Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Dumb-Ass………

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Taking a page from the Barack Obama book of pre-capitulation as a negotiating tactic, the Syriza party has ruled out any possibility of Greece exiting the Euro:

Last week, the stock market in Athens suffered its worst day in decades, and Greek politicians bickered over the political uncertainty provoked by the presidential vote.

Greece’s largest opposition party, Syriza is currently ahead in the polls. A snap election could find the party into power.

In an interview with EurActiv Greece, Papadimoulis, an influential figure in Syriza, attempted to dash these fears, saying that a Syriza government is committed to keeping the country in the eurozone.

“There is absolutely no case for a Grexit. Those who invoke such a possibility play a propaganda game against the Greek and European economy,” Papadimoulis said.

He added that the actual danger for Greece is its social disintegration and its transformation intoto a “debt colony” and for Europe, a new phase of recession, higher unemployment and poverty.

In an attempt to appease international lenders and possible investors’ fears, Papadimoulis made it clear that there is no Syriza party member who speaks in favour of returning to the drachma.

If you want to avoid Greece becoming a debt colony of Frau Merkel,* you cannot unilaterally disarm.

To the degree that you take a Greek exit from the Euro Zone, or possibly an exit from the EU off of the table, you are weakening your bargaining position.

Look at what Iceland did, and take f%$#ing notes.

*Horses whinnying.

Cable Company F%$#ery

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South Park got it right

HBO Go is a service that allows subscribers to the HBO channel to view content on PCs, tablets, and other devices.

The kicker is that for now, though I expect this to change as it renegotiates contracts, in order to use this service, you need to have your cable/fiber company certify that you are an HBO subscriber in order to get the service.

Guess what? Comcast, the most loathed company in America, is refusing to provide this information for its subscribers:

One of the more dubious Comcast practices brought up by opponents of Comcast’s planned $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable is the cable giant’s sluggish refusal to support certain internet video services and platforms running over its broadband network. Case in point is the HBO Go app on Roku, which Comcast hasn’t supported since around 2011 or so for no coherent reason. To get the app to work, it needs to simply authenticate with the cable provider to prove you are a cable subscriber (since, at least until next year, there’s no HBO Go standalone option).

Much smaller cable companies haven’t had a problem in getting this to work, but Comcast, with its limited resources, somehow just can’t seem to spend the time. Roku’s neutrality filing with the FCC expressed concern that cable authentication systems could be used as yet another way gatekeepers could extract tolls from streaming services. As we noted when Comcast similarly refused to support HBO Go on the Playstation 3, the company — when it can be bothered to comment on the issue at all — usually trots out the excuse that getting this stuff to work is well, gosh — time consuming:

“With every new website, device or player we authenticate, we need to work through technical integration and customer service which takes time and resources. Moving forward, we will continue to prioritize as we partner with various players.”

It certainly does appear to be a case of priorities. With Comcast looking to eliminate any and all justifications to reject its merger, the company this week announced its network would finally support HBO Go on Roku — some three years later. It couldn’t possibly be that Comcast intentionally stalled on supporting HBO Go on the country’s best-selling third-party streaming device because it wants to keep customers contained within the Comcast set top ecosystem and away from other options, could it?

I really think that if a politician of either party were to say that his goal would to make Comcast, “Squeal like a pig,” he would be elected President.

But we still have politicians going to their knees to “service” the cable giants.

What the Rude one Said

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Note to Cops: If You’re Gonna Be So Thin-Skinned, You Should Stop Killing People:

That’s Andrew Hawkins, a wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns. He wore that shirt while warming up for his team’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunay. As you can read, it calls for justice in the deaths of Tamir Rice, the 12 year-old who was shot to death by a Cleveland cop for holding a toy gun, and John Crawford, who was shot to death by a cop outside Dayton, Ohio, for the crime of holding a BB gun he had picked up while shopping in a Walmart. Both were killed within seconds of the arrival of the police, with no attempt to ascertain what was occurring. They are both awful situations that call for serious soul-searching by the police in Ohio, to hold the officers accountable in some way, to improve training so that such tragedies don’t happen again, to perhaps confront the racism that seems to heighten the violence in these situations. That would all be meaningful and sensitive.

But it’s so much easier to go batsh%$ and attack Hawkins.

Yeah, like teenaged girls who just saw that bitch Tanya wearing that purple dress on Instagram when she knew perfectly well that Alicia was gonna wear the same one to the dance (god, Tanya, you don’t even look good in purple), the Cleveland Police Patrolman’s Association stomped its feet and demanded an apology: “It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law. They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland police protect and serve the Browns stadium and the Browns organization owes us an apology.” You gotta love the implied threat there: “Mighty nice stadium you have here. Be a shame if we let your animal fans run wild.”

Read the rest of the Rude Pundit’s essay.

Ho ……… Ho ……… Ho ………

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Red and white as camouflage

You may have heard about the SantaCon, a costumed pubcrawl that has, since its founding in (where else?) San Francisco.

Increasingly, it has been the accompanied by drunkenness, violence, public urination, and general mischief.

Well, a criminal mastermind, in what is certain to be a movie or a cable release in the next 18 months, robbed a bank disguised as Santa and then vanished in the crimson clad crowd:

Roughly after 1 p.m. on Saturday, at the peak of SantaCon debauchery, a 40-something white man in a Santa suit walked into a San Francisco bank and handed the teller a note demanding money. The teller handed him an undisclosed amount of cash, and then—like in the St. Patrick’s Day scene from “The Fugitive”—the man walked outside and disappeared into the crowd of Santas.

So far, the police have made no arrests, and it seems very likely the man might actually get away. It was a perfect heist—a festive, vomit-soaked “Ocean’s 11.”

My only question is whether this was a run of the mill criminal who had a bright idea, or a really smart guy.

If it’s the former, he’ll do something stupid now that he has the money.

If it’s the latter, this guy will be calling a literary agent when the statute of limitations runs out.

I Doubt his Motives, but I Approve the Action

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has banned fracking in New York state:

Finally, New York is about to ban fracking.

In a long-awaited decision, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the state will not move forward with high volume hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, because of the threat it poses to air, water and public health.

The governor’s been hedging on the issue since 2012, when his administration first undertook a health impact review. At a public year-end cabinet meeting Wednesday, New York state Acting Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker provided an overview of what he said could be ”significant health risks” from the oil and gas extraction process, which has been prevented in the state under a temporary moratorium put in place in 2008.

“Would I live in a community [with fracking] based on the facts I have now?” Zucker asked. “Would I let my child play in a school field nearby, drink water from the tap or grow vegetables from the soil? My answer is no.”

He concluded, “I cannot support high-volume hydraulic fracturing in the great state of New York.”

I cannot help but assume that there is a crass self-serving reason behind this, because, well, it’s Andrew Cuomo.

Still, it was the right decision.

Yes, Jeb Bush Should be Stapled to the Whole Sordid Terri Schaivo Affaire

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Charlie Pierce reminds us of what he did:

Jeb Bush made a family tragedy into a family horror. He willingly put the power of his office behind lunatics who were jumping fences, calling bomb threats into elementary schools, putting bounties on Michael Schiavo’s head, and endagering great people doing wonderful work at a hospice. This episode shouldn’t be an obscure part of his past. It should define him as a politician, and as a man.

Just to remind you.

Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state, and then Governor Jeb Bush decided to intervene to prevent the removal of her feeding tube in a transparent attempt to make nice with the “Pro-Life” terrorist crowd.

Michael Schiavo, Terri’s husband, and the target of this obscenity, has some choice words for the “smart” Bush:

In his announcement Tuesday that he would explore a 2016 presidential bid, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) promised to focus on “ideas and policies that will expand opportunity and prosperity for all Americans.” But he made no mention of his most controversial act during his two terms in office: his attempts to take custody of Terri Schiavo and overrule her husband Michael’s decision to remove her feeding tube, fifteen years after cardiac arrest had left her in a vegetative state.

ThinkProgress spoke with Michael Schiavo and the attorney who represented him in the matter, George Felos, about Bush’s presidential candidacy. Both expressed concern that Bush’s record was one of government interference and opposing individual liberty.

“If you want a government that’s gonna intrude on your life, enforce their personal views on you, then I guess Jeb Bush is your man,” Schiavo explained, adding, “We really don’t need another Bush in office.”

………

Though Michael Schiavo got a court order in 2002 to remove his wife’s feeding tube — he said his wife had not wanted to be kept alive artificially — Jeb Bush intervened, pushing the state legislature to pass an unconstitutional bill in a special session giving him authority to order the feeding tube reinserted. When a state judge ordered it removed again, Felos told ThinkProgress, Bush “manipulated the organs of state government in order to try to evade the court order.”

“Through the Dept. of Children and Family Services and through the Department of Law Enforcement they tried in the courts to ignore the higher court pronouncements – this was documented in an article by the Miami Herald,” he recalled, though, “when local authorities said you’re going to have to go through us in order to get her, and the state law enforcement agency backed down.”

………

“It’s one thing to have your own personal beliefs,” Felos said, “It’s quite another to use your official powers and your official office to subvert the court and the lawful process.”

He also recalled that after Schiavo’s death, Jeb Bush went after Michael Schiavo personally, asking the state’s attorney to investigate whether he had called 911 fast enough. “It was very odd, almost like a personal vendetta the governor had towards Michael Schaivo.” The state’s attorney found no evidence against him and closed the case. “The propriety of using your office to hunt and harass people, as the governor did to Mr. Schiavo after his wife’s death, I think raises significant questions about his judgment and his character,” Felos said.

Michael Schiavo, nearly a decade later, said he believes Jeb Bush’s intervention was a purely political move and an act of buffoonery. “If you want a government that’s gonna be intrusive and interfere in your personal life, vote for Bush. If you want to live like that, want people to interfere in your personal lives, then vote for him,” he said.

The whole Schiavo matter defines who and what Jeb Bush is as a politician and as a person.

It should also be noted that when it became national news, the American public recoiled in horror.

They should recoil in horror at Jeb Bush as well.

Crap! I Guess that I’m Actually Watch this Damn Film Now

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For the 2nd time in my life,* threats of terrorism have pulled a major motion picture from release.

I guess that I

This time it’s for the James Franco and Seth Rogen farce The Interview that has been pulled from screens:

Sony Pictures Entertainment on Wednesday dropped plans for its Christmas Day release of “The Interview,” a movie that depicts the assassination of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, after receiving a terror threat against theaters.

 Before that, the four largest theater chains in the United States said they would not show the movie, which has been at the center of a devastating hacking attack on Sony over the last several weeks. In a statement, Sony said: “We respect and understand our partners’ decision and, of course, completely share their paramount interest in the safety of employees and theatergoers.”

 Sony Pictures Entertainment on Wednesday dropped plans for its Christmas Day release of “The Interview,” a movie that depicts the assassination of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, after receiving a terror threat against theaters.

 Before that, the four largest theater chains in the United States said they would not show the movie, which has been at the center of a devastating hacking attack on Sony over the last several weeks. In a statement, Sony said: “We respect and understand our partners’ decision and, of course, completely share their paramount interest in the safety of employees and theatergoers.”

Hollywood executives never miss a chance to choose the craven path, I guess.

In a development that should surprise no one, “Senior Administration Officials” have confirmed that the hack originated in the DPRK.

BTW, James Franco had the best tweet about the cancellation:

#Emmastone kills it in @cabaret!!!! #alancumming is so good I started smoking and slapped his ass. 🌲🌲❤️Bye NYC!❤️🌲🌲
— James Franco (@JamesFrancoTV) December 17, 2014

That is so cool.

For the irony impaired, he tweeted this after the film was puled, and he says nothing at all about this.

Epically cool!

*The first time was when the film Mohammad, Messenger of God was pulled as a result of the 1977 Hanafi Siege, where hostages were taken in Washington, DC.

Let us Be Clear, this was all an Exchange of Spies

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The Obama administration is attempting to split hairs, and is claiming that the release of Cuban spies in American jails, and an as yet unnamed American spy in Cuban jail is a spy exchange, but that the release of Alan Gross was a humanitarian release.

It’s a nice fairy story, but this was a spy exchange.

What Alan Gross was doing in Cuba was espionage.

Rolling the Wiki:

Gross was working with Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), a contractor working with USAID who had won a US$6 million U.S. government contract for the program in which Gross was involved, a controversial “democracy-promotion program” that ballooned under the Bush administration, to provide communications equipment to break the Cuban government’s ‘information blockade’. Gross received more than US$500,000, despite the fact that he spoke little Spanish and had not worked in Cuba before.

 USAID’s US$20 million Cuba program, authorized by a law calling for regime change in Cuba, has been criticized repeatedly in congressional reports as being wasteful and ineffective, and putting people in danger. Funding was held up briefly in 2010 over concerns following Gross’s arrest.

 Before his arrest, Gross visited Cuba four times in five months in 2009 on a tourist visa, according to American officials to deliver computer and satellite equipment to three Jewish community groups. In December 2009, according to Development Alternatives Inc., he was on a follow-up trip, researching how the groups were making use of the equipment he had previously distributed to them. As reported by the Jewish Daily Forward, Cuba’s small Jewish community of fewer than 2,000 people who mainly live in Havana enjoys religious freedom, the possibility to emigrate to Israel, and has fairly good relations with the government under Raúl Castro, but has little influence, making observers wonder why the United States provides material to them under a USAID program that usually targets dissidents. According to a Latin America specialist for the Council on Foreign Relations it is possible that Gross’s mission was useful only in as much as it satisfied Congressional demand to take action in Cuba.

 In January 2012, it was reported that Cuban authorities claim that Gross has visited Cuba as early as 2004, delivering a video camera to a leading Freemason who later declared that he had been a Cuban intelligence agent since 2000.

 Gross filed reports for USAID of his four visits to Cuba in 2009. The report of the fifth and final trip was written by a representative of Gross’s company. A review of the reports was revealed on February 12, 2012, by the Associated Press (AP). According to the reports, Gross was aware of the risks he was taking. AP reports that Gross did not identify himself as a representative of the U.S. government, but claimed to be a member of a Jewish humanitarian group. To escape Cuban authorities’ detection, he enlisted the help of American Jews to transport electronic equipment, instructing them to pack items a piece at a time in carry-on luggage, and also travelled with American Jewish humanitarian groups doing missions on the island so he could intercede with Cuban authorities if questions arose. Gross declared that he was thoroughly inspected by the customs officials at Jose Marti International Airport when entering the country, and that he declared all of the items in his possession. The equipment he brought to Cuba on his fourth trip, most but not all of which is legal in Cuba, included 12 iPods, 11 BlackBerry Curve smartphones, three MacBooks, six 500-gigabyte external drives, three Internet satellite phones known as BGANs, three routers, three controllers, 18 wireless access points, 13 memory sticks, three VoIP phones, and networking switches. In his report on this trip, marked as final, he summarized: “Wireless networks established in three communities; about 325 users”. However, he went to Cuba for a fifth time in late November 2009 and was arrested 11 days later. When he was arrested, he was carrying a high-tech chip, intended to keep satellite phone transmissions from being located within 250 miles (400 kilometres). The chip is not available on the open market. It is provided most frequently to the CIA and the Defense Department, but can also be obtained by the State Department, which oversees USAID. Asked how Gross obtained the card, a USAID spokesman said that the agency played no role in helping Gross acquire equipment.

He was employed to transfer technology for the purpose of aiding opponents of the regime, what’s more if you follow the links at the Wiki page, which show that he when he, “He enlisted the help of American Jews to transport electronic equipment,” he was deceiving the people who helped him bring in electronics:

He did not tell the recipients that a U.S. government program outlawed in Cuba had paid for the equipment, it added, and used two unwitting U.S. Jews to slip some of the gear into the island.

Mr. Gross was a spy, and his release was a part of an exchange of spies.

This is not a bad thing.

Spy swaps are made all the time.

Presenting it as a purely humanitarian gesture is completely disingenuous.

Finally!

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Following the exchange of Alan Gross and the Cuban 5 3, (More on that in a subsequent post) Obama has announced that the US and Cuba will be establishing formal diplomatic relations:

President Obama on Wednesday ordered the restoration of full diplomatic relations with Cuba and the opening of an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than a half-century as he vowed to “cut loose the shackles of the past” and sweep aside one of the last vestiges of the Cold War.

 The surprise announcement came at the end of 18 months of secret talks that produced a prisoner swap negotiated with the help of Pope Francis and concluded by a telephone call between Mr. Obama and President Raúl Castro. The historic deal broke an enduring stalemate between two countries divided by just 90 miles of water but oceans of mistrust and hostility dating from the days of Theodore Roosevelt’s charge up San Juan Hill and the nuclear brinkmanship of the Cuban missile crisis.

 “We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries,” Mr. Obama said in a nationally televised statement from the White House. The deal, he added, will “begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas” and move beyond a “rigid policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were born.”

We must also thank the Super-Pope for helping this along:

Pope Francis encouraged the talks with letters to Mr. Obama and Mr. Castro and had the Vatican host a meeting in October to finalize the terms of the deal. Mr. Obama spoke with Mr. Castro by telephone on Tuesday to seal the agreement in a call that lasted more than 45 minutes, the first direct substantive contact between the leaders of the two countries in more than 50 years.

I am liking this Pope more and more.

Of course, the dead enders and political cowards, like Senators Bob Menendez and Marco Rubio, are having a hissy fit over all this, but both as a matter of policy and a matter of politics, they are simply wrong.

This policy has been in place for longer than I’ve been alive, and it has never worked.

The fact that it is also a hearty f%$# you to the most radical elements of the Cuban emigre community, the nut-jobs who gave us the Elian Gonzalez cluster f%$#.

BTW, if you really hate the Castro regime, we need to let the banksters in to destroy the regime.

The CIA never could, but the crooks that we coddle on Wall Street can overthrow the Castros.

Win

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This is epic. Brad and Dallas Woodhouse are brothers and pundits. One is a Democrat, and the other is a Republican, and while they were on CSPAN, their mom called in to berate them for fighting at family gatherings:

Everybody knows that the best part about CSPAN is the unpredictable nature of the show’s call-in segments, where regular hosts and guests do an admirable job of fielding unusual questions with no advance warning. But brothers Brad and Dallas Woodhouse are now the champions of awkward CSPAN calls, after the politically divided brothers ended up taking a call from their mom.

“Oh God, it’s mom,” Dallas Woodhouse said as soon as “Joy” from North Carolina started to speak.

“You’re right, I’m from down south,” she said. “And I’m your MOTHER.”

She’d called to take issue with something her kids said on air: That the brothers’ political bickering — you see, one is liberal, and the other is conservative — is typical of most families. “I don’t know many families that are fighting at Thanksgiving,” she said. “I’m hoping you’ll have some of this out of your system when you come here for Christmas. I would really like a peaceful Christmas.”


Epic

It is Impossible to Avoid the Conclusion that Black Lives Didn’t Matter Much at all to the Magazine.

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This is an Actual TNR Cover

In case you haven’t heard, there has been a kerfluffle at that bastion for white Ivy League affirmative action The New Republic, with the firing of  Franklin Foer as editor.

A significant portion of the deadwood on their masthead, along with other staff, resigned in protest.

While they consider it to be drawing an ethical line in the sand, it is, in fact, a mark of their missing ethics.

The fact that they were still on that masthead after years of racism and disregard for the minority community at TNR is how their stand should be viewed, as Ta-Nehisi Coates so ably states:

………

 Earlier this year, Foer edited an anthology of TNR writings titled Insurrections of the Mind, commemorating the magazine’s 100-year history. “This book hasn’t been compiled in the name of definitiveness,” Foer wrote. “It was put together in the spirit of the magazine that it anthologizes: it is an argument about what matters.” There is only one essay in Insurrections that takes race as its subject. The volume includes only one black writer and only two writers of color. This is not an oversight. Nor does it mean that Foer is a bad human. On the contrary, if one were to attempt to capture the “spirit” of TNR, it would be impossible to avoid the conclusion that black lives don’t matter much at all.

 That explains why the family rows at TNR’s virtual funeral look like the “Whites Only” section of a Jim Crow-era movie-house. For most of its modern history, TNR has been an entirely white publication, which published stories confirming white people’s worst instincts. During the culture wars of the ’80s and ’90s, TNR regarded black people with an attitude ranging from removed disregard to blatant bigotry. When people discuss TNR’s racism, Andrew Sullivan’s publication of excerpts from Charles Murray’s book The Bell Curve (and a series of dissents) gets the most attention. But this fuels the lie that one infamous issue stands apart. In fact, the Bell Curve episode is remarkable for how well it fits with the rest of TNR’s history.

(emphasis mine)

I just need to note here, as I always do, that, in his late teens, the co-author of The Bell Curve, Charles Murray, burned a cross next to the local police station.

This event in his early life provides necessary context for the fact that most of his professional career has been about putting an academic gloss on racism.

Coates makes the point that the genteel racism of the magazine is not limited to the actions, and tenure, of the contemptible Marty Peretz:

Two years later, Washington Post writer Richard Cohen was roundly rebuked for advocating that D.C. jewelry stores discriminate against young black men—but not by TNR. The magazine took the opportunity to convene a panel to “reflect briefly” on whether it was moral for merchants to bar black men from their stores. (“Expecting a jewelry store owner to risk his life in the service of color-blind justice is expecting too much,” the magazine concluded.)

 TNR made a habit of “reflecting briefly” on matters that were life and death to black people but were mostly abstract thought experiments to the magazine’s editors. Before, during, and after Sullivan’s tenure, the magazine seemed to believe that the kind of racism that mattered most was best evidenced in the evils of Afrocentrism, the excesses of multiculturalism, and the machinations of Jesse Jackson. It’s true that TNR’s staff roundly objected to excerpting The Bell Curve, but I was never quite sure why. Sullivan was simply exposing the dark premise that lay beneath much of the magazine’s coverage of America’s ancient dilemma.

Read the rest.

BTW, after you read this, you might want to read Wonkette’s Rebecca Schoenkopf’s take on this.

While Coates’ analysis is trenchant and thoughtful, Wonkette is just delightfully snarky and very funny.

One Thing Worse than Being a Whiny Bitch is Being a Whiny Bitch with Permission to Shoot People

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The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, New York City’s largest police union, on Friday called on cops to keep Mayor Bill de Blasio away from police officers’ funerals.

The union published a notice on its website urging officers to keep de Blasio or City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito away, the New York Daily News reported on Friday.

“DON’T LET THEM INSULT YOUR SACRIFICE!” the notice reads.

Officers can download a form to request that de Blasio and Mark-Viverito not attend their funerals “in the event that you are killed in the line of duty.”

“Due to Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito’s consistent refusal to show police officers the support and respect they deserve, I believe that their attendance at the funeral of a fallen New York City police officer is an insult to that officer’s memory and sacrifice,” the form reads.

and

A Cleveland police union has demanded that the Cleveland Browns football team apologize for a player who wore a T-shirt before Sunday’s game protesting the police shootings of two black people.

Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins wore a shirt reading “Justice for Tamir Rice And John Crawford III” during pre-game warmups. Rice, who was just 12 years old, died last month after a Cleveland police officer shot him when he mistook the boy’s toy gun for a real weapon. Crawford, 22, was shot dead by police in August at an area Wal-Mart while he was holding an air rifle.

Cleveland Police Patrolman Union President Jeff Follmer sent local TV station WEWS a statement after Sunday’s game that called for an apology from the NFL team. “It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law,” the statement read, as quoted by WEWS. “They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium and the Browns organization owes us an apology.

Seriously.  If a member of the police force cannot deal with the rather anodyne statements about controversial use of force by the department, they need to find another line of work.

I would suggest that they apply to be professional  Klein Bottles, because with their heads so far up their asses, there would be very little adjustment.

We are the Texas of the Developed World

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I am paraphrasing the late Molly Ivins here, but the fact that the United States antediluvian approach to child care is driving women out of the workplace, and so making us less competitive than other members of the developed world, should be an subject of national shame:

Since Kerry Devine, 32, and her friends began having children, she has noticed a stark difference between her female friends in Auburn, Wash., where she lives, and those in England and Cyprus, where she grew up. In the United States, they almost all stopped working outside the home, at least until their children were in school. Yet, she says, she can’t think of a friend in Europe who left work after her children were born.

Ms. Devine quit her job after she had her first child, a girl, four years ago, because she thought 12 weeks of maternity leave was too short. “I just didn’t want to leave her in day care or pay for the expenses of it,” she said. When she gave birth to twin boys this year, a return to work — she had been a property manager for apartment buildings — looked even less plausible.Since Kerry Devine, 32, and her friends began having children, she has noticed a stark difference between her female friends in Auburn, Wash., where she lives, and those in England and Cyprus, where she grew up. In the United States, they almost all stopped working outside the home, at least until their children were in school. Yet, she says, she can’t think of a friend in Europe who left work after her children were born.

Ms. Devine quit her job after she had her first child, a girl, four years ago, because she thought 12 weeks of maternity leave was too short. “I just didn’t want to leave her in day care or pay for the expenses of it,” she said. When she gave birth to twin boys this year, a return to work — she had been a property manager for apartment buildings — looked even less plausible.

Her story would have played out differently, she said, if she had been living in her native England. Like many European countries, Britain offers a year of maternity leave, much of it paid, and protections for part-time workers, among other policies aimed at keeping women employed.

One would think that the supporting family values would actually involve supporting people who actually have a family, but the “family values” crowd seems to think that all they need to do is to tell women what to do with their ovaries, and hate te ghey, and it is Mission Accomplished.

F%$# that

Guess What? The Senate Report Reveals that Torture Worked?

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At least it works if your goal is to force a prisoner to lie about Saddam Hussein’s connections to Al Qaeda to justify our invading Iraq:

………

Such is the case with the “debate” on whether torture “worked” following the release of the Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA’s “Detention and Interrogation Program.”

On the one side, we have among others Dianne Feinstein: “The big finding is that torture doesn’t work and shouldn’t be employed by our country” she told PBS. Similarly, a headline in the Hill tells us: “McCain: ‘I know from personal experience’ torture doesn’t work.”

Then, we have six former directors and deputy directors of the CIA claiming the “interrogation program” “saved thousands of lives” by helping to capture al-Qaeda members. On this score, the Intelligence Committee report seems to have the goods, quoting CIA emails. While the former CIA directors claim a string successes based on torture: “KSM [Khalid Sheik Muhammed] then led us to Riduan Isamuddin, aka Hambali, East Asia’s chief al Qaeda ally and the perpetrator of the 2002 Bali bombing in Indonesia — in which more than 200 people perished.” But the report quotes a CIA official’s internal emails: “Frankly, we stumbled onto Hambali.”

But that doesn’t mean Feinstein and McCain are right and that’s the end of story. The truth is that torture did work, but not the way its defenders claim. It worked to produce justifications for policies the establishment wanted, like the Iraq war. This is actually tacitly acknowledged in the report — or one should say, it’s buried in it. Footnote 857 of the report is about Ibn Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured in Afghanistan shortly after the U.S. invasion and was interrogated by the FBI. He told them all he knew, but then the CIA rendered him to the brutal Mubarak regime in Egypt, in effect outsourcing their torture. From the footnote:

“Ibn Shaykh al-Libi reported while in [censored: ‘Egyptian’] custody that Iraq was supporting al-Qa’ida and providing assistance with chemical and biological weapons. Some of this information was cited by Secretary Powell in his speech at the United Nations, and was used as a justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Ibn Shaykh al-Libi recanted the claim after he was rendered to CIA custody on February [censored], 2003, claiming that he had been tortured by the [censored, likely ‘Egyptians’], and only told them what he assessed they wanted to hear. For more more details, see Volume III.” Of course, Volume III has not been made public.

So, while CIA head John Brennan now says it’s “unknowable” if torture lead to information that actually saved lives, it’s provable that torture lead to information that helped lead to war and destroyed lives.

………

This was somewhat acknowledged in the other Senate report on torture, released by the Armed Services Committee in 2008. It quoted Maj. Paul Burney, who worked as a psychiatrist at Guantanamo Bay prison: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq and we were not successful. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link … there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.” The GTMO Interrogation Control Element Chief, David Becker told the Armed Services Committee he was urged to use more aggressive techniques, being told at one point “the office of Deputy Secretary of Defense [Paul] Wolfowitz had called to express concerns about the insufficient intelligence production at GTMO.”

So, torture works if you are planning to create false intelligence to justify a phony war which leads to the biggest military and diplomatic disaster in US History.

So it was all about amusing Dick Cheney.

They generate false intel, and Dick gets that war that he wanted so badly.

Linkage

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John Cleese on Stupidity:

And Just to Prove that there is No Event that Uber Won’t Use an Excuse for Price Gouging………

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The internet based limo service jacked up its rates in Sydney in response to the hostage crisis there:

Uber briefly charged its users in downtown Sydney a minimum $100 to escape an armed hostage crisis, a result of automatic surge pricing meant to get more drivers online.

An executive in the city’s Central Business District (CBD) sent Mashable screenshots of the Uber app that showed the company was charging up to four-times the normal rate because “demand is off the charts.”

“I have never, ever seen it at four-times [the normal rate] and I’m a 1% top Uber user,” said Matthew Leung, the user in contact with Mashable. “I understand the way the business works — higher the demand, higher the charge — but four-times at $100 minimum is ridiculous. Almost price gouging at its worst.”

Another customer shared a screenshot of their “wack” fare estimate that showed a trip from an area just blocks from the siege to the airport would cost $145-185. That journey would normally cost less than $100, according to Uber’s website. “This is price surging,” he wrote in a comment to Mashable.

After Mashable published a story on the price hikes, the company reversed course and announced that all riders in the area would be free, and that anybody who had been charged the higher amount would be refunded.

I can hear Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, saying, “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids.”

Seriously,  Uber, and its Ayn Rand worshiping CEO are simply too evil to trust with your money.

Sydney? Seriously?

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I have to say that if terrorists were going to make an attack, Sydney, Australia would be the last place that I would expect:

At least one gunman is holding staff and customers hostage at a cafe in the Australian city of Sydney.

Hundreds of armed police have sealed off the normally busy Martin Place in the central business district.

Earlier, at least three people were seen inside the Lindt cafe with their hands up against a window, and holding up a black flag with Arabic writing.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has described the “terrifying” incident as “deeply concerning”.

It is not yet confirmed as a terrorist attack, though the fact that the hostage takers appeared to have displayed the black Jihadi flag would imply that this is likely.

It’s just plain weird.

Obama Must Hate Warren Right Now

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Elizabeth Warren’s campaign against Wall Street insider Antonio Weiss’ nomination for undersecretary for domestic finance for the US Treasury is picking up steam:

Under pressure from progressive groups to reject Wall Street influence, three more Senate Democrats yesterday turned against the nomination of Antonio Weiss for a senior post at the U.S. Treasury Department.

President Barack Obama’s choice of Weiss, an investment banker at Lazard Ltd. (LAZ), has put him at the center of an ideological fight within the Democratic Party over the finance industry’s clout in Washington.

The attacks are coming from Democrats who say the Obama administration relies too much on Wall Street veterans to fill important regulatory posts. They are criticizing Weiss, in particular, for his role in engineering tax-lowering inversion deals for U.S. companies.

The opposition yesterday from Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Al Franken of Minnesota further complicates the nomination for the administration and Democratic leaders. After defending Weiss’s Democratic bona fides and accepting his campaign contributions, they’ll have to turn to Republicans to get him into office.

“This fits the administration’s pattern of choosing Wall Street insiders to senior policy positions instead of those with strong consumer protection or community bank and credit union experience,” Manchin said on the Senate floor yesterday.

There are now note enough Democratic votes to 

Neither Shaheen nor Manchin are representatives of the “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party,” and the fact that they are bucking the President is a big deal.

It appears that the idea that someone who has no background in domestic finance is a good selection for the undersecretary for domestic finance, simply because they are a big Democratic donor, and they have a background in the financial industry is no longer as universally held as it used to be.

It also appears that people are finally getting the idea that multimillion dollar payouts from the financial industry for people who go into government service is implicitly corrupt.

Good.

Any discomfort that Barack Obama might experience because a portion of the Democratic Party has realized that he is Wall Streets biggest fan is well deserved.