Year: 2013

Buh Bye Silvio

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A special committee of the Italian Senate has voted to eject Silvio Berulusconi:

A special panel of the Italian Senate on Friday voted to strip Silvio Berlusconi of his current seat, a humiliating blow for a man who has dominated Italy for the past two decades but whose political career is now very much in jeopardy.

The expulsion vote against Mr. Berlusconi, based on his recent tax fraud conviction, was his second setback of the week, after his failed attempt to bring down the country’s fragile coalition government. The full Senate will probably decide by the end of the month whether to expel Mr. Berlusconi, though a vote against him is now considered very likely.

Mr. Berlusconi, 77, a former prime minister and billionaire media mogul, who once wielded power with a swagger, had fought for weeks to prevent the expulsion vote. Many analysts say his effort to topple the government was partly intended to interrupt or delay the proceedings against him in the Senate. But a mutiny of his center-right supporters forced him to make a public reversal and support the government in a parliamentary confidence vote.

The underlying problem is that Berlusconi controls pretty much all the private TV stations in Italy, and he used this media domination to prosecute his electoral success.

LINKAGE

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This is too funny for words:

Live In Obedient Fear, Citizen

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Ibragim Todashev, who may or may not have been tied to something that alleged Boston Marathon Bomber Tamerlan, and who was shot by the FBI under circumstances that are still unclear.

Well, he had a girlfriend, and she has been slated for deportation and held in solitary confinement because she gave an interview to Boston Magazine:

Tatiana Gruzdeva, the girlfriend of Ibragim Todashev—the man shot by the FBI just after allegedly implicating himself and marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a 2011 triple murder in Waltham—has been arrested in Florida by Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a collect call from Glades County Jail, where she said she is being held in solitary confinement, Tatiana Gruzdeva said that immigration officers told her she was being deported because of her interviews with Boston magazine.

The Glades County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that Gruzdeva is being held in the county jail.

Gruzdeva, 19, said she had gone to sign work papers at the local immigrations office at 11 p.m. Tuesday. She had been waiting for weeks for the work authorization form that would allow her to earn a living. Instead, she said, she was taken aside and arrested. “They said it’s because of interview,” she said. “I’m in the room by myself,” she said repeatedly, crying.

Whoever ordered this is a bad, bad, person.

Wendy Davis is Running for Texas Governor

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After her bursting on the national political scene, she has announced that she is running for Governor:

Wendy Davis walked across the stage at the Wiley G. Thomas Coliseum more than 30 years ago to accept her diploma from Richland High School.

On Thursday, she returned to that stage to kick off her bid to become Texas’ 48th governor.

“This is a campaign not just for governor, but for the very future of our state,” the 50-year-old Democratic state senator from Fort Worth said. “Thirty-two years ago, I started my own journey in this room.

“Today, we start a new journey – together,” she said. “It’s a journey that won’t end on Election Day and it won’t end in Austin. As long as we can make our great state even greater, we will keep going.”

Davis gained national fame — and notoriety — from a June filibuster geared to prevent a comprehensive abortion bill from passing, which prompted Democrats throughout the state to encourage her to try to reclaim for their party the governor’s mansion which hasn’t housed a Democrat since Ann Richards left in 1995.

I think that she is facing long odds, but at least she will be competitive, and we won’t have a freak show like the 2006 election, which had Carole Keeton Insertlastnamehere and Kinky Friedman running as independents and scoring in the double digits.

It’s good for the Texas Democratic Party, even if she does not win.

It’s Jobless Thursday

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The numbers look pretty good:

The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits edged higher last week but remained at pre-recession levels, a signal of growing strength in the labor market.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 308,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

The data could provide some of the strongest guidance this week on the health of the U.S. economy as a partial government shutdown delays the release of economic data, including the monthly employment report which was scheduled to be released on Friday.

In related news, we won’t get last month’s figures on Friday, because there literally three people left working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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Initial reports are that a woman rammed some of the stanchions at the White House, and then led police on a high speed chase toward Congress before being shot to death.

There was a child in a car seat in the car when this was going on.

No further information right now, just a lot of speculation in the media.

An Old Witch Tells the President What to Do

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Read Hecate:

……… I pulled A’s in a lot of law school classes, but the class in which I did my absolute best was Negotiations 101.

 Of course, unlike our President, I didn’t go to Harvard Law School and I was only assistant editor, not editor, of Law Review. I’ve never taught ConLaw and I’ve never held elective office. But I have had cause to wonder, more than once, if Mr. Obama may not have been busy doing something else on the day they taught Negotiating 101 at HLS.

 ………

 So, I’m an old woman who didn’t go to HLS and wouldn’t presume to imagine that I could lead the United States. But I’ll still, as someone who’s actually been in the field, practiced law, and successfully negotiated good outcomes for my clients, presume to give Mr. Obama some advice.

 If I were sitting today where you sit, Mr. Obama, almost at the confluence of the Anacostia River, the Washington Chanel, and the Potomac River, here’s what I’d do:

 I’d announce that, now that the government’s been closed for two days, I’m unwilling to sign anything but a clean bill to fund the government, except that now I also want the Rapeublicans to approve all of my judicial nominees who have been languishing in Congress lo these many years.

 Tomorrow morning, I’d eat breakfast, put on my nice suit, walk out into the Rose Garden (it’s gorgeous in DC this week) and announce that now that I’ve slept on it, I won’t sign anything except a clean bill with approval of all of my judicial nominees and statehood for DC. I’d wave to the reporters, go play golf (include a woman this time, Mr. President), review their homework with my daughters, and get a massage.

 On Friday, after I had lunch at the Palm with my wife (have the crabmeat cocktail and the steak salad, rare), I’d walk up to Dupont Circle and say that I’d been discussing it with Ms. Obama and, now, I’m unwilling to sign anything except a clean bill with approval of all of my judicial appointees, statehood for DC, and a new bill of Elizabeth Warren’s choosing.

 I’d take the weekend off, go to Camp David, let the girls and the dogs run around and enjoy Indian Summer in Maryland, have dinner with some crazy, wild-eyed liberals, and make sure the press knew who they were and what we ate (include arugula and craft beer on the menu).

 On Monday, I’d wait.

 On Tuesday, I’d give a speech and announce that, having thought about it over the weekend, in the calm of Camp David, I also need a new program of really strong controls on financial markets.

 You get the picture.

 Right now, the only people upping the ante are the Rapeublicans. In order to “meet in the middle” and appear “reasonable” Mr. Obama has to move towards their position. That’s no way to negotiate.

 Rapeublicans who are watching the polls go even further down on the notion of shutting down the government (they’ve already crossed that Rubicon — another river reference — so what the heck), need some additional motivation to move towards Mr. Obama. And they need to see that continuing to hold out will cost them even more.

 Maybe, in the end, Mr. Obama shows what a reasonable guy he is by compromising on a new bill of Elizabeth Warren’s choosing and half of his judicial appointees. That’s how negotiations work.

The outcome of any negotiation is an artifact of power, and I do not think that Obama gets that.

“Welcome the Interest of the American People,” My Ass

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If Barack Obama “Welcomed” a discussion on NSA surveillance, he would not be fighting the tech company’s request for transparency on the spying orders:

The U.S. Justice Department has told a secret surveillance court that it opposes a request from technology companies to reveal more about the demands they receive for user information, according to court papers released on Wednesday.

Negotiations between the federal government and companies such as Google Inc have gone on for months, and while U.S. spy agencies said they plan to be more transparent, they have opposed company requests to disclose more detailed data.

The court papers were filed under seal on Monday in the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a body originally created to curb intelligence abuses.

Microsoft Corp, Yahoo! Inc, LinkedIn Corp and Facebook Inc are among the companies seeking permission to publish statistics about the extent of the demands placed on them.

Don’t listen to what he says, watch what he does.

Greece ……… Is ……… F%$#ed

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The leaders of the Greek Fascist Golden Dawn Partywere formally charged with assault and murder:

Nikolaos Michaloliakos, the extremists’ enigmatic leader, was said to be in his pyjamas when police surrounded his home and knocked at the door. Like his second-in-command, Christos Pappas, who subsequently surrendered, and the four MPs who were hauled before a public prosecutor on Tuesday, he stands accused of murder, money-laundering, blackmail and illegal possession of arms.

But they were almost immediately kicked loose on bail:

Three senior lawmakers from Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn were freed on Wednesday pending trial on criminal charges, an unexpected setback to the government’s efforts to clamp down on a party it has labelled a neo-Nazi criminal gang.

The decision to free the men after an 18-hour court session raises questions about the solidity of the state’s case against Golden Dawn after one of its sympathisers stabbed to death an anti-fascism rapper.

Party spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris and fellow lawmakers Ilias Panagiotaros and Nikos Michos stormed out of the court to cheers of “bravo” from supporters. They kicked and shoved journalists out of the way before hailing a taxi.

“We will not back down!” Michos shouted. “You can only stop us with bullets. Even from the grave, we will rise up – know this well!”

The parallels between a certain beer hall putsch of a failed painter are rather alarming.

The Euro looks to be doing the same job of stabilizing Europe during a depression as the mindless fixation on the gold standard of the German central bank did in the 1930s.

It’s Official, the Nobel Peace Prize is a Joke

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First, they give the following people Nobel Peace Prizes:

  • Henry Kissinger
  • Barack “Drones ‘R Us” Obama
  • Jimmy Carter (Bought a civil war and plunged Afghanistan into 30+ years of hell just to f%$# with the Soviets).

And now we have the, “International Academy of Spiritual Unity and Cooperation of Peoples of the World,” Nominating Vladimir Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Of course, the Nobel committee has not awarded him the prize, but the fact Russian President “Cuddles” has been nominated does indicate that their credibility is shot.

No this is not The Onion.

I Wish I Could Smith Words Like Charlie Pierce

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This New York Daily News Cover, and related story aren’t as good as the classic “Ford to City: Drop Dead”, but it’s close

Because his characterization of the recent leaks of Boehner communications on healthcare to the press as, “The Democrats Are Bringing Guns To A Gunfight,” is both succinct and evocative.

He is describing the fact that Democrats have finally taken the gloves off, and they are leaking emails from Boehners staff to the press:

Senate Democrats are considering leaking a series of emails between the chiefs of staff of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker John A. Boehner regarding employer contributions to congressional staff health care plans, multiple top-level sources said late Monday.

 Senate Democratic chiefs of staff discussed the emails between Reid chief David Krone and Boehner chief Mike Sommers at a recent meeting, according to a source with direct knowledge of the meeting.

 Leaking the emails would be unusual, given the taboo over disclosing personal communications between top staffers. But the missives also would reveal Boehner’s position on employer subsidies for congressional staff. Democrats believe the Ohio Republican’s decision to attach an amendment to revoke those contributions to the most recent House continuing resolution was a direct shot at vulnerable Senate Democrats up in 2014 and would like to highlight the contradiction between Boehner’s public and private stances on the issue.

Pierce is right when he approves:

This would only be responding in kind. For years, Washington worked on a system of both written and unwritten rules of behavior. One of the marked characteristics of the reign of the morons has been to trash the informal systems of acceptable conduct. Fine. Let’s do away with all of them and have an actual brawl over what’s at stake.

BTW, some of the leaks have already occurred, with communications between Boehner and Reid being leaked to Politico:

With the federal government nearing shutdown, House Speaker John Boehner stood on the House floor Monday and called on his colleagues to vote for a bill banning a “so-called exemption” that lawmakers and staffers receive for their health insurance.

 “Why don’t we make sure that every American is treated just like we are?” Boehner asked, seeking to prohibit members of Congress and Capitol Hill aides from getting thousands of dollars in subsidies for their health insurance as they join Obamacare-mandated insurance exchanges.

 Yet behind-the-scenes, Boehner and his aides worked for months with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and others, to save these very same, long-standing subsidies, according to documents and e-mails provided to POLITICO. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was also aware of these discussions, the documents show.

 During a five-month period stretching from February to July, Boehner and his aides sought along with Reid’s office to solve what had become a big headache for both of them. They drafted and reviewed a possible legislative fix, as well as continued to push for an administrative one from the Office of Personnel Management.

 ………

 “As POLITICO has previously reported, Speaker Boehner was aware that Sen. Reid and the White House were discussing this issue. He was always clear, however, that any ‘fix’ would be a Democratic ‘fix.’ His ‘fix’ is repealing” Obamacare.

 But according to several sources in attendance at a mid-July meeting with Reid, Boehner wondered aloud at one point whether he and the Nevada Democrat could quietly slip some language into a bill to end the problem without it receiving any public attention.

 “When I was in the state legislature, we used to stick things in [bills] and no one would notice,” Boehner said during a private meeting with Reid in July to discuss this issue, the sources said.

 Boehner’s aides then told him this would not be possible, so the idea was dropped.

 The speaker and his chief of staff, Mike Sommers — who was at that July 17 meeting as well — cannot “recall the Speaker making such a comment,” Boehner’s office said.

 In mid-July, as Boehner and Reid were trying to schedule a private meeting with Obama on the super-sensitive topic, the speaker’s top aide said it was okay to use a cover story to conceal the true nature of that prospective White House gathering.

 “We can’t let it get out there that this is for [Boehner] and [Reid] to ask the President to carve us out of the requirement of Obamacare,” Sommers told David Krone, Reid’s top aide in a July 17 e-mail obtained by POLITICO.

 “This is a little bit more difficult because it isn’t a routine meeting, as [Nancy] Pelosi and [Mitch] McConnell won’t be there. I am even ok if it is the President hauling us down to talk about the next steps on immigration.”

 After Krone suggested that the White House press office might float that the Boehner-Reid-Obama meeting was on immigration, Sommers said he wasn’t concerned about what cover story was just as long as the real reason behind the meeting wasn’t disclosed.

 “I really don’t care what is is about[,] it just can’t be about what we know it is about!” Sommers told Krone.

If Harry Reid did not specifically order the leaks, then he knew in advance, and said nothing to dissuade the leakers.

More of this please.

Democrats need to stop wringing their hands about how people observed the social niceties  in the good old days, and recognize that the ‘Phants do not see those niceties as anything but a weapon to be wielded against their opponents.

I’m not suggesting that Democrats go back to caning people on the floor of the Senate, Democrats need to understand that you do not bring a Hello Kitty® doll to a gunfight.

Even as Obama and Holder Refuse to Go After the Banksters, the Judges are Getting Cross

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Well, about 99% of the population have wondered why no banksters have been criminally prosecuted, and now, judges are beginning to wonder as well:

Last week, for the first time since the financial crisis, the government faced off in court against a major bank over lending practices during the mortgage mania. Lawyers for the Justice Department contend that Countrywide Financial, a unit of Bank of America, misrepresented the quality of mortgages it sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage finance giants, starting in 2007. Fannie and Freddie incurred gross losses of $850 million on the defective loans and net losses of $131 million, the government said.

Bank of America disagrees. Its lawyers say that Countrywide did not defraud Fannie or Freddie.

This case is undoubtedly big, but it is only one of many mortgage-related matters inching through the judicial system. And what is notable about some of the lower-profile matters is the tone and tack that federal judges are taking in their rulings. District court judges are not generally known as flamethrowers, but some seem to be losing patience with the banks.

For decades leading up to the foreclosure debacle, plaintiffs’ lawyers say, judges generally took the side of lenders when borrowers came to court complaining of problematic lending or predatory loan servicing. Many judges still do. But some are getting tough, perhaps having seen too many examples of dubious bank behavior.

“Maybe the judges are tired of the diet of baloney sandwiches the banks have been feeding them,” said April Charney, a foreclosure defense lawyer who for years represented troubled borrowers at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid in Florida. She is now in private practice.

Two recent rulings — one in New York involving Bank of America and one in Massachusetts involving Wells Fargo — serve as examples. In the Wells Fargo case, a ruling on Sept. 17 by Judge William G. Young of Federal District Court was especially stinging. In it, he required Wells Fargo to provide him with a corporate resolution signed by its president and a majority of its board stating that they stand behind the conduct of the bank’s lawyers in the case.

The case involved a borrower named Joseph Henning who fell behind on his mortgage, which he received from Wachovia, an entity later absorbed by Wells Fargo. In a suit filed against Wells Fargo in May 2009, Mr. Henning contended that the loan was predatory.

Judge Young agreed with the bank’s argument that federal laws pre-empted the state-law remedies Mr. Henning was seeking. But he did so reluctantly, calling it a win based “on a technicality.”

Then he chastised the bank. “The disconnect between Wells Fargo’s publicly advertised face and its actual litigation conduct here could not be more extreme,” the judge wrote. “A quick visit to Wells Fargo’s Web site confirms that it vigorously promotes itself as consumer-friendly,” he continued, “a far cry from the hard-nosed win-at-any-cost stance it has adopted here.”

If Wells Fargo does not supply the corporate resolution within 30 days of the ruling, the case will go to a jury trial, the judge said.

It is notable that there is no right to jury trial here, and Wells Fargo does not want to place their fate in the hands of ordinary people who are likely to understand how

Even if prosecutors are unwilling to hold the banksters to task, it appears that some judges are no longer willing do deal with the sh%$ that banksters are trying to peddle as Shinola.

You Cannot Tell Me that This Wasn’t Done at the Request of the White House

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We now see a case where the state security apparatus declares a critic to be a “supporter of terrorism”, and so our poodles at the British intelligence services harassing a man who is protesting and documenting America’s drone strikes:

A well-known and highly respected Yemeni anti-drone activist was detained yesterday by UK officials under that country’s “anti-terrorism” law at Gatwick Airport, where he had traveled to speak at an event. Baraa Shiban, the project co-ordinator for the London-based legal charity Reprieve, was held for an hour and a half and repeatedly questioned about his anti-drone work and political views regarding human rights abuses in Yemen.

When he objected that his political views had no relevance to security concerns, UK law enforcement officials threatened to detain him for the full nine hours allowed by the Terrorism Act of 2000, the same statute that was abused by UK officials last month to detain my partner, David Miranda, for nine hours.

Shiban tells his story today, here, in the Guardian, and recounts how the UK official told him “he had detained me not merely because I was from Yemen, but also because of Reprieve’s work investigating and criticising the efficacy of US drone strikes in my country.”

 The notion that Shiban posed some sort of security threat was absurd on its face. As the Guardian reported Tuesday, “he visited the UK without incident earlier this summer and testified in May to a US congressional hearing on the impact of the covert drone programme in Yemen.”
Viewing anti-drone activism as indicative of a terrorism threat is noxious. As Reprieve’s Cory Crider put it yesterday, “if there were any doubt the UK was abusing its counter-terrorism powers to silence critics, this ends it.”

Greenwald further goes on to describe NSA documents, which describe opposition to drone assassinations as a military threat to operations:

One specific entry discusses “threats to unmanned aerial vehicles”. It lists various dangers to American drones, including “air defense threats”, “jamming of UAV sensor systems”, “terrestrial weather”, and “electronic warfare employed against the command and control system”.

 But alongside those more obvious, conventional threats are what the entry describes as “propaganda campaigns that target UAV use”.

 Under the title “adversary propaganda themes”, the document lists what it calls “examples of potential propaganda themes that could be employed against UAV operations”.

 One such example is entitled “Nationality of Target vs. Due Process”. It states:

Attacks against American and European persons who have become violent extremists are often criticized by propagandists, arguing that lethal action against these individuals deprives them of due process.”

In the eyes of the US government, “due process” – the idea that the US government should not deprive people of life away from a battlefield without presenting evidence of guilt – is no longer a basic staple of the American political system, but rather a malicious weapon of “propagandists”. The ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights, among many other groups, have made exactly that argument against the US drone targeting program (“the US government’s killings of US citizens Anwar Al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, and 16-year-old Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011 violated the Constitution’s fundamental guarantee against the deprivation of life without due process of law”).

And the “loyal opposition” in the US is busy shutting down the government over insurance policies.

Hello? If you are worried about tyranny, perhaps there are some places you could look for it that are not simply batsh%$ insane.

I Think that this is a Diss of John Paul II

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It’s generally being presented as a unifying gesture, but I think that the decision to canonize Popes John Paul II and John XXIII on the same day:

Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII will be declared saints on 27 April 2014, Pope Francis has announced.

 The Pope said in July that he would canonise his two predecessors, after approving a second miracle attributed to John Paul.

 Polish John Paul, the first non-Italian pope for more than 400 years, led the Catholic Church from 1978-2005.

 Pope John was pontiff from 1958-1963, calling the Second Vatican Council that transformed the Church.

 The decision to canonise the two at the same time appears designed to unify Catholics, correspondents say.

 John Paul II is a favourite of conservative Catholics, while John XXIII is widely admired by the Church’s progressive wing.

………

The double canonisation will be the first in the Church’s history.

Here is why I think that this is a comment on

John Paul has been on a fast track to sainthood since his death, when crowds in St Peter’s Square chanted “santo subito” (“sainthood now”).

 During his own papacy he simplified the process by which people are made saints, and created more of them than all previous popes combined.

 John XXIII is remembered for introducing the vernacular to replace Latin in church masses and for creating warmer ties between the Catholic Church and the Jewish faith.

 He has a big following in Italy, where he is known as Il Papa Buono, the good pope.

 ………

 Two miracles have been officially attributed to Pope John Paul II – the number usually needed for canonisation.

 ………

 Pope John XXIII was beatified by John Paul II in 2000, and Pope Francis took the unusual step of waiving the requirement of a second miracle in his case.

John Paul II’s canonization was on a rocket docket that Francis knew could not be stopped, but by making John XXIII, he takes some of the wind out of the sails of the inevitable JPII, and by waiving waiving the “2nd miracle” for John, he makes a comment on how standards were relaxed by John Paul.

Then again, ich bin a Yid, so my knowledge on the Catholic Church is neither deep nor broad.

This is a Level of Surreal that Buggers the Mind

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I am at a Jiffy Lube, and a Football Game is on, Baltimore vs. Buffalo.

They cut to the Vikings-Steelers game at Wembley in England.

It’s a foreign outreach thing that the NFL does.

They show the singing of both national anthems, the Star Spangled Banner, and God Save the Queen.

Singing the the Star Spangled Banner was Kiss bassist Gene Simons.

Gene Simmons singing the Star Spangled Banner?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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An Important Lesson About How to Reduce Piracy

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Interesting. It appears that the expansion of Netflix into Canada had reduced piracy by ½:

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings dropped a surprising statistic during an interview with Dutch website Tweakers last week, as he made the rounds promoting the launch of Netflix Netherlands.

When asked if Dutch viewers would switch from piracy to Netflix, Hastings said sure, some will switch, and that piracy helps “create the demand” for easier, legitimate ways to watch video through the Internet. Pressed for examples of markets where Netflix has actually brought about a decrease in piracy, Hastings pointed to Canada. Here, he claims, “Bittorrent traffic’s down by about 50 per cent since Netflix launched three years ago.”

There are some facts in the entire copyright debate, particularly as applies to entertainment:

  • It’s inconvenient for people to pirate things.
  • They are willing to pay when the institutions who control the content aren’t dicks who make “legal” use of the products even more inconvenient because they want to wring every possible penny from their users.

Of course, it’s rather unlikely that the the powers that be are going to stop acting like a dicks, seeing as how they have the political pull to turn what should be civil infractions into felonies though their pet congresscritters.

H/t PP at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.