I just saw Kung Fury on YouTube.
Doing a parody of a genre, in this case 80s Kung Foo movies, particularly if you are going a high cheese, is dancing on the knife edge.
If you are not cheesy enough, it doesn’t work. If you are too cheesy, the audience loses the ability to suspend its disbelief.
The director and writer, David Sandberg gets the balance almost perfect. (Laser Raptors and David Hasselhoff)
It appears that a the Baltimore jails are systematically denying appropriate healthcare to its inmates:
Weeks after Baltimore announced plans to construct a new, $30 million youth jail, a motion filed by the ACLU, Public Justice Center, and Law Offices of Elizabeth Alexander claims detainees are routinely denied life-saving medications, due to systemic failures in the Baltimore City Detention Center (BCDC). In addition to gross medical neglect, the motion alleges that inmates are also housed in moldy, vermin-infested units that exacerbate existing health problems.
The organizations behind the motion conducted a comprehensive review of 13 death cases and 24 randomly-selected medical records from 2013 to 2015, concluding that inmates with chronic diseases had their medications interrupted. For instance, an HIV-positive detainee alleges his antiretrovirals were taken away upon entry, but nurse notes indicate that some of his medication wasn’t available, which is why he didn’t receive it for five days. BCDC allegedly failed to give another inmate with a significantly low white blood cell count his prescribed retrovirals until shortly before his death. The review says hypertensive cardiovascular disease claimed the life of another detainee who was prescribed medication for his blood pressure and heart but was never given the proper drugs. Due in part to a failure to complete ordered laboratory tests, another person allegedly died of because of blood in the sac close to her heart. And people with diabetes allegedly did not receive prescribed insulin for extended periods of time, and had their dietary restrictions ignored.
The motion also claims that inmates with physical disabilities are denied proper medical attention. On multiple occasions, BCDC allegedly failed to give an inmate with urinary problems clean catheters, and the one bathroom he can access is flooded. The motion also mentions a detainee relegated to a defective wheelchair who had back pain for five months, but wasn’t given his muscle relaxant. Additionally, the motion claimed an amputee with severe pain hasn’t had a thorough exam to evaluate his pain or prescribe the most effective medication.
I understand that locking people up is expensive, but if you are going to lock people up, you have to provide at least minimally competent medical care.
Flight
Taxiing
Tethered Tests
Rendering showing rotor and hub fairings
Sikorsky’s S-97 Raider advancing blade helicopter prototype has
taken flight at their test center in Florida:
Sikorsky’s “big bet” on the future of rotorcraft took a sizable step forward on May 22, when the S-97 Raider high-speed helicopter made its first flight, almost eight decades after founder Igor Sikorsky set the mold for the helicopter by flying the VS-300.
With its single main rotor and anti-torque tail rotor, the VS-300 solidified a configuration that has come to dominate the rotorcraft market, but also set a speed limit of around 150 kt. that has not changed significantly for 30 years.
With its rigid coaxial rotors and pusher propulsor, Sikorsky believes the Raider and subsequent designs can change the vertical-lift market by offering twice the cruise speed while retaining the low-speed attributes of conventional helicopters, but with higher hot-and-high performance, efficiency and maneuverability, and lower noise, vibration and pilot workload.
The aircraft flown on May 22 is the first of two prototypes of the Raider light tactical helicopter being built under a $200 million industry effort funded by Sikorsky and its supplier partners. This follows on from the $50 million company-funded X2 Technology Demonstrator, which flew 23 times from 2008-11 and exceeded its speed goal of 250 kt.
On its first flight at Sikorsky’s development flight center in West Palm Beach, Florida, the Raider flew for an hour, versus the 30 min. planned, says Mark Miller, vice president of research and engineering, completing three takeoffs and landings, and forward, rearward and sideward flight. The aircraft was flown by Raider chief pilot Bill Fell, with X2 test pilot Kevin Bredenbeck as co-pilot.
Where the 6,000-lb.-gross-weight X2 proved the physics of the rigid coaxial-rotor compound helicopter, Miller says, the production-representative 11,400-lb. Raiders are intended to show their operational effectiveness through customer demonstrations. They will also reduce risk for the 30,000-lb. SB-1 Defiant Sikorsky is building with Boeing for the U.S. Army’s Joint Multi Role technology demonstration.
Rolled out in October, the first Raider had completed 36 hr. of shakedown ground runs since February. This culminated in an untethered ground run on May 20, clearing the aircraft for flight. On the hour-long first sortie, which was limited only by fuel, all 97 points on an “aggressive” test card were completed, including piloted frequency sweeps in all axes, something normally too risky for a first flight, says Fell.
Initially, the Raider is flying with its triplex fly-by-wire flight control system in back-up degraded mode to reduce complexity and focus on basic airworthiness in the low-speed regime. “There is phenomenal control power with the rigid rotors,” he says. “You can make an input in roll or pitch and the aircraft responds immediately. And with no tail rotor, you do not have to manage the pedals.”
………
The Raider will be flown to 140-150 kt. in pure helicopter mode, says Miller. Toward the end of Phase 1, software will be upgraded to Block 2, bringing in the variable-pitch propulsor and articulating tail to increase speed and enable the full flight envelope. Hub and inter-rotor fairings will be fitted to reduce drag.
Phases 1 and 2 will demo the hover KPP carrying the equivalent of six troops and two crew, as well as an endurance objective. Phase 2 will focus on demonstrating—and likely exceeding—the speed objective when fitted with stub wings carrying weapons. “Raider is a balanced design optimized for more than 220 kt. fully weaponized, but the inherent speed of the configuration is more than 250 kt.,” says Miller. “That’s 100 kt. faster than anything else.”
Phase 3 will demo the maneuverability potential of the rigid coaxial rotor and propulsor. In addition to enabling level-attitude acceleration and deceleration and pushing the helicopter to higher forward speeds, the variable-pitch propeller can be used to produce reverse thrust, enabling the Raider to “hang on the prop” to point sensors and weapons toward the ground.
………
The Raider will be flown to 140-150 kt. in pure helicopter mode, says Miller. Toward the end of Phase 1, software will be upgraded to Block 2, bringing in the variable-pitch propulsor and articulating tail to increase speed and enable the full flight envelope. Hub and inter-rotor fairings will be fitted to reduce drag.
[Aircraft 1 is instrumented for envelope expansion, Hub and inter-rotor “sail” fairings for high speed are not yet fitted. Credit: Sikorsky]
Aircraft 1 is instrumented for envelope expansion, Hub and inter-rotor “sail” fairings for high speed are not yet fitted. Credit: Sikorsky
Phases 1 and 2 will demo the hover KPP carrying the equivalent of six troops and two crew, as well as an endurance objective. Phase 2 will focus on demonstrating—and likely exceeding—the speed objective when fitted with stub wings carrying weapons. “Raider is a balanced design optimized for more than 220 kt. fully weaponized, but the inherent speed of the configuration is more than 250 kt.,” says Miller. “That’s 100 kt. faster than anything else.”
Phase 3 will demo the maneuverability potential of the rigid coaxial rotor and propulsor. In addition to enabling level-attitude acceleration and deceleration and pushing the helicopter to higher forward speeds, the variable-pitch propeller can be used to produce reverse thrust, enabling the Raider to “hang on the prop” to point sensors and weapons toward the ground.
The early tests will involve low, conventional helicopter, speed. As the test moves to higher speeds, fairings will apply to the mast and rotor hubs.
Right now, there are two competing technologies for high speed vertical lift for the US military, advancing blade, and tilt rotor.
Tilt rotor appears to offer superior performance in horizontal flight, at the cost of increased down wash issues, less capable low speed handling, and a larger ground envelope.
I’m inclined to go with the advancing blade. I think that it is an inherently safer technology (autorotation), and the implementation seems to involve a lot less “bleeding edge” technology. (The V-22’s high pressure hydraulic system, necessary to keep weight down, has been a maintenance nightmare).
Whoever came up with the site Ship Your Enemies Glitter is clearly of a deeply diabolical bent, and having a silly revenge web site is better than having a lair in a volcano with nuclear weapons.
As such, I heartily endorse this product, and state for the record that I have received no considerations from this enterprise for my review:
We hate glitter. People call it the herpes of the craft world. What we hate more though are the soulless people who get their jollies off by sending glitter in envelopes.
We’ve had enough so here’s the deal: there’s someone in your life right now who you can’t stand. Whether it be your sh%$ty neighbour, a family member or that bitch Amy down the road who thinks it’s cool to invite you to High Tea but not provide any weed.
So pay us money, provide an address anywhere in the world & we’ll send them so much glitter in an envelope that they’ll be finding that sh%$ everywhere for weeks. We’ll also include a note telling the person exactly why they’re receiving this terrible gift. Hint: the glitter will be mixed in with the note thus increasing maximum spillage.
Like I said. It’s this, or going full Bond Villain.
H/T Neo at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
I’ve seen lemmings with shallower learning curves. Because of the last war for which Fred Hiatt shook his moneymaker, the influence that the United States can bring to bear on centuries-old internal conflicts in Iraq is slightly less than that wielded at the moment by the Carolina League. Our aid makes us one friend and makes for that friend a hundred enemies.
—Charlie Pierce on WaPo editorial page editor Fred Hiatt’s repeated calls for boots on the ground.
Why does Fred Hiatt still have a job?
I don’t buy into the Post‘s self image of greatness, but they deserve better than to have the 2nd worst* opinion page in the nation.
*It is self evident that the worst OP/ED page in the nation belongs to The Wall Street Journal.
Notwithstanding the myriad tough technical problems that are involved, one would think that the Missile Defense Agency would at least be able to make the manufacturers make the interceptors to spec:
Two serious technical flaws have been identified in the ground-launched anti-missile interceptors that the United States would rely on to defend against a nuclear attack by North Korea.
Pentagon officials were informed of the problems as recently as last summer but decided to postpone corrective action. They told federal auditors that acting immediately to fix the defects would interfere with the production of new interceptors and slow a planned expansion of the nation’s homeland missile defense system, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office.
As a result, all 33 interceptors now deployed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County and Ft. Greely, Alaska, have one of the defects. Ten of those interceptors — plus eight being prepared for delivery this year — have both.
Summing up the effect on missile-defense readiness, the GAO report said that “the fielded interceptors are susceptible to experiencing … failure modes,” resulting in “an interceptor fleet that may not work as intended.”
………
One of the newly disclosed shortcomings centers on wiring harnesses embedded within the kill vehicles’ dense labyrinth of electronics.
A supplier used an unsuitable soldering material to assemble harnesses in at least 10 interceptors deployed in 2009 and 2010 and still part of the fleet.
The same material was used in the eight interceptors that will be placed in silos this year, according to GAO analyst Cristina Chaplain, lead author of the report.
The soldering material is vulnerable to corrosion in the interceptors’ underground silos, some of which have had damp conditions and mold. Corrosion “could have far-reaching effects” because the “defective wiring harnesses” supply power and data to the kill vehicle’s on-board guidance system, said the GAO report, which is dated May 6.
………
Chaplain told The Times that based on her staff’s discussions with the Missile Defense Agency, officials there have “no timeline” for repairing the wiring harnesses.
The agency encountered a similar problem with wiring harnesses years earlier, and the supplier was instructed not to use the deficient soldering material. But “the corrective actions were not passed along to other suppliers,” according to the GAO report.
L. David Montague, co-chairman of a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed operations of the Missile Defense Agency, said officials should promptly set a schedule for fixing the harnesses.
“The older they are with that kind of a flawed soldering, the more likely they are to fail,” Montague, a former president of missile systems for Lockheed Corp., said in an interview.
The second newly disclosed defect involves a component called a divert thruster, a small motor intended to help maneuver the kill vehicles in flight. Each kill vehicle has four of them.
The GAO report refers to “performance issues” with the thrusters. It offers few details, and GAO auditors declined to elaborate, citing a fear of revealing classified information. They did say that the problem is different from an earlier concern that the thruster’s heavy vibrations could throw off the kill vehicle’s guidance system.
The report and interviews with defense specialists make clear that problems with the divert thruster have bedeviled the interceptor fleet for years. To address deficiencies in the original version, Pentagon contractors created a redesigned “alternate divert thruster.”
The government planned to install the new version in many of the currently deployed interceptors over the next few years and to retrofit newly manufactured interceptors, according to the GAO report and interviews with its authors.
That plan was scrapped after the alternate thruster, in November 2013, failed a crucial ground test to determine whether it could withstand the stresses of flight, the report said. To stay on track for expanding the fleet, senior Pentagon officials decided to keep building interceptors with the original, deficient thruster.
What sort of moron structures a multi-billion dollar multi-year defense system in such a way that there is absolutely no quality control?
To accelerate deployment, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld exempted the missile agency from the Pentagon’s standard procurement rules and testing standards.
(emphasis mine)
OK, that kind of moron.
Why the hell is the MDA still operating this way?
Rumsfeld has been “spending more time with his family” for about 9 years, so one would think that the pentagon would be able to correct at least one of his f%$#-ups in the interim.
H/T the hairiest Saroff, aka Bear who Swims. o o
(_)____o
~~~~(_____)~~~~
oo oo
It appears that yet another hedge fund billionaire is upset that politicians don’t fawn over him like the people he employs:
“I don’t need anybody crapping all over what I do for a living,” Cooperman told CNNMoney’s Cristina Alesci Monday.
Cooperman is the founder of hedge fund Omega Advisors, which has about $9 billion in assets.
He thinks Clinton is a hypocrite for painting a nasty picture of hedge fund managers and then asking them for money and trying to befriend them.
“[She] hangs out with all these people in Martha’s Vineyard and in the Hamptons and then the very first thing she has to say is to criticize hedge funds,” Cooperman, said.
Cooperman, 72, said he isn’t looking for praise, but declares he’s the living embodiment of the American Dream.
“I have nothing to apologize for. I’ve made a lot of money. I’m giving it all back to society,” he says, emphasizing his large donations to places such as Hunter College in New York, Columbia University and Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey.
You are not the embodiment of the American dream, motherf%$#er, you are a parasite who got particularly lucky.
You poor delicate little flower.
How about you take your billions of dollars and a nice warm warm cup of shut the f%$# up.
*Yes, the fact that I could use this amusingly alliterative title was one of the reasons that I Posted this.†
†Yes, I did spend more time on the hed than I did on the article. I’m kind of lame that way.
Just when you thought that the FIFA scandal could get any more surreal, or more pathetic, one of the FIFI officials accused of bribery and money laundering has cited an article from The Onion to defend himself from the charges:
Jack Warner, a former vice president of FIFA, was arrested last week in connection with a sweeping United States Justice Department investigation that slapped 14 bigwigs with charges of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering.
Warner, apparently unfamiliar with The Onion, defended himself against these charges Sunday by holding up an article from the news satire website — “FIFA Frantically Announces 2015 Summer World Cup in the United States” — stating that “all this has stemmed from the failed U.S. bid to host the World Cup.”
“If I was so bad, if FIFA is so bad…why is it the USA wants to keep the FIFA World Cup?…Something has to be wrong,” Warner says.
This is f%$#ed up and sh%$.
It’s also funny as hell, but it’s f%$#ed up and sh%$.
Andrew “Buddy” Donohue has been appointed Chief of Staff for the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Before his appointment, Mr. Donohue was a lawyer for Goldman Sachs:
The Securities and Exchange Commission confirmed Thursday that it hired a managing director of Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs Inc. to serve as chief of staff, prompting critics to decry a revolving door that links the corridors of finance and power.
Chairman Mary Jo White has hired Andrew “Buddy” Donohue, the SEC said in a news release, tapping the influential Wall Streeter to become chief of staff of the agency in charge of protecting investors. He’ll serve as a senior adviser to White on policy, management, and regulatory issues.
Most recently, Donohue worked as a managing director and associate general counsel at Goldman Sachs. Previously, he led the SEC’s Investment Management Division between May 2006 and November 2010, spanning two administrations and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
“I am thrilled that Buddy will be returning to the SEC to provide his extensive knowledge and expertise to the agency,” said SEC chief White said in a statement. “Buddy is a seasoned professional whose previous SEC and private sector experience will be invaluable in advancing all aspects of the agency’s mission.”
White said Donohue’s background will be “especially useful” as the commission advances new rules for risk management and weighs a uniform fiduciary standard for the investment community.
Yeah, sure.
It is, “Especially Useful,” for the, “Managing director and associate general counsel at Goldman Sachs,” to work on rules for risk management and a fiduciary standard for brokers.
FWIW, holding brokers to a fiduciary standard, which requires them to act in the best interest of their client, is something that the financial industry has been fighting tooth and nail, and the man from Goldman Sachs is Chief of Staff for the organization which is drawing up the regulations for this.
Reform, my flabby white ass.
It turns out that, at least for the next few hours, some significant portions of the Patriot Act have expired:
The Senate failed to pass legislation late Sunday to extend three Patriot Act surveillance measures ahead of their midnight expiration. The National Security Agency’s bulk telephone metadata collection program—first exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013—is the most high profile of the three spy tools whose legal authorization expired.
President Barack Obama was set to sign the bill, the USA Freedom Act, ahead of the midnight Sunday deadline. But Senate lawmakers who convened in a special session at 4pm ET Sunday could not reach an accord. The Senate is to resume debate Monday at noon ET.
As expected, there was much banter back and forth on the Senate floor about whether the Constitution was being gutted or whether the country would come to ruins if the Senate did not quickly adopt the already approved House legislation ahead of the June 1 expiration deadline. (The three Patriot Act provisions that failed to pass the Senate were renewed days ago in the House through 2019.)
“Are we willing to trade liberty for security?” asked Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), perhaps the most vocal opponent of the legislation. Despite an apparent victory, Paul had no illusions that this fight for privacy would end after these specific extension talks. “The Patriot Act will expire tonight, but it will only be temporary,” he added.
………
The three Patriot Act provisions on the agenda would have been extended until 2019 if approved. The first concerns the so-called “business records” provision that enabled the NSA’s bulk telephone metadata program brought to light by the Snowden disclosures. This provision granted the government the power to seize all types of records—including those surrounding health and banking. The authorities must assert to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court (FISA Court) that they are “relevant” to a terrorism investigation before getting a warrant. The bulk metadata collection program was altered somewhat under the House and Senate legislation, however.
I expect this victory to be short lived, but even this temporary and largely symbolic setback for the overweening security state heartens me a bit.
*I f%$#ing cannot f%$#ing believe that I f%$#ing just f%$#ing said that non-ironically.
It turns out that the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) kangaroo courts are not the worst part of the TPP.
It turns out that it is set up as what the US Trade Representative calls a, “Living agreement: to enable the updating of the agreement as appropriate to address trade issues that emerge in the future as well as new issues that arise with the expansion of the agreement to include new countries.”
What this means is that the agreement can be changed by the vote of a a foreign bureaucracy with no requirement for Congressional advice and consent.
When one looks at the, where the “Judges” work for the benefit large multinational firms, do their adjudication, and then go back to work for the benefit large multinational firms, one can only imagine the skulduggery that can be done with this.
(Retitled on 7/1/2016 because some moron at Google™ Adsense™ flagged it as sexually explicit because of the title)
In response to prosecutorial misconduct, a California judge has dismissed the whole Orange County DA’s Office from a case:
Prosecutorial and police misconduct are often dismissed as just a few bad apples doing a few bad apple-ish things. But what happens when it’s entrenched and systemic and goes unchecked for years? That looks to be the case in Orange County, California, where the situation got so completely out of hand this spring that Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals issued an order disqualifying the entire Orange County District Attorney’s Office (that’s all 250 prosecutors) from continuing to prosecute a major death penalty case.
After literally years of alleged misconduct involving jailhouse informants, as well as prosecutors’ repeated failures to turn over exculpatory material, Judge Goethals determined in March that the office can simply no longer work on the case of mass murderer Scott Dekraai, who pleaded guilty last year to killing his ex-wife and seven others at a beauty salon in 2011.
Revelations of misconduct in the Dekraai case have raised questions about patterns of obstruction and deception that have unraveled various other murder cases in the county, which has a population larger than that of 20 different states. Other cases involving informants who were eliciting illegal confessions have emerged, entire cases have collapsed, and more may follow. The story goes way back to the 1980s, as R. Scott Moxley explains at length in the OC Weekly, to a prosecutorial scandal that ended in the execution of one defendant and a lengthy sentence for his alleged co-conspirator. Their convictions were based on the testimony of various jailhouse informants even though they told conflicting stories. That scandal rocked the area then, and this new one shows eerie parallels.
………
One issue in the Dekraai case is whether deputies deliberately placed him near a prized informant to elicit illegal confessions. While preparing for the penalty phase of the trial, Santa Ana assistant public defender Scott Sanders, who is defending Dekraai, discovered that a jailhouse informant who had produced damning evidence about his client had done the same thing in another case Sanders was handling. After further investigation, Sanders claimed that a branch of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department called “special handling” would deliberately place jailhouse snitches in cells next to high-value inmates awaiting trials, with instructions to collect confessions, a practice that is unconstitutional.
Together with his law clerks, Sanders spent a year unearthing and then reconstructing a tranche of 60,000 pages of records indicating that the county sheriff’s office routinely used and coordinated with those informants to get around the constitutional prohibition on eliciting incriminating statements from defendants who had lawyered up and should not have been interrogated. The sheriff’s department has admitted that mistakes were made. The DA’s office claims there was nothing coordinated or systemic going on. But Judge Goethals disagreed, finding that the new revelations called into question the integrity of the entire Orange County District Attorney’s office.
Initially, Judge Goethals had ruled that the DA’s office was negligent in failing to turn exculpatory information over, finding that “the district attorney’s well-documented failures in this case, although disappointing, even disheartening to any interested member of this community, were negligent rather than malicious.” But that seems to have changed following further revelations of refusal to turn over evidence.
In an explosive moment following a hearing last year, Sanders revealed that the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has maintained a massive, secret, 25-year-old computerized record-keeping system called TRED. These TRED documents were full of potentially exculpatory data, but the agency officials had systematically refused to turn any of them over, or even acknowledge their very existence, to defense counsel.
In his March order, Goethals wrote: “It is now apparent that the discovery situation in this case is far worse than the court previously realized. In fact, a wealth of potentially relevant discovery material—an entire computerized data base built and maintained by the Orange County Sheriff over the course of many years which is a repository for information related directly to the very issues that this court was examining as a result of the defendant’s motion—remained secret, despite numerous specific discovery orders issued by this court, until long after the initial evidentiary hearing in this case was concluded and rulings were made.”
………
What’s wrong with using jailhouse informants? It depends on how they are used. Testimony from snitches is certainly legal—even if the informant gets rewarded with a reduced sentence or material benefits or even cold, hard cash. But evidently the Orange County informants were deliberately moved to be closer to high value targets, they taped their conversations, and the records of much of this conduct were then hidden. As Dean Erwin Chemerinsky explains, the Constitution limits the use of jailhouse informants to situations in which statements are made voluntarily to cellmates, not orchestrated and recorded by jailhouse officials, all of which makes the interaction too much like an interrogation. The 1964 Supreme Court case Massiah v. United States bars the government from eliciting incriminating statements from a defendant after the right to counsel has kicked in. In Dekraai’s case the issue was how jailhouse informant Fernando Perez found his way into a cell next to Dekraai, befriended him, and then reported hearing him “bragging” about the Seal Beach murders.
The answer to that question is troubling. According to a 505-page motion filed by Sanders, Dekraai was somehow placed next to a guy known as “Inmate F,” (Perez) who then buddied up to Dekraai, heard all he had to say and then—to hear prosecutors tell it—came forward out of the goodness of his heart. As Sanders explained:It appeared that the prosecution had been the recipient of extraordinarily good luck. The inmate housed closest to Dekraai was a good listener, a great note taker, and someone so selfless that he wanted to assist the OCDA [Orange County district attorney] and local law enforcement without wishing for anything in return. OCDA Investigator Erickson’s subsequently written report confirmed this picture of Inmate F. The prosecution promised nothing in return for his assistance, which was perfect for Inmate F. because he wanted nothing.
The problem for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office arose after Sanders started digging into details about Inmate F and happened upon, just for starters, a note in his file stating: “WAS TERMINATED AS A C.I. [confidential informant]—DO NOT USE AS A C.I.” as well as his colorful history of three-strikes convictions and conspiracies to murder fellow inmates.
Last August, Judge Goethals ruled that prosecutors couldn’t use the Perez statements during the penalty phase of the trial, but he also found that there was no evidence of a conspiracy, just that mistakes were made. But after Sanders found the TRED records, it became clear that sheriff’s officials—not a nurse, as they had sworn, under oath—had put Perez next to Dekraai’s cell, and that the violations were likely deliberate and coordinated.
………The problem with the system set up in Orange County, according to Sanders, was that jailhouse informants were asked to collect incriminating statements and then share them with prosecutors in exchange for reduced charges or other favors. Last November, the Orange County Register reported that two prolific informants with extensive criminal records had received more than $150,000 from law enforcement agencies for obtaining information from jailed suspects awaiting trials.
………
The Dekraai case became a turning point in Orange County when Judge Goethals got mad. He found that two deputies, Ben Garcia and Seth Tunstall, who belonged to the “special handling” unit dealing with informants, testified falsely to the court, denying the very existence of the TRED records at a crucial hearing last year. He also found that a prosecutor, Eric Petersen, had testified falsely.
………
In the end it took a crusading public defender and a judge finally willing to believe him to smoke out the wrongdoing. In tossing the entire DA’s office off the Dekraai case, Judge Goethals wrote that “certain aspects of the district attorney’s performance in this case might be described as a comedy of errors but for the fact that it has been so sadly deficient. … There is nothing funny about that.” The disqualification of an entire prosecutor’s office rarely, if ever, occurs. But Judge Goethals finally concluded that in hiding exculpatory evidence, and then covering up the whole mess, the “District Attorney has a conflict of interest in this case, which has actually deprived this defendant of due process in the past.”
………The constitutional protections built into our criminal justice system are not perfect. But the events of the past year in Orange County reveal that the alternative—a nihilistic sense that we can do whatever we must to nail the criminals—is far more dangerous. Especially if we let the most dangerous criminals walk in exchange for snitching in trivial cases. Yet more dangerous still is our tendency to turn a blind eye on the practices that are now coming to light in Orange County. They happen in secret because not enough people want to know about them. And they will continue to happen because so many people keep trying so hard not to care.
The law here is pretty clear: Once a defendant has lawyered up, neither the police nor the prosecutors may talk to him without his counsel.
This applies to any person acting as an agent of the police or prosecutors, and it is clear that the police, prisons, and prosecutors deliberately used their jailhouse snitches as agents, and then concealed this though obstruction of justice and perjury.
I fear that these practices are far more common that we are led to believe.
Martin O’Malley has officially announced that he is running for President:
Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley blasted social injustice and Wall Street excesses as he launched a White House bid on Saturday, casting himself as a younger, more liberal alternative to Democratic Party frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
“Powerful, wealthy special interests here at home have used our government to create, in our own country, an economy that is leaving a majority of our people behind,” said O’Malley, opening his 2016 presidential campaign with a rally at a waterfront park in downtown Baltimore.
O’Malley, who has aggressively courted his party’s liberal wing, began his political career in Baltimore, first as a member of city council and then as mayor.
Decrying big banks as having been behind the financial crisis of 2008, O’Malley singled out Goldman Sachs for particular criticism. He said Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein recently told his employees that “he’d be just fine” with either Republican Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton as president after the November 2016 election.
“Well, I’ve got news for the bullies of Wall Street,” O’Malley said. “The presidency is not a crown to be passed back and forth by you between two royal families.”
Hillary Clinton is the wife of former President Bill Clinton while Jeb Bush, who has not yet formally announced his candidacy but is already considered a leading contender among Republican hopefuls, is son and brother of former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
Signs at O’Malley’s rally promised he would provide “new leadership,” but in fact he faces an uphill battle against former secretary of state Clinton, who consistently tops opinion polls to be the party’s nominee, and who enjoys national name recognition.
The nickel tour of Martin O’Malley:
I think that the biggest impact on the Democratic nomination processes will be to give the press to further curtail their already meager (and dismissive) coverage of Bernie Sanders.
I prefer him to Clinton, but I prefer Sanders to O’Malley.
We now have evidence that the US State Department is pressuring the Nobel Prize committee to nominate Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for the Peace Prize:
A leaked letter dated May 19th and sent by the Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, Vladimir Groysman, to the chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Oslo Norway, thanks her for “the efforts you have made to have Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize,” but continues: “Still we consider your assurances of support by the two members of the Nobel Committee as insufficient,” because there are five members of the Committee, and the support of 3 of them is necessary.
Thus, “We expect further efforts aimed at shifting the position of Berit Reiss-Andersen, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn and especially that of the Chair of the Nobel Committee Kaci Kullman Five. Regarding the latter, we recommend that you take advantage of the information you are going to receive from Germany. Your colleagues in Berlin have assured us that the dossier will soon be delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Oslo. It is of utmost importance for Mr. Poroshenko to have firm guarantees that he will be awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize, since it could highlight the unanimous support of Ukrainian integrity by the democratic community of the world. Assistant Secretary of State Viktoria Nuland has highly estimated your job during her visit to Kyiv.”
Once again, like a bad penny, every time there is a harebrained neocon scheme at State, Victoria Nuland is at the heart of the skulduggery.
The three mentioned Nobel Peace Prize Committee members are a politcally varied group. Ms. Reiss-Andersen is from the social democratic or “Labour” party; Ms. Ytterhorn is from the libertarian or “Progress” party; and Ms. Five is from the Conservative Party. The two unidentified members are Thorbjørn Jagland from the Labour Party, and Henrik Syse from the Conservative Party. If this letter is correct, those are the two who are referred to by the letter’s phrase, “your assurances of support by the two members.”
The letter also makes a vague reference to the poor reputation that the Committee has engendered on account of the Committee’s having granted the Prize to Barack Obama in 2009 (a decision that the Committee’s Chairperson, Ms. Five, concurred with and has been criticized for): “We understand the difficulties you face when promoting the candidacy of the President of Ukraine, therefore we ask you to exert additional leverages by engaging those U.S. Senators who effectively cooperated with the Committee in 2009.” Presumably, this means that whomever “those U.S. Senators” were, the Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament thinks that they were “effective.”
President Poroshenko entered office on 25 May 2014 after a U.S.-sponsored coup in Kiev that installed Arseniy Yatsenyuk as Ukraine’s Prime Minister on 26 February 2014, after the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Asian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, had instructed the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev on 4 February 2014 to get “Yats” appointed as the junta’s leader; she issued that instruction to him by phone on February 4th and the coup occurred on February 22nd; Yatsenyuk was then appointed on February 26th, and he remains in power today. One pro-Russian part of Ukraine, Crimea, then seceded and joined Russia, and another, Donbass, seceded and was not accepted by Russia; it thus was bombed by the Ukrainian Government during May through December 2014, since Donbass’s repeated requests to be allowed to join Russia were spurned by Vladimir Putin. (Yet, Ukraine accuses Russia of providing the fighters who are actually the men of Donbass, who refuse to be ruled by the U.S.-coup regime. Russia sends them guns, and volunteers have come from Russia and many other countries to help the Donbass defenders.) German intelligence estimates that “up to 50,000” people were killed in that bombing campaign, but U.S. and other official estimates are only around 5,000.
Even before Poroshenko took office, the new Ukrainian government of “Yats” Yatsenyuk invaded Donbass, using bombers, tanks, rocket-launchers, and everything it had; and, when Poroshenko gave his victory speech in the ceremonial Presidential election on May 25th, he promised, and it was very clear from him, that: “The anti-terrorist operation [he called the residents there ’terrorists’] cannot and should not last two or three months. It should and will last hours.” (Another translation of it was “Antiterrorist operation can not and will not continue for 2-3 months. It must and will last hours.”) But it did last months — Poroshenko’s prediction was certainly false; and, moreover, he lost first one round of the war, and then another — his prediction of its outcome was likewise false. And recently, he said that the war must be resumed for yet a third round, in order that Ukraine win back both Crimea and Donbass. However, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned him on May 12th that he must not do that, and that if he did he’d be violating the Minsk II ceasefire accords which had been arranged by France’s Francois Hollande and Germany’s Angela Merkel. Then, three days later, his Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland, who had arranged the February 2014 coup, told both Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko to ignore what Kerry had just said, and that, “We continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine and reiterate our deep commitment to a single Ukrainian nation, including Crimea, and all the other regions of Ukraine.”
(emphasis mine)
The important thing is not that this is absurd, nor is it why Victoria Nuland has a job at the State Department and a security clearance.
The important thing here is that this is a graphic example of just how f%$#ed up and failed our policy in the Ukraine has proved to be.
We went for a color revolution by funding and supporting Ukrainian Fascists (not hyperbole, the Pravyi Sektor party and its associated paramilitaries are Fascists who idolize Nazi collaborators) for no particular reason, and Russia reacted to what it saw as an existential threat, because it was an existential threat, and we have slavering war mongers in Kiev, and a civil war in which the Russian aligned rebels are winning.
Heck of a job, Brownie Victoria Nuland.
The markets want money for cocaine and prostitutes. I am deadly serious.
Most people don’t realize that “the markets” are in reality 22-27 year old business school graduates, furiously concocting chaotic trading strategies on excel sheets and reporting to bosses perhaps 5 years senior to them. In addition, they generally possess the mentality and probably intelligence of junior cycle secondary school students. Without knowladge of these basic facts, nothing about the markets makes any sense—and with knowladge, everything does.—ObsessiveMathsFreak in the comments section of a post on the blog The Irish Economy
H/t Paul Krugman
On a web site dedicated to people who do consumer electrical work, someone posits that Tesla’s new home battery packs will force homes to go voltage DC current. This is absolutely and completely wrong, because fails to get even a single fact right, as would be clear to anyone who knew the most basic physics:
CE pros might be sitting in the proverbial catbird seat when it comes to the future of wiring homes.
With the solar revolution seemingly in full swing all across the nation, consumers are enamored with “going off the grid.” And many homeowners are counting on home batteries to be the next phase of their off-the-grid plans. Companies likes Tesla and RoseWater Energy Group are leading the way in the development of these new power storage devices for homes.
But if the battery power trend takes off, it must lead to a new paradigm in which homes will be powered more with low voltage wiring than line voltage electrical, according to a blog by CE veteran Paul Self on Buildz.com.
Indeed, will the pure science limitations of AC/DC conversion eventually force a gigantic sea change from builders, electricians and the National Electric Code itself in the way homes are constructed and wired? The answer is “Yes” that might have to happen, says Self.
Here is Self’s logic: [Or more accurately, here are his completely incoherent thoughts]“An underlying issue with solar power and the Tesla battery is the fact that they run on DC while the power infrastructure in buildings is AC. Stepping power up and down from AC to DC and vice-versa wastes energy, about 20 percent is lost in the conversion. Some converters do a better job than others, but resolving this 20 percent loss is very important when working on a battery stored energy supply.
Ummmm. No. Inverters operate at efficiencies of about 95% at their design points, and if you are connected to the grid, as Tesla envisions, you will only use the inverter .
Many devices in a home could run on DC. Almost all non-incandescent light bulbs can run on DC and require a transformer to step the 110 VAC down to a 12 – 5 VDC signal for the bulb.
No. The a fluorescent light ballast operates as follows: It uses a transformer to jump UP the voltage (not down), then rectifies it to DC, and then uses an inverter (square wave, because unlike motors, that is fine for gas tubes) to hop the frequency from 60hz in the wall, to 1+ Khz to eliminate flicker. (For incandescents, it’s not an issue, because even as the AC current goes through them they hot. CFLs are generating lights from individual sparks).
Other devices like computers, TVs, cable boxes, and cell phone chargers all operate similarly.
No again. They cannot use line current, they need to condition the power, and it is easier to do this with AC current.
Appliances like electric ovens, electric water heaters, and air conditioners will require 110VAC, but most of the house is on DC.
Let me paint you a picture.
They reacquire 110VAC because they are high power, and at low voltage, the amperage, and wire size go through the roof. (Details follow)
- Sun generates 12VDC via the solar panel
Yes, a panel will generate relative low voltage DC, but if arranged in series, you can generate 100s of volts, and have smaller and cheaper wiring with less transmission losses.
- Solar panels push power to a battery
Again, note arranging in series. In their cars, for example, Tesla battery packs operate at DC voltages between 250V and 425V.
- The battery or the solar panel push 12VDC to a DC to AC converter (20% loss of power).
Again. Inverters are around 95% efficient these days.
- AC is distributed throughout the house
- Many devices then convert the power BACK to DC (20% loss of power)
Again, the efficiencies of rectifiers is about 95%, not 80%, and the devices that have to convert it back to DC would have to do so anyway, because power from the batteries is not as uniform as their electronics requires.
- This all seems pretty silly to lose this much power. I am sure it is less than a cumulative loss of 40 percent power, but when your trying to free yourself of the power company, this really adds up.
Also note that he knows no math. Two devices operating at a 20% loss (80% efficiency) would give us losses of 80% x 80% = 64%; 100% -64% = 36%.
This guy cannot even do basic multiplication.
You know what also “really ads up”?
Copper.
Let’s take a 40 W light bulb.
Power is Voltage x Current = V x I, so for a 120V source, the current is ⅓ amp. For his 12 Volt DC system, the current would be 3⅓ amps, 10 times more current.
You can also express power in terms of current and resistance, P=I2R, so losses in transmission would go through the roof.
Well, they would, except if you look up the charts, it turns out for a typical (I chose 50 feet) length, the DC wiring has much lower resistance, because it is much thicker.
How much thicker? Well the table for wiring for 12VDC gives us 6 Ga wire, and the worksheet for 120VAC gives us 14 Ga wire, and the wire gauge size table gives us conductor diameters of 0.17″ and 0.064″ respectively.
That is a lot of copper you end up paying for, and for many applications.
He also ignores the fact that DC Motors (the kind with brushes) are less efficient, run hotter, and wear out more quickly.
The motor on your furnace, and dryer, and washing machine, are typically induction motors, that operate directly off of your house current, and with a DC house you would need inverters for the motors. (So called “Brushless DC motors” contain their own power circuitry linked to an induction motor).
If you see this guy, do not let him near your electronics. He will kill himself, or kill you, or set your house on fire.
Note that I am NOT an electrical engineer, though I got the basics in school, but this is so ignorant, and so wrong, that I felt compelled to Fisk this bit of bovine scatology.
H/T /.
Rather unsurprisingly, the thing that they did right was dissing New York Times columnist, and perpetual middle school doyenne Maureen Dowd.
It seems that our lady of shallow cattiness was in Hollywood, and called for an Uber ride, and she saw the cars fleeing her on the app:
………
Even in the land of movie stars, you could feel like a movie star when your Uber chauffeur rolled up. Standing in front of the Sunset Tower Hotel, I tapped my Uber app and saw five little cars swarming around my location. But, suddenly, they scattered in the opposite direction. I stood in the driveway, perplexed. Finally, a car pulled up, and the driver waved me in.
“Do you know why no one wanted to pick you up?” he asked. “Because you have a low rating.”
(Uber drivers see your rating once they accept the request and then can cancel.)
I was shocked. Blinded by the wondrous handiness of Uber, I had missed the fact that while I got to rate them, they got to rate me back.
Revealing that I had only 4.2 stars, my driver continued to school me. “You don’t always come out right away,” he said, sternly, adding that I would have to work hard to be more appealing if I wanted to get drivers to pick me up.
To the degree that we can tell, the firms fares are opaque and confusing, Uber does not charge by the hour, it charges on the basis of distance + some sort of weird “special sauce”.
The drivers are paid on the basis of what is charged, so by leaving drivers to cool their heels while she does her nails, or finishes packing, or whatever, she is requiring the drivers to wait unpaid for her.
Given that with a glance at the app, you can see where the nearest drivers are, it would be a simple thing to wait until just before she was ready to leave, or to post for a driver at some point in the near future so that you can be assured that she is ready to ride when they arrive.
Ms. Dowd comes to a completely different conclusion:
Except then I learned that sitting in an Uber car was pretty much like sitting in my office: How much have you developed your audience? How much have you been shared? How much have you engaged your reader? Are you trending?
I was trending on Uber, all right, and not in a good way. I had avoided Lyft not only because of that pink mustache but because I had heard that you were encouraged to sit up front with drivers and give them fist-bumps. It seemed more like The Flintstones’ car than Cinderella’s pumpkin coach.
But, now, instead of quietly sitting in the back seat of my Uber and checking my phone or reading the paper, I had to start working to charm.
“Your husband likes oysters?” I enthused to one woman driving me in San Francisco.
“What are the kids up to this summer?” I chirped to another.
It was starting to have the vibe of friending, liking and sharing on Facebook, and that always gives me acid flashbacks to the ’80s when I was forced to go to my brother’s house and watch slides of his wedding. Finally, my nephew explained that I didn’t need to grovel or gush. I simply needed to say, as I got out of the car, “Five for five.” If I promised to give them five stars — even in the Wild West of Uber X, where the drivers often seem so unfamiliar with the local terrain it’s as though they’ve arrived from Mars — they would give me five stars.
So her solution is to go and subject the drivers that she is paying to be her hostage to the wondrous personality that is Maureen Dowd.
You are treating Uber drivers like sh%$, and no amount of small talk will fix that.
Just don’t leave the driver waiting.
Also, tips, particularly in cash, where Uber won’t take a cut, can’t hurt.
So, the other shoe has dropped on the former speaker, and we learn that Denny Hastert sexually abused a student:
J. Dennis Hastert stumbled into political power amid a Republican sex scandal in 1998 that unexpectedly elevated the husky Illinoisan to a position just two heartbeats away from the presidency.
He became the longest-serving Republican House speaker in U.S. history, but remained so proud of his days as a small-town high school teacher and wrestling coach that he relished the Capitol Hill nickname “Coach.”
But this week those once-idolized small-town roots caught up with the 73-year-old Hastert, who in recent years has worked behind the scenes as a Washington power broker.
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert indicted
Federal prosecutors have announced bank-related charges against former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
On Friday, federal law enforcement officials said Hastert had paid $1.7 million over the last four years to conceal sexual abuse against a former male student he knew during his days as a teacher in Yorkville, Ill., where Hastert worked until 1981.
A top federal law enforcement official, who would not be identified speaking about the ongoing federal case, said investigators also spoke with a second man who raised similar allegations that corroborated what the former student said. The second person was not being paid by Hastert, the official said.
The disclosures followed Thursday’s federal indictment against Hastert on charges of lying to the FBI about the reasons for large cash withdrawals he is accused of making to buy the man’s silence.
Currently, the age of consent in Illinois 17, but it is 18 if the person is in a position of authority, for example, being a teacher and coach. (Link)
This law appears to me to be something relatively recent, the whole “position of authority” thing really started in the 1990s, and I know that the age of consent in the 1920s was 16, so it is entirely likely that this did not constitute statutory rape.
Still, it is remarkable that the best Republicans could find for Speaker after Gingrich and Livingston had been driven from office at least in part for adultery.
I’m hoping that Larry Flynt offers another bounty on wandering Republican penises running for President..
The Democratic Party has found a generally friendly reception in Hollywood, and as a result, they have been at least as supportive of draconian and stupid legislation and regulation to increase the profits of Hollywood.
The Obama administration has now taken this to its absurd extreme, and has has filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court supporting Oracle’s claim that APIs should be copyrightable:
The Justice Department is weighing in on the hot-button intellectual property dispute between Google and Oracle, telling the Supreme Court that APIs are protected by copyright.
The Obama administration’s position means it is siding with Oracle and a federal appeals court that said application programming interfaces are subject to copyright protections. The high court in January asked for the government’s views on the closely watched case.
The dispute centers on Google copying names, declarations, and header lines of the Java APIs in Android. Oracle filed suit, and in 2012, a San Francisco federal judge sided with Google. The judge ruled that the code in question could not be copyrighted. Oracle prevailed on appeal, however. A federal appeals court ruled that the “declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of the API packages are entitled to copyright protection.”
Google maintained that the code at issue is not entitled to copyright protection because it constitutes a “method of operation” or “system” that allows programs to communicate with one another.
“That argument is incorrect,” the administration told the justices.
In an amicus brief, computer scientists urged (PDF) the Supreme Court to reverse last year’s appeals court decision. “The Federal Circuit’s decision poses a significant threat to the technology sector and to the public,” they wrote. “If it is allowed to stand, Oracle and others will have an unprecedented and dangerous power over the future of innovation. API creators would have veto rights over any developer who wants to create a compatible program—regardless of whether she copies any literal code from the original API implementation. That, in turn, would upset the settled business practices that have enabled the American computer industry to flourish, and choke off many of the system’s benefits to consumers.”
Does the court really want operating system vendors to pick and choose who can write software, and what sort of software can be written, on their systems.
This is nuts. The purpose of copyright is to, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,”* and there is no way that expanding copyright in this manner does anything to promote progress.
This is insane, and this sort of IP extremism is at the heart of much that is wrong with things like the DMCA, the TPP, Evergreening, and the continual extension of copyright because Disney does not want Steamboat Willie to enter the public domain.
This is nuts.