Year: 2014

For Once, Obama Declines to Split the Baby (Fabulous!)

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After the failure of Congress to pass any LGBT civil rights legislation, Obama has signed an executive order banning it for government contractors.

The surprising bit is that despite entreaties from the religion-as-an-excuse-to-be-a-bigot crowd, the executive order does not grant a religious exemption:

President Obama, resisting calls from several prominent faith leaders, will not include a new exemption for religiously affiliated government contractors when he issues an executive order Monday barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, the White House said Friday.

Obama announced last month that he would sign such an order after concluding that Congress was not going to act on a broader measure prohibiting discrimination based on sexual discrimination or gender identity by companies.

Since then, faith leaders have urged him to include an exemption for government contractors with a religious affiliation, such as some social service agencies.

White House officials said Friday that the new executive order would not include such an exception. But Obama will preserve an exemption put in place by former president George W. Bush that allows religiously affiliated contractors to favor employees of a certain religion in making hiring decisions.

Gay rights organizations have criticized that earlier exemption, and they celebrated news Friday that Obama would not be broadening it.

“With the strokes of a pen, the president will have a very real and immediate impact on the lives of millions of LGBT people across the country,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group.

I think that one of the consequences of the Hobby Lobby decision is the understanding that accommodation of the Talibaptist crowd is a losing proposition.

I’ve thought this for a while.

People who use religion as a, “Veil under which anger can be legitimatized,” to are a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.

Best Soccer Hooliganism Ever!!!1!!! – Stellar Parthenon

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It was at the World Cup, when the US team played the German team:

As Germany basks in its World Cup victory, it’s easy to forget that one of the most telling geopolitical moments of the tournament came during the Germany-U.S. game. As American fans chanted “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”, the Germans countered with, “N-S-A! N-S-A! N-S-A!”

The author tries to make the bigger point about America’s role in the world, that our allies are increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of the indispensable America.

While I agree that this is true, particularly with regard to the next generation coming online, this is not my takeaway on this story.

My takeaway is that Germans must be the cleverest soccer rowdies in the world, though I will acknowledge that, “cleverest soccer rowdy,” is a lot like, “world’s hairiest naked mole rat.”

And Back in the Middle East, We Have a Captain Renault Moment………

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I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is shocked to find 20 rockets in one of their schools in Gaza:

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees is investigating the discovery of 20 rockets hidden in one of its vacant schools in the Gaza Strip. The UNRWA condemned the incident as a “flagrant violation” of international law, adding that the rockets had been removed and that the relevant parties had been informed.

Israel regularly accuses Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza of using civilian installations to store and rockets, including during the current conflict, which began on 8 July.

I find the protestations of UNRWA to ring hollow.

While I understand that the agency needs to maintain good a relationship with the authorities in Gaza in order to effectively provide services, this sort of behavior has been the rule, not the exception, with UNRWA for nearly 70 years.

Meanwhile, Some Good News on the IP Front

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The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle has been claiming that, even though most of the Sherlock Holmes stories are out of copyright, a few are old enough to fall under the Mickey Mouse copyright extensions,* so the whole character falls under copyright.

The appellate court ruled against them and now the Supreme Court has denied cert, effectively ending the case in favor of the public domain:

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan refused on Thursday afternoon to block a federal appeals court ruling against continued copyright protection for fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, for any stories about him that have entered the public domain. Kagan acted without even asking for a response from an author who is preparing a new Holmes anthology, and she gave no explanation for her denial of a stay.

The nickel tour of the original case is here:

The estate has been attempting to block a California lawyer and Holmes fancier, Leslie S. Klinger, from publishing a new book about the two characters unless he is willing to get a license from the estate and pay a fee. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected the estate’s copyright claim, calling it “quixotic.” The new filing at the Court, including the Seventh Circuit’s ruling as an appendix, has been docketed as 14A47, and can be read here.

 ………

 Doyle has been dead for eighty-four years, but because of extensions of copyright terms, ten of his fifty-six short stories continue to be protected from copying. All of the short stories and four novels were published between 1887 and 1927, but all of the collection except ten short stories have entered into the public domain as copyrights expired.

 The Doyle estate, though, is pressing a quite unusual copyright theory. It contends that, since Doyle continued to develop the characters of Holmes and Watson throughout all of the stories, the characters themselves cannot be copied even for what Doyle wrote about them in the works that are now part of the public domain and thus ordinarily would be fair game for use by others.

It’s nice that cockamamie IP theories are no longer getting judicial deference.

*I mean that literally. Disney has been vociferous in lobbying for copyright extensions to ensure that the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, remain out of the public domain.

A Bit of Analysis on the Probable Shoot Down in the Ukraine

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Putin’s Flight Route from Sao Paulo to Moscow, and MS-12 MH17’s Route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur


Buk Missile Launcher


50 Km Radius about Snizhe (Red) where Launcher was Reported, and the crash site in Grabovo (Hrabove) (Blue)

Click for Popup Slide Show

What we know right now is that the Malaysian Airlines Flight 12 crashed in the Ukraine, and that it was very likely shot down by a medium of heavy surface to air missile (SAM).  (The aircraft was at about 10,000m, well above the range of light SAMs and AAA)

RT (obvious caveats apply) is noting that Putin’s presidential transport crossed paths with the airliner not that long before the shoot-down: (See map)

“I can say that Putin’s plane and the Malaysian Boeing intersected at the same point and the same echelon. That was close to Warsaw on 330-m echelon at the height of 10,100 meters. The presidential jet was there at 16:21 Moscow time and the Malaysian aircraft – 15:44 Moscow time,” a source told the news agency on condition of anonymity.

I don’t know what exactly happened and why, but I’m inclined that the regular Russian military would not be pointing anything into the air bigger than a water pistol until Putin’s plane was on the ground.

I’ve checked a couple of sources online, and it appears that timing is as close as RT describes.

I think that RT is implying that  it was the part of an attempted assassination against Putin, but I am calling BS on that.

Furthermore, I plotted a great circle route from Sao Paulo to Moscow (below, attached), which would appear to indicate that the Putin’s aircraft and aircraft would have come close to MH17’s flight path.

Given the timing, it is hard to imagine that anyone in the Russian military was allowed to point anything skyward more potent than a water pistol.

Ukrainian sources are alleging that a Buk missile launcher was used to shoot down the aircraft, and it should be noted that the Ukrainian rebels did capture some of these systems:

Ukrainian official said Thursday that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, a passenger jet traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down near Snizhe today, a town close to the Ukrainian-Russian border. The plane was carrying 295 people and crashed early evening, local time.

 No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but immediate reports say that the airplane was grounded by a Buk surface-to-air missile system. The Buk, developed by the Soviet Union in 1979, has remained widely in use throughout the former Soviet states, including Ukraine.

 General Philip Breedlove, the commander of the U.S. European Command, said that Moscow has been supplying Ukrainian separatists with anti-aircraft weaponry, and has held training sessions along the eastern Ukrainian border, teaching rebels how to operate the systems.

 Direct supply of the Buk from Moscow to rebels would be a major escalation in the ongoing conflict. However, on June 29, Russia’s official news agency, ITAR-TASS, reported that pro-Russian separatists took a Buk system under their control. The report does not specify whether or not this was theft from the Russian or Ukrainian militaries, only that the rebels had seized control of the weapons system. An AP report, dated yesterday, noted that, “A launcher similar to the Buk missile system was seen by Associated Press journalists near the eastern Ukrainian town of Snizhne, which is held by pro-Russia rebels, earlier Thursday.”

As I noted the Buk fires the SA-11 (30km range) or the SA-17 (50km range).

The crash location is given as Grabovo (Hrabove), though, given the physics of the situation, the impact point could be anywhere from 10 to 100 km east northeast of that.  (See map)

Assuming that it was a missile, my opinion  is that the rebels are the most likely perps, followed by the Ukrainian armed forces or irregulars, with the Russian military a distant third.

I would also note that while it does appear that the rebels captured the missiles from the Ukrainian military, I cannot see them being able to operate the system without extensive training by Russian military of the FSB.

Oh Crap

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Israel has begun ground operations against Gaza:

Israeli tanks rolled into the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday night and naval gunboats pounded targets in the south as Israel began a ground invasion after 10 days of aerial bombardment failed to stop Palestinian militants from showering Israeli cities with rockets.

Israeli leaders said the incursion was a limited one focused on tunnels into its territory like the one used for a predawn attack Thursday that was thwarted. They said it was not intended to topple Hamas, the militant Islamist movement, from its longtime rule of Gaza.

As rockets continued to rain down on Israeli cities, a military spokesman said the mission’s expansion was “not time bound” and was aimed to ensure Hamas operatives were “pursued, paralyzed and threatened” as it targeted “terrorist infrastructure” in the north, south and east of Gaza “in parallel.

The only agenda that will be served by this is Bibi Netanyahu’s electoral ambitions.

Linkage

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How to Roll Cable: (Should work with garden hose too)

H/T Neo at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for the vid.

If You Can’t Make School Vouchers Work in Sweden, You Can’t Make it Work Anywhere

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It turns out that Milton Friedman education reform, much like all of his real word ideas, has turned out to be a huge clusterf%$#:

Every three years, Americans wring their hands over the state of our schools compared with those in other countries. The occasion is the triennial release of global scholastic achievement rankings based on exams administered by the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which tests students in 65 countries in math, science, and languages. Across all subjects, America ranked squarely in the middle of the pack when the tests were first given in 2000, and its position hardly budged over the next dozen years.

 The angst over U.S. student performance—and its implications for the American workforce of the near future—is inevitably accompanied by calls for education reform: greater accountability, more innovation. Just as inevitable are the suggestions for how more accountability and innovation could be realized: more charter schools, more choice, less bureaucratic oversight.

 Advocates for choice-based solutions should take a look at what’s happened to schools in Sweden, where parents and educators would be thrilled to trade their country’s steep drop in PISA scores over the past 10 years for America’s middling but consistent results. What’s caused the recent crisis in Swedish education? Researchers and policy analysts are increasingly pointing the finger at many of the choice-oriented reforms that are being championed as the way forward for American schools. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that adding more accountability and discipline to American schools would be a bad thing, it does hint at the many headaches that can come from trying to do so by aggressively introducing marketlike competition to education.

 ………

 But Swedish school reforms did incorporate the essential features of the voucher system advocated by Friedman. The hope was that schools would have clear financial incentives to provide a better education and could be more responsive to customer (i.e., parental) needs and wants when freed from the burden imposed by a centralized bureaucracy. And the Swedish market for education was open to all, meaning any entrepreneur, whether motivated by religious beliefs, social concern, or the almighty dollar, could launch a school as long as he could maintain its accreditation and attract “paying” customers.

 For a while, at least if media accounts of the reforms are any indication, things looked like they were going pretty well. Voucher school students consistently outperformed their counterparts at government schools; in 2008, the London Telegraph described the reforms’ impact as “tremendous.” The number of private schools increased tenfold in less than a decade, with a majority run as for-profits.

 But in the wake of the country’s nose dive in the PISA rankings, there’s widespread recognition that something’s wrong with Swedish schooling. As part of ongoing efforts to determine the root cause, the Swedish Schools Inspectorate (the equivalent of the U.S. federal government’s Department of Education) called for a regrading of a subset of standardized tests administered during 2010 and 2011. In total, nearly 50,000 students at all grade levels from more than 700 schools had their tests in English, Swedish, science, and math re-evaluated.

BTW, Friedman’s ideas were implemented for about a year at the beginning of the brutally totalitarian rule of Augusto Pinochet with the assistance of his acolytes, the “Chicago Boys”.

After less than a decade, these “reforms” collapsed under the pressure of incompetence and corruption:

After the coup and the death of Allende, Pinochet and his Chicago Boys did their best to dismantle Chile’s public sphere, auctioning off state enterprises and slashing financial and trade regulations. Enormous wealth was created in this period but at a terrible cost: by the early 80s, Pinochet’s Friedman-prescribed policies had caused rapid de-industrialisation, a tenfold increase in unemployment and an explosion of distinctly unstable shantytowns. They also led to a crisis of corruption and debt so severe that, in 1982, Pinochet was forced to fire his key Chicago Boy advisers and nationalise several of the large deregulated financial institutions. (Sound familiar?)

If you hear Milton Friedman’s name invoked in support of an idea, be very, very afraid.*

*Full disclosure, I do agree with Milton Friedman that Marijuana should be legalized.†
†More full disclosure: I know Milton Friedman’s son, David Friedman, though our discussions have entirely dealt with medieval history.

I’m Guessing that Obama Has a Sad Right Now

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Because the UN Human Rights Commissioner has said that Edward Snowden should not be prosecuted:

The United Nations’s top human rights official has suggested that the United States should abandon its efforts to prosecute Edward Snowden, saying his revelations of massive state surveillance had been in the public interest.

The UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, credited Snowden, a former US National Security Agency contractor, with starting a global debate that has led to calls for the curtailing of state powers to snoop on citizens online and store their data.

“Those who disclose human rights violations should be protected: we need them,” Pillay told a news conference.

“I see some of it here in the case of Snowden, because his revelations go to the core of what we are saying about the need for transparency, the need for consultation,” she said. “We owe a great deal to him for revealing this kind of information.”

The United States has filed espionage charges against Snowden, charging him with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorised person.

Pillay declined to say whether President Barack Obama should pardon Snowden, saying he had not yet been convicted. “As a former judge I know that if he is facing judicial proceedings we should wait for that outcome,” she said. But she added that Snowden should be seen as a human rights defender.

Considering the fact that Obama’s war on whistle-blowers makes Richard Nixon look like Julian Assange, I rather imagine that Obama is on the phone telling UN Ambassador Samantha Powers to go postal on Ms. Pillay.

Charlie Pierce on a Rant is a Thing of Beauty

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In a post entitled, “Things In Politico That Make Me Want To Mainline Antifreeze, Part The Infinity,” he takes on Politico‘s hosting a fete of, and then writing a fawning article about Papa Dick and Baby Dick Cheney:

Its puerilty has finally crossed over into indecency. Its triviality has finally crossed over into obscenity. The comical political starfcking that is its primary raison d’erp has finally crossed over into $10 meth-whoring on the Singapore docks. Once a mere surface irritation, Tiger Beat On The Potomac has finally crossed over into being a thickly pustulating chancre on the craft of journalism. It has demonstrated its essential worthlessness. It has demonstrated that it has the moral character of a sea-slug and the professional conscience of the Treponema pallidum spirochete. Trust me. Stephen Glass never sunk this low. Mike (Payola) Allen has accomplished the impossible. He’s made Jayson Blair look like Ernie Pyle.

It goes on, and most of it near the perfection of, “He’s made Jayson Blair look like Ernie Pyle.“

Read the rest of it, and then someone please nominate Mr. Pierce for a Pulitzer.

104 Prominent Republicans Endorse a Democrat for Governor of Kansas

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They have endorsed Paul Davis because it is Sam Brownback is detached from reality and driving the state into a ditch:

More than 100 Kansas Republican politicians and activists Tuesday threw their collective weight behind Democratic governor candidate Paul Davis, a move designed to inspire other rebellious Republicans to action and weaken the re-election bid of GOP Gov. Sam Brownback.

Public expression of support for Davis by Republicans from across the state at a Topeka news conference exposed anew civil war within the Republican Party between moderates and conservatives. The endorsements also reflected Davis’ effort to frame his campaign in bipartisan tones.

“All of us are proud Republicans,” said Wint Winter Jr., a former state senator. “We came together because of our common love of Kansas, our commitment to Kansas families and our belief in moderate, common-sense leadership. We are deeply concerned by the direction Sam Brownback is taking Kansas.”

………

The 104-person list of Davis backers included former Senate Presidents Bud Burke, Dick Bond and Steve Morris, one-time Kansas House Speakers Wendell Lady, Jim Braden and Robert Miller, former Lt. Govs. Gary Sherrer and Shelby Smith, former U.S. Rep. Jan Meyers, prior Kansas GOP chairman Bill Falstad, Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger as well as national GOP delegates, local school board members, mayors, and city and county officials.

Rather unsurprisingly, Rick Santorum is campaigning for Brownback in apocalyptic terms, further reinforcing Brownback’s batsh%$ insane conservative street cred.

My guess is that Brownback will win, with the backing of lots of Koch brothers’ money, and we will see that the Kansas as a model for the Koch Brother’s America, which, interestingly looks increasingly like Somolia.

Your Moment of Science Fiction Awesome

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Click on the images for a larger slideshow

Rather unsurprisingly, they both involve Star Trek, the original series.

The first is a photograph of an an enciente Orion slave girl courtesy of Wil Wheaton.

The bottom two pictures are of a remote that is modeled on the original props for the Star Trek phaser:

The Phaser was created from meticulous 3D scans of the last-known TOS hero prop and is a fully functional, gesture-based universal remote control that can be used to control many home entertainment systems and other IR-controlled devices. The 1:1-scale Phaser is equipped with 10 authentic phaser firing sounds, a customizable personal lock code, tactile force-feedback, and it can store up to 36 remote commands.

I’d never thought about it before, but that pistol grip is profoundly non ergonomic.

If you were to use the phaser, it would be hard to hit the broad side of a barn.

It’s 150 bucks for the remote. The pregnant Orion slave girl: priceless.

Un-Dirtyword_Believable

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The German parliamentary committee investigating the NSA may, “may revert to typewriters,” in order to thwart spying from the Americans:

German politicians are considering a return to using manual typewriters for sensitive documents in the wake of the US surveillance scandal.

 The head of the Bundestag’s parliamentary inquiry into NSA activity in Germany said in an interview with the Morgenmagazin TV programme that he and his colleagues were seriously thinking of ditching email completely.

 Asked “Are you considering typewriters” by the interviewer on Monday night, the Christian Democrat politican Patrick Sensburg said: “As a matter of fact, we have – and not electronic models either”. “Really?” the surprised interviewer checked. “Yes, no joke,” Sensburg responded.

 “Unlike other inquiry committees, we are investigating an ongoing situation. Intelligence activities are still going on, they are happening,” said Sensburg.

You know, the magic slate works to.

During the cold war, the members of the American embassy assumed that they were bugged, and they used these 99¢ toys to communicate when they wanted not to be overheard.  (No, this is not a joke)

We live in profoundly strange times.

Bummer of a Birthmark, Rahm………

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In his bid for reelection, Rahm Emanuel is behind his virtually unknown opponents by 22%:

For the past couple of weeks, Karen Lewis has been saying she is “seriously” considering running for mayor.

 It turns out voters are taking the fiery Chicago Teachers Union president’s potential candidacy seriously as well.

 And Mayor Rahm Emanuel probably should, too.

 At least that’s what a surprising new Early & Often Poll suggests.

 If the mayoral election were held today, the lightning rod union leader who was the architect behind a 2012 teachers’ strike would beat Emanuel by 9 percentage points in a head-to-head contest, the survey found.

 Lewis was leading Emanuel 45 percent to 36 percent with 18 percent of the likely voters undecided.

 And Emanuel could face an even steeper hill if he faces Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, long considered his most formidable challenger.

 A head-to-head contest found Preckwinkle in a romp vs. Emanuel by a stunning 24 points.

 Preckwinkle dominated with 55 percent of those surveyed. Emanuel notched just under 31 percent.

I don’t think that Toni Preckwinkle got anything going by way of a campaign right now, but Karen Lewis is, having set up an exploratory committee.

Neither of them have a whole bunch of name recognition beyond the fact that they fought with Rahm, and they are still kicking Rahm’s ass.

The Emanuel campaign is claiming that it is no big deal, but I kind of figure that his

Details below.

The Financial Times Suggests that Private Equity is Screwing their Clients

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No, seriously. It is the Financial Times, and they are suggesting that private equity is fundamentally corrupt in their business practices:

It is too early to say whether the $30bn leveraged buyout of First Data in 2007 on the eve of the financial crash was a bad deal. KKR, the private equity group with a controlling stake, could yet recoup its investment, which it has written down by 20 per cent: the payment processing specialist will attempt to go public, possibly this year.

But one thing is certain: the Atlanta company, which has struggled under $24bn of debt since the KKR acquisition, will have paid its owner more than $100m in fees for a range of advisory, transaction and consulting services – including some that may never be required.

For the past three years alone, total fees to KKR-related parties amounted to $117m, according to First Data’s yearly regulatory filings. The bulk was an annual charge of about $20m that the company has to pay until 2019 for being “monitored”. If KKR, run by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, decides to sell or float its stake before that date, it is entitled to a termination fee.

First Data also paid KKR’s capital markets unit $21m for financing and underwriting services, and $35m for consulting work to Capstone, a company that works exclusively for the New York buyout house.

Such arrangements, struck with companies that can hardly say no to their majority owners, are coming under growing scrutiny by regulators. They are also sparking frustration among some investors, although few have incentives to reform the system.

“Those fees pump substance out of portfolio companies. It is the sort of greed you would typically see in investment banking,” says Georges Sudarskis, an industry veteran who advises Asian and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a hard look at the industry’s fees. Andrew Bowden, a director at the SEC, said in May that his team had identified “violations of law or material weaknesses in controls over 50 per cent of the time” when reviewing payments from portfolio companies to their private equity owners.

(emphasis mine)

I just love the phrase, “It is the sort of greed you would typically see in investment banking.”

BTW, private equity do not deliver higher rates of return that would justify these fees.

I’m beginning to think that if we simply threw everyone who worked on Wall Street in jail, you would have a wrongful conviction rate in the single digit percentiles.

Rick Santelli Gets Told that He Is Wrong About Everything

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I think that his cow-orkers at CNBC are sick and tired of Rick “Tea Party” Santelli’s clown show:

Santelli gets completely owned, even if he doesn’t realize it, when Steve Liesman says, “Rick, it’s impossible for you to have been more wrong. Every single bit of advice you gave would have lost people money, Rick. Lost people money, Rick. Every single bit of advice. There is no piece of advice that you’ve given that’s worked, Rick. There is no piece of advice that you’ve given that’s worked, Rick. Not a single one.“

It’s not often that you hear one employee call out another one on the network as completely incompetent and worthless.

H/t TPM.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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As a small child, I spent a fair amount of time unsupervised.

As a 20 year old, I took a year off while I changed schools and majors, and saw the (IMHO Ronald Reagan inspired) height of the missing child hysteria in 1981-82.*

So, I am disgusted, but not surprised, that a mom was jailed for sending her 9 year old to play in the park alone, despite the fact that she was sent with a cell phone, and the mother was at work nearby:

Just in case you thought you could parent whatever way you see fit in 2014 America:

A North Augusta mother is in jail after witnesses say she left her nine-year-old daughter at a nearby park, for hours at a time.

Hours at a time? At a park? In the summer? Gosh! That certainly sounds normal and fun like a reason to throw a mom in jail—and place the child in state custody.

Here are the facts: Debra Harrell works at McDonald’s in North Augusta, South Carolina. For most of the summer, her daughter had stayed there with her, playing on a laptop that Harrell had scrounged up the money to purchase. (McDonald’s has free WiFi.) Sadly, the Harrell home was robbed and the laptop stolen, so the girl asked her mother if she could be dropped off at the park to play instead.

Harrell said yes. She gave her daughter a cell phone. The girl went to the park—a place so popular that at any given time there are about 40 kids frolicking—two days in a row. There were swings, a “splash pad,” and shade. On her third day at the park, an adult asked the girl where her mother was. At work, the daughter replied.

The shocked adult called the cops. Authorities declared the girl “abandoned” and proceeded to arrest the mother.

Watch the news: It sounds like Debra Harrell committed a serious, unconscionable crime. The reporter looks ready to burst with contempt. But what are the facts? She let her daughter play at the park for several hours at a time—like we did as kids. She gave her a daughter a phone if she needed to call. Any “danger” was not only theoretical, it was exceedingly unlikely.

The danger is vanishingly small.

We are a nation who lives in terror of vanishingly small threats, child abduction, shark attacks, plane crashes, and non existent things, like vaccine related autism, while blithely ignoring greater threats, like driving, guns in the home, crossing the street, and anything that begins with the phrase, “Watch this.”

Have I mentioned that we as a society are both paranoid and insane?

*The people whipping up the hysteria claimed that there were something like 85,000 child abductions a year†. They did this by counting every time a kid was delivered late from visitation, got lost in the mall for 5 minutes, etc.
†Stranger child abduction number significantly less than 100 per year.