Orenthal James “O. J.” Simpson.
Just stop.
Please, just stop.
Month: March 2016
This is Amazingly Evil
The most evil thing in America this doesn’t come from the Republican Presidential campaign.
It came from immigration judge Jack Weil, who has asserted that 3 and 4 year old children are qualified to represent themselves before an immigration judge:
A senior Justice Department official is arguing that 3- and 4-year-olds can learn immigration law well enough to represent themselves in court, staking out an unconventional position in a growing debate over whether immigrant children facing deportation are entitled to taxpayer-funded attorneys.
Jack H. Weil, a longtime immigration judge who is responsible for training other judges, made the assertion in sworn testimony in a deposition in federal court in Seattle. His comments highlighted the plight of thousands of juveniles who are forced to defend themselves each year in immigration court amid a surge of children from Central America who cross the southwestern U.S. border .
“I’ve taught immigration law literally to 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds,” Weil said. “It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of patience. They get it. It’s not the most efficient, but it can be done.”
He repeated his claim twice in the deposition, also saying, “I’ve told you I have trained 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in immigration law,” according to a transcript. “You can do a fair hearing. It’s going to take you a lot of time.”
Legal and child psychology experts ridiculed Weil’s assertions, noting that key milestones for 3- and 4-year-olds include cooperating with other children, saying simple sentences and building towers of blocks.
“I nearly fell off my chair when I read that deposition,” said Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University, who is a witness for the plaintiffs in the Seattle case. “Three- and 4-year-olds do not yet have logical reasoning abilities. It’s preposterous, frankly, to think they could be taught enough about immigration law to be able to represent themselves in court.”
………
Lauren Alder Reid, a spokeswoman for the department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), said in a statement: “At no time has the Department indicated that 3 and 4 year olds are capable of representing themselves. Jack Weil was speaking in a personal capacity and his statements, therefore, do not necessarily represent the views of EOIR or the Department of Justice.”
………
Weil is not just any immigration official. As an assistant chief immigration judge in EOIR’s Office of the Chief Immigration Judge — which sets and oversees policies for the nation’s 58 immigration courts — he is responsible for coordinating the Justice Department’s training of immigration judges.
………
Ahilan Arulanantham, deputy legal director at the ACLU of Southern California and the attorney who questioned Weil in the deposition, said he initially thought the judge had misspoken “because what he said was so outrageous. As I asked further questions, he obviously meant what he said.”
“This is the person in charge of training immigration judges about how to treat children? And this is the witness the government puts forward to present their views as to how this is supposed to happen? That is horrifying,” said Arulanantham. He added that Weil’s assertions “are going to be a significant issue in the case.”
Unlike in felony criminal cases in federal court, children charged with violating immigration laws have no right to appointed counsel, even though the government is represented by Department of Homeland Security attorneys.
Although a network of pro bono organizations and a Justice Department program try to help children find attorneys — some paid for by the government — many children are forced to fend for themselves. According to Justice Department figures, 42 percent of the more than 20,000 unaccompanied children involved in deportation proceedings completed between July 2014 and late December had no attorney. It is unclear how often children 5 or under are forced to defend themselves, but attorneys and advocates for immigrants said it does happen.
This is a level of outright malice inherent in his statements that leaves me dumbstruck.
Weil should not be an Immigration Judge. I’m not sure that he should be trusted as a pastry chef.
I Have Been Studiously Ignoring This Crap, but Now We Have a Grant of Immunity
Yes, I am a Bernie supporter, but I’ve always felt that the whole Benghazi/Email with Clinton is 6 pounds of sh%$ in a 5 pound bag.
I guess I have to start taking it kind of seriously, because the IT guy who set up Clinton’s email server has cut an immunity deal with the DoJ:
The Justice Department has granted immunity to a former State Department staffer, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, as part of a criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information, according to a senior law enforcement official.
The official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009.
As the FBI looks to wrap up its investigation in the coming months, agents are likely to want to interview Clinton and her senior aides about the decision to use a private server, how it was set up, and whether any of the participants knew they were sending classified information in emails, current and former officials said.
I still think that the email server thing is complete crap, and the Benghazi pearl clutching is such dense crap that it risks collapsing into a bullsh%$ black hole.
Still, with the grant of immunity, this stinking sack of sh%$ just got real.
San Bernardino DA Uses the Chewbacca Defense
The San Bernardino district attorney is now saying that the work iPhone of Syed Farook may contain some unstoppable magic malware that can destroy all life on earth:
The San Bernardino District Attorney told a federal judge late Thursday that Apple must assist the authorities in unlocking the iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the two San Bernardino shooters that killed 14 people in a killing rampage in December. The phone, which was a county work phone issued to Farook as part of his Health Department duties, may have been the trigger to unleash a “cyber pathogen,” county prosecutors said in a brief court filing.“The iPhone is a county owned telephone that may have connected to the San Bernardino County computer network. The seized iPhone may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino’s infrastructure,” according to a court filing (PDF) by Michael Ramos, the San Bernardino County district attorney.
The development represents the first time any law enforcement official connected to the investigation provided an indication, other than links to possible co-conspirators, of what the authorities might discover on the phone. The district attorney’s position comes a week after Jarrod Burguan, the San Bernardino police chief, said there was a “reasonably good chance that there is nothing of any value on the phone.” James Comey, the FBI director, said Feb, 21 that “Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn’t.”
The county declined to directly comment. A spokesman, David Wert, told Ars in an e-mail that “The county didn’t have anything to do with this brief. It was filed by the district attorney.” The DA’s office, which did not immediately respond for comment, followed up with a statement to Ars, saying that there is a “compelling governmental interest in acquiring any evidence of criminal conduct, additional perpetrators, potential damage to the infrastructure of San Bernardino County, and in protecting the California Constitutionally guaranteed due process rights of the victims, deceased and living, arising from state crimes committed on December 2, 2015.”
Jonathan Zdziarski, a prominent iPhone forensics expert, said in a telephone interview that the district attorney is suggesting that a “magical unicorn might exist on this phone.”
OK, it might not be an apocalyptic computer virus, it might just be a “magical unicorn”, or some other mythical beast, like a moderate Republican or a humble Frenchman.
This is a level of mendacity that should have the judge issuing sanctions against the DA. (Some jail time would be nice)
About F%$#ing Time
This guy is in custody now too
It looks like the the FBI is finally going after people who threatened federal officers at the Bundy ranch:
FBI agents have been busy today. Another one (possibly two) of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s sons was arrested, this time in Utah. According to what David ‘Davey’ Bundy’s wife told The Salt Lake Tribune today, her husband was arrested just after 7:00 a.m. Thursday at the site of the house the Millard County contractor is building for his family just south of Delta.
Marylynn Bundy said she was told of her husband’s arrest by a worker who was blocked from getting to the house by law enforcement.
“I think they are just trying to get all the Bundy men locked up, so they can raid their homes,” Marylynn Bundy said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nevada confirmed to the paper that a charging document had been filed against Bundy, but said that it was sealed and the feds did not confirm his arrest.
The feds are busy making arrests today. After his role in the armed standoff in Nevada almost two years ago at the Bundy ranch, tea party activist Jerry DeLemus was arrested on nine federal charges today. He’s also the husband of Rep. Susan DeLemus, a crazy-time New Hampshire Republican lawmaker and co-chair of the state’s “Veterans for Trump” coalition.
………
UPDATE: The Idaho Statesman just reported that, “Eric James Parker, 32, and Steve Arthur Stewart, 36, both of Hailey, O. Scott Drexler, 44, of Challis, and Todd Engel, 48, of Boundary County were taken into custody, U.S. Attorney for Idaho Wendy Olson said.”
“This investigation began the day after the assault against federal law enforcement officers and continues to this day,” U.S. Attorney for Nevada Daniel Bogden said in a release. “We will continue to work to identify the assaulters and their role in the assault and the aftermath, in order to ensure that justice is served.”
The wheels of justice do grind slowly, but it appears that they grind sure.
Jim Webb, How About a Nice Hot Cup of Shut the F%$# Up?
And he wonders why no one supported his Presidential run.
I think that being a clueless narcissistic asshole, even by the standards of politics, might have had something to do with it:
Former Democratic presidential candidate Jim Webb won’t be voting for Hillary Clinton, but he hasn’t ruled out casting his ballot for Donald Trump.
………
“I would not vote for Hillary Clinton,” Webb said on MSBNC’s “Morning Joe.”
When asked whether he’d vote for Trump, Webb said he wasn’t closed to the idea. “I’m not sure yet. I don’t know who I’m going to vote for,” he said.
He said Clinton would simply continue President Barack Obama’s policies, but that with Trump, things would change — but he’s not convinced it would be for the better.
“If you’re voting for Donald Trump, you may get something very good or very bad,” Webb said. “If you’re voting for Hillary Clinton, you’re going to be getting the same thing.”
There is something seriously wrong with that guy
For Sanders Supporters Who are Silver Lining Types
First, note that the primaries are structured that all of Clinton’s strong states will be done by mid March.
Basically, the southern states, the ones that won’t vote for a Democrat, are relatively early in the process:
I’m keeping this short to put a very simple idea into your head. Because of the way the Democratic Party voting calendar is structured this year, Clinton’s largest lead will occur on March 15. After that, most of Sanders’ strongest states will vote.
What this means is simple:
- Hillary Clinton will grow her lead until the March 15 states have voted.
- Bernie Sanders will erase that lead — partly or completely — after March 15.
- How much of Clinton’s lead he will erase depends on your not buying what the media is selling — that the contest is over.
- In most scenarios where Sanders wins, he doesn’t retake the lead until June 7, when five states including California cast their ballots.
March 15 is the Ides of March; a good way to remember the date. The message — gear up for a battle after the Ides of March, and don’t let the establishment media tell you what to think. They won’t be right until the last state has voted.
If you want to stop reading here, this is all you need to know.………
Bottom line — Super Tuesday is upon us, and what’s bad for Sanders supporters on March 1 is going to look worse for a few weeks. Stay heartened. Whatever the result in March, this isn’t over until June, after Sanders’ best states have voted as well.
(Emphasis Original)
This is not surprising. Both of the party establishments have attempted to front load the the south, the Republicans because they double down on racism, and the Democrats because they want to forestall the liberal wing of the party. (Super Tuesday was largely a product of the right wing of the right wing of the Democratic Party.)
This raises an interesting question, “Does Sanders have the resources go to distance?”
The answer is clearly, “Yes.”
In fact, it is very likely that Sanders has more Cash on Hand than Clinton does: (Note that this does not include Super PAC money, but that money does not go as far, because it cannot be targeted as flexibly)
Hillary Clinton raised $30 million in February and has $31 million on hand, her campaign announced on Wednesday — far less than Bernie Sanders.
………
Her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, raised $43 million in February, with $6 million of that coming on Monday. Sanders’ campaign has not announced its cash on hand, but as of the end of January, he had nearly $15 million in the bank.
Sanders Raised $20 million to Clinton’s $15 million in January.
So, Sanders raised $63 million in the first two months of the year, and Clinton raised $37 million, and she has $31 million cash on hand, and we can be reasonably certain that the Sanders campaign has a lower burn rate than Clinton, because she is employing a lot of high powered consultants, and has a far more extensive fundraising apparatus.
Assuming the same spending rates, and Hillary and Bernie would be neck and neck in cash on hand.
My guess is that Bernie is a few million ahead, and Hillary’s big donors are running into campaign finance limits, so the Sanders campaign can take this to the convention.
Deep Thought
You Can’t Buy an Election, but You Can Rent It.
No citation, because this one is a Matthew G. Saroff original.
What Happens When You Bring in a Finance Type to Shake Things Up
First, the break everything, and then they get fired:
Simon Newman, the Mount St. Mary’s University president who astonished many with a brutal remark, inspired some to a new vision for the university, and set off an intense national debate about academic freedom, will step down effective immediately.
Karl Einolf, the dean of the Richard J.Bolte, Sr., School of Business at the university will serve as acting president, the board of trustees announced Monday night.
The change came after weeks of turmoil at the country’s second-oldest Catholic university, which faced questions from its faculty, alumni and national groups — including the organization that provides the crucial accreditation for the university — over its future direction and leadership. Some saw it as a clash between those open to change and those mired in tradition. Others felt it had become a debate over the very soul of the university: Catholic or corporate?
………
Newman came to the Maryland campus in 2015 with plans for sweeping changes, such as boosting enrollment, shoring up the university’s finances and raising its national profile. His blunt business manner — he had been in the financial industry for his entire career — was welcome to some and jarring to others. Several people were abruptly fired and escorted off campus, and retiree benefits were cut in the fall. But the real turmoil began this year after the student newspaper, the Mountain Echo, reported that Newman had planned to cull struggling freshmen early in the semester, before a federal reporting deadline, to improve the university’s retention rate.
No students left the school as a result of the survey, but Newman’s remarks after some faculty members expressed concerns about the plan shocked many; he said a professor was thinking of the students as cuddly bunnies but that they had to drown the bunnies, “put a Glock to their heads.”
When two professors were subsequently fired — one with tenure, one who had been the adviser to the Echo — many interpreted it as retaliation for opposing Newman’s policies despite the administration’s denial that it was retribution.
………
There was another fear, as well: The Mount’s accreditation was just reaffirmed in June, with its next scheduled review report in 2020. But this month the Middle States Commission on Higher Education requested “a supplemental information report, due March 15, 2016, addressing recent developments at the University which may have implications for continued compliance with Requirement of Affiliation #9, Standard 4 (Leadership and Governance), Standard 6 (Integrity), Standard 8 (Student Admissions and Retention), and Standard 10 (Faculty).”
This sh%$ is what happens when you hire someone whose qualifications basically consist of being a parasite from the finance industry.
Sick of Those Windows 10 Update Messages?
JR at the Stellarparthenon BBS came up with the following to turn it off:Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindowsWindowsUpdate]
"DisableOSUpgrade"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindowsGWX]
"DisableGWX"=dword:00000001
I haven’t tried it myself, but feel free to try this out.
You past this into a text document, and give it the .reg extension, and it will run when you double click on it.
Who Knew?
Marco Rubio’s jokes about Trump’s dick size are not a low point in Presidential campaigning. It turns out that it it goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson:
………
As a matter of fact, Jefferson was well aware of the political salience of the well-timed tiny-dick joke because he used them himself, in the ferocious campaign of 1800.As the challenger in 1800, his goal was to topple the incumbent. His critique of President John Adams included the accusation that he was “a hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”
And, of course, old Martin Van Buren campaigned by accusing William Henry Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe, of being “a man who wore corsets, put cologne on his whiskers, slept on French beds, rode in a British coach, and ate with golden spoons from silver plates.” Which is sort of an implied dick joke from a more civilized time. And thus do we discover that, in yet another vital element of being a political candidate, Marco Rubio comes up…well…short.
I loves me some history.
Quote of the Day
But Washington is freaking out about Trump in a way they never did about Bush. Why? Because Bush was their moron, while Trump is his own moron. That’s really what it comes down to.
Read the rest of the article, but this bit is the synthesis of all that the Republicans fear about Trump.
Not a Great Night for Sanders
Right now, he appears to have won Vermont, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Oklahoma, and Clinton won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, and Vairginia.
She also got about twice as many delegates.
Trump won all but four of the states on the ‘Phant side, with Cruz winning Texas and Oklahoma, and Rubio winning Minnesota, and Vermont being too close to call.
We are no hearing a clamor for Bernie to leave the race from the pundits, despite the fact that the Democratic side of the Race is closer than the Republican side, and no one is suggesting that other Republicans capitulate to Trump.
I just love our punditocracy works.
As an aside, Sanders is crushing it on fundraising, raising $20 million in January and $42 million in February, and appears to be outpacing Clinton, with a far lower burn rate, so he can continue to run until the convention.
Snark of the Day
Democrats Always Prove the Commies Right
Read his whole post, but he has a list of things where his communist friend’s predictions proved right:
I’m regularly accused of believing things that I’ve never said and don’t believe. That’s largely a facet of the fact that, on the internet today, arguing with people is really a matter of misrepresenting what they’re saying and then attacking the misrepresentation. One of the most constant of these is that I say “both parties are the same.” I’ve never said that. Ever. In my life. But over time, the claims of friends who do say that have been vindicated over and over again.
By that I mean something very simple: my communist friends who really do say that the two parties are the same make predictions about politics. My Democrat friends do the same. Looking back at the times when the two groups have clashed, the commies have been right literally 100% of the time.
I get accused of being a “Naderite,” though in fact I voted for Gore in the first election I was old enough to vote in. (I’ve come to regret that decision over time.) The Democrats said that left-wing critics of the party would be welcomed into the fold; the commies told me that the Democrats hate the left and always would. The commies were right. The Democrats told me that anti-Iraq war voices would be an important slice of the party in the debates to come. The commies told me Democrats and their representatives in the media would engage in redbaiting eliminationism like we’d never seen before. The commies were right. The Democrats told me that a candidate like Howard Dean, who at the time was running as an explicitly left-wing challenger to the Democrat establishment, would have a great chance at the nomination; my commie friends said that the Democrats and their surrogates in the media would destroy Dean. The commies were right.
He’s right, but kind of depressing.
Still, it’s a good read.
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Really Needs to be Fired
Even if you ignore her tenure at the DNC, which is marked by incompetence, careerism, and biased, her history in supporting the most egregious examples of abusive consumer is a reason to force her retirement.
In November, she voted to allow car dealers to discriminate against minorities:
Before Thanksgiving, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz helped push through congress a bill that would allow automobile dealers and auto finance companies to discriminate against minority and unsophisticated car buyers by charging them more in fees and interest rates.
The Reforming CFPB Indirect Auto Financing Guidance Act that Wasserman Schultz voted for would basically let lenders and dealers ignore Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rules that bar dealers and auto finance companies from charging unsophisticated borrowers who are mostly minorities hundreds of dollars more in excessive interest and fees on car loans regardless if the car buyer has excellent credit.
The National Automobile Dealers Association or NADA is pushing this bill because they realized that after dusting off an old marketing book from Wells Fargo, that their members could easily widen their profit margins by adding stealth fees and charging higher interest rates to unsophisticated minority consumers who are just happy they can own a new car.
The bill is, as Brian O’Connor at the Detroit News points out, “a repulsive layering of racism wrapped in consumer rip-offs wrapped in a layer of lies and stuffed with lots and lots of campaign cash.”
Like an old sub-prime mortgage, the auto finance company sets a minimum interest rate on car loan made through a dealer, and the dealer can then hike the interest rate to 2.5 percentage points or more with the lender kicking in back end points equaling 1% to 3% of the sale price of the car to the dealer and the salesman. This similar to what used to be called Yield Spread Premiums in lending. In other words, NADA wants and what Wasserman Schultz endorses is really ghetto loans for cars.
And now she’s tring to hamgstring the CFPB’s attempts to regulate the worst practices of the payday lending industry:
One of the benefits of America’s unusually stingy welfare system is that it allows our domestic payday-loan industry to thrive. Since the safety net is too threadbare to catch the working poor when they fall on troubled times, payday lenders are able to charge them exorbitant interest on subsistence loans. Nationally, the average interest rate on a payday loan is a stellar 390 percent.
But Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is dead set on sapping all of the dynamism out of the payday-loan industry. The CFPB is about to issue new regulations on payday lenders that are aimed at preventing borrowers from falling into a vicious (or viciously profitable) cycle where they take out high-interest loans just to make the interest payments on their previous high-interest loans. Fortunately, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is co-sponsoring a bill that would gut the CFPB’s regulations and allow payday lenders to keep profiting off the desperation of the impoverished.
According to a memo obtained by the Huffington Post, Wasserman Schultz is trying to rally congressional Democrats around a bill that would delay the CFPB’s new rules for two years and nullify those rules in any state that adopts its own payday-lending law, like the DNC chair’s own home state of Florida.
The key thing about such state laws is that they’re likely to be much kinder to the profits of payday lenders than what the CFPB is crafting. In Florida, the average interest rate on a payday loan is still 304 percent, according to Pew Charitable Trusts. What’s more, 76 percent of all payday loans in the state are turned loans — loans taken out to pay back another loan — according to Americans for Financial Reform. Thus, Florida’s law has left the highly profitable vicious cycle of payday borrowing intact.
………
With such brave legislators leading the Democratic Party, it’s difficult to understand how Bernie Sanders can get so mad at the “Establishment.”
H/t Naked Capitalism, where they also note that DWS recently signed onto a letter to the CFPB asking for an exemption for credit unions and banks smaller than $10 billion from consumer protecting regulations.
Seriously. What is wrong with the Democratic Party?
I kind of understand how one might be tempted to make use of an evil person’s evil, but Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is to incompetent that her evil servs no one.
If she were were in a James Thurber novel, the Todal would have Gleeped her by now.*
Support Tim Canova, who primarying her.
*The 13 Clocks. Just go read it.
Well, This Explains Why She Married Me
At some point during Lansdowne’s production of Little Shop of Horrors, Sharon lost her keys.
That was Saturday night.
She remembered putting them in her coat pocket, but somehow they had fallen out.
For the past 2-1/2 days, she has been frantically retracing her steps, and tearing apart the house and the car in an attempt to find her keys.
She found them today.
They were in her coat pocket.
It appears that she had put them in her zipper pocket so that they would be safer, and then she forgot that she had done so.
This is a fail on par with marrying me.
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