Year: 2015

Seriously?

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I have been a bit dubious of the prosecutors’ (and the judge’s) behavior at the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Boston bombing trial.

The case that is a slam dunk, Tsarnaev’s defense team has conceded that he was one of the bombers, so the only issue in dispute is whether the sentence is life without parole or death, and I get the sense that the prosecutors are trying to push the envelope to get a death penalty, and the judge eager to allow them to do so.

This is depressing, because it is more important for the trial to be seen as scrupulously fair than it is to put a needle in has arm.

The latest, and far most concrete, example of this is the prosecutors (and the judge) have have gone a bit far with the showing a video of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev flipping off a security cam while in a holding cell:

The US Department of Justice has released an image of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev giving the finger to a security camera in his jail cell, a day after prosecutors showed it to jurors in the sentencing phase of his trial.

The image, taken three months after the April 2013 bombing in his holding cell at the federal courthouse, is one of the only public images of Tsarnaev since his arrest days after the bombing.

“This is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – unconcerned, unrepentant and unchanged,” assistant US attorney Nadine Pellegrini on Tuesday told the jurors who will decide whether the 21-year-old former college student should be executed.

Tsarnaev’s lawyers on Wednesday sought to blunt the impact of a photo, placing it in context of his movements in the cell. They showed the jury video clips of him looking into the camera, apparently fixing his hair in the reflective glass, and then making a slightly angled, two-finger gesture similar to what teenagers often do playfully in selfies. Then he raised his middle finger at the camera.

In an apparent attempt to press the argument that Tsarnaev was a “kid” who was led astray by his big brother, defense attorney Miriam Conrad asked Assistant US Marshal Gary Oliveira if he knew how old Tsarnaev was at that time.

The witness said he didn’t.

“You don’t know that he was 19 years old?” Conrad asked.

I understand that the prosecution is required to show that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a horrible and unrepentant person to get death.

But presenting a 19-year old flipping off a security cam to justify a death penalty?  That seems a bit much.

This serves no purpose but to inflame the jury, and the judge should not have allowed it.

So Not a Surprise

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You know those “Cybersecurity” bills that are supposed to protect our data and our privacy?

Not so much:

Cybersecurity legislation advancing in Congress could create the first brand-new exemption to the Freedom of Information Act in nearly half a century—a prospect that alarms transparency advocates and some lawmakers.

A bill approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee last month would add a new tenth exemption to FOIA, covering all “information shared with or provided to the Federal Government” under the new measure.

Another provision in the legislation would require that “cyber threat indicators and defensive measures” which companies or individuals share with the federal government be “withheld, without discretion, from the public.” The Senate bill, which is expected to come to the floor soon, also seeks to shut off any access to that information under state or local freedom of information laws.

Two cybersecurity bills are expected to be taken up on the House floor as soon as this week. Both contain similar language about keeping confidential threat and defensive measure information turned over to the government. However, a new FOIA exemption that was in the House Intelligence Committee cyber bill was taken out, a spokesman confirmed Friday.

In an official Senate Intelligence Committee report made public over the weekend, two Democratic members of that panel objected to the new FOIA exemption, which would be the first brand-new exemption added to the landmark transparency legislation since 1967.

“We are unconvinced that it is necessary to create an entirely new exemption to the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA,” Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) wrote in a statement accompanying the panel’s report on the cyber bill. “Government transparency is critical in order for citizens to hold their elected officials and bureaucrats accountable; however, the bill’s inclusion of a new FOIA exemption is overbroad and unnecessary as the types of information shared with the government through this bill would already be exempt from unnecessary public release under current FOIA exemptions.”

………

Critics say the proposed new FOIA exemption could allow companies to block disclosure of virtually any information by anyone in the government simply by submitting that information to the new cybersecurity portal. McDermott said the narrower provisions were also troubling and have mandatory language that could preclude the government from releasing cyber-related information even when needed to warn about a danger to the general public.

McDermott also said it would set a bad precedent if a bill creating an entirely new FOIA exemption made it into law without passing through the panels which oversee that law in each chamber.

“By authorizing a new exemption to the FOIA through a committee other than the committees of jurisdiction….you’ve undermined FOIA,” she warned.

Not surprised that the Obama administration likes this a lot. His history as President is one of being a cheerleader for the overarching security state, and his jihad on whistle blowers is a national disgrace.

Suspicious Police Killings Go Local

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Specifically, the death of Freddie Gray, who was alive and well when he was put in a paddy wagon by Baltimore police, and was in a coma with a broken neck and nearly severed spinal cord when it arrived at the station:

Officials and community leaders welcomed Tuesday the Justice Department’s announcement that it is opening a criminal investigation into Freddie Gray‘s death in Baltimore police custody — an incident that continues to spark angry demonstrations.

“The Department of Justice has been monitoring the developments in Baltimore, Md., regarding the death of Freddie Gray,” spokeswoman Dena Iverson said in a statement. “Based on preliminary information, the Department of Justice has officially opened this matter and is gathering information to determine whether any prosecutable civil rights violation occurred.”

The federal agency did not release details about the investigation, but said it would include the FBI, the U.S. attorney’s office and civil rights lawyers within the department.

The announcement came amid growing protests — hundreds demonstrated Tuesday evening in front of the Western District police station, where the 25-year-old was taken April 12, before being hospitalized and dying a week later. Protesters wore T-shirts with the slogan #Justice for Freddie and chanted “No justice, no peace.”

Meanwhile, police gave members of a City Council public safety committee updates on the status of their investigation into Gray’s death. After the hearing, Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez said the Police Department will cooperate fully with the FBI in the federal probe and will hand over copies of all the documents it has.

Police said they are trying to determine whether Gray was properly restrained in a transport van, where officials have said his injuries occurred. He suffered a broken vertebra after he was arrested near Gilmor Homes in Sandtown-Winchester. 

Something is seriously broken with policing in America.

That New Speaker of the New York State Assembly?

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When Carl E. Heastie leapt from obscurity to the top of New York State’s political power structure this year, he brought with him the potential of a new beginning in Albany. He vowed to bring accountability and integrity back to a statehouse that was reeling from the latest arrest of a lawmaker — the man he was succeeding as the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver.

But an episode from Speaker Heastie’s past that has never received public scrutiny casts new light on his claims of being a reformer.

About 16 years ago, when he had not yet run for public office but had already become entrenched in Bronx Democratic politics, Mr. Heastie was able to hold onto a home that prosecutors said his mother had bought with embezzled money and that a judge had instructed him to sell. Selling it years later brought what appears to be the only significant financial gain of his life.

An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.

An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.

“If it was purchased with moneys that were stolen, then no one should receive the benefit of that,” Justice Robert H. Straus told the Heasties during a hearing in January 1999 at State Supreme Court in the Bronx.

But Mr. Heastie did, indeed, profit from his mother’s crime.

Despite the judge’s instructions, Mr. Heastie was able to keep the apartment. His mother died at age 60 three weeks after being sentenced, and Mr. Heastie said he stopped trying to sell the property. When he finally did sell it — six years later for nearly $200,000 more than his mother had paid — he used the proceeds to buy a more expensive home.

………

The first break for the Heasties came when the Bronx district attorney’s office did not require Mrs. Heastie to sign a formal forfeiture agreement, as is common in such cases. Prosecutors also did not pursue a civil action against Mr. Heastie to force him to sell the home, which they could have done even after her death, Mr. Levin said.

And when Mr. Heastie told the judge, through a lawyer, that he could not sell the property, the assertion went unquestioned. Prosecutors did not press Mr. Heastie, for example, about the “real estate salesperson” who he said was trying to sell it. So it never came out in court that the person was not a full-time real estate professional but another loyalist to Mr. Seabrook with a full-time job in city government.

Finally, a judgment against Mrs. Heastie that was signed by the judge was never filed in civil court by the Bronx County clerk’s office. The judgment, which essentially disappeared, could have been used to pursue money from her estate after her death.

This really is kind of mind boggling.

I understand that there are necessary compromises that a politician must make if they want to become a leader, but it seems that everyone in New York state government are ethically compromised.

Is it Just Me, or Does Jabba the Governor Seem to be on a Path to the Pokey?

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The pattern of self dealing continues.

This time it’s Chris Christie cutting a sweetheart deal for his brother’s law firm:

As one of its first moves in its state takeover of financially strapped Atlantic City, Chris Christie’s administration has awarded a lucrative government contract to the financial services firm that employs the Republican governor’s brother, Todd Christie. The deal followed an even bigger contract given to the firm by Christie officials only weeks after the governor’s brother began working there.

In January, Chris Christie signed an executive order installing an emergency management team to develop “a plan to place the finances of Atlantic City in stable condition on a long-term basis.” Two months later, Reuters obtained documents showing that Christie administration officials signed a contract with Ernst & Young, which hired Todd Christie as a New Jersey-based director in March 2013. Todd Christie is listed as working on the firm’s “business development” in campaign finance records.

The Christie administration contract will pay Ernst and Young more than $250,000 to provide financial analysis of Atlantic City. As the casino town faces a $101 million deficit and hotel closures, the deal cemented by Christie’s Department of Law also will allow Ernst & Young to bill taxpayers $455 per hour for other services, according to Reuters. The Christie administration gave the contract to Todd Christie’s firm at a time when New Jersey’s executive branch ethics code says that public officials may not use their positions “to secure a job, contract, governmental approval or special benefit for yourself, a friend or family member.”

“I hope the governor’s advocacy for the state takeover of Atlantic City was not simply to repay a favor to his brother, Todd Christie, for all of the support Todd has given him over the years,” said Assemblyman John Wisniewski, the Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s investigative committee. “It is fair to ask questions any time you have the executive branch taking actions that at least on the surface appear to uniquely benefit somebody very close to the governor.”

………

The Christie administration’s Atlantic City-related contract to Todd Christie’s firm follows Todd Christie delivering more than $50,000 to the Republican Governors Association, which backed his brother’s election campaigns. The governor’s brother also delivered a maximum $3,800 contribution to his brother’s reelection campaign after he started at Ernst & Young.

This is not the first time Todd Christie’s business has intersected with the government business his brother oversees.

Only weeks after Todd Christie started at Ernst & Young, Christie administration officials awarded the firm separate contracts worth more than $550,000 for auditing services in connection with the state’s expenditures on Hurricane Sandy recovery. Ernst & Young has said Todd Christie was not involved in the deal, and noted that Ernst & Young is a large company with many employees.

Todd Christie also was part of a group of investors who purchased and sold properties near public transit facilities that his brother’s appointees redeveloped, according to the Bergen Record. At an event touting the redevelopment, the governor joked that his father was the “lobbyist in the Christie family for this project.”

So totally not corrupt, right?

This is not the sort of sh%$ that goes unnoticed in a Presidential race, even if it is business as usual in New Jersey, and even if Christie is a Republican.

Props to the People who Complained

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Newsweek published an anti-wind power OP/ED, and after an outpouring of outrage from informed readers, the magazine was forced to publish a clarification admitting that the author was literally an employee of the Koch brothers:

Editor’s note: The author of this piece, Randy Simmons, is the Charles G. Koch professor of political economy at Utah State University. He’s also a senior fellow at the Koch– and ExxonMobil-funded Property and Environment Research Center. These ties to the oil industry weren’t originally disclosed in this piece.

It’s still buried at the bottom or the article, but this sort of push-back is important.

Well, I Guess Giving Rides to Blind Folks is Restrictive Government Regulations as Well

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Uber is at it again.

This time, they are refusing to give rides to people with service animals:

A federal judge in San Francisco has allowed a civil lawsuit filed against Uber by an advocacy group for the blind to proceed.

The case was initially filed in September 2014 by the National Federation of the Blind of California and one individual plaintiff, who alleged that the quasi-taxi company is in violation of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), along with other state disabilities laws.

Uber had initially filed to have the case dismissed, but the judge’s ruling last Friday means the case will proceed.

According to the initial civil complaint, UberX drivers routinely refused to serve blind riders who travel with service animals:

Further, UberX drivers across the United States are likewise refusing to transport blind individuals, including identified UberX drivers who repeatedly denied rides to one blind woman on twelve separate occasions, charged blind riders cancellation fees, and abandoned blind travelers in extreme weather, all because of guide dogs.

In total, Plaintiffs are aware of more than thirty instances where drivers of UberX vehicles refused to transport blind individuals with service animals. UberX drivers that refused to transport these blind individuals did so after they initially agreed to transport the riders. The UberX drivers denied the requested transportation service after the drivers had arrived and discovered that the riders used service animals.

In addition, some UberX drivers seriously mishandle guide dogs or harass blind customers with guide dogs even when they do not outright deny the provision of taxi service. For example, Leena Dawes is blind and uses a guide dog. An UberX driver forced Ms. Dawes’ guide dog into the closed trunk of the UberX sedan before transporting Ms. Dawes. When Ms. Dawes realized where the driver had placed her dog, she pleaded with the driver to pull over so that she could retrieve her dog from the trunk, but the driver refused her request. Other blind customers with guide dogs have been yelled at by Uber drivers who are hostile toward their guide dogs.

In its motion to dismiss, Uber argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing, and that as a private company, it is not bound by the provisions of the ADA—an argument that United States Magistrate Judge Nathaniel Cousins found did not hold water.

If they think that Title III of the ADA (public accommodations and commercial facilities) doesn’t apply to them, they are desperately trying to avoid treating their employees as employees, why should they give a damn about things like Sarbanes-Oxley?

Investing with Objectivist psychopaths who think they are supermen who are above the laws of mere mortals who does not appear to me to be a sensible thing.

This is Disgraceful

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It appears that the Obama administration is ignoring federal law intended to prevent jailing juveniles in adult prisons:

The Obama administration is failing to sanction states that house excessive numbers of teenagers and children in adult jails and prisons, placing them at greater risk for violent attacks, sexual assaults and suicide, two career Justice Department employees plan to testify Tuesday in front of a Senate panel.

Under a 1974 law known as the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, the Justice Department is required to sharply curtail some federal aid to state governments when those states incarcerate too many juveniles and children in adult jails and prisons. The law also demands that the federal government withhold such funds from states that lock up large numbers of so-called status offenders — children and teens who have engaged in minor offenses such as truancy, curfew violations, drinking alcohol or running away from home.

The law was later amended to require the Justice Department to also cut grant money to states that fail to make fixes after the determination that their criminal justice systems hold “disproportionate” numbers of minority youths.

The two career Justice Department officials are expected to testify that the Obama administration is in violation of federal law by continuing to provide these funds to eight jurisdictions that do not meet one or more of those standards: Virginia, Illinois, Tennessee, Rhode Island, Idaho and Alabama, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Really?

The evidence is fairly clear here. Children incarcerated with adults are more likely to be raped, and they are more likely to become hardened criminals.

This is contemptible.

Today in IP Insanity

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Automakers are petitioning the Library of Congress prevent backyard mechanics from repairing their own cars:

Automakers are supporting provisions in copyright law that could prohibit home mechanics and car enthusiasts from repairing and modifying their own vehicles.

In comments filed with a federal agency that will determine whether tinkering with a car constitutes a copyright violation, OEMs and their main lobbying organization say cars have become too complex and dangerous for consumers and third parties to handle.

Allowing them to continue to fix their cars has become “legally problematic,” according to a written statement from the Auto Alliance, the main lobbying arm of automakers.

The dispute arises from a section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that no one thought could apply to vehicles when it was signed into law in 1998. But now, in an era where cars are rolling computing platforms, the U.S. Copyright Office is examining whether provisions of the law that protect intellectual property should prohibit people from modifying and tuning their cars.

Every three years, the office holds hearings on whether certain activities should be exempt from the DMCA’s section 1201, which governs technological measures that protect copyrighted work. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for individual rights in the digital world, has asked the office to ensure that enthusiasts can continue working on cars by providing exemptions that would give them the right to access necessary car components.

This is under the anti-counterfeiting provisions of the DMCA, which not only prevents copying, it prevents “unauthorized access”, and the auto industry is attempting to lock down their cars to the backyard mechanic, and possibly the independent mechanics as well.

Do you want to have no alternative to price gouging by the dealer on maintenance?

The Onion Abides………

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Man Pleased To Find Most Of His Mid-’90s Anti-Hillary Rant Still Usable

DECATUR, IL—Expressing relief that he would not have to construct an entirely new diatribe from scratch, local man Harold Willis was reportedly pleased Monday to discover that most of his anti-Hillary Clinton rant from the mid-1990s was still perfectly usable.

Unfortunately, the press corps(e) does not see this as an ironic bit of humor, they see this as a model for the next 16 months.

I pray that Rush Limbaugh and his ilk are rendered mute from choking on their own bile.

The Middle East is a Truly F%$#ed Up Place

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You may recall that Palestinian terrorists abducted and killed three Israeli Jewish students, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah a while back.

It was a part of the ostensible justification for the latest military operation against Gaza.

A day after they were buried, Israeli terrorists kidnapped and burnt to death Palestinian teen Mohammed Khudair.

Well, it just got more screwed up, because after the Israeli government placed Khudair’s name on a memorial to terrorist attacks, both Israelis and Palestinians flipped out:

Israel has added the name of a Palestinian teen to its “Monument to the Memory of the Victims of Terrorism”, upsetting the youth’s parents and a group representing families of slain Israelis with both demanding his name be removed.

………

The Almagor Terror Victims Organisation, a group founded in 1986 and representing the families of Israelis killed in Palestinian attacks, demanded the government remove the plaque honoring Khudair.

“(Khudair’s) name on the memorial debases the memory of all the other fallen people,” Yossi Tzur, an Almagor member whose 17-year-old son was killed in a Palestinian suicide bombing in 2003, told Israel Radio.

“He is not part of the Israeli ethos. He is not part of the sacrifice our children made at the altar for the sake of Israel’s establishment and existence,” Tzur said.

Khudair’s parents told Reuters they had not been consulted by Israel about adding their son’s name to the memorial, which lists more than 4,000 people.

“We can’t accept that his name be included among soldiers who killed his relatives in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank,” said Khudair’s father, Hussein.

His mother, Suha, said her son was “a Palestinian martyr, and not Israeli”, and their family felt shamed.

This is incredibly depressing.

This kid is a victim of terrorism, and neither side can move themselves to move past a tribal inability to feel any smidgen empathy for the other.

It’s all degenerated into a contest over whose suffering is more righteous.

I Cannot Believe That I am Not Saying This Ironically, but Donald Trump Just Seized the Moral High Ground in the Republican Presidential Sweepstakes

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He’s a nut. He’s a Joke. His hair is absurd.

But Donald Trump had the guts to support Social Security and Medicare in front of a Republican audience in New Hampshire:

Among the usual platitudes designed to garner applause in his Saturday afternoon New Hampshire Republican leadership summit speech, Donald Trump included a line railing against cutting Social Security and Medicare. There was no applause from the fiscally conservative crowd for that one. Go figure.

“You look at what is going with the various things that our country is doing and then you hear politicians, and all you hear is all talk, no action,” the mogul said in his speech before the state GOP’s “First in the Nation” summit.

“I am actually disappointed with a lot of the Republican politicians,” he continued, “I am a conservative Republican.” He then rattled off a series of policy ideas of which he either approves or disproves:

“Whether it is we are going to cut Social Security, because that’s what they are saying,” he continued. “Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And we can’t do that. And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut.”

No applause there. Know your audience, man.

This is not a mark of an outbreak of sanity, or morality, on the part of “The Donald”, though. 

It is a mark of what is, for lack of a better term, the depravity of the modern Republican Party.

And the Biggest Koch Sucker of This Election Season Is………

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It is Scott Walker:

Charles G. and David H. Koch, the influential and big-spending conservative donors, appear to have a favorite in the race for the Republican presidential nomination: Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

 On Monday, at a fund-raising event in Manhattan for the New York State Republican Party, David Koch told donors that he and his brother, who oversee one of the biggest private political organizations in the country, believed that Mr. Walker would be the Republican nominee.

 “When the primaries are over and Scott Walker gets the nomination,” Mr. Koch told the crowd, the billionaire brothers would support him, according to a spokeswoman. The remark drew laughter and applause from the audience of fellow donors and Republican activists, who had come to hear Mr. Walker speak earlier at the event, held at the Union League Club.

 Two people who attended the event said they heard Mr. Koch go even further, indicating that Mr. Walker should be the Republican nominee. A spokeswoman disputed that wording, saying that Mr. Koch had pledged to remain officially neutral during the primary campaign.

 But Mr. Koch’s remark left little doubt among attendees of where his heart is, and could effectively end one of the most closely watched contests in the “invisible primary,” a period where candidates crisscross the country seeking not the support of voters but the blessing of their party’s biggest donors and fund-raisers.

Not surprising.

The Kochs don’t want to waste money, and Scotty, goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage its Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin,* is already bought and paid for.

**Credit where credit is due. This bon mot was coined by Esquire magazine’s inimitable Charlie Pierce.

It’s 4/20

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What is/was your favorite munchie food?

I no longer indulge in “Demon Weed”, but when I did, I favored ice cream sandwiches and Fig Newtons™.

Of course, I stopped toking before I became even vaguely aware of Ben and Jerry’s™, and the explosion of gourmet snacks was almost a decade away.

Good News Everyone!!!

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Good news everyone!


I invented a device that makes you read this in your head using my voice!

It appears that the DoJ’s antitrust division will oppose the Comcast-Time Warner Merger:

Staff attorneys at the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division are nearing a recommendation to block Comcast Corp.’s bid to buy Time Warner Cable Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

Attorneys who are investigating Comcast’s $45.2 billion proposal to create a nationwide cable giant are leaning against the merger out of concern that consumers would be harmed and could submit their review as soon as next week, said the people. The division’s senior officials will then decide whether to file a federal lawsuit seeking to block the tie-up.

Even better, it appears that this opposition could have the effect of preventing other mergers in the industry:

………

A rejection would be a blow to Comcast, which would have to give up on valuable cable and broadband assets in major U.S. cities including New York and Los Angeles. The $45.2 billion merger proposal is also a way for Philadelphia-based Comcast to fend off competition from phone companies, satellite providers and Web services like Netflix Inc. that have taken hundreds of thousands of its TV subscribers in recent years.

Another company has a lot at stake: Charter Communications Inc., the No. 4 in the industry. Charter, which counts billionaire John Malone as its largest investor, has agreed to take control of 3.9 million Comcast cable-TV customers to ease approval for the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. If that fails, Charter won’t get those customers. Another Charter deal, the recent agreement to purchase of Bright House Networks, would also be in jeopardy.

The most amazing thing about this is that the push-back seems to come primarily from consumers, driven largely by both Comcast and TW Cable, and the belief that if they are allowed to merge, the suckitude will get only worse.

Remarkably, this is the second time that adverse regulation against cable companies has resulted in a consumer backlash.

The Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992 was vociferously opposed by the cable companies, and they plastered their programming with advertising against it.

Once alerted, cable users bombarded Congress with calls and letters supporting the bill, because they figured that if their cable company was against the 1992 Cable Act, they were for it.

Quote of the Day

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Alas, reality trumps theory. As we have seen almost every time this thesis has been put into practice, it fails. The tax cuts don’t magically kick the economy into higher gear and the government ends up short of money. Remember former President George W. Bush and his tax cuts? Same deal.

—Barry Ritholtz, on Kansas’ fiscal implosion from worshiping at the alter of supply side economics and tax cuts.

I Now Understand Why Jon Stewart is Leaving The Daily Show

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After many years of commenting on cable TV wankitude, he can no longer handle watching Fox News anymore:

………

My biggest objection to Fox News, I say, is not the scaremongering, it’s the way it’s reshaped the Republican party. It will misrepresent social and economic issues, and promote the more extreme elements of the party, politicians such as Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, in a way that is hugely detrimental to American politics. (For the record, Rupert Murdoch disagrees, and last year claimed that Fox News “absolutely saved” the Republican party.) “Watching these channels all day is incredibly depressing,” says Stewart. “I live in a constant state of depression. I think of us as turd miners. I put on my helmet, I go and mine turds, hopefully I don’t get turd lung disease.”

Now that he is leaving The Daily Show, is there any circumstance in which he would watch Fox News again? He takes a few seconds to ponder the question. “Umm… All right, let’s say that it’s a nuclear winter, and I have been wandering, and there appears to be a flickering light through what appears to be a radioactive cloud and I think that light might be a food source that could help my family. I might glance at it for a moment until I realize, that’s Fox News, and then I shut it off. That’s the circumstance.”

OK, I get it now.

If I had to watch Fox News for a living, I’d be ……… I’d be ………

Hell, I need a full fifth of Jack and a bong full of Maui Wowie to even consider it.

Remember the Brief Kidnapping of Richard Engel by Assad’s Forces in Syria? Not so Much.

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It turns out that he was kidnapped by the Syrian opposition, and then freed by the same militias as a part of a false flag operation: (See also here and here.)

NBC News on Wednesday revised its account of the 2012 kidnapping of its chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, saying it was likely that Mr. Engel and his reporting team had been abducted by a Sunni militant group, not forces affiliated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

In a statement posted on the NBC News website Wednesday evening, Mr. Engel said that a review of the episode — prompted by reporting from The New York Times — had led him to conclude that “the group that kidnapped us was Sunni, not Shia.” He also wrote that the abductors had “put on an elaborate ruse to convince us they were Shiite shabiha militiamen.”

Mr. Engel and his team were kidnapped in December 2012 while reporting in Syria. They were held for five days. Just hours after emerging, they appeared on the “Today” show.

“This was a group known as the shabiha, this was the government militia, these are people who are loyal to President Bashar al-Assad,” Mr. Engel said on “Today,” citing information he had gathered from the group. In that and other appearances on NBC, and in a Vanity Fair magazine article, he said that he had been rescued by Sunni rebels. At least two people died during the course of the captivity, he said in some versions of the account.

Interviews by The Times with several dozen people — including many of those involved in the search for NBC’s team, rebel fighters and activists in Syria and current and former NBC News employees — suggested that Mr. Engel’s team was almost certainly taken by a Sunni criminal element affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the loose alliance of rebels opposed to Mr. Assad.

The group, known as the North Idlib Falcons Brigade, was led by two men, Azzo Qassab and Shukri Ajouj, who had a history of smuggling and other crimes. The kidnapping ended, the people involved in the search said, when the team was freed by another rebel group, Ahrar al-Sham, which had a relationship with Mr. Qassab and Mr. Ajouj.

Mr. Engel and his team underwent a harrowing ordeal, and it is a common tactic for kidnappers in war zones to intentionally mislead hostages as to their identity.

NBC executives were informed of Mr. Ajouj and Mr. Qassab’s possible involvement during and after Mr. Engels’s captivity, according to current and former NBC employees and others who helped search for Mr. Engel, including political activists and security professionals. Still, the network moved quickly to put Mr. Engel on the air with an account blaming Shiite captors and did not present the other possible version of events.

Of course they, “Did not present the other possible version of events,” they couldn’t present other possible versions, because Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia..

Those Sanctions are Working out Just Ducky

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It looks like the Russians are managing lower oil prices and US and EU sanctions reasonably well:

It’s been fascinating to watch the Russian economy adjust to sharply lower oil prices. With a little help from the central bank, the country’s recession might not be as bad as previously thought.

After an initial period in which the ruble plummeted and inflation surged — with food prices up 15.4 percent from a year earlier in December — the Russian central bank’s response is turning things around. A sharp increase in short-term interest rates, currently at 14 percent, has stabilized the ruble and might even be getting consumer prices under control.

The episode has taken a toll on Russian living standards. In the first quarter of 2015, inflation-adjusted incomes were down 1.4 percent from a year earlier. Retail sales dropped 6.7 percent — and individual stores, such as the M Video electronics chain, reported even steeper declines. Imports were particularly hard hit, thanks to the impaired buying power of the ruble: In January and February, they were down 37.9 percent from a year earlier. The government’s finances haven’t fared well, either. Standard & Poor’s predicted Friday that Russia’s fiscal deficit will rise to 4.4 percent this year, higher than the 3.7 percent the government predicts.

Still, there are signs that a cheaper ruble might be helping some Russian producers compete with imports. True, industrial production was down 14.6 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, with the garment industry — which depends heavily on imported inputs — taking the steepest plunge. Yet Russian food production was up 3.5 percent, suggesting that import substitution might not be just President Vladimir Putin’s pipe dream.

Those sanctions are working so well.

It’s gotten to the point that the Russian Central Bank governor has suggested that they will be lowering interest rates to keep the Ruble from appreciating to much.

One important thing to note here is that Russia has some advantages over other sanctions targets, specifically a captive market for natural gas in Europe, and a central bank that has dealt with these problems very competently.

I would argue that much of the reason that the bank has handled this so well is because of their relative lack of independence from the Russian government.

Because they have not been allowed to indulge in free market navel-gazing they have responded aggressively to Russia’s crisis.