Year: 2014

Another School Shooting

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Click for full size pop up


Another day, another shooting

We just had spree killing at a school:

The first bell had just trilled at Troutdale’s Reynolds High School Tuesday morning when the sound of something like fireworks erupted in a locker room by the school gymnasium.

 Moments later, a vice principal came over the loudspeaker –“This is not a drill” — and teachers ran through hallways, yelling at students to lock themselves in classrooms and hide.

 A “lone gunman” shot and killed freshman Emilio Hoffman, then was found dead a few minutes later in a nearby bathroom. It is the 74th school shooting in the United States since the mass killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012.

December 14, 2012 to today is 543 days, or 77½ weeks, or just under 18 months.

77½ weeks⁄74 shootings. That’s about 1 shooting a week, just at public schools.

Think about it.  When you add in various spree killings and act of right wing terrorism that don’t involve school children, Vegas last week, Washington Naval Yard, Isla Vista, and that salon killing in upstate New York, and you end up with more than one shooting a week since Sandy Hook.

Note that this is without any incidents in the state of Texas.

And how many have there been in all of western Europe over that time?

We are insane as a society.

Thank You for Keeping Maryland Weird

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I just heard about this on the radio, and confirmed this on the Prince George’s County Police Department Facebook page:

PGPD Issues BOLO for Bunny

The PGPD is asking for our community’s help in finding the burglar who snatched a bunny costume. Please keep your eyes peeled for a 6′ gray and white furry bunny with pink ears and a pink nose.

Unfortunately, we aren’t joking. On June 6, 2014, patrol officers were called to the 4600 block of Calvert Road in College Park for a burglary. Employees discovered a storage shed had been broken into overnight. The only item taken was the costume.

Last week, we told you about how our officers helped a tortoise (http://tinyurl.com/p2wpojj ). Please help us rescue the hare now too.

Anyone with information on this case is asked to call the Prince George’s County Police Department’s Regional Investigation Division – Northern Region at (301) 699–2601. Callers wishing to remain anonymous may call Crime Solvers at 1–866–411–TIPS (8477), text “PGPD plus your crime tip” to CRIMES (274637) on your cell phone or go to www.pgcrimesolvers.com and submit a tip online.

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Ummmm……… Isn’t This Straight Out Bribery?

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The Republicans in the Virginia State Senate bought off state Senator Phillip Puckett with the offer of a 6-figure job and a permanent judgeship for his wife, which threw control of the chamber back to the Republicans:

Republicans appear to have outmaneuvered Gov. Terry McAuliffe in a state budget standoff by persuading a Democratic senator to resign his seat, at least temporarily giving the GOP control of the chamber and possibly dooming the governor’s push to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

Sen. Phillip P. Puckett (D-Russell) will announce his resignation Monday, effective immediately, paving the way to appoint his daughter to a judgeship and Puckett to the job of deputy director of the state tobacco commission, three people familiar with the plan said Sunday. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

The news prompted outrage among Democrats — and accusations that Republicans were trying to buy the Senate with job offers in order to thwart McAuliffe’s proposal to expand health coverage to 400,000 low-income Virginians.

Del. Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax) said Republicans were unable to win the policy argument about Medicaid expansion, so they have resorted to other means.

“It’s astounding to me. The House Republican caucus will do anything and everything to prevent low-income Virginians from getting health care. . . . They figure the only way they could win was to give a job to a state senator,” Surovell said. “At least they can’t offer Terry McAuliffe a job. I hope Terry continues to stand up to these bullies.”

Puckett, a senator since 1998, did not respond to calls seeking comment. Other Republicans denied that Puckett was offered the jobs in exchange for his resignation.

Yeah, sure.

Here is a note to governor McAuliffe:  Now is a time to enforce party discipline:  If you can block Puckett’s getting a do-nothing job on the tobacco commission, do it.  If you can block the appointment of his daughter to a judgeship, do it.

Use the veto pen.  It is all fruit of a poisoned tree.

And Then There is George Will………

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No link, because I do not want to give him page views, but George Will, the man who coached Ronald Reagan in his debates with Jimmy Carter, using Jimmy Carter’s own briefing books, which had been stolen, while commenting on Reagan’s debate performance on Nightline, has returned to classic form, arguing that women want to make rape allegations, because it is a “coveted status that confers privileges.”

No I won’t link to George Will, but I will link to The Onion article, “College Rape Victim Pretty Thrilled She Gets To Recount Assault To Faculty Committee:

Visibly excited for the thrilling hour ahead, college sophomore Megan Anderson enthusiastically made her way to a meeting with members of her university’s Office of Student Conflict Resolution to offer a detailed account of her recent sexual assault, the eager undergraduate told reporters Tuesday. “I get to go into a room filled with a committee of middle-aged men whose primary concern is upholding the college’s reputation and recount in explicit detail the circumstances of my rape at the hands of another student—I can’t wait,” said the pleased 19-year-old, who noted that she’s particularly looking forward to describing her choice of clothing the night of the assault, explaining the nature of her relationship with her rapist, and entertaining a variety of questions aimed at determining whether she herself invited the attack with her words and actions, all while offering a step-by-step account of the most horrific night of her life. “Don’t get me wrong, it was great being interrogated by the local and campus police, but this way I get to tell university officials who have a vested interest in minimizing campus rape statistics and ensuring the steady inflow of alumni donations what exactly I was drinking and why I could have misremembered events. And to think, once I finally give my entire story, I then get the pleasure of listening as they try to push the whole incident under the rug. Lucky me!”

Seriously, if I had a time machine, I’d go back in time to 1940, and give his mom a shot of Depo-Provera.

What a pathetic sorry excuse for a human being.

Anyone Surprised that the Vegas Gunman are Tied in with Camp Bundy?

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Roll Tape!

The Secretary of the Interior has observed that alleged terrorists Jerad and Amanda Miller spent time at the Clive Bundy ranch, or as Wonkette notes, “Oh Look Some Bundy Ranchers Did A Vegas Spree Killing, For Freedom.”

The Bundies have been tryinb very hard to pretend that the Millers were never a part of the protest, but see the tape of Mr. Miller on the Bundy Ranch.

There is a point where right wing American Caucasian entitlement crosses the line to terrorism, and the Millers, and to my mind the Bundys and their fellow travelers are both over that line.

An aggressive investigation of everyone involved with threatening law enforcement and BLM personnel is necessary.

A Mobbed Up Bank is the Least of His Problems

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Pope Francis just fired the whole board charged with overseeing the Vatican bank, the Financial Information Authority (AIF):

Pope Francis has removed the entire board of the Vatican’s financial watchdog in his latest attempt to rehabilitate the troubled Vatican bank.

 Two years before they were due to step down, the five Italians heading the Financial Information Authority (AIF) have been replaced with a more international group of experts, including one woman.

 The change follows reports of clashes between the board members and the body’s Swiss director, René Bruelhart, an anti-money laundering expert.

 The new members are Marc Odendall, who manages and advises philanthropic organisations in Switzerland, Juan Zarate, a Harvard law professor who was a security adviser to President George Bush, Joseph Yuvaraj Pillay, former managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and Maria Bianca Farina, the head of two Italian insurance companies.

 ………

 Pope Benedict XVI created the watchdog in 2010 to supervise and regulate the widely discredited Vatican bank – which is officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) – and prevent it being used for money-laundering and for terrorism.

 But when Bruelhart, who cleaned up Liechtenstein’s banking system, arrived as director in 2012 he encountered resistance to the reforms from an old guard.

 The group reportedly wrote to Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin earlier this year complaining that they were being kept in the dark, after Bruelhart’s arrival.

 Reformist members of the Curia had urged Francis to bring in professionals with a global perspective who could work with the Swiss lawyer.

 ………

 And in January he sacked all but one of the five cardinals in the commission that supervises the Vatican bank.

The Vatican Bank is clearly a big can of worms, but compared to Irish Orphanage scandal which includes hundreds of surreptitiously buried bodies and involuntary medical experiments:

It gets worse. One week after revelations of how over the span of 35 years, a County Galway home for unwed mothers cavalierly disposed of the bodies of nearly 800 babies and toddlers on a site that held a septic tank, new reports are leveling a whole different set of charges about what happened to the children of those Irish homes.

 In harrowing new information revealed this weekend, the Daily Mail has uncovered medical records that suggest 2,051 children across several Irish care homes were given a diphtheria vaccine from pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome in a suspected illegal drug trial that ran from 1930 to 1936. As the Mail reports, “Michael Dwyer, of Cork University’s School of History, found the child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for commercial use in the UK.”  There is no evidence yet – and there may never be – that any family consent was ever offered, or about how many children had adverse effects or died as a result of the vaccinations. Dwyer told the Mail, “The fact that no record of these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London, suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to government, municipal authorities, or the general public. However, the fact that reports of these trials were published in the most prestigious medical journals suggests that this type of human experimentation was largely accepted by medical practitioners and facilitated by authorities in charge of children’s residential institutions.” In a related story, GSK — formerly Wellcome — revealed Monday on Newstalk Radio that 298 children in 10 different care homes were involved in medical trials in the ’60s and ’70s that left “80 children ill after they were accidentally administered a vaccine intended for cattle.”

 Irish Minister of State for Training and Skills Ciaran Cannon has called for a public inquiry into the treatment of the children and their deaths.  The archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has also called for an investigation, adding that it should be free of Catholic Church interference. “We have to look at the whole culture of mother and baby homes; they’re talking about medical experiments there,” he told RTE Radio this weekend. “They’re very complicated and very sensitive issues, but the only way we will come out of this particular period of our history is when the truth comes out.” And a spokesman for GSK said the latest revelations, “if true, are clearly very distressing.”

This is not even the first time information on these kinds of vaccine trials has come to light. In 2010, the Irish Independent uncovered how children born in the homes were subjected to a single “four-in-one” vaccine trial without their mothers’ permission. The children often didn’t even know what they’d been subjected to until well into adulthood. Appallingly,  Ireland had no laws regarding medical testing on humans until 1987. Mari Steed, who was born at the Bessborough home in the ’60s, told the Sunday Independent, “We were used as human guinea pigs.”

Yes, very distressing. 

Seriously, I don’t think that Francis could live long enough to drain this swamp.

I don’t think that he could live long enough to drain this swamp if he became Pope when he was 12 ……… And his dad was Methuselah.

I am a F&@#ing Moron

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The Cornish pastys did not cook properly last night.

They just were not getting done.

This morning, it hit me:  the recipe called for them to be cooked at 210° (165° with a convection oven).

Only the recipe is METRIC, not English, so 210°/165° C is 410°/330° F.

So I will be taking my not particularly cooked pastys from the fridge and putting it in the oven at the appropriate temperature.

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Trying New Things………

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Cornish (Devonian) pastys just went into the oven.

First time I’ve ever tried them.

I used a very basic recipe (PDF).

To the Americans out there, “Swede” is Rutabaga.

We will see how it goes.

Filling (beef, swede, potatoes, and onions with salt and pepper) seems pretty simple, but I am concerned about the theoretically but not really as simple crust (flour, water, various fats, salt).

As an FYI, the oldest record of a pasty is in neighboring Devon, not Cornwall, so, notwithstanding the EU’s Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) designation of the savory pastry.

BTW, While We are on the Whole Bergdahl Thing………

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That the homecoming party for Bowe Bergdahl because of violence from the right wing knuckle draggers:

The controversy over whether the U.S. should have traded five members of the Taliban for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl reached all the way to Hailey, Idaho, on Wednesday, as the soldier’s hometown canceled its celebration of his freedom amid threats and security worries.

………

Hailey Mayor Fritz Haemmerle told the Los Angeles Times that the town had been deluged with calls and letters of complaint that it was honoring a deserter. The event had been intended as a private celebration, he said, but the organizers decided it was too provocative considering the bitter national dialogue.

“The police chief is aware of the types of people who have threatened to come up and protest this thing,” Haemmerle said. “We’re a town of 8,000 people. The last thing we want is trouble.”

So Haemmerle said he asked the chief to talk to the organizers.

“For better or worse, there are people who blame Bowe for the deaths of other soldiers who searched for him. If that’s true, it’s just tragic,” he said. “We don’t need any more people to get hurt. I don’t think Bowe’s family needs that. It’s not in anyone’s best interests.”

(emphasis mine)

So, the wingers were threatening violence over a private party for parents and relatives to celebrate their son coming home.

All because it was a black Democrat that got him home.

These folks are one open carry incident away from becoming actual terrorists.

You Cannot Make this Sh%$ Up

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Oliver “Arms for Hostages” North is criticizing the Obama administration for paying a ransom:

As the right’s outrage over Bowe Bergdahl’s release grew, Chris Hayes joked, “We should definitely get Oliver North to weigh on this one, for maximum absurdity.”


Chris, of course, was kidding. But we were reminded a day later that in this farcical political environment, it’s awfully difficult to joke about things that are likely to be real.

Newsmax host and former Republican congressman J.D. Hayworth added his voice today to the growing right-wing outrage over the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in a prisoner exchange with the Taliban, and what better person to discuss the situation with than Oliver North!

North demanded that the media ask the Obama administration if there was “a ransom, a fiscal, financial, money transaction,” with the Taliban as part of the deal. “Was there a ransom paid? Did the government of the United States, either directly or indirectly, finance a terrorist organization?”

Oliver North, helping push the political world closer to “maximum absurdity,” also took his concerns to Fox News’ Sean Hannity last night.

………

But even putting that aside, in what universe does Oliver North enter this debate with a straight face?

I realize that it’s become impolite in some circles to point out scandals that rocked Ronaldus Magnus’ White House, but the Reagan administration illegally sold weapons to Iranians in order to secure the release of American prisoners, then used the money to illegally finance a war in Central America. Reagan himself assured the American public that the allegations weren’t true, and those assurances turned out to be the opposite of the truth.

Un dirty-word believable.

The Onion has become completely redundant.

25 Years Ago Today

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The most famous news photo of the 1980s


The long shot


A ground level shot about a minute earlier (on the left side between the two trees in the background)

The Tienanmen massacre.

That’s all been swept under the rug, and to the degree that anyone in China thinks about it, it’s in the context of a highly restrictive media environment which mischaracterizes the events of that day.

One wonders when the people who did this will be made accountable through either the justice system or via the judgement of history.

If these guys are any indication:

It won’t ever happen.

Well, at Least Someone Has Put the Fear of God into the NRA

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Following the National Rifle Association’s declaring the Texas open carry maniacs weird, said maniacs organized a mass destruction of their NRA cards, and the NRA responded by folding like a bunch of overcooked cauliflower:

The National Rifle Association is walking back its statement criticizing gun activists who carry loaded assault weapons in public as a form of protest, with the NRA’s top lobbyist apologizing and calling the statement “a mistake.”

In recent months Open Carry Texas and several other gun activist groups have made headlines for openly carrying loaded assault weapons in public and into restaurants in the Dallas area. This tactic of attempting to “normalize” open carry of rifles has spectacularly backfired, as gun violence group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America has persuaded several restaurant chains where open carry rallies were staged to ask customers not to bring firearms into their businesses.

On June 2, Mother Jones reported on a statement on the NRA’s website that criticized the open carry protests as “downright weird” and suggested that the practice was “downright scary” to onlookers and “counterproductive for the gun owning community.” The Mother Jones report was widely circulated in media as it was an aberration from the NRA’s typical absolutist position on firearm issues. Open Carry Texas called the NRA’s statement “disgusting and disrespectful” and some gun activists cut up their NRA membership cards.

The NRA’s top lobbyist, Chris Cox, appeared on the NRA’s radio show Cam & Company on June 3 to repudiate the NRA’s article criticizing the open carry movement. Cox said that the statement was “a mistake” and that “it shouldn’t have happened,” adding “our job is not to criticize the lawful behavior of fellow gun owners.” Cox also blamed the statement on a “staffer” who Cox said “expressed his personal opinion.” Referencing media interest in the statement, Cox termed it a “distraction.”

I’m beginning to think that we should start having people of color showing up at NRA meetings and maybe NRA headquarters, doing open carry.

See what that does to the state of their underwear.

How Much of a F%$#tard Gun Fondler do You Have to Be to Have the NRA Call You a F%$#tard Gun Fondler?

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Well, now we know:

The nation’s staunchest defender of the Second Amendment has told gun activists in Texas who insist on carrying assault-style rifles in public places to knock it off.

In a statement issued late last week, the National Rifle Association (NRA) called out so-called “open carry” groups in Texas that have been frightening restaurant customers and motorists by approaching them while carrying AK-47s and AR-15s.

The NRA applauded Texas for a “robust gun culture,” but noted that a number of activists had “crossed the line from enthusiasm to downright foolishness.”
“Now we love AR-15s and AKs as much as anybody, and we know that these sorts of semiautomatic carbines are among the most popular, fastest selling firearms in America today,” the statement said. “Texas, independent-minded and liberty-loving place that it is, doesn’t ban the carrying of loaded long guns in public, nor does it require a permit for this activity. Yet some so-called firearm advocates seem determined to change this.”

 “[I]t is a rare sight to see someone sidle up next to you in line for lunch with a 7.62 rifle slung across his chest, much less a whole gaggle of folks descending on the same public venue with similar arms,” the NRA continued. “Let’s not mince words, not only is it rare, it’s downright weird and certainly not a practical way to go normally about your business while being prepared to defend yourself. To those who are not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to oneself or one’s cause, it can be downright scary.”

(emphasis original)

Seriously, this like that classic moment in Iron Man 3, when one of the henchmen says, “”Honesty, I hate working here they are so weird!” and runs away.

Catch Phrases VI

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On spies:
It is not the story of men and women who have a better and deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of us.


*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). So in jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.

Self-regulation stands in relation to regulation the way self-importance stands in relation to importance.

—Willem Buiter

Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.

—Honore de Balzac


See full Tom Tomorrow cartoon here.

Shanda fur die Goyim!

To quote Freddie Dalton Thompson from The Hunt for Red October:


This Business Will Get out of Control. It Will Get out of Control and We’ll Be Lucky to Live through It.

Ronald Reagan, Jr. said about Dick Cheney, “[Not] a mindful human being. That’s probably the nicest way I can put it.”

New favorite German word: Backpfeifengesicht, a face that needs to be slapped.

SEC Rule 10b-18 allowing stock buybacks adopted in 1982


 

As the saying goes, “バカにつける薬はない”.*

*Pronounced in Japanese, “baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai”, which means, “There is no medicine for stupidity.” Apologies for any inaccuracies in the text, I do not know Japanese.

That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.

—P.C. Hodgell

How to embed a threadreader app thread:
Start with url: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1305261859155505153.html

Look at the number after the thread, and paste in the number sequence into this:

<iframe allowfullscreen=”” frameborder=”0″ height=”1500″ src=”https://threadreaderapp.com/embed/##############.html”  type=”text/html” width=”340 px”></iframe>

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Slavie Federal Savings Bank, Bel Air, MD

Full FDIC list

And here are the credit union closings.  I’ve redone the whole list, because I screwed up at some point this year, and missed some credit union closings, counted assisted mergers, which I shouldn’t have, and accidntaly counted a bank twice:

  1. Bagumbayan Credit Union, Chicago, ​IL, ​1/21/2014
  2. St. Francis Campus Credit Union, ​Little Falls, ​MN, ​2/14/2014
  3. Parsons Pittsburg Credit Union, ​Parsons, ​KS, ​3/21/2014
  4. Mayfair Federal Credit Union, ​Warminster, ​PA, ​3/31/2014
  5. Health One Credit Union, ​Detroit, ​MI, ​5/16/2014
  6. Life Line Credit Union, ​Richmond, ​VA, ​5/23/2014

Full NCUA list

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

What P.Z. Meyers Said

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He wrote a post complaining about business as usual at the Democratic Party titled, “Democrats: You suck.

His experience is that, following making a small donation to a Democratic candidate for office, he has been bludgeoned into something approaching PTSD from their repeated fund raising requests:

………

……… At least I think that’s what they’re doing; I now look at the incoming source, and if it’s the Democrats, I don’t bother to pick up. And here I am, entirely sympathetic to that party (if dissatisfied with their conservatism), and I have a conditioned aversion now.

I’ve had enough. I can learn. And the moral I have learned is to never donate to the Democratic party.

Who’s the idiot behind this campaign? Is it actually working for them?

Do Republicans do the same thing to their donors, or do they just scam them with things like gold coins and quack cures?