Year: 2014

The Cops will Riot, Not the Protesters. That’s What Happened the Last Time

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Craven Politician,* and Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has decided to declare a state of emergency and call out the National Guard:

Governor Jay Nixon activated the Missouri National Guard in anticipation of unrest when a grand jury decides whether to indict a white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager.

Nixon declared a state of emergency and created a “unified command” of police agencies in preparation for the decision, due this month in the slaying of 18-year-old Michael Brown of Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb.

“As part of our ongoing efforts to plan and be prepared for any contingency, it is necessary to have these resources in place in advance of any announcement,” Nixon, a 58-year-old Democrat, said yesterday in a statement. “Public safety demands that we are fully prepared.”

The violence in Ferguson last time did not come from the protesters. It came from the cops.

The Ferguson, and the other local and county police forces participating, rioted.

If Nixon wants to do the right thing, he needs to take those Guard troops, and use them to keep the local police in their barracks.

If he is not willing to do so, then Obama should federalize the guard, and lock down the cops.

A lot of meaningless violence would be prevented.

*But I repeat myself.

As Nome, Alaska Goes, So Goes the Country

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Well, not usually, though the good people of Nome have been at the forefront of dealing urban polar bear infestations.

In this case, however, if Nome decides to charge sales taxes to churches and other non-profits, it will be a very big deal:

Nome, Alaska, is a tiny town of less than 4000 people. Despite its size, its name is well-known, showing up in popular culture venues from “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” of the 1950’s, to “The X-Files,” to “The Simpsons Movie.” And Nome is the finish line of the 1049 mile-long Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

 Nome, Alaska, may one day soon be known for another reason: as the first American town to tax its churches.

 Strapped for cash, the town’s Finance Director, Julie Liew believes taxing churches and other non-profits could raise $300,000 annually. The city council has already met to debate the idea, and it looks like they may move forward.

“You get rid of the sales tax exemption, most of the time these other exemptions aren’t given — we’re a very nice city [to do] it,” City Council member Matt Culley said, according to KNOM. “When we sit down at budget time, [with] the numbers to look at, if we want to donate that [money back to nonprofits], the money can go all back in … but we have control over it now, as opposed to it going whatever direction that we have it going now.”

This is a very good idea.

More money is being spent on various tax exemptions in the United States than is spent on food stamps. (source of the table above)

Subsidizing religion and religiosity is not a good thing

More of This

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Elizabeth Warren has announced that she is opposing the nomination of Antonio Weiss as Treasury undersecretary, because he is a creature of the corrupt Wall Street establishment who arranged a huge “inversion” deal to avoid US taxes:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren plans to oppose President Barack Obama’s nomination of Antonio Weiss, a Wall Street investment banker, to be Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance, another sharp-elbowed move by the progressive movement’s most prominent leader.

Weiss, head of global investment banking at Lazard, is widely respected on Wall Street. But he advised on Burger King’s acquisition of Canadian doughnut chain Tim Horton’s, a so-called “tax inversion deal.” Defenders say the deals are commonplace across Wall Street and Weiss did not advise on the tax portion. Such arguments have not swayed the Massachusetts Democratic senator, a persistent Wall Street critic who appears headed to a leadership role in the next Congress.

A Warren adviser told POLITICO: “She is a no on Antonio Weiss. She was a Treasury official herself, she cares a lot about who is in the domestic finance role. It oversees Dodd-Frank implementation and other core economic policy-making.”

The adviser added that Warren “agrees with Senator Grassley that his past work with corporate inversions is a major issue, and she’s had growing concerns with the Administration being loaded with so many appointees from Wall Street rather than more people who would bring different perspectives.”

The adviser also argued that Weiss’ mergers and acquisitions background on Wall Street was not a good fit for the domestic finance post. “She also doesn’t believe that his investment banking background – which focuses almost entirely on Europe and on international mergers and acquisitions – puts him in a good position to oversee domestic issues like consumer protection and US financial regulation,” the adviser said.

The fact that Obama has nominated is a Wall Street type who is unsuited, and probably disinclined, to protect consumers from the banksters is not an unintentional oversight.

Neither it is Obama practicing eleventy dimensional chess.

If the past 6 years have shown anything, it is that Barack Obama and Eric “Place” Holder have put the wealth and impunity of the financial sector above all other policy concerns.

Since ISIS was Created by Efforts to Overthrow Bashar al-Assad, It Follows that Fighting ISIS Might Involve Eschewing the Goals to Overthrow Bashar al-Assad

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One of the realities that is studiously ignored in the west is that the Syrian civil war has its roots in efforts by the Gulf monarchies to overthrow the Damascus regime.

These efforts sowed misery throughout the region, and boosted Salafist militias through the area.

Another reality being studiously ignored is that ISIS was, until recently, the private military of the House of Saud, assembled by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then head of the Saudi intelligence agency.

It comes as no surprise that it appears that people are discovering that fighting ISIS is incompatible with the immediate overthrow of the Baathist regime in Syria:

The Obama administration, as I wrote last week, has at least a hypothetical way forward in Iraq, but not in Syria, which it is currently treating as the rear sanctuary for Islamic State (IS) forces besieging Iraq. By the time its long-term plan to train insurgents to fight both IS and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad reaches fruition, there may be very little Syria left to save. Even that’s assuming that the administration takes its own plan seriously, which past history suggests it will not.

What, then, can be done — by anyone — to turn off the Syrian meat grinder?

Last week, David Ignatius of the Washington Post wrote about a leaked document proposing a set of local cease-fires between Syrian rebels and the regime that might ultimately lead to a process of political reconciliation. The column whipped up a tornado of speculation in the very small world of Syria experts. That, in turn, led David Harland, the head of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD), the Geneva-based organization responsible for the document, to produce a finished report outlining the proposal and then to send it to me. The document remains private, so I can’t link to it, but I can quote from it. The argument it makes must be taken seriously by anyone who cares about Syria.

………

The premise of the HD report, titled “Steps to Settle the Syrian Conflict,” is that neither the regime nor the rebels are capable of defeating the other. The savage stalemate creates conditions in which both IS and Jabhat al-Nusra, the local al Qaeda offshoot, can thrive. Worse, the haplessness of mainstream insurgent groups has “radicalized and salafized” the rank and file, who are increasingly joining the jihadists. With the rout last week of American-backed brigades in the western city of Idlib, non-jihadi rebels are in danger of becoming a marginal force in Syria. At the same time, the Syrian state — which is now functional, but not much more, across much of the country — is coming ever closer to collapse. As the state grows weaker, criminal elements and militias grow ever stronger, while IS and al-Nusra fill the vacuum of governance. Syria could collapse into Somalia. There is an urgent need to preserve the state, so the argument goes, even if that also means keeping Assad in power. “Better to have a regime and a state than not to have a state,” as Harland pithily puts it.

I see any action that can be seen as a big f%$# you to the House of Saud as an independent good, so I am not an unbiased source, but I do think that this is the reality here.

When AT&T Has Even the FCC Calling Bullsh%$………

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You know how it goes.

The FCC is increasingly aware of massive public opposition to the broadband monopolists attempts to rape the consumers and internet businesses, what John Oliver rightly called “Cable company F%$#ery”, and so the former cable company lobbyist who is currently running the FCC is making noises about making it a touch more difficult for the last mile providers.

In response to this, AT&T tries blackmail, suggesting that any pro-consumer and pro-competition regulation will result in their curtailing their plans for a significant expansion of their fiber build-out.

The FCC called bullsh%$ on AT&T’s claims, and have demanded to see their detailed plans for expansion of broadband capability:

Two days after AT&T claimed it has to “pause” a 100-city fiber build because of uncertainty over network neutrality rules, the Federal Communications Commission today asked the company to finally detail its vague plans for fiber construction.

 Despite making all sorts of bold promises about bringing fiber to customers and claiming its fiber construction is contingent on the government giving it what it wants, AT&T has never detailed its exact fiber plans. For one thing, AT&T never promised to build in all of the 100 cities and towns it named as potential fiber spots. The company would only build in cities and towns where local leaders gave AT&T whatever it wanted. In all likelihood, only a small portion of the 100 municipalities were likely to get fiber, and nobody knows which ones.

………

Today, the FCC challenged AT&T to finally reveal some facts about its fiber plans in a letter to AT&T Senior VP Robert Quinn. Jamillia Ferris, a former Justice Department antitrust lawyer who joined the FCC to review the AT&T/DirecTV merger, began the letter by describing Stephenson’s statement that “the Company would limit its fiber deployment to the ‘2 million additional homes’ that are ‘commitments to the DirecTV announcement’ and that any other fiber deployment would depend on the outcome of the Commission’s Open Internet Proceeding.” Ferris then asked Quinn for:

(a) Data regarding the Company’s current plans for fiber deployment, specifically: (1) the current number of households to which fiber is deployed and the breakdown by technology (i.e., FTTP [fiber-to-the-premises] or FTTN [fiber-to-the-node]) and geographic area of deployment; (2) the total number of households to which the Company planned to deploy fiber prior to the Company’s decision to limit deployment to the 2 million households and the breakdown by technology and geographic area of deployment; and (3) the total number of households to which the Company currently plans to deploy fiber, including the 2 million households, and the breakdown by technology and geographic area of deployment;

(b) A description of (1) whether the AT&T FTTP Investment Model demonstrates that fiber deployment is now unprofitable; and (2) whether the fiber to the 2 million homes following acquisition of DirecTV would be unprofitable; and

(c) All documents relating to the Company’s decision to limit AT&T’s deployment of fiber to 2 million homes following the acquisition of DirecTV.

Of course, AT&T never intended to put all that fiber in the ground, but it is nice that the FCC is saying that the emperor has not clothes.

This is all very simple, really: 

  • Businesses are in the business of making money.
  • When a business has a strangle hold on a market, like the Telcos and Cable companies do, the most profitable actions that they can take are those taken to reinforce their monopoly statusand those taken to extract monopoly enforced rents.
  • Thus businesses have no incentive to improve services.
  • Cable company f%$#ery.  QED.

These companies are the most loathed companies in America for a reason.

To quote Lily Tomlin, “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Phone Company.”

More on That Zeppo Thing

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Basically, I was trying to come up with a way of holding two things together that would allow for simple installation and removal of a payload on top of a mast.

After coming up with a number of rather ugly potential solutions, I remembered that Zeppo (Herbert) Marx had developed a clamp in his post showbiz career as an Engineer and manufacturer, developing the Marman Clamp* (pictured), which found extensive use as a stage separation mechanism in space craft in addition to securing the “Fat Man” inside the B-29 “Bock’s Car” when it dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

The clamp, plus a couple of pins for alignment, and I had a solution that was clean, dirt cheap, robust, and nearly soldier proof.†

Needless to say, I am feeling rather smug about this.

*It appears that Zeppo did not invent the clamp, but rather he was the one to bring it to mass production.

†Nothing can be made soldier proof. It simply can be made somewhat soldier resistant.

This is a Twisted Equivalent of a Japanese Corner Office

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In Japan, a corner office is not a mark of status.

The term is Madogiwa-zoku (窓際 literally”at the window tribe”), and it is a way of cashiering long term loyal employees who have not quite made it to retirement age.

The twisted bit here is the idea of taking a promising person, and giving them a shiny new “Leadership” position as a way of neutering them.

The person in question being taken to the Vet’s is Elizabeth Warren:

Senate Democrats are elevating Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to a new leadership position on Thursday. She will help shape policy and messaging for the party.

Warren’s title will be Strategic Policy Advisor to the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. She will serve as a liaison to liberal organizations, a source familiar with the move confirmed to TPM.

“Senator Warren will be a liaison to the liberal groups in our base to ensure that they have a voice in leadership meetings and discussions,” the source said.

A top Democratic leadership aide told TPM that “the idea was to create a position in leadership for her within the Democratic Policy and Communications Center, which is the messaging and policy “war room” chaired by Senator Schumer and Vice Chair Stabenow.”

This is all about making sure that Warren is not in a position to agitate for changes in the (frequently inept) Senate leadership now, or to be a public voice for economic and financial regulation in 2016 primaries.  (I do not expect her to run, but I can see her being a pain for a Wall Street friendly candidate, like Hillary Clinton.)

F%$#ing Flowers!!!!!

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I mean that quite literally.

I have had a most unpleasant day.

I do not know which angiosperm gives off copious amounts of pollen in November in Maryland in a final bit of libidinous excess.

Some plant is f%$#ing their proverbial roots off, and my nose is running like a faucet.

Or maybe it’s the beginning of a cold.

Hopefully it’s the plant thing.

Republicans Simply Do Not Understand Rock and Roll

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There was a concert on the Mall in Washington, DC for memorial day , and right wing heads exploded over his singing the John Fogerty song Fortunate Son:

It’s still unclear if Bruce Springsteen, one of the musicians at the center of the latest controversy, will be similarly apologetic.

Pretty much everyone has had something to say about Springsteen’s performance Tuesday at the “Concert for Valor,” an HBO musical event for veterans held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Performing with Zac Brown and Dave Grohl, Springsteen sang “Fortunate Son,” Creedence Clearwater Revival’s classic Vietnam War-era anthem that examines issues of class and jingoism in America. John Fogerty, the CCR frontman, said that his own experience as a drafted serviceman served as an inspiration for the song.

“I was the same age as the soldiers serving in Vietnam and from the same lower-middle class as them,” Fogerty once said.

 ………

Springsteen also performed his hit “Born in the U.S.A.,” a song that, as the Washington Post’s Justin Moyer pointed out, actually includes many of the same themes as “Fortunate Son.”

Of course, as Charlie Pierce pithily observes, the song supports the troops,  It condemn the people who profit from war without fighting themselves:

Apparently, one of the Fox peawits did notice what the song actually is about. (And it’s here where I point out that, unlike most of the people pretending to be offended today, Fogerty actually is a veteran, and that, when I was covering Vietnam veterans issues in the late 1970’s, most of the guys I talked to absolutely adored this song.) It’s not about people like this.



It’s about people like this.



Glad I could clear that up.

Republicans do not understand Rock and Roll.

QED.

Welcome to Serfdom

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The latest case of non-compete agreement abuse, how about a $15-an-hour janitor?

Back in the spring, Benny Almeida was unemployed for a spell. So he took the first job offer that came his way — $15 an hour to work as a water-damage cleanup helper in Bellevue.

“At that point what savings I had was gone,” the 26-year-old says.

But three months into his work for ServiceMaster of Seattle, Almeida got a better offer. A rival firm he had also applied to called to say it now had a job opening — paying $18 an hour.

………

Sounds like your typical American free-enterprise story. Except Almeida either forgot or didn’t understand that he was part of the latest corporate fad in squeezing blue-collar workers: noncompete clauses even for low-wage jobs.

To get the $15-an-hour job last spring, Almeida was required to sign a “restriction on competition” clause that said if he leaves, he can’t work for two years for any firm doing similar work in ServiceMaster’s “geographic area” — which the company’s lawyer told me means King, Snohomish, Island, Yakima and Kittitas counties.

ServiceMaster of Seattle, a franchise in a $3.4 billion national corporation, now is trying to force Almeida to forfeit his $18-an-hour job at Superior Cleaning of Woodinville.

The noncompete clause would mean Almeida also couldn’t work in any water- or fire-damage job, janitorial, office cleaning, window washing, floor or carpet cleaning or other job ServiceMaster does.

“ServiceMaster of Seattle hereby demands that you immediately cease all employ with Superior Cleaning,” reads a “notice of violation” letter the company’s law firm wrote to Almeida (who lives with his aunt in Lynnwood).

I’m waiting for McDonald’s to claim that, “Do you want fries with that?” is a trade secret.

Seriously, where is Madam la Guillotine when you need her?

Well, This is Just Ducky

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It appears that some ISPs are stripping the encryption out of their user’s email, even when connecting to outside servers:

Recently, Verizon was caught tampering with its customer’s web requests to inject a tracking super-cookie. Another network-tampering threat to user safety has come to light from other providers: email encryption downgrade attacks. In recent months, researchers have reported ISPs in the US and Thailand intercepting their customers’ data to strip a security flag—called STARTTLS—from email traffic. The STARTTLS flag is an essential security and privacy protection used by an email server to request encryption when talking to another server or client.1

By stripping out this flag, these ISPs prevent the email servers from successfully encrypting their conversation, and by default the servers will proceed to send email unencrypted. Some firewalls, including Cisco’s PIX/ASA firewall do this in order to monitor for spam originating from within their network and prevent it from being sent. Unfortunately, this causes collateral damage: the sending server will proceed to transmit plaintext email over the public Internet, where it is subject to eavesdropping and interception.

This type of STARTTLS stripping attack has mostly gone unnoticed because it tends to be applied to residential networks, where it is uncommon to run an email server2. STARTTLS was also relatively uncommon until late 2013, when EFF started rating companies on whether they used it. Since then, many of the biggest email providers implemented STARTTLS to protect their customers. We continue to strongly encourage all providers to implement STARTTLS for both outbound and inbound email. Google’s Safer email transparency report and starttls.info are good resources for checking whether a particular provider does.

STARTTLS is not a particularly strong, but it does filter out metadata like addresses and subjects.

What was (when discovered, the ISP in question, AIO Wireless, stopped doing this) is all about is an attempt to resell user data, or serve ads to the users.

As the good folks at Golden Frog observe:

Neither the old or the new proposed Internet rules being debated by the FCC would stop wireless providers from blocking encryption technologies. That is very frustrating and one of the key points in our FCC filing. The FCC is a government organization and tasked with protecting national security when it comes to electronic communications. They are part of the same government that surveils its citizens. It’s not unreasonable to think they are getting pressure to curtail encryption.

 Furthermore, ISPs have incentive to block privacy technologies like VPNs. They want to profit as much as possible from the way you use the Internet. Privacy services that are independent of their offerings don’t allow them to do that. If they aren’t selling the service to you, they aren’t making money and that frustrates them. However, when they are blocking privacy services, they are dangerously putting businesses’ confidential communications and individual customers’ privacy at risk.

 We strongly believe that the same Open Access rules that should apply to wired Internet providers should also apply to mobile Internet providers, especially considering this specific encryption-related incident that affects online privacy.

Unfettered free market capitalism ……… Gotta love it.

H/T naked capitalism.

And the Other Shoe Drops on Net Neutrality

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Former Cable TV Lobbyist, and Barack Obama’s FCC chairman, just told Barack Obama to go Cheney himself on net neutrality:

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is not convinced that the FCC should treat consumer broadband service as a utility despite President Obama urging him to do so.

A report last night in The Washington Post says Wheeler met Monday with Web companies including Google, Yahoo, and Etsy and told them that he wants to find a compromise that addresses the concerns of Internet service providers such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T. Wheeler was formerly a lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries.

“What you want is what everyone wants: an open Internet that doesn’t affect your business,” Wheeler told attendees of the meeting, according to the Post’s sources. “What I’ve got to figure out is how to split the baby.”

Obama argued that reclassifying consumer broadband service as a utility is the best way to implement net neutrality rules that prevent ISPs from blocking or throttling Web services or prioritizing traffic in exchange for payment. Obama noted that the FCC is an independent agency that can vote however it wants, a message Wheeler apparently has taken to heart.

“I am an independent agency,” Wheeler said repeatedly during the meeting, according to the Post’s sources.

While the Post story said Wheeler is “moving in a different direction” from the president’s plan, it did not provide any details as to what that direction is. Before Obama’s call for a full reclassification of broadband as a utility, Wheeler was reportedly close to settling on a hybrid approach in which the service ISPs offer to content providers would be treated as a utility while the service ISPs offer to consumers would remain a lightly regulated information service.

“Wheeler worries that the president’s more drastic approach is too simplistic, according to people familiar with his thinking,” the Post wrote. “With his long experience in the telecommunications industry, Wheeler is well aware of concerns that ill-considered regulations could stifle innovation and slow the growth of the country’s broadband infrastructure, those people said. And he worries that the White House is being naive about the ripple effects of changing how a major piece of national infrastructure is governed.”

I guarantee you that Wheeler got a heads up before Obama made the statement.

In fact it was probably more than just a heads up.  I think that Obama knew what Wheeler’s response would be before he made his statement.

When I doubted Obama’s sincerity, and worried that he would, “find a way to f%$# the ordinary guy and benefit the big corporations again,” it appears that I was right.

He gets to pretend to be on our side, while siding with the oligarchs.

Another Candidate for the Dumbest Guy on the F%$#ing Planet.

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Who in their right mind would mess with perfection?

Everyone who ever suggested that Sophia Loren get a nose job:

When you were starting out, as hard as it is to believe, some people told you to change your appearance, right?

 I always tried not to listen to these people. They were saying that my nose was too long and my mouth was too big. It didn’t hurt me at all because when I believe in something, it’s like war. It’s a battle. But even Carlo said, “You know the cameramen, they say that your nose is too long. Maybe you have to touch it a little bit.” And I said, “Listen, I don’t want to touch nothing on my face because I like my face. If I have to change my nose, I am going back to Pozzuoli.” At that time, they used to do noses like a French nose with a little tip at the end — they liked that. Can you imagine me with a nose like that?

Seriously?

She’s still gorgeous in her at 80.

That is nucking futs.

Well, Here is a Shocker

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When the Department of Justice investigated CIA torture, they never interviewed its victims:

As the US government prepares to defend its record on torture before a United Nations panel, five Libyan men once held without charge by the CIA say the main criminal investigation into allegations of detainee abuse never even interviewed them.

 The Libyans’ accusation reopens controversy over the 2012 pre-election decision by the prosecutor in the case not to bring charges against anyone involved in CIA abuse – an episode the US State Department has held up as an example of its diligence in complying with international torture obligations.

On Wednesday, a United Nations committee in Geneva is scheduled to hear a US delegation outline recent measures Washington has taken to combat torture. It will be the first update the US has provided to the committee since 2006, when the CIA still operated its off-the-books “black site” prisons. Human rights campaigners who have seen the Obama administration repeatedly decline to deliver justice for US torture victims consider it a belated chance at ending what they consider to be impunity.

 ………

That high-profile inquiry, conducted by assistant US attorney John Durham, wrapped in 2012 without bringing criminal charges against anyone involved in the deaths of two detainees in CIA custody. That decision, heralding the end of federal investigations for post-9/11 detainee abuse, was preceded by Durham’s 2011 announcement that he would not proceed past a “preliminary review” for 99 out of 101 cases of suspected CIA torture.

The State Department, in a 2013 written submission to the UN committee, referred to Durham’s team as “experienced professionals” that found the “admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.”

But the Libyans say that neither Durham nor his staff “ever sought or requested our testimony”.

What a surprise.  Obama and Holder’s “investigation” was a sham.

This is a feature, not a bug, just like his refusal to prosecute financial fraud of Wall Street.

Worst ……… Constitutional ……… Law ……… Professor ……… Ever

This is Kind of a Big Deal

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The National Institute of Mental Health has withdrawn its support for the DSM-5, the 5th edition Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the massive update of the American Psychological Association’s encyclopedic, and controversial, diagnostic manual:

Just two weeks before DSM-5 is due to appear, the National Institute of Mental Health, the world’s largest funding agency for research into mental health, has indicated that it is withdrawing support for the manual.

In a humiliating blow to the American Psychiatric Association, Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Director of the NIMH, made clear the agency would no longer fund research projects that rely exclusively on DSM criteria. Henceforth, the NIMH, which had thrown its weight and funding behind earlier editions of the manual, would be “re-orienting its research away from DSM categories.” “The weakness” of the manual, he explained in a sharply worded statement, “is its lack of validity.” “Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure.”

That consensus is now clearly missing. Whether it ever really existed remains in doubt. As one consultant for DSM-III conceded to the New Yorker magazine about the amount of horsetrading that drove that supposedly “evidenced-based” edition from 1980: “There was very little systematic research, and much of the research that existed was really a hodgepodge—scattered, inconsistent, ambiguous.”

According to Insel, too much of that problem remains. As he cautioned of a manual whose precision and reliability has been overstated for decades, “While DSM has been described as a ‘Bible’ for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each.” And not even a particularly good dictionary, apparently. Of the decision to steer research in mental health away from the manual and its parameters, Insel states: “Patients with mental disorders deserve better.”

I’m wondering how much of this is a generational thing.

The people who have been in charge of the DSM since at least the late 1970s are all roughly of the same age, being in their 40s back then, and being in their ate 1970s now, and as such, advances in genetics, neurochemistry, and imaging allow for a far more quantitative approach to the discipline.

Rush Limbaugh is a Whiny Bitch, Part MMMMMMCMLXIX

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Yeah, he’s threatening to sue the DCCC over their use of his quotes in the last campaign:

Rush Limbaugh is hopping mad at the Democratic Party — but this time he’s threatening to do more than just talk about it on the radio.

The conservative pundit is threatening to sue the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for a series of fundraising e-mails that suggested Limbaugh was condoning campus rape in comments he made on his widely syndicated program on Sept. 15.

In a letter to the Washington-based organization intended for delivery Monday morning, Limbaugh’s lawyer demanded a retraction and a public apology for the fundraising e-mails. The letter indicated Limbaugh will sue for defamation and business “interference” if his demand isn’t met.

DCCC representatives were not available Monday; the organization’s offices are closed for the Veterans Day holiday.

The legal threat is the result of DCCC fundraising appeals sent out in the wake of Limbaugh’s on-air comments about a new policy at Ohio State University that instructs students to get verbal consent before having sex. The DCCC highlighted one particular sentence from his commentary — “How many of you guys . . . have learned that ‘no’ means ‘yes’ if you know how to spot it?” — saying it was tantamount to condoning sexual assault.

………

The legal threat is the result of DCCC fundraising appeals sent out in the wake of Limbaugh’s on-air comments about a new policy at Ohio State University that instructs students to get verbal consent before having sex. The DCCC highlighted one particular sentence from his commentary — “How many of you guys . . . have learned that ‘no’ means ‘yes’ if you know how to spot it?” — saying it was tantamount to condoning sexual assault.

Yeah, well I listened to what he said, and even if he weren’t a public figure, this would be laughed out of court, because, in the United States, the truth is always a defense against accusations of libel and slander.

As a public figure, there is no evidence of malice or a reckless disregard for the truth in this.

Also, considering how the DCCC did no November 4, why the f%$# would Limbaugh, who is Republican to his core want to force the Democratic party to change its strategy?

Seriously Rush, take one for the team, and man up.

My Nose Hair Was Vibrating Like a Hummingbird with Epilepsy

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An odd thing happened today.

Some people came by to hand out cans of Red Bull as part of a promotion.

It’s not my bag, but I was really tired, and it was free.

First, it tastes f%$#ing awful, worse than Schlitz Dark.

Second, it is not the good kind of boost.

It makes Mountain Dew look like Château Lafite Rothschild.

Not good.

Not quite as bad as Moxie or Baijiu,  but man, it’s close.

Way to Go, Francis

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Pope Francis has demoted right wing Cardinal Raymond Burke yet again:

In a move that reflects the loosening posture of the Vatican on major social issues, conservative U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke was removed by Pope Francis from yet another top post.

Burke, who has long been vocal about denying communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion, was dismissed as head of the Holy See’s highest court and given the post of Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a largely ceremonial job overseeing charity to seniors.

At 66, Burke is considered young by church hierarchy standards. The dismissal is a set-back to his Vatican career as well as a clear message from Pope Francis to those not hewing to his progressive view of the Catholic Church.

The move was expected by Vatican-watchers given that Burke, the former archbishop of St. Louis, had openly criticized Francis’ less doctrinaire approach to the faith. Last year, Francis had removed Burke from the Congregation for Bishops, a group tasked with the appointment of new bishops worldwide.

In addition that Burke was playing partisan politics in the United States, which created a long term risk for what is arguably the richest community in Catholicism, Burke was also ignoring the basic structure of the Church.

I may not know the finer points of canon law, and quite honestly I have no desire to, being a Jew, but I do the middle ages on weekends as a hobby, and so I do have a decent understanding of a feudal system of government.

Basically, a Bishop is like a Count, a Cardinal is more like a Duke (Technically called. “Princes of the Church”), and the Pope is the Monarch in charge.

The important bit about this is that Bishops and Cardinals are in fealty to the Pope, and calling out the guy in charge in public is frowned upon in such a system.

Raymond Burke should consider himself lucky.

A few hundred years ago, (or in any case, certainly before the Magna Carta was signed) if a Count or a Duke acted this way, it would keep the headsman gainfully employed.