No, I’m not joking here.  The Blairites and the Tories claiming that the fact that Jeremy Corbyn did not verbally attack a Holocaust survivor makes him an antisemite, which, even by the standards of British politics, is what one would technically called fakakte:

Oh no, look how antisemitic he is NOW. It turns out Corbyn sat on a platform with a Jewish Holocaust survivor, who compared Israel’s behaviour to that of the Third Reich. Corbyn says he disagrees with him, but that’s not enough, he should have decked the twat. The fact that Corbyn didn’t even yell abuse at him proves he’s antisemitic.

Because this man, Hajo Meyer, said that having been through his unimaginable trauma, he couldn’t bear to see appalling acts carried out in the name of the Israeli state, and this seems to have led him to conclusions that aren’t accurate. Maybe we should cut the bloke some slack, what with him having been at Auschwitz. But that would make you an ANTISEMITE, because if you care about Jews you tell Holocaust survivors: “We’ve all had problems in life, mate, now shut your mouth and get your facts straight.”

………

Luckily, other newspapers have been more measured, such as The Times which asked: “Why can’t Corbyn see antisemitism staring him in the face?” It is a puzzle why some people can’t see antisemitism staring them in the face. Sometimes antisemitism is much more subtle, such as when The Sunday Times employed David Irving – but his antisemitism was discreet, having only written a series of books in praise of Hitler and denying the Holocaust, not like those people whose antisemitism stares you in the face.

………

And the Conservative Party are genuinely appalled by it all, which is why they would never allow their prominent members to associate with an anti-Semite. Instead Boris Johnson has been meeting Trump’s ex-spokesman Steve Bannon, who gives his support to inclusive liberal groups such as the English Defence League, and wrote on his website: “Hell has no fury like a Polish elite American Jew.”

Bannon certainly wouldn’t attract an antisemitic following. It’s true that among the comments on his website are such messages as “Heil Hitler”, but it would take an expert historian to find traces of antisemitism in that.

Is there a problem with antisemitism in the Labour Party?

Yes, of course there is.

Is it worse than that of the UK as a whole, or Boris “Dances with Breitbart” Johnson ?

F%$# if I know.

Are Stock Buybacks Starving the Economy?

This has been another episode of simple answers to somple questions.

Before Reagan, stock buybacks were considered illegal share price manipulation which serves no real purpose.

It’s still share price manipulation which serves no real purpose, only it’s legal now.

Political memories are short, but just 15 years after Iraq was destroyed and the chain reaction sent most of the Arab world back to the dark ages, it is now “treason” to question the word of the Western intelligence agencies, which deliberately and knowingly produced a fabric of lies on Iraqi WMD to justify that destruction. 
It would be more rational for it to be treason for leaders to blindly accept the word of the intelligence services.

—Craig Murray

The validity or argument from authority is highly suspect, particularly when addressing problems, since, if the authorities knew their sh%$, we would not have a problem.

There has been a second incident of Novichok poisoning near Porton Down in England.

While this the Russian nerve agent is described as persistent, this does not mean “eternal”, and for something like VX, which is the most persistent of the better known agents, would be likely be degraded to harmlessness in about a month, particularly in the mild and wet climate of southern England.

Thus, I found the most recent poisoning to be perplexing, until I discovered that the Novichok came from a bottle that the man had apparently found dumpster diving.

This would explain how the Novichok remained viable for so long, but the idea that a crack Russian assassin team would dose the door knob of the Skripal and then take the left over agent and throw it in the dumpster.

I can see the need to carry more than is necessary, and the need to dispose of the excess afterwards, but anyone with even a modicum of knowledge would know how to deactivate Novichuk before disposing of the container.

Basically, you would dump it in a bucket of household bleach.

None of this makes sense as an FSB/GRU assassination team.

In fact, the only scenario that has a comprehensible narrative is that there is some lunatic at Porton Down is doing the whole Bruce Ivins thing, which is even more frightening, because it is completely unpredictable.

He leaked grand jury testimony while working for Ken Starr, he believes that everything the President does is inherently legal, but he’s a Yalie, so it’s all cool:

Brett M. Kavanaugh, the federal judge nominated by President Trump on Monday to the Supreme Court, has endorsed robust views of the powers of the president, consistently siding with arguments in favor of broad executive authority during his 12 years on the bench in Washington.

He has called for restructuring the government’s consumer watchdog agency so the president could remove the director and has been a leading defender of the government’s position when it comes to using military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects.

Kavanaugh is “an unrelenting, unapologetic defender of presidential power” who believes courts can and should actively seek to rein in “large swaths of the current administrative state,” said University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck, who closely follows the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

I’m with Dan Froomkin, who suggests that if Kavanaugh leaked secret grand jury information, and this appears to be an open secret in Washington, DC, then the reporters should burn him.

If smoking some weed in college derailed Douglas Ginsburg’s nomination in 1987, then Kavanaugh is a clear and present danger to the court.

In fact, when we look at what happens with international outsourcing, it increases transportation costs, it requires more people, and emits more greenhouse gasses:

For the past few weeks I’ve been reading a raft of literature by lawyers, economists and bureaucrats involved with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other free traders. It’s been a fascinating journey into an alternate world, one in which frictionless trade and money flows; and unified regulations and laws are considered to be a good thing.

The reasoning behind this virtually unquestioned acceptance is as follows: if there are no barriers to trade, whether financial or regulatory, goods and services will be created (or done) wherever they cost the least. If they are done in the lowest-cost place, they are being done in the most efficient way, and that means more is created and consumers also pay less.

It is thus a good thing, virtually always, to reduce barriers to trade and services. If it can be done for cheaper somewhere it should be. Some people may lose, but overall more (or the same) is created for less, and this is good.

This is basically an article of faith in everything I’ve been reading from people who make their living around the WTO.

But you may have caught the error in the thinking. It assumes the lowest cost is equivalent to the most efficient.

But it isn’t. When manufacturing moved from the US to China, it cost less to do in China, yes, but it produced more carbon (climate change); it took more people to produce the same amount of goods, and it generally used more materials, as well.

In other words, in every way except the monetary cost it was less efficient.

Free trade is about labor market arbitrage, not any real efficiencies.

Not a member of the Trump administration, but rather Maine Governor, and human bowling jacket,^* Paul LePage, who just got spanked by the court for refusing to turn in Medicaid expansion paperwork to the federal government:

Gov. Paul LePage’s administration must file paperwork by next week to the federal government to adopt Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in Maine, a state Superior Court judge said Monday in a decision rebuking the defiant Republican governor.

Obamacare supporters in April sued the LePage administration to force it to comply with the results of a November ballot initiative ordering the state to expand coverage to tens of thousands of low-income adults under the 2010 health care law. But LePage has insisted he won’t adopt Medicaid expansion unless state lawmakers meet his conditions for funding the program.

Under the Maine ballot initiative, roughly 80,000 low-income adults are supposed to qualify for Medicaid benefits starting July 2. The LePage administration ignored an early April deadline to formally notify the federal government it would expand, prompting the lawsuit from advocates who spearheaded the ballot measure.

………

Monday’s court decision requires the LePage administration to file paperwork to HHS by June 11. A LePage spokesperson said the administration is reviewing the decision and declined to say whether it would appeal the ruling.

Your honor, if he does not file the paperwork by June 11, can you throw his ass in jail on June 12?

It would make my day.

^*Not my bon mot, it comes from Charlie Pierce.

Well, now that chaplains at Fort Campbell have banned Jewish Lay leaders from holding services on campus.

Yet another case of the Talibanization of the US military:  (It’s even worse in the US Air Force)

Chaplains in the 101st Airborne Division have fired the longstanding Jewish lay leaders at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, allegedly without providing any reason, effectively ending Friday night Shabbat services for Jewish soldiers and their families.

The two ranking chaplains also refused to support the Jews’ attempts to celebrate Passover on March 30, the first night of the eight-day long religious celebration, allegedly because it conflicted with Christians’ Good Friday observances and would save money during the installation’s four-day holiday.

Jeanette Mize, her husband, Curt, and son, Lawrence, served as lay leaders for Jewish worship on the installation for nearly two decades. On Feb. 28, the three were allegedly fired without cause under the direction of the division chaplain, Col. John Murphy, and his deputy chaplain, Lt. Col. Sean Wead.

“There was no explanation why I was fired,” Jeanette Mize told Army Times.

She added that her family has “faithfully provided weekly Shabbat and yearly religious worship events since 1999,” and they have worshiped at Fort Campbell since 1984.

Mize contacted Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, who lodged a complaint with base officials. Weinstein subsequently spoke by phone with Col. Brett Sylvia, the division’s chief of staff, who is currently deployed with the headquarters to Afghanistan.

………

But Weinstein said he was informed on Friday morning that the inquiry had become a 15-6 investigation. That type of inquiry hints at the severity of the allegations and how seriously the Army is taking them, according to Weinstein.

“About 10 percent of the cases I file with the Army become 15-6 investigations,” he said.

Mize and her family have never been paid for the services they provide for the roughly 80 members of the Jewish community on Fort Campbell.

The nearest synagogue is about 50 miles away, and it appears that the chaplains were attempting to force Mize out for some time.

The term for the chaplain’s behavior is, “Contrary to good order and discipline.”

It appears that they are under the misapprehension that the investigation is being run by New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr.,^* and so have forgotten basic rules of behavior when one is under criminal investigation:

1. Shut the f%$# up!
2. See rule 1.
3. Seriously, see rule 1!

In any case, path the popcorn:

President Trump on Thursday directly contradicted his earlier statements that he knew of no payment to Stormy Daniels, the pornographic film actress who says she had an affair with him.

Mr. Trump said he paid a monthly retainer to his former lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, and suggested that the payment by Mr. Cohen to the actress could not be considered a campaign contribution.

The president’s comments reiterated an explosive announcement late Wednesday by one of his recently-hired attorneys, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who said on Fox News that the president reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payment to the actress Stephanie Clifford, who performs as Stormy Daniels. Though Mr. Giuliani described his interview as part of a strategy, the disclosure caught several Trump advisers by surprise, sending some scrambling on Thursday morning to determine how to confront the situation.

In three Twitter posts Thursday morning, the president repeated some of what Mr. Giuliani said a day earlier, specifically that Mr. Trump repaid a $130,000 payment Mr. Cohen made to Ms. Clifford just days before the presidential election in 2016.

Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump said this removed the question of whether it was a campaign finance violation. Mr. Trump also continued to deny the affair.

Seriously, when you combine Trump and Giuliani there must have been some sort of idiot bully event horizon.

^*See Cyrus Vance, Jr.’s history with Harvey Weinstein & the Trump SoHo investigation. This guy really does not want to investigate rich people.

Remember, Social Security and Medicare began as small, pilot programs that eventually evolved to provide guaranteed coverage. Oh, wait, no.

— Stephanie Kelton (@StephanieKelton) April 23, 2018

A very good point is being made here: The people who want a pilot roll-out of something like single payer actually trying to kill it.

Single payer, and things like the jobs guarantee, CANNOT not work unless they are universal in nature, and pilot programs are, by the very nature of their being pilot programs, are likely to fail.

It appears that someone in Congress snuck in a provision banning sending arms to militias that allow Nazis to serve.

It’s addressing what is a very real problem in the Ukraine:

A little-noticed provision in the 2,232-page government spending bill passed last week bans U.S. arms from going to a controversial ultranationalist militia in Ukraine that has openly accepted neo-Nazis into its ranks.

House-passed spending bills for the past three years have included a ban on U.S. aid to Ukraine from going to the Azov Battalion, but the provision was stripped out before final passage each year.

This year, though, the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill signed into law last week stipulates that “none of the funds made available by this act may be used to provide arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.”

“White supremacy and neo-Nazism are unacceptable and have no place in our world,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), an outspoken critic of providing lethal aid to Ukraine, said in a statement to The Hill on Tuesday. “I am very pleased that the recently passed omnibus prevents the U.S. from providing arms and training assistance to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion fighting in Ukraine.”

The United States has been aiding and training Ukrainian forces in their fight against Russian-backed separatists since 2014, and recently expanded that aid to include arms. The omnibus includes about $620.7 million in aid for Ukraine, including $420.7 million in State Department and foreign operations funds and $200 million in Pentagon funds.

The Azov Battalion was founded in 2014, and its first commander was Andriy Biletsky, who previously headed the neo-Nazi group Patriot of Ukraine. Several members of the militia, which has been integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard, are self-avowed neo-Nazis.

But a spokesman for the group has defended it, telling USA Today in 2015 that only 10 to 20 percent of recruits are neo-Nazis and that those people do not represent the official ideology of Azov.

Gee only 10-20% Nazis.

Would you like a sandwich to go with that? It contains only 10-20% rat feces.

So, we’ve been supporting Nazis in the Ukraine, and  al Qaeda in Syria (sorry, I meant “Islamist moderates”)

Should we just put a skull on our uniform caps and be done with it?

Bob Muller has just indicted 13 Russians for trolling the election.

I gotta figure that my blog is going to pop up on his radar soon, and I look awful in orange. Damn:

The special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations on Friday with illegally trying to disrupt the American political process, including efforts designed to boost the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump and hurt that of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The indictment represents the first charges by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, for meddling in the 2016 presidential election — the fundamental crime that he was assigned to investigate.

In a 37-page indictment filed in United States District Court, Mr. Mueller said that the 13 individuals have conspired since 2014 to violate laws that prohibit foreigners from spending money to influence federal elections in the United States.

Obviously, I am never a non-US citizen, but occasionally,^* I am a troll, so there is a concern about legal jeopardy for me.

As I understand this, Mueller’s interpretation of the law makes door to door canvassing, or volunteering in a campaign office by foreigners unlawful.

Of course, my standard caveat on such things, “I’m an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit!,” applies.^†

^*OK, maybe more than occasionally.
^†I love it when I get to go all Dr. Mccoy!

I missed it the evening that it came out, but caught it on Youtube.

At 2:10 in the video, he notes how Hillary Clinton responded to allegations of sexual harassment on her staff in 2008.

Spoiler: It wasn’t good, and her response when it hit the news a few days ago was even worse.

In 2016, she was in a close race for the least self-aware major party presidential candidate nominee, and I am still not sure who actually won THAT contest.

We had the first failure of the year on Tuesday, St. Elizabeth’s Credit Union of Chicago, IL.

Here is the Full NCUA list.

Slow pace this year so far.

It appears that, in addition to increasing the size of paychecks, testosterone offers protection from autoimmune disease:

Testosterone. Source of prostates and testes, muscles and machismo, chest hair, and according to some, even math skills. Its levels are only one of the biological differences between males and females, but they may help to explain another: the discrepancies in the incidence of autoimmune diseases.

Women are three to nine times more likely than men to suffer from autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS), Grave’s disease, celiac disease, systemic lupus erythematous, and rheumatoid arthritis. Not only do women get these diseases at higher rates, they usually get them at younger ages.

Men’s higher testosterone levels—about seven to eight times higher than women’s—have been shown to be protective for MS in both mice and men. But it was not clear exactly how this worked. Recent work in a mouse model of MS has filled in the downstream effectors that mediate testosterone’s protective effects. These effectors might be useful as therapeutics, whereas testosterone use really isn’t, especially for women, who are the ones who need it most.

The work focused on a type of immune cell called a mast cell. Mast cells get a bad rap because they release histamine during allergic reactions, but they’re generally involved in inflammation. In the mice that recapitulate MS, testosterone influences the behavior of mast cells in the lymph nodes, central nervous system, and lining of the brain. In female mice, which don’t have as much testosterone, mast cells instead produce pro-inflammatory signaling molecules called cytokines.

The more you know.

Biden Trashes Millennials in His Quest to Become Even Less Likable

—VICE

Yeah, pretty much.

He’s my kid, and he did an artwork for 2017.

He torched it because 2017 sucked.

His thought was, “On the one hand, it’s weird that I destroyed one of my own art works, but on the other hand, I feel strangely accomplished.”

He filmed it, I was cameraman, and my other kid, Natalie, did the lighting.

Not bad for 2 hours of filming and editing.

It does seem to me that there is something profoundly Canadian about this:

Link.

At the Wall Street Journal CEO Council meeting. Trump economic advisor Gary Cohn asked who would be investing in new plant and equipment if the tax cuts passed.

Very few hands went up:

President Trump’s top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, looked out from the stage at a sea of CEOs and top executives in the audience Tuesday for the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council meeting. As Cohn sat comfortably onstage, a Journal editor asked the crowd to raise their hands if their company plans to invest more if the tax reform bill passes.

Very few hands went up.

Cohn looked surprised. “Why aren’t the other hands up?” he said.

He laughed a little to lighten the mood, but it didn’t cause many more hands to rise. Maybe the CEOs were tired. Maybe they didn’t hear the question. It was a casual poll, but the lukewarm response seemed in tension with much of the public enthusiasm among corporations for a tax overhaul.

………

Second, executives themselves have indicated they probably won’t use extra profits to invest. A Bank of America-Merrill Lynch survey this summer asked over 300 executives at major U.S. corporations what they would do after a “tax holiday” that would allow them to bring back money held overseas at a low tax rate. The No. 1 response? Pay down debt. The second most popular response was stock buybacks, where companies purchase some of their own shares to drive up the price. The third was mergers. Actual investments in new factories and more research were low on the list of plans for how to spend extra money.

This sh%$ is not a surprise.  Basically, it’s Econ 101.

1. Tax-overhaul backers say corporate rate cut will encourage investment by businesses
2. During #wsjceocouncil interview with Gary Cohn, WSJ asks CEOs to raise hands if they’ll boost investment if rates cut
3. Few CEOS raise hands
4. Cohn asks: “Why aren’t the other hands up?” pic.twitter.com/5PI60NlW0A

— Tim Hanrahan (@TimJHanrahan) November 14, 2017

Researchers at Abertay University and the University of New South Wales Canberra have concluded that boys are better at physics because they can “Fire for Effect” when peeing:

Boys are better at Physics because they learn about “projection” while going to the toilet, researchers have claimed.

From a young age, boys are taught about how to aim accurately so that they do not make a mess in the bathroom, and this gives them a better understanding of “projectile motion”, according to three academics.

Writing for Times Education Supplement (TES), Anna Wilson of Abertay University along with Kate Wilson and David Low of the University of New South Wales Canberra, explained their theory.

“Playful urination practices – from seeing how high you can pee to games such as Peeball (where men compete using their urine to destroy a ball placed in a urinal) – may give boys an advantage over girls when it comes to physics,” the academics wrote.

The researchers said they have examined gender differences in achievement on physics tests, and found that girls generally perform worse than boys, but with a more marked gap in specific topic areas.

“In particular, the largest gaps in performance between girls and boys arise in questions that involve projectile motion – things that have been thrown, kicked, fired, etc,” they said.

“On some projectile questions, we’ve seen only around one-third of girls answer correctly, compared to two-thirds of boys. This isn’t a trivial gap in performance, particularly when a diagnostic test may contain several questions on projectiles.”

Seriously?

The stupid, it burns ………