Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Mission Accomplished, Frau Merkel*

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It looks like Germany is finally running out the string on its beggar thy neighbor economy:

Germany’s exports are falling at the fastest rate since the global crisis in 2009, raising fears of a triple-dip recession and a disastrous relapse for the rest of the eurozone.

The country’s five economic institutes – or “Wise Men” – slashed their growth forecast for Germany from 2pc to 1.2pc next year, warning that the latest measures unveiled by the European Central Bank will add “hardly any” extra stimulus to the real economy and may be unworkable.

Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, warned that the eurozone is at “serious risk” of falling back into recession if nothing is done, and is in danger of suffering a lost decade. “If the right policies are decided, if both surplus and deficit countries do what they have to do, it is avoidable,” she said. The wording is a clear call to Germany for an immediate shift in policy.

German exports slumped by 5.8pc in August as the crisis in Ukraine and Russia took its toll. “We’re no longer in a recovery,” said Volker Treier, head of the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK). He said geopolitical upsets may have pushed the economy over the edge into a “technical recession”, but added that Germany itself is also to blame for failure to break out of a slow-growth trap. “We have too little investment. That’s been the case for years,” he said.

The Wise Men said in a joint report that the German economy is now in “stagnation”, with unemployment likely to rise next year. “There are no signs of the long-awaited recovery yet. Corporate investment fell in the second quarter and there is hardly any evidence to suggest that this cautious approach to investment will change in the near future,” they said.

Germany has been running its economy by suppressing worker wages and domestic demand, and focusing on exports and trade surpluses.

Of course, that is also what they are suggesting for everyone else in the Euro zone, which of course does not works, because for every trade surplus, there has to be a corresponding trade deficit.

It’s a zero sum game, and they have managed to sufficiently impoverish their Euro Zone “partners” to the degree that they no longer can import German products, and now the Germans have no one to export to.

It should result in some policy changes in Germany, but it won’t while Merkel is Chancellor, because she has staked her political career on depicting the other members of the EU as lazy and profligate to her constituents.

*Horses whinnying.

The AIG Lawsuit: Snark too Good not to Share

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First is Chris Arnade says that, “Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chairman of AIG, has that kind of fart-in-the-elevator audacity:

The senior managing director – a top-ranking banker – walked onto the crowded elevator, focus fixed on her Blackberry, pressed the elevator button and farted loudly. As the smell filled the elevator, as others nervously coughed, some covering up giggles, her focus stayed on the Blackberry. Four floors later she left, commenting to a colleague, “The elevators are vile. The janitors are always on some break.”

 Another MD turned to me: “That’s why she earns the big bucks.”

 “Being able to fart?” I asked.

 “No, you idiot. Audacity. Audacity so great that you can fart on the elevator and blame it on someone else.”

And then, of course, there is John Stewart commenting on the AIG Lawsuit:

I wish that I could write like either of them.

People I Never Expected to Cite, Better Business Bureau Edition

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Generally, I find the BBB to be kind of useless.

There is an inherent conflict because the organization rates its dues paying members, and there have been repeated instances where being a dues paying members have been cut slack by virtue of this status.

Still, I have to note that the BBB just gave the Uber car service an “F”:

Uber, the smartphone-based hail-a-ride service, often claims it is cheaper than a ride in a taxi. It looks as if some Uber customers do not agree.

The company received an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau on Thursday, the lowest possible rating given by the organization.

The grade is based on, among other criteria, more than 90 Uber customer complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau over the last three years, most of them centering on Uber’s so-called surge pricing.

Customers still feel misinformed about how they are charged for their rides, according to complaints at the bureau’s website, and say they are not able to receive adequate customer service when they try to complain about their fares.

With its surge pricing, Uber’s temporarily increases fare prices anywhere from one and a half to 10 times the normal cost of taking an Uber ride, based on the demand for drivers. When many people in a particular area request Uber at the same time, for example, the price of rides in that area goes up.

“I never knew about surcharges until after the fact and was unaware, confused and uninformed,” one customer wrote on the bureau’s site.

Uber has a long, tricky history of its surge pricing. When Manhattan was hit by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, for example, many people complained that Uber was using a natural disaster to price gouge its customers.

Yes, it is price gouging, and yes, Uber’s structure and behavior, as well as the Objectivist statements of it founder, indicates that it has a contempt for both its employees contractors and its customers.

Not surprising.  Much of the philosophical underpinning of Objectivism blaming the victim.

It’s Already Happened

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Howie Klein at Down with Tyranny observes that the Democratic Party establishment is targeting liberals, with both the DCCC and the DSCC systematically supporting conservative Dems over liberal ones, even when the numbers point toward the liberals being a more competitive candidates.

It’s clear, for example, that DCCC chairman Steve Israel feels that is more important to rebuild the Blue Dog Caucus than it is to win control of the Congress.

He then wonders the establishment would target a liberal presidential candidate and support a less electable corporate Democrat:

Which suggests an interesting thought. If a truly hard-core progressive — an Elizabeth Warren or Zephyr Teachout, say — were the party’s strongest presidential candidate, would corporate Democrats choose a lesser candidate anyway, one with a greater chance of losing, just to keep the White House in the hands of someone’s One-Percent candidate? Again, your call, but we may see that tested fairly soon.

 He’s actually wrong about this.  It already happened ……… In 1973, and not only did the party establishment not support the Liberal nominee, George McGovern, and they actively sabotaged his campaign, and tacitly supported Richard “The Human Stain” Nixon.

The corporatist wing of the Democratic Party will fight for its power within the party even at the expense of the power of the party.

Not this Sh%$ Again!

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The so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels are complaining that actions against ISIS are aiding the Assad regime:

But the Syrian president’s ability to continue to attack his enemies without interference is fuelling anger amongst mainstream opposition supporters. “Syrian warplanes used to shell us two or three times a week but now they target us every day thanks to the coalition forces,” Faris Samir, from Harm in the northern Idlib region, complained on Thursday.

 “We are losing martyrs and many get injured but no one pays any attention. Now the Syrian army is taking areas bombed by the coalition forces after the Islamic factions withdraw. I have to say that the coalition military campaign is in the interest of the Syrian regime and against the Syrian people.”

I offer the “mainstream opposition”* a hearty f%$# you.

Get your war on if you want, but the actions against ISIS have nothing to do with your goal of overthrowing Assad.

I would argue that the gross incompetence of the “mainstream opposition”, which created an opening for sectarian governments to ship foreign Jihadis to Syria aid was a major contributing factor in the creation of ISIS.

Seriously.  Go f%$# yourself.

While we are at it, let us remember the advice of Machiavelli:

A prince should therefore be slow in undertaking any enterprise upon the representations of exiles, for he will generally gain nothing by it but shame and serious injury.

The Free Syrian Army should be viewed through this lens.

*Not sure how moderate these folks are. That whole martyr quote sounds like a dog whistle to religious extremists.

The New York Times Calls Out Erdogan on ISIS

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Not only do they criticize his inaction, the editorial board specifically calls out Turkey’s actions to support Jihadists and Islamic extremists which eventually led to the formation of ISIS:

This is an indictment of Mr. Erdogan and his cynical political calculations. By keeping his forces on the sidelines and refusing to help in other ways — like allowing Kurdish fighters to pass through Turkey — he seeks not only to weaken the Kurds, but also, in a test of will with President Obama, to force the United States to help him oust President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whom he detests.

 ………

 But all sides — the Americans, Mr. Erdogan and the Kurds — agree that ground forces are necessary to capitalize on the air power. No dice, says Mr. Erdogan, unless the United States provides more support to rebels trying to overthrow Mr. Assad and creates a no-fly zone to deter the Syrian Air Force as well as a buffer zone along the Turkish border to shelter thousands of Syrian refugees who have fled the fighting.

 ………

 Mr. Erdogan’s behavior is hardly worthy of a NATO ally. He was so eager to oust Mr. Assad that he enabled ISIS and other militants by allowing fighters, weapons and revenues to flow through Turkey. If Mr. Erdogan refuses to defend Kobani and seriously join the fight against the Islamic State, he will further enable a savage terrorist group and ensure a poisonous long-term instability on his border.

(emphasis mine)

This is not the sort of truth telling that I expect from the “Paper of Record,” and I hope that they extend it to the House of Saud (specifically Prince Bandar, who was aggressively supporting ISIS until they were well into invading Iraq).

That won’t happen though.

As an aside, Erdogan actions in the matter have set back Turkey’s bid to join the EU by many years, because the Europeans already looked at intervening in Syria, and wanted no part of the Erdogan and the Gulf princes’ efforts to replace yet another secular Arab regime with a Sunni government.

Not not even the French, who still think of Syria as a colony in some ways, were unwilling to go on that adventure.

Given that there is no meaningful opposition to Erdogan and his AKP party for the foreseeable future, I’m pretty sure that any number of EU functionaries, as well as many governments, are now feeling a sense of relief that they have been slow walking Turkey’s application.

Wisconsin and Texas Voter Suppression Laws Blocked

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These are only short term injunctions though:

The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked Wisconsin from enforcing its strict voter identification law in this year’s election.

 By a 6-3 vote, the justices granted an emergency appeal from civil rights lawyers who argued it was too late to put the rule into effect.

 Lawyers for the ACLU had noted the state had already sent out thousands of absentee ballots without mentioning the need for voters to return a copy of the photo identification.

 It would be “chaos,” they said, for the state now to have to decide whether or not to count such ballots because the voters failed to comply with the new law.

 Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. The six justices in the majority did not issue a written opinion to accompany the decision to lift an order by a lower court that would have allowed the law to take effect.

So not surprised that the three most right wing justices decided that keeping the n*****s from voting is more important than preventing chaos in the already started balloting.

At nearly the same time, a federal judge in Texas struck down that state’s new voter ID law on the grounds that it violated the constitutional right to vote and discriminated against racial minorities.

 Texas Atty. Gen. Gregg Abbott said the state would appeal the ruling.

 The Wisconsin and Texas cases were the two most closely watched tests of new voter rules this year. In both states, the Republican-led legislatures sought to tighten the rules for voting and to require all registered voters who did not have driver’s license to obtain a photo ID card at a state motor vehicles office.

In Texas, a gun license was acceptable too, but not a college ID, even a college ID issued by a state college.

Funny that.

Reasonably decent Jobless Numbers

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Pretty good, with the 4 week moving average hitting an 8½ year low:

Initial jobless claims held steady at 287,000 last week.

 Expectations were for claims to rise slightly to 295,000, up from last week’s 287,000.

 Last week’s report was revised up slightly to 288,000.

The 4-week moving average of claims fell to 287,750, down 7,250 from last week, the lowest 4-week moving average since February 4, 2006.

This is a Sauce for the Gander Moment

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Frank Wolf (R-VA), who chairs the subcommittee that writes the Department Justice budget, has demanded an investigation of foreign money taken by think tanks:

The Justice Department should look into whether Washington think tanks may be violating federal law by accepting money from foreign governments — and then issuing reports that promote the donors’ agendas — without registering as a “foreign agent,” a senior House lawmaker has said in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

The request, from Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, who has already criticized the Brookings Institution for taking large donations from foreign governments, puts pressure on the Justice Department to get involved in the debate, particularly given that Mr. Wolf is the chairman of the House panel that controls the Justice Department‘s budget.

The letter, sent on Wednesday, refers to an article published in The New York Times in September that detailed the tens of millions of dollars that foreign governments, including Norway and the United Arab Emirates, have donated in recent years to think tanks as those governments have sought help in highlighting their priorities in Washington.

Federal law requires any organization taking money from a foreign government and acting at its request, direction or control to file documents with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

………

He noted in the letter that money has also been included in next year’s budget bill for the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate the quality of the agency’s enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and to consider possible changes needed in the law. The legislation was first passed in 1938, based on fear that Germany was secretly funding Nazi propaganda in the United States.

The distinguished from Virginia should be aware that this can go places he does not intend.

Even ignoring the various peccadilloes of Grover Norquist, the right wing think tank ecosystem is at least as awash in foreign money as places like the Brookings Institute.

Honestly, in a perfect world, I think that we would be better off without think tanks, which on both sides of the which seem to primarily function be a full employment system for political hacks, defeated politicians, supporters of American empire, which ill serves both America and the world.

Not The Onion

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President Obama blasted Republicans as the party of “billionaires” on Tuesday while mingling with high-rollers at the $26 million estate of Rich Richman — yes, that’s his real name — in Greenwich, Conn.

Richman, who built his $10 billion company developing rental housing, lives in the Conyers Farm area, where the minimum lot size is 10 acres. Twenty-five donors paid $32,400 each to get their photo taken with the president. Others paid $10,000 for dinner.

To quote Depeche Mode, “I think that God has a sick sense of humor. “

They Don’t Want the Truth to Come Out, That’s Why

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More Escalation, and More Turkish Machinations

Turkey has the 2nd biggest army in NATO, and much of it is stationed a few miles from ISIS, but, much to the disappointment of the Obama administration they are refusing to take any actions at all:

As fighters with the Islamic State bore down Tuesday on the Syrian town of Kobani on the Turkish border, President Obama’s plan to fight the militant group without being drawn deeper into the Syrian civil war was coming under acute strain.

 While Turkish troops watched the fighting in Kobani through a chicken-wire fence, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that the town was about to fall and Kurdish fighters warned of an impending blood bath if they were not reinforced — fears the United States shares.

 But Mr. Erdogan said Tuesday that Turkey would not get more deeply involved in the conflict with the Islamic State unless the United States agreed to give greater support to rebels trying to unseat the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. That has deepened tensions with President Obama, who would like Turkey to take stronger action against the Islamic State and to leave the fight against Mr. Assad out of it.

It gets better.

While refusing to take any action, Istanbul is demanding that the US put boots on the ground (see vid).

It’s pretty clear that Erdogan has been aggressively supporting the rebels in Syria, including some of the most extreme Jihadis.  (The so-called moderates could not fight their way out of a wet paper bag)

Turkey is reticent about taking action for a number of reasons:

  • They want the Kurds in Iraq and Syria to be neutralized as a military force that might ally with their own Kurds.
  • Erdogan is obsessed with replacing the secular regime in Syria with a Sunni one.
  • The Turks fear that if they go in on any operations against ISIS, their complicity in its formation will be revealed. 

I think that the last point is most of their concern wight now.

It’s why they went ape sh%$ over Biden’s comments regarding the Turkish role in the Syrian civil war.

Before ISIS was ISIS, Turkey and the House of Saud were the biggest backers of al Qaeda linked militants in Syria, and now that their little monster has become a potential threat, they are looking for plausible deniability.

OK, the EU and ECB are in the Banksters” Pockets

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I’ve always wondered why, when Irish banks failed at the beginning of the financial crisis, Ireland decided to make the bond holders whole.

I figured that it was some sort of delusion about being “business friendly.”

Basically, Ireland’s economic strategy at the time was to be an amazingly accommodating 3rd world nation that through an accident of history had access to the European financial system, and that they could not thing beyond this.

I was wrong. The Irish government was blackmailed into accepting a bailout deal that got bond holders 100¢ on the dollar:

Senior European and European Central Bank (ECB) officials agreed to threaten Ireland with national bankruptcy if the government made any attempt to burn bondholders, the Sunday Independent can reveal.

 The threat was made at a high-level teleconference meeting, details of which have been revealed for the first time by the Central Bank governor, Dr Patrick Honohan.

 Mr Honohan, who famously told the nation Ireland would be entering the Troika bailout programme live on radio as government ministers were publicly denying it, also revealed he was kept out of loop about the meeting.

 In a new book about the late Brian Lenihan, Mr Honohan said he only found out about the meeting after the Troika delivered the ultimatum to Mr Lenihan on November 26, 2010.

 “The Troika staff told Brian in categorical terms that burning the bondholders would mean no programme and, accordingly, could not be countenanced,” Dr Honohan writes. “For whatever reason, they waited until after this showdown to inform me of this decision, which had apparently been taken at a very high-level teleconference to which no Irish representative was invited.”

I think that it is time for the Irish to push back on this, and declare that the debts from their bailout to be odious debt, and repudiate it:

In international law, odious debt, also known as illegitimate debt, is a legal theory that holds that the national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation, should not be enforceable. Such debts are, thus, considered by this doctrine to be personal debts of the regime that incurred them and not debts of the state. In some respects, the concept is analogous to the invalidity of contracts signed under coercion.

The Irish government had an obligation to make the depositors whole, up to whatever limit their bank insurance is set, but the bond holders are covered by no such obligation.

When a bank goes under, its bond holders are not supposed to be at the front of the line.

The EU & IMF extorted a bailout to the commercial and investment banks that were born by the Irish citizenry.

This should be repudiated.

Muck Farvel!

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Marvel Comics is cancelling the Fantastic Four comic book, largely because Marvel Studios does not have the movie rights, having sold them to Fox during their broke as hell days:

That, as a result of Disney’s highest single shareholder and Marvel CEO Isaac Perlmutter’s anger with Fox Studios over negotiations regarding the film-and-related rights to The Fantastic Four, that Marvel would cancel the Fantastic Four comic rather than provide any promotion, however small it might be, towards the Fox Studios film. Merchandise and licenses were scrapped and even Fantastic Four posters in the offices were pulled down lest Perlmutter see one and have his ire raised. It may not have been logical, but it was a decision born of personal emotion. It was steadied by sense. X-Men wasn’t cancelled, for example as the Xbooks sell so well. But Fantastic Four? It may have been the first book of the Marvel Universe, but its sales have continued to drag, even after multiple relaunches with high profile creators. There would be less of a hit to the bottom line if this comic was dropped.

Our story was pooh-poohed by all and sundry, save for CBR who independently confirmed that it was intended for the Fantastic Four to be cancelled. Then the letter about sketch card artists being forbidden to use Fantastic Four characters was made public, Mondo talked about being forbidden to use Fantastic Four characters and today, we we were already planning to run another story about Diamond Select Toys confirming that they are unable to make any Fantastic Four toys.

Right now we are not able to make characters from the FF, but as soon as that changes we will consider them.

But events moved on too quickly. Now the catalogues of Hachette, Marvel’s bookstore distributor, seems to confirm the cancellation at least. With June’s solicitation for James Robinson and Leonard Kirk‘s Fantastic Four: The End Is Fourever.

I get it that Marvel Studios wants the FF back, but they sold the rights when they were nearly bankrupt before they got bought by the Mouse, and killing off the Ff comic book in a fit of pique sucks.

Federal Court Rules that Virginia Congressional Districts are Unconstitutional

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Nope. Nothing Suspicious Here

What a surprise. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the 3rd Congressional district was drawn entirely on the basis of race, and so is unconstitutional:

A panel of federal judges on Tuesday declared Virginia’s congressional maps unconstitutional because they concentrate African American voters into a single district at the expense of their influence elsewhere.

 The decision, handed down in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, orders the Virginia General Assembly to draw up new congressional maps by April — potentially launching a frenzied and highly political battle for survival within Virginia’s congressional delegation.

 The order delivered another victory for Democratic plaintiffs hoping to break up black-majority districts, which they say have been drawn by Republicans who have used the Voting Rights Act to dilute the influence of minority voters.

 A similar case in Alabama in which Republicans prevailed will be heard by the Supreme Court this term.

 “We’re obviously thrilled with the results,” said Marc Elias, a lawyer on the Virginia case who represented two voters from the district where the unconstitutional redistricting took place. “The Republicans engaged in impermissible racial gerrymandering in a cynical effort to gain seats. . . . We look forward to the state doing a new redistricting to comply with the court’s orders.”

The current Congressman for this district won with 81% of the vote in the last election. Of course this is all about minimizing the black vote in the state by concentrating them in one place.

I wish that this had come down in time to effect this election.

Governor Corbet (R-PA) Picks Fights with Philadelphia Teachers to Bolster Flagging Campaign

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So, surprise, his evil minions on the Philadelphia School Reform Commission picked a fight with the teachers’ union by unilaterally abrogating their contract:

In a stunning move that could reshape the face of city schools, the Philadelphia School Reform Commission voted Monday to unilaterally cancel its teachers’ contract. The vote was unanimous.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers was given no advance word of the action — which happened at an early-morning SRC meeting called with minimal notice — and which figures to result in a legal challenge to the takeover law the SRC believes gives it the power to bypass negotiations and impose terms.

Jerry Jordan, PFT president, called the move “cowardly” and vowed to fight it strongly.

“I am taking nothing off the table,” a clearly angry Jordan said at an afternoon news conference. Job actions could be possible, once he determines what members want to do. “We are not indentured servants.”

………

Whether the state takeover law, known as Act 46, actually gives the SRC the power to cancel union contracts remains to be seen.

The SRC has imposed some work rules on the teachers’ union the past year, but has always bargained contracts since its creation in 2001.

“Unbelievable!” Ted Kirsch, president of the statewide AFT-PA and a former longtime president of the PFT, said Monday morning when he learned of the SRC’s action.

“They have mismanaged this system and now they’re following along with Corbett’s plan – it’s the teachers’ fault.”

Will Bunch, aka Attytood, responds in an analysis aptly titled, “A heartbreaking act of staggering cowardice,” and even by the standard of Pennsylvania politics, this is completely classless:

See this picture? This is what raw cowardice and utter contempt for democracy looks like.

Moments before meeting begins, crowd is mainly district staffers and journalists. pic.twitter.com/bx7TMw8jUW
— Kevin McCorry (@byKevinMcCorry) October 6, 2014



The picture was taken Monday morning and posted on Twitter by Kevin McCorry of WHYY’s Newsworks just before 9:30 a.m., at the Philadelphia School District headquarters building at 440 North Broad Street.

In a matter of seconds — in a meeting that would last all of 17 minutes, and with one hasty comment from the public — the Philadelphia School Reform Commission, the state agency that has presided over 14 years of ruination of public education here, is about to explode a political bombshell. The SRC is about to revoke its contract with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, and cut the teachers’ benefits — and it’s about to do it before this nearly empty room.

This is no accident. The lack of a crowd, and the lack of public debate, was an act of careful calculation. The calculation of cowards.

The meeting was called on short notice, and not announced on their web site.

Instead, it was printed in small print in the Philadelphia Inquirer classified the day before.

Finally, there is this particularly astute bit of political analysis:

The contract stalemate between the SRC and the PFT has been going on for 21 months, so why take this vote in such a rash and arrogant fashion on this particular morning, October 6, 2014? Could it be because it’s exactly 29 days before Pennsylvania votes on whether to keep Gov. Corbett — who appointed the majority on the five-member SRC — or ditch him for Democrat Tom Wolf.

Do you remember that it was just last year that a Republican firm took a secret poll and used the report to urge Gov. Corbett that there was only one way that the foundering, unpopular governor could restore his image on education issues: To confront the Philadelphia teachers union. Now, with Corbett in the political fight of his life and losing badly, the school commission led by the governor’s appointees is starting a fight with the Philadelphia teachers’ union.

What a remarkable coincidence!

Look, I know what you’re thinking — Corbett is getting clobbered so badly in the polls that what does it matter at this point. I agree — but why do NFL teams keep lobbing Hail Mary passes when they’re losing by five touchdowns? Maybe Corbett figures a tough stance will appeal to suburban voters (although most of them are too freaked out by their own sky-high property taxes to notice). Maybe he’s desperate for the chaos of a teacher’s strike, which would violate a 1992 state law. Here’s a prominent Philadelphia Republican (yes, that’s a thing, apparently) who came out practically minutes after the SRC vote saying that a) he hates (yes, hates) the union but b) pleads with them to strike. Another coincidence? A strike (which I seriously doubt will happen — look for this to be fought in court) would be devastating to tens of thousands of schoolchildren. But, hey, politics ain’t beanbag.

Corbett hopes to pick up votes by running against Philadelphia, which is, of course a dog whistle for running against people with a high amount of melanin, and the children be damned.

Why to Make Pot Legal, Part Gazillion

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Growing marijuana is illegal, so the growers tend not to be particularly solicitous of EPA regulations, and as a result the Fisher may be placed on the endangered species list:

A rare west coast mammal is up for Endangered Species protection thanks to the threat posed by California’s illegal marijuana industry.

The fisher, a carnivorous cousin of the weasel found in the old-growth forests in California, Oregon and Washington is already rare, its numbers reduced by fur trappers and loggers going back to the 1800s, as well as by urban development. Only two naturally occurring wild populations exist, according to the Center for Biological Diversity: one is in the southern Sierra, and the other is in southern Oregon and Northern California. A third was reintroduced into Washington’s Olympic National Park in 2008. But the motivation for the new level of protection, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials, comes from the use of rat poison on marijuana plantations. Of 58 carcasses tested by one 2012 study, nearly 80 percent tested positive for traces of rodenticide.

“It is an illegal activity so it’s not like we know a lot yet,” explained Paul Henson, state supervisor for the FWS in Oregon. “But we know it’s fairly widespread within the range of the fisher, because that’s also where a certain amount of the illegal cultivation occurring on public lands.”

Make pot legal now.

Well, This Explains a Lot

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Former CIA Director Leon Panetta has now revealed that Rahm Emanuel attempted to cut him a new one for his cooperation with the Senate investigation of torture:

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta, in his new book, describes being summoned to a White House meeting and cussed out by President Obama’s chief of staff after he agreed to give the Senate intelligence committee access to documents chronicling the agency’s use of torture during the Bush administration.

“The president wants to know who the f%$# authorized this release to the committees,” Rahm Emanuel, who served as Obama’s chief of staff and enforcer in 2009 and 2010, is quoted as saying while slamming the table for emphasis.

Panetta’s book, Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace, is a blunt account of his time as Obama’s CIA director and, later, Secretary of Defense.

He describes being micromanaged and second-guessed by White House aides who seemed focused on political appearance over substance. White House pushback on the Senate torture inquiry, which came despite Obama’s pledge to run the most transparent administration ever, is in that way typical – as is Emanuel’s profane tirade. (Emanuel, as I’ve written before, saw even the most deeply moral and legal decisions in purely political terms.)

………

Panetta describes then-director of national intelligence Dennis Blair as coming to his rescue, asking Emanuel:

“If the president’s hair is on fire,” he retorted, “I want to know who the f%$# set his hair on fire.”

Blair was fired in May 2010 and replaced by James Clapper, with sources citing as a main reason “the mutual distrust between the White House and members of Mr. Blair’s staff.” John Brennan, who was then Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser and is now CIA director, was one of the people Panetta implied had set the president’s hair on fire.

I do not know whether Obama never had any intention to create openness, or if folks like James Clapper and John Brennan managed to get him to swallow their sky is falling bullsh%$.

It really doesn’t matter.

Hope and change, my flabby white ass.

Never Stop Your Enemies from Stepping on Their Own Dicks

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If you ask me, and you’re not asking me but I’m saying so anyway, Georgia has suddenly become the most interesting Senate race in the country. It was mighty interesting during the Republican primary, but then slipped in status as the race devolved into a plain vanilla case of the Republican Business Robot holding a safe lead over the Centrist Democratic Robot. The Centrist Democratic Robot’s Robotic Centrist Democrat campaign strategy leaked, and the Republican Business Robot used it predictably to tar the Centrist Democratic Robot as a Terrorist ISIS Mexican Democratic Robot — the worst kind of robot there is.

But now, things — things are happening. The Republican Business Robot, David Perdue, apparently went on the record some years back describing how he’s spent “most of [his] career” outsourcing. This was in response to a direct question asking him, “Can you describe your experience with outsourcing?” It’s unambiguous and it reinforces the central attacks on both Perdue and Republican economic priorities. It is the sort of thing on which a late-stage move can be made.

It’s not complicated. You, Michelle Nunn’s campaign, make an ad quoting directly from the deposition. “Q: Can you describe your experience with outsourcing?” “A: Yeah, I spent most of my career doing that.” You just take this dialogue and cut the ad and then make like 10 more and show them all on every channel, for a month. Hey, look at that:

Perdue’s defense? That he is proud of his sending American jobs overseas:

U.S. Senate candidate David Perdue said Monday he is proud of outsourcing he has done in his career as a corporate executive, pushing blame for lost jobs back on Washington.

Perdue, a former CEO for Dollar General and Republican nominee to replace retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss, was stung by his own words last week in an article on Politico.com. The Washington political news website quoted Perdue from a 2005 deposition where he said he “spent most of my career” outsourcing.

“Defend it? I’m proud of it,” he said in a press stop at The White House restaurant in Buckhead. “This is a part of American business, part of any business. Outsourcing is the procurement of products and services to help your business run. People do that all day.”

The deposition was taken as part of a lawsuit in the bankruptcy of Pillowtex, a failed textile company where Perdue was CEO in 2002 and 2003. In remarks Monday, he attempted to draw a line between his business decisions and Washington policies.

Yeah, this is going to go over to all those folks who lost their jobs in the textile industry.

There is a peculiar kind hubris that is a part and parcel to the American management class.

They cannot allow themselves to admit that what they do is not a heroic John Galtesque exercise, because once they do that, the fact that they are parasites (moochers) becomes inescapable.

Calm Down Everyone

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Yes, Justice Kennedy did grant an injunction preventing same sex marriages in Idaho and Nevada, but this is a fairly standard technical ruling to allow the Idaho AG to file an appeal:

With same-sex couples in Idaho legally free to seek marriage licenses this morning, state officials filed a last-minute plea to the Supreme Court to delay that opportunity. The plea came hours after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had struck down Idaho’s ban on gay and lesbian marriages, and then had put its ruling into immediate effect.

The filing said that the state had asked the Ninth Circuit to put its ruling back on hold so that it could be challenged before the en banc Ninth Circuit and, later, before the Supreme Court. The request was submitted to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who handles emergency filings from the geographic area that includes Idaho. He has the option either of acting alone or of referring the request to the full Court.

In their application, Idaho officials argued that their case, if it gets to the Supreme Court, is narrower in scope than the other same-sex marriage cases that the Justices had refused to review on Monday. The questions it would raise are only preliminary to a return of the case to the Ninth Circuit, the document argued.

Originally this ruing included Nevada, but this appears to have been in error, as Kennedy subsequently limited the scope of the injunction to just Idaho:

UPDATE 3:18 p.m. Justice Kennedy on Wednesday afternoon issued a revised order, limiting the postponement to the situation in Idaho, thus excluding Nevada. That puts back into effect a Ninth Circuit ruling nullifying the Nevada ban, and thus clears the way for issuing marriage licenses in that state to gay and lesbian couples. The order contained no explanation of the change, but it apparently was due to the captions the Ninth Circuit had put on its order putting its decision into effect. Lawyers for a gay rights advocacy group, Lambda Legal, had asked for a clarification of the earlier Kennedy order.

Basically this is limited, and should be (relatively) short term, to allow for Idaho to file for either an en banc hearing from the Ninth Circuit or an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Obviously, committed couples in Idaho must be bumming, but this is a procedural move without a much long term significance.