Category: Breaking News

Good News Everyone!

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Bloom County is returning to the funny papers, and I am stoked:

After 25 years, Berkeley Breathed is returning to his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip, “Bloom County.” Breathed announced the new incarnation of the politically-minded strip via a post on Facebook that featured him working on a new comic with the words “Bloom County 2015” at the top.

“Bloom County” originally ran from December 1980 until 1989, just two years after he won the Pulitzer. The characters, such as Bill the Cat, Opus the Penguin, Hodge-Podge the Rabbit, Milo Bloom, and Cutter John, lived on in the Sunday-only strip “Outland” from 1989 to 1995, as well as “Opus” from 2003 to 2008. When “Opus'” run ended, Breathed said he was stepping away from strips entirely and began focusing on writing children’s books. At the time, he said the political climate in the country had grown too bitter for him to continue taking a light tone on things, and he wanted to get out before things got too tough.

However, with the 2016 presidential campaign season heating up, it seems that Breathed has found something funny to talk about again:

I will miss Jon Stewart during the 2016 campaign, but Bloom County  coming back takes the sting out, at least a bit.

Charges for Murder and Manslaughter, but the Bigger Picture is Worse

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All 6 police officers have been charged in death of Freddie Gray:

The six Baltimore police officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray – who died after being injured in police custody – have been charged criminally, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced Friday.

 Mosby’s announcement on the steps of the War Memorial Building was greeted with cheers and applause. Mosby said she told Gray’s family that “no one is above the law and I would pursue justice upon their behalf.”

 The city was gearing up for another round of demonstrations after the announcement. Baltimore City and Maryland state offices granted workers in the city liberal leave early Friday afternoon.

 After the charges were announced, Desmond Taylor, 29, shouted in jubilee in front of the War Memorial Building.

 “I did not expect this, but I prayed for it,” he said. “This day means that your actions bring consequences in Baltimore City.”

 Reacting to news of the charges, President Barack Obama called it “absolutely vital that the truth come out.”

 “What I think the people of Baltimore want more than anything else is the truth,” the president said. “That’s what people around the country expect.”

 All six officers were in custody and being processed at Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center as of 2 p.m., said Gerard Shields, a spokesman for the department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

 Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., 45, who was the driver of a police van that carried Gray through the streets of Baltimore, was charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter, second-degree assault, two vehicular manslaughter charges and misconduct in office. A man who answered the phone at Goodson’s home declined to comment and hung up the phone.

The rest are charged with, involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, misconduct in office, and false imprisonment in various combinations.

I would have liked to seen obstruction of justice added, because, given the circumstances, that charge would be pretty clearly guaranteed conviction.

The big picture, of course,  is that sort of stuff happens every day, because random arrests of black people, and brutality against them, along with the inevitable revenue generation.  (Properties don’t seize themselves.)

It is incredibly rare for a police officer to be investigated, much less charged.

Interestingly enough, the charge of murder is based on the rather interestingly named “depraved heart murder”:

The term “depraved heart” means something more than conduct amounting to a high or unreasonable risk to human life. The perpetrator must realize the risk his behavior has created to the extent that his conduct may be termed willful. Moreover, the conduct must contain an element of viciousness or contemptuous disregard for the value of human life which conduct characterizes that behavior as wanton.

But, as I said before, for each of these 6 police officers, there are tens, if not hundreds, of other cops who have done the same thing, albeit it probably did not result in a death, or massive protests and riots.

The Germanwings Crash Begins to be a Bit Less Mysterious

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They have not yet found the flight data recorder, but they have released the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), and it appears that one of the pilots was locked out of the cockpit:

As officials struggled Wednesday to explain why a jet with 150 people on board crashed amid a relatively clear sky, an investigator said evidence from a cockpit voice recorder indicated one pilot left the cockpit before the plane’s descent and was unable to get back in.

A senior military official involved in the investigation described “very smooth, very cool” conversation between the pilots during the early part of the flight from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany. Then the audio indicated that one of the pilots left the cockpit and could not re-enter.

“The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer,” the investigator said. “And then he hits the door stronger, and no answer. There is never an answer.”

He said, “You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”

While the audio seemed to give some insight into the circumstances leading to the Germanwings crash on Tuesday morning, it also left many questions unanswered.

It’s now beginning to sound like deliberate action by one of the pilots, though it’s curious that the descent was not steeper.

First Measels, and now Mumps, Thanks Jenny

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A mumps outbreak in Idaho has spread to Washington state:

An outbreak of mumps that started at an Idaho university and infected 21 people across the state has now spread to neighboring Washington state, health officials said on Monday.

The spread of mumps, a highly contagious virus that leads to painful swelling of the salivary glands, comes as a wider measles outbreak has infected more than 100 people in California and over a dozen more in 19 other U.S. states and Mexico since December.

The mumps outbreak began in September at the University of Idaho campus in Moscow, near the border with Washington state, and later spread to the capital, Boise, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare said.

Mumps, which leads to painful swelling of the salivary glands, spreads easily from sharing saliva through kissing, shared eating utensils or water bottles, public health officials said.

So far, there have been 21 confirmed and probable cases, including six around Boise, the state’s most populous city, a statement said. Then on Friday, two infections were reported in Washington state, the statement added.

Public health officials were urging students on the Moscow campus and anyone who might have come into close contact with an infected person to ensure their vaccinations are up to date. Mumps and measles can be prevented through a single vaccine, the MMR vaccine that also covers rubella, health officials said.

I would note that mumps can also cause sterility in adults and adolescents, as well as meningitis, pancreatitis,  encephalitis, deafness, and the occasional death.

It’s less lethal than measles, but it’s still dangerous and avoidable.

Let me send a big f%$# you to Jenny McCarthy, Andrew Wakefield, and the fraudsters, liars and stupid people who are endangering the rest of society.

What the Hell?!?!?

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There has been what appears to be a terrorist attack on the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa:

A masked gunman killed a soldier standing guard at Canada’s war memorial Wednesday, then stormed Parliament in an attack that was stopped cold when he was shot to death by the ceremonial sergeant-at-arms. Canada’s prime minister called it the country’s second terrorist attack in three days.

“We will not be intimidated. Canada will never be intimidated,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed in an address to the nation.

Unfolding just before 10 a.m., while lawmakers were meeting in caucus rooms, the assault rocked Parliament over and over with the boom of gunfire, led MPs to barricade doors with chairs and sent people streaming from the building in fear. Harper was addressing a caucus when the attack began outside the door, but he safely escaped.

Investigators offered little information about the gunman, identified as 32-year-old petty criminal Michael Zehaf-Bibeau. But Harper said: “In the days to come we will learn about the terrorist and any accomplices he may have had.”

Canada was already on alert at the time because of a deadly hit-and-run assault Monday against two Canadian soldiers by a man Harper described as an “ISIL-inspired terrorist.” ISIL, or Islamic State, has called for reprisals against Canada and other Western countries that have joined the U.S.-led air campaign against the extremist group in Iraq and Syria.

Needless to say, I expect to see Canada’s own “Zombie Eyed Granny Starver”, PM Stephen Harper, to milk this for all the electoral advantage that it is worth.

I expect him to start taking some sort of actions that are unpalatable to the opposition in the name of security, much as Bush did with the founding of DHS.

Oh Crap, the Balloon has Gone Up

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We are now bombing ISIS targets in Syria:

The United States stepped up its war against the Islamic State militant group, launching air strikes on targets in Syria for the first time.

The Pentagon press secretary, rear admiral John Kirby, confirmed that the US and allied nations sent fighter jets, bomber aircraft and Tomahawk missiles in an operation against Isis that he described as “ongoing”.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, indicated that Raqqa, a Syrian stronghold of Isis, was among the targets of the operation, which began in the early hours of Tuesday morning local time.

The first wave of strikes finished about 90 minutes later at around 10pm EDT (2am GMT), but the operation was expected to continue for several more hours,

Airstrikes against Isis targets in Iraq, which began on 7 August, now occur daily. Of Syria, the official said: “If we need to go daily, we will.”

The US was joined in the Syria operation by Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, an official said.

This will be going on for months before we see any meaningful impact in Iraq.

(Update)

It appears that F-22s were used in a combat role for the first time, which means one or two things:

  • The USAF is itching to show off their latest bling.
  • The Syrian Foreign Ministry’s claims that they were notified about the strikes (no link, I heard it on Maddow) is not true, and the F-22s were used because of their radar evading capabilities.

I’m pretty certain about the first point, and less so about the second.  Basic physics would have the F-22 more vulnerable to longer wave (VHF) radars than the B-2, which does not appear to have flown sortees, and the Syrians do have VHF radars.

Also, despite the USAF trying to kill the aircraft for the past 30+ years,  A-10s Warthog close support aircraft are being deployed to the Middle East. (So not a surprise)

Oh Crap

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If reports from the Ukrainian government are true, and I’m not big on the idea of trusting them, then they just shelled a Russian aid convoy:

Ukraine claims it has destroyed Russian military vehicles in the country’s east, a day after a column was spotted moving across the border.

Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, told David Cameron by phone that his country’s armed forces had destroyed part of an armed convoy that the Guardian saw moving through a gap in a border fence on Thursday night.

There was no immediate proof, and it was impossible to establish if the Ukrainians had targeted the same convoy seen by the Guardian. The Russians categorically denied that any of their troops were even in Ukraine. But the claim marks a new escalation in the six-month confrontation over Ukraine and if verified would amount to the first confirmed military engagement between the two adversaries since the crisis began in the spring.

“The president informed [Cameron] that the information was trustworthy because the majority of those machines [Russian military vehicles] had been eliminated by the Ukrainian artillery at night,” a statement from Poroshenko’s office read.

Russia is denying this, but if this is true, or worse, they shelled an aid convoy in the dead of night, the Russians have arranged one with the Red Cross, things are going to go pear shaped quickly.

Happy 9th of Av*

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Not a day to get breaking news.

Case in point, a guy who had recently been in West Africa just walked into a New York City Hospital and there are concerns that he is throwing symptoms of Ebola:

Heightened concern about the Ebola virus has led to alarms being raised at three hospitals in New York City. But so far, no Ebola cases have turned up.

The latest episode involved a man who had recently been to West Africa, and who went to the emergency room at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan late Sunday with a high fever and gastrointestinal problems, the hospital reported on Monday.

He is being kept in isolation at the hospital while tests are being done for Ebola, a deadly disease, but also for other illnesses that could have caused his symptoms.

Yeah, it would be the 9th of Av.

Remind me not to eat any bat soup.

*It is Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the Hebrew month Av, and a small subset of the nasty bits of Jewish history follows:

  1. The report of the spies from Canaan, resulting in the people of Israel spending 40 Years in the Desert.
  2. The destruction of the 1st Temple.
  3. The destruction of the 2nd Temple.
  4. The Romans razed Betar, killing 100,000 Jews.
  5. The Romans plowed the temple mount.
  6. The start of the 1st Crusade.  (You see it as a coming together of Christendom.  I see it as a pogrom with years of murder and rape.)
  7. The expulsion of Jews from England.
  8. The expulsion of Jews from France.
  9. The expulsion of Jews from Spain.
  10. Germany entered the WW I. (Can be legitimately claimed to have directly led to the Shoah)
  11. Formal approval of the “Final Solution” by the Nazis in 1941.
  12. Deportations to Treblinka from the Warsaw Ghetto begin in 1942.

Excuse me while I find something sturdy to cover my head with.

    Another School Shooting

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    Click for full size pop up


    Another day, another shooting

    We just had spree killing at a school:

    The first bell had just trilled at Troutdale’s Reynolds High School Tuesday morning when the sound of something like fireworks erupted in a locker room by the school gymnasium.

     Moments later, a vice principal came over the loudspeaker –“This is not a drill” — and teachers ran through hallways, yelling at students to lock themselves in classrooms and hide.

     A “lone gunman” shot and killed freshman Emilio Hoffman, then was found dead a few minutes later in a nearby bathroom. It is the 74th school shooting in the United States since the mass killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012.

    December 14, 2012 to today is 543 days, or 77½ weeks, or just under 18 months.

    77½ weeks⁄74 shootings. That’s about 1 shooting a week, just at public schools.

    Think about it.  When you add in various spree killings and act of right wing terrorism that don’t involve school children, Vegas last week, Washington Naval Yard, Isla Vista, and that salon killing in upstate New York, and you end up with more than one shooting a week since Sandy Hook.

    Note that this is without any incidents in the state of Texas.

    And how many have there been in all of western Europe over that time?

    We are insane as a society.

    Fabulous!!!!!

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    Gay Marriage is legal in Oregon:

    Today Judge Michael McShane struck down Oregon’s discriminatory state constitutional amendment that denies committed gay couples the freedom to marry, ruling that it violates the U.S. Constitution. The ruling is the 17th consecutive victory in state and federal court for the freedom to marry since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Windsor v. United States in June 2013. The ruling is the 13th win in federal court for marriage since June.

    The order is effective immediately – meaning that today, same-sex couples across the state will be able to marry!

    OK, I Don’t Have Any Special Insights, But Here are My Unspecial Insights On the Ukraine

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    First, as in Georgia, the Russian operation was well considered and well executed. This was a tougher job than was done in Georgia, because as I noted at the time of that invasion, there was months of Georgian preparation for their attack on Sough Ossetia, and the Georgian military had been completely penetrated by the Russians, so the Russian forces had months to prepare.

    In this case, it was all pulled together in about 1½ weeks:

    At first, it wasn’t clear who exactly the armed men were—spotted at airports in Sevastopol and Simferopol overnight on Feb. 28. But on March 1, the Russian senate unanimously approved a request from Pres. Vladimir Putin to use the military “on the territory of Ukraine pending the normalization of the social and political situation in that country.”

     The operation was already underway. Russian forces had launched a coordinated takeover of key sites, including airports, government offices, television stations and the two land routes connecting Crimea to the rest of Ukraine.

     Someone sabotaged Ukrtelecom, which provides phone and Internet service to the peninsula.

    Well executed, and John Kerry, aka the Clown Prince of Foreign Policy, has a response that is jaw dropping in its hypocrisy:

    Secretary of State John Kerry made the round of Sunday shows this morning to condemn Russia’s “incredible act of aggression” in Ukraine, warning Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that the country faces harsh economic sanctions from the international community.

     “It is really a stunning, willful choice by President Putin to invade another country,” Kerry said on Face the Nation.

     But in the seriousness of the situation, the irony of Kerry’s next comments may have gone missed. ”You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext,” he said.

    Yes, that WAS his talking point of the day.

    Meanwhile, the Ukranians are mobilizing their military, and a member of their interim government, and a member of the right-wing Svoboda party, Mikhail Golovko, is suggesting that the Ukraine will restore its nuclear arsenal.

    Needless to say, this is a complete mess, and there are not a lot of lessons learned at this point.

    The only one that immediately comes to mind is that the EU’s hasty moves toward expansion work against its viability and continued existence.  (The start of this crisis was the rejection of an EU deal intended to lead toward Ukrainian accession)

    I Take One F%$#ing Day off From Blogging………

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    And Putin occupies the Crimea.  The news gods mock me.

    Seriously, I’ll have more on the the turmoil around the Black Sea later, but because my kids were in a play, Once Upon a Mattress (Natalie was the Nightingale of Samarkand, and Charlie was in the pit orchestra) over the last two days, I’ve not blogged.

    It was a nice production of a rather indestructible play. 

    Asacia, who played the female lead Winnifred, cracked some ribs on Thursday, but she could go on, and so could the show.

    I Did Not Expect Harry Reid to Have the Stones to do This

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    I said that I did not believe that Reid of the Democrats would ever invoke the nuclear option, no matter how awful the Republicans were.

    I was wrong:

    Senate Democrats took the dramatic step Thursday of eliminating filibusters for most nominations by presidents, a power play they said was necessary to fix a broken system but one that Republicans said will only rupture it further.

    Democrats used a rare parliamentary move to change the rules so that federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments can advance to confirmation votes by a simple majority of senators, rather than the 60-vote supermajority that has been the standard for nearly four decades.

    The immediate rationale for the move was to allow the confirmation of three picks by President Obama to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — the most recent examples of what Democrats have long considered unreasonably partisan obstruction by Republicans.

    In the long term, the rule change represents a substantial power shift in a chamber that for more than two centuries has prided itself on affording more rights to the minority party than any other legislative body in the world. Now, a president whose party holds the majority in the Senate is virtually assured of having his nominees approved, with far less opportunity for political obstruction.

    The main combatants Thursday were the chamber’s two chiefs, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who have clashed for several years over Republican filibusters of Obama’s agenda and nominees.

    Reid said the chamber “must evolve” beyond parliamentary roadblocks. “The American people believe the Senate is broken, and I believe the American people are right,” he said, adding: “It’s time to get the Senate working again.”

    McConnell linked the rule change to the methods used to approve Obama’s health-care law solely with Democratic votes. The normally reserved GOP leader paced at his desk during his speech, often turning his back to Democrats to address only his fellow Republicans.

    “It’s a sad day in the history of the Senate,” McConnell told reporters, calling the move a Democratic “power grab.”

    The clash ended with a vote nearly as partisan as the times — 52 to 48, with all but three Democrats backing the move and every Republican opposing it.

    I tend to think good riddance to the filibuster. 

    It is an accident of history, and it has generally ill-served the American people.

    Here’s hoping that it gets further dismantled as time goes on.

    F%$# Ronald Reagan for Gutting Mental Health Care in the US

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    Former Virginia gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds was stabbed by his mentally ill son, who then shot himself.

    Yesterday, his son was released early from what would be a 48 hour psyche evaluation because there were no beds available:

    Dennis Cropper, executive director of the Rockbridge County Community Services Board, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the emergency custody order, or ECO, allowed Gus Deeds to be held as long as four hours to determine whether he should be kept longer, up to 48 hours, under a temporary detention order.

     The son was evaluated Monday at Bath Community Hospital, Cropper said, but was released because no psychiatric bed could be located across a wide area of western Virginia.

    (emphasis mine)

    It’s kind of trite to blame Ronald Reagan, except for the fact that Reagan WAS to blame, having aggressively gutted the public psychiatric health system, first in California, and then, after he was elected, nation wide.

    Wendy Davis is Running for Texas Governor

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    After her bursting on the national political scene, she has announced that she is running for Governor:

    Wendy Davis walked across the stage at the Wiley G. Thomas Coliseum more than 30 years ago to accept her diploma from Richland High School.

    On Thursday, she returned to that stage to kick off her bid to become Texas’ 48th governor.

    “This is a campaign not just for governor, but for the very future of our state,” the 50-year-old Democratic state senator from Fort Worth said. “Thirty-two years ago, I started my own journey in this room.

    “Today, we start a new journey – together,” she said. “It’s a journey that won’t end on Election Day and it won’t end in Austin. As long as we can make our great state even greater, we will keep going.”

    Davis gained national fame — and notoriety — from a June filibuster geared to prevent a comprehensive abortion bill from passing, which prompted Democrats throughout the state to encourage her to try to reclaim for their party the governor’s mansion which hasn’t housed a Democrat since Ann Richards left in 1995.

    I think that she is facing long odds, but at least she will be competitive, and we won’t have a freak show like the 2006 election, which had Carole Keeton Insertlastnamehere and Kinky Friedman running as independents and scoring in the double digits.

    It’s good for the Texas Democratic Party, even if she does not win.

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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    Initial reports are that a woman rammed some of the stanchions at the White House, and then led police on a high speed chase toward Congress before being shot to death.

    There was a child in a car seat in the car when this was going on.

    No further information right now, just a lot of speculation in the media.

    Why High Frequency Sucks Part 86

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    Some high frequency traders in Chicago made a lot of money by having 7 milliseconds advance notice of the recent Fed decision:

    In the wake of an unusual trading pattern after the Federal Reserve’s decision to continue economic stimulus last week, Fed officials have contacted certain news organizations to discuss rules and procedures for the central bank’s advance release of sensitive information, CNBC has learned.

    On Sept. 18, the Federal Reserve shocked the financial world with its decision not to scale back its level of support to the economy as most market participants expected.

    Financial markets reacted at the speed of light, pushing stocks dramatically higher in just moments. But it looks like the speed of light just wasn’t fast enough for some traders.

    Some traders in Chicago appear to have had access to the Fed’s decision before anyone else in the Windy City. According to trading data reviewed by CNBC, they began buying in Chicago-traded assets just before others in that city could possibly have been aware of the Fed’s decision. By one estimate, as much as $600 million in assets changed hands in the milliseconds before most other traders in Chicago could learn of the Fed’s September surprise-a sharp contrast to the very low volume of trading ahead of the Fed’s decision.

    ………

    The precise timing of the release is crucial because information can only travel as fast as the speed of light-a physical reality first laid out by Albert Einstein. Information-like a Fed decision-released in Washington takes as much as 7 milliseconds to travel to Chicago, where futures and other assets are traded. And because high-speed trading firms are now able to execute trades at the millisecond level, there is a brief window of time in which information can be publicly available in Washington but is still traveling to Chicago, where computers won’t receive it until milliseconds later.

    Thanks to modern technology, that window is long enough for some to profit if they know which direction the market is about to go and can place millisecond-level trades accordingly. None of this trading would typically involve a human being-it takes slow-moving humans about 300 milliseconds just to blink an eye, making them much too slow to react to news at the millisecond level. Instead, high-speed data feeds are plugged directly to algorithmic trading computers, which in turn analyze the news as it comes in and execute pre-programed trading strategies.

    What apparently happened is that a reporter who was given the information ahead of time, the Federal Reserve does this in a locked room (really) under sequester.

    The reporters can prepare their reports, but they cannot release any information before 2:00 pm.

    Someone cracked the system, and used the speed of light to gain a competitive edge.

    The bitch is, I am not sure that this was illegal.

    Whoever did this did not act on non-public information, it had been released publicly at 2:00pm EDT, which is when they traded, they simply beat the information going down the wires .

    It should be illegal, and I’d love to see someone prosecute these motherf%$#ers.