Year: 2015

F%$# Donald Trump for Making Boris Johnson Look Wise

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The fact that Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, who can best be described as little more than a life support system for his hair, can appear wise when talking about Donald Trump is an indication of just how wrong and disturbing the whole phenomenon of Trump’s political ascendance is:

London’s mayor, the conservative politician Boris Johnson, also chimed in.

“As a city where more than 300 languages are spoken, London has a proud history of tolerance and diversity and to suggest there are areas where police officers cannot go because of radicalization is simply ridiculous,” he said.

“The only reason I wouldn’t go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump,” Johnson quipped.

We live in Bizarro World.

Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!

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Daniel Holtzclaw will likely spend the rest of his life in jail:

After listening to several weeks of testimony and four days of deliberating, a jury has found a former Oklahoma City police officer accused of sex crimes guilty on 18 counts.

Daniel Holtzclaw is accused of sexually assaulting 13 women while on duty as an Oklahoma City police officer.

In August 2014, the state charged Holtzclaw with 36 felony counts of rape, sexual battery, indecent exposure and forcible oral sodomy after the 13 women came forward, claiming the officer assaulted them while they were in custody or inside his police car.

In all, the jury heard 13 accusers’ stories of assault.

………

After four days of deliberating, the jury found Holtzclaw guilty on 18 counts.

They recommend he be sentenced to a total of 263 years.

This is not what I expect from an all white jury in Oklahoma.

Good for the jurors and the prosecutors.

5 Years ago, they probably would not even have charged the guy.

We chan thank Black Lives Matter for this change in attitude.

Seriously Neat Tech

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Do you know how GPS works?

Basically, the satellites broadcast the time using very accurate clocks, and the differences in times received from various satellites in different positions allow a receiver to determine its positions.

Well, it looks like someone is on the cusp of using a natural clock to do the same thing, using pulsars: (paid subscription required)

Celestial navigation was a mainstay in the early days of aviation, and astronavigation is still used in nuclear bombers to overcome jamming. Now a European research project has shown the feasibility of employing pulsars for aircraft navigation that is independent of ground- or space-based equipment.

The PulsarPlane project is investigating the use of pulsar signals for real-time navigation and timing, to overcome the vulnerabilities of global navigation satellite systems and reduce operating costs for aviation in the second half of this century.

Begun in 2013 and funded by the European Union’s Framework 7 research program, the project is coordinated by the Dutch aerospace laboratory NLR and involves universities in the Netherlands, Finland, Portugal and Bulgaria.

Pulsars are fast-rotating neutron stars that emit stable, fast electromagnetic pulses with unique periods between 1.4 millisec and 5 sec. and unique shapes. Pulsars are visible from everywhere on Earth and across a wide band of frequencies.

This is insanely cook cool.

And I Sit in Front of My Monitor, Looking lIke a Cow That Just Stepped on Its Own Udder

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I’ve just discovered that, among the international sports federations, the world Soccer organization FIFA is the 2nd Least corrupt:

A study conducted by Play the Game/Danish Institute for Sports Studies, and published in October 2015, found that on the basic criterion of good governance, Fifa ranks second among the 35 Olympic international sports federations with a Sports Governance Observance index of 67.8 percent.

Yes, the same Fifa that was raided by the police for the second time on Wednesday, resulting in more arrests of its officials. The same Fifa against whose officials US government officials revealed a new indictment that alleges “an even more extensive network of criminal behaviour across dozens of countries and that involved some of the most powerful people in international soccer,” according to The New York Times.

What the f%$#ing f%$3?

We are living in Bizarro world.

H/t Naked Capitalism. 

Today in Stupid

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In Marshfield, Wisconsin, a school board member is trying to ban a Muppet book:

File this under “Why even local elections are important.”

In Marshfield, Wisconsin, the school board decided last summer to slightly change the curriculum to include kindergarten teachers to read a Muppets-themed book called “For Every Child A Better World.” Per the Amazon description of the book, it is about this:

The familiar character of Kermit the Frog teaches young readers about the plight of young children who lack the basic human necessities and the efforts of the United Nations to provide such essentials as housing, water, food, and medical aid.

The goal of reading this book was to help make the little tykes better citizens, something that this world does desperately need.

But one of the school board members, Mary Carney, had a complete breakdown about this book and threatened to not send her kids to her school district. Carney’s beef was that she felt that the new curriculum downplayed “American exceptionalism”:

As near as I can determine, Marshfield is a place for people who aren’t cool enough to live in Wausau, Wisconsin.

Maybe He Will Go to Jail After All

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It looks like Andrew Cuomo got a $700,000.00 advance from a subsidiary of News Corp, and then they got a multi-million dollar subsidy:

New York’s state government has committed millions of dollars in taxpayer support to News Corporation for a real estate deal — less than three years after a subsidiary of that company gave New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo a book deal worth up to $700,000. The commitment was disclosed in documents released by the Port Authority — an agency jointly controlled by Cuomo and New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie.

The documents say the Port Authority, News Corporation and 21st Century Fox “have received commitments from New York State” for a “one-time payment of $15 million in 2016 and the utilization of a $15 million” state tax credit as part of the agency’s push to make the companies “anchor tenants” for 2 World Trade Center. The documents say the transactions are part of an initiative to reduce News Corporation’s and 21st Century Fox’s rent payments at the new building by $155 million.

The Cuomo-appointed executive director of the Port Authority, Patrick Foye, told International Business Times Wednesday night that he is recommending that the Port Authority’s board approve the package because, he said, the agency will get significant bang for its buck. “That is objectively a good deal, a good transaction for the Port Authority and the region,” he said.

This is not a surprise.

Murdoch has a long history of using political connections for business advantage, and Andrew Cuomo swims in the sea of corruption that is Albany like a fish.

Be Afraid. Be Very, Very Afraid

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Over at the Washington Post, Paul Schwartzman and Jenna Johnson look at the Trump Campaign, and they discover that there is actually a very sophisticated and measured messaging process, not the shoot from the lip perception of “The Donald”:

He referred to Mexicans as “rapists,” questioned Sen. John McCain’s status as a war hero, ridiculed the physical appearance of his opponents, falsely claimed that “thousands” in New Jersey cheered as the World Trade Center fell and, this week, called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

Despite predictions that such searing, divisive rhetoric and the resulting outcry would cripple his campaign, Donald Trump’s insults and controversial proposals have propelled him to the forefront of the 2016 presidential race — and kept him there.

And while it may seem like a lurching, chaotic campaign, Trump is, for the most part, a disciplined and methodical candidate, according to a Washington Post review of the businessman’s speeches, interviews and thousands of tweets and retweets over the past six months.

Trump delivers scores of promises, diatribes and insults at breakneck speed. He attacks a regular cast of villains including undocumented immigrants, Muslims, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, his GOP rivals and the media. He keeps the narrative arc of each controversy alive with an endless stream of statements, an unwillingness to back down even when he has misstated the facts — and a string of attacks against those who criticize him.

All the while, his supporters see a truth-talking problem solver unlike the traditional politicians who have let them down. Spending remarkably little, he dominates yet another news cycle, and his Republican rivals languish in his shadow.

………

The Post’s analysis found several qualities to Trump’s approach. First is a pattern of experimentation that suggests that he is testing his insults and attacks as he goes along. Like a team of corporate marketers, Trump understands the value of message-testing — but he appears to do it spontaneously, behind the lectern and on live television.

It appears that there is a method to this madness.

To me this is a hell of a lot scarier than him being some loud mouth who accidentally captured the Zeitgeist of the Republican Party, because it means that the next time, it could be worse.

They Don’t Even Care How it Looks

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The Senate Intelligence Committee issued its torture report.

The unclassified summary was released redacted to the point of incoherence.

The full report was sent to the wWhite House which promptly locked it away and forbade anyone from reading it, regardless of their security clearance.

It’s the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ear saying, “La, la, la, I can’t hear your!”

One year ago today, the Senate Intelligence Committee published a highly redacted executive summary of its investigation into the CIA’s torture and rendition program. The 525-page summary was shocking in many of its details, revealing the torture and rape of detainees held in CIA custody and encompassing treatment far in excess of even the torture techniques formally authorized by the Bush administration.

Despite the passage of 12 months, the actual report, comprising 6,700 pages, still has not been made publicly available. In fact, reading it appears to be prohibited among officials in the executive branch. Nearly a month and a half after the report’s initial release, it had not even been taken out of the package in which it was delivered to the Department of Justice and Department of State, according to government lawyers. Even the organization that was the subject of the report, the CIA, tightly controlled internal access and made “very limited use” of it, as had the Department of Defense, the lawyers said in a court filing.

That shunning of the torture report appears to be ongoing and very much by design: It turns out the Department of Justice has “refuse[d] to allow executive branch officials to review the full and final study,” Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Patrick Leahy wrote in a letter last month to the attorney general and FBI director, urging that they or their “appropriately cleared” underlings read the full report.

“The legacy of this historic report cannot be buried in the back of a handful of executive branch safes, never to be reviewed by those who most need to learn from it,” they added.

Elizabeth Beavers, a policy coordinator focusing on torture at Amnesty International, believes that no one in the Obama administration, including at the Department of Justice, has read the full report. “They appear to be taking a ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ [stance] with regards to the proof of criminal acts it may contain,” she said. But “for the administration not even to read the whole report, and to look the other way while it is possibly buried or even destroyed, sets a dangerous precedent by excusing major crimes like torture and forced disappearance.”

It appears that Obama is still insisting on ignore the most depraved excesses of the state security apparatus, and someone in his administration is trying to insure that they never have direct knowledge of what was done.

They must think that they won’t be subject to the International Criminal Court if they are willfully blind.

Admittedly, my knowledge of international law is limited, but I do not think this argument would wash in The Hague.

There is No Moderate Opposition in Syria

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In looking for rebels to supply, the government seems to be unable to fine forces that are not affiliated with terrorists:

Last July, an ultraconservative Islamist rebel group made a splash by publicly offering to work with Western powers to resolve the Syrian civil war and build “a moderate future,” a surprising overture from a force that regularly fights alongside al Qaida loyalists.

But the very next month, the same rebel group eulogized Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban chief who sheltered Osama bin Laden before and after the 9/11 attacks, as a steadfast warrior who embodied “the true meanings of jihad and sincerity.”

The mixed messaging from Ahrar al Sham poses a serious dilemma for the Obama administration and its allies as they determine which rebel militias are acceptable partners in a revived diplomatic effort to resolve the Syrian conflict.

Ahrar al Sham is one of Syria’s largest and most effective rebel forces, and its involvement in – or exclusion from – peace negotiations could determine the viability of any settlement hatched from a new series of negotiations in Vienna. The group is too important to exclude from talks on the country’s future, say officials and analysts who monitor the conflict.

We have created a situation where the government of President Bashar Assad is the closest we have to a non terrorist non jihadi alternative.

We have lost.  Let’s cut our losses and get the f%$# out.

Quote of the Day

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Here’s what U.S. state and city pension funds are getting this year for the hundreds of millions of dollars in fees they’re forking over to hedge funds: almost nothing.

—Bloomberg Business

Private equity and hedge funds have earned lots of money capitalizing on the panic of underfunded public pensions seeking higher returns to deal with chronic under-funding.

There have been no higher returns, but Wall Street has gotten its vig, some of which, of course, gets recycled back to the campaign funds of politicians who might otherwise provide oversight of the pension funds.

As Yves Smith is wont to say, It’s a, “Self licking ice cream cone.”

Of Course, Jeb(!) Bush Floats a Conspiracy Theory. That’s All He Has Left.

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It appears that in an attempt to regain relevance, Jeb(!) Bush has made the accusation that Trump’s campaign is a rat-f%$#ing orchestrated by Hillary Clinton:

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush responded to a poll promoted by Donald Trump — which showed the billionaire holding on to 68 percent of his supporters if he ran as an independent — by floating the theory that the GOP frontrunner’s candidacy might be a false flag operation planted by Hillary Clinton.

The tweet may have been in jest, and otherwise Bush has been one of the more vocal critics among the 2016 field of Trump’s hardline stances that including banning Muslims from entering the U.S. (Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus — who persuaded Trump to sign a loyalty pledge to the GOP — said he didn’t agree with the Muslim ban, but refused to criticize Trump further.)

Maybe Donald negotiated a deal with his buddy @HillaryClinton. Continuing this path will put her in the White House. https://t.co/AlvByiSrMn

— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) December 8, 2015

Hillary and her Evil Minions™ aren’t that smart.

More importantly, they are not tight lipped enough to pull it off.

If Clinton had done this, someone in her campaign would have already gone to the press claiming that they were the genius behind this.

It Appears That Antonin “Fat Tony” Scalia Thinks That Blacks Are Too Stupid for College

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Yes, he actually said that during an affirmative action argument before the Supreme Court:

In the oral arguments Wednesday for a Supreme Court affirmative action case, Justice Antonin Scalia—a well known critic of affirmative action—suggested that the policy was hurting minority students by sending them to schools too academically challenging for them.

Referencing an unidentified amicus brief, Scalia said that there were people who would contend that “it does not benefit African-Americans to — to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less — a slower-track school where they do well.”

He argued that “most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas.”

“They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re — that they’re being pushed ahead in — in classes that are too — too fast for them,” Scalia said.

Remember when I said that I was ready for Scalia to choke on his own bile?

It’s not gonna happen.

If it could, he would have been taken to hospital in an ambulance today.

In fact, half the court would have had to be treated for bile suffocation just from the amount that he spewed.

I See that You Have Jumped C. Megalodon*

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C. Megalodon. One Big Shark

While there are some very valid reasons for students to make protests, but the protesters of Lebanon Valley College have lost their f%$#ing minds:

Lebanon Valley College administrators were presented a “list of demands” Friday, after a heated week of equality-driven student demonstrations and calls to action that gripped the predominantly white institution.

 It was against this backdrop that a standing room-only crowd gathered inside a lecture hall in the school’s Miller Chapel Friday, and organizers delivered demands meant to bring about greater diversity in faculty and student ranks, as well as a greater sense of inclusiveness on campus.

 The demands — announced at the end of Friday’s meeting and promptly handed to the university’s president, Dr. Lewis Thayne — include calls for a more diverse curriculum; removing or altering the name “Lynch” in the college’s “Lynch Memorial Hall” due to the word’s racial connotations; more sensitivity training for staff; diversity workshops; regular surveys of the racial climate on campus; facilities recognizing varied gender identities and disabilities; and clearer protocols for officials in responding to allegations and acts of bias.

As an FYI, the hall is not named after the practice of extrajudicial murders by hanging or burning, it’s named after a former president of Lebanon Valley College, Clyde A. Lynch, who among other things, kept the college going during the depression.

I guess we should fire the current Attorney General of the United States, a black woman named Loretta Lynch, because these delicate little flowers feel vaguely uncomfortable.

You know, there are statues to actual racists, and defenders of racism, all over the couintry, see Lee, Robert E. and Forest, Nathan B., and you are going after this?

Here is a counter proposal:  Get your head out of your collective asses.

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

Politics Got a Bit Less Entertaining………

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Jimmy “The Rent Is Too Damn High” McMillan has announced that he is retiring from politics:

Jimmy McMillan, the whiskered political showman who became a viral Internet star when he ran for governor of New York in 2010 as a candidate of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, has announced his retirement from the political arena, citing a lack of public support for his agenda.

In a news release infused with misspellings and other errors that was dated Tuesday, Mr. McMillan said voters had been “totally brainwashed” and criticized Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, for not securing “a rent reduction for the people in the cities of Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island, Manhattan and Queens.”

“Rent is too damn high is an international crisis,” he wrote. “There are many questions the people should ask themselves. I which them the best — I’m out.”

The news release said the Rent Is Too Damn High Party was “for sale, trademark and all,” and listed a Manhattan lawyer, Vincent Imbesi, as a point of contact.

He will be missed from the political scene.

This is Not a Surprise

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The Euroskeptic and nativist National Front just crushed the first round of regional elections in France:

French mainstream politicians have struggled to come up with a response to what one analyst described as the “major hangover” of a historic victory by the Front National in the first round of regional elections.

 While the far-right had been predicted to do well, the FN’s record score of almost 28% of the national vote and first place in six of the country’s 13 regions by Sunday night left the traditional parties reeling.

 The governing Socialist party came third as expected, but analysts agreed on Monday that the main loser was the centre-right opposition party Les Républicains, led by the former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

………

In 2010 the FN scored about 11% of the national vote in the regional elections. Support for the FN has risen steadily since 2011 when Le Pen took control of the party from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and set out to shed its racist and xenophobic image.

This is not a surprise.

Germany seems determined to repeat the policies that made its depression the worst in Europe in the 1930s, and now it has the power to enforce on most of the rest of Europe.

What’s more, the European Union has prosecuted further integration in a manner calculated to vitiate any semblance of meaning public input.

The juxtaposition of these two is a petri dish for anti-EU populists, but the populist left remains firmly committed to the European Union, so the only meaning alternative is the bigots, racists, and Fascists.

We will see more of this.

Don’t Get J.K Rowling Angry. You Wouldn’t Like Her When She’s Angry.

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It appears that the author of the Harry Potter series has taken umbrage at everyone comparing Voldemort to Donald Trump:

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has rejected the comparison of US presidential candidate Donald Trump to the villain in her seven-part book series, saying on Twitter that “Voldemort was nowhere near as bad”.

How horrible. Voldemort was nowhere near as bad. https://t.co/hFO0XmOpPH

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 8, 2015


The author was tweeting in response to a BBC report on the number of tweets comparing the Republican politician with the Dark Lord.

Trump made headlines on Tuesday when he called for a “total and complete shutdown” of US borders to Muslims, in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack. Trump has targeted Muslims in previous speeches, calling for surveillance of mosques across America and claiming Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a claim he refused to retract despite fact-checkers debunking it.

We live in Bizarro World.

That is Going to Leave a Mark………

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Tervor Noah had a very special guest on The Daily Show last night, Jon Stewart:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been obstructing a bill to pay for the health coverage for the first responders at the Twin Towers because he wants to hold it hostage to a change in oil export policy.

Jon Stewart came out of retirement, and appeared as a guest.

He also went down to Congress to harangue what were clearly uncomfortable Senators and Representatives.

Watch the whole thing, particularly the round table toward the end.

It sucks to be Mitch McConnell on even the best of days, this makes it suck even more.

Because Comedy Central vids autoplay on some platforms, I have put the video after the break

Well, This Is One F%$# of a Campaign Slogan………

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Too Evil for Dick Cheney.

Seriously, it is a complete mindf%$# that the Donald has plumbed depths that Dick Cheney recoils from in horror:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is joining a chorus of voices slamming GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s proposal to bar Muslims from entering the U.S.

“I think this whole notion that somehow we can just say no more Muslims, just ban a whole religion, goes against everything we stand for and believe in,” Cheney told radio host Hugh Hewitt.

“I mean, religious freedom has been a very important part of our history and where we came from,” Cheney added during Monday’s interview.

This is so wrong, and so weird, that I am at a complete loss for words.

Fox News Has Its Limits ……… Who Knew?

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It turns out that if you call the President a “Pussy” on the air, or if you saying that Obama, “Doesn’t give a sh%$,” is a bridge too far for the performance art troupe known as Fox News:

Fox News has suspended two contributors, Ralph Peters and Stacey Dash, who described President Obama as a “p**sy” who doesn’t “give a s**t” on air today, reports CNN.

Peters’ and Dash’s comments “were completely inappropriate and unacceptable for our air,” Fox News senior executive vice president Bill Shine said in a statement announcing the suspensions this afternoon.

Peters, who Fox describes as its “strategic analyst,” called the president a “total pu—” who “doesn’t want to hurt our enemies” during an apperance on Fox Business Channel on Monday. “This guy, [he] is such a total p**sy, it’s stunning,” Peters told host Stuart Varney, reacting to the president’s recent address on terrorism.

On her regular turn on the “Outnumbered” couch on Fox News Monday afternoon, former Clueless star Stacey Dash just couldn’t contain her anger at President Obama’s Sunday evening Oval Office address on terror, saying that “I felt like he could give a shit — excuse me, like he could care less.”

“Fox Business Network and Fox News Channel do not condone the use of such language, and have suspended both Peters and Dash for two weeks,” Shine said. Both Peters and Dash have been suspended for two weeks.

It’s only 2 weeks, but I wouldn’t have expected 2 minutes from Emperor Ailes.