When the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan disavow you and yours for your bigotry:
H/t DU, with a 3 cushion shot off the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Author: Matthew G. Saroff
Our Man in Kabul
It appears that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is mad enough to say to members of parliament that if things don’t go his way, he might join the Taliban:
At one point, Mr. Karzai suggested that he himself would be compelled to join the other side —that is, the Taliban—if the parliament didn’t back his controversial attempt to take control of the country’s electoral watchdog from the United Nations, according to three people who attended the meeting, including an ally of the president.
Mr. Karzai blamed the lawmakers’ resistance to his move on a foreign conspiracy, they said. The Afghan president’s latest remarks came less than 24 hours after he assured U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that he was committed to working with the U.S. That phone call was precipitated by a similar—but less vitriolic–anti-Western diatribe Mr. Karzai delivered earlier last week.
So he’s complaining that the Electoral Complaints Commission is appointed by independent judges and the UN, and that parliament is refusing to reorganize it so that he can appoint its members, and stack future elections.
It should be noted that the commission invalidated almost a million votes during his reelection bid, and found pervasive fraud by him and his allies, so I guess that he does not want a repeat of this.
Still, his statements make him both part of the problem, and probably completely f%$#ing nuts.
When juxtaposed with his ruinously corrupt drug running brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the head of Kandahar’s provincial council, whose actions are so suspect that US forces have threatened to kill him the next time he is seen meeting with a Taliban representative, it’s really a heady brew.
I Really Want to Know the Whole Back-Story On This
According to the associated article, “As firefighters cleaned up the scene late this morning, Kali Burns, who lives next door, ran up and down the street dressed in a gorilla suit and caught the attention of some firefighters. Burns said his friends dared him to put the costume on, so he did. He said he only wanted to ‘cheer everybody up.'”
I dunno, I think that there is something deeper involved.
You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
H/t Americablog.
Quote of the Day
This is as about as succinct a statement as to what needs to be fixed as anything that I have thus far seen:
Our position was simple: products having no economic purpose except to achieve questionable accounting, tax or regulatory goals; or that raise serious concerns that customers will use them to issue materially misleading financial statements; or that meet any of the other bullet points in the 2006 statement’s list, should, at a minimum, be labeled presumptively prohibited.
—Susan P. Koniak, George M. Cohen, David A. Dana and Thomas Ross in a New York Times OP/Ed
Basically, any transaction that has as a significant part of its purpose to obscure the material health of the firm should be be used only with prior approval.
Of course, it’s much to sensible to be adopted, either in regulation by Geithner,* et al, or in law by Congress.
*But remember, the Cossacks work for the Czar.
Adventures in Wingnuttery
Now that Wisconsin state law requires teaching about the use of contraceptives in sexual education classes, the Juneau County Distract Attorney is threatening prosecutions of any teacher who teaches these classes, on the theory that teaching kids about condoms, etc. is, “Forcing our schools to instruct children on how to utilize contraceptives encourages our children to engage in sexual behavior, whether as a victim or an offender.”
He is threatening prosecutions for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Expect a baby boom in Juneau County shortly, because those kids will be f%$#ing anyway.
Business Lose
The New Republic, which has over the past 36 years descended from a well respected liberal voice to a a bastion of white ivy-league entitlement, plagiarism, fabulism (making sh%$ up), Republican talking points, and a cut in its publishing frequency, and its circulation, by nearly ½.
Well, in yet another step towards total irrelevancy, the magazine has decided to start charging for “premium” online content, whatever that means.
It’s a magazine that you could not pay me to read, and now they want us to pay them.
Gordon Brown Calls Election
Basically, the Tories have been slipping in the polls, and so Gordon Brown has called for a May 6 election.
I think that it still an uphill battle, but the Tories appear to be in, “Stepping on their own dick,” mode right now, and one poll shows the margin to be only 4%, so it is an opportune time for Labour to call an election.
I think that it will be a close thing, but my record on such things is less than stellar.
Jon Stewart Goes After Jon McCain
Ouch!
John McCain, in a tough primary fight with a man whose political corruption John McCain covered up is now denying that he was ever a maverick.
Considering the fact that it was every 3rd or 4th word out of his mouth in the campaign, this merits some comment, of a particularly scathing nature.
Well, luckily, Jon Stewart writes a lot better than I do, so I will just leave you with his comedic flaying of the “straight talking maverick” from Arizona:
But even with all that, you never felt like the guy was selling his soul. You just felt like he was maybe shaving little slivers of his soul …off …for money. But you still always felt like he maintained a controlling interest in his soul. Fifty-one percent of his soul. The majority shares of his soul. Until now.
And then he goes say that McCain is making “soul default swaps on the back end,” in a masterful juxtaposition of corruption and our opaque financial system.
Really, I cannot do justice to what he does in just 5 minutes and 4 seconds.
He shows the hypocrisy and political cowardice of the the man that the Beltway pundits, and the Sunday talk show hosts, love beyond measure.
Of course the aforementioned Beltway pundits Sunday talk show hosts will never acknowledge that their guy is basically a selfish and petulant politician, but I think that the rest of America is starting to realize this.
Another Fox News Viewer Arrested for Threatening a Congressman
Yesterday, it was Patty Murry, today it’s Nancy Pelosi.
Anyone see a pattern?
Signs of the Apocalypse, Tom Coburn Edition
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
Wherein the raving nut job from the Sooner State says thatNancy Pelosi is a nice woman and that you should not believe everything htat you hear on Fox news:
“The intention is not to put anybody in jail,” Coburn said. “That makes for good TV news on Fox, but that isn’t the intention.”
Later, when his audience started to boo at the mention of Pelosi, Coburn stopped them.
“Come on now… how many of you all have met her? She’s a nice person,” Coburn said. “Just because somebody disagrees with you, doesn’t mean they’re not a good person.”
“Don’t catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody’s no good,” Coburn added.
Coburn urged audience members to widen their points of view by reading and watching different media outlets, not just the ones they agree with.
(emphasis mine)
This from a man who says that abortion doctors should face the death penalty, and that he, in the course of his duties as an OB/GYN, has performed abortions, so maybe he can hold these rather disparate thoughts in his head because if he is batsh%$ insane.
In China, He Would Already Would Be Dead
As would be the regulators and judges that Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship has assiduously cultivated over the years.*
They would have been tried, convicted, and had a bullet in the base of their skull.
As it is, the Upper Big Branch Mine, where 25 miners have died and 4 are still missing, has a long history of repeated violations, 1,342 since 2005, and 50 just last month is a case of a wealthy business owner buying off the local Mandarins, and then having a very public disaster.
This is classically a situation where the Chinese legal machinery rolls into action and does a few executions for PR.
They’ve done it to corrupt brokers, and it appears that in this case, the model would be to execute Blankenship, the judge, and a few bureaucrats in the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
All in all it would make the world a better place, particularly in the case of Blankenship, whose company has left a trail of avoidable mining disasters behind it.
And then the meds kick in, and I remember that I oppose the death penalty.
*He quite literally bought a West Virginia Supreme Court justice some years back.
Please, God, Let This Be True!
The rumor is that Larry Summers is dissatisfied with his relative lack of power in the Obama administration, and will soon be leaving.
I am generally not a big follower of the Kremlinology school of politics, which looks obsessively at petty power squabbles amongst the courtiers in the White House, but it appears that Larry Summers, after being denied Treasury Secretary because he was too toxic, was expecting that he would be appointed to replace Ben Bernanke as Fed chair.
Well, Joshua Green at The Atlantic notes that Summers has started demanding perks, such as, I kid you not, “golf dates with the president,”* and that he is most unhappy with his role as head of the Director of the White House’s National Economic Council, and is considering leaving.
Well, all that I can say is, hip hip hurray!
Larry Summers, whatever his academic achievements have been, has been deeply, profoundly and disastrously wrong on every venture into the real world, as evidenced by Mark Ames’ devastating portrait of his performance as a public servant which shows him to be both incompetent and corrupt.
Here’s hoping that Barack Obama does not feel the need to keep him around. Larry Summers is not just the wrong man for these times, he is the wrong time for any times.
Next up, Tim Geithner, and if the Senators place a hold on his successor, then recess appoint Sam Webb.
It is a disaster on both a policy and a politics level to allow senior economic staff to be so captured by wall street.
*Golf Dates? F%$#ing Golf Dates?!?!? How fucking egotistical and petty can you be?
What is Missing From This Video?
Using a blender to reduce an iPad to iPowder
The answer is after the break, but here is a hint: it involves one Steve Jobs in a redux of a very specific scene from one of Kubrik’s better known films.
Do you know what I am referring to?
Do you have an inkling?
Well, if you do not get the answer, just, “click for more” to see the answer, with appropriate photographic documentation.
Blah, blah, blah!The video, as delightfully perverse as it is, lacks that special something: Steve jobs restrained and forced to watch the liquidation of the most recent vision to spring forth from his metaphorical loins.
I am referring, of course to the brainwashing scene in A Clockwork Orange with Malcolm McDowell.
You Know that the ‘Phants are Crapping Their Pants When……
That look in his eyes is terror
When Karl Rove is so concerned about teabagger paranoia over the census that he as recorded a PSA for the decennial survey.
You see, the numbers are coming back, and it turns out that all over the Republican heartland, people are refusing to fill out the forms, because people like Michelle Bachmann and Glen Beck are telling them that it’s all a ploy for Barack Obama’s concentration camps for white folks.
What this means is that, probably for the first time in a very long time, that the under counting of minorities and immigrants may be balanced out by non-compliance among the suburban and rural white populations, which could move a few Congressional districts to bluer states, and change the shapes, of a few more.
I know that the census is important, and I know that it should be filled out promptly and accurately, but still, my initial thought is, “Heh. Hoist by their own petard.”
Cute Slide Show
It’s called, “A History of Obama Feigning Interest in Mundane Things,” and it’s amusing, though, just to be fair, every politician has these sorts of photo-ops.
Rats ……… Ship ……… Any Questions?
It appears that there has been a flood of resumes from Republican National Committee (RNC) staffers following revelations of waste, corruption, and mismanagement under Michael Steele’s watch.
It appears that they think that continued association with Mr. Steele would be bad for their future career trajectory.
Well, duh.
Hearts and Minds
The head of Wikileaks on Dylan Ratigan
The Wikileaks Video
Dan Froomkin has some very trenchant commentary on the video released by Wikileaks showing the attack on a Reuters camera crew and the people who later attempted to take the shooting victims to hospital.
Wikileaks calls it “Collateral Murder,” and I think that the characterization is a bit inflammatory.
That being said, regardless of intent or criminality, it is clear that this was a mistake. As Glenn Greenwald notes on Ratigan, the people effected by this violence will have their world view, and their view of the United States, colored by these events, as will the people in the Arab world who see videos like this, and videos like this are common features on various Arab broadcast networks.
In a word, incidents like this create a fertile ground for the radicalization of individuals, who then are far more likely to take action against Americans and American interests: In other words, they create terrorists.
That being said, I think that there are some problems here beyond the tactical, an over-reliance on relative imprecise airpower and artillery in a counter-insurgency situation, or the aesthetic, the rather creepy laughter on the video.
The first is that this sort of tragedy is an inevitable part of war, and are unavoidable, and so invasion and occupation, even when conceived to combat radicalism and terrorism, must create some level of new radicalism and terrorism, because sh$# like this will happen. War is confusing, and mistakes will be made.
Second, it does appear, at least according to as to training and rules of engagement, there were some violations, at least according to Lt. Col Anthony Shaffer (again on Ratigan), based on his observation of the video, and the fire directed at the would be rescuers of the injured people.
Third, and most importantly, it is clear that the US Military has a policy of deliberately lying about such things as standard operating procedure, whether it is this incident, the friend fire incident that killed Pat Tillman, or the rather gruesome account of special forces operatives digging bullets out of bodies in order to cover up their mistakes that has been reported recently by the New York Times.
It’s clear that this has nothing to do with protecting militarily sensitive information, simply put, shooting innocent civilians, or former NFL players, is not militarily sensitive, and the people on the ground, both the general public in the war zones, as well as the forces opposing us, already know what is going on.
The purpose of these activities is to deliberately deceive the American public, which is something that the military has been specifically forbidden to do by law, and the media, particularly the broadcast and cable media, appear to be all to willing to ignore.
Simply put, on matters where embarrassment is an issue, the Military can be reliably relied on to lie, and the press can be trusted to mindlessly parrot the stories over the news cycle.
God Bless The Onion
Good Writing
Matt Taibbi, once again, this time on how the banks used complex products to rape Jefferson County, Alabama when they wanted to issue debt to upgrade their sewer system:
What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human sh%$ into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street — and misery for people like Lisa Pack. [a county employee laid off when the debt exploded]
………And once the giant sh%$ machine was built and the note on all that fancy construction started to come due, Wall Street came back to the local politicians and doubled down on the scam. They showed up in droves to help the poor, broke citizens of Jefferson County cut their toilet finance charges using a blizzard of incomprehensible swaps and refinance schemes — schemes that only served to postpone the repayment date a year or two while sinking the county deeper into debt. In the end, every time Jefferson County so much as breathed near one of the banks, it got charged millions in fees. There was so much money to be made bilking these dizzy Southerners that banks like JP Morgan spent millions paying middlemen who bribed — yes, that’s right, bribed, criminally bribed — the county commissioners and their buddies just to keep their business. Hell, the money was so good, JP Morgan at one point even paid Goldman Sachs $3 million just to back the f%$# off, so they could have the rubes of Jefferson County to fleece all for themselves.
(%$# mine, emphasis original)
I believe that I have described him as this generation’s Hunter S. Thompson, but I was wrong.
He is this generation’s Upton Sinclair, though there is certainly a lot of Thompson in his prose.
It’s a fairly long read, and the twists and turns of the deal, where Morgan Stanley paid a middleman to bribe people, and now will be getting off Scott free, and I really can’t do justice with a summary, so just read the whole thing, and at the end, you will agree with him when he says, “This isn’t capitalism. It’s nomadic thievery.”
I wish that I could write like him.
Meta
I’ve reorganized the Google™ Ads™, in the hopes of getting a few more pennies, because my my application for extended unemployment benefits, has been put on hold by the petulance of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK).
I figure that the narrow strip of ads under the title is preferable to my screaming, “Will no on rid me of this turbulent ‘Phant.”