Uber Drivers Protest Their Dick Boss
Innovation in the area of taxicabs is not a bad thing, but Uber is run by a bunch of self important, randroid assholes who subscribe to the philosophy of murderer, sociopath, and proto-Objectivist William Edward Hickman, “What is good for me is right.”
This is not a philosophy of a good employer or an ethical businessman.
In Japan, the children exposed to the fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown are developing thyroid cancer at 40 times the normal rate:
Some 39 months after the multiple explosions at Fukushima, thyroid cancer rates among nearby children have skyrocketed to more than forty times (40x) normal.
More than 48 percent of some 375,000 young people—nearly 200,000 kids—tested by the Fukushima Medical University near the smoldering reactors now suffer from pre-cancerous thyroid abnormalities, primarily nodules and cysts. The rate is accelerating.
More than 120 childhood cancers have been indicated where just three would be expected, says Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.
The nuclear industry and its apologists continue to deny this public health tragedy. Some have actually asserted that “not one person” has been affected by Fukushima’s massive radiation releases, which for some isotopes exceed Hiroshima by a factor of nearly 30.
Why are children still in the area, and why are they not receiving large doses of KI would displace radioactive iodine from their thyroids.
I’m beginning to think Tokyo Electric Power Company strategy is to channel the Bobby McFerrin song, “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”
House Democrats just submitted a bill to enforce net neutrality:
A group of Democrats in Congress have drafted a bill to bar the FCC from allowing “fast lane” prioritization deals.
Dubbed the “Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act,” the legislation would call on the FCC to ban carriers from making the paid prioritization deals in which content providers pay service providers to receive better connection speeds. Additionally, the bill would block service providers from prioritizing their own services.
“Americans are speaking loud and clear – they want an internet that is a platform for free expression and innovation, where the best ideas and services can reach consumers based on merit rather than based on a financial relationship with a broadband provider,” Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said when announcing the bill.
“The Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act would protect consumers and support a free and open internet,” Leahy said.
The bill is being presented in the Senate and House by Leahy and congresswoman Doris Matsui (D-CA), and is being cosponsored by senator Al Franken (D-MN), congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), and congresswoman Anna Eshoo(D-CA).
I don’t think that it can survive a Republican filibuster in the Senate, and it would never even get to the floor in the house, but this is no longer an obscure technical issue.
Thanks to John Oliver, this issue has a name, “Cable Company F%$#ery,” and everyone knows what that means.
They won’t get the legislation in this Congress, but it is an election winner.
I’m just hoping that if this ever makes it to be a vote, the Dems won’t water this down.
This time, it’s Erin Burnett reminding Paul Bremer that he is clueless incompetent f%$#. She actually led with it:
Bremer penned an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal under the headline “Only America Can Prevent a Disaster in Iraq,” in which he argued for some form of U.S. troops on the ground there. After 4,490 American lives lost and $1.7 trillion spent, Burnett asked him, “How can you advocate any more people, any more lives going to risk for that country?”
“Because it’s in our interest,” Bremer responded matter-of-factly, going to elaborate that the U.S. cannot allow Iraq to become a home base for terrorists like those that constitute the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Taking on the role of the skeptical viewers, Burnett asked Bremer, “Aren’t you the one who got us into this mess?” She confronted Bremer with video from 2003 of him heralding Iraq’s “hopeful” future after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Bremer defended his words and the actions the Bush administration took to bring democracy to Iraq, instead blaming the Obama administration for presiding over the deterioration of those gains over the last few years.
Erin Burnett is just about as establishment as Halperin was yesterday.
She started off at Goldman “Vampire Squid” Sachs, after a stint at CNN, she went to Citi, then Bloomberg, then CNBC, and finally CNN.
She married a guy who worked for Lehman and Citi.
And she just called out Bremer as a clueless incompetent little sh%$.
I’m smelling a very positive trend.
Yeah, not me either, but it appears that Rick Perry is about to make it available for public review:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) recently broke bread with The New York Times Magazine’s Mark Liebovitch at a Jewish deli in Beverly Hills.
“I’m more Jewish than you think I am,” he told Leibovitch over a corned-beef Reuben. “I read the part of the Bible that said the Jews are God’s chosen people.”
You’re more Jewish than we think you are?
A am NOT willing to check out this claim.
Had barbecue at Dougies as a birthday dinner. (Yes, there is such a thing as Kosher Barbecue)
I followed his blog regularly until he left Reuters for Fusion, and given Fusion’s new focus on multimedia, he has not at this point set up a regular text-base home blog.
He is, however, still blogging, at Fusion, Slate, and other places.
I emailed him, and he suggested that I can follow him via his (generally pretty low volume) personal domain, FelixSalmon.com, which is is using as an index for his various activities.
It now appears that one impetus for the US state security apparatus to spy on all of us was to cover its own ass:
You may have heard about the government’s spying on the Associated Press. And high-level NSA whistleblower Bill Binney told Washington’s Blog that the government also spied on Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen, and chief Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen.
But Senior NSA executive Thomas Drake tells Washington’s Blog that the spying on reporters started 12 years ago – in 2002 – and has been fairly systematic.
By way of background, Drake had championed the “ThinThread” program, which automatically encrypted Americans’ data (data could only be decrypted after a court found there was probable cause that the American was a bad guy).
But after 9/11, NSA instead adopted the competing “Stellar Wind” system, which didn’t protect Americans’ privacy, and was less effective and more expensive.
………
There was a program called “First Fruits”. They’ve no doubt changed the name of the program [since then.]And that First Fruits program was a cutout which was designed from all of the domestic surveillance take. “Let’s just pipe off from all” that is involving designated [reporters] … or in some cases whole groups of reporters and journalists.
So you’re targeting actual newspapers. You’re targeting media outlets.
And you’re monitoring – on a persistent basis – their communications.
WASHINGTON’S BLOG: How early did that start?
THOMAS DRAKE: The preliminary version of that – as far as an active program – was in 2002.
(emphasis original)
When secrecy is used as a weapon to cover up ones own misdeeds, not only does it breed more secrecy, it breeds more misdeeds.
Our secret security state is not protecting us. It is petri dish for incompetence.
Did Mark Halperin just call Paul Bremeran incompetent loser?
I think that Halperin, perhaps the poster child for the toxic consensus inside Washington D.C, did:
“It seems what you’re proposing is to double down on the policies that the Bush administration and you thought would lead to, not just a democratic and independent Iraq, but a force for good in the region,” Halperin said. “Why should we even consider going back to the same set of ideas to try to prop up a government with U.S. intervention, which seems to have failed and left us in this position?”
“I’m not proposing to prop up any government,” Bremer said, arguing that Maliki had dissolved many of the post-surge gains in Iraq. “In fact, I explicitly said we need a new government…I explicitly called for him to resign as Defense Minister and Minister of the Interior.”
“But what business is it of the United States at this point who is in the government of people of Iraq?” Halperin asked. “Why isn’t that up to the people of Iraq, civil society and leaders there, to figure it out and not the United States?”
“Because there is no one there who can do it and no other country who can do it,” Bremer said. “The experience of all of us involved in this for the last decade is that only the Americans can help the Iraqis broker across these sectarian and ethnic lines. There is nobody else who can do it, including the Iraqis.”
“What’s our record on that –” Halperin tried to ask, but Bremer cut him off.
“We may regret that, but it’s a fact, and facts have a nasty way of coming back and basically determining your options,” Bremer said.
This was on Morning Joe, and though the aforementioned Joe (Scarborough) seemed to like the idea of re-invading Iraq, but everyone else, the very heart and soul of the Beltway consensus are actually unwilling to swallow the bullsh%$ that Bremer was attempting to sell.
I think that the evil spawn of Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the Senator from Boeing, Richard Pearle, Elliot Abrams, Doug “The f%$#ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth” Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. may have finally run out their string.
I certainly hope so, but I am an inveterate optimist on such matters.
Yesterday, I suggested that Gary Larson had encapsulated the id of Baltimore.
On further examination, I realized that I neglected to mention B. Kliban, who penned this cartoon.
He’s best known for his cat cartoons, but he was seriously bent artist.
His cartoon is just one step removed from Attila the Hon.
In its celebration of all things Ballmur, it strikes me that two of the prominent cultural features of the Charm City, big hair and those funky retro eye glasses, might lead one to believe that it is the spiritual home of Gary Larson’s comic, The Far Side.
Certainly, Mr. Larson and John Waters seem to have a sense of the off beat that comes from similar places.
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We were at Honfest (The term “Hon” is a Baltimore thing), and I saw this guitar.
Epic win!
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I just love how right wing Talibaptist types think that the law does not apply to them:
Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said Thursday that same-sex couples who have wed in recent days are not married in the eyes of the law and that county clerks issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples could be prosecuted.
Also Thursday, Republican Gov. Scott Walker backed Van Hollen’s work defending the gay marriage ban but sidestepped questions on whether clerks should be charged and what his personal views on gay marriage are now.
Three district attorneys running for attorney general — two Democrats and a Republican — said they would not issue charges against clerks and their area. A Democratic state representative running to succeed Van Hollen also criticized the idea of issuing charges.
“You do have many people in Wisconsin basically taking the law into their own hands and there can be legal repercussions for that,” Van Hollen said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “So, depending on who believes they’re married under the law and who doesn’t believe they’re married under the law may cause them to get themselves in some legal problems that I think are going to take years for them and the courts to work out.”
The Republican attorney general said he did not believe same-sex couples could be prosecuted but that county clerks risked charges.
………
County clerks can be jailed for up to nine months and fined up to $10,000 for issuing marriage licenses that aren’t allowed under state law. The same section of the statutes also provides penalties for judges, ministers and others who officiate over a “fictitious marriage,” but Van Hollen did not address whether they could be charged.
………
United States District Judge Barbara Crabb last week declared that Wisconsin’s ban on same-sex marriage violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the law. She has not yet entered an injunction instructing public officials what to do about her finding.
After all, who has to listen to some judge anyway?
Judge Crabb, could you please find this rat f%$# in contempt?
Another day, another shooting
This one in a church in Phoenix.
In looking at insights in the clusterf%$3 that is Iraq, Politico seeks advice from Douglas Feith.
Feith? Seriously, Douglas Feith?
The man who made the rest of the Bush administration look intelligent, competent, and observant.
Is there anything that a conservative can do disqualify them from being viewed as a font of wisdom?
The Teletubbies are coming back.
Seriously, just make it quick.
Because they treated a consumer boycott for “Black Friday” 2011 as a terrorist event:
The documents reveal that Fusion Centers and their personnel even conflate their anti-terrorism mission with a need for intelligence gathering on a possible consumer boycott during the holiday season. There are multiple documents from across the country referencing concerns about negative impacts on retail sales.
The Executive Director of the Intelligence Fusion Division, also the Joint Terrorism Task Force Director, for the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department circulated a 30-page report tracking the Occupy Movement in towns and cities across the country created by the trade association the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).
He directed that the recipients of the document, who included top staff at the Washington, D.C. Fusion Center, “develop a one page product that we can send to our District Commanders to make them aware of the potential threat.”
(emphasis original)
Can you say out of control totalitarian organization?
Good, I knew that you could.
Time to stare into the face of God.
It’s not a nova, it’s the light from some sort of stellar upheaval reflected off of interstellar gas.
H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Former Virginia Attorney General has been hired as president of the Senate Conservatives Fund.
That whole “Adults in the Republican Party” thing?
Not happening.
Over at Emptywheel, Jim White shows us a bit of cognitive dissonance that will make your head spin on the “World” section of the New York Times:
Seriously, first, we, (and the House of Saud) arm rebels in Syria, then they move into, and take over ¼ of Iraq, and take more of our weapons, and the very serious people think that we need to send them more weapons.
We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
(On Edit)
And Obama is looking at air strikes to support the government. Obama has gone the full Nixon/Vietnamization route.
