Year: 2015

Great. Now Bees are Going to Have Nic Fits

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It appears that part of the problem with the  neonicotinoid pesticides,  and bees is that bees react in the same way to the pesticides as a smoker does to nicotine, and preferentially select contaminated nectar.  (Research articles is here and here)

This has the effect of increasing their exposure to these pesticides, which have been tied to colony collapse disorder:

Bees prefer food containing neonicotinoid pesticides, research suggests.

They may “get a buzz” from the nicotine-like chemicals in the same way smokers crave cigarettes, according to scientists at Newcastle University.

The experiments raise the question of whether bees can be exposed to harmful doses of pesticides because they are attracted to the chemicals.

Another study found neonicotinoids had a negative effect on bees in the wild.

The Crop Protection Association, which represents pesticide producers, questioned the findings of the studies, published in the journal, Nature.
Scientific controversy

Bees are in decline in Europe and North America due to a number of factors, including pesticides, habitat loss and diseases.

In 2013, the EU imposed a two-year ban on using three neonicotinoid pesticides on flowering crops amid concern about their effects on bees.

Neonicotinoids contain synthetic chemicals similar to nicotine, which as a plant toxin is damaging to insects.

Neuroscientists at Newcastle University tested whether honeybees and bumblebees preferred food containing neonicotinoids over untreated food in the laboratory.

They were surprised to find that sugar solution containing two of three neonicotinoid pesticides appeared to be attractive to bees and “may act like a drug” targeting the brain.

This sh%$ is getting very real.

We need to stop pandering to the Ag chemical companies of the world, and review these chemicals with a lot more rigor.

And in the Justice Department………

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Eric Holder’s DOJ has defended the police for every excessive use of force suit that has made it to the Supreme Court:

Teresa Sheehan was alone in her apartment at a mental health center, clutching what her lawyers said was a small bread knife and demanding to be left alone. San Francisco police officers, responding to a call from a social worker, forced open the door, blinded her with pepper spray and shot her.

It was the kind of violent police confrontation that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has frequently criticized in Cleveland; Albuquerque; Ferguson, Mo.; and beyond. But last month, when Ms. Sheehan’s civil rights lawsuit reached the Supreme Court, the Justice Department backed the police, saying that a lower court should have given more weight to the risks that the officers faced.

At the Supreme Court, where the limits of police power are established, Mr. Holder’s Justice Department has supported police officers every time an excessive-force case has made its way to arguments. Even as it has opened more than 20 civil rights investigations into local law enforcement practices, the Justice Department has staked out positions that make it harder for people to sue the police and that give officers more discretion about when to fire their guns.

Police groups see Mr. Holder as an ally in that regard, and that pattern has rankled civil rights lawyers, who say the government can have a far greater effect on policing by interpreting law at the Supreme Court than through investigations of individual departments.

“There is an inherent conflict between people at the Justice Department trying to stop police abuses and other people at the Justice Department convincing the Supreme Court that police abuses should be excused,” said Ronald L. Kuby, a Manhattan civil rights lawyer.

The department should not be routinely defending cops against allegations of excessive force before the Supreme Court.  It should be evaluating each case on its own merits, and making the decision only then.

It’s current path is does not serve the citizenry.

What Part of “Peace Officer” Don’t You Get?

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Protests in Baltimore were relatively peaceful last night, and now we are getting reports police escalated last night’s events by penning up the teenagers who were at the Mondawmin Mall:

After Baltimore police and a crowd of teens clashed near the Mondawmin Mall in northwest Baltimore on Monday afternoon, news reports described the violence as a riot triggered by kids who had been itching for a fight all day. But in interviews with Mother Jones and other media outlets, teachers and parents maintain that police actions inflamed a tense-but-stable situation.

 ………

 When school let out that afternoon, police were in the area equipped with full riot gear. According to eyewitnesses in the Mondawmin neighborhood, the police were stopping busses and forcing riders, including many students who were trying to get home, to disembark. Cops shut down the local subway stop. They also blockaded roads near the Mondawmin Mall and Frederick Douglass High School, which is across the street from the mall, and essentially corralled young people in the area. That is, they did not allow the after-school crowd to disperse.

 Meghann Harris, a teacher at a nearby school, described on Facebook what happened:

Police were forcing busses to stop and unload all their passengers. Then, [Frederick Douglass High School] students, in huge herds, were trying to leave on various busses but couldn’t catch any because they were all shut down. No kids were yet around except about 20, who looked like they were waiting for police to do something. The cops, on the other hand, were in full riot gear, marching toward any small social clique of students…It looked as if there were hundreds of cops.

The kids were “standing around in groups of 3-4,” Harris said in a Facebook message to Mother Jones. “They weren’t doing anything. No rock throwing, nothing…The cops started marching toward groups of kids who were just milling about.”

A teacher at Douglass High School, who asked not to be identified, tells a similar story: “When school was winding down, many students were leaving early with their parents or of their own accord.” Those who didn’t depart early, she says, were stranded. Many of the students still at school at that point, she notes, wanted to get out of the area and avoid any Purge-like violence. Some were requesting rides home from teachers. But by now, it was difficult to leave the neighborhood. “I rode with another teacher home,” this teacher recalls, “and we had to route our travel around the police in riot gear blocking the road… The majority of my students thought what was going to happen was stupid or were frightened at the idea. Very few seemed to want to participate in ‘the purge.'”

A parent who picked up his children from a nearby elementary school, says via Twitter, “The kids stood across from the police and looked like they were asking them ‘why can’t we get on the buses’ but the police were just gazing…Majority of those kids aren’t from around that neighborhood. They NEED those buses and trains in order to get home.” He continued: “If they would’ve let them children go home, yesterday wouldn’t have even turned out like that.”

Meg Gibson, another Baltimore teacher, described a similar scene to Gawker: “The riot police were already at the bus stop on the other side of the mall, turning buses that transport the students away, not allowing students to board. They were waiting for the kids.…Those kids were set up, they were treated like criminals before the first brick was thrown.” With police unloading busses, and with the nearby metro station shut down, there were few ways for students to clear out.

………

Mondawmin Mall is where lots of students catch the bus, when you shut down MTA how the heck they gonna get home? @BaltimorePolice
— Jay (@Ms_lionesss) April 27, 2015

It is the job of police to maintain the peace. It is why they sometimes are called peace officers.

The police are the professionals in this situation, and they must act professionally.

The expectation of professionalism is why they are get to use a gun, a badge, and tools like tear gas and pepper spray.

It means, for example, that they need to use the appropriate tools to manage a situation, and not, for example, throw bricks back at the protesters:

We’re about to look now. Here’s a video of police throwing rocks back at protesters:

This is not in indicator of professionalism in a police force.

The rioting last night was foreseeable given the behavior of the police.

They presented themselves in an overly confrontational way to teenagers, they then made impossible for people to leave the area.

While the behavior of the protesters is reprehensible, the behavior of the police can only be described as extreme malpractice.

There are a number of senior cops on the Baltimore PD who needs to be fired over this.

Republican Family Values

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It’s the hypocrisy, stupid:

Anti-Gay North Dakota State Rep Caught Sending Dick Pics On The Grindr, Surprise LOL

 by Evan Hurst, Apr 28 2:00 pm 2015

 America, meet your newest closet case anti-gay Republican lawmaker! He’s a North Dakota state representative, and he is not in the closet anymore, due to the fact that he’s been outed for voting against SB 2279, a routine bill designed to protect gays and lesbians, among others, from discrimination (which failed, for the third time). The representative’s name is “Randy Boehning,” and while we are tempted to just finish the post right there, we will tell you the story instead:

State Rep. Randy Boehning, a 52-year-old Republican legislator from Fargo, says a Capitol employee told him a fellow lawmaker vowed to out him as gay if he continued to vote against bills granting gays legal protections against discrimination. […]

The exchange came to light when Dustin Smith, a 21-year-old Bismarck man with no known connections to the Capitol, contacted The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead earlier this month, saying he recognized Boehning from a gay dating smartphone app called Grindr. Chatting under the user name Top Man!, Boehning sent Smith sexually suggestive messages and, in the early morning hours of March 12, an unsolicited photo of his penis, according to exchanges reviewed by The Forum.

Smith added, “how can you discriminate against the person you’re trying to pick up?” Good point, sir! It’s very rude, to want to f%$# the gays in a good way in your off time, and then go to work the next day and f%$# the gays in a bad way, by voting against their (AND YOUR OWN) rights. This is why we have the Barney Frank rule, which says that if a politician is known to be gay, and also votes and campaigns against LGBT people, then they are fair game for outing and stuff.

Has anyone told Jon Stewart?

Think of the children!!!!

TPP Dayenu

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For the gentiles out there, Dayenu is a song that sung at the Passover Seder. (My family’s Minhag [tradition] is that it is sung in the key of “off”).

It describes the exodus from Egypt, and ends each stanza with “Dayenu”, which means, “It would be enough”.

In any case, I will reproduce part of the TPP trade deal Dayenu:

1. The TPP makes it easier to offshore more jobs now performed in the United States.

2. If the TPP just made it easier to offshore more jobs and did not also generate increasing downward pressure on wages, it would still be sufficient to vote to kill it!

3. If the TPP just generated increasing downward pressure on wages and did not also empower another 25,000 foreign corporations to use Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) tribunals to gut our net neutrality, environmental, health, labor and safety laws and regulations, it would still be sufficient to vote to kill it!

4. If the TPP just empowered another 25,000 foreign corporations to use investor state tribunals to gut our net neutrality, environmental, health, labor and safety laws and regulations and did not also give big pharma new monopoly patent rights, it would still be sufficient to vote to kill it!

5. If the TPP just gave big pharma new monopoly patent rights, and did not also provide for rolling back financial regulations put in place after the crash of 2008, it would still be sufficient to vote to kill it!

6. If the TPP just rolled back financial regulations and did not also provide for banning buy local and buy domestic policies, it would still be sufficient to vote to kill it!

7. If the TPP just provided for banning buy local and buy domestic policies and did not also undermine climate change and energy policies by constraining the permissible policies governments can use to implement them, it would still be sufficient to vote to kill it!

8. If the TPP just undermined climate change and energy policies by constraining the permissible policies governments can use to implement them and did not also use an anti-democratic fast track process that gives Representatives and Senators no space to represent the range of people they represent, it would still be sufficient to vote to kill it!

9. If the TPP did not just use an anti-democratic fast track process that gives Representatives and Senators no space to represent the range of people they represent, and did not also potentially prevent the Treasury from replacing the practice of issuing Treasury debt to fund deficit spending with alternative funding methods, it would still be sufficient to vote to kill it!

Read the rest.

Bullsh%$ Bingo, Education Edition

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I understand that there are a number of different views on how education might change over the next few decades, but this melange of incomprehensible argle bargle that serves as a justification for paying slave wages and breaking teachers unions.

Basically, he is describing the private equity wet dream for charter schools:

Whenever a college student asks me, a veteran high-school English educator, about the prospects of becoming a public-school teacher, I never think it’s enough to say that the role is shifting from “content expert” to “curriculum facilitator.” Instead, I describe what I think the public-school classroom will look like in 20 years, with a large, fantastic computer screen at the front, streaming one of the nation’s most engaging, informative lessons available on a particular topic. The “virtual class” will be introduced, guided, and curated by one of the country’s best teachers (a.k.a. a “super-teacher”), and it will include professionally produced footage of current events, relevant excerpts from powerful TedTalks, interactive games students can play against other students nationwide, and a formal assessment that the computer will immediately score and record.

I tell this college student that in each classroom, there will be a local teacher-facilitator (called a “tech”) to make sure that the equipment works and the students behave. Since the “tech” won’t require the extensive education and training of today’s teachers, the teacher’s union will fall apart, and that “tech” will earn about $15 an hour to facilitate a class of what could include over 50 students. This new progressive system will be justified and supported by the American public for several reasons: Each lesson will be among the most interesting and efficient lessons in the world; millions of dollars will be saved in reduced teacher salaries; the “techs” can specialize in classroom management; performance data will be standardized and immediately produced (and therefore “individualized”); and the country will finally achieve equity in its public school system.

………

I’ve started recognizing a common thread to the latest trends in teaching. Flipped learning, blending learning, student-centered learning, project-based learning, and even self-organized learning—they all marginalize the teacher’s expertise. Or, to put it more euphemistically, they all transform the teacher into a more facilitative role.

I believe that a good adjective to describe this vision is, “Dystopian“.

A good adjective to describe the article is, “Incomprehensible”.

A good summary is, “Education changes ……… Because ……… Internet.”

The Technical Term is Lying Sack of Sh%$………

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In this case, the term can be applied to the President of the Maryland Police Union:

Protests escalated in Baltimore on Saturday over the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered a serious spinal cord injury while in police custody. The mysterious injury raised suspicions that he was taken on a “rough ride,” in which officers deliberately drive erratically to injure unbuckled and handcuffed passengers. But the president of Maryland’s police union told ThinkProgress he is unaware of the unsanctioned police practice.

In a word, bullsh%$.

“Rough rides”, a procedure where a person is placed in a paddy wagon, handcuffed but not buckled in, and then subjected to a ride that consists of sudden starts, stops, and abrupt maneuvers, and so tossing them around the inside of the vehicle.

I understand that Mr. Canales has a responsibility to represent his union members, but this sort of bald faced lie, much like the boneheaded statement by Gene Ryan, president of the Baltimore FOP that the earlier peaceful protests were akin to a lynching, are transparently false.

What’s more these statements are clearly inflammatory, and so both of these folks served to put their own members at risk.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that term before,” Maryland Fraternal Order of Police President Vince Canales said when asked about the event that may have caused Gray’s death.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts acknowledged on Friday that Gray’s injuries could have been caused by a “rough ride,” but said the investigation into the circumstances of his death will continue even after the police findings are given to prosecutors on Wednesday.

A Baltimore Sun investigation found that Gray is not the only person to emerge from a Baltimore police van with serious injuries — others have won multi-million judgments after suing the police department for their injuries. But despite the repeated brutal incidents, Canales and others closely entwined with the city police are still unaware of the practice.

Baltimore deputy public defender Natalie Finegar told the Baltimore Sun she has no personal knowledge of “rough rides,” but others in her office are aware of the practice. “It is common knowledge among public defenders that [the Baltimore Police Department] has paid out significant judgments in ‘rough ride’ and other cases,” James Johnston, a Baltimore public defender, told the Sun. “In my experience, it is not uncommon for clients to suffer injuries during an arrest.”

When asked about a series of cases of police brutality in Baltimore, Canales presented a very different view from advocates who say the recent incidents in Ferguson, New York City, Cleveland and elsewhere were part of a larger systematic problem with police.

Instead of banning any particular police practices, Canales said each incident should be treated on a “case-by-case” basis because “everyone responds differently to different situations.” But reports from across the country have proved otherwise. In Baltimore, an investigation from 2014 found that the police department has paid around $5.7 million to more than 100 people since 2011 in lawsuits claiming officers beat up mostly African American suspects.

Maybe police officers should turf out Vince Canales and Gene Ryan at the next union election, because they sure as hell aren’t serving their members or the general public.

Bad Day at the Office

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This is one of the finest examples of a correction ever:

Correction: This post initially attributed the song “Barbara Ann” to The Beatles. It is, in fact, a Beach Boys song. The author of this post would blame his relative youth, but as a fan of the oldies, this would be dishonest. He would instead like to extend his sincerest apology for this egregious error and promise that it will not be repeated.

Clarification: As Ed Morrissey notes, the song was originally written and sung by The Regents and later covered by the Beach Boys. So the author of this post is clearly having one of those days.

He was writing how bombing Iran is incredibly unpopular, even among Republicans.

In the process, he writes about how McCain sang “Bomb Iran” to the tune of “Barbara Ann”, and completely screws up the provenance of the song.

Normally, I reserve the, “Bad Day at the Office,” hed for vehicular crashes, but I think that Aaron Blake’s correction rated this title as well.

H/t Jim Romenesko.

So, the Flash Crash Was Caused by Some Guy Living in His Parents’ Basement?

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The DoJ is attempting to extradite Nav Sarao to the United States because he allegedly caused the “Flash Crash”.

While this might be significant for Mr. Sarao, this is missing the forest for the trees.

If our markets are so unstable as to be tripped into catastrophe by one guy, they are too unstable to exist in their current form:

Everyone on Wall Street has been talking about this week’s arrest of a little-known UK-based trader on allegations that he caused the May 6, 2010 “Flash Crash.”

That’s because the consensus view on the Street is that the arrest itself is absolutely ridiculous. In fact, as one trader put it, it’s “beyond ridiculous.”

 Over the past few days, we’ve had several conversations with traders, quantitative analysts, and hedge fund managers. It was the topic of conversation at happy hours and charity events.

 What’s more, there wasn’t a single person we spoke to who bought the argument that one guy wiped billions from the market in a matter of minutes by “spoofing” — a practice in which a trader orders a bunch of trades and then cancels them. It creates artificial demand and manipulates the price of a stock.

 It’s been almost five years since the “Flash Crash” and regulators are suddenly blaming Navinder “Nav” Sarao, a 36-year-old who trades S&P futures from his mom and dad’s house in a London suburb. Yep, regulators think a guy in saggy sweatpants and Nike Airs trading from his parents’ basement did it.

It also appears that the charges are just plain bogus:

On May 6, 2010, Sarao’s algo started at 10:20:00 ET and turned off at 14:40:12. The flash crash ignition point was at 14:42:44
— Eric Scott Hunsader (@nanexllc) April 22, 2015

Spotting Sarao’s #HFT spoofing algo is like spotting an elephant at a tea party. An eMini chart on 5/6 pic.twitter.com/AN8Ov2VH7u
— Eric Scott Hunsader (@nanexllc) April 22, 2015


Round up the usual suspects!

This prosecution is all about covering up the total vulnerability in the market.

The “Flash Crash” was not a result of actions of one person. It was a result of the profit strategies of dozens, if not hundreds of actors in the markets, and they all are structured in a way that was calculated to maximize, and exploit, volatility.

The “market making” capabilities of high frequency traders is a mirage:  As soon as the market experiences upset, they pull out, and create a crash.

We need to make the markets less responsive, and create greater transaction costs.

Otherwise, instant market panics will become a routine part of our lives, and the lives of the 99% not extracting rents from the financial markets will suck.

The Police Story on the Freddie Gray Killing Changes

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Gee, what a surprise. Once what happened to Freddie Gray became a matter for independent investigation, the police story changed:

Police chiefs in Baltimore retreated on Friday from earlier claims that Freddie Gray, whose death has caused an outcry, must have been injured inside the van carrying him after his arrest.

They said they were investigating what happened during one of the stops made by the vehicle.

Asked whether Gray was fatally hurt by a so-called “rough ride” without a seatbelt in the back of the vehicle, or could have been injured outside the van, police commissioner Anthony Batts said at a press conference there were “potentials for both of those”.

“If someone harmed Freddie Gray, we will have to prosecute him,” said Batts.

Deputy commissioner Kevin Davis said officials were looking into the second of three stops the van’s driver made after Gray was arrested on the morning of 12 April. “The facts of that interaction are under investigation,” said Davis.

Gray, 25, died last Sunday after suffering a broken neck and injured voice box. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said earlier this week “what happened happened inside the van,” echoing a police report that said Gray “suffered a medical emergency” in the vehicle.

………

Davis said Gray said he needed a medic during a third stop by the van, made to pick up a second prisoner, but an ambulance was not called until 25 minutes later, after the vehicle arrived at police headquarters. Batts told reporters that during the third stop, officers “picked him up off the floor and placed him on a seat”.

Batts said on Thursday that the second prisoner, who was separated from Gray by a metal wall, told investigators that Gray was “was still moving around, that he was kicking and making noises” until the van arrived at the station. Police are declining to identify the man due to his status as a witness in the criminal inquiry.

This thin blue line crap needs to stop.

We not only need to go after don’t cops, we need to go after cops who refuse to go after bad cops.

Zero tolerance.

I Wish that I Were Finnish

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IN Finland, fines are based on daily earnings, so a rich asshole got a a €54,024 fine for doing 64 in a 50 zone:

Getting a speeding ticket is not a feel-good moment for anyone. But consider Reima Kuisla, a Finnish businessman.

He was recently fined 54,024 euros (about $58,000) for traveling a modest, if illegal, 64 miles per hour in a 50 m.p.h. zone. And no, the 54,024 euros did not turn out to be a typo, or a mistake of any kind.

Mr. Kuisla is a millionaire, and in Finland the fines for more serious speeding infractions are calculated according to income. The thinking here is that if it stings for the little guy, it should sting for the big guy, too.

The ticket had its desired effect. Mr. Kuisla, 61, took to Facebook last month with 12 furious posts in which he included a picture of his speeding ticket and a picture of what 54,024 euros could buy if it were not going to the state coffers — a new Mercedes. He said he was seriously considering leaving Finland altogether, a position to which he held firm when reached by phone at a bar where he was watching horse races.

“The way things are done here makes no sense,” Mr. Kuisla sputtered, saying he would not be giving interviews. Before hanging up, he added: “For what and for whom does this society exist? It is hard to say.”

………

But the idea that the rich should pay heavier fines did not seem to be much in question. “It is an old system,” said Pasi Kemppainen, chief superintendent at the National Police Board. “It may lead to high fines, but only for people who can afford it.”

In fact, the Finnish “day fine” system, also in use in some other Scandinavian countries, dates to the 1920s, when fines based on income were instituted for all manner of lesser crimes, such as petty theft and assault, and helped greatly reduce the prison population.

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The fines are calculated based on half an offender’s daily net income, with some consideration for the number of children under his or her roof and a deduction deemed to be enough to cover basic living expenses, currently 255 euros per month.

Then, that figure is multiplied by the number of days of income the offender should lose, according to the severity of the offense.

Mr. Kuisla, a betting man who parlayed his winnings into a real estate empire, was clocked speeding near the Seinajoki airport. Given the speed he was going, Mr. Kuisla was assessed eight days. His fine was then calculated from his 2013 income, 6,559,742 euros, or more than $7 million at current exchange rates.

Someone committing a similar offense and earning about 50,000 euros a year, or $54,000, none of it capital gains, and with no young children, would get a fine of about 345 euros, or about $370. Someone earning 300,000 euros ($322,000), would have to pay about 1,480 euros ($1,590).

My heart bleeds borscht for Reima Kuisla.

Man up you over-pampered parasite.

The Shrill One is Sick of Those Muthaf%$#ing Liars on this Muthaf%$#ing Campaign

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Among other things, he appears to be calling out the New York Times, though not by name, who publishes his opinion pieces:

So there’s a lot of buzz about alleged scandals involving the Clinton Foundation. Maybe there’s something to it. But you have to wonder: is this just the return of “Clinton rules”?

If you are old enough to remember the 1990s, you remember the endless parade of alleged scandals, Whitewater above all — all of them fomented by right-wing operatives, all eagerly hyped by mainstream news outlets, none of which actually turned out to involve wrongdoing. The usual rules didn’t seem to apply; instead it was Clinton rules, under which innuendo and guilt by association were considered perfectly OK, in which the initial suggestion of lawbreaking received front-page headlines and the subsequent discovery that there was nothing there was buried in the back pages if it was reported at all.

Some of the same phenomenon resurfaced during the 2008 primary.

So, is this time different? First indications are not encouraging; it’s already apparent that the author of the anti-Clinton book that’s driving the latest stuff is a real piece of work.

The link that he mentions it sites dates that are wrong, conflating paid and unpaid speaking gigs, and the use of hoax press releases by parody sites.

I really don’t want to defend Hillary Clinton.

The dynastic issue is of concern, and it is clear, notwithstanding her recent statements regarding finance and inequality, that she is a tool of the banksters. (And then there is that whole frothing at the mouth war monger thing)

So damn the Times and the Post for making me defend her.

The only bright note to this, as Krugman observes later in his post, is that, “There’s a much more effective progressive infrastructure now, much more scrutiny of reporting, and the kinds of malpractice that went unsanctioned 20 years ago can land you in big trouble now.”

Truth be told, I don’t think that the progressive infrastructure will make a difference, but I do think that things like Twitter and Facebook, which make it a lot easier to point out unprofessional journalism, have become a much bigger part of the media landscape, if only because they influence what organizations like Politifact, the WaPo‘s Fact Checker, and FactCheck.org, who do a little bit of separating the wheat from the chaff.

Well, it was Only a Matter of Time Until we Killed a White Guy………

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And now the Obama administration has been forced to admit that they killed two white hostages in drone strikes:

An American aid worker and another man held hostage by Al Qaeda were killed in an American drone strike in Pakistan in January, government officials disclosed on Thursday, underscoring the perils of a largely invisible, long-distance war waged through video screens, joysticks and sometimes incomplete intelligence.

 Intending to wipe out a compound linked to the terrorist group, the Central Intelligence Agency authorized the attack with no idea that the hostages were being held there despite hundreds of hours of surveillance, the officials said. Even afterward, they said, the agency did not realize at first that it had killed an American it had long sought to rescue, with the wrenching news becoming clear over time.

 The violent death of an American at the hands of his own government proved a searing moment in a drone war that has come to define the nation’s battle with Al Qaeda, especially since President Obama took office. Visibly upset, Mr. Obama came to the White House briefing room shortly after his staff issued a written statement announcing the deaths to make a rare personal apology.

But no one gave a sh%$ when a 16 year old American kid, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was killed by drones “accidentally”, former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, “I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don’t think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.”

His dad was a jihadi, so it was all cool.

One of the important thing to note is that the White House had no idea who was in the al-Qaeda compound:

The targets of the deadly drone strikes that killed two hostages and two suspected American members of al-Qaida were “al-Qaida compounds” rather than specific terrorist suspects, the White House disclosed on Thursday.

The lack of specificity suggests that despite a much-publicized 2013 policy change by Barack Obama restricting drone killings by, among other things, requiring “near certainty that the terrorist target is present”, the US continues to launch lethal operations without the necessity of knowing who specifically it seeks to kill, a practice that has come to be known as a “signature strike”.

Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, acknowledged that the January deaths of hostages Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto might prompt the tightening of targeting standards ahead of lethal drone and other counter-terrorism strikes. A White House review is under way.

“In the aftermath of a situation like this, it raises legitimate questions about whether additional changes need to be made to these protocols,” Earnest said.

………

Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the accidental killings revealed on Thursday raise “questions about the reliability and the depth of the intelligence that the government is relying on to conduct drone strikes”.

“In neither of these two cases did the government actually know beforehand who it was killing. It does raise questions about how much the government knows – or how little the government knows – before it pulls the trigger,” Jaffer said.

“Perhaps that doesn’t in itself suggest that the strikes were unlawful, but it certainly raises some questions.”

It appears that the CIA thought that something might be wrong when there were two extra bodies found at the strike sites.

Oops!

I will note two things, said by the inimitable Charlie Pierce:

Am I being unpatriotic if I mention that, at this point, I wouldn’t trust the CIA to give me directions to the mall?

There has been a lot of “collateral damage” (Dead innocents) from drone strikes, but it is clear that the CIA is FAR more reckless than the Pentagon over this, though it has improved from the excesses of Petraeus’ disastrous stint as DCIA.

His second point is more important:

I’ve always thought of the drone war in terms of the melon vendor and the guy in the goat cart on the other side of the road. There’s an al Qaeda operative buying a melon from a vendor. Meanwhile, a guy with a goat cart comes up the other side of the road. Suddenly, here comes death from above. The terrorist is dead. So is the melon vendor. So is the guy in the goat cart on the other side of the road. They’re all blown into equally tiny bits. How do we think the families of the melon vendor and the guy with the goat cart are going to take this? We create a desire for retribution with which our grandchildren may have to cope. And we may never know the names of the melon dealer or the guy with the goat cart, the way we now know the names of Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto. We may never know the name of the melon dealer until his grandchild blows up an airplane. And none of that should be surprising because that’s also what happens when you make war, any kind of war, in a place.

The drone campaign is clearly excessive, and as a result, we are destabilizing the region, and creating a generation of people who want to make war on America.

Anyone who thinks that our drone campaign makes us safer is insane.

Ted Cruz Panders to the Ghey When Money is Involved

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One of the big questions about Ted Cruz is whether he is a true believer, or if he is just a self-aggrandizing asshole who is doing this for his own selfish reasons.

Well, this news seems to strongly imply that Ted Cruz is really all about Ted Cruz:

Senator Ted Cruz has positioned himself as a strong opponent of same-sex marriage, urging pastors nationwide to preach in support of marriage as an institution between a man and a woman, which he said was “ordained by God.”

But on Monday night, at a reception for him at the Manhattan apartment of two prominent gay hoteliers, the Texas senator and Republican presidential hopeful struck quite a different tone.

During the gathering, according to two people present, Mr. Cruz said he would not love his daughters any differently if one of them was gay. He did not mention his opposition to same-sex marriage, saying only that marriage is an issue that should be left to the states.

The dinner and “fireside chat” for about a dozen people with Mr. Cruz and his wife, Heidi, was at the Central Park South penthouse of Mati Weiderpass and Ian Reisner, longtime business partners who were once a couple and who have been pioneers in the gay hospitality industry.

“Ted Cruz said, ‘If one of my daughters was gay, I would love them just as much,’” recalled Mr. Reisner, a same-sex marriage proponent who described himself as simply an attendee at Mr. Weiderpass’s event.

(emphasis mine)

Cruz doesn’t care about hating on the ghey, he’s just using it for political advantage.

Politicians weasel on issues all the time, but some issues, and I would include same sex marriage among these issues, there has to be a real moral component (at least on the pro-bigotry side).

Couldn’t We Send Him to Guantánamo?

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This has to be the best headline of the day:

To Send a Message, Judge Sentences David Petraeus to 75% of One Speaking Fee

David PetraeusFormer CIA Director David Petraeus just got sentenced to two years of probation for leaking highly sensitive information to his mistress and then lying to the FBI about it.

………

The only “surprise” of the hearing is that, rather than getting slapped with a $40,000 fine, Judge David Keesler more than doubled the fine to send a message.

To $100,000.

According to SpeakerPedia, Petraeus makes upwards of $132,750 for each speech.

Needless to say, this is disgraceful.

This guy mishandled secure information, he then deliberately leaked it to his lover, and then he lied to the FBI about it, and he can make enough to pay the fine in about 70 minutes.

BTW, the Obama administration is using him as a consultant now, so it appears that he still has a security clearance.

There is Now a Nazi Definition of Chutzpah………

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The descendants of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, are suing Random House demanding royalties for the use of his quotes in the book Goebbels: A Biography:

The estate of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda, is taking legal action against the publisher Random House over a new biography, claiming payment for the use of extracts from his diaries.

Cordula Schacht – a lawyer whose own father, Hjalmar Schacht, was Hitler’s minister of economics – is suing Random House Germany and its imprint Siedler, over the book Goebbels, by Peter Longerich, professor of modern German history at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Longerich, an authority on the Holocaust and Nazi era Germany, drew extensively on Goebbels’ diaries in his biography, which was published in Germany in 2010. Now those same passages from the diaries are set to appear in the English ­edition, which Penguin Random House UK and its imprint Bodley Head will publish on 7 May.

Rainer Dresen, general counsel of Random House Germany, told the Guardian that an important principle was at stake. “We are convinced that no money should go to a war criminal,” he said.

Agreed, Mr. Dresen.

Not only is this chutzpah, it’s insane, even when not considering the overweening nature of the international copyright regime.

There May Still Be Some Utility Left in the Mk. 1 Human

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Toyota has discovered that robots cannot do it all, and that they need highly experienced experts to maximize the productivity at their plants:

Inside Toyota Motor Corp.’s oldest plant, there’s a corner where humans have taken over from robots in thwacking glowing lumps of metal into crankshafts. This is Mitsuru Kawai’s vision of the future.

“We need to become more solid and get back to basics, to sharpen our manual skills and further develop them,” said Kawai, a half century-long company veteran tapped by President Akio Toyoda to promote craftsmanship at Toyota’s plants. “When I was a novice, experienced masters used to be called gods, and they could make anything.”

These gods, or “kami-sama” in Japanese, are making a comeback at Toyota, the company that long set the pace for manufacturing prowess in the auto industry and beyond. Toyota’s next step forward is counterintuitive in an age of automation: Humans are taking the place of machines in plants across the nation so workers can develop new skills and figure out ways to improve production lines and the car-building process.

“Toyota views their people who work in a plant like this as craftsmen who need to continue to refine their art and skill level,” said Jeff Liker, who has written eight books on Toyota and visited Kawai last year. “In almost every company you would visit, the workers’ jobs are to feed parts into a machine and call somebody for help when it breaks down.”

The return of the kami-sama is emblematic of how Toyoda, 57, is remaking the company founded by his grandfather as the chief executive officer has pledged to tilt priorities back toward quality and efficiency from a growth mentality. He’s reining in expansion at the world’s-largest automaker with a three-year freeze on new car plants.

………

“What Akio Toyoda feared the company lost when it was growing so fast was the time to struggle and learn,” said Liker, who met with Toyoda in November. “He felt Toyota got big-company disease and was too busy getting product out.”

………

Learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn’t get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines. At about 100 manual-intensive workspaces introduced over the last three years across Toyota’s factories in Japan, these lessons can then be applied to reprogram machines to cut down on waste and improve processes, Kawai said.

In an area Kawai directly supervises at the forging division of Toyota’s Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap and shortening the production line 96 percent from its length three years ago.

Toyota has eliminated about 10 percent of material-related waste from building crankshafts at Honsha. Kawai said the aim is to apply those savings to the next-generation Prius hybrid.

The work extends beyond crankshafts. Kawai credits manual labor for helping workers at Honsha improve production of axle beams and cut the costs of making chassis parts.

Though Kawai doesn’t envision the day his employer will rid itself of robots — 760 of them take part in 96 percent of the production process at its Motomachi plant in Japan — he has introduced multiple lines dedicated to manual labor in each of Toyota’s factories in its home country, he said.

“We cannot simply depend on the machines that only repeat the same task over and over again,” Kawai said. “To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine.”

True dat.

Guys on the shop floor are an invaluable source of knowledge and wisdom.