They blew up a barn in Germany.
The official story is that methane buildup from cow flatulence caused this:
Methane gas from 90 flatulent cows exploded in a German farm shed on Monday, damaging the roof and injuring one of the animals, police said.
………
One cow was treated for burns, a police spokesman added.
We know better though it’s part of the great ruminant conspiracy.
John Haggerty is much braver than I am.
He decided to rely exclusively on Fox News for information on current events for one month.
I would have gnawed my own eyes off by the end of the 2nd day.
It appears that New Jersey Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno has drawn the attention of the Times, and when the hed is, “A Lieutenant Governor, an Artist and a Portrait of a Smear, it’s pretty clear that your political career is in trouble:
In her first year in office, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno opened a frontal attack on an unlikely target, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Its contracting was “inexcusably” flawed, she said. Its practices were “unethical” and too cozy. Its director had to go.
Ms. Guadagno went on like this for months in 2010, and no one knew what to make of it. She wanted more control over the Arts Council, which distributed $16 million a year all over the state and was broadly respected.
In spring 2011, she began a new offensive. She went before legislative committees and pilloried a man doing work on an Arts Council contract, building a 9/11 timeline at Liberty State Park in Jersey City. His contract was no-bid, she said, the money unclear.
This gentleman is Daniel Aubrey, a 62-year-old man with a gray-flecked goatee. He and his wife, an artist, live in a modest home on a modest block just outside Trenton. A friend called him that day and exclaimed: The lieutenant governor just spelled out your name and said there was contract fraud!
A day later, an assistant attorney general called Mr. Aubrey. You are involved in an illegal contract, the prosecutor said. Do you have a criminal attorney?
He did not.
Just like that, Mr. Aubrey fell into reputation’s ditch, and the Christie administration piled dirt atop him. Except — and this is not incidental to our story — Mr. Aubrey did nothing wrong.
This behavior is unconscionable, and if it is not illegal, it should be.
No surprise, but Kim Guadagno used to be a professional bully prosecutor.
Sucks to be her right now.
And some biting social satire
Growing up, I remember listening to his album Gazette.
And there was also his lifelong political activism, along with his standing up to the evil bullies of HUAC.
He was, of course, a bit subversive, but art tends to be subversive.
We will not see his like in the foreseeable future.
And this ruling is not being classified as secret:
A Virginia man who claims that as a teenager he was detained, interrogated, and abused in Kuwait at the behest of the Obama administration (a story I wrote about here) has won a key victory in his lawsuit against the government. A George W. Bush-appointed judge allowed Gulet Mohamed’s case to move forward on Wednesday, ruling that by putting him on the no-fly list (and thus infringing on his right to return home to the US), the government made him “a second class citizen.”
Judge Anthony Trenga of the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, ruled that the no-fly list’s “impact on a citizen who cannot use a commercial aircraft is profound,” restricting the right to travel and visit family, the “ability to associate,” and even the ability to hold down a job. Inclusion on the list also “also labels an American citizen a disloyal American who is capable of, and disposed toward committing, war crimes, and one can easily imagine the broad range of consequences that might be visited upon such a person if that stigmatizing designation were known by the general public,” Trenga added. Here’s another key excerpt:In effect, placement on the No Fly List is life defining and life restricting across a broad range of constitutionally protected activities and aspirations; and a No Fly List designation transforms a person into a second class citizen, or worse. The issue, then, is whether and under what circumstances the government should have the ability to impose such a disability on an American citizen, who should make any such decision, according to what process, and by what standard of proof.
This little bit of Kafkaesque horror is something that came from the Obama administration.
This is not the product of one of Dick Cheney’s security wet dreams, this is Obama embracing and extending those policies.
Normally, I have no interest in awards, but the Grammy’s have their moments.
The last time was in 1984, when Annie Lennox stunned and offended ½ of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States (and amused the other ½).
This year, however, it is a bit more significant. Queen Latifa officiated at the wedding of 34 couples, some of them same sex, and right wingers are having a major butt hurt about this:
Anti-gay commentators were none too pleased with last night’s performance of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “Same Love” at the Grammy Awards, which included a ceremony where thirty-four couples — including same-sex couples — were married. Unsurprisingly, many claimed that the show was evil and mean to anti-gay activists.
My heart bleeds borscht for these bigots.
The Washington Post is criticizing the Yanukovych government in the Ukraine for laws that exist in their hometown without any comment:
The lunatics writing the Washington Post editorials want to blame the Ukraine (and the Russian president Putin) for its remarkable patient defense against the foreign supported, neo-nazi vandals of the Svoboda party who try to storm and take over government buildings in Kiev.
One paragraph especially shows their unmatched hypocrisy:The repressive new restrictions, which criminalize such activity as wearing helmets and setting up tents in public spaces, look a lot like the strategy the Russian ruler used to crush mass demonstrations against his regime in 2011 and 2012. Mr. Yanukovych even adopted the regulation Russia imposed on nongovernment groups that receive foreign funding — a product of Mr. Putin’s paranoid conviction that pro-democracy movements in his country and elsewhere are the result of Western government plots.
Wearing helmets and masks at demonstrations has been unanimously criminalized by the D.C. Council in the Washington Post’s hometown. Tents set up in public spaces by the Occupy movement have been outlawed and cleared by force all over the United States. The Russian and Ukrainian laws that regulate foreign money to political organisations are copies of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act which is law of the land since 1938.
(emphasis original)
There is very little difference between how the Ukraine is using law as an instrument for crushing political protest, and how the United States s using law as an instrument for crushing political protest.
It appears that the hyper wealthy think that people not liking them or how they make money is just like the holocaust, “Seems like billionaire venture capitalist Tom Perkins is very, very afraid of progressives. In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, Perkins expressed his deep fear that fascist progressives were going to burn down the city.”
He actually invoked Kristallnacht:
From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent. There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these “techno geeks” can pay. We have, for example, libelous and cruel attacks in the Chronicle on our number-one celebrity, the author Danielle Steel, alleging that she is a “snob” despite the millions she has spent on our city’s homeless and mentally ill over the past decades.
This is ludicrous.
BTW, San Francisco has a law against private vehicles blocking bus-stops, as the aforementioned Google buses do. It’s a $271 fine, and this means something north of $½ billion in fines have been ignored by the city by various tech firms, because big tech is above the law.
The idea that somehow or other, either criticism or legitimate law enforcement actions directed toward the extremely wealthy is somehow a fascist style persecution against the 0.01% is both pernicious and laughable.
Busy week. 1 Bank, and 2 credit Unions
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
And here are the credit union closings:
I was using Google to confirm the spelling of the word “Bated”, as in, “Bated breath,” the other day, and I came across its origins.
It turns out that it’s a diminutive form of the word “abated”, and the first recorded use was by William Shakespeare, specifically, Merchant of Venice, “Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key, With bated breath and whispering humbleness, Say this; ‘Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last; You spurn’d me such a day; another time You call’d me dog; and for these courtesies I’ll lend you thus much moneys’?”
I already knew that the first recorded use of puke, actually the word puking, came from The Scottish Play.
I just think that it’s kinda cool.
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Normally, I do not watch the Superbowl for the Football.
When my team, Washington is playing, I do not watch.
The least time I did was Super Bowl XXII. I watched the first quarter, and Denver was leading 10-0, so when some friends came by suggesting dinner, I turned off the TV, and we left the hotel, (I was at a Boskone) and went put to eat.
I returned an the start of the third quarter, and the Redskins had scored 35 unanswered points.
I then realized that Washington had lost whenever I watched, and won when I hadn’t, so I do not watch them in that game.
You can call me superstitious, just don’t call me late for dinner.
So these days, I watch out for the ads, if I watch at all. (I saw Apple’s 1984 ad when our originally aired.)
However, there are some exceptions to this.
If the Buffalo Bills play the Minnesota Vikings, I’ll watch.
Another exception is if the Superbowl is played outside in inclement winter weather, as the Football gods intended.
This year, the game will be played at the stadium formerly known as The Meadowlands, in North Jersey, so there is a distinct possibility of real Football played in real Football weather.
So if the mercury is below -10°C, our of there is some serious snow, I well be watching.
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The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board just issued a report on the NSA’s metadata driftnet.
They have concluded that it is both ineffective and illegal:
An independent federal privacy watchdog has concluded that the National Security Agency’s program to collect bulk phone call records has provided only “minimal” benefits in counterterrorism efforts, is illegal and should be shut down.
The findings are laid out in a 238-page report, scheduled for release by Thursday and obtained by The New York Times, that represent the first major public statement by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which Congress made an independent agency in 2007 and only recently became fully operational.
………
The program “lacks a viable legal foundation under Section 215, implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments, raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value,” the report said. “As a result, the board recommends that the government end the program.”
………
But the privacy board’s report criticized that, saying that the legal theory was a “subversion” of the law’s intent, and that the program also violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
“It may have been a laudable goal for the executive branch to bring this program under the supervision” of the court, the report says. “Ultimately, however, that effort represents an unsustainable attempt to shoehorn a pre-existing surveillance program into the text of a statute with which it is not compatible.”
The ruling was not unanimous, the two members, both alumni of the ferociously corrupt and incompetent Bush DoJ, Rachel L. Brand and Elisebeth Collins Cook, both thought that everything was all hunky dory, with Ms Cook letting loose this bit of completely moronic insanity:
Still, in her dissent, Ms. Cook criticized judging the program’s worth based only on whether it had stopped an attack to date. It also has value as a tool that can allow investigators to “triage” threats and provide “peace of mind” if it uncovers no domestic links to a newly discovered terrorism suspect, she wrote.
Translation: Just because spying on the whole country hasn’t yet worked, doesn’t mean that at some point there might be a chance of it doing something good.
To paraphrase Jimi, excuse me while my head explodes.
Meanwhile, Ars Technica goes a bit further down into the weeds, and covers some important minutae:
The Thursday PCLOB report only addresses critiques of the Section 215 program, but it notes that a future report will address problems found in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (FISA AA). Meanwhile, the report describes the rules for targeting non-Americans outside the United States. The government argues that PRISM and related spying programs targeting non-Americans outside the United States are authorized under Section 702.
………
The report goes into great detail explaining both the mechanics of the bulk metadata collection program and how it began. It also emphasizes that under the Section 215 program, the NSA does not collect cell-site location information (CSLI), which can be used to provide geographic information about a call.
However, the report ominously notes:
In the past, the NSA has collected a limited amount of cell site location information to test the feasibility of incorporating such information into its Section 215 program, but that information has not been used for intelligence analysis, and the government has stated that the agency does not now collect it under this program.
The PCLOB concluded, as Ars has previously, that by allowing analysis of up to “three hops,” this could potentially encompass around half the population of the United States:
If the NSA queries around 300 seed numbers a year, as it did in 2012, then based on the estimates provided earlier about the number of records produced in response to a single query, the corporate store would contain records involving over 120 million telephone numbers.
The PCLOB also notes that there is a significant difference between using phone calling data to follow up on a reasonable suspicion, and collecting information on every phone call made in the country.
Still, I don’t expect anything but minor cosmetic changes.
Full report after the break:
One of the provisions of the PPACA was that senior executives had to get the same sort of insurance as the rest of their workers.
Well, it seems that the Department of Health and Human Services has decided that it’s just too hard to come up with rules to implement this portion of the statute:
The Obama administration is delaying enforcement of another provision of the new health care law, one that prohibits employers from providing better health benefits to top executives than to other employees.
Tax officials said they would not enforce the provision this year because they had yet to issue regulations for employers to follow.
The Affordable Care Act, adopted nearly four years ago, says employer-sponsored health plans must not discriminate “in favor of highly compensated individuals” with respect to either eligibility or benefits. The government provides a substantial tax break for employer-sponsored insurance, and, as a matter of equity and fairness, lawmakers said employers should not provide more generous coverage to a select group of high-paid employees.
But translating that goal into reality has proved difficult.
Officials at the Internal Revenue Service said they were wrestling with complicated questions like how to measure the value of employee health benefits, how to define “highly compensated” and what exactly constitutes discrimination.
Bruce I. Friedland, a spokesman for the I.R.S., said employers would not have to comply until the agency issued regulations or other guidance.
This sh%$ ain’t rocket science.
Either they are dragging their feet, or they are writing Byzantinely complex rules.
The only reason for complexity is to create loopholes that millionaire campaign contributors executives can drive their Beemers through.
Susie Madrak’s has a post at C&L about Christie’s allies in the New Jersey Democratic Party.
While I am not an expert on New Jersey Politics, that way madness lies, I was aware that South Jersey Dems tended to be more in line with both Christie’s policies and his manner.
Normally, I would not write about Suzie’s take on this, but she reveals a deep systemic problem with governance at the state and local level throughout the United States.
Specifically, she notes how insurance is routinely used as a way to generate undeserved profits for businessmen, and undeserved political contributions for politicians:
We talked about the legislative fight over funding Philadelphia’s then-new convention center. He called it “a boondoggle.”
“Then why did the Republicans end up supporting it?” I said.
He looked at me like I was a moron. “The bonds. The insurance. Follow the money,” he said. “The Republicans are making money off all that stuff. It’s always about insurance and bonds.”
So I took his advice, and started delving into the esoteric world of municipal insurance. I discovered that the same insurance broker had almost every single insurance contract in the county, and that he was a heavy Republican contributor – which is why he got all those contracts in the first place.
New Jersey has a broker like that. His name is George Norcross, and he’s a Democrat — at least nominally.
To understand why he who controls the insurance controls the politics, you need to understand just how profitable insurance is. And if you own the political apparatus that runs along with it, you have a perpetual money machine that really doesn’t require much upkeep.
It was the experience in the county I covered that the politically-connected insurance contracts cost an average of 30% more than a municipality or other entity would pay on the open market. Much of the excess profits get kicked back through political contributions. (These contracts are almost always an exception to the open bidding process, which makes it easy. Not so much for the homeowners paying the additional millage.)
But there are other benefits. For instance, a cooperative insurance broker who wields that much power with the carriers makes sure there are quick and speedy confidential settlements regarding messy little matters like police brutality cases or public officials who are stealing money. They control which attorneys are retained by the carriers, and they’re always politically connected.
It may be tidy, but it’s probably not democracy.
Here’s an example of how Norcross works — and it’s all perfectly legal, even if the taxpayers get screwed:In another DRPA-related transaction, Norcross’s insurance firm received $410,000—not for actually doing the authority’s insurance work, but for referring that business to another insurance firm, Willis of New Jersey. While a report last year from the New Jersey comptroller was critical of that arrangement, it also noted that there was technically nothing unlawful about it, a point Norcross reiterates when I bring it up. “Look,” he says, “the report itself says nothing happened that was illegal.”
Looking at this, and how the regulatory and legal environment not only enables, but encourages this behavior.
After all, when was the last time that your heard of an indictment, much less a conviction of an insurance broker doing a shady deal with a local government?
It’s the Iron Triangle writ local.
After JP Morgan had to pay billions of dollars in fines and restitution, the board of directors took decisive action, and doubled JP Morgan CEO’ Jamie Dimon’s salary.
I guess in finance, everyone gets a gold star, kind of like kindergarten, only with less accountability:
JP Morgan Chase has almost doubled chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon’s pay for 2013, rewarding the executive for settling probes against the bank.
Dimon will receive total compensation of $20m in 2013, consisting of $18.5m in stock options and a base salary of $1.5m, the bank said in a statement Friday.
That compares with total compensation of $11.5m a year earlier, down from $23m in each of the previous two years.
The bank says it took several factors into account when deciding on Dimon’s pay, including the “sustained long-term performance” of the bank, gains in market share and customer satisfaction as well as his handling of the legal issues facing the lender.
Seriously, we need to start jailing these people post haste.
A whiteout and a pileup in Indiana. 3 dead, and at least 20 injured.
H/t PP at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Stephen Trimble points us to a journalist covering demonstrations in Kiev.
Trimble believes that this is an impromptu helmet.
I think not.
You have no padding and thin gauge metal, so protection is minimal.
Instead, I think that this intrepid reporter is invoking the protection of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, may we all bask in his noodly goodness.
Yesterday, I asserted that the abortion criminalization right wants to punish women for their own sexuality.
Today, Mike Huckabee removed all doubt:
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said the Republican Party is waging a “war for women,” at a meeting of the Republican National Committee Thursday.
Addressing a luncheon of committee-members, staffers, and operatives, Huckabee took aim at Democrats who accuse the GOP of waging a “war on women” with its policies against abortion and government-subsidized birth control.
“Republicans don’t have a war on women,” Huckabee said. We’re having a war for women. To empower them to be something other than victims of their gender.”
“If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it,” he continued. “Let us take that discussion all across America, because women are far more than the Democrats have played them to be.”
Great shades of Elvis.
Cannot control their libido?
Unless Huckabee has some girl-on-girl fantasies and a turkey baster, there is, you know, a penis involved in sex and conception.
Controlling their reproductive system? That is the definition of birth control.
What is it about Republicans? Are they still fuming over the fact that they couldn’t get laid during the “Summer of Love” in 1967?
I couldn’t get laid in 1967 either, but in my defense, I turned 5 years old that year.
I would also note that (most of the time, anyway) don’t act like a 5 year old these days, but it appears that Republicans have not managed that trick.
If there was a way to throw these pitiful excuses for a human being in gaol, I’d go for that too.
A teacher harassed one of her students for being a Buddhist, and when the parents complain the administration suggest that the family give up Buddhism:
A public school in Louisiana allegedly advised a Buddhist family to change their beliefs if they didn’t want their child to face harassment from zealous teachers.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Louisiana on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit against Negreet High School in Sabine Parish on behalf of two parents, Scott and Sharon Lane, and their son, “C.C.” The lawsuit claims the school has “a longstanding custom, policy, and practice of promoting and inculcating Christian beliefs,” including the teaching of creationism.
Sixth-grade teacher Rita Roark has told her students that the universe was created by God about 6,000 years ago, and taught that both the Big Bang theory and evolution are false, according to the lawsuit. She told her students that “if evolution was real, it would still be happening: Apes would be turning into humans today.”
One test she gave to students asked: “ISN’T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” The correct answer was “Lord,” but C.C. wrote in something else. Roark responded by scolding the boy in front of the entire class.
When informed that C.C. was a Buddhist and therefore didn’t believe in God, Roark allegedly responded, “you’re stupid if you don’t believe in God.”
On another accusation, she allegedly described both Buddhism and Hinduism as “stupid.”
When the outraged parents confronted Sabine Parish Superintendent Sara Ebarb about the incidents, she allegedly told them “this is the Bible belt” and that they “shouldn’t be offended” to “see God here.” Ebarb advised that C.C. should either change his faith or be transferred to another District school where “there are more Asians.”
Those “educators” had better hope that there is no God, because if he does, then they are all surely going to hell.
Remember when President Clinton put forward the idea of “Reinventing Government”?
It was all about how by unleashing “private sector efficiency” on government functions, with the inevitable result being better government for less money.
Leaving aside the historically dismal performance of such efforts ***cough*** Halliburton ***cough***, but one could make the argument that providing logistical service to the military, but when the part of the Office of Personnel Management responsible for security clearance investigations was spun off as a private firm, USIS, that was a core function.
It really doesn’t get any more “core” than preserving state secrets.
And now we see how “private sector efficiency” has allowed the security clearance process to descend into a morass of corruption and incompetence:
The company that conducted a background investigation on the contractor Edward J. Snowden fraudulently signed off on hundreds of thousands of incomplete security checks in recent years, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
The government said the company, U.S. Investigations Services, defrauded the government of millions of dollars by submitting more than 650,000 investigations that had not been completed. The government uses those reports to help make hiring decisions and decide who gets access to national security secrets.
In addition to Mr. Snowden, the company performed the background check for Aaron Alexis, a 34-year-old military contractor who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard last year. Mr. Alexis, who died in a shootout with the police, left behind documents saying the government had been tormenting him with low-frequency radio waves.
The accusations highlight not just how reliant the government is on contractors to perform national security functions, but also how screening those contractors requires even more contractors. U.S. Investigations Service, now known as USIS, is the largest outside investigator for government security clearances. It is one of many companies that has found lucrative government work during the expansion of national security in the last decade.
From 2008 to 2012, about 40 percent of the company’s investigations were fraudulently submitted, the Justice Department said.
(emphasis mine)
It doesn’t save money. All it does is increase the looting, and gives the looters more money to lobby for more looting.
This is disastrous for both our government and our society.