Month: September 2013

Election Results

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For New York Elections, Blazio has won the Democratic primary for mayor, but it won’t be clear until morning if he got enough votes to avoid a runoff, while on the ‘Phant side, Joseph Lhota has won by a sufficient margin to avoid a runoff.

Unfortunately, Spitzer lost in his race for Comptroller, because Wall Street managed to buy enough votes for his opponent Scott Stringer.

In Colorado, it looks like the NRA has successfully recalled the two state senators who helped pass the common sense gun laws there.

Bummer on Spitzer’s loss and the NRA’s victory. 

The Best that Can Be Expected………

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I guess it was inevitable that former TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky would have to find work.

Considering his background, taking a position in a large white shoe law firm tied in with finance was very likely and Jenner & Block appears to be much less evil than many of their competitors:

Neil Barofsky, the former prosecutor who brought transparency and accountability to the federal government’s 2008 bank bailout program as its first special inspector general, has joined Jenner & Block, a law firm based in Chicago, as a partner.

Mr. Barofsky, who was appointed by George W. Bush to oversee the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program in late 2008, was a Washington outsider whose periodic reports on the program questioned Treasury officials’ claims of its effectiveness. He and his office drew criticism at times from those officials, as a result.

Mr. Barofsky left his post in 2011 to teach at New York University’s law school. He also wrote “Bailout,” a scathing account of his time in Washington that highlighted the problem of regulators who he said were for the most part captured by the institutions they were supposed to police.

In an interview, Mr. Barofsky said that joining Jenner & Block was a natural next step because the firm specialized in helping government agencies and major corporations with in-depth investigations of problematic practices. Such investigations, he said, are similar to the work he did at TARP. In addition, unlike many other large law firms, Jenner & Block represents clients bringing suits against large financial institutions.

“I can bring my experience investigating large financial institutions and complex financial transactions to a place that doesn’t just do defense work in this area,” Mr. Barofsky said. “This is an opportunity in private practice to help improve governance and have a truth-seeking role.”

Well, we’ll see how this goes, and he has done a real service in reporting on the corruption of the TARP as IG, and in his book about the experience, Bailout, which has probably earned him the undying enmity of Timothy Geithner, Eric Holder, and Barack Obama, and he deserves a lot of credit and a not inconsiderable payday, for that.

It’s Not Like it Was Important, It’s Just an Execution

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So Florida Attorney General had a fundraising meeting, so she delayed an execution:

There is no graver responsibility and act of state government than an execution.

In Florida this week, a campaign fundraiser takes precedence.

Attorney General Pam Bondi persuaded Gov. Rick Scott to postpone an execution scheduled for tonight because it conflicted with her re-election kick-off reception.

“What’s going on down there? It’s ridiculous,” said Phyllis Novick, the Ohio mother of one of Marshall Lee Gore’s victims, when told Monday about the reason for the delay.

Gore, 50, raped, strangled and stabbed 30-year-old Robyn Novick in 1988 before dumping her body into a Miami-Dade County trash heap. Gore was also sentenced to die for the slaying of 19-year-old Susan Roark, whose body was found a few months later in Columbia County.

Gore was initially scheduled for execution in June, but the date was twice delayed because of legal skirmishes over Gore’s sanity.

I have mixed emotions.

I oppose the death penalty, I see a delay to an execution as a good thing, but postponing an execution so that you can raise money?!?!

Damn, that is cold.

I Did Not See This Coming………

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Something else I did not expect, MoveOn’s ad on this is not lame

I did not expect the Russians to announce that the Assad regime have come to a preliminary agreement to place their chemical arsenal under in the control of foreign monitors:

Russia opened up a possible diplomatic solution to the Syrian chemical weapons crisis on Monday with a pledge to persuade the Assad regime to hand over its chemical arsenal to international supervision to be destroyed.

Russia’s new initiative was announced by its foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, hours after the US secretary of state, John Kerry, suggested that the Syrian government could avert punitive US air strikes in retaliation for an alleged chemical attack on 21 August, if it surrendered “every single bit” of its arsenal by the end of the week.

However, Kerry added that Assad “isn’t about to do it”, and the state department hastily issued a clarification saying that apparent ultimatum was “rhetorical” rather than a concrete bargaining position.

But Lavrov appeared to seize on the idea as a means of averting US military intervention.

“If the establishment of international control over chemical weapons in that country would allow avoiding strikes, we will immediately start working with Damascus,” he said.

“We are calling on the Syrian leadership to not only agree on placing chemical weapons storage sites under international control, but also on its subsequent destruction and fully joining the treaty on prohibition of chemical weapons,” Lavrov said after a meeting with his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moallem.

FWIW, the Syrians have appeared to welcome the proposal:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s foreign minister on Monday said he welcomed Russia’s proposal that Damascus hand over control of its chemical weapons arsenal to international supervision to avoid US military action.

“I carefully listened to (Russian foreign minister) Sergei Lavrov’s statement about it. In connection with this, I note that Syria welcomes the Russian initiative based on the Syrian leadership’s concern about the lives of our nationals and the security of our country,” Walid al-Muallem said in comments carried by Russian state news agency ITAR-Tass.

I am not one to favor the “eleventy dimensional chess” bullsh%$ put forward by the Obamabots out there, but this is a welcome development.

I’m not sure if it is luck or design.

The tough part will be insuring that the rebels get rid of their poison gas.

The Assad regime cannot be comfortable with disarming without that.

Of course, that would unmask the House of Saud’s complicity in arming Jihadist rebels with chemical weapons, and I’m not sure that Prince Bandar bin Sultan would like to be labeled a war criminal.

Quote of the Day

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The upshot is that it is now known that “the N.S.A. cannot be trusted on the issue of cyber security,” said Soghoian. He continued, “My sincere hope is that the N.S.A. loses its shine. They’re the bad guy; they’re breaking into systems; they’re exploiting vulnerabilities.” It’s conceivable that they have good intentions. And yet, Soghoian continued, “they act like any other hacker. They steal data. They read private communications.” With that methodology, how easy can it be, though, to give the agency the benefit of the doubt? As many have, Thomas Drake compared the worldview of what he calls the “rogue agency” to the total surveillance of George Orwell’s “1984,” in which the only way to escape was “to cower in a corner. I don’t want to live like that. I’ve already lived that and it’s not pleasant.”

—Matt Buchanan in The New Yorker

(Emphasis mine)

Hillary Will Not Be the Dem Nominee in 2016

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I know that she seems invincible, but she seemed invincible in 2007, and her Iraq War vote killed her campaign.

Well, now she has strongly endorsed bombs for peace in Syria (king of like f%$#ing for virginity):

Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday endorsed President Obama’s call for military strikes against Syria and said “it would be an important step” if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad surrendered his stockpile of chemical weapons.

“The Assad regime’s inhuman use of weapons of mass destruction against innocent men, women and children violates a universal norm at the heart of our global order, and therefore it demands a strong response from the international community, led by the United States,” she said.

Clinton, a potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, made her first public remarks on Syria during a previously scheduled appearance at the White House. She said she had just come from a meeting with Obama, during which they discussed a proposal advanced by Russia to avert U.S. military strikes by having Assad turn over control of the country’s chemical weapons to international monitors.

She said that such a move would be important but that “this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction, and Russia has to support the international community’s efforts sincerely or be held to account.”

She also suggested that the Russian proposal came about only because of a “credible military threat by the United States.”

She’s been coy about running, but anyone who votes for this clusterf%$# in not going to get the nomination, and she has learned her lesson.

I will say that my opinion of her has improved in the past few days, if just because her successor appears to be either batsh%$ insane, or a flat out liar, or both.

I think that this is a tell.  Clinton is not running. 

If she had been more reticent, and less explicit, she would have been position to thread the needle.

She chose not to, and it appears to me to be a conscious choice which flows from her not running for President.

I could be wrong though, my predictions usually are.

Alan Grayson Calls Out the So Called “Classified Briefing” Given to Congress

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Alan Grayson writes an oblique, but blistering editorial in the New York Times:

The documentary record regarding an attack on Syria consists of just two papers: a four-page unclassified summary and a 12-page classified summary. The first enumerates only the evidence in favor of an attack. I’m not allowed to tell you what’s in the classified summary, but you can draw your own conclusion.

 On Thursday I asked the House Intelligence Committee staff whether there was any other documentation available, classified or unclassified. Their answer was “no.”

 The Syria chemical weapons summaries are based on several hundred underlying elements of intelligence information. The unclassified summary cites intercepted telephone calls, “social media” postings and the like, but not one of these is actually quoted or attached — not even clips from YouTube. (As to whether the classified summary is the same, I couldn’t possibly comment, but again, draw your own conclusion.)

………

 We have reached the point where the classified information system prevents even trusted members of Congress, who have security clearances, from learning essential facts, and then inhibits them from discussing and debating what they do know. And this extends to matters of war and peace, money and blood. The “security state” is drowning in its own phlegm.

 My position is simple: if the administration wants me to vote for war, on this occasion or on any other, then I need to know all the facts. And I’m not the only one who feels that way.

And then he follows this up with in interview with the Washington Post where he also says that he has been given no meaningful information, and adds to this the fact that he feels that Obama and his administration are not competent in managing their relationship with Congress:

When has the White House ever — ever — been able to turn around a vote? It hasn’t happened in the entire Obama administration; much less happened when the constituent mail is running 100-1 against. When nobody is paying attention, anything is possible. The president can offer you favors or employ moral suasion or enlist lobbies. But the public is watching and is extremely angry about the president’s position. In that kind of environment, the president doesn’t even have the tools.

BTW, the White House Chief of Staff has admitted as much, saying that this is not a court of law, but that it, “passes the common sense test.”

The White House asserted Sunday that a “common-sense test” dictates the Syrian government is responsible for a chemical weapons attack that President Barack Obama says demands a U.S. military response. But Obama’s top aide says the administration lacks “irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence” that skeptical Americans, including lawmakers who will start voting on military action this week, are seeking.

 “This is not a court of law. And intelligence does not work that way,” White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said during his five-network public relations blitz Sunday to build support for limited strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

 “The common-sense test says he is responsible for this. He should be held to account,” McDonough said of the Syrian leader who for two years has resisted calls from inside and outside his country to step down.

So Obama’s Chief of Staff just said that Obama’s Secretary of State was exaggerating the case.

Roll tape.

Title Corrected, note bit in italics.

How Ordinary People Can Do Heroic things………

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Susan De Guardiolia has confronted the bureaucratic agents of tyranny, and she won:

Fundamentally, the routine expansion of what can only be described as a creeping police state can be stopped by citizens who know their rights.

You do not have to be a lawyer to do this.

You simply have to know a few things:

  • Am I being detained?
    • If the answer is no, leave.  If they refuse to answer, repeat the question, politely.
  • If a policeman asks to search your belongings (including vehicle), then they need your consent to search.  Clearly state your refusal to consent.

Police officers will frequently make voluntary compliance appear mandatory. 

Know your rights.

Deep Thought

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When a person commits a sin and does not turn in repentance, when that person forgets the sin, the Holy One remembers it.

When a person fulfills a commandment by doing a good deed, the Holy One remembers it.

When a person commits a sin and later turns in repentance, remembering the sin, the Holy One grants atonement, and forgets the sin.

When a person fulfills a commandment and ius constantly filled with self-praise because of it, the Holy One forgets it.

What a person forgets, God Remembers; what a person remembers, God forgets.

—Rebbe Shmelke of Nikolsberg

This was a note included in the margins of our Machzor*, and was pointed out during Rosh Hashanah services today by the Rabbi.

It needs to be shared.

*A specialized version of a Jewish prayer book that is intended specifically for Jewish High Holidays services. Link

Krugman Nails It

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In accordance with Euro Zone requirements, France is taking steps to reduce its deficit.

The people who most strongly argue for “expansionary austerity”*, are criticizing Frances steps, and Paul Krugman rightly takes them to task:

Simon Wren-Lewis looks at France, and finds that it is engaging in a lot of fiscal austerity — far more than makes sense given the macroeconomic situation. He notes, however, that France has eliminated its structural primary deficit mainly by raising taxes rather than by cutting spending.

And Olli Rehn — who should be praising the French for their fiscal responsibility, their willingness to defy textbook macroeconomics in favor of the austerity gospel — is furious, declaring that fiscal restraint must come through spending cuts.

………

But the larger point here, surely, is that Rehn has let the mask slip. It’s not about fiscal responsibility; it never was. It was always about using hyperbole about the dangers of debt to dismantle the welfare state. How dare the French take the alleged worries about the deficit literally, while declining to remake their society along neoliberal lines?

It should be noted that Robert Mundell, known as the “Father of the Euro”, is also a big figure in supply side economics (aka Raganomics).

The Euro’s academic and intellectual roots are dominated by people who have the dismantling of the social safety net as one of their important goals.

It is therefore no surprise that they are prosecuting their agenda by using austerity as a tool to do this, but the people who have to live in the Euro are their victims.

*Much like sparkle ponies that sh%$ M&Ms, expansionary austerity does not exist.

Not Enough Bullets………

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In the New York City Mayoral primary, Bill De Blasio, the New York City Public Advocate, is leading in all the polls.

In fact, he is leading by enough that, in a 9 candidate race, he has a shot to clear the 40% requirement in a runoff, is rather telling.

It is heartening that in the home of Wall Street an unabashed liberal appears likely to be the next Mayor of New York.

One of his central proposals is to, “Increase the city’s income tax on wealthy residents earning over $500,000, from 3.86 percent to 4.41 percent,” (PDF) to fund universal preschool.

If you do the math, you will realize that this means an additional $2750.00 in taxes for someone earning a million dollars a year, basically chump change, particularly amongst the well to do in New York.

However, it appears the suggestion that the rich and very rich toss a few more pennies toward public resources has hurt the feeling of rich self absorbed assholes:

When New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio first proposed taxing the rich so every child in the city could attend all-day preschool, it was October and he had support from fewer than 10 percent of Democrats in polls.

 Now he leads the pack. And some of the wealthy New Yorkers who’d pay more under his plan say it bewilders and offends them.

Oh, it offends them, their delicate feelings are hurt.

F%$# that.

“It shows lack of sensitivity to the city’s biggest revenue providers and job creators,” said Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a network of 200 chief executive officers, including co-Chairman Laurence Fink of BlackRock Inc. (BLK), the world’s biggest money manager.

I am so concerned that we are being insufficiently “sensitive” to the parasites from Wall Street.

E.E. “Buzzy” Geduld, who runs the hedge fund Cougar Capital LLC in the city and is a trustee of Manhattan’s Dalton School, where annual tuition tops $40,000, said de Blasio’s plan “is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard” and “not a smart thing to do.”

Yes, because someone who can afford $40,000.00 for a year at private school, will be absolutely destroyed by a 0.55% increase in their taxes on income over ½ a million dollars a year.

De Blasio first presented his tax plan to a quiet audience attending his Oct. 4 speech to the Association for a Better New York, a real-estate developers’ civic group. He called on them, as some of the city’s wealthiest individuals, to provide about $532 million for universal all-day pre-kindergarten and after-hours middle-school programs.

About 20,000 of New York’s 68,000 four-year-olds get city-funded full-day pre-kindergarten classes, with 38,000 enrolled in three-hour programs and 10,000 in none. The added pre-K slots would cost roughly $342 million, de Blasio said.

It’s rather telling that George Soros has contributed to De Blasio campaign. I think that he earns a decent salary.

Additionally, that raving Bolshevik Ben Bernanke has endorsed increased pre-school and after school programs as well.

What a bunch or useless self-absorbed jerks.  I would call them schmucks, but a schmuck has a head.

Pass the Popcorn………

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Pass the Popcorn

The NRA has joined with the ACLU’s lawsuit against NSA surveillance of Americans. They are maintaining that it violates the law against maintaining a national gun registry:

The National Rifle Association has joined a lawsuit against the federal government’s sweeping surveillance program, claiming the collection of phone records and other data violates First Amendment rights and amounts to an illegal gun registry.

In supporting the American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit, the NRA on Wednesday filed a supporting brief arguing the National Security Agency’s datamining “could allow identification of NRA members, supporters, potential members, and other persons with whom the NRA communicates, potentially chilling their willingness to communicate with the NRA.”

The NSA’s phone database would let the government track whether gun owners called the NRA, gun stores, shooting ranges or others.
The brief also says the database “could allow the government to circumvent legal protections for Americans’ privacy, such as laws that guard against the registration of guns or gun owners,” thereby creating an illegal “national gun registry.”

The ACLU welcomed the gun group’s support.

As strange as it sounds, I welcome the NRA’s support as well.

This almost Makes Me Miss Condoleeza Rice

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Some times, the stupid just just overwhelms me.

Normally, it’s a group effort, but recently, John Kerry has been a on a particular reprehensible roll:

Secretary of State John Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee today that he “often” agrees with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, despite taking issue with his most recent column on the Syria conflict.

 ………

 “So with all due respect to Tom Friedman, Who is Most Often Correct, on this occasion, it is absolutely vital that we send the message and deteriorate his capacity,” Kerry concluded.

Seriously.

This almost makes me ………………

Hell, I need some better drugs to handle this sh%$.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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The owner of Lavabit, the now-shuttered secure email provider, has been told that he could be jailed for terminating his service:

The owner of an encrypted email service used by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden said he has been threatened with criminal charges for refusing to comply with a secret surveillance order to turn over information about his customers.

“I could be arrested for this action,” Ladar Levison told NBC News about his decision to shut down his company, Lavabit LLC, in protest over a secret court order he had received from a federal court that is overseeing the investigation into Snowden.

Lavabit said he was barred by federal law from elaborating on the order or any of his communications with federal prosecutors. But a source familiar with the matter told NBC News that James Trump, a senior litigation counsel in the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va., sent an email to Levison’s lawyer last Thursday – the day Lavabit was shuttered — stating that Levison may have “violated the court order,” a statement that was interpreted as a possible threat to charge Levison with contempt of court.

This can be interpreted in two ways: Either they are threatening to jail him for fighting a broad subpoena in court, or they are threatening him because he shut down the service because he refused to run it as part of an ongoing and broad surveillance of his customers.

In either case, this is contemptible, even if it is nominally legal.

The Latest Snowden Release Does Not Surprise………

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It appears that people at all levels of the US government do not trust Pakistan:

The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaeda, North Korea and Iran. But top-secret budget documents reveal an equally intense focus on one purported ally: Pakistan.

No other nation draws as much scrutiny across so many categories of national security concern.

A 178-page summary of the U.S. intelligence community’s “black budget” shows that the United States has ramped up its surveillance of Pakistan’s nuclear arms, cites previously undisclosed concerns about biological and chemical sites there, and details efforts to assess the loyalties of counter­terrorism sources recruited by the CIA.

Pakistan appears at the top of charts listing critical U.S. intelligence gaps. It is named as a target of newly formed analytic cells. And fears about the security of its nuclear program are so pervasive that a budget section on containing the spread of illicit weapons divides the world into two categories: Pakistan and everybody else.

The disclosures — based on documents provided to The Washington Post by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden — expose broad new levels of U.S. distrust in an already unsteady security partnership with Pakistan, a politically unstable country that faces rising Islamist militancy. They also reveal a more expansive effort to gather intelligence on Pakistan than U.S. officials have disclosed.

Not surprising.

We’ve heard this from a lot of different sources over the years.

For anyone to trust Pakistan, and particularly its military and intelligence services, would have to be a thoroughly deluded fool.

The Only Two Things You Need to Know About Larry Summers as Fed Chair

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Item 1: He’s controversial because he is such a horrifically bad choice:

The Washington Post’s Neil Irwin looked this morning at what he sees as the many reasons the upcoming nomination of a new Federal Reserve chair became a circus, unlike past low-controversy nominations.

………

But among Neil’s four factors, only one really matters at the margin: The White House appears poised to make a demonstrably bad choice for Fed Chair.

If Larry Summers withdrew himself from consideration, or the White House announced that it isn’t going to pick him, the circus tents would pack up and we could all go home. The Fed Chair race would become uncontroversial and boring again, Business Insider’s existence notwithstanding.

People oppose Summers for all sorts of reasons, but here are my two.

One is that while we don’t know exactly where he (or Janet Yellen) would lead on monetary policy, I suspect Summers shares the White House’s unhealthy lean toward tight money. It’s particularly hard to figure out what Summers would do since he’s not actually a monetary policy scholar.

The other is that I fear Summers would squander the comity and collaboration that make the Federal Reserve Board work, since he’s had a tendency to do that at other institutions he’s been tapped to lead.

Item 2: Wall Street, which has spent millions cultivating him, appears to be terrified at the prospect of Summers as Fed Chair:

The spreading expectation that President Obama will name Lawrence H. Summers to lead the Federal Reserve Board appears to be working against the central bank’s efforts to stimulate the economy.

The jitters even have some analysts betting that a Summers nomination could lead to slower economic growth, less job creation and higher interest rates than if the president named Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s vice chairwoman.

Businesses raising money and people buying homes and cars all have faced higher interest rates in recent months as the Fed’s campaign to suppress borrowing costs has faltered. The rise in rates reflects optimism that the economy is gaining strength, and an expectation that the Fed will begin to pull back later this year. But a wide range of financial analysts also see evidence of a Summers effect.

Many investors expected that Ms. Yellen would be nominated to replace Ben S. Bernanke as head of the central bank, a choice that would have sent a clear message of continuity. Instead, investors are now trying to anticipate how Mr. Summers might change the Fed.

The unease is the product of a little information and a lot of speculation. Mr. Summers, a Harvard University economist who served for two years as Mr. Obama’s primary economic adviser, has said little about monetary policy in recent years. Investors are left parsing a handful of comments in which he has expressed some doubts on the benefits and concern about the consequences of the Fed’s policies.

“People don’t know what Larry might do,” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of Pimco, the giant bond fund manager. “There’s a lack of a lot of information on Larry’s views. We don’t have enough information to make an assessment, just some second- and thirdhand accounts.”

Wall Street owns Larry Summers, but they don’t want him to be Fed Chair.

The only thing to argue for him is cronyism and corruption.  Seriously.

If Obama nominates him, I am calling both of my Senators bring up his role in Andrei Schleifer’s corruption in the market reforms in Russia.

Mission Creep Already?

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Now we have Barack Obama saying that “limited and proportional strikes” will create Freedumb:

President Barack Obama said Tuesday that “limited, proportional” military strikes against Syria would degrade President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons capabilities and allow that nation to “free itself” from political conflict.

And we have John Kerry leaving an opening for boots on the ground:

Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday appeared to leave the door open to the U.S. deploying ground troops in Syria in the event the country “imploded, for instance.”

“In the event Syria imploded, for instance or in the event there was a threat of a chemical weapons cache falling into the hands of somebody else and it was clearly in the interest of our allies — all of us, the British, the French, and others. I don’t want to take off the table an option that might or might not be available to the President of the United States to secure our country,” Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, debating whether to authorize President Barack Obama’s punitive strike in response to a reported chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime.

Asked by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), the ranking Republican on the committee, whether the secretary of state truly believed combat troops could be an option, Kerry walked the comment back by saying he was only “thinking out loud.”

Yeah, like that is reassuring.

This is so going to turn into a complete cluster-f%$#.