Category: Schadenfreude

Heh.

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Obama has just told TransCanada “No Backsies”.

It’s about bloody time:

The White House on Tuesday said President Obama had no intention of bowing to a request from the company behind the Keystone XL oil pipeline to delay a decision on the project, saying he wanted to take action before his tenure ends.

The State Department is reviewing a request made on Monday by the company, TransCanada, to pause its yearslong evaluation of the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which has become part of a broader debate over Mr. Obama’s environmental agenda.

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday that “there’s reason to suspect that there may be politics at play” in TransCanada’s request. He strongly suggested that the review, which has been widely expected to result in a rejection of the pipeline as soon as this month, remained on track.

“Given how long it’s taken, it seems unusual to me to suggest that somehow it should be paused yet again,” Mr. Earnest said about the evaluation at the State Department, which reviews proposed cross-border projects that require a presidential permit. The president, Mr. Earnest added, “would like to have this determination be completed before he leaves office.”

Environmental protection advocates say Mr. Obama is poised to reject the pipeline project in large part to make a bold statement about his commitment to curb climate change in advance of a United Nations summit meeting in Paris. He will seek to broker an accord at the December gathering, committing every nation to enacting new policies to counter global warming.

It would be nice if he hadn’t waited 6 years to start this.

When Republican Presidential Candidates Have Lost Megyn Kelly, the Race has Jumped the Shark

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Shoot me, I agree with Megyn Kelly

Specifically, the latest candidate whine fest over debate moderation has Kelly lambasting them, which means that they have truly jujped Jumping C. Megalodon*.

She suggested that the candidates might want a massage as well:

Fox News host Megyn Kelly on Monday night mocked the letter drafted by Republican presidential campaigns listing a series of rules and questions for networks hosting future debates.

 After listing some of the demands, including that networks not allow lightning rounds or candidate-to-candidate questioning, Kelly jokingly suggested, “And then maybe the foot massage?”

 She then criticized the campaigns’ request that they approve any graphics about the candidates ahead of the debate.

 “Can you imagine having to submit our graphics for approval to the candidates? Good luck with that,” she said.

It really is pathetic.

*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). But in either case, you are jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.

Schadenfreude Alert

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The Kaiser Family Foundation has just released a study on public health costs, and they found that both state spending has mushroomed in states that have refused to adopt Medicaid expansion:

Beginning in FY 2014, policy changes introduced by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have been driving Medicaid enrollment and spending growth. This report provides an overview of Medicaid enrollment and spending growth with a focus on state Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 and state Fiscal Year 2016. Findings are based on interviews and data provided by state Medicaid directors as part of the 15th annual survey of Medicaid directors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia conducted by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) and Health Management Associates (HMA). Information collected in the survey on policy actions taken during FY 2015 and FY 2016 can be found in the companion report. Key findings related to Medicaid enrollment and spending growth are described below.

Medicaid enrollment and spending increased substantially in FY 2015, the first full year of implementation of the major ACA coverage expansions. Across all 50 states and DC, Medicaid enrollment increased on average by 13.8 percent in FY 2015, largely due to the ACA coverage expansions. Driven by growth in enrollment, total Medicaid spending increased by 13.9 percent on average in FY 2015. (ES – 1)  Beyond enrollment, states reported that the other drivers of increases in spending were provider rate increases and the higher cost of health care, including prescription drugs. Improvements in the economy were a downward pressure on enrollment which affected spending, but downward pressure in enrollment and spending as a result of the improving economy were outweighed by the ACA coverage policy changes.

………

In FY 2015, Medicaid enrollment and total Medicaid spending growth in expansion states far exceeded growth in non-expansion states. Expansion states reported Medicaid enrollment and total spending growth nearly three times the rate of non-expansion states. (Figure 2) A total of 29 states were implementing the ACA Medicaid expansion in FY 2015, up from 26 states in the previous year (FY 2015 additions include: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Indiana).

Across the 29 expansion states in FY 2015, enrollment increased on average by 18.0 percent and total spending increased by 17.7 percent; both enrollment and spending growth were driven by increases in enrollment among adults qualifying under the new expansion group. Of the 29 states expanding Medicaid in FY 2015, more than half (17 states) noted that enrollment initially increased faster than expected. Over two-thirds of expansion states reported that per member per month costs for the expansion population were at or below projections.1 Across the 22 states not implementing the Medicaid expansion in FY 2015,2 enrollment and total spending growth was 5.1 percent and 6.1 percent (respectively), much slower growth compared to the expansion states. Increased enrollment among previously eligible parents and children was the primary reason cited for enrollment growth in non-expansion states. (ES – 2)

This could not happen to a more deserving bunch of narcissistic nihilists.

H/t Talking Points Memo.

Oopsie!!!

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It turns out that Fox News’s favorite ex-CIA expert on Benghazi just got busted by the FBI for lying about being a CIA operative:

Wayne Simmons has been arrested after a federal grand jury indicted him on “charges of major fraud against the United States, wire fraud, and making false statements to the government,” including allegedly falsely claiming he worked for the CIA. Simmons was a frequent and favorite guest on Fox News, and was one of the conservative media’s purported experts on the 2012 Benghazi attacks. Simmons joined several prominent conservative activists and media figures in calling for the House to convene a Benghazi Select Committee.

He’s what the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia had to say:

Wayne Shelby Simmons, 62, of Annapolis, Maryland, a former occasional on-air commentator who appeared on a cable news network, was arrested today after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of major fraud against the United States, wire fraud, and making false statements to the government.

According to the indictment, Simmons falsely claimed he worked as an “Outside Paramilitary Special Operations Officer” for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1973 to 2000, and used that false claim in an attempt to obtain government security clearances and work as a defense contractor, including at one point successfully getting deployed overseas as an intelligence advisor to senior military personnel. According to the indictment, Simmons also falsely claimed on national security forms that his prior arrests and criminal convictions were directly related to his supposed intelligence work for the CIA, and that he had previously held a top secret security clearance. The indictment also alleges that Simmons defrauded an individual victim out of approximately $125,000 in connection with a bogus real estate investment.

Simmons will make his initial appearance at 2 p.m. today in front of Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson at the federal courthouse in Alexandria.

If convicted, Simmons faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the wire fraud counts, 10 years in prison on the major fraud against the U.S. counts, and 5 years in prison on the false statements count. The maximum statutory sentences are prescribed by Congress and are provided here for informational purposes, as the sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the court based on the advisory Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

So, do you think that Anyone at Fox News will make even the briefest mention of this?

I’m just hoping that Trevor Noah or Larry Wilmore get their teeth into this.

That would be epic.

Quote of the Day

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I didn’t get into Parliament to be a bit of f%$#ing arm candy’

—An unnamed Tory woman Member of Parliament, who was upset at being required to walk next to Prime Minister Cameron at the Conservative Party conference

Here’s the deal.

If you join a party of Neanderthals, you will be dealing with Neanderthals with Neanderthal attitudes.

I would think that this should be self-evident:

Some female Tory MPs are apparently outraged at being lined up as ‘arm candy’ to walk alongside Prime Minister David Cameron at this year’s party conference.

According to The Spectator, there are a number of new female MPs who have been told to stand and walk alongside the Prime Minister as he makes his way between events at this year’s Tory conference in Manchester.

Some of the women are said to be unhappy with the arrangement, which is said to have become apparent when the special rota on who will accompany Mr Cameron on his visits was published among the team.

According to the publication, one source even claimed: ‘I didn’t get into Parliament to be a bit of f***ing arm candy’.

Heh.

If You Treat Your Employees Like Crap, It Flows to the Customer

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It turns out that the Wal-Mart grocery business is lagging, because they suck at running supermarkets:

Wal-Mart’s grocery business is getting crushed by competitors, according to analysts.

The retailer is plagued by negative customer feedback “due to lack of convenience in shopping Supercenter formats, below-average customer service, and below-average quality, freshness, and breadth of produce,” Wayne Hood, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a recent research note.

As a result, Wal-Mart is losing grocery market share to rivals like Kroger and Publix, which have higher customer satisfaction ratings than Wal-Mart, according to Hood.

That’s a troubling sign for Wal-Mart, which gets more than half of its revenue from groceries, and has been consistently offering lower prices than its rivals, Hood writes.

Grocery prices at Wal-Mart are approximately 10% to 15% lower at Wal-Mart compared to Kroger, according to Hood.

But the lower prices have failed to spur growth in Wal-Mart’s grocery business, as illustrated in the graph below.

Basically, Wal-Mart sucks, but they are cheap.

Of course, dollar stores are cheaper and they are not suckier, and Target is a bit more expensive and much less sucky, and now it turns out that even the lowly supermarket chain produces stores that people are wiling to pay extra to go to.

Couldn’t happen to a more repulsive company.

Editorial of the Day

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Brevity is the soul of wit

Michigan State Representative Cindy Gamrat, a Teabagger from the banks of the Kalamazoo river, was expelled from the state house because she and fellow rep (and fellow Teabagger) Todd Courser (who resigned) used state funds to cover up their adulterous affair.

A special election was called to replace her, and Gamrat is running for reelection.

The Grand Rapids Press and Kalamazoo Gazette editorial on this development is remarkably concise: (click for a larger image)

No.

It’s as if Ernest Hemingway wrote this editorial.

H/t Jim Romenesko

Does a Bear Sh%$ in the Woods?

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The other half of the couplet is the question, “Is the Pope Catholic?”
It appears that the right wing believes that the Pope is not Catholic, because clearly Jesus embraced those money lenders in the temple:

A while ago, Rush Limbaugh declared that Pope Francis is a Marxist, which is pretty much inconsistent with being a practicing Catholic. Now Representative Paul Gosar (R-Ariz) has announced that the Pope, in concluding that climate change is a threat to the planet, is advocating socialist views. As a result, he will boycott the Pope’s address to Congress on Thursday. According to Catholic doctrine, the Pope is the head of the Church, the Vicar of Christ, and an infallible authority on Catholic doctrine. But none of that, if one can use another familiar phrase, cuts any ice with Rep. Gosar.

If Pope Francis wants to devote his life to fighting climate change, Gosar said, he should do so on his personal time — not as pope. “To promote questionable science as Catholic dogma is ridiculous,” he intoned. This seems to be the standard line among political conservatives who are suffering from cognitive dissonance now that there is a Pope whose Catholicism is in doubt because he has distanced himself from the Republican Party line. James Inhofe, Chair of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, has declared: “The pope ought to stay with his job, and we’ll stay with ours.” Rick Santorum adds: “I think we [Catholics] are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we’re good at, which is theology and morality.” And Jeb Bush thinks that religion “ought to be about making us better as people, less about things [that] end up getting into the political realm.”

The irony here is pretty obvious. People like Gosar, Inhofe, Santorum and Bush have been playing the God card for years. They have been happy to use Christian religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, as a recruiting device and a campaigning platform for a variety of conservative political issues. Now they want the Pope to mind his own business and stick to morality and religion. One of the many things they are missing, however, is that climate change is a moral issue.

The term for this is “Cafeteria Catholics,” and when the Catholic Church was busy doing things like denying communion to John Kerry because the only things that mattered were abortion and gay marriage, it was the conservatives who used it imply a lack of integrity.

I’ve got my weekly dose of schadenfreude over this.

I Think That Obama Is Beginning to F%$# with Republicans for Sh%$S and Giggles

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White House officials have just met with Black Lives Matter officials:

Black Lives Matter activists, including select members of Campaign Zero, met with top White House officials on Wednesday, a senior administration official confirmed to BuzzFeed News.

Activists met with senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, as well as Roy Austin, the deputy assistant to the president for urban affairs, and a collection of White House officials. The meeting focused on law enforcement and community policing with an emphasis on how to increase public safety locally.

I can hear wingnut heads exploding right now.

The Best Case of, “Our Work is Done Here,” this Presidential Campaign

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The “Stop Chris Christie” PAC has closed its doors.

It appears that they believe that, through the efforts of Chris Christie, they have been rendered redundant:

A super PAC opposing Chris Christie’s (R) presidential bid said Tuesday that it planned to shut down, citing the New Jersey governor’s poor performance in the polls.

The treasurer of the Stop Chris Christie PAC, Thomas Bjorkland, made the announcement in response to a letter from the Federal Election Commission that warned the super PAC must change its name or else clarify the nature of the committee. Bjorkland wrote in a letter to the FEC that “based on recent polling and the miserable showing of the candidate in question,” the committee decided to instead wind down its operations.

That’s some sweet Schadenfreude.

Ashley Madison Hack Data Goes Live………

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I think that a fair amount of thought went into the how it was released, which is why is why they released the data on BitTorrent:

Gigabytes worth of data taken during last month’s hack of the Ashley Madison dating website for cheaters has been published online—an act that could be highly embarrassing for the men and women who have used the service over the years.

A 10-gigabyte file containing e-mails, member profiles, credit-card transactions and other sensitive Ashley Madison information became available as a BitTorrent download in the past few hours. Ars downloaded the massive file and it appeared to contain a trove of details taken from a clandestine dating site, but so far there is nothing definitively linking it to Ashley Madison. User data included e-mail addresses, profile descriptions, addresses provided by users, weight, and height. A separate file containing credit card transaction data didn’t include full payment card numbers or billing addresses.

The way that BitTorrent works is that someone puts a file up, and as people download it, they each get a little bit of the file, and then share it amongst themselves, which means two things:

  • There is not a central server to get hammered.
  • Once the whole file is loaded into this distributed network, it takes a long time for it becomes unavailable, because multiple copies of the various bits float around the impromptu network.

In fact, the protocol was developed to help with software firms that saw their servers hammered when they made popular new releases.

After the release, of course, it was applied to songs, movies, bootleg software, etc.

See the picture below for a graphic of how this all works.

It has already outed one prominent Christofascist asshole, who I will not name, because he is on my list of They Who Must Not be Named, so I will experience my Schadenfreude privately.

Meet the Clampetts

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Cue the Banjos

Down in Oklahoma, some bigot declared that their gun shop was a “Muslim Free Zone”, the 1964 Civil Rights Act be damned.

This brought in the usual suspects who dedicated themselves to “protecting” the establishment.

One of these products of generations of first cousins marrying dropped his gun and shot himself:

The Muskogee County sheriff said a member of the group guarding an Oktaha gun shop accidentally shot himself Tuesday.

Sheriff Charles Pearson said the man dropped his gun and a bullet hit him in the arm. The sheriff did not identify the man or offer any other details about what happened.

 The group of armed citizens and veterans is standing guard outside the Save Yourself Survival and Tactical Gear store after the owners said they received death threats from all over the world for putting up a sign saying Muslims weren’t welcome.

“I saw several of those gentlemen out there yesterday,” Pearson said. “The way they were holding their weapons, with the fingers on the triggers, you can tell a couple of these gentlemen have no idea about weapons safety. It’s like the Clampetts have come to town,” Sheriff Pearson told muskogeenow.com.

According to the Supreme Court, there is a fundamental right to own firearms.

We also have a fundamental right to eat Ghost Peppers, which have a heat rating of over eight hundred thousand Scovilles.

Just because you have a right to do this does not make it right, though.

This gentleman should not own a gun, because he is too stupid to own a gun.

Bummer of a Birth Mark, Rand

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The Department of Justice has just unsealed a criminal indictment naming three close Rand Paul aides conspiracy for fraud and bribery relating to the 2012 Republican primary:

Two top allies of presidential candidate and US Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) were charged with violating campaign finance laws during the 2012 presidential campaign, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

Jesse Benton, who worked on the presidential bid of Paul’s father, Ron, was named as one of three political operatives in the alleged scheme to conceal payments to an Iowa state senator.

According to a National Journal report last April, Benton was tapped to run a Paul-sanctioned super PAC, America’s Liberty PAC, supporting the senator’s 2016 presidential bid.

John Tate, who is listed as the group’s founder and president, was also named in the charges. The other operative named was Dimitrios Kesari, a former deputy campaign manager on Ron Paul’s campaign.

The indictment was based on six counts, including conspiracy, filing false records, false statements, and obstruction of justice.

Though the indictment did not name which 2012 presidential candidate Benton, Tate, and Kesari worked on, there is little doubt that it is referring to former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), Rand Paul’s father.

Note that one of these people, Jesse Benton, is married to Rand Paul’s niece, so it is all in the family.

At the rate that this is going, the Republicans are going to nominate Donald Trump.

Put a Fork in Jabba the Governor, He’s Done………

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At the Monmouth Park racetrack in New Jersey, Triple Crown winner American Pharaoh won the Haskell Invitational.

The trophy was presented in the winner’s circle, and as soon as Chris Christie, and as soon as he appeared, a deafening chorus of boos erupted from the crowd of more than sixty thousand.

They continued for as long as he was before the crowd, and returned whenever someone mentioned his name:

It was one long happy celebration at Monmouth Park for the great American Pharoah’s latest victory. At least, that is, until Gov. Chris Christie stepped into the Winner’s Circle to present the trophy.

 And then, the record crowd of 60,983 booed.

 Long.

 Loud.

 Sustained.

Maybe he should have hung around Bill Murray.

The cheering resumed as trainer Bob Baffert and owner Ahmed Zayat addressed the crowd and talking about their famous horse. Then Christie’s name was mentioned again, and the booing started anew.

So not even the popular Triple Crown winner, which went off as such a heavy favorite that a $2 bet won 20 cents, could improve the popularity of the Republican presidential candidate in his home state.

Christie still believes that he can become President.

He should be figuring out how to stay out of jail, because someone is going to roll over him to the US Attorney, and he is going to be under significant legal jeopardy.

It’s over dude.

You won’t be President, and you won’t win another election ……… Ever,

Your Evening Schadenfreude

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This is the skeeviest mugshot that I’ve seen in a Long time

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been indicted on multiple counts of fraud and financial shenanigans, some of which carry the possibility of life in prison:

Facing three felony counts of securities law violations, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was arrested, fingerprinted and photographed Monday morning for alleged violations that took place when he was a state legislator.

 Indicted by a Collin County grand jury last week, Paxton surrendered at the county jail in his hometown of McKinney, avoiding assembled reporters by entering through a side door.

 ………

 The grand jury indictments against Paxton, unsealed shortly after noon, revealed that two first-degree fraud charges were based on Paxton’s efforts in July 2011 — when he was a member of the Texas House — to sell stock on behalf of Servergy Inc., a privately held, McKinney-based tech company.

 According to the indictments, Paxton failed to tell stock buyers — including state Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, and Florida businessman Joel Hochberg, who each purchased more than $100,000 in Servergy stock and were listed as complainants on the fraud charges — that he had been compensated with 100,000 shares of Servergy. Paxton also said he was an investor in Servergy when he had not invested his own money in the company, the charges indicated.

 ………

 Paxton encouraged investors to put more than $600,000 into Servergy, special prosecutor Kent Schaffer told The New York Times last week. Paxton’s role was discovered as part of a Texas Rangers investigation, Schaffer said.

 First-degree felonies can be punished by up to life in prison.

Paxton is a wingnut’s wingnut, even by the standards of Texas, which is saying a lot.


Pass the popcorn

The fact that he has been caught red-handed defrauding fellow Republican members of the state legislature makes this whole affair quite ……… entertaining.

I am amused.

Internet Firm Going Public, but Not in a Good Way

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It appears that, Ashley Madison the dating site for people who want to cheat on their spouses, has gone public ……… prematurely, and much like their clients, prematurely is not a word that you want to hear:

Large caches of data stolen from online cheating site AshleyMadison.com have been posted online by an individual or group that claims to have completely compromised the company’s user databases, financial records and other proprietary information. The still-unfolding leak could be quite damaging to some 37 million users of the hookup service, whose slogan is “Life is short. Have an affair.”

The data released by the hacker or hackers — which self-identify as The Impact Team — includes sensitive internal data stolen from Avid Life Media (ALM), the Toronto-based firm that owns AshleyMadison as well as related hookup sites Cougar Life and Established Men.

Reached by KrebsOnSecurity late Sunday evening, ALM Chief Executive Noel Biderman confirmed the hack, and said the company was “working diligently and feverishly” to take down ALM’s intellectual property. Indeed, in the short span of 30 minutes between that brief interview and the publication of this story, several of the Impact Team’s Web links were no longer responding.

………

In a long manifesto posted alongside the stolen ALM data, The Impact Team said it decided to publish the information in response to alleged lies ALM told its customers about a service that allows members to completely erase their profile information for a $19 fee.

According to the hackers, although the “full delete” feature that Ashley Madison advertises promises “removal of site usage history and personally identifiable information from the site,” users’ purchase details — including real name and address — aren’t actually scrubbed.

“Full Delete netted ALM $1.7mm in revenue in 2014. It’s also a complete lie,” the hacking group wrote. “Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real name and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed.”

On NPR, a representative of ALM said that they were using DMCA take-down notices to keep the information off the web, but that makes no sense at all, because a data is not copyrightable, though there may be some trade secret protections that apply.

In either case, there was a bit of schadenfreude for me when I heard about this.

I can understand how some people might look for someone to cheat with, you see this in the personal ads of the alternative press regularly, but making a whole site for this is just really creepy.

H/T Yves Smith.

John McCain needs to Man the F%$# Up

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I understand the freakout over Donald Trump impugning John McCain’s war record:

“He’s not a war hero,” Mr. Trump said during an appearance at the Family Leadership Summit. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Of course, considering the record of Republicans on this:

  • George W. Bush and Karl Rove starting a whispering campaign in the 2000 primaries that McCain had collaborated with his North Vietnamese jailers.
  • Belittling Al Gore’s service in Vietnam.
  • Calling Max Cleland, a silver star recipient who lost three limbs in Vietnam a coward.
  • Mocking John Kerry’s service by sporting band-aids with purple little purple hearts on them at the 2004 Republican presidential convention.

The idea that now somehow it is beyond the pale for people to mock someone’s military service, when Republicans have been doing so for more than a decade, is ludicrous.

Republicans have been mocking opponents military service for over a decade.

That pretty much the whole Republican Presidential field are having the vapors over Donald Trump is a mark of both hypocrisy and a terminal lack of self awareness.

The fact that “The Donald” makes this clear to any cogent observer amuses me.

The Question Is Not If Sheldon Silver Flips on Andrew Cuomo, but When

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Marcello Trebitsch, the son-in-law of former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has just pled guilty to running a multi-year Ponzi scheme:

A son-in-law of former New York state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver pleaded guilty to securities fraud Monday, admitting to cheating investors out of nearly $6 million in a Ponzi scheme.

 Marcello Trebitsch, 37, of Brooklyn, entered the plea in Manhattan federal court in a written deal with prosecutors that recommended a prison sentence of four to five years. Sentencing was set for Nov. 2.

 “I am sorry for what I have done and I apologize to the court and my family,” Trebitsch told Judge Vernon Broderick.

 Prosecutors said Trebitsch, who is married to Silver’s daughter, solicited more than $8 million from four investors from 2007 to 2014 based on false and misleading representations.

 Silver, a Democrat who resigned from his leadership position after his January arrest on corruption charges, has pleaded not guilty and said he will be vindicated. Prosecutors say Silver took nearly $4 million in payoffs and kickbacks.

 Prosecutors said Trebitsch told investors they would secure double-digit gains with minimal risk of loss, but then Trebitsch mainly used the investors’ money for his own benefit and to repay other investors after suffering enormous trading losses on the portion of investors’ money that he did invest.

 ………

 In a release, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Trebitsche “ran a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, defrauding investors who put their faith in him and entrusted him with their hard-earned savings. He returned their faith with deceit and self-dealing, lying about his trading losses and using investor money on himself.”

Note that his wife, Michelle Trebitsch (née Silver), is a co-owner of the firm, Allese Capital, as well as being the certified public accountant who did the firm’s books, so it is likely that they will extract some sort of plea, or at least an admission, out of her.

Additionally, it is likely that  and a whole lot of their assets are going to be forfeited.

I’ve got to imagine that US Attorney Bharara would be eager to have Andrew Cuomo in the dock. It would be a major feather in is cap.

Right now, he has the sentence of Silver’s son in law, the possible prosecution of his daughter, and the potential for leaving his grand children penniless as well as parentless for a few years would be powerful  inducements for former speaker Silver to cooperate.

Silver will talk, and only question is whether he gets Cuomo, or he gets one of his closest associates, because Cuomo managed to create a level of plausible deniability in his dealings by using proxies.

Given that Cuomo is a former prosecutor, my guess is that it will be the latter, but I am hoping for the former.

Sh%$ Like This Makes Me Feel Unreasonably Smug

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It appears that the New York Times has finally had enough of right wing publishers manufacturing data for its best seller list, and it’s first target is the Ted Crux Book A Time For Truth:

Conservatives are furious at the New York Times for refusing to allow Ted Cruz and his publisher, HarperCollins, to game the system and “earn” his way on to the bestseller list via “strategic bulk purchases.”

 In an email to Politico’s Dylan Byers, Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy explained why Cruz’s “A Time For Truth” was omitted, noting that the company has “uniform standards that we apply to our best seller list, which includes an analysis of book sales that goes beyond simply the number of books sold.”“In the case of this book,” she added, “the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases.”

 Conservatives are complaining that “bulk purchases” should still count as sales:

 ………

 And while they might have ground to stand on there — if by “bulk purchases,” the Times meant “10,000 copies purchased to be sold at Walmart” — but the Times specified that it believes HarperCollins engaged in “strategic bulk purchases.” In essence, The Times accused Cruz’s publisher of trying to buy its way onto the bestseller list by having a firm like Result Source hire thousands of people across America to individually purchase a copy of “A Time For Truth,” in the hope that some of those retailers are on the secret list of booksellers who report their sales to the Times, or that the aggregate purchasers will simply be too high for the Times to ignore.

 In other words, conservatives are upset that HarperCollins got caught trying to rig the system in order to make “A Time For Truth” a bestseller, though that’s not quite how they see it:

 ………

Wingnut tears are salting my soup as we speak.