Did Psychopaths Take Over Wall Street Asylum?
This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.
Category: Evil
Another Gem From Matt Taibbi
His latest is called, “Wall Street: Everything You Need to Know.”
The nickel tour is that this is about one Jeffrey Verschleiser, who went beyond what Obama calls, “Immoral but not illegal.” He engaged in what was pretty much black letter fraud, and not only has he not been called to the dock, he is flush enough to buy all 94 rooms in an Aspen hotel for his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.
This is a guy who was at the core of Bear Stearns’ corrupt financial transactions that took down the firm, and he was telling his associates that he was “putting lipstick on a pig”, and some of his actions appear to be straight out embezzlement.
Why he is not facing criminal prosecution is beyond me.
Read Taibbi’s piece. It puts it all in context.
Another Example Why the Credit Default Swap is the Toxic Waste of the Financial World
On an article about how Greek government debt may take down the Euro, we find this little gem:
Lagarde’s demand for a larger haircut smacked into an onslaught of leaks from the bond-swap negotiations between the government and private sector bond holders. First, there were rumors that the banks had largely agreed on a deal. Then there were rumors that hedge funds that had acquired some of these bonds at a discount were refusing to go along with anything. They were betting that they could profit from a default because it would trigger CDS payouts. And if the majority agreed to the haircut, they would also profit because Greece would eventually redeem the bonds.
Now, there are rumors that the government wants to compel these hedge funds to join the bailout majority. Tool: retroactive “collective-action clauses”—if a majority of bondholders agrees to the deal, the recalcitrant minority could be forced to go along.
Of course, the question is how you can make money for this.
It comes down to the fact that there is something called the “naked” credit default swap.
The nickel tour is that a CDS is an insurance policy, you pay your premiums, and in the event of “something” happening, you get a payout for the “loss”.
The reason that I put “loss” in scare quotes is because unlike most forms of insurance, there is no requirement to hold an interest in the continued existence of whatever you are insuring.
This has been case since 1746 (!) when Parliament passed the Marine Insurance Act.
Basically, if I purchase a CDS on something risky, like Greek sovereign debt, I have to pay a lot of money, but let’s engage in a little mental exercise:
- Assume a billion dollars in a specific debt issue.
- Buy $1 million dollars in debt at a discount from someone who is scared, let’s say it’s 50¢ on the dollar. So you spend $500,000.
- You purchase a CDS on the whole issue, let’s assume that it’s a 30% payment, or $300 million.
- Refuse to accept a haircut, triggering a default, and a full payout on the CDS.
- So, you spent $300.5 million, and get a $1 billion payout.
This is vulture capitalism at it’s worse. You don’t just wait for something to die, you figure a way to pluck out the eyes to hasten the demise.
This is a microcosm for everything that is wrong with “Anglo Saxon” hyper-capitalism.
I Don’t Want to Start Any Blasphemous Rumours…*
Because the one of the Vatican’s child safety coordinator has just been sentenced to jail for downloading child pr0n:
He was arrested after uploading images of pre-pubescent boys on to the Ning social networking website.
Police officers who traced him to his home in Plymouth, Devon, found more than 4,000 child porn images, mainly of boys aged 10 to 12, on his church-supplied computer and a memory stick when they raided the house in Penrose Road.
The court heard that 4,389 images were found on the laptop and memory stick.
The majority, 3,721, were at Level One, the lowest level for abusive images.
But there were 120 at Level Four, which includes scenes of child rape, and 12 at Level Five, which can include scenes of torture and sadism.
Jarvis, who the court heard claimed he was abused as a child, was sentenced at the city’s crown court after admitted 12 counts of making, possessing and distributing indecent images at a previous magistrates’ court hearing.
You know, notwithstanding the assertions of people like ……… You know ……… the Pope that it’s all an aberrations and caused by our wicked society.
I think that a bit of self examination is order here, because lashing out at the rest of the world over this seems to be just a bit delusional.
H/t Americablog.
*The refrain from the Depeche Mode song Blasphemous Rumors is, “I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours, But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor, And when I die I expect to find Him laughing.”
Just When Thought that the ‘Phants Could Not Get Any More Repulsive
They have slipped a provision into the payroll tax extension which would deny unemployment compensation for people who lack a high school diploma:
For legislation to extend the payroll tax cut through the end of 2012, House Republicans are expected to push for a provision on unemployment insurance (UI) that is appalling even by current Washington standards. Neither President Obama nor Congress should accept any payroll-tax legislation that includes it. Here’s why:The provision, part of a full-year payroll-tax bill that the House passed in December, would deny UI benefits to any worker who lacks a high school diploma or GED and is not enrolled in classes to get one or the other — regardless of how long the person worked or whether he or she has access to adult education, which itself has been subject to significant budget cuts in the past few years and is heavily oversubscribed.The proposal would deny UI benefits to hundreds of thousands of workers — many of them middle-aged — who have worked hard, played by the rules, and effectively paid UI taxes for years and who then were laid off due to no fault of their own.This would violate the basic compact that the UI system has embodied since its creation under President Roosevelt in 1935 — that people who have amassed a sufficient record of work, and on whose behalf UI taxes have faithfully been paid, may receive UI benefits for a temporary period if they are laid off and are searching for a new job.
Republicans need to find a way to blame the victim. It’s in their DNA.
Just put on the f%$#ing glasses, and look.
Just really look, and understand that these are two sorts of people with the ‘Phants, the aliens, and the people who gleefully say, “I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.”
Yes, Some of these Folks are Actually Guilty of Bad Things
But it’s right to dismiss charges against all the kids that the cash for kids judges sent up:
A judge brought in to clean up after a “kids for cash” scandal has expunged every juvenile court case decided by a Pennsylvania jurist convicted of corruption.
Senior Judge Arthur Grim was selected almost three years ago to review juvenile court cases decided by former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella, who’s serving time in jail for his involvement in the corruption case.
As a result of Grim’s efforts, records have been expunged for more than 2,000 juveniles sentenced by Ciavarella.
Ciavarella and another ex-judge are serving federal prison sentences for sending juveniles to for-profit youth detention centers in return for money.
Grim called the handling of juvenile cases in Luzerne County a judicial process “run amok,” and he gave recommendations to prevent such renegade justice again.
Pennsylvania State Supreme Court Chief Justice Ron Castille said Thursday that Grim has suggested many reforms that require legislative action, but the courts have already changed certain rules to treat kids more fairly.
When the checks and balances fail so badly that judges manage to get kickbacks for sending kids to private prisons, and no one says anything for years, expunging every conviction is least that we owe them as a society.
Background here.
Jon Stewart is Right
At about 3:30, but it’s worth it to watch the whole thing
You can make fun of Rick Santorum without having to resort to making ass juice/frothy mixture/Google jokes.
There’s simply way too much insanity even without Dan Savages bit of literary genius.
Case in point, he just said that the “American left” “hates Christendom”, because, among other things, they think that the Crusades were an aggression against the Arab world.
Because, the mass slaughter in Jerusalem, and the pogroms and murders that swept through Europe was all hunky dory.
On behalf of my ancestors, who were doubtless murdered and raped by your ancestors, go Cheney yourself.
H/t The Reality-Based Community, who asks the obvious question, “Is he going to endorse the Inquisition next, and expose Voltaire as an undercover jihadist and proto-Marxist?”
Seriously, I’m not sure if Santorum is simply bat-sh%$ insane, if he’s just used to saying this crap because it’s what College Republicans do to tweak people in order to get their juvenile jollies.
Truth be told, it doesn’t matter. The end result is the same.
John Stewart Goes Postal on Barack Obama
Brutal!
John Stewart gives Barack Obama a righteous, and justly deserved, beat-down over the President’s signing of the “f%$# the Bill of Rights” indefinite detention defense authorization bill.
It’s remarkable how much eloquence he (and to be fair, his writers) gives to the absolute outrage through humor than the outrage expressed by other commentators.
If you want to show someone who doesn’t get why what happened is so wrong, this conveys it more succinctly than anything I’ve read from Greenwald, or Taibbi, or the Rude Pundit.
Stewart is a national treasure.
OK, I Didn’t Expect This in Maryland
But two doctors have been charged with fetal homicide for late term abortions:
Two doctors who Maryland authorities say botched an abortion last year in Elkton have been indicted on murder charges — in what appears to be the first use of the state’s fetal homicide law involving a medical professional performing surgery.“We’re in uncharted territory,” Cecil County State’s Attorney Edward D.E. Rollins said Friday. He declined to comment further because the indictment remains sealed until the suspects are arraigned in Maryland. They were arrested Wednesday in New Jersey and in Utah.Dr. Steven Chase Brigham, 55, of Voorhees, N.J., faces five counts of first-degree murder, five counts of second-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. Dr. Nicola Irene Riley, 46, of Salt Lake City faces one count each of first- and second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.Authorities would not describe the indictment in detail. A statement from Elkton police says some of the charges relate to an abortion that went awry 16 months ago. Detectives investigating that case — in which a teenager had to be rushed to a hospital and survived — said they found nearly three dozen late-term aborted fetuses in a freezer in Brigham’s Elkton clinic.Maryland is one of 38 states with a fetal homicide law. But unlike many, Maryland does not define when it is too late to perform an abortion. Under the law, enacted in 2005, it is illegal to abort a fetus deemed viable, or showing signs of healthy development.
In case you are wondering, Edward D.E. Rollins is a Republican, and this is fairly clearly a case where they are trying to use this as another wedge against Roe v. Wade to the Supreme Court.
What is interesting here is that they aren’t charging the mothers in the conspiracy charges, when, if there is a conspiracy, they are clearly co-conspirators.
Prosecutors love conspiracy charges. They are easier to prosecute, and they are a remarkably effective tool for turn witnesses, but we aren’t seeing its use here, because this is all about an anti-choice political agenda.
I expect to see this before the Supreme Court in the next 2-3 years.
What Dan Savage Says…
I don’t know how I missed this.
It is positively brilliant:
Bachmann and her ilk believe that woman who have sex—along with men who fail to purchase health insurance—deserve to die horrible deaths. That’s why they hate the HPV vaccine, that’s why they fought its introduction, that’s why they tell lies about it now. Because they want women to die.
Read the rest. It’s short.
It’s also true.
The majority of the people who who seek to criminalize abortion want to punish women for having sex, and anything that resembles freedom in their personal, in any way they can.
It’s an unalloyed evil that these folks see The Handmaiden’s Tale as a blueprint Rather than a warning.
I Really Don’t Have the Words to Express My Contempt for the Rich Who Whine About Not Being Loved Enough
Fortunately, Matt Taibbi does have words to express my contempt.
Read it.
Just When I Thought that I Could Not Get Any More Cynical………
I read this analysis, which makes the very convincing case that Barack Obama does not object to the detention provisions of the defense authorization bill because he supports the rule of law, but because it classifies these detainees as prisoners of war, and so subject to the strictures of the Geneva Conventions:
However, on further reflection I conclude that the Obama regime’s objection to military detention is not rooted in concern for the constitutional rights of American citizens. The regime objects to military detention because the implication of military detention is that detainees are prisoners of war. As Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin put it: Should somebody determined “to be a member of an enemy force who has come to this nation or is in this nation to attack us as a member of a foreign enemy, should that person be treated according to the laws of war? The answer is yes.”
Detainees treated according to the laws of war have the protections of the Geneva Conventions. They cannot be tortured. The Obama regime opposes military detention, because detainees would have some rights. These rights would interfere with the regime’s ability to send detainees to CIA torture prisons overseas. This is what the Obama regime means when it says that the requirement of military detention denies the regime “flexibility.”
The Bush/Obama regimes have evaded the Geneva Conventions by declaring that detainees are not POWs, but “enemy combatants,” “terrorists,” or some other designation that removes all accountability from the US government for their treatment.
By requiring military detention of the captured, Congress is undoing all the maneuvering that two regimes have accomplished in removing POW status from detainees.
A careful reading of the Obama regime’s objections to military detention supports this conclusion.(See http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/112/saps1867s_20111117.pdf)The November 17 letter to the Senate from the Executive Office of the President says that the Obama regime does not want the authority it has under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), Public Law 107-40, to be codified. Codification is risky, the regime says. “After a decade of settled jurisprudence on detention authority, Congress must be careful not to open a whole new series of legal questions that will distract from our efforts to protect the country.”
In other words, the regime is saying that under AUMF the executive branch has total discretion as to who it detains and how it treats detainees. Moreover, as the executive branch has total discretion, no one can find out what the executive branch is doing, who detainees are, or what is being done to them. Codification brings accountability, and the executive branch does not want accountability.
Those who see hope in Obama’s threatened veto have jumped to conclusions if they think the veto is based on constitutional scruples.
(emphasis original)
Read the White House PDF. They flat out say that the reason that they object is because they want more “flexibility” (to torture, etc).
It’s not for nothing that I call Obama the “The Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever”.
H/t Washington’s Blog.
Despicable
Last night, I posted about what I though was a seriously cheeky and inventive way of tweaking the cops at Occupy Melbourne.
People wore tent costumes as a protest on the ban on tents.
What was the police response?
They stripped down a woman to her underwear in public, cutting her clothes off.
There are any number of people who give good justification to be called pigs.
You have, politicians (Newt, I mean you), sports figures (too many to name), reality TV stars (I try not to know their names), actors, musicians, the guy who cut me off in traffic today, overly aggressive telemarketers, etc.
This does not make all of these people pigs, it just makes the pigs who have those jobs pigs.
Well, these, “4 Melbourne City Council officers and 8 Victorian police officers,” are pigs.
I would not piss on them if they were on fire.
I hope Karma is real for these folks.
Don’t Use Download.com
Seriously. They have taken to bundling malware with their download installers:
From: Fyodor
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 14:35:30 -0800Hi Folks. I’ve just discovered that C|Net’s Download.Com site has
started wrapping their Nmap downloads (as well as other free software
like VLC) in a trojan installer which does things like installing a
sketchy “StartNow” toolbar, changing the user’s default search engine
to Microsoft Bing, and changing their home page to Microsoft’s MSN.The way it works is that C|Net’s download page (screenshot attached)
offers what they claim to be Nmap’s Windows installer. They even
provide the correct file size for our official installer. But users
actually get a Cnet-created trojan installer. That program does the
dirty work before downloading and executing Nmap’s real installer.
At least, there is symmetry
Note that the author of this post is also the author of Nmap, and this violates his license.
Here’s some more background.
The fact that they (CNET/Download.com) also employ “Draw by Crayon Libertarian” Declan McCullagh, who is still proud of creating the “Al Gore created the Internet” lie provides a book end for this crap.
I’m not suggesting a boycott here. I’m suggesting that CNET, and more specifically Download.com, has crossed a line and is now a purveyor of malware.
It’s just not me saying this, it’s, “Panda, McAfee, F-Secure,” (top link) who are classifying their wrappers as spyware.
What the F%$#?
It appears that Lisa Riniker, the DA for Grant County, Wisconsin, has filed a felony prosecution against a 6 year old who was “playing doctor” with a 5 year old:
The parents of a Grant County boy who authorities have accused of first-degree sexual assault for playing doctor with a 5-year-old girl when he was 6 years old have filed a federal lawsuit against the county’s district attorney, a social worker and a former Sheriff’s Office investigator.The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Madison, seeks $12 million in damages for alleged violations of the constitutional rights of the boy and his parents.It names as defendants Grant County District Attorney Lisa Riniker, as well as Jan Moravits, a social worker with Grant County Social Services, and recently retired Grant County Sheriff’s Sgt. James Kopp.…………Among the suit’s claims is that the boy was selectively accused of a felony for playing doctor with the daughter of a Grant County political figure. It also alleges that the investigations by Kopp and Moravits were haphazard and biased in favor of the girl’s father because of his political status and that Riniker did not act reasonably in charging a 6-year-old with first-degree sexual assault.…………The boy, who is now 7 and has a developmental disability, has been diagnosed with stress disorders that medical professionals attribute to the defendants’ actions, according to the suit. He has experienced fear of going to jail, as well as anxiety, depression, sleepless nights, vomiting, crying and missed school time.The lawsuit also asks that a judge issue a permanent injunction to stop Riniker’s “attempts to coerce” the boy’s parents into forcing the boy to admit guilt.…………
It gets better. The DA got a judge to slap a gag order on the parents, and the charges would mandate that he register as a sexual offender for the rest of his life.
Seriously, this juxtaposes the worst of overzealous prosecution and political cronyism.
I despair for the whole human race right now.
BTW, here is the DA’s business contact info, if you feel compelled to express your opinion to her:
Lisa Riniker
130 W Maple St
Lancaster WI 53813
Phone: 608-723-4237
Fax: 608-723-4382
Regardless of party (I could not determine this from the Google machine), this is the worst elected official in all of Wisconsin.
H/t Americablog.
The filing is attached after the break:
Lawsuit Filed Against Overzealous DA who Charged 6 Year Old with Sexual Assault for Playing Doctor
Not Enough Bullets…
Here are two bullet points for the presentation
- While he was Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson Tipped off Wall Street to the bailout of Fannie Mae, which allowed them to profit from this decision:
On the morning of July 21, before the Eton Park meeting, Paulson had spoken to New York Times reporters and editors, according to his Treasury Department schedule. A Times article the next day said the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were inspecting Fannie and Freddie’s books and cited Paulson as saying he expected their examination would give a signal of confidence to the markets.
A Different Message
At the Eton Park meeting, he sent a different message, according to a fund manager who attended. Over sandwiches and pasta salad, he delivered that information to a group of men capable of profiting from any disclosure.
Around the conference room table were a dozen or so hedge- fund managers and other Wall Street executives — at least five of them alumni of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from 1999 to 2006. In addition to Eton Park founder Eric Mindich, they included such boldface names as Lone Pine Capital LLC founder Stephen Mandel, Dinakar Singh of TPG-Axon Capital Management LP and Daniel Och of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC.
After a perfunctory discussion of the market turmoil, the fund manager says, the discussion turned to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Paulson said he had erred by not punishing Bear Stearns shareholders more severely. The secretary, then 62, went on to describe a possible scenario for placing Fannie and Freddie into “conservatorship” — a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets.
Stock Wipeout
Paulson explained that under this scenario, the common stock of the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, would be effectively wiped out. So too would the various classes of preferred stock, he said.
The fund manager says he was shocked that Paulson would furnish such specific information — to his mind, leaving little doubt that the Treasury Department would carry out the plan. The managers attending the meeting were thus given a choice opportunity to trade on that information.
I think that the next two paragraphs, while appearing to exonerate those involved, actually reveal the criminality:
There’s no evidence that they did so after the meeting; tracking firm-specific short stock sales isn’t possible using public documents.
And law professors say that Paulson himself broke no law by disclosing what amounted to inside information.
I understand where the reporter is coming from: He knows what could be done with information, and what probably was done with the information, but his legal department said that he could not connect the dots.
This is Wall Street and the “Vampire Squid” we are talking about. Of course they would use this information to profit. It’s what they do.
As to the morality of Hank Paulson, I will refer you to the fact that he does not use email, and “People who meticulously avoid email should not be trusted, because it is simply too calculating, as if they know they are regularly committing crimes.”
And this guy was the f%$#ing Secretary of the F%$#ing Treasury of the United States of America
- And as to bullet point 2, we discover, courtesy of Senator Bernie Sanders, that the Federal Reserve bailed out the banks to the tune of 16 trillion dollars (H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS):
The first ever GAO(Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke(pictured to the left), Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3
What was revealed in the audit was startling: $16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious — the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.
To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is “only” $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is “only” $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.
Seriously, if we don’t start prosecuting these folks, this is never going to end, and by these folks, I mean Hank Paulson, and any member of the Federal Reserve who did anything beyond jaywalking.
We need to start throwing asses in jail, serious time in serious prisons, because if we don’t, they are just going to keep looting.
The Unbelievable Wankitude that is Sam Brownback
Seriously. It appears that a girl watching Sam Brownback address a mock legislature tweeted that he “sucked”, and Brownback’s office found her tweet and contacted school authorities:
A Kansas teenager is in trouble after mocking Gov. Sam Brownback during a mock legislative assembly for high school students.
Emma Sullivan, a senior at Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, was in Topeka on Monday as part of Kansas Youth in Government, a program for students interested in politics and government.
During the session, in which Brownback addressed the group, Sullivan posted on her personal Twitter page:
“Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot”
On Tuesday, Sullivan was called to her principal’s office and told that the tweet had been flagged by someone on Brownback’s staff and reported to organizers of the Youth in Government program.
The principal “laid into me about how this was unacceptable and an embarrassment,” Sullivan said. “He said I had created this huge controversy and everyone was up in arms about it … and now he had to do damage control.
“I’m mainly shocked that they would even see that tweet and be concerned about me,” she said. “I just honestly feel they’re making a lot bigger deal out of it than it actually was.”
Sullivan said the principal ordered her to write letters of apology to Brownback, the school’s Youth in Government sponsor, the district’s social studies coordinator and others.
Karl Krawitz, the school principal, did not return calls or e-mails Wednesday.
It goes without saying that Krawitz is a bully and a coward, full of demands when he’s leaning on a student, and silent when the press calls, though in all fairness, being a bully and a coward depending on circumstances is pretty much the definition of a Principal’s job.
That being said, the fact that any political operation decided to go after a teenager over a tweet is pathetic beyond belief. This is “Michelle Malkin stalking a 12-year old over his support of S-Chip” pathetic.
It’s also deeply evil, and un-American.
Just when I think that the ‘Phants could not go any lower, I am disabused of this quaint notion.
I Will Write No More About Penn State, No More, Forever
Because I can add absolutely nothing to what Charlie Pierce has said:
It was midway through the pregame prayer session that the gorge hit high tide. There is always something a little nauseating in large spectacles of conspicuous public piety, but watching everyone on the field take a knee before the Penn State-Nebraska game, and listening to the commentary about how devoutly everybody was praying for the victims at Penn State, was enough to get me reaching for a bucket and a Bible all at once. It was as though the players and coaches had devised some sort of new training regimen to get past the awful reality of what had happened. Prayer as a new form of two-a-days. Jesus is my strength coach. Contrition in the context of a football game seemed almost obscene in its obvious vanity.
…………
If that blights Joe Paterno’s declining years, that’s too bad. If that takes a chunk out of the endowment, hold a damn bake sale. If that means that Penn State spends some time being known as the university where a child got raped, that’s what happens when you’re a university where a child got raped. Any sympathy for this institution went down the drain in the shower room in the Lasch Building. There’s nothing that can happen to the university, or to the people sunk up to their eyeballs in this incredible moral quagmire, that’s worse than what happened to the children who got raped at Penn State. Good Lord, people, get up off your knees and get over yourselves.
…………
This is a searing, and completely relevant, indictment of the hypocrisy surrounding the response of Penn States, and its apologists.
Read the whole thing.
Why You Should Tell Your Local Public Radio Station to Go Pound Sand During Pledge Week
In the latest case, we have Warren Olney, the host of “On Point,” equating homosexuality with child rape:
Allegations of child sex abuse have destroyed the carefully cultivated image of Penn State’s football team and brought down the university’s administration. They’ve also exposed once more the vulnerability of children, when a sexual predator can hide behind the façade of an institution bent on protecting its reputation. Foster children were assigned to former coach Jerry Sandusky’s care, even though charges against him were investigated for years. Today, Penn State’s Board of Trustees expanded its probe into the cover-up. With 500,000 children desperate for loving homes, we look at efforts to widen the pool of available parents. Should gays and lesbians qualify?
That’s Olney’s lede from his show on gay foster parents.
And then he lets an anti-gay bigot, Jerry Cox of the Arkansas’ Family Council, which has been designated as a hate group by the SPLC, spew his filth without challenging his cherry picking and outright lies.
But Warren Olney still has a job, while Lisa Simeone, an entertainment reporter, got fired for being a spokesman for a Occupy Wall Street Group, and now NPR has dropped its distribution of World of Opera produced by WDAV in an attempt to get her fired from that show.
Yep, you got it. They are trying to get an entertainment reporter fired, and shut down an opera show.
To be fair, On Point is distributed by PRI, not NPR, though PRI was weaseled big time on this, “Thank you for contacting Public Radio International. We share your concern. Although PRI does not have editorial control over the show -we distribute the program and KCRW produces-once we heard the program yesterday, we began having discussions with the editorial staff of To the Point, and those discussions will continue.”
The problem is that public broadcasting suffers from Barack Obama syndrome: It sees liberals as a captive audience to be belittled and scorned in an attempt to suck up to to right wingers who will hate them anyway.
If you give, they will continue to do this, so when they call, write back, and say that balance does not involve sanctioning hate speech and leaving outright lies unchallenged.
As it stands today, Warren Olney is still secure in his job, and NPR is still trying to get Lisa Simeone fired, so public broadcasting is not is not an institution for “mindful human beings,” to quote Ronald Reagan, Jr. on Dick Cheney.
I’m not saying that these people are inherently evil, but they are so weak that they are willing allies of evil.
I’m Beginning to Wonder if This is all Anti-Mormon bigotry
It seems that the Republican base is determined to find an alternative to Mitt Romney, and they seem to cycle through a series of brain dead clowns who are destined to fail. So, after cycling through Bachmann, Perry, and Cain, it looks like the ‘Phants are truly scraping the bottom of the barrel, with Newt Gingrich rising in the polls:
It’s come to this.
In the wake of Herman Cain’s multiple sexual harassment accusations, the media narrative of Romney-the-Inevitable has continued to grow. But it seems the anti-Mitt crowd is continuing to grasp for other choices. The latest alternative?
Newt Gingrich.
Months ago, many declared Gingrich’s campaign dead barely after it had begun, when he criticized Paul Ryan’s medicare-killing house budget, and lost his top campaign staffers in a major shakeup. But polls released Friday suggest growing momentum.
Let’s review the mounting evidence, shall we?
A national CBS News poll shows Gingrich as the choice of 15% of GOP voters, tied with Mitt Romney and three points behind Herman Cain, who is slipping.
A national McClatchy/Marist poll shows Gingrich in second place with 19% of the vote — four points behind Romney. Also notable is that 43% of Gingrich’s supporters say they are firmly committed to his candidacy — compared to 30% for Romney, and 31% for Cain. In total, only 30% of voters supporting a candidate say they are firmly committed. Gingrich’s higher-than-average floor of support could prove significant moving forward.
This is a guy who served his 1st wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital being treated for cancer, and dumped his 2nd on Mother’s Day when he knew that she had MS, and conducted a years long affair with his current wife while pursuing the impeachment of Bill Clinton for a blow job.
That and the fact that he’s a smarmy bastard.
The base is thrashing around for a non-Mormon and non-Catholic alternative to Romney, so the hapless Huntsman and the batsh%$ insane Santorum* are not viable alternatives.
I’m wondering who the Republicans next “Great White Hope” will be.
*The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.