Month: March 2020

It’s a Busy Day at the Dog Track

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The issue here is not risk, that is possibility quantifiable possibility of something bad happening, but uncertainty, where your numbers go ¯_(ツ)_/¯ :

U.S. stocks careened lower Monday, with major indexes swinging perilously close to the first bear market in more than a decade as a price war for oil and fallout from the coronavirus frightened investors.

The selling was heavy across markets and geographies, with investors seeking shelter in government bonds, sending Treasury yields to new lows. U.S. stocks fell hard enough at the open to trigger a circuit breaker for the first time in 23 years that kept trading frozen for 15 minutes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its worst decline since 2008 and at one point came within 65 points of touching a bear market.

For the day, the Dow sank 2,013.76 points, or 7.8%, to 23851.02. It was the first time the Dow lost more than 2,000 points in a session. The S&P 500 fell 225.81 points, or 7.6%, to 2746.56, also its worst day since 2008. And the Nasdaq Composite slid 624.94 points, or 7.3%, to 7950.68.

All 11 sectors in the S&P 500 were down, led by energy, which slid 20%. Financials were down 11%. Industrials and materials both fell 9.2%.

By day’s end, the Dow, S&P and Nasdaq were all down roughly 19% from record highs set earlier this year. A drop of 20% from those highs would halt a bull-market run that began after the financial crisis. Stocks bottomed out 11 years ago, on March 9, 2009.

As an aside, this is the time when I DON’T look at how my IRA or 401(k) is doing, 

Seriously, just don’t.

Boeing is Broken

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Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule is facing 61 safety issues, because those stock buybacks have to come from somewhere, I guess:

Boeing faces 61 safety fixes following last year’s botched test flight of its Starliner crew capsule, NASA said Friday.

NASA has also designated December’s aborted space station mission as a serious “high-visibility close call” that could have destroyed the capsule—twice.

In releasing the outcome of a joint investigation, NASA said it still has not decided whether to require Boeing to launch the Starliner again without a crew, or go straight to putting astronauts on board.

Douglas Loverro, NASA’s human exploration and operation chief, told reporters that Boeing must first present a plan and schedule for the 61 corrective actions. Boeing expects to have a plan in NASA’s hands by the end of this month.

Boeing needs to fire every single one of its executives.

Bobble head dolls could do a better job.

Another White House Reshuffle

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I’m not sure if it means much, though obviously the upcoming election probably has something to do with this.

Practicing Kremlinology on the Trump administration is well outside of my areas of competence:

President Trump on Friday pushed out Mick Mulvaney, his acting White House chief of staff, and replaced him with Representative Mark Meadows, a stalwart conservative ally, shaking up his team in the middle of one of the biggest crises of his presidency.

Mr. Trump announced the change on Twitter after arriving in Florida for a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate, choosing to make one of the most significant switches he can make in his White House on a Friday night when most of the country had tuned out news for the weekend. As a consolation prize, the president named Mr. Mulvaney a special envoy for Northern Ireland.

………

In taking over the White House, Mr. Meadows, 60, a retiring Republican from North Carolina, becomes Mr. Trump’s fourth chief of staff in 38 months, the most that any president has had in such a short time. His arrival almost surely signals more changes to follow, as most of Mr. Mulvaney’s deputies and others on his team are expected to leave, too, possibly including Emma Doyle, his top lieutenant, and Joe Grogan, the domestic policy adviser.

………

Mr. Mulvaney, 52, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, served as chief of staff for more than 14 months in an “acting” capacity without ever formally being given the title. Mr. Mulvaney brushed off the snub by telling people that everyone in Mr. Trump’s White House was effectively in the job on an acting basis, but the seeming lack of faith or respect invariably made it harder for him to impose authority.

Witnesses placed Mr. Mulvaney at the heart of the events that led to Mr. Trump’s impeachment for pressuring Ukraine to incriminate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats. Mr. Mulvaney carried out Mr. Trump’s order to suspend $391 million in aid to Ukraine, an action declared illegal by the Government Accountability Office. Some advisers later told the president that Mr. Mulvaney had helped ensnare him in impeachment, even though he was following Mr. Trump’s wishes.

At a news briefing in October, Mr. Mulvaney contradicted the president’s denial that he had imposed a quid pro quo on the assistance to benefit his own political fortunes. Mr. Mulvaney told reporters that the White House had withheld aid to Ukraine in part to force Kyiv to commit to investigating a widely debunked theory that Ukraine intervened in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of the Democrats, a story that American intelligence agencies have called Russian disinformation.

“Absolutely. No question about that,” Mr. Mulvaney said. He added, “That’s why we held up the money. ”

It would be nice if Mulvaney were to roll on Trump now, but that is not going to happen.

Back Loaded Bribery

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Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joseph Dunford, retired a few months ago, and now has secured a lucrative sinecure with Lockheed-Martin hawking the F-35 mistake jet:

In 2015, things weren’t looking great for the Marine Corps’ F-35B fighter jet. Reports from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Department of Defense inspector general had found dozens of problems with the aircraft. Engine failures, software bugs, supply chain issues, and fundamental design flaws were making headlines. The program was becoming synonymous in the press with “boondoggle.”

Lockheed Martin, the program’s lead contractor, desperately needed a win.

Luckily for Lockheed, it had a powerful ally in the commandant of the Marine Corps, General Joseph Dunford. Five years later, Dunford would be out of the service and ready to collect his first Lockheed Martin paycheck as a member of its board of directors.

………

On September 30, 2019, Dunford, the military’s highest ranked official, stepped down from his position as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He had served in the Marine Corps since 1977, working his way up to the highest tier of the armed services over 42 years.

Just four months and 11 days later, he joined the Pentagon’s top contractor, Lockheed Martin, as a director on the board.

In announcing Dunford’s hire, a January press release from Lockheed Martin quotes CEO Marillyn Hewson: “General Dunford’s service to the nation at the highest levels of military leadership will bring valuable insight to our board.”

Dunford’s consistent cheerleading of the F-35 and his subsequent hiring at its manufacturer create the perception of a conflict of interest and raised the eyebrows of at least one former senior military official.

“Here he is having been an advocate for it, having pressed it, having pushed for it … and now he’s going to work for the company that makes the aircraft, that just, to me, stinks to high heavens,” retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as special assistant to Colin Powell when he led the Joint Chiefs, told POGO.

This should be illegal.

What Happens When You Treat Your Staff like Crap for Years

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After years of cuts, many of the staff of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) are not favorably inclined toward their current, or former employer, and so many of the retired staff are disinclined to return temporarily to help deal with the COVID-19 crisis:

Scores of retired NHS doctors and nurses have told the Guardian that they are against returning to work to help tackle coronavirus, with many saying it would threaten their physical and mental health. The government confirmed contingency plans on Tuesday to call back to work NHS “leavers and retirees” to help relieve pressure on an NHS workforce that is expected to be overwhelmed by the virus.

But a majority of 120 former NHS employees who responded to a Guardian callout were resistant, and in some cases hostile, to the idea. Many respondents said unprompted they did not want to a return to a working environment where they suffered stress, bullying, burnout and even breakdowns.

Seventy-one said they would not be happy to return to work, with many expressing their reluctance in vehement terms. “After the way I was treated I would rather shove a rusty six-inch nail up my backside than return to my old job,” said a 67-year-old former staff nurse from Manchester.

This is what happens when you are in an organization that has systematically been defunded, demonized, and privatized for decades.

Once you go back, you do not want to get back in.

NHS has been Americanized, and now it has a disgruntled staff, and former staff, who unlikely to go that extra mile in an emergency.

It Looks like Bibi Is Going to Jail

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As additional returns have come in in the COVID-19 quarantine delayed election results in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has lost seats in the Knesset, and now it appears that in a historical team up with the Arab Joint List, not only will he not get his seat, but they will be passing a law preventing an indicted politician from forming a government, so Bibi’s just become a sh%$ load more likely to end up in a cell:

An elated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu roared, “This is the biggest victory of my life!”—but that was Monday.

By Thursday, his voice hoarse, a tired Netanyahu growled, “We won’t let them steal the election!” In the words of Netanyahu’s centrist rival and Israel’s probable next prime minister, Benny Gantz, “Someone here celebrated too early.”

Then came a remarkable cascade of bad news for Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, and its first to be indicted while in office.

Avigdor Lieberman, his onetime defense minister and now a fearsome nemesis, announced his support for a law proposed by Gantz, a former army chief of staff, which would bar an indicted legislator from being appointed to form the government.

Such a law would eliminate any route to immediate political survival for Netanyahu, whose trial in three separate cases of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust is scheduled to open in Jerusalem District Court on March 17.

In an almost never seen instance of Israeli multi-partisanship that Israeli media call “the anti-Bibi coalition,” this law enjoys the support of 62 members of the 120-member Knesset, from the majority-Arab Joint List through the left-wing Labor Party, and now, unto Lieberman, a hardline secular right-winger.

………

Alon Pinkas, Israel’s former consul general in New York and adviser to former prime minister Ehud Barak, noted in an interview with The Daily Beast, that, “For the third time in one year, Netanyahu pushed for an election with one goal in mind: getting a 61-seat majority to grant him an immunity from prosecution over three severe indictments he is facing. For the third time he failed.”

………

And Netanyahu was about to receive another blow.

Late Thursday, Moshe Yaalon, another former army chief of staff and the most hardline rightist in the Gantz centrist coalition, agreed to support a minority government led by Gantz, with the support of the Joint List, the Arab-majority party that leaped from 13 Knesset seats to 15 even as Netanyahu intensified his attack on Arab citizens, who form 21 percent of Israel’s population.

“Gantz is joining forces with terror supporters!” Netanyahu declared in a meeting of his coalition members. “Gantz’s move undermines the foundations of Israeli democracy and subverts the will of the voter. We’ll stand strong against it.”

………

As the situation unfolded Thursday night, Netanyahu asked his attorney general to “immediately” open a criminal investigation into alleged Lieberman electoral shenanigans a decade ago. Lieberman responded with a press release: seven laughing/crying emojis and not a single word.

By dawn on Friday, an increasingly cornered Netanyahu was accusing Supreme Court Justice Neal Hendel, who chairs Israel’s electoral commission, the body responsible for counting the votes, of criminal malfeasance. Netanyahu promised to petition the supreme court to investigate Hendel’s political affiliations.

The commission condemned any implication of impropriety, and Gantz posted that “counting all the votes, including those of citizens under quarantine due to fears of the coronavirus, is the basis of a democratic country, and one must respect the results and the voters’ choice—and no less the work of the Electoral Commission.”

………

How did this happen?

Relying on exit polls, Monday’s Netanyahu believed that counting his own party’s votes and those of his coalition partners, he had secured 60 out of the Israeli parliament’s 120 seats, and would find a way to squeak by on a narrow majority.

One route appeared to be poaching wavering opposition legislators. In a television interview on Tuesday, Netanyahu spokesman Yonatan Orich foresaw that “the establishment of a government is a matter of a few days.”

………

Meanwhile, votes were being counted. Over two and a half days, the Likud’s coalition slipped from an high of 60 seats to 59 to 58, where it hovered for a day before the pollsters’ disbelieving eyes.

Netanyahu is a cancer on Israeli body politic, and arguably the single greatest threat to the continued existence of the state of Israel.

That he is going on trial, and likely is going to jail, is an unalloyed good.

You Know All Those Movies Where Con Men are the Heroes?

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You know, the ones where are ripping off “The Man”, who is corrupt, or violent, or both?

Well it appears that Michael Bloomberg’s staffers have seen those movies too, considering the reports that they were robbing him blind:

Michael Bloomberg ended his presidential campaign on Wednesday after being walloped on Super Tuesday. But, according to nearly a dozen members of his campaign staff, the former New York City mayor’s presidential dreams really died when Elizabeth Warren eviscerated his record on live television during the February 19 debate in Las Vegas.

Not a single Bloomberg staffer that I spoke to was surprised by the campaign’s implosion. Speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal and because of the campaign’s nondisclosure agreements—which The Nation obtained a leaked copy of in February—campaign employees cited that bruising debate as well as a general lack of enthusiasm for Bloomberg among the staff as main factors ending his presidential run.

………

A third staffer also said that the debate marked a turning point, after which phone calls with voters became more difficult. “The day after [the debate] when we made calls people were like, ‘Oh yeah, I was thinking about him [Bloomberg], but I’m not really sure anymore.’”

Bloomberg’s performance, specifically his handling of Warren’s questions, even alienated the campaign’s volunteers. Of the volunteers that quit, one campaign employee told me, “Just about every one of them said it was because of the debate performance or the NDA scandals.”

………

But despite an almost limitless budget, the Bloomberg campaign would learn that money can’t buy loyalty. Staffers described an almost total lack of belief in Bloomberg himself. “Most people knew this was a grift,” one campaign official explained, describing even leadership as being unwilling to fulfill basic campaign responsibilities. “At our first office meeting, my [director] said, ‘We don’t need to canvass. We can just make calls, right guys?’ And everyone was like, ‘Yeah, that’s sensible.’”

Another employee who specialized in social media explained how their coworkers’ lack of enthusiasm resulted in lackluster engagement with social media audiences, which often led to tweets so perfunctory—many would just copy and paste campaign talking points—that their Twitter accounts would get mistakenly flagged as spam and suspended.

Multiple people described elaborate schemes to undermine the campaign and help their favored candidates. As one staffer explained, “I would actively canvass for Bernie when I was supposed to be canvassing for Mike. I know of at least one team of ‘volunteers’ that was entirely fabricated by the organizers who had to hit their goals. It was easy enough to fudge the data to make it look like real people put in real volunteer work, when in reality Mike was getting nothing out of it.”

Another staffer told me, “In San Diego, the regional organizers also exploited the campaign’s resources, staff, and infrastructure for local races they either were running in or consulting on.”

………

While most Bloomberg campaign employees who spoke to The Nation recalled being critical of Bloomberg from the very beginning, one was more sympathetic, citing Bloomberg’s climate change policies and desire to shrink the Pentagon budget. But he remarked, “The campaign truly made me jaded. I’m never going to sell my soul again.”

If these multi-billionaires are our modern royalty, then there can only be one conclusion from thesese reports.  While the peasants may not yet be revolting, they are going SERIOUSLY passive-aggressive.

Traditional Values, Huh?

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At a Sanders Rally in Phoenix, a protester unveiled a Nazi flag and shouted, “Heil Hitler.”

Clearly, the problem is “Bernie Bros” saying nasty things on Twitter.

More seriously, why the hell aren’t Sanders and Biden getting Secret Service protection?

Moments after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took the stage at his campaign rally in Phoenix on Thursday night, the crowd was on its feet cheering madly for the Democratic presidential candidate.

But those cheers were swiftly replaced by deafening boos when Sanders’s supporters noticed that one man standing behind the senator in an upper section of the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum wasn’t waving a “Bernie” sign like many of those around him.

Instead, the man was holding a red flag above his head — and it was emblazoned with a swastika.

“It was absolutely wild,” Brianna Westbrook, a national surrogate for the Sanders campaign, told The Washington Post. “I never thought I would have seen a swastika at a political event. It’s gross.”

While people near the protester quickly ripped the offending item out of his hands and he was removed from the arena, the mere appearance of a Nazi flag at an event dedicated to a democratic socialist who could become the country’s first Jewish president sparked outcry. The moment, captured in videos and photos that circulated on social media Thursday night, was denounced as an act of anti-Semitism and prompted increased concerns about Sanders’s safety on the campaign trail.

………

“I was expecting Trump supporters to be protesting. I didn’t expect a swastika flag to be unfurled,” Orlando Garrido, a rally attendee, told The Post. “I never thought I would actually see something like that.”

On Twitter, the display was widely condemned as observers pointed out that Sanders’s Polish relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.

………

The Anti-Defamation League identified the protester Friday as Robert Sterkeson, a resident of Arizona. According to the ADL, Sterkeson is “a self-described ‘stunt activist’ who has harassed a range of Jewish and Muslim organizations and events.”

They Want to Give Your Encryption Keys to the Golden State Killer

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Joseph James DeAngelo is accused of the being the Golden State Killer (there are now reports that he is negotiating a plea deal).

One of the reasons that he evaded capture so long was that he was a police officer when some of the crimes were being committed.

As such, he had access to inside information about both the investigation and police techniques.

Congress is proposing the EARN act, which would require that internet providers provide an encryption back door to law enforcement, which would mean that the next serial killer with law enforcement connections would be able to access your most private communications, and your bank records.

If you don’t think that this would happen, know that a few years back, NSA employees were using the agency’s surveillance capabilities to spy on girlfriends, spouses, and exes:

A bipartisan pair of US senators today introduced long-rumored legislation known as the EARN IT Act. Meant to combat child sexual exploitation online, the bill threatens to erode established protections against holding tech companies responsible for what people do and say on their platforms. It also poses the most serious threat in years to strong end-to-end encryption.

As the final text of the bill circulated, the Department of Justice held a press conference about its own effort to curb online child predation: a set of 11 “voluntary principles” that a growing number of tech companies—including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Roblox, Snap, and Twitter—have pledged to follow. Though the principles the companies are pledging to adopt don’t specifically impact encryption themselves, the event had an explicit anti-encryption message. The cumulative effect of this morning’s announcements could define the geography of the next crypto wars.

………

EARN IT focuses specifically on Section 230, which has historically given tech companies freedom to expand with minimal liability for how people use their platforms. Under EARN IT, those companies wouldn’t automatically have a liability exemption for activity and content related to child sexual exploitation. Instead, companies would have to “earn” the protection by showing that they are following recommendations for combatting child sexual exploitation laid out by a 16-person commission.

………

Though it seems wholly focused on reducing child exploitation, the EARN IT Act has definite implications for encryption. If it became law, companies might not be able to earn their liability exemption while offering end-to-end encrypted services. This would put them in the position of either having to accept liability, undermine the protection of end-to-end encryption by adding a backdoor for law enforcement access, or avoid end-to-end encryption altogether.

If you give this power to law enforcement, it will be abused, if not by a serial killer, then by domestic abusers stalking exes, or bad cops determined to evade the Constitution.

This is a VERY bad law.

Elizabeth Has Left the Building

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She has not yet made an endorsement, and she may not make one.

I cannot see her endorsing Biden, she started her activism opposing 2005 bankruptcy bill, and endorsing him before the convention would repudiate her entire political career.

I place her likelihood of endorsing Sanders at less than 25% though.

Senator Elizabeth Warren entered the 2020 race with expansive plans to use the federal government to remake American society, pressing to strip power and wealth from a moneyed class that she saw as fundamentally corrupting the country’s economic and political order.

She exited on Thursday after her avalanche of progressive policy proposals, which briefly elevated her to front-runner status last fall, failed to attract a broader political coalition in a Democratic Party increasingly, if not singularly, focused on defeating President Trump.

………

Though her vision energized many liberals — the unlikely chant of “big, structural change” rang out at her rallies — it did not find a wide enough audience among the party’s working-class and diverse base. Now her potential endorsement is highly sought, and both Mr. Sanders and Mr. Biden have spoken with her in the days since Super Tuesday losses sealed her political fate, though she revealed precious little of her intentions on Thursday.

“I need some space around this,” she said.

Not a Surprise

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It turns out that Naomi Seibt, the German girl put forward by the Heartland Institute as an answer to Greta Thunberg, is a white supremacist asshole.

I did Nazi that coming:

A young campaigner who has been hailed by climate sceptics as the right’s answer to Greta Thunberg has previously described a white nationalist who appeared to promote “white genocide” theories as one of her “inspirations”.

Naomi Seibt, a 19-year-old from Münster, Germany, who styles herself as a “climate realist”, has also had to deny she made remarks that could be seen as antisemitic following an attack on a synagogue last year.

Seibt has been described as the darling of climate change deniers and spoke at a small side event of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) – a high-profile annual meeting of rightwing activists in Washington that will also feature the US president, Donald Trump.

………

An examination of the young activist’s YouTube videos and interviews has revealed that Seibt has shown support for an alt-right activist.

In a YouTube discussion last year that was highlighted in a report by the German broadcaster ZDF, Seibt discussed an attack on a synagogue in Halle that killed two people who were outside the temple, and said Jews were considered to be “at the top” of groups who were seen as being oppressed. “Ordinary Germans”, she said, were “at the bottom”. Muslims, she added, were somewhere in between.

………

“It is clear that she is articulating – no matter how inarticulately – age-old tropes of Jewish power and white grievance: the idea that Jews are a privileged class and that white people are oppressed by them,” said Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, who studied the remarks.

………

In another YouTube interview describing her embrace of “views that were outside the mainstream”, Seibt referred to the Canadian alt-right internet activist Stefan Molyneux as an “inspiration”.

………

Seibt has been hired by a US thinktank called the Heartland Institute, which has traditionally been financed by fossil fuel and coal companies and is known for pushing radical anti-science theories about the climate crisis.

So not a surprise.

About F%$#ing Time

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The International Criminal Court will be investigating all of the parties ion the Afghan war for crimes against humanity, including the US military.

Considering the abysmal record of the US military investigating itself for such things, this is long overdue:

The United States is to be investigated for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan following an International Criminal Court (ICC) ruling today. The court overturned an April 2019 decision blocking a probe into the actions of U.S. troops, Taliban guerillas, and Afghan government forces.

ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has been pressing for formal investigations into alleged U.S. war crimes since 2017. But she has faced threats and opposition from President Donald Trump, notably having her U.S. visa canceled in retaliation.

Washington claimed that the measure was necessary “to protect its sovereignty and to protect our people from unjust investigation and prosecution” by the court.

The U.S. is not a party to the Rome Statute that established the ICC and refuses to recognize the court’s authority over its citizens. It has gone to great lengths to cover up alleged war crimes committed across the world, including with plans to charge WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the Espionage Act. Assange could face 175 years behind bars for publishing a series of videos and leaked cables exposing corruption and war crimes committed by the U.S. in Iraq and elsewhere.

While there is a no possibility of any US citizen facing anything resembling justice from the ICC, the prospect of an aggressive an independent review of the US military’s actions, even if limited to, “Name and shame,” would be a significant step forward of the moral development of the world.

Corona Virus Claims the First Airline

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Low cost carrier Flybe has ceased operations:

Only five days ago, the boss of British Airways’ owner IAG warned that the coronavirus would push weaker airlines “over the edge”. Little surprise, then, that Flybe should be an early victim: a perennial struggler to turn a profit, flying routes that few others deemed commercially viable around the UK. But, even at such a geographical remove from the current outbreak, it is unlikely to be the last.

For now, the effects of Covid-19 on airlines echo the pattern among the human population: standstill in China, tolerated by the stronger carriers abroad, but potentially fatal to those less robust. And Flybe’s pre-existing conditions included an unusually onerous tax burden of air passenger duty affecting domestic flights, dampened demand alongside Brexit, and increased fuel and leasing costs from a falling pound. Its investors – a consortium led by Virgin Atlantic swooped in last year – had sensed a final opportunity after its share price had tanked; but by January they were begging the government, in vain, for assistance to stay alive.

 This will probably not be the last.

Oh Snap!

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It looks like a federal judge, a George W. Bush appointee and former head of the FISA court, no less, is calling out Attorney General William Barr’s dishonest handling of the Mueller report, and he is demanding an unredacted copy for him to review.

It is not often that you find a judge using words like “distorted” and “misleading” to describe the behavior of the Attorney General of the United States of America:

A federal judge on Thursday sharply criticized Attorney General William P. Barr’s handling of the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, saying that Mr. Barr put forward a “distorted” and “misleading” account of its findings and lacked credibility on the topic.

Mr. Barr could not be trusted, Judge Reggie B. Walton said, citing “inconsistencies” between the attorney general’s statements about the report when it was secret and its actual contents that turned out to be more damaging to President Trump. Mr. Barr’s “lack of candor” called into question his “credibility and, in turn, the department’s” assurances to the court, Judge Walton said.

The judge ordered the Justice Department to privately show him the portions of the report that were censored in the publicly released version so he could independently verify the justifications for those redactions. The ruling came in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking a full-text version of the report.

The differences between the report and Mr. Barr’s description of it “cause the court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller report to the contrary,” wrote Judge Walton, an appointee of President George W. Bush.

Mr. Barr’s public rollout of the Mueller report has been widely criticized. Still, it was striking to see a Republican-appointed federal judge scathingly dissect Mr. Barr’s conduct in a formal judicial ruling and declare that the sitting attorney general had so deceived the American people that he could not trust assertions made by a Justice Department under Mr. Barr’s control.

William Barr’s behavior is consistent with his behavior over the past 30 years, but, at least until recently, he was consider a respectable member of Washington society.

We really need to burn the whole of Washington society down.

Tweet of the Day

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Say what you like about Marvel Comics but this remains the best explanation for why Bloomberg just spent all that money on something other than, you know, helping people. pic.twitter.com/3zaHN4oVBo

— Joe Macaré (@joemacare) March 5, 2020

You will never convince me that this is not an intentional metaphor for self-entitled wealth, and an unintentional metaphor Mike Bloomberg’s Presidential campaign.

Stopped Clock Tweet of the Day

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My strong suspicion is that if Biden wins many conservatives with misgivings about Trump currently telling themselves they’d vote for him will “learn” that he backs legal abortion, raising taxes, taking your guns, and other normal Dem stuff and decide he’s too leftwing.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 1, 2020

Matthew Yglesias is right.

Now THERE is a sentence that I never expected to write.

So Ready for the Giant Meteor

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At his speech following the Super Tuesday results, Joe Biden was rushed by two vegan protesters, and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden went after one of them like Ray Nitschke.

This election is going to be a complete sh%$ show, and Donald John Trump is a master of the sh%$ show.

I am SO sick and tired of this bullsh%$.

I appreciate the fact that Jill Biden is a complete bad-ass, but I want to go and live in a f%$#ing cave:

It could have been a scene out of the romantic thriller “The Bodyguard,” except the hero of the moment in this case was not a trained agent but Jill Biden.

The sequence began as former vice president Joe Biden was delivering his victory speech in Los Angeles, thanking his supporters for his Super Tuesday comeback.

Suddenly, a protester rushed the stage wielding a “Let Dairy Die” placard. With the vegan protester just a few feet from her husband, Jill Biden clutched her husband’s right hand and interposed her body between him and the woman lunging at him.

About 10 seconds later, another anti-dairy industry protester stormed the stage. Reacting with lightning speed, the former second lady swung around, extended her arms, grabbed her by the wrists and then blocked her with a stiff-arm.

Wincing, she pushed the woman back as her husband and sister-in-law looked on with concern during the sudden confrontation.

Thank You Elizabeth Warren

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Michael Bloomberg has suspended his Presidential campaign and will endorse Joe Biden.

His performance in Super Tuesday was profoundly underwhelming, he won only American Samoa, where only he and Tulsi Gabbard was running.

He spent $½ Billion, and in 30 seconds of Liz Warren destroyed his campaign.

Good for her, and my guess is that this was the first time that someone actually took Bloomberg to task in decades.

Thank you Elizabeth Warren for excising this cancer from the American body politic.