Month: October 2017

Midvale School for the Gifted

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I was going to Maariv* at the local Kollel†, so that I could say Kaddish‡ for her.

Charlie came with me, because we studied some Gemara€ before services.

Charlie walked into the study area, and pushed the door open (it swings both ways) despite the large signs taped to it marked “Pull.”

I said, “Midvale School for the Gifted,” and Charlie gave me a blank look.

I had to remind him that it was a Gary Larson cartoon.

*Evening services.
†Community religious study center.
‡A memorial prayer, it is the 41st anniversary of her death.
€A companion work of the Mishna, together they constitute the Talmud.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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It appears that tech companies are looking to running portions of towns.

Why do I NOT find this reassuring?

It sounds almost dystopian: One of North America’s largest cities handing over a key neighborhood to a tech giant so it can be rebuilt from scratch. That, however, may be exactly what is about to happen. Recently, it was announced that Sidewalk Labs, a division of Google-parent Alphabet, will (pending approval) lead the creation of about a 12-acre district called Quayside in a prime area of Toronto’s newly revitalized waterfront area.

But if the plan immediately sounds like the beginning of a sci-fi movie in which things are about to go very wrong, Sidewalk Labs’ vision at least is distinctly utopian. Simply put, Google’s urban spinoff wants to build a laboratory for how a city should be run, a smart city predicated on tech, data, and everything from self-driving shuttles to garbage sorted by robots — all while shifting its Canadian headquarters to the new district.

This has fail written all over it.

After all, these are the folks who can’t write a calculator app that adds 1+2+3.

Oh, Snap

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Remember the infamous “Trump Dossier”, which alleged that Trump paid prostitutes in Moscow to pee on a bed used by Barack Obama a few years before?

It turns out that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for the report.

So, it was opposition research, which isn’t a big deal. This is what political campaigns, and party committees do.

Obviously, the source of the funding will influence what sort of direction that Fusion GPS gave to former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, the author of the report, which would influence where he looked, and also the level of confirmation of any stories that he might come across.

Of course, the current leadership of the DNC has disavowed what the earlier leadership of the DNC did, but many in the Democratic party establishment, most notably the execrable Joy Reid, are saying that the source does not matter.

Apparently, the logic of the previous paragraph does not apply to the DNC email leaks, which have actually been confirmed as true, because ……… Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, I guess.

I is confoozled.

Corruption Much?

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A company owned by a Trump donor which has just 2 employees, was just awarded a $300 million contract to rebuild the Puerto Rico power grid.

The outbreak of corruption makes the Katrina recovery effort look honest and competent:

For the sprawling effort to restore Puerto Rico’s crippled electrical grid, the territory’s state-owned utility has turned to a two-year-old company from Montana that had just two full-time employees on the day Hurricane Maria made landfall.

The company, Whitefish Energy, said last week that it had signed a $300 million contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to repair and reconstruct large portions of the island’s electrical infrastructure. The contract is the biggest yet issued in the troubled relief effort.

Whitefish said Monday that it has 280 workers in the territory, using linemen from across the country, most of them as subcontractors, and that the number grows on average from 10 to 20 people a day. It said it was close to completing infrastructure work that will energize some of the key industrial facilities that are critical to restarting the local economy.

The power authority, also known as PREPA, opted to hire Whitefish rather than activate the “mutual aid” arrangements it has with other utilities. For many years, such agreements have helped U.S. utilities — including those in Florida and Texas recently — to recover quickly after natural disasters.

The unusual decision to instead hire a tiny for-profit company is drawing scrutiny from Congress and comes amid concerns about bankrupt Puerto Rico’s spending as it seeks to provide relief to its 3.4 million residents, the great majority of whom remain without power a month after the storm.

………
Whitefish Energy is based in Whitefish, Mont., the home town of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Its chief executive, Andy Techmanski, and Zinke acknowledge knowing one another — but only, Zinke’s office said in an email, because Whitefish is a small town where “everybody knows everybody.” One of Zinke’s sons “joined a friend who worked a summer job” at one of Techmanski’s construction sites, the email said. Whitefish said he worked as a “flagger.”

Zinke’s office said he had no role in Whitefish securing the contract for work in Puerto Rico. Techmanski also said Zinke was not involved.
………
The scale of the disaster in Puerto Rico is far larger than anything Whitefish has handled. The company has won two contracts from the Energy Department, including $172,000 to replace a metal pole structure and splice in three miles of new conductor and overhead ground wire in Arizona.

Shortly before Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, Whitefish landed its largest federal contract, a $1.3 million deal to replace and upgrade parts of a 4.8-mile transmission line in Arizona. The company — which was listed in procurement documents as having annual revenue of $1 million — was given 11 months to complete the work, records show.
………
Kent McNellie, an investment professional at HBC, the Texas investment firm that is now the largest financier of Whitefish, said the company’s experience reconstructing a one-mile power line destroyed in a wildfire in Washington state was more relevant to Puerto Rico’s needs than is the experience of many companies on the mainland. The span in Washington included an elevation change of about 5,000 feet, and the terrain required crews and equipment to be delivered by helicopter.

HBC investments, sounds familiar  ……… Gee, I wonder why:

The private-equity firm that finances Whitefish, HBC Investments, was founded by Joe Colonnetta, who serves as its general partner.

Federal Elections Commission data compiled by The Daily Beast shows Colonnetta contributed $20,000 to the Trump Victory PAC during the general election, $2,700 to Trump’s primary election campaign (then the maximum amount permitted), $2,700 to Trump’s general election campaign (also the maximum), and a total of $30,700 to the Republican National Committee in 2016 alone. Colonnetta’s wife, Kimberly, is no stranger to Republican politics either; shortly after Trump’s victory, she gave $33,400 to the Republican National Committee, the maximum contribution permitted for party committees in 2016.

(emphasis mine)

Nothing to see here, move along.

Item Number 1033 of Things that I Thought I Would Never Say*

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Yeah, I cannot believe that I just said that, but everyone’s favorite philandering self-important martinet just slapped down the Trump administration for saying that reporters should not fact check Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, on his the lies that he spewed a few days back.

ABC’s THIS WEEK host Martha Raddatz began her interview by asking Gen. Petraeus about this incident.

“I want to start with what the White House said, about it being highly inappropriate to debate a four-star general,” she said.

Petraeus replied, “Well, I think we’re all fair game.” He continued, “We, in uniform, protect the rights of those to criticize us, frankly.”

We live in strange times.

*The number one thing that I thought I would never say remains, as always, “It’s not buffet time at the Wildebeest.”

This Dick Waving Is Going to Get Us All Killed

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We now have reports that, for the first time since 1991, the United States Air Force will be putting nuclear bombers back on round-the clock nuclear alert:

The U.S. Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status not seen since the Cold War ended in 1991.

That means the long-dormant concrete pads at the ends of this base’s 11,000-foot runway — dubbed the “Christmas tree” for their angular markings — could once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and set to take off at a moment’s notice. 

“This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, said in an interview during his six-day tour of Barksdale and other U.S. Air Force bases that support the nuclear mission. “I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.”

I am NOT feeling any safer right now.

God Damn Staten Island Commies!

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Cue Jake and Elwood

Now we have reports that the Russian intelligence agencies were running their nefarious meddling in the US elections out of Staten Island, New York.

If you find that absurd, I wholeheartedly agree.

Looking at what they did, and what they hosted, I cannot see anything that is in any manner indistinguishable from from your run of the mill click-bait troll farms.

This, “A noun, a verb, and Vladimir Putin,” sh%$ is getting seriously old.

Oh well, anything to avoid any serious self-examination.

Headline of the Day

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Cy Vance Represents Everything Wrong with the Justice System

—The Outline

Of course, Paul Blest is referring to Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., not his dad who was secretary of state.

Vance is almost certainly going to be reelected next year, but it now appears that he let the rich and powerful skate in exchange for campaign donations:

If you’re looking for an example of unequal treatment perpetuated in our criminal justice system, you should look no further than the decisions made by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office

Last week, as reports of Harvey Weinstein’s decades of sexual harassment and assault became public, news emerged that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus “Cy” Vance Jr. had declined to prosecute Weinstein in March 2015 for misdemeanor sexual abuse, a charge that carries the maximum of three months in jail or one year’s probation, plus a $500 fine. It was later found that the prosecution was in possession of a recording from a sting operation, including the victim, where Weinstein had admitted he had committed the assault. Still, Vance declined to file the charges. Last week, the International Business Times reported one major conflict of interest regarding the case: Weinstein’s lawyer, David Boies, donated $10,000 to Vance in August 2015, four months after Vance declined to prosecute.

The case is emblematic of Vance’s time in the DA’s office. Throughout his two terms – and he’s likely to win re-election next month – Vance has shied away from prosecuting powerful people like Weinstein, even when the cases are solid, and he’s chosen repeatedly to go after less- influential people when the cases are suspect or the crimes committed didn’t hurt anyone. Beyond Vance’s own office, however, it highlights a more pressing, systemic issue: there are two different justice systems for two different Americas.

The Weinstein decision echoed another one made earlier in Vance’s career as DA, a position he was elected to in 2009. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, was accused in 2011 of sexually assaulting a housekeeper at a hotel in Manhattan. Vance also declined to bring charges in that case. “I look at the DSK case as a paragon,” Vance told the New York Times in a 2013 interview, “because we absolutely believed this poor woman should be believed over this powerful man, and when additional facts came out, we were willing to show them to the defense.” (Those “additional facts,” as Colorlines noted in 2011, didn’t have anything to do with the accuser’s account of her assault at the hands of Strauss-Kahn.)

And then there are Trump kids:

Apart from Vance’s miserable failure at doing either of these things, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. were, similarly to Weinstein, left untouched by Vance in 2012 even after Vance’s major economic crimes division recommended that he should bring charges of felony fraud against them for “misleading prospective buyers of units in the Trump SoHo, a hotel and condo development.” Less than six months later, ProPublica reported, the Trumps’ lawyer had donated and raised over $50,000 for Vance’s re-election. It was only after the ProPublica story came out that Vance — who is running for re-election unopposed — returned the donation. 

The most favorable interpretation is that Vance doesn’t want to prosecute rich people because they hire armies of lawyers, but that interpretation seems to be rather naive given the juxtaposition of campaign donations.

I don’t think that this is an isolated incident.

Remember Those Apocryphal Stories of Vietnam Vets Being Spat On?

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One Case, and it was a war suppporter

There have been many claims over the years that returning Vietnam vets were spat on by protesters.

It turns out no one had been able to find a single contemporaneous report of this ever happening.

Well, someone has finally found one, only the veterans being spat on were VVAW members protesting the war, and the spitter was a war supporter:

A couple of days ago, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Jerry Lembcke “The Myth of the Spitting Antiwar Protester.” Lembcke wrote a book a few decades ago debunking that myth but it is still going strong… stronger than ever, actually. The trope of “they’re spitting on our veterans” is popular with anti-kneeling fanatics who maintain that athletes who protest during the national anthem are “spitting on the graves” of those who died to defend the flag and the freedom to do as you’re told and stand during the national anthem.

I have always found Lembcke’s argument and evidence compelling but I don’t like to take anything for granted. So I did a little extra digging. Some of that was digging through a stash of old Amex/Canada magazines that I have held onto for 45 years or so. A Vietnam veteran named Al Reynolds wrote an account published in the May-June 1973 issue reporting on the Vietnam Veterans Against the War contingent in the “Home with Honor” parade staged in New York City at the end of March of that year.

………

So there it is, folks. The making of a myth. An older woman in a fur coat, with carefully teased hair, her face distorted with rage, spitting at Vietnam veterans protesting against the war is transformed into a Legionnaire, with a red face, waiting at the airport gate to spit on returning G.I.s for not winning the war and finally into anti-war “maggots” protesting poor little John Rambo who was just doing what he had to do to win. So where does that leave us in October 2017? My, my, look at all the rhinestone Rambos!

There you have it. One report, and it was a war supporter spitting on veterans who were trying to end the war.

Not exactly what draft-dodger Sylvester Stallone raged about in Rambo.

Vlad, Baby, You Are a Word Class Troll, and I Mean That as a Compliment.

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Say what you will, but more than any other world leader, Vladimir Putin is the trolling master:

Russian President Vladimir Putin says that Americans don’t show enough respect for President Trump.

“Mr. Trump was elected by the American people. And at least for this reason it is necessary to show respect for him, even if you do not agree with some of his positions,” Putin said at the Valdai International Discussion Club when asked what advice he could give his U.S. counterpart, according to state-run Tass Russian News Agency.

Putin said that “disrespect is shown for [Trump]” in the U.S., which he called “regrettable.”

Seriously, I am in awe.

Well, played.

Linkage

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This SNL sketch is both hilarious and terrifying:

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen!

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Someone leaked the ICE asset forfeiuture guide to The Intercept, and it is a truly chilling:

An internal handbook obtained by The Intercept provides a rare view into the extensive asset seizure operations of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, an office that trains its agents to meticulously appraise the value of property before taking it.

HSI’s 71-page “Asset Forfeiture Handbook,” dated June 30, 2010, underscores the role seizures play in “helping to fund future law enforcement actions” and covering costs “that HSI would otherwise be unable to fund.” It thus offers an unprecedented window into ICE’s wide-ranging asset forfeiture operations and the premium the agency places on seizing valuable property. Forfeiture proceeds can bolster ICE’s partnerships with local police departments, which are now the subject of heightened debate given the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration agenda.

 We need to change the rules on asset forfeiture, because we have cops engaging in shakedowns

This Is the Stupidest Thing I’ve Read All Day, including Twitter

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There is a happy ending though, because the author of this post on Reddit has finally realized that you don’t have to pay to take books out of the library.

How do people not know this?

Admittedly, I live just outside Baltimore City, where the local library is known as the “Enoch Pratt Free Library,” which is a bit of a tell, but I am still stunned.

Keith Ellison, Please Resign as Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee

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I know that you and Tom Perez are supposed to be working together well, but once again, the so called centrists have decided retribution against perceived slights from the left takes precedence.

Just quit. Don’t tell Perez why, he doesn’t deserve an explanation, and don’t discuss it with the press, just leave.

Let the action speak for itself:

A shake-up is underway at the Democratic National Committee as several key longtime officials have lost their posts, exposing a still-raw rift in the party and igniting anger among those in its progressive wing who see retaliation for their opposition to DNC Chairman Tom Perez.

 The ousters come ahead of the DNC’s first meeting, in Las Vegas, Nevada, since Perez took over as chairman with a pledge this year to unite a party that had become badly divided during the brutal Bernie Sanders-Hillary Clinton 2016 primary race.

………

 The removal and demotion of a handful of veteran operatives stood out, as did what critics charge is the over-representation of Clinton-backed members on the Rules and Bylaws Committee, which helps set the terms for the party’s presidential primary, though other Sanders and Ellison backers remain represented.
Those who have been pushed out include:

  • Ray Buckley, the New Hampshire Democratic chairman and longtime DNC official who ran against Perez for chair before backing Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. Buckley lost his spots on the Executive Committee and DNC Rules Committee.
  • James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute and prominent Sanders backer, is no longer co-chair of the Resolutions Committee and is off the Executive Committee, a spot he has held since 2001.
  • Alice Germond, the party’s longtime former secretary and a vocal Ellison backer, who was removed from her at-large appointment to the DNC.
  • Barbra Casbar Siperstein, who supported Ellison and Buckley, was tossed from the Executive Committee.

The moves exposed a rift in the partnership between Perez and his deputy chair, Ellison, who have publicly broadcast their “bromance” since Perez tapped Ellison for the post in a show of unity after their hard-fought race this year for the party’s chairmanship.

It’s one thing to make nice for the good of the party, and ignore, among other things, an Islamaphobic whisper campaign during the contest for DNC chair.

It’s another thing to stand idly by while these same people continue a vendetta against the liberal wing of the party.

Walk away.  It’s time.  Just walk away.

I Did Not Expect This

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Warning, graphic video
The officers who brutalized David Dao on a United Airlines flight a few months ago have been fired:

According to the initial police report, Dao was said to have pushed away an officer’s arm, causing “the subject to fall, hit, and injure his mouth on the armrest on the other side of the aisle.” Another officer corroborated that account, but none of this is visible on the videos passengers posted online.

Thomas Demetrio, Dao’s attorney, said video evidence is what doomed the officers.

“Do not state something that is clearly contrary to video viewed by the world,” he said in a statement. “Our cell phones are the best deterrent to ensure mistreatment becomes a rarity.”

The inspector general inquiry said that officers had “deliberately removed material facts from their reports.” Aviation officials fired the security official who had “improperly escalated the incident” as well as an official involved in removing facts from a report on the incident.

You have the constitutional right to tape LEOs in action.  Use it.

As the counselor notes, “Cell phones are the best deterrent to ensure mistreatment becomes a rarity.”

This May Be the Worst Thing That I Have Ever Said

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We just had a workplace shooting in Maryland and Delaware yesterday.

3 dead and 6 wounded. Just another day at the office.

My wife and I were discussing this as I was getting ready to go to work, and I said, “My advice is always to shoot the boss, not your co-workers.”

Sharon,* ever the optimist, asked a very wise question, “How about not shooting anyone.”

Without thinking, I replied:

This is America, that’s not an option.

That was literally the first thought in my head, like some kind of like a Rorschach test.

That may have been the worst thing that I have ever said in my entire life.

I’m not sure if it reflects poorly on me, on our society, on my understanding of our society, or the universe.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.