Author: Matthew G. Saroff

2 November 2010, 2:03 PM

I Haven’t Followed Out of State Initiatives Much

But this one in Washington State is prize:

Ballot Measure Summary
This measure would require the Seal of the State of Washington to be changed to depict a vignette of a tapeworm dressed in a three piece suit attached to the lower intestine of a taxpayer shown as the central figure. The seal would be required to be encircled with the following words: “Committed to sucking the life blood out of each and every tax payer.” The illustration would be selected from submissions submitted by taxpayers.

Just when you thought that the silly season could not get any sillier………

H/t DC at the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS.

2 November 2010, 4:50 AM

No Predictions from Me

My record sucks, and I will take Abraham Lincoln’s advice, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

But I will leave you with a political quote on the horror that is Republicans the man who best understood horror in the 20^th century,^* Howard Phillips Lovecraft:

As for the Republicans—how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.

H/t Fafblog for the quote, which is being circulated by movie director, and Lovecraft fan, Joe Dante.

^*Or at least pre Holocaust, since I believe that it fundamentally redefined horror in the Western world by putting the lie to the myth of man’s moral progress..

1 November 2010, 8:32 PM

Oh For F%$#’s Sake, Pick a F%$#ing Fight!

In the face of what are likely to be very large legislative losses tomorrow, the Obama administration is busy trying to find more ways to capitulate to Republicans in the vain hope that they will be nice:

With Republicans poised to gain ground in Tuesday’s elections, the White House is losing hope that Congress will approve its plan to raise taxes on the nation’s wealthiest families and is increasingly focusing on a new strategy that would preserve tax breaks for both the wealthy and the middle class.

According to people familiar with talks at the White House and among senior Democrats on Capitol Hill, breaking apart the Bush administration tax cuts is now being discussed as a more realistic goal. That strategy calls for permanent extension of cuts that benefit families earning less than $250,000 a year, and temporary extension of cuts on income above that amount.

The move would “decouple” the two sets of provisions, Democrats said, and focus the debate when tax cuts for the rich expired next year or the year after. Republicans would be forced to defend carve-outs for a tiny minority populated by millionaires, an unpopular position that would be difficult to advance without the cover of a broad-based tax cut for everyone, aides in both parties said.

“The concept of ‘decoupling’ is a hot topic right now,” said one senior Democratic aide.

And the Republicans will demand permanent tax cuts for the rich pigs, including the near total elimination of the inheritance tax, unless I miss my guess.

How many f%$#ing times do you have to lead with a compromise, and get a “no” before you realize that you cannot negotiate with the barbarians at the gate?

You want to pick a fight because you can, and because raising taxes on people making more than $¼ million a year is both good politics and good policy.

It allows you to set the agenda, choose the time and place of conflict, and it mobilizes your base.

This, “Can’t we all just get along/Kumbayah” crap has ill served the Obama administration, the Democratic Party, and the whole country.

1 November 2010, 7:55 PM

Prosecution Doing Back-Flips For Goldman Sachs in High Frequency Trading Trial

If there was any doubt that the federal prosecutors in New York prosecuting Sergey Aleynikov for theft of trade secrets weren’t in Goldman Sach’s Pocket, those doubts have been allayed:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has always closely guarded the secrets of its lucrative high-speed trading system. Now the securities firm is getting a help from an unusual source: federal prosecutors.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan this week asked a federal district judge to seal the courtroom at the forthcoming trial of a former Goldman computer programmer accused of stealing the firm’s computer code. The move was a formal request to empty the courtroom of the general public when details of Goldman’s trade secrets are being discussed. The trial is set to start to late November.

Prosecutors also asked that any documents related to Goldman’s trading strategies remain under seal.

Such requests are common when proprietary corporate information could be exposed in a trial, lawyers say. This case is unusual in that it involves secrets about a potentially lucrative trading system, rather than, say, ingredients in a soda formula.

What is also unusual is that this code is almost certainly obsolete, and almost certainly has no value to a competitor.

The software almost certainly has to be updated regularly, probably monthly, possibly weekly, which means that the algorithms and code are almost certainly obsolete, but still they want the court sealed.

This is not about protecting trade secrets, this is about concerns by the vampire squid^* that if the details on how they conducted business came out, they would have people calling for their scalps for front-running the markets.

Basically, Goldman, and the prosecutors, are trying to conceal activity by Goldman that is either illegal, or would lead to changes in regulations that would make it so if the details came out.

My earlier posts on this are here.

^*Alas, I cannot claim credit for the bon mot describing Goldman Sachs as a, “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” This was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.

1 November 2010, 7:43 PM

Appeals Court Allows DADT Expulsions to Continue

They have made their temporary injunction against the judge’s ruling permanent, so DADT, and separations from the military, continue until probably at least next June:

With one judge dissenting, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a stay of the injunction of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy issued by U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips, pending the outcome of the government’s appeal of Log Cabin Republicans v. United States.

The immediate impact of the ruling, which was not unexpected by legal observers, means that — absent congressional or executive action — DADT will remain in effect through at least Spring 2011. The practical timeline for the appeal, however, means it actually would remain law much longer.

Damn.

1 November 2010, 7:03 PM

So they Torture a Little Boy, Admit the Testimony Thereby Extracted, Use it to Coerce a Confession, and Sentence Him to 40 Years in Prison

Only he will actually be out in less than 3 years, since Omar Khadr will be transferred to Canada, and released for time served:

A United States military commission at Guantánamo Bay has sentenced a former child soldier for Al Qaeda to 40 years in prison for war crimes — but he might be released in less than three years, the Defense Department said.

A panel of seven military officers at the American military base in Cuba determined on Sunday that the child soldier, Omar Khadr, 24, should be imprisoned — for terrorism-related offenses he committed in Afghanistan when he was a teenager — until he nearly reaches retirement age.

But that sentence was theoretical. Under the terms of a plea agreement, Mr. Khadr will serve no more than eight years. Moreover, after one year, Mr. Khadr, a Canadian citizen, is likely to be transferred to a prison in Canada, where he would be eligible to apply for parole after serving two years and eight months.

Seriously.

The was a show trial, with a predetermined result specifically to allow face saving on the idea of military commissions.

The proceedings are a travesty of the law and basic decency, and every individual up the chain of command who allowed this case to proceed is guilty of conspiracy to violate both US anti-torture statutes and international treaties to which the United States is a signatory.

Not feeling hopey changey right now.

1 November 2010, 6:24 PM

An Interesting Take of the Delphi Method

The Delphi Method is that people in aggregate make better predictions than the experts.

This can apply to a group of experts, or it can apply to a large sampling of the general population.

Well, someone just applied this methodology by using Google searches:

Google has published details of the levels of search interest for political candidates as election day approaches. But there seems to be little clear connection between Google hits and the ballot box.

The main advantage the web has for tracking patterns is the sheer number of people using it. For example, it sounds insane that anyone wanting to find the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) website would do anything other than try ufc.com as their first tactic. Yet the number of people who search for “UFC” and related terms in the days leading up to a pay-per-view event is nearly always a good indication of how many people will buy the event. The reason is that even if only a tiny fraction of people actually have to search for the term, it still adds up to enough people that variations over time are measurable.

Does this work for politics? Well, here’s the current levels of Google search interest among web users from the relevant state in three notable Senate races, along with predictions for the winner from polling analysis site fivethirtyeight.com (source of the image above). The first figure shows each candidate’s current share of the total searches for the listed candidates, while the second is the predicted share of the vote.

Florida: Marco Rubio 45.4/44, Charlie Crist 32.9/32, Kendrick Meek 21.7/24

Nevada: Harry Reid 54.4/47, Sharron Angle 45.6/50

Pennsylvania: Joe Sestak 51.1/48, Pat Toomey 49.9/52

I have no clue as to whether or not this is a valid technique, but if it is, Reid will be reelected, and Sestak will beat Toomey.

I guess that we will find out tomorrow, but I am inclined not to believe that this is a valid predictive technique.

1 November 2010, 6:17 PM

They Really Are Sociopaths……

No, I don’t mean the Teabaggers, I mean the beltway pundits.

Case in point, David Broder, who is suggesting that Barack Obama start a war with Iran, because it might be good for the economy and his election prospects. (No direct link, we should not reward such behavior with eyeballs.)

As Scott Horton notes (link above), this clearly demonstrates the, “strongest evidence yet of the moral depravity and sheer nuttiness,” of the WaPo editorial page.

And I am sure that Broder was very proud of what he came up with, it seems so clever, and counter-intuitive, and it means that young men will die.

I bet that it gave the octogenarian psychopath his first stiffie in weeks.

Here is hoping that Keith Olbermann thinks to put him on his “worst” list tonight.

31 October 2010, 10:23 PM

Trick or Treating

Click for full size

The Rubikuitous Charlie

The most Sanguine Natalie

For that thoughtful look with: her glasses on

We went trick or treating tonight.

Natalie tried to go upscale on her fangs for her vampire costume, and go with ones that just fit on her eye-teeth, as opposed to the mouth guard type ones, and it didn’t work, so she improvised using some sugary blood syrup that she got at the SCA event on Saturday.

Charlie’s costume, a Rubik’s Cube, however worked out very well, and he got a lot of compliments, though he did experience, as I had warned him, issues with comfort and mobility.

Still, they had fun, and took in a decent haul of hysteria inducing sugar, so they both considered their outing a success.

We had to return home at one point, because they needed gloves.

Neither of their costumes were amenable to the use of pockets to warm one’s hands.

I remember trick or treating when I was a kid, with my Dad watching, and now I am watching as my kids trick or treat.

It’s the whole “circle of life” thing, I guess.

31 October 2010, 5:34 PM

The Stewart Rally

Click for full size

I didn’t go, it was our anniversary, and I have not watched the vids yet, but here are some of the signs I found via “the Google.”

31 October 2010, 11:23 AM

So, ABC decided to have Andrew Breitbart as a contributor to their election night coverage, despite the fact that he has repeatedly punked the news media with deliberately false and deceptive “news” stories, and now they are trying to walk this clusterf%$# back:

Since conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart announced on his website that he was going to be a participant in ABC’s Town Hall meeting at Arizona State University, there has been considerable consternation and misinformation regarding my decision to ask him to participate in an election night Town Hall event for ABC News Digital. I want to explain what Mr. Breitbart’s role has always been as one of our guests at our digital town hall event:

Mr. Breitbart is not an ABC News analyst.

He is not an ABC News consultant.

He is not, in any way, affiliated with ABC News.

He is not being paid by ABC News.

He has not been asked to analyze the results of the election for ABC News.

Mr. Breitbart will not be a part of the ABC News broadcast coverage, anchored by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. For the broadcast coverage, David Muir and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg will contribute reaction and response gathered from the students and faculty of Arizona State University at an ABC News/Facebook town hall.

He has been invited as one of several guests, from a variety of different political persuasions, to engage with a live, studio audience that will be closely following the election results and participating in an online-only discussion and debate to be moderated by David Muir and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg on ABCNews.com and Facebook. We will have other guests, as well as a live studio audience and a large audience on ABCNews.com and Facebook, who can question the guests and the audience’s opinions.

I have no objection to ABC using conservatives as either news analysts or “guests” on their discussions.

That is a basic journalistic activity.

That being said, when you do so, you have an obligation to bring on someone who has is own opinions, not his own (made up) facts.

Andrew Breitbart is an individual who has deliberately, and maliciously created fake news stories to pursue his political agenda, and he continues to do so.

If you are a news organization, and you don’t use the words, “professional liar,” before any mention of him, you are a piss-poor news organization.

31 October 2010, 8:35 AM

The Nobility Gets the Best Sh%$ to Smoke

Instead of going to the Stewart/Colbert march for Sanity/Fear, Sharon^*, the kids, and I went to TNT, an SCA event held by our local group (the Barony of Brighthills).

I got called up to receive a baronial award, the Order of Job, for selfless service to the Barony.

I’m a wee bit confused: I don’t recall doing much beyond cutting up some veggies, making the oldest recorded recipe for chocolate for an event, and washing a few dishes.

In any case, it was our 16^th anniversary, and we enjoyed ourselves. We ate, we danced, we made glass beads using a torch.

I got my wife some books as an anniversary gift.

It’s so nice having a wife who doesn’t want to be surprised by such things: I just point her at the book seller, and she says, “Is this OK honey?”

This is much better than the expectation that I am a mind reader.

A good time was had by all.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

30 October 2010, 6:35 AM

Not Gonna Happen……

The real reason for the UK independent deterrent

With the draconian British budget cuts, and the conversion of their carrier aviation from the STOVL F-35B to the CTOL F-35C, there is now talk of the British engaging in some form of joint carrier operations with the French:

London’s decision to fit catapults on its planned second aircraft carrier opened up the prospect of French Rafale strike fighters flying off a British flattop, with reciprocal rights for British aircraft off the French carrier, French Defense Minister Hervé Morin said Oct. 26 at the Euronaval trade show.

Morin asked the French military staff to assess whether the installation of catapults would allow French aircraft, such as the Rafale, to operate off the Royal Navy vessel, and the answer was: “Yes, it’s technically feasible,” he told journalists.

That opened up potential opportunities of interoperability and mutual interdependence between the British and French fleets, he said. With such cross-deck operations came the possibility of a “permanent presence at sea,” he said.

I just don’t see it happening.

While the French and British have on occasion used common aircraft, most notably the SEPECAT Jaguar, given the nearly thousand-year history of animus between the two nations (see “Yes Prime Minister” vid), I just cannot see them operating jointly in this manner.

30 October 2010, 5:55 AM

Holy Sh%$

Last weekend, the US Military lost control of a missile squadron:

President Obama was briefed this morning on an engineering ~~power~~ failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming that took 50 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), one-ninth of the U.S. missile stockpile, temporarily offline on Saturday.

The base is a main locus of the United States’ strategic nuclear forces. The 90th Missile Wing, headquartered there, controls 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles. They’re on full-time alert and are housed in a variety of bunkers across several states.

On Saturday morning, according to people briefed on what happened, a squadron of ICBMs suddenly dropped down into what’s known as “LF Down” status, meaning that the missileers in their bunkers could no longer communicate with the missiles themselves. LF Down status also means that various security protocols built into the missile delivery system, like intrusion alarms and warhead separation alarms, were offline. In LF Down status, the missiles are still technically launch-able, but they can only be controlled by an airborne command and control platform like the ~~Boeing E-6 NAOC “Kneecap” aircraft~~, E-4B NAOC aircraft or perhaps the TACAMO fleet, which is primarily used to communicate with nuclear submarines. Had the country been placed on a higher state of nuclear alert, those platforms would be operating automatically because the frequencies used to transmit nuclear codes would be interfacing with separate systems, according to officials.

(strike-through original)

This is about ¹⁄₉ of our land based deterrent.

Great googly moogly.

29 October 2010, 8:12 PM

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

No FDIC closures, so the count for this year remains at 139, see the full FDIC list, but there was a credit union failure:

Phil-Pet Federal Credit Union, Pampa, TX

It does seem like the trend is slowing, but it’s still pretty awful.

So, here is the graph pr0n with trendline (FDIC only):

I would note that are now at the point where the utility of the least squares trendline is diminishing, but I’m keeping it here for historical purposes.

29 October 2010, 7:26 PM

No, I Did Not See Obama’s Interview on The Daily Show…

I haven’t had time, or the inclination, though I have read excerpts.

The excerpts do not impress me, but then again, I’m not in the “Impressed by Barack Obama,” demographics, and and have not been since late 2007 (scroll down). I held my nose to vote for him in the general in 2008.

I just don’t feel any need to see it, though I probably will when the election passes.

Call it my own ‘enthusiasm gap’.

29 October 2010, 6:16 PM

Well, Alaska Just Got Weird

With polls showing Lisa Murkowski in the lead, and the board of elections, in a transparent attempt to help her campaign, putting out a list of “registered write-in candidates,” for the first time in history, which is in court, but the Alaska Supreme Court is allowing the decision to stand for now pending arguments.

In response, Joe Miller and the Alaska Teabaggers have flooded the election office to register hundreds of write ins to be added to the list.

With Miller firmly in 3^rd place in the latest polls, and these polls were before the release of his personnel files, I can understand why they want to move votes from Murkowski to him, but this would appear to move votes from Lisa Murkowski to Lisa Martini, or Lisa Murkin, or Lisa Murrow, which has the effect of boosting Democrat Scott Adams.

Pass the popcorn.

Heh.

29 October 2010, 5:35 PM

I Don’t Know What to Make of This

But it appears that someone in Yemen was attempting to send letter bombs to the United States:

Security officials in Britain and Dubai intercepted parcel bombs being sent from Yemen to the United States in a “credible terrorist threat,” President Barack Obama said on Friday.

He said the parcels were bound for “two places of Jewish worship in Chicago.”

Suspicion fell on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, which took responsibility for a failed plot to blow up a U.S. passenger jet on Christmas Day in 2009.

“Initial examinations of those packages has determined that they do apparently contain explosive material,” Obama told reporters in a televised briefing, calling it “a credible terrorist threat against our country.”

The White House said earlier that “both of these packages originated from Yemen” and that Obama was notified of the threat on Thursday night.

This is clearly an attempt at electioneering, even in Yemen, one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to know of the election, but, unlike bin Laden’s statement just prior to the 2004 election, where he was clearly trying to throw the race to Bush, the intent here is unclear.

Some questions:

Is this an attempt to favor Democrats or Republicans?
Why were synagogues chosen?
Did the perps expect to succeed of fail?

Damned if I know.

28 October 2010, 9:54 PM

The Most Morally Repugnant Industry on the Face of the Earth

It’s the private prison industry, which is lobbying for draconian immigrations laws, like Arizona’s “Papers Please” law, because more people in detention means more money for them:

NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.

The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.

The story leads off with a private prison pitching an immigration detention facility for women and children in Benson, Arizona.

There are certain functions that cannot be fobbed off on the private sector, and this is perhaps the most sterling example.