Month: September 2015

Oops!

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Someone is getting fired

On the Chicago TV station WGN, they did a story on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, and their likely soon to be fired graphics guy called up the badge that the Nazis forced Jews to wear in concentration camps:

The news director of a Chicago TV station apologized after a staff member mistakenly chose a symbol of Nazi Germany to illustrate a story about Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

“Regrettably, we failed to recognize that the artwork we chose to accompany the story contained an offensive symbol,” the director, Jennifer Lyons, said in an apology on Wednesday. “This was an unfortunate mistake. Ignorance is not an excuse.”

The apology came the morning after Tom Negovan, an anchor with WGN-TV Chicago, read a 20-second description of the holiday. Over his shoulder, viewers could see a graphic of a Star of David badge emblazoned with the German word “Jude,” or Jew, on striped material of the kind used in Nazi prisoner uniforms.

Un-dirtyword-believable.

Does a Bear Sh%$ in the Woods?

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The other half of the couplet is the question, “Is the Pope Catholic?”
It appears that the right wing believes that the Pope is not Catholic, because clearly Jesus embraced those money lenders in the temple:

A while ago, Rush Limbaugh declared that Pope Francis is a Marxist, which is pretty much inconsistent with being a practicing Catholic. Now Representative Paul Gosar (R-Ariz) has announced that the Pope, in concluding that climate change is a threat to the planet, is advocating socialist views. As a result, he will boycott the Pope’s address to Congress on Thursday. According to Catholic doctrine, the Pope is the head of the Church, the Vicar of Christ, and an infallible authority on Catholic doctrine. But none of that, if one can use another familiar phrase, cuts any ice with Rep. Gosar.

If Pope Francis wants to devote his life to fighting climate change, Gosar said, he should do so on his personal time — not as pope. “To promote questionable science as Catholic dogma is ridiculous,” he intoned. This seems to be the standard line among political conservatives who are suffering from cognitive dissonance now that there is a Pope whose Catholicism is in doubt because he has distanced himself from the Republican Party line. James Inhofe, Chair of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, has declared: “The pope ought to stay with his job, and we’ll stay with ours.” Rick Santorum adds: “I think we [Catholics] are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we’re good at, which is theology and morality.” And Jeb Bush thinks that religion “ought to be about making us better as people, less about things [that] end up getting into the political realm.”

The irony here is pretty obvious. People like Gosar, Inhofe, Santorum and Bush have been playing the God card for years. They have been happy to use Christian religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, as a recruiting device and a campaigning platform for a variety of conservative political issues. Now they want the Pope to mind his own business and stick to morality and religion. One of the many things they are missing, however, is that climate change is a moral issue.

The term for this is “Cafeteria Catholics,” and when the Catholic Church was busy doing things like denying communion to John Kerry because the only things that mattered were abortion and gay marriage, it was the conservatives who used it imply a lack of integrity.

I’ve got my weekly dose of schadenfreude over this.

This is a Truly Epic Rant

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In fact, this rant about US missteps on Syria is good enough that I forgive the blogger’s use of the Comic Sans font:

I have decided to voice my opinions on what the situations are in re the MENA area both abroad and in the US concerning Syria and Turkey. More tomorrow on Iraq. These are simply my opinions, feel free to disregard them and come up with your own:

– Petraeus wants John Allen’s wretched job? Give it him. As I understand what happened, Allen found it to be impossible to argue successfully with the WH’s collection of “those whose brains were destroyed in the process of obtaining a Ph.D in poly sci ” led by the country’s community organizer in chief. Let us see if Petraeus will do better. IMO Petraeus is a phony of the sort that David Hackworth used to describe as a “perfumed prince,” in my words, a Byzantine courtier type whose fame was generated in a largely self orchestrated media campaign. Let us see if this “Great Captain” can unravel this skein of wormlike threads that he helped create. Perhaps Broadway Joe Scarborough will turn and burn with him?

………

It goes on from there, and it is truly a thing of beauty.

I also think that it is an accurate assessment, and it shows why the President of the United States cannot blithely accept the counsel of  Council of Foreign Relations types, who subscribe to the “Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics,” which states that so long as the US maintains it will, it can accomplish whatever it wants.

It didn’t work in the Bush administration, and it won’t work now.

Uruguay is Now My Favorite Latin American Nation

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Last year, they legalized Marijuana, and now they have regected the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) international trade deal:

Often referred to as the Switzerland of South America, Uruguay is long accustomed to doing things its own way. It was the first nation in Latin America to establish a welfare state. It also has an unusually large middle class for the region and unlike its giant neighbors to the north and west, Brazil and Argentina, is largely free of serious income inequality.

Two years ago, during José Mujica’s presidency, Uruguay became the first nation to legalize marijuana in Latin America, a continent that is being ripped apart by drug trafficking and its associated violence and corruption of state institutions.

Now Uruguay has done something that no other semi-aligned nation on this planet has dared to do: it has rejected the advances of the global corporatocracy.

………

Earlier this month Uruguay’s government decided to end its participation in the secret negotiations of the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). After months of intense pressure led by unions and other grassroots movements that culminated in a national general strike on the issue – the first of its kind around the globe – the Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez bowed to public opinion and left the US-led trade agreement.

………

TiSA involves more countries than TTIP and TPP combined: The United States and all 28 members of the European Union, Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey.

Together, these 52 nations form the charmingly named “Really Good Friends of Services” group, which represents almost 70% of all trade in services worldwide. Until its government’s recent u-turn Uruguay was supposed to be the 53rd Good Friend of Services.

………
TiSA has spent the last two years taking shape behind the hermetically sealed doors of highly secure locations around the world. According to the agreement’s provisional text, the document is supposed to remain confidential and concealed from public view for at least five years after being signed. Even the World Trade Organization has been sidelined from negotiations.
But thanks to whistle blowing sites like WikiLeaks, the Associated Whistleblowing Press and Filtrala, crucial details have seeped to the surface. Here’s a brief outline of what is known to date (for more specifics click here, here and here):
1.TiSA would “lock in” the privatization of services – even in cases where private service delivery has failed – meaning governments can never return water, energy, health, education or other services to public hands.
2.TiSA would restrict signatory governments’ right to regulate stronger standards in the public’s interest. For example, it will affect environmental regulations, licensing of health facilities and laboratories, waste disposal centres, power plants, school and university accreditation and broadcast licenses.
3.TiSA would limit the ability of governments to regulate the financial services industry, at a time when the global economy is still struggling to recover from a crisis caused primarily by financial deregulation. More specifically, if signed the trade agreement would:

  • Restrict the ability of governments to place limits on the trading of derivative contracts — the largely unregulated weapons of mass financial destruction that helped trigger the 2007-08 Global Financial Crisis.
  • Bar new financial regulations that do not conform to deregulatory rules. Signatory governments will essentially agree not to apply new financial policy measures which in any way contradict the agreement’s emphasis on deregulatory measures.
  • Prohibit national governments from using capital controls to prevent or mitigate financial crises. The leaked texts prohibit restrictions on financial inflows – used to prevent rapid currency appreciation, asset bubbles and other macroeconomic problems – and financial outflows, used to prevent sudden capital flight in times of crisis.
  • Require acceptance of financial products not yet invented. Despite the pivotal role that new, complex financial products played in the Financial Crisis, TISA would require governments to allow all new financial products and services, including ones not yet invented, to be sold within their territories.

4. TiSA would ban any restrictions on cross-border information flows and localization requirements for ICT service providers. A provision proposed by US negotiators would rule out any conditions for the transfer of personal data to third countries that are currently in place in EU data protection law. In other words, multinational corporations will have carte blanche to pry into just about every facet of the working and personal lives of the inhabitants of roughly a quarter of the world’s 200-or-so nations.

As I wrote in LEAKED: Secret Negotiations to Let Big Brother Go Global, if TiSA is signed in its current form – and we will not know exactly what that form is until at least five years down the line – our personal data will be freely bought and sold on the open market place without our knowledge; companies and governments will be able to store it for as long as they desire and use it for just about any purpose.

Obviously, in the grand scheme of things, Uruguay doesn’t count for a whole lot, the whole country has a population is less than that of Los Angeles, but it is the first time that any country involved in the negotiations has pulled out, and should make it easier for another nation to take this step, which means that that standing up to the interests of the US, which are primarily to support data brokers, pharma, IP restrictions, and the banksters.

This is a good thing for the people of Uruguay, and if it leads to more countries pulling out of this agreement, it will be a good thing for the world.

Headline of the Day

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From the New York Times, we see the obituary for Hall of Frame catcher, Yogi Berra:

Yogi Berra Dies at 90; Yankee Star Built His Fame 90% on Skill, and Half on Wit

Berra was a standout as a catcher, as well as achieving success as a manager, but much of his fame came from his penchant for mangling the English language, with such memorable quotes as, “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded,” and, “It’s déjà vu all over again!”

The headline is a fitting homage to Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra.

What Happens When This Doesn’t Generate a Media Sh%$ Storm?

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Martin Shkreli, the hedge fund pharma executive who generated outrage when he bought a drug for rare diseases and boosted its price by over 5555%, has backed down after he got called out by the New York Times:

“Yes it is absolutely a reaction — there were mistakes made with respect to helping people understand why we took this action, I think that it makes sense to lower the price in response to the anger that was felt by people,” Shkreli, 32, said.

Turing Pharmaceuticals of New York bought the drug from Impax Laboratories in August for $55 million and raised the price. Shkreli said Tuesday the price would be lowered to allow the company to break even or make a smaller profit.

Daraprim fights toxoplasmosis. The infection is particularly dangerous for people who have weakened immune systems, like AIDS patients, as well as for pregnant women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

………

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was among those who expressed outrage over the price increase. On Tuesday she outlined a plan she said would limit how much patients have to pay out of pocket for medications each month.

As I noted last night, after Glaxo Smith Kline sold the drug market rights and before Shkreli bought the drug, the price was raised by 1350%, from $1.00 to $13.50 a pill, but since it wasn’t going from $13.50 to $750.00 a pill, nobody batted an eyelash.

Notwithstanding the protestations of contemptible greedheads like Martin Shkreli, generating unearned profits through financial engineering and exploitation of monopoly power benefits no one but contemptible greedheads like Martin Shkreli.

Get a Brain, Morans

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Some inbred white bigots who don’t know how to use a spell checker have decided that enough is enough, so they took to flying pro confederate banners over various monuments:

Community activists and historic preservationists got help from an unusual source to draw attention to their protest Saturday of statues of Confederate leaders on Monument Avenue during the first day of training for the UCI Road World Championships.

 A small plane carrying a banner with a Confederate battle flag and the phrase “Confederate heros matter” circled above Monument Avenue, where the protest had gathered at the statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.

 The Virginia Flaggers, who took credit for the banner on their Facebook page, said the misspelling of “heroes” was “Pilot error. We sent the right spelling. We think the point was still made.”

 “This is the first time he’s ever messed up,” Grayson Jennings, a spokesman for the Virginia Flaggers, said of the pilot in an interview. “I don’t think half the people even knew he messed up.”

(emphasis mine)

Trust me, people know.

This is going to end up a major meme, kind of like this pic:

The stupid, it burns us.

This Is a Clear Case of Immoral Parasitism, and It’s Pharma, so Not the Surprise

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You know the story, hedge fund puke buys a pharmaceutical firm, takes an out of patent drug that costs a few bucks, changes the distribution method to make analysis by potential competitors more difficult, and then raise the price by 5555%: (No, this is not a decimal place error)

Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.

 The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 “What is it that they are doing differently that has led to this dramatic increase?” said Dr. Judith Aberg, the chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She said the price increase could force hospitals to use “alternative therapies that may not have the same efficacy.”

 ………

 The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association sent a joint letter to Turing earlier this month calling the price increase for Daraprim “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.” An organization representing the directors of state AIDS programs has also been looking into the price increase, according to doctors and patient advocates.

 Daraprim, known generically as pyrimethamine, is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasite infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems for babies born to women who become infected during pregnancy, and also for people with compromised immune systems, like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients.

 ………

 This is not the first time the 32-year-old Mr. Shkreli, who has a reputation for both brilliance and brashness, has been the center of controversy. He started MSMB Capital, a hedge fund company, in his 20s and drew attention for urging the Food and Drug Administration not to approve certain drugs made by companies whose stock he was shorting.

 In 2011, Mr. Shkreli started Retrophin, which also acquired old neglected drugs and sharply raised their prices. Retrophin’s board fired Mr. Shkreli a year ago. Last month, it filed a complaint in Federal District Court in Manhattan, accusing him of using Retrophin as a personal piggy bank to pay back angry investors in his hedge fund.

 ………

 With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim’s distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.

 The switch from drugstores to controlled distribution was made in June by Impax, not by Turing. Still, controlled distribution was a strategy Mr. Shkreli talked about at his previous company as a way to thwart generics.

 ………

 Dr. Aberg of Mount Sinai said some hospitals will now find Daraprim too expensive to keep in stock, possibly resulting in treatment delays. She said that Mount Sinai was continuing to use the drug, but each use now required a special review.

 “This seems to be all profit-driven for somebody,” Dr. Aberg said, “and I just think it’s a very dangerous process.”

You can read the details of his looting the last firm he ran here.

I would note that Mr Shkreli is not alone in this behavior: When Glaxo Smith Kline sold the marketing rights to the drug to CorePharma, the price of the drug was $1 a pill,

Is there anything that big finance can’t make destructive and evil?

Remember Last Night, When I Used the Phrase, “Bush Crime Family?”

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Well today, we learn of the orgy of political payback and cronyism in the next generation of the Bush family, we have George P. Bush turning the office of Texas Land Commissioner into an opportunity for his buddies to profit while ignoring state law that requires public notice of open positions:

Less than a year after being elected to lead the oldest state agency in Texas, Land Commissioner George P. Bush has dramatically remade the General Land Office by ousting most of its longtime leaders and replacing many with people with ties to his campaign and family.

Eleven of the top 18 officials on the agency’s organizational chart a year ago have been fired or forced out or have quit, and more could leave soon in an overhaul that Bush has described as a “reboot.”

In their place, Bush, a former Fort Worth resident, has given top jobs to two of his law school classmates, two relatives of members of two Bush presidential administrations and at least three others with ties to the family or other political leaders.

In all, Bush has hired at least 29 people who worked on his campaign or have political connections, according to a review of thousands of pages of personnel records. The agency did not advertise any of the openings publicly.

………

State law requires all agencies considering external candidates for a job to post the opening with the Texas Workforce Commission. Newly elected statewide officials often ignore the requirement for some core positions. Attorney General Ken Paxton and Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller have been publicly criticized for doing it a few times this year.

But Bush’s hiring differs because it is so far-reaching, with hires ranging from a temporary transition director to five campaign veterans hired permanently for the new position of “regional outreach coordinator.”

Bush made many so-called appointment hires before even taking office but has continued them well into this year.

The General Land Office, established in 1837, oversees all state public lands and also leases mineral rights to oil and gas companies, generating billions of dollars for schools. Bush, the grandson and nephew of presidents and the son of current presidential candidate Jeb Bush, was elected in November.

………

“Any agency, board, bureau, commission, committee, council, court, department, institution, or office in the executive or judicial branch of state government that has an employment opening for which persons from outside the agency will be considered shall list the opening with the Texas Workforce Commission,” the law says.

Commission spokeswoman Lisa Givens said she did not know who was responsible for enforcing that law. The commission does not check to ensure that jobs are posted, she said.

The attorney general’s office referred questions about the law to the workforce agency.

Personnel records show that Bush directed at least 40 external hires from November to July but listed only four of those with the Workforce Commission.

The average salary for those four was about $65,000. The average salary for the 36 unposted jobs was $90,000.

Ten jobs went to campaign aides, including temporary transition director Trey Newton, who made $17,500 per month, and the five regional outreach coordinators, who are making $55,000 a year. Newton, the campaign engineer Bush once called “our Karl Rove,” left in January. He did not return a call seeking comment.

Another campaign strategist, Ash Wright, and his wife, Patty Wright, both got unposted jobs in December with annual salaries of $120,000 and $48,000, respectively. Both have left, with Ash Wright returning to Bush’s campaign.

The campaign’s spokesman, J.R. Hernandez, got a more permanent job as Bush’s chief of staff, with an annual salary of $110,000. Hernandez, the son of George W. Bush adviser Juan Hernandez and a 2008 college graduate, started the job exactly a week after the election. The application in his personnel file is not signed or dated, and there is no offer letter, making it hard to determine a timeline of employment.

The Bush family has been engaging in this sort of entitled privilege since my dad was in elementary school.

H/t Atrios.

Elections is Weird

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Somehow, after completely failing to deliver on its promises, and folding like a bunch of overcooked broccoli, Syriza still managed to emerge from the latest Greek elections the conclusive winner:

Alexis Tsipras will be sworn in as Greece’s prime minister later on Monday and his new government formally announced on Tuesday, Greek media said, after the leftist Syriza leader romped to an unexpectedly convincing election victory.

The result on Sunday was a personal triumph for the 41-year-old, who gambled on the snap poll last month to see off a revolt by party radicals over his U-turn on accepting more tough austerity measures in exchange for Greece’s third international bailout.

The premier-elect will now make renegotiating the terms of Greece’s debt mountain a top priority. He will attempt to build a broad consensus among the parties he defeated so as to strengthen his hand in talks with the country’s eurozone creditors, a senior Syriza source told Reuters.

………

Following a campaign that for weeks looked too close to call, Syriza won 35.5% of the vote – a fraction less than its previous total – against 28.1% for the centre-right opposition, New Democracy, giving the leftist party 145 seats in the 300-seat parliament.

………

Tsipras said he would renew his coalition with the small nationalist Independent Greeks party to give him the 151-seat majority he needs in parliament. The new government’s programme will be dictated by the punishing terms of Greece’s latest €86bn rescue package, which demands a radical overhaul of the country’s ailing economy and far-reaching changes to tax, welfare and pension systems. The cash-for-reforms deal is subject to quarterly reviews, with the first due next month.

I am thoroughly flummoxed by these results.

My guess as to the meaning of all this is that, “The whippings will continue until morale improves.”

This is Significant………

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It turns out that the aircraft that Russia is sending to Syria are not Su-27s or MiG-31s. They are top of the line Su-30SM multi-role fighters:

The Institute for the Study of War had spotted four Russian fighter jets at Al Assad International Airport in Damascus. The Kremlin may have sent air-to-air missiles to Syria along with the aircraft, the D.C.-based think tank added.

But Washington area consultant and War Is Boring contributor Chris Biggers pointed out on the blog Offiziere that ISW had misidentified the jets. As it turns out, Russia sent its maneuverable and deadly Su-30SM multi-role jets.

Recent satellite imagery acquired by Airbus of al-Assad International airport in Syria shows four Su-30SM aircraft, not four SU-27 Flanker as originally reported by the Institute for [the] Study of War. The aircraft are easily mistaken for the SU-27 due to the modern variant’s use of the same airframe. The only predominant identifier on satellite imagery separating these aircraft from the earlier model is the canards positioned forward on the fuselage which assist with the aircraft’s thrust vectoring capability.

Located on the north side of the runway at Latakia, the Su-30SM multi-role fighters are one of Russia’s more advanced 4+ generation aircraft, often compared to the U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle. This variant is equipped with a passive electronically scanned array (PESA) BARS radar, fly-by-wire flight controls, modern ECM as well as thrust vectoring, making this a highly maneuverable and capable fighter.

In March 2012, Russia hired the Irkut Corporation to build a total of 60 Su-30SM fighters. While the new model was the first for the Kremlin’s air arms to feature the small canard positioned behind the cockpit, Irkut had already sold similar MKI and MKM versions to India and Malaysia, respectively.

The reason that this is important is because of the whole “Multi Role” thing.

The Su-30SM is not as well suited for the interception role as the MiG-31, top speed and ceiling are lower, but it can carry a much wider range of munitions, including the KH-58 anti-radiation missile, which has the capability to attack surface to air missile installations at ranges greater than 200 km, which could suppress NATO SAMs in Turkey that have largely prevented the Syrian Air Force from operating in the north of the country.

Syria is a complete clusterf%$#, (When the Assad regime is the best alternative, you know that you have completely screwed the pooch) , and now we are seeing increased Russian involvement in the conflict.

It’s a mess, and it’s getting scary.

Hunter S. Thompson was a Prophet

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In The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time, Hunter S. Thompson relates the following tale:

This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas. The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows.

“Christ, we can’t get a way calling him a pig-f%$#er,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”

Well, right now, the UK is transfixed by the tale of PM David Cameron and Piggate:

Late last night, the Daily Mail published an astounding excerpt of an unauthorized biography of UK Prime Minister David Cameron, alleging that he placed a “private part” of his body into the mouth of a dead pig’s head while at Oxford University.
He put his nob in a pig’s mouth. Popped his todger into the poor swine’s gob.
It’s crucial when dealing with such an important and weighty story to have all the facts, so please let this Brit guide you through the revolting tale of prime ministerial pig porkery.

It is claimed that there are pictures, but this could be a, “Make the sonofabitch deny it,” moment.

In either case, this is a profoundly weird moment in politics.

28 Years

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Former president of Peanut Corporation of America, Stewart Parnell, was sentenced to 28 years in prison for knowing shipping salmonella contaminated peanuts around the country:

Former peanut company executive Stewart Parnell was hit with a virtual life prison term Monday for his 2014 conviction on crimes related to a salmonella outbreak blamed for killing nine and sickening hundreds.

A federal judge in Georgia sentenced the 61-year-old former head of Peanut Corporation of America to 28 years behind bars, imposing potentially the toughest punishment in U.S. history for a producer in a food-borne illness case.

U.S. District Judge W. Louis Sands also sentenced the former executive’s brother, Michael Parnell, 56, to serve a 20-year prison term. The relative and co-defendant was a broker who provided food manufacturing giant Kellogg’s with peanut paste from his brother’s company.

Mary Wilkerson, 41, a former quality control manager at the now-defunct peanut firm, drew a five-year prison term for her conviction on obstruction in the tragedy.

Sands also ordered both Parnells to surrender, rejecting defense arguments that the two should be allowed to remain free on bond pending appeals. The judge deemed them potential flight risks.

………

The case stemmed from Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention findings that traced a national salmonella outbreak to the Parnell company’s peanut roasting plant in Blakely, Ga. The outbreak sickened 714 people in 46 states and may have contributed to nine deaths, the CDC reported.

The illnesses began in January 2009 and ultimately prompted one of the largest food recalls in U.S. history.

A federal jury convicted Parnell last September on 71 criminal counts, including conspiracy, obstruction of justice and introduction of adulterated food. The verdict came after prosecutors presented evidence that Parnell and the co-defendants knowingly shipped salmonella-tainted peanut butter from the Georgia facility to Kellogg’s and other customers — who in turn used it in products ranging from packaged crackers to pet food.

How about some similar sentences for corrupt bankers?

This is a Night for Weird History

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I just discovered that Prescott Bush, George H.W.’s dad, and George W’s and Jeb’s grand dad, was one of the founders of Planned Parenthood:

Can you name any historical figures who helped Planned Parenthood kick off its first fundraising campaign back in 1947? If you first guessed some progressive liberal icon, you’d be wrong.

The die-hard public pro-life bona fides of George W. Bush and his brother and current GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush are undeniable. Jeb has repeatedly said that he would defund Planned Parenthood if he’s elected, and it’s been a promise he’s been making long before the Center for Medical Progress launched their viral undercover video campaign attacking the non-profit, claiming the organization was “selling baby parts.”

But a little known fact — first resurfacing in a 2005 article in SFGate — reveals that the grandfather and father of the last two Bush presidents, Prescott Bush, was the treasurer of the organization in its early years.

But even then, supporting a woman’s right to control over her own reproductive system was politically dangerous.

The political repercussions hit hard. Prescott Bush was knocked out of an expected victory for a Senate seat in Connecticut in 1950 after syndicated columnist Drew Pearson declared that it “has been made known” that Bush was a leader in the “Birth Control Society” (The old name of Planned Parenthood had been the Birth Control Federation of America.) Recall that contraceptives were controversial in those days — and remember that a constitutional right to use them wasn’t established until 1965, when the Supreme Court affirmed an implied right to privacy in Griswold vs. Connecticut.

Prescott Bush won a Senate seat two years later, and his son George and daughter-in-law Barbara continued to support Planned Parenthood even after George’s election to Congress from Texas. In fact, he was such an advocate for family planning that some House colleagues gave him the nickname “Rubbers.”

If I believed that there was an ounce of integrity in the Bush Crime Family, my head would hurt, but Poppy Bush made it patently clear that this was not the case when he turn his back on both his father’s legacy and own his lifelong support of reproductive rights to become Vice-President.  (And let us not forget that Prescott Bush’s investment firm was shut down for acting as an agent of Nazi Germany in 1942.)

I don’t think that this family would walk a straight line if their lives depended on it.

F-35 Testing Beginning to Resemble Lance Armstrong Blood Tests

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It turns out that the recent “successful deployment of the F-35 in US Marine Corps exercises was nothing of the sort:

The Marine Corps triumphantly declared its variant of the F-35 combat ready in late July. In the public relations build-up, the recent demonstration of its performance on the USS Wasp was heralded as a rebuttal to the program’s critics.

But a complete copy of a recent memo from the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) — obtained by the Project On Government Oversight through the Freedom of Information Act — reveals that a number of maintenance and reliability problems “are likely to present significant near-term challenges for the Marine Corps.”

The Marine Corps named this demonstration “Operational Test One,” but it turns out it wasn’t actually an operational test, “in either a formal or an informal sense of the term.” To count as an operational test, conditions should closely match realistic combat conditions.

But DOT&E found the demonstration “did not — and could not — demonstrate that Block 2B F-35B is operationally effective or suitable for use in any type of limited combat operation, or that it was ready for real-world operational deployments, given the way the event was structured.”

The details buried inside the report’s annexes also show just how much trouble the crew faced in attempting to keep the F-35s selected for the demonstration flightworthy. Before the demonstration even began the Marine Corps had to swap out one F-35B with another “due to a fuel system fault that would have been impractical to fix at sea given the maintenance workload.”

In combat, not only would this kind of replacement be impractical, it would likely be impossible.

It goes on to state that the the WASP was emptied of other aircraft in order to facilitate F-35 ops, critical hardware and software not being present on the system, around 80 civilian contractors on board to keep the aircraft running, a prognostics and maintenance system that is basically non-functional, and a much lower operational tempo than promised.

This aircraft is a turkey, and I see no prospect of it being fixed.

In Addition to Being a True Patriot, Edward Snowden Is Wicked Cool

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He just showed up in robot form on Neil Degrasse Tyson’s podcast to explain why we have not been contacted by aliens:

Whistle-blower Edward Snowden has some strong opinions on communications — even when those communications are coming from aliens.

 The former intelligence-agency contractor turned fugitive was an unexpected guest on famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk podcast on September 18. And, inevitably, the two got to talking about extraterrestrials.

 ………

 But Tyson scored an interview with him in New York City. How? Snowden rigged a robot that he can control from Russia, and rolled right into Tyson’s office at the Hayden Planetarium in New York with his face displayed on the screen.

 The conversation turned to encryption and cybersecurity, but here’s where an astrophysicist differs from a journalist: Tyson’s line of questioning quickly turned to how encryption relates to communication with … aliens.

 Tyson asked Snowden if a highly intelligent alien civilization might be communicating with encrypted messages. And Snowden had an unsettling answer.
First, Snowden said, let’s assume that most advanced societies eventually realize that they need to encrypt their communication in order to protect it. This could also be the reason why we’ve never heard from other civilizations — their messages may have just been melding into the background static of the universe.
Here’s Snowden’s full answer, from the StarTalk podcast:

So if you have an alien civilization trying to listen for other civilizations, or our civilization trying to listen for aliens, there’s only one small period in the development of their society when all of their communication will be sent via the most primitive and most unprotected means.
So when we think about everything that we’re hearing through our satellites or everything that they’re hearing from our civilization (if there are indeed aliens out there), all of their communications are encrypted by default.
So what we are hearing, that’s actually an alien television show or, you know, a phone call … is indistinguishable to us from cosmic microwave background radiation.

So it could be possible there are alien messages constantly hitting our satellites, and we just don’t recognize them because they’re so heavily encrypted. (The cosmic microwave background radiation that Snowden mentions is thermal radiation throughout the universe left over from the Big Bang. It basically looks and sounds like static to us puny humans.)

(emphasis original)

This is way cooler than I will ever be.