Year: 2015

Not This Sh%$ Again

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Once again, we have a Hitler of the week selected by the US state security apparatus.

This week, it is Venezuela:

The United States declared Venezuela a national security threat on Monday and ordered sanctions against seven officials from the oil-rich country in the worst bilateral diplomatic dispute since socialist President Nicolas Maduro took office in 2013.

 U.S. President Barack Obama signed and issued the executive order, which senior administration officials said did not target Venezuela’s energy sector or broader economy. But the move stokes tensions between Washington and Caracas just as U.S. relations with Cuba, a longtime U.S. foe in Latin America and key ally to Venezuela, are set to be normalized.

 Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro denounced the sanctions as an attempt to topple his government. At the end of a thundering two-hour speech, Maduro said he would seek decree powers to counter the “imperialist” threat, and appointed one of the sanctioned officials as the new interior minister.

 Declaring any country a threat to national security is the first step in starting a U.S. sanctions program. The same process has been followed with countries such as Iran and Syria, U.S. officials said.

 The White House said the order targeted people whose actions undermined democratic processes or institutions, had committed acts of violence or abuse of human rights, were involved in prohibiting or penalizing freedom of expression, or were government officials involved in public corruption.

 “Venezuelan officials past and present who violate the human rights of Venezuelan citizens and engage in acts of public corruption will not be welcome here, and we now have the tools to block their assets and their use of U.S. financial systems,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a statement.

A security threat?!?!!?  Seriously?

Venezuela is a mess, and the “Bolivarian Revolution” is arguably the 2nd worst possible potential rulers for the oil rich nation, but they are no more a security threat to the United States than is my cat Meatball.

This Monroe Doctrinesque bullsh%$, where the US seems to see meddling in regime change in the Western Hemisphere to be a God given birthright, needs to stop.

I think that it is clear that the Maduro government won’t be around for a particularly long time, they do not appear to be able to manage their way a paper bag, unless pressure by the State Department, CIA, National Endowment for Democracy, etc. for regime change serves to reinforce their grip on power as it has in Cuba.

And When the Democrats Get Back into Power, They Won’t Reverse This

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Koch sucking Republican Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, just signed so called right to work legislation:

For decades, states across the South, Great Plains and Rocky Mountains enacted policies that prevented organized labor from forcing all workers to pay union dues or fees. But the industrial Midwest resisted.

Those days are gone. After a wave of Republican victories across the region in 2010, Indiana and then Michigan enacted so-called right-to-work laws that supporters said strengthened those states economically, but that labor leaders asserted left behind a trail of weakened unions.

Now it is Wisconsin’s turn. On Monday, Gov. Scott Walker — who in 2011 succeeded in slashing collective bargaining rights for most public sector workers — signed a bill that makes his state the 25th to adopt the policy and has given new momentum to the business-led movement, its supporters say.
“This freedom-to-work legislation will give workers the freedom to choose whether or not they want to join a union, and employers another compelling reason to consider expanding or moving their business to Wisconsin,” Mr. Walker said.

Seeing as how well Walker’s Koch Brothers inspired agenda has worked in Wisconsin (Hint: not at all, compare it to Minnesota, which has taken pretty much the opposite policies), we should not expect to see much job growth in Wisconsin relative to its neighbors.

The obvious question here though is what happens when the Democrats take control of the state house and governor’s mansion again?

If the past is precis, there will be no repeal.

In both the recall campaign, and in Walker’s reelection campaign, the Democratic candidates eschewed calling for a repeal of his law stripping state workers of union rights, so, at least until the pathetic Wisconsin state Democratic party establishment can be put out of its misery, I would expect that both these laws will stay in place.

Basically, Wisconsin Democrats continue to believe that portraying themselves as non or post partisan is a winning electoral strategy, even though it is clear that the modern Republican party has, to quote Digby, “Gone insane and that every incentive and structural political edifice out there made it impossible for them not to be insane.”

Running on PPUS (Post Partisan Unity Schtick) is the same as running on nothing, and the voters will almost always choose a bad something over nothing.

Sedition Anyone?

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A group of 47 Republican senators has written an open letter to Iran’s leaders warning them that any nuclear deal they sign with President Barack Obama’s administration won’t last after Obama leaves office.

 Organized by freshman Senator Tom Cotton and signed by the chamber’s entire party leadership as well as potential 2016 presidential contenders Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the letter is meant not just to discourage the Iranian regime from signing a deal but also to pressure the White House into giving Congress some authority over the process.

 “It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system … Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

Foreign policy scholar Daniel Dresner notes that this goes well past what is garden variety trolling by political partisans: (And yes, he uses the world “troll”)

Now, on the one hand, I get what Senate Republicans are trying to do here. They don’t like the contours of the deal that’s being negotiated, and they really don’t like Barack Obama’s enthusiasm for bypassing a truculent Congress via executive actions on Iran. So if the Senate GOP can signal to Iranians that an executive agreement isn’t that much of a credible commitment device, maybe they can scuttle a deal they dislike with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns. It’s certainly a better gambit than, say, this ad.

That said, there are still a few confusing aspects about this. First, there’s the question of the law. I don’t think an open letter from members of the legislative branch quite rises to Logan Act violations, but if there’s ever a trolling amendment to the Logan Act, this would qualify.

For those of you who are not up on obscure federal legislation, the Logan Act was passed in 1799(!) and makes it a felony for private citizens to “freelance” in American diplomatic relations:

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

So, Nixon queering the peace talks with Vietnam in 1968 would qualify as well, but let’s be clear, no one is going to be prosecuted over this, any more than someone would be prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition acts, which were passed in 1798.   (Most of them have expired, anyway)

They also got schooled by the Iranian FM over the finer points of international law:

Iranian foreign minister and the country’s Chief nuclear negotiator said the recent open letter by a group of Republican senators about Iran’s nuclear talks has no legal value and is just a propaganda ploy.

Asked about the open letter of 47 US Senators to Iranian leaders, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Dr. Javad Zarif, said, “In our view, this letter has no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy. It is very interesting that while negotiations are still in progress and while no agreement has been reached, some political pressure groups are so afraid even of the prospect of an agreement that they resort to unconventional methods, unprecedented in diplomatic history. This indicates that like Netanyahu, who considers peace as an existential threat, some are opposed to any agreement, regardless of its content.”

Zarif expressed astonishment that some members of US Congress find it appropriate to write to leaders of another country against their own President and administration. He pointed out that from reading the open letter, it seems that the authors not only do not understand international law, but are not fully cognizant of the nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy.

Foreign Minister Zarif added, “I should bring one important point to the attention of the authors and that is, the world is not the United States, and the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by US domestic law. The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfil the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations.”

The Iranian Foreign Minister added that “change of administration does not in any way relieve the next administration from international obligations undertaken by its predecessor in a possible agreement about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”

“I wish to enlighten the authors that if the next administration revokes any agreement with ‘the stroke of a pen,’ as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law.”

He emphasized that if the current negotiation with P5+1 result in a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it will not be a bilateral agreement between Iran and the US, but rather one that will be concluded with the participation of five other countries, including all permanent members of the Security Council, and will also be endorsed by a Security Council resolution.

Zarif expressed the hope that his comments “may enrich the knowledge of the authors to recognize that according to international law, Congress may not ‘modify the terms of the agreement at any time’ as they claim, and if Congress adopts any measure to impede its implementation, it will have committed a material breach of US obligations.”

It’s one thing to suggest that an agreement is not valid without Congressional approval,* it’s another to directly conduct the other side in a diplomatic dispute and explicitly state the the word of the US government is meaningless.

47 members of the US Senate, particularly freshman Senator Tom Cotton have one off the f%$#ing deep end.

Welcome to today’s Republican Party, I guess.

*In this case, it appears to have been conducted under the auspices of the UN Security Council, and it appears that it will be approved by the UN Security Council, so there is room for disagreement there, which would suggest that a Security Council vote would be required to amend or abrogate the deal, and not Congress.†
†Yes, I understand how many of the black helicopter one world government nutjobs in Congress would find this objectionable, but f%$# then.  They are stupid and bat sh%$ insane.

Emmanueldämmerung* in Progress

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We have always know that Rahm Emanuel is a bully, who kisses up to his superiors and kicks down at his subordinates, or for that matter anyone he sees as unimportant, but this report seems to indicate that the long time Obama ally is seriously losing his sh%$:

They say old Rahm Emanuel came out last night—or maybe it was the real one hiding in plain sight all the time: a sneering, aggressive pol who went “nose-to-nose” with a mental-health advocate demanding, “You’re gonna respect me!”

The alleged exchange took place off-camera between Chicago’s mayor and Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle, a member of Mental Health Movement, a group that has been fighting the mayor over the closure of six mental health clinics across the city. Behind a door that separated the mayor from a roomful of constituents at a campaign stop in the Wicker Park neighborhood, Ginsberg-Jaeckle says, he got Rahmbo’d.

 “This is the Real Rahm,” Ginsberg-Jaeckle wrote on Facebook. “Calm and collected in public, raging angry and self-defensive behind closed doors.”

 But Emanuel’s campaign, while not directly refuting the mayor’s alleged call for respect, said the exchange was more cordial than Ginsberg-Jaeckle’s version of events. The mayor’s office has reached out Ginsberg-Jaeckle and Delgado to address their concerns, campaign spokesman Steve Mayberry said in a statement.

“The mayor was eager to get to the substance of the residents’ concerns,” Mayberry said via email. “After respectfully listening to the residents, he asked that they respectfully listen to his point of view. As a result, the meeting ended cordially and the mayor is working with health officials to address the residents’ needs.”


Debbie Delgado, another member of the group, interrupted Emanuel, prompting the behind-closed-doors altercation.

“She told of losing her son to gun violence,” Ginsberg-Jaeckle wrote. “She told [Emanuel] how her other son was holding him as he died. She told about how the city’s Northwest Mental Health Clinic in Logan Square saved their lives, helped her and her son deal with the PTSD and depression. Then she asked why he took that clinic away from her.”

 Rahm said he would speak with the pair, and Ginsberg-Jaeckle said they then left the room for a private conversation. That’s when Emanuel allegedly shouted: “You’re gonna respect me!”

 The mayor’s office wouldn’t address the supposed angry exchange.

 “Since it was a non-city event there were no city people there to witness it,” said Chloe Rasmas, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office.

 Rahm said he would speak with the pair, and Ginsberg-Jaeckle said they then left the room for a private conversation. That’s when Emanuel allegedly shouted: “You’re gonna respect me!”

 ………

 “We delivered 10,000 letters to the mayor’s office in October 2012. They didn’t respond. So, we started sending one email a week. No response. We held forums and protests. The day before a vote on the budget we did a sit-in outside the mayor’s office, and they forced us out by cutting off any access bathrooms,” Ginsberg-Jaeckle said, running down years’ worth of attempts to talk with the mayor.

 “I could go play by play, but long story short we could not get through to this man. Finally, the extreme we reached was crashing his events.”

 That’s what they did Wednesday night, not expecting much other than to be escorted out. Locke said Rahm told police to hold off when Ginsberg-Jaeckle and Delgado rose from their front-row chairs to confront the mayor. It was all cordial, until the trio left the room.

Demanding respect at the top of his voice.

Respect should not be demanded, it should be earned.

Why do I get the sense that Rahm Emanuel is suffering from a really bad case of “Middle Child Syndrome”?

In either case, I hope that the people of Chicago realize that they are dealing with a guy for whom a difficult reelection campaign is likely to make him an even worse mayor than he already is.

I would also one of his supporters, Republican Senator Mark Kirk, is blowing the racist dog whistle by invoking Detroit, while Republican Governor Bruce Rauner is leaning on begging 3rd place mayoral candidate Willie Wilson to endorse Rahm as well.

They wouldn’t be endorsing who is tied in the minds of their base to the “Kenyan Muslim Atheist Radical” Barack Obama unless they were pretty firmly on the same side, and they were worried about his chances.

I am so hoping that he loses the April 7 contest.

*I cannot claim credit for this bon mot. It was coined by Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism.

Not Just Ferguson

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In Wittier, California, police officers have sued over retaliation for reporting illegal quotas:

Six Whittier police officers are suing the city, saying they faced retaliation when they complained and refused to meet alleged ticket and arrest quotas.

Officers Jim Azpilicueta, Anthony Gonzalez, Mike Rosario, Nancy Ogle, Steve Johnson and Cpl. Joseph Rivera say they spoke out against the quotas, which they claim were imposed by the Whittier Police Department in 2008, according to a suit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

The officers said their “careers have been materially and adversely affected, and irreparably harmed” by the city.

City Manager Jim Collier and Whittier police spokesman Officer John Scoggins declined to comment and said they had not seen the lawsuit.

“The lawsuit is unfortunate and the city will determine the best course of action once an analysis of the lawsuit is completed,” Collier said.

The officers say the alleged ticket and arrest quotas continue to this day.

The alleged retaliation started after the officers said they complained to their supervisors and the police department’s Internal Affairs Division, the suit claims.

After complaining about quotas, the officers faced a series of disciplinary actions including counseling sessions, unwarranted transfers, increased scrutiny and disparaging comments, the lawsuit said.

………

Imposing arrest and ticket quotas on police officers violates California Vehicle Codes section 41600. The codes makes it illegal for any state or local agency to force officers to meet a certain number of citations or arrests for promotion or disciplinary purposes.

Here’s a thought for initiative petition crazy California:  Someone start collecting signatures for a ballot measure that takes all the proceeds from these sort of offenses, and transfers it to a scholarship program for state schools.

Once municipalities no longer from pulling this sh%$, they will stop pulling this sh%$.

Normally, this Level of Incompetence at this Level of Status Results in a Promotion, not a Demotion

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But it appears that the Norwegian culture is different form ours, as former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland has been demoted from his position as head of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee:

Norway’s Nobel peace prize committee has demoted its chairman, Thorbjørn Jagland, in a move unprecedented in the long history of the award.

The committee, which said the former Norwegian prime minister would remain as a committee member, gave no reason for its decision.

However, the renowned diplomat drew criticism shortly after becoming committee chairman in 2009 for awarding the prestigious Nobel to newly elected US president Barack Obama.

The move stunned the world and the recipient alike, as Obama had been in office less than nine months and the US was waging simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

After six years at the helm of the committee, Jagland, 64, will be replaced by deputy chair, Kaci Kullmann Five, the organisation said on Tuesday.

“There was broad agreement within the committee that Thorbjørn Jagland was a good chair for six years,” Kullmann Five told reporters, but declined to comment on the discussion.

Commentators and former Nobel laureates had criticised the committee’s decisions under Jagland’s stewardship.

Hitting back at critics after Obama’s prize, Jagland said the organisation wanted to praise the US leader’s early vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and capture “the spirit of the times, the needs of the era”.

Last year, a federal study estimated that the US will spend $1tn (£649bn) upgrading its nuclear arsenal over the next three decades.

Ohhh ……… Bummer of a birthmnark, Thorbjørn.

Your award recipient is responsible for more spending on nukes than the rest of the world combined.

………

And in 2012 Jagland became the face of a body that handed the award to the European Union for its commitment to “peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights”.

“The EU is clearly not the ‘champion of peace’ that Alfred Nobel had in mind when he wrote his will,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in an open letter with two other former laureates.

Jagland, a former leader of Norway’s Labour party who has served as prime minister, foreign minister and speaker of parliament, spent much of his career trying to bolster support for Norway to join the EU.

So the that award appears to be an attempt to political agenda that he has personally held for years.  (And then there is the whole thing that the EU seems like the most forceful attempt at German hegemony in Europe since that bloke with the funny mustache)

It is rather unsurprising, that Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu roundly condemned the selection of the EU as, “Clearly not the ‘champion of peace’ that Alfred Nobel had in mind when he wrote his will.”

Oh Snap.

This is the Least Surprising News Since ……… Ever

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The US Department of Justice has determined that the entire justice system of Ferguson, Missouri discriminates against minorities:

Ferguson, Mo., is a third white, but the crime statistics compiled in the city over the past two years seemed to suggest that only black people were breaking the law. They accounted for 85 percent of traffic stops, 90 percent of tickets and 93 percent of arrests. In cases like jaywalking, which often hinge on police discretion, blacks accounted for 95 percent of all arrests.

The racial disparity in those statistics was so stark that the Justice Department has concluded in a report scheduled for release on Wednesday that there was only one explanation: The Ferguson Police Department was routinely violating the constitutional rights of its black residents.

The report, based on a six-month investigation, provides a glimpse into the roots of the racial tensions that boiled over in Ferguson last summer after a black teenager, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by a white police officer, making it a worldwide flash point in the debate over race and policing in America. It describes a city where the police used force almost exclusively on blacks and regularly stopped people without probable cause. Racial bias is so ingrained, the report said, that Ferguson officials circulated racist jokes on their government email accounts.

I’m not sure what a final resolution to this should be, but as a start, I would suggest that all fines and court costs in the municipality be placed under the control of a special master and not allowed to accrue to the town treasury.

The town will continue to discriminate so long as it makes a profit from doing so.

People should not hate their own police, but it is the God given right of any free citizen to hate the tax collector, even though it is an essential function.

By turning the Ferguson courts and police into a revenue source it creates a toxic environment.

The people hate the cops. 

The cops hate them back, and come to believe that they are surrounded by the enemy, and not familiar citizens.

Then you get a kid shot and left to lie in the street for hours in plain view as a warning to the community.

I’d also like to see some criminal prosecutions, perhaps under RICO, against those who created, promulgated, and maintained such a system.

Quote of the Day

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As anti-worker as Reagan was, however, he continued to praise unions and their vital contribution to America. Ronald Reagan would be unable to win a Republican primary in any state in 2015 because he supported the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. That is how extreme his Party has become.

—William K. Black On Scott Walkers batsh%$ insane statements comparing labor unions and ISIS.

I think that Ronald Reagan was determined to muzzle labor unions, and condemn them to irrelevancy, but he felt the need from a political perspective to throw some empty rhetorical flourishes their way even as he knifed them in the back.

These days, you cannot win a primary campaign in the Republican party doing the same.  The demand for “red meat”is too strong.

Seriously, Pocket Change and a Meaningless Probation?

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David Petraeus has pled guilty to to leaking top secret information, and his deal includes a two point “enhancement” for obstructing justice by lying to the FBI, and the DoJ is asking foir a $40,000.oo fine and 2 years probation:

………DOJ quietly announced it had reached a plea deal with former CIA Director David Petraeus for leaking Top Secret/Secure Compartmented Information materials to his mistress, Paula Broadwell.
Among the materials in the eight “Black Books” Petraeus shared with Broadwell were:

…classified information regarding the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings, and defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS’s discussions with the President of the United States of America.

The Black Books contained national defense information, including Top Secret/SCI and code word information.

Petraeus kept those Black Books full of code word information including covert identities and conversations with the President “in a rucksack up there somewhere.”

Petreaus retained those Black Books after he signed his debriefing agreement upon leaving DOD, in which he attested “I give my assurance that there is no classified material in my possession, custody, or control at this time.” He kept those Black Books in an unlocked desk drawer.

For mishandling some of the most important secrets the nation has, Petraeus will plead guilty to a misdemeanor. Petraeus, now an employee of a top private equity firm, will be fined $40,000 and serve two years of probation.

He will not, however, be asked to plead guilty at all for lying to FBI investigators. In an interview on October 26, 2012, he told the FBI,

(a) he had never provided any classified information to his biographer, and (b) he had never facilitated the provision of classified information to his biographer.

This is a guy whose record seems to be more of an exercise in self-promotion than anything else, and it’s pretty clear that he deliberately mishandled classified information because he wanted to help his girl friend, and it also clear that he lied to the FBI with the specific intent of obstructing an investigation, and the Department of Justice doesn’t want any jail time.

I hope that the judge goes a bit further than the Department of Justice.

Headline of the Day

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DEA Warns of Stoned Rabbits if Utah Passes Medical Marijuana.

The dead enders in the drug prohibition industry have become increasingly shrill as the rest of the population realizes that prison works to fight drug use like gasoline puts out fires.

The story gets even weirder:

Utah is considering a bill that would allow patients with certain debilitating conditions to be treated with edible forms of marijuana. If the bill passes, the state’s wildlife may “cultivate a taste” for the plant, lose their fear of humans, and basically be high all the time. That’s according to testimony presented to a Utah Senate panel (time stamp 58:00) last week by an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“I deal in facts. I deal in science,” said special agent Matt Fairbanks, who’s been working in the state for a decade. He is member of the “marijuana eradication” team in Utah. Some of his colleagues in Georgia recently achieved notoriety by raiding a retiree’s garden and seizing a number of okra plants

.(emphasis original)

Illegal pot growing does constitute an environmental issue, frequently the farms contribute to erosion, and apply various agricultural chemicals to excess, but stoned bunny rabbits?

Seriously?

I think that this “Reefer Madness” bullsh%$ needs to be called out.

I will note that the Utah senate panel went with sanity, as opposed to the, “Think of the poor bunnies,” claptrap, and passed the bill along to the state senate.

This is Significant

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Donald Trump spoke at CPAC, and he was booed when he called for ground troops in Iraq to fight ISIS:

In the same question and answer period with Sean Hannity, he [Trump] embarrassed himself yet again when he outlined his strategy to fight ISIS, which was nothing more than “he’d hit them really hard.” With what? We don’t know, but when he supported sending ground troops against ISIS, the crowd turned on him.

Hannity: A, to stop Iran’s nuclear program and B, to defeat ISIS, cause I don’t hear say degrade them, I hear you say defeat them.

Trump: Defeat. Well, with ISIS, I’d just hit them really hard and that would probably and a year ago you wouldn’t have said it and nobody wouldn’t have likes it, you may have to have some boots on the ground for a period of time until you’re rid of the cancer. (boos) That’s number one, you may have to have it Look, they’re cutting off the heads of people, they’re burning at the stake, It’s like we’re living in medieval times.

(emphasis original)

Unfortunately, the video has been deleted by the user, but the fact that the crowd at CPAC, who have pretty much defined themselves as the wingnuts of wingnuts, have come to the conclusion that the John McCain school of foreign policy is without merit is significant.

If the war forever has lost the CPAC crowd, they have lost the nation.

Why Scott Walker Said Something Batsh%$ Insane………

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At CPAC, Scott Walker implied that union activists and the terrorist group ISIS are equivalent:

At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker drew a comparison between Islamic State militants and the Wisconsin union protesters with whom he has repeatedly clashed since 2011.

In response to a question about how he would deal with global threats such as the one posed by ISIS, Walker drew from his personal experience.

“If I can take on a 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world,” Walker said on the CPAC stage, after giving a longer answer about how he would handle ISIS if he were the president.

Rather unsurprisingly, Democratic firebrand Senator condemned the comments.

Rather more surprising is the fact that he was condemned on the (web) pages of the reactionary mouthpiece The National Review:

But former Texas Gov. Rick Perry quickly criticized Walker’s remarks. And NRO’s Jim Geraghty was appalled:

That is a terrible response. First, taking on a bunch of protesters is not comparably difficult to taking on a Caliphate with sympathizers and terrorists around the globe, and saying so suggests Walker doesn’t quite understand the complexity of the challenge from ISIS and its allied groups.

Secondly, it is insulting to the protesters, a group I take no pleasure in defending. The protesters in Wisconsin, so furiously angry over Walker’s reforms and disruptive to the procedures of passing laws, earned plenty of legitimate criticism. But they’re not ISIS. They’re not beheading innocent people. They’re Americans, and as much as we may find their ideas, worldview, and perspective spectacularly wrongheaded, they don’t deserve to be compared to murderous terrorists.

No one should be shocked by Walker’s statement.  Statements like this are a required part of running for office as a Republican, particularly for Presidential candidates.

There is a cultural imperative among Republicans to troll liberals/Democrats.

When a Republican candidate says something that makes non-Republican heads explode, it is seen as an independent good by the base.

The issue these days is that each time a Republican tries to make liberal heads explode, the bar keeps getting moved further down the road toward “to crazy even for Republicans”, and these days the line is pretty narrow.

It’s stupid, it’s immature, and it is exceedingly juvenile, but that is today’s Republican party in a nut shell.

Quote of the Day

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It’s Easier to Get Laid at CPAC Than on Spring Break

—Sam Brode at Mother Jones

To be fair, this is true of almost all conferences, and political conferences of all sorts are reputed to have sexual activities that make Woodstock look like a revival meeting.

So, it is no surprise that the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) would be the site of some fairy enthusiastic “after parties.

Still, it is a great quote.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!! (on Sunday)

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And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Doral Bank En Espanol, San Juan, PR

Full FDIC list

I’m not sure how much this bears on banking for the rest of the US.

I am vaguely aware of issues with the Puerto Rican economy, particularly with regard to their budget and debt service for their state owned enterprises.

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

My Daughter, the Scenery Chewer

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I just finished watching the Lansdowne High School production of Bye Bye Birdie.

Natalie was cast as the overbearing mother, and played it with appropriately overbearing gusto.

People loved her.

But thank God that it is over.  Both shows weren’t off very well, but it appeared that the show was cursed.

There were multiple practises that were cancelled due to snow, including the full dress rehearsal, (!) and a spate of injuries, mostly sprained ankles.

They say that the show must go on, and go on it did.

Posted via mobile.

The End of the Vulcan Bar Matzvah*

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Nimoy has had a varied career, actor, director, poet, photographer, and writer.
As such, it’s hard to find his best moment, but his worst moment is clearly singing this song

Leonard Nimoy has died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at 83:

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83.

His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Mr. Nimoy announced that he had the disease last year, attributing it to years of smoking, a habit he had given up three decades earlier. He had been hospitalized earlier in the week.

Seriously. If you smoke, stop today.

*It’s an old family story. My mom was talking to a friend in Alaska, Danny Plotkin, and asked how he was doing. He replied to her that he was flying down to the lower 48 to go to a “Vulcan bar Mitzvah”. It turns out that Leonard Nimoy was his nephew, and Nimoy’s son was having a Bar Mitzvah