that resulted in three deaths, according to documents filed in federal court.

The suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was charged by federal prosectors as he lay in a bed at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, officials said.

In a criminal complaint unsealed Monday in United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Mr. Tsarnaev was charged with one count of “using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction” against persons and property within the United States resulting in death, and one count of “malicious destruction of property by means of an explosive device resulting in death.”

If he is convicted, the charges could carry the death penalty.

During the bedside arraignment, a magistrate judge advised Mr. Tsarnaev of his rights and the charges against him, according to court papers.

(emphasis mine)

Credit where credit is due, Eric Holder and Barack Obama decided not to try and put this guy before a military tribunal.

I’m sure that Senator Lindsey Graham is having a bitchy hissy fit right now, and that makes me smile.

I Wonder if this is About Race

No Comments

The New York Times has an article about how the Danes are looking to roll back their social safety net:

It began as a stunt intended to prove that hardship and poverty still existed in this small, wealthy country, but it backfired badly. Visit a single mother of two on welfare, a liberal member of Parliament goaded a skeptical political opponent, see for yourself how hard it is.

It turned out, however, that life on welfare was not so hard. The 36-year-old single mother, given the pseudonym “Carina” in the news media, had more money to spend than many of the country’s full-time workers. All told, she was getting about $2,700 a month, and she had been on welfare since she was 16.

In past years, Danes might have shrugged off the case, finding Carina more pitiable than anything else. But even before her story was in the headlines 16 months ago, they were deeply engaged in a debate about whether their beloved welfare state, perhaps Europe’s most generous, had become too rich, undermining the country’s work ethic. Carina helped tip the scales.

With little fuss or political protest — or notice abroad — Denmark has been at work overhauling entitlements, trying to prod Danes into working more or longer or both. While much of southern Europe has been racked by strikes and protests as its creditors force austerity measures, Denmark still has a coveted AAA bond rating.

But Denmark’s long-term outlook is troubling. The population is aging, and in many regions of the country people without jobs now outnumber those with them.

Some of that is a result of a depressed economy. But many experts say a more basic problem is the proportion of Danes who are not participating in the work force at all — be they dawdling university students, young pensioners or welfare recipients like Carina who lean on hefty government support.

“Before the crisis there was a sense that there was always going to be more and more,” Bjarke Moller, the editor in chief of publications for Mandag Morgen, a research group in Copenhagen. “But that is not true anymore. There are a lot of pressures on us right now. We need to be an agile society to survive.”

The better term for an “Agile society” is a race to the bottom, and this really is the underlying principle of the Euro Zone, but I’m also wondering whether the fact that Danish society has become more multi-ethnic, and that there is a feeling, particularly amongst the nativist right, that taxpayer dollars are going to people who are not truly Danish.

It seems an unfortunate truism that attacks on the social safety net are frequently couched in terms of a condemnation of the lazy and undeserving “other”.

Crowd Sourcing a Cat Naming

No Comments
Click for full size



Kitteh playing games


Kitteh finds this interesting


Kitteh in box


Another Paparazzi? I vant to be left alone.


Ready to take a nap anywhere


Meatball is unamused by all of this fuss

Yes, crowd sourcing.  As my son said, “Crowd sourcing is sooooo 2013!”

In any case, there have been two suggestions made from family members. Sharon*, has taken to calling him (yes, he is a Tom, at least until he is old enough to get neutered) Annoying Kitten, and then started using the initials AK, which I then suggested adding -47 to, in homage of Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov’s most famous contribution to the world of military arms, so she has taken to calling said cat, “AK-47”.

I have two problems with this: First, it does not suit the cat. Cats are less assault rifles than they are stilettos. Second it seems that naming a pet after a weapon has a potential for accidental weapons discharge.†

Natalie, on the other hand, has suggested, “Mr. Snugglypuff,” because ……… well because she is a 15 year old girl who is a theater geek.  (And also, because he looks so cute, but a monster lurks behind the fur, a monster with teeth, and claws, and bent sense of humor.)

I am a firm believer that one does not name a cat.  Instead, one discovers the name that a cat already had, and I do not believe that either my daughter nor my wife have captured his name.

So, what do you think that we should call the cat.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
†I had a discussion with a Vietnam vet, Peter Meeledy, about how a dog named “VC” nearly started a firefight among his unit, because, well, when someone shouts “VC” in 1969, you tend to shoot first, and ask questions later.

Bacon, It’s Not Just for Breakfast

3 Comments

You can also use it to cut a hole through armor plate:

I recently committed myself to the goal, before the weekend was out, of creating a device entirely from bacon and using it to cut a steel pan in half. My initial attempts were failures, but I knew success was within reach when I was able to ignite and melt the pan using seven beef sticks and a cucumber.

No, seriously. The device I built was a form of thermal lance. A thermal lance, typically made of iron instead of bacon, is used to cut up scrap metal and rescue people from collapsed buildings. It works by blowing pure oxygen gas through a pipe packed with iron and magnesium rods. These metals are surprisingly flammable in pure oxygen, releasing a huge amount of heat as they are consumed. The result is a jet of superheated iron plasma coming out of the end of the pipe. For sheer destructive force, few tools match a thermal lance. But iron isn’t the only thing that’s flammable in a stream of pure oxygen.

I’ve done some work with exothermic cutters, which are simpler than a thermal lance.

It’s an iron tube. You blow oxygen through it, and when you strike an arc, you ignite the iron, and the hot stream of oxygen which burns through whatever you are cutting.

Basically, if you pass oxygen through a tube of anything which burns hot enough to start your target burning, and almost any metal or oil/fat will in a pure oxygen atmosphere, you can cut through almost anything.

Still, it’s neat. 

Why a Carbon Tax is Better than a Carbon Market, Part 3.1415926

No Comments

The EU which has the largest and most ambitious carbon market world, has effectively shut it down by refusing to subsidize it:

The European Parliament this week voted 334-315 (with 60 abstentions) against a controversial “back-loading” plan that aimed to boost the flagging price of carbon, which since 2008 has fallen from about 31 euros per tonne to about 4 euros (about $5.20). Since the vote, the price has fallen even farther, to 2.80 euros. The collapsing market is hardly the kind of firm foundation needed for building a clean-energy economy.

“Now, the market is dead, as far as I can see,” said Steffen Böhm, director of the Essex Sustainability Institute at Britain’s Essex Business School.

What will be the aftermath of the ETS collapse? Here’s a quick primer on what happened, and what it could mean elsewhere, particularly in California, which inaugurated a new carbon market at the start of this year. (Related: “California Tackles Climate Change, But Will Others Follow?”

The “backloading” is an indirect subsidy which would pull carbon credits off of the market to raise prices.

Cap and trade does not work without extensive government intervention, it costs more to administer, and it requires extensive and ongoing government subsidies.

Tell me again why cap and trade is better than a carbon tax again?

The only thing that I can figure out is tribalism:  It allows politicians to create yet another mechanism for them to throw profits toward their classmates from their “elite” schools who are working at Wall Street or the City of London.

It’s Official: the SCOTUS’ Resident Troll Does Not Give a Sh%$!

No Comments

There really are not a whole bunch of formal rules for a sitting Supreme Court justice.

They are famously exempt from the ethics regulations that apply to other Federal judges.

That being said, there are a number of customs that have always been scrupulously observed.

One of them is not to make statements that appear to prejudge something that might come come before the court.

Well, Fat Tony just pissed on that one, and went one further, and made public statements on a case that is currently being decided by the court:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told university students that key provisions of the Voting Rights Act had evolved from an emergency response to racial discrimination in 1965 to an “embedded” form of “racial preferment” that would likely continue indefinitely unless the court acts to end them.

Justice Scalia, speaking Monday night at the University of California Washington Center, elaborated on remarks he made in February during Supreme Court arguments over the act’s Section 5, which requires states and localities that historically discriminated against minority voters to obtain federal approval to change election procedures.

Section 5 functions as a racial entitlement because the federal government doesn’t take a similar interest in protecting the voting rights of white people from racial discrimination, Justice Scalia said.

Congress repeatedly has reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, most recently in 2006, when President George W. Bush signed a 25-year extension. At February arguments, Justice Scalia dismissed overwhelming congressional support for Section 5 as “very likely attributable to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

Seriously. They heard the arguments, and they haven’t made a decision yet, and he is making public statements on this?

Is he nuts? Is it Alzheimer’s? Or maybe he realizes that he will never be Chief Justice, and he no longer gives a sh%$.

I do not know why he did this, nor do I care, but it is clear that he is no longer (if he ever was) fit to be a Supreme Court justice.

This is Not the Onion

No Comments

You know that guy who is alleged to have mailed ricin laced letters to Obama and Congresscritters?

Wanna guess what his day job is?

He was an Elvis impersonator:

An Elvis impersonator named Paul Kevin Curtis who lives in Corinth Mississippi was charged Thursday for allegedly sending ricin-tainted letters to President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wiker (R-MS), and a judge in Lee County Mississippi. Court documents released by the Department of Justice show Curtis was charged with one count of sending a letter “containing threats to take the life of or to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States” and a count of sending a letter “containing a threat to injure the person of others.”

We are living in very strange times.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!

No Comments

Daym!!!  It;s been a busy week for bank regulators:

  1. First Federal Bank, Lexington, KY
  2. Heritage Bank of North Florida, Orange Park, FL
  3. Chipola Community Bank, Marianna, FL

Full FDIC list

And here are the credit union closings:

  1. Shiloh of Alexandria Federal Credit Union,

Full NCUA list

We went from 9 total failures for the year to 13.  That’s a big bump 

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

Google Has Done the Impossible………

No Comments

Google has made me want to be a German:

Google received an ultimatum Thursday from German consumer organizations that want it to start answering questions from its users via email.

The Federation of German Consumer Organisations (VZBV) has asked Google to sign an undertaking that it will provide customer service by responding individually to users questions sent by email, said Carola Elbrecht, VZBV’s project manager for consumer rights in the digital world at the VZBV.

Signing such a document would expose Google to fines if it breached the undertaking. On the other hand, said Elbrecht, “If Google does not sign it, we’re going to court.”

Germany’s Telemedia Act requires businesses to provide an email address to allow customers to contact them quickly.

But, said Elbrecht, “It is not enough to just provide an email address that leads into emptiness, you also need to be able to communicate over it.” Responding to users attempting to get their questions answered with automatic replies, as Google does in Germany, is not sufficient, she said.

Seriously, dealing with issues on Blogger, or Gmail, or pretty much any Google product, you have no way of contacting a human being.

Their response is “check out the forums and support pages.”

The forums are where people go when they don’t have the answers, and it’s exceedingly rare when a Google staffer deigns to read and answer a question, and the support pages are frequently incomplete and/or out of date.

This is Nucking Futs

No Comments

I get that the bombing at the Boston Marathon is a big deal.

But the saturation coverage is excessive, and locking down the Boston Metro area, the home to about 4½ million people, is insane.

Seriously, if this happens in a place like London (52 dead, over 700 injured), or Madrid (191 dead and 2050 injured), they kept the cities open.

It seems that every time that something like this happens, we are greeted by our authorities telling us to indulge in underwear befouling terror.

Seriously, our reaction as a society (I’m not talking about the first responders here) has been one of profound cowardice, and government officialdom has encouraged this whole thing.

I wonder if this is the ultimate goal. Is it all about sending the message, “Live in obedient fear, citizen.“

Quote of the Day

No Comments

On suggestions by a CEO of a company that makes its money from making all of us scared and paranoid:

It sounds to me like the Boston marathon attendees fell down on their job to prevent the attack.

Complete and utter paranoid nonsense

You have no obligation to be a free and voluntary force of Stasi informants.

Nor does the government have the ability to prevent every possible mishap.

What can be done is to care for the injured and assist, if possible, in finding those responsible.

Even more importantly, to live free of fear and suspicion of others.

Otherwise, the terrorists and their counterparts like Phrantceena Halres will have won.

—Patrick Durusau on the assertions of so called security experts that we all need to be paranoid and terrified

FYI,Halrez is, “founder, chairman and CEO Total Protection Services International, a security services company focused exclusively on high threat/close proximity safety and security services.”

So she is in the “scaring the sh%$# out of us” business.

I’m Not Sure Who’s the Rat, and Who is the Sinking Ship………

No Comments

But following the discovery of a complaint filed by his ex-wife for trespassing at her home, the national GOP is pulling out all resources from his campaign:

National Republicans are pulling the plug on Mark Sanford’s suddenly besieged congressional campaign, POLITICO has learned — a potentially fatal blow to the former South Carolina governor’s dramatic comeback bid.

Blindsided by news that Sanford’s ex-wife has accused him of trespassing and concluding he has no plausible path to victory, the National Republican Congressional Committee has decided not to spend more money on Sanford’s behalf ahead of the May 7 special election.

“Mark Sanford has proven he knows what it takes to win elections. At this time, the NRCC will not be engaged in this special election,” said Andrea Bozek, an NRCC spokeswoman.

Sanford is facing Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a Clemson University administrator and sister of comedian Stephen Colbert, in a race that has grabbed the national spotlight.

The NRCC’s move comes hours after Tuesday night’s report by the Associated Press that Sanford’s ex-wife, Jenny Sanford, filed a court complaint accusing him of trespassing at her home in early February – which would be a violation of the terms of their divorce agreement.

Republicans said they were caught off guard by news of Jenny Sanford’s complaint. They worry other damaging revelations about Mark Sanford’s personal life that they aren’t aware of could come out in the coming weeks.

The calculus here is simple: The district is pretty red, and any money that they spent on Sanford now they would also have to spend in 2014 if he won, so it is better to let Colbert-Busch to have a few months in Congress, where her vote won’t count.

That way you do not have Mark Sanford around your neck like a corpulent albatross.

I Do Not Care That Their Votes did Not Matter, Primary Them

No Comments

The 4 Democrats who voted for the filibuster on the (already largely ineffectual) background checks on guns need to have their political careers ended:

As the Senate began voting Wednesday on nine proposed changes to a gun control bill, the centerpiece proposal on background checks quickly failed to win enough support, despite broad public backing.

The vote on the so-called Manchin-Toomey amendment was 54 in favor, 46 against — failing to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to move ahead. Four Republicans supported it, and four Democrats voted no.

………

In addition to McCain and Toomey, the amendment was supported by Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Mark Kirk (Ill.) The Democrats who opposed the measure were Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.), Mark Begich (Alaska), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.) The four Democrats face difficult reelections in rural states with strong gun cultures.

And their votes will not make a difference.

The NRA will still run ads against them, and the 10% of the electorate who oppose a sane background check policy would never vote for them.

It is more important to enforce meaningful party loyalty than it is to allow these ratf%$#s to hold their seats.

Why Does George W. Bush Hate America?

No Comments

Because that is the only reason that he would approve of his aid threatening to ban William F. Buckley from the radio because he criticized them:

Buried in this op-ed by former Bush speechwriter Matt Lattimer about Margaret Thatcher is this incredibly juicy nugget.

A few years later, when (William F.) Buckley questioned the wisdom of the Iraq war and George W. Bush’s 2008 surge, he was all but drummed out of the conservative movement. “If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we’ve experienced, it would be expected that he would retire or resign,” Buckley once said of Bush. For such apostasies, Bush aides threatened to ban Buckley from the radio airwaves. (I know because I was there.)

(emphasis mine)

These guys sound more like Stalinists every day.