Year: 2015

Bernie Sanders Is More Serious than the Media Thinks

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 And I am not just saying this because the famously curmudgeonly Matt Taibbi  wrote him a political love letter.

In the US, the lifeblood of politics is money, and the fact that the Sanders for President campaign raised $1.5 million dollars in the first 24 hours after his announcement, and raised $3 million in the first 4 days.

Needless to say, unlike most modern candidates on both sides of the aisle, these were small individual donations, not Wall Street and other big donors.  (About ½ of Obama campaign funds came from big donors in 2008)

I think that it is highly unlikely that he can wing the primary, and if he did, we would see the Blue Dog and New Dem wings of the party surreptitiously campaigning against him, much like Henry “Scoop” Jackson and his ilk did in 1972 to George McGovern.

I Really Don’t Know What to Make of This

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But if Sy Hersh’s account of the killing of Osama bin Laden is even ¼ true, this is the biggest story that he’s ever broken:*

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.

 The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions, including one by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times Magazine of 19 March 2014. Gall, who spent 12 years as the Times correspondent in Afghanistan, wrote that she’d been told by a ‘Pakistani official’ that Pasha had known before the raid that bin Laden was in Abbottabad. The story was denied by US and Pakistani officials, and went no further. In his book Pakistan: Before and after Osama (2012), Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad, wrote that he’d spoken to four undercover intelligence officers who – reflecting a widely held local view – asserted that the Pakistani military must have had knowledge of the operation. The issue was raised again in February, when a retired general, Asad Durrani, who was head of the ISI in the early 1990s, told an al-Jazeera interviewer that it was ‘quite possible’ that the senior officers of the ISI did not know where bin Laden had been hiding, ‘but it was more probable that they did [know]. And the idea was that, at the right time, his location would be revealed. And the right time would have been when you can get the necessary quid pro quo – if you have someone like Osama bin Laden, you are not going to simply hand him over to the United States.’

 This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.

The cliff notes version of this, courtesy of The Stranger, is:

  • Pakistani officials knew about the raid and even helped the US pull it off.
  • There never was a firefight, neither in the yard outside the house nor once the SEALs got inside.
  • The story of the courier whom the reportedly CIA traced, leading them to bin Laden, was a fabrication.
  • The story of the courier dying in the firefight was a cover-up “because he didn’t exist and we couldn’t produce him,” a retired senior intelligence official told Hersh.
  • The way the CIA actually found out where bin Laden was is that a “Pakistani walk-in” who wanted the $25 million reward came in and told the CIA about it.
  • Osama bin Laden was not armed, contrary to reports that he had a machine gun and was killed in a firefight, and he was not killed with just one or two bullets but “obliterated.”
  • “Seals cannot live with the fact that they killed bin Laden totally unopposed, and so there has to be an account of their courage in the face of danger. The guys are going to sit around the bar and say it was an easy day? That’s not going to happen,” that same retired senior intelligence official said.
  • “Despite all the talk” about what the SEALs collected on-site, the retired official said there were “no garbage bags full of computers and storage devices. The guys just stuffed some books and papers they found in his room in their backpacks.”
  • The story about bin Laden’s sea burial may be a fabrication.
  • The retired official told Hersh that bin Laden’s “remains, including his head… were thrown into a body bag and, during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains—or so the Seals claimed.”
  • Obama was going to wait until a week after bin Laden’s death to announce it, and he was going to tell the American people that bin Laden had been killed by a drone, but after the SEALs had to blow up their malfunctioning helicopter on-site, attracting attention locally, everything changed.
  • The story about the vaccination program carried out locally in an attempt to get bin Laden’s DNA—a story that “led to the cancellation of other international vaccination programmes that were now seen as cover for American spying”—wasn’t true.
  • Retired official again: “It’s a great hoax.”

(emphasis original)

The American press has been completely dismissive of Hersh’s report, and, it’s fair to say that the sourcing is not as solid as I would have liked.

Then again, when you look at the biggest supporter of the “Zero Dark Thirty” narrative, the CIA, we know that they are still lying about torture, that they still nave not come clean about spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and basically wrote the movie “Zero Dark Thirty”.

I know that the movie version is false, at least as to whether torture worked, the Senate Intelligence Committee report proved that.

I’m not sure where the truth lies, and any dealing with the machinations of the “war on terror” in general, and the Pakistani state security apparatus in particular. is a bag full of cats.

At this point, I’ll go with Charlie Pierce’s:

What’s clear is that, in the war on terror, or whatever it is in which we’ve been engaged since we handed the military policy over to the spooks and thrown international crisis diplomacy into the vast, deep underbrush of myth and legend generated by the conjuring spells of the intelligence world, that we willingly surrendered self-government to magic and spellcraft. And Osama bin Laden is still dead, and his body is still at the bottom of the sea. Maybe.

I’m not clear what the truth is, except (of course) for the fact that the CIA tortured, that it did not work, and that Langley lies about everything.

I is confuzzled.

*And yes, I mean that statement. If is just ¼ true, this is the biggest story that Seymour f%$#ing Hersh has ever broken. Think about that for a moment.

Oh Sh%$!

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One of the issues with studying South Polar ice is that you cannot see what is under the ice directly.

Well, using satellite based gravimetric measurements, they were able to get data on mass changes under the ice, and it’s worse than previously estimated:

Study after study shows that Antarctica isn’t in great shape. Its ice shelves are disappearing and its ice sheets are collapsing, hastening swiftly rising sea levels. Sounds terrible.

But just in case you wanted a second opinion, a new study out of Princeton University takes a look at a decade’s worth of satellite data. Their results, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, show that not only is Antarctica melting, it’s melting faster than ever before.

………


They used data collected between 2003 and 2014 by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) twin satellites that can measure differences in the amount of water around the world. Since its launch in 2002, GRACE has analyzed the health of underground aquifers, analyzed flooding, and helped show that ice loss in Antarctica was messing with the continent’s gravity.
………

The data showed that between 2003 and 2014, Antarctica lost 92 billion tons of ice per year. That’s the net amount of ice loss–some ice grew back in East Antarctica, but the gains were a drop in the bucket compared to the 121 billion tons of ice that the West Antarctic ice shelf lost during that time.

This story is not going to have a happy ending.

For Once, the Law Applies to the Little Guy

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The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that the pension gutting law past last year is unconstitutional. I am further amused because it looks like Rahm Emanuel’s equivalent law in Chicago is also covered by the ruling:

The Illinois Supreme Court on Friday unanimously ruled unconstitutional a landmark state pension law that aimed to scale back government worker benefits to erase a massive $105 billion retirement system debt, sending lawmakers and the new governor back to the negotiating table to try to solve the pressing financial issue.

The ruling also reverberated at City Hall, imperiling a similar law Mayor Rahm Emanuel pushed through to shore up two of the four city worker retirement funds and making it more difficult for him to find fixes for police, fire and teacher pension funds that are short billions of dollars.

At issue was a December 2013 state law signed by then-Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn that stopped automatic, compounded yearly cost-of-living increases for retirees, extended retirement ages for current state workers and limited the amount of salary used to calculate pension benefits.

Employee unions sued, arguing that the state constitution holds that pension benefits amount to a contractual agreement and once they’re bestowed, they cannot be “diminished or impaired.” A circuit court judge in Springfield agreed with that assessment in November. State government appealed that decision to the Illinois Supreme Court, arguing that economic necessity forced curbing retirement benefits.

On Friday the justices rejected that argument, saying the law clearly violated what’s known as the pension protection clause in the 1970 Illinois Constitution.

“Our economy is and has always been subject to fluctuations, sometimes very extreme fluctuations,” Republican Justice Lloyd Karmeier wrote on behalf of all seven justices. “The law was clear that the promised benefits would therefore have to be paid and that the responsibility for providing the state’s share of the necessary funding fell squarely on the legislature’s shoulders.

During the financial crisis, Wall Street made arguments that their obscene pay was contractually guaranteed, and as such, could not be regulated.

At the very same time, they were cutting wages and benefits of auto workers at GM and Chrysler.

I am amused.

Additionally, I am amused because this means that teabagger governor Bruce Rauner is going to be forced to raise taxes.

Heh.

I’ve Heard this Song Before

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In a Japanese redux of the Obama administrations secrecy on the Trans Pacific Partnership, the Abe administration has reneged on a promise of transparency:

A senior government official has backtracked on his proposal to give lawmakers access to the draft text of a 12-nation Pacific trade pact ahead of a potential deal.

Yasutoshi Nishimura, senior vice minister of the Cabinet office in charge of the negotiations, said his intent was misunderstood when he told a press conference on Monday that Japan will “make preparations to allow lawmakers access to the text next week” at the earliest.

Nishimura apparently withdrew the disclosure plan due to strong opposition from some government officials, who are concerned about differences in confidentiality obligations between Japan and the United States, according to informed sources.

In line with a rule agreed with the 11 other countries, only a handful of Japanese officials can currently read the text, such as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, TPP minister Akira Amari and chief TPP negotiator Koji Tsuruoka.

However, the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office has already made the draft Trans-Pacific Partnership text available to U.S. legislators on condition they do not make any part of it public.

Nishimura said Thursday that Tokyo cannot take the same measure as Washington “there is a big difference between the duty of confidentiality” of lawmakers in the two countries.

If this deal cannot handle the light of day, which appears to be the case, it’s a bad deal.

And John Dillinger Feared the “Chilling Effect” of the FBI

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Today’s front page of the Baltimore Sun interviews a number of current and former members of the Baltimore Police Department, noting ominously that,  “The result could have a “chilling effect” on officers, preventing them from making “good faith judgments” when making arrests“.

If we eliminate the most significant issue in the whole Freddie Gray case, the fact that a 25 year old man was killed by the callous, brutal, and unprofessional behavior of members of the BPD, we still have the following:

I think that it’s well past time for police to follow the laws that they are sworn to uphold.

I am well aware that the job of being a policeman is a tough one, and I know that it involves tough calls, and I know that human beings make mistakes.

This goes well beyond mistakes.

That’s not the problem.  The problem is the fact that there is a culture of impunity that is nearly universal among law enforcement officers in the United States, and this ill serves both the citizenry and the constabulary.

The Baltimore PD is generating over a million dollars in brutality and misconduct settlements every year, and the very small minority of officers who are responsible for this suffer no consequences.

BTW, I think that one of the things that would help here is if cops got a mandatory 6 paid months off every 3 years, and officers were required to attend mandatory counseling on at least a monthly basis.

I have a friend in the psychological biz, and his assessment is that most police officers who have been on the job for more than a few years suffer from PTSD.

This does not make for a well functioning civil society.

The French Finally Start Making Foreign Sales for the Rafale

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For a number of years now, the Rafale has been the bridesmaid, and never the bride, on foreign sales.

The logjam broke when India selected the Dassault aircraft as the winner of its MMRCA competition.

The contract was for 126 aircraft, with the first 18 being delivered by Dassault, and the remainder being locally manufactured by state owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).

At this point contract negotiations because Dassault was unwilling to offer performance guarantees for the aircraft manufactured by HAL:

After months of seeing Dassault Aviation being browbeaten in the Indian press, French arms procurement agency DGA defended its contractor, asserting that a 2012 agreement to provide India with Rafale fighter jets never committed the company to guarantee aircraft manufactured in India at state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL). However, a recent senior adviser to HAL’s management tells Aviation Week that guaranteeing HAL’s work is not the issue, but that the French are being “rigid” and refusing to stand behind the integrity of the design.

 “Dassault will not be responsible for the whole contract. It is a co-management setup,” says French defense procurement chief Laurent Collet-Billon, who was clear that France will not assume full liability for HAL-built Rafales. “It cannot be a problem, because it was not in the request for proposals [RFP].”

 Speaking to reporters during an annual media address Feb. 9, France’s arms procurement chief said the €10.2 billion ($12 billion) agreement—which has been under negotiation for more than three years—calls for the first 18 of 126 Rafale jets to be built in France. After that, HAL would take over production of the remaining 108 aircraft.

 ………

 Moreover, a retired senior Indian military officer who was involved in the drafting of the original RFP and has been a senior advisor to HAL, tells Aviation Week that “the French don’t want to be accountable in any way. The original equipment manufacturer [OEM] has to stand guarantee with respect to design and integrity of design. The French are trying to get away from the OEM’s responsibility.” He added that the defense ministry would eventually have to choose between the Rafale and the Fifth-Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA), a HAL-developed variant of the Sukhoi T-50.

 ………

 Dassault’s response to the RFP was influenced by a planned partnership with Reliance Industries, a $75 billion private-sector energy-based conglomerate that planned to expand into aerospace and defense. Reliance would have performed much of the manufacturing work on the locally built Rafales in new-build facilities. However, the Indian government has insisted that HAL build the aircraft. The original manufacturers of the Su-30MKI and Jaguar were not asked for similar guarantees.

The subtext here is that Dassault has absolutely no confidence in the ability of HAL to make Rafales in a timely or competent manner.

After much negotiation, it was offered that HAL be upgraded to co-contractor status, which would have the effect of increasing technical transfer at the cost of HAL being responsible for any guarantees on the aircraft that they build.

While all of this was going on, an actual sales deal was signed with Egypt, which would have 24 jets pulled out of the current pipeline for the French AF, and modified slightly. (Basically pulling wiring for nuclear weapons and going with a non-NATO communications system)

The fact that Rafael finally had some export orders, along with the fact that India has a desperate need for new airframes, (it’s aging fleet of MiG-21s are crashing with alarming regularity) India and France cut a deal for a government to government transfer of 36 of the fighter jets:

India will now negotiate direct purchase of 36 Rafale jets from France through a government-to-government deal worth around $4 billion, without any “Make in India” or technology transfer component, to meet IAF’s urgent “critical operational necessity” for new fighters.

 After Modi held extensive talks with French President Francois Hollande in Paris on Friday, it was announced that fresh commercial negotiations will now be held for the direct acquisition of two Rafale squadrons (each has 18 jets) in “flyaway” condition.

 “France has agreed to fast-track the deliveries and give us better terms for the outright purchase and longer maintenance support for the jets. Finding the money for this contract should not be a problem since it will have to be paid in installments linked to deliveries,” said a source.

Basically, the French came away with the upside of an Indian deal, it removed uncertainty in other nations about being a “first mover” on the export front, which led to the Egypt deal, and they did not have to hitch their wagon to the famously f%$#ed up HAL, which, as evidenced by the 30+ year and counting development of the Tejas lightweight fighter, is something that would have bitten Dassult in the butt at a later date.
.

And now there is the announcement of the sale of an additional 24 aircraft to Qatar.

After what must have been over a decade of uncertainty, it appears that Dassault will stay in the fighter business.

Quote of the Day

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I ‘m no expert on UK politics, though I do follow it pretty constantly, but pretty sure one problem (not the only one) is that Labour has the early aughts Dem disease. “Not quite as evil as the other guys” is not a winning strategy. It isn’t really about going more Left, though on some issues it could have been, it’s about clearly highlighting the distinctions. You know, making clear just what it is you stand for, whatever the hell that is.

—Atrios

Or, as Harry S Truman put it, “Given a choice between a fake Republican and a real one, the public will choose the real Republican every time.”

Another Fact the Antivaxxers Will Ignore

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It turns out that measles vaccines do more than just preventing measles, because a case of measles can cause immune suppression for months afterwards, and so even ex-measles the death rate for vaccinated is lower:

Vaccination against measles has many benefits, not only lifelong protection against this potentially serious virus. Mina et al. analyzed data collected since mass vaccination began in high-income countries when measles was common. Measles vaccination is associated with less mortality from other childhood infections. Measles is known to cause transient immunosuppression, but close inspection of the mortality data suggests that it disables immune memory for 2 to 3 years. Vaccination thus does more than safeguard children against measles; it also stops other infections taking advantage of measles-induced immune damage.

Abstract

Immunosuppression after measles is known to predispose people to opportunistic infections for a period of several weeks to months. Using population-level data, we show that measles has a more prolonged effect on host resistance, extending over 2 to 3 years. We find that nonmeasles infectious disease mortality in high-income countries is tightly coupled to measles incidence at this lag, in both the pre- and post-vaccine eras. We conclude that long-term immunologic sequelae of measles drive interannual fluctuations in nonmeasles deaths. This is consistent with recent experimental work that attributes the immunosuppressive effects of measles to depletion of B and T lymphocytes. Our data provide an explanation for the long-term benefits of measles vaccination in preventing all-cause infectious disease. By preventing measles-associated immune memory loss, vaccination protects polymicrobial herd immunity.

I do not expect this to change any minds in the willfully ignorant anti-vaccine community, but perhaps public health officials and legislatures could use this as a justification for tightening up the waivers.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!

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We have the 5th bank failure of the year, Edgebrook Bank of Chicago, Illinois.

At this point last year, we had 6 failures.

There is a possibility, though not a probability, that total FDIC bank closures will remain in the single digits this year.

    Full FDIC list

    1. ,
    2. ,
    3. ,

    Here is the Full NCUA list.

    So, here is the graph pr0n with last few years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

    First the yearly view:

    And then a pic of the year so far:

    Stupid Lawyer Tricks………

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    A lawyer for the sorority Phi Sigma Sigma has sent a DMCA take-down notice to the Penny Arcade forums alleging misappropriation of trade secrets. (See also here)

    They have also apparently sued the poster.

    There, are of course any number of problems with this:

    • The Digital Millennium Copyright Act applies to copyright, not trade secrets.
    • The idea that the oaths, robes, secret handshakes, secret knocks, and seating arrangements are trade secrets is kind of laughable.
    • The post was made 3½ years ago, and has been publicly available since then, so the idea that it is a secret any more is ludicrous.
    • The Streisand Effect, wherein an attempt to censor information results in its wider dissemination.

    In any case, this makes the description of rituals on Penny Arcade a legitimate topic for discussion.

    Phi Sigma Sigma (PSS) secretly stands for Philanthropic Social Society. However, this is never written down or recorded (until now) because it is so “sacred”. The Handshake consists of a series of motions. Member A first begins with the pointer finger and the thumb surrounding Member B’s pointer finger and thumb. This is the “Phi”. Then Member A wraps the remaining fingers, middle, ring and pinky around the hand as a symbol of the “Sigma”. Depending on who is the senior member, the pinky finger is wrapped around the older member’s hand. Next is the hand knock. It goes Knock. Pause. Knock. Pause. Knock, knock, knock. The meetings are set up usually with the President, VP and other officers sitting at the front. The President wears a yellow or gold robe and the officers wear royal blue robes. The remaining members sit across from the officers in a pyramid formation with the base closest to the officers and the apex farthest from the officers. Members are seated by class order, then by alphabetical order. The table at which the President and Vice President are seated consists of candles on each side. Two gold candles and one blue at each corner of the table. Members usually recite an oath, “We, the members of Phi Sigma Sigma, promise to keep secret and sacred all of our proceedings.” The way to enter the pyramid is by using the hand knock to notify the members you are wanting to enter the room. The President will respond back with her gavel by repeating the knock. The person will enter then travel to the apex of the pyramid formation. The President will say the secret and sacred words “Remove the Veil” and then the member will respond back with the Chapter’s name, example, “Zeta Eta.” The Gold and King Blue symbolize “Perpetuity” and “Sincerity”. At initiation, blue “veils” (tulle from the local fabric store) are placed on the heads of the potential new members and are later removed to symbolize some sort of occult transformation and that they are full-fledged members.

    This story has made it to the ΦΣΣ Wikipedia page I think that it’s time to understand that it’s game over, and any additional attempt to suppress this information serves neither the public nor the sorority.

    Decent, but Not Great Unemployment News

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    In April, non-farm payroll increased by 223,000and the (U-3) unemployment rate fel by 0.1% to 5.4%:

    The American job market rebounded in April, the government said on Friday, helping to ease worries that the economy was on the brink of another extended slowdown after a bleak winter in which the overall economy stalled. But the growth in jobs failed to translate, once again, into any significant improvement in pay.

    Employers added 223,000 positions last month, the Labor Department reported, and the unemployment rate decreased to 5.4 percent, a turnaround from the disappointing performance in March, initially reported as a modest 126,000 gain and then revised down on Friday to 85,000.

    “We expected a rebound following the numbers in March and we got it, but not much more,” said Guy Berger, United States economist at RBS. “Wage growth is still the missing piece.”

    Indeed, before Friday’s report, some economists were estimating that average hourly earnings might rise 0.2 percent or more in April, signaling an upswing from the slow pace of wage gains since the end of the recession.


    But average hourly earnings rose only 0.1 percent in April, producing a 2.2 percent annual gain. That modest showing suggests that any meaningful wage gains for most workers are still delayed, despite the steadily falling unemployment rate.

     This really ain’t much.

    First, population increase requires about 200,000 new jobs each month to run in place, so 223,000 is not much, and second the drop in unemployment is largely an artifact of rounding:

    ………

    In April, 8.549 million Americans were unemployed. The civilian labor force, which includes the employed and everyone looking for jobs, stood at 157.072 million. Based on those numbers, the unemployment rate was 5.443%.

    In March, there were 8.575 million unemployed and 156.906 million in the labor force, which meant the unemployment rate back then was closer to 5.465%.

    That’s a 0.022% point decline in the unemployment rate. That’s definitely less of a drop than the 0.1% drop rounding will get you.

    On the brighter side, the Black unemployment rate fell tyo below 10% for the first time in 7 years.

    Quote of the Day

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    And of course, the more Labour comes to be occupied by influential but unrepresentative middle-class professionals, the more contemptuous it becomes of the Other Britain, the lesser Britain, the stupid Britain that won’t obediently vote Labour even though Labour only wants to care for it and nudge it towards health and decency.

    —Brendan O’Neill in Spiked, an online current affairs publication in the UK

    I find this interesting, because the article describes a sort of progressive contempt for the “common man” that Obama just demonstrated in his Nike speech.

    When “We know what is best for you” trumps “What do you need” you get this sort of political malpractice.

    I think that Labour, like the Democratic Party, loathes their base, while the Tories, like the Republican Party, are terrified of their base.

    Time for the liberal base to get some scalps, because putting fear into the hearts of the professional political class gets results.

    Seriously, Nike? I Think That Obama Is Trolling TPP Opponents Now

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    Obama spoke at a Nike plant to promote the Trans Pacific Partnershio (TPP).

    This is an interesting choice, considering that the show manufacturer is patient zero in shipping jobs overseas to contractors who practice abusive worker policiew.

    Bernie Sanders is not unaware of the irony of the choise of venue:

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is calling upon President Obama to cancel his plans to visit Nike’s corporate headquarters this week as part of the White House’s push to drum up support for a major new trade agreement.

    Sanders said the shoe giant, which has moved many of its manufacturing jobs to cheaper markets overseas, only epitomizes how previous trade deals “have failed American workers.”

    In a letter sent to Obama Wednesday afternoon and obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the self-identified socialist, who is now running for president as a Democrat, says the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, would only boost Nike’s profits while doing nothing to increase manufacturing jobs here.

    “While manufacturing may not be the most glamorous job, I’m sure that there are workers across America, from Baltimore to Los Angeles to Vermont to Ferguson, who would be more than happy to be paid $15-$20 an hour to manufacture the Nike products they buy,” Sanders wrote.

    ………

    Obama plans to visit Nike’s Portland-area headquarters Friday morning as he takes his sales pitch outside Washington for both the 12-nation Pacific trade deal and the so-called “fast track” authority he has said is vital to finalizing negotiations with Japan and other partners.

    Obama’s fellow Democrats are proving to be the main obstacle to passing both in Congress, but he has been ramping up his appeals in recent weeks.

    ………

    But Sanders said TPP would “do nothing to encourage Nike to create one manufacturing job in this country,” and would only boost its executives’ compensation.

    He cited a study that Nike employs more than 300,000 workers in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is just 56 cents an hour and labor unions are banned.

    Nike has been the subject of protests for its use of foreign sweat shop labor for over a decade, and Obama thinks that it is a good idea to extol the virtues of the TPP there.

    I am not sure if Barak is just f%$#ing with us, or if he just believes that no one could possibly have a fulfilling life living on shop floor.

    In either case though, his decision to speak there oozes contempt for people on the other side of the issue.

    I Think That We May Have Identified Part of the Problem in the Baltimore Police Department

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    The most senior of the officers indicted in the Freddie Gray murder, Brian Rice,  has had multiple incidences of threats of violence and erratic behavior:

    The Baltimore police lieutenant charged with the manslaughter of Freddie Gray allegedly threatened to kill himself and the husband of his ex-girlfriend, during incidents that led to him being disciplined and twice having his guns confiscated.

    Brian Rice, who pursued and arrested Gray after the 25-year-old “caught his eye” on 12 April, was reportedly given an administrative suspension after being hospitalised for a mental health evaluation when he warned he was preparing to shoot himself in April 2012.

     Rice, 41, also received an internal discipline when a judge granted a temporary restraining order against him after a request from Andrew McAleer, the husband of Karyn McAleer, who is the mother of Rice’s young son and a fellow Baltimore police officer. Rice has been married to and divorced from two further women, according to court records.

    A sharply critical 10-page complaint against Rice, which Andrew McAleer filed to a court in Maryland in January 2013, is being published in full for the first time by the Guardian. It details what McAleer, a Baltimore firefighter, described as a “pattern of intimidation and violence” by the officer.

    McAleer said in his court filing, which was first reported by the Guardian last month, that Rice forced one of Karyn McAleer’s young children to “shoot” a photograph of her and her husband that Rice had “taped to a piece of cardboard intended for target practice”. It was not clear from the filing whether any weapon was actually used.

    McAleer said that two months before this, in April 2012, his wife called to tell him to protect himself and her five children from Rice because the lieutenant had called her threatening to kill himself.

    Deputies from the Carroll County sheriff’s department responded to an emergency call and transported Rice to a hospital, before confiscating his police service weapon, his personal 9mm handgun, two rifles and two shotguns.

    It is unclear how long Rice spent as a patient. The police response to an incident at Rice’s home was first reported earlier this month by the Associated Press, which said it resulted in an administrative suspension from Baltimore police.

    ………

    Rice was allegedly given another administrative suspension and had his guns confiscated again eight months later, according to court filings, after McAleer obtained the week-long peace order against the police lieutenant.

    ………

    Rice was ordered to stay away from McAleer, his home and his workplace after a series of alleged confrontations, including one armed standoff in June 2012 when officers from two police departments responded to a 911 call and spent 90 minutes defusing the situation.

    McAleer alleged Rice was screaming and smelled of alcohol during the 2am confrontation in front of McAleer’s house. He said his wife later said Rice had told her he planned to kill McAleer during the June 2012 encounter.

    Great googly moogly. 

    What does a Baltimore cop have to do to get fired?

    This guy was a f%$#ing lieutenant after all of this?

    H/T Neo at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.