Category: Stupid

Ignore Last Time, I Was a Junkie: Worst Presidential Campaign Slogan Ever

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Rick Perry is now saying that the reason that he was so stupid in his 2012 run for President was because he was jacked up on pain pills:

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) offered a critical assessment of some of the problems with his last presidential run.

“I wasn’t healthy. You all know the health stories — it was what it was,” Perry said in front of reporters in Souix City, Iowa, according to an NPR report published on Tuesday. Perry has taken steps toward running for the White House again and is expected to formally jump into the race on June 4 in Dallas.

During a 2012 GOP debate in Rochester, Michigan, Perry struggled to name the three federal agencies he would cut if elected president.

“The third agency of government I would do away with —the Education, the uh, the Commerce, and let’s see. I can’t find the third one. I can’t,” Perry said during the debate. “Sorry, oops.”

Later in the cycle, aides to Perry said that the governor suffered from severe back pains and depended on painkillers to make it through the debates, which seemed to have affected his debate performances.

Seriously?  You are suggesting that unwise use of painkillers made you behave erratically, and it’s all better now?

This is the worst bit of stupidity by a Presidential candidate since ……… Ummmmm ……… Sorry, oops.

And so I Must Add Another to the List of They Who Must Not Be Named………

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The Stupid, it Burns Us!

I must add (thankfully former) Twitter “Hashtag activist” Suey Park, who face planted with her #CancelColbert tag about a year ago.

It started with ……… Hell, just watch the attached video.

Short version:

  • Football team owner and contemptible scumbag Dan Snyder, facing criticism for his team’s name, founds the “Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation” in a ploy that not even his own mother would believe.
  • Colbert makes joke about this.
  • Comedy Central tweets punchline bereft of context.
  • Ms. Park has a Twitter fit, despite never having seen the original joke, which goes viral.
  • Colbert answers back (He is actually very gentle to her and savage on the cable news coverage) in the attached video.
  • Ms. Park becomes a laughing stock.
  • Dirtbag misogynists sent threats of murder and rape to Ms. Park, and she gets doxxed.

We can all agree that nothing that Ms. Park did merited the threats against her person.

What is also clear that, even by the incredibly lame standards of “Twitter Hashtag Activists,” Suey Park squandered whatever credibility she once had: She has become a punchline to a very bad joke.

She has made some attempt to rehabilitate her reputation (see link), but, I don’t care about her reputation, or how she feels about herself, or how she might have learned from the experience.

Until she does something that affirmatively proves that her opinions have some insight beyond what could be generated with an ELIZA program, she goes on my list of They Who Must Not Be Named.

That is all.

The Most Incompetent Member of the Bush Administration

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I think that we have a winner, and despite a spirited competition, Richard Bruce Cheney has won the “most incompetent” crown:

Dick Cheney would like you to believe that he knows more about protecting the nation from terrorism than anyone else. But he actually knows less.

When presented with an actual terror threat — the one that turned into the 9/11 attacks — Cheney thought al Qaeda was bluffing.

No kidding. This is from The Great War Of Our Time: The CIA’s Fight Against Terrorism, a new book by former acting CIA director Mike Morell:

The threat reporting continued [in the spring and summer of 2001] — other pieces were titled “Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent” and “Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks” — but I sensed some skepticism about it. The vice president one morning asked me whether all this threat reporting might not be deception on the part of al Qa‘ida — purposely designed to get our attention and to get us to needlessly expend resources in response.

UBL Threats Are Real. Take a minute and think about that. Think about what would have happened on the afternoon of September 11, 2001 if Americans had known that had been Cheney’s attitude just a few months before. Think about how, if he’d been a Democrat, that would have defined liberals as weak, cowardly children for the next 50 years.

So it’s not just that Cheney is cartoonishly evil, it’s that he’s monstrously incompetent; in fact, his monstrous incompetence is a large part of why he’s so cartoonishly evil. He was overwhelmingly powerful, but with no understanding of reality, and so blundered around the world strewing destruction wherever he went.

Dick Cheney initiated the privatization of key military functions as SecDef under Bush 1.

He ignored the threat of  al Qaeda.

His response to the attacks of September 11 was to gin up a war with Iraq, who was secular Arab enemy of Jihadists.

As White House Chief of Staff, he convinced Gerald Ford to dump Nelson Rockefeller as VP for his reelection bid, killing any chance at grabbing a portion of Black vote.  (In 1976, Jimmy Carter was viewed with some suspicion by elements of the Black community)

This is a guy who has failed upward throughout his career.

No wonder that  Harry Whittington who was shot in the face by Cheney, ended up apologizing to Cheney for his being shot in the face. 

It appears to be some sort of twisted Republican imperative.

If You Are a Guy and You Refuse to Go on Your Rescuing-Supermodels Adventure Because Charlize Theron Is Coming with You, You Really Need to Reconsider Your Commitment to Heterosexuality.

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Virginia Hey, “Warrior Woman”, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)


Charlize Theron, Furiosa, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

You may be aware that Australian director George Miller has done a reboot of his seminal 1979 film Mad Max.

What you may not be aware of is the fact that various members of the really small penis brigade, aka “Men’s Rights Advocates”, have called for a boycott of the film.

Over at Unfogged, a guest poster notes:

The new Mad Max movie may be the most guy movie ever made. The plot is literally Tom Hardy (Mad Max) and Charlize Theron (Furiosa) rescue scantily-clad supermodels. If you asked me when I was 15 to list movie ideas, the list would have gone something like: scantily-clad supermodels, 18 wheelers, guys getting shot, guys getting blown up, fist-fights on top of an 18 wheeler, guys with chainsaws, guys getting run over by 18 wheelers, guys with guitars that shoot fire, and cars crashing into 18 wheelers and blowing up. This list is basically the script for Mad Max: Fury Road. The only thing missing is a helicoper piloted by velociraptors crashing into an 18 wheeler. But there’s always the chance of a sequel.

He further notes that the this shows just how toxic the “Mens Rights” Movement is. Not only are they demandin “guy films”, they are demanding the exclusion of any strong women from the movie, even though the director, George Miller, has a long history of woman warriors in his films.

His closing statement says it all, “If you are a guy and you refuse to go on your rescuing-supermodels adventure because Charlize Theron is coming with you, you really need to reconsider your commitment to heterosexuality.”

That’s gonna leave a mark.

H/t Brad DeLong

Shoot Me Now

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Caribou Barbie, aka Sarah Palin has said that she is seriously interested in running for President in 2016:

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin told The Washington Post in an interview Friday that she is “seriously interested” in running for the White House in 2016.

“You can absolutely say that I am seriously interested,” Palin said, when asked to clarify her thinking about a possible presidential bid.

My brain hurts.

This is bad for the Republicans, and bad for the country.

The only people to benefit by this are political satirists.

And John Dillinger Feared the “Chilling Effect” of the FBI

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Today’s front page of the Baltimore Sun interviews a number of current and former members of the Baltimore Police Department, noting ominously that,  “The result could have a “chilling effect” on officers, preventing them from making “good faith judgments” when making arrests“.

If we eliminate the most significant issue in the whole Freddie Gray case, the fact that a 25 year old man was killed by the callous, brutal, and unprofessional behavior of members of the BPD, we still have the following:

I think that it’s well past time for police to follow the laws that they are sworn to uphold.

I am well aware that the job of being a policeman is a tough one, and I know that it involves tough calls, and I know that human beings make mistakes.

This goes well beyond mistakes.

That’s not the problem.  The problem is the fact that there is a culture of impunity that is nearly universal among law enforcement officers in the United States, and this ill serves both the citizenry and the constabulary.

The Baltimore PD is generating over a million dollars in brutality and misconduct settlements every year, and the very small minority of officers who are responsible for this suffer no consequences.

BTW, I think that one of the things that would help here is if cops got a mandatory 6 paid months off every 3 years, and officers were required to attend mandatory counseling on at least a monthly basis.

I have a friend in the psychological biz, and his assessment is that most police officers who have been on the job for more than a few years suffer from PTSD.

This does not make for a well functioning civil society.

Stupid Lawyer Tricks………

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A lawyer for the sorority Phi Sigma Sigma has sent a DMCA take-down notice to the Penny Arcade forums alleging misappropriation of trade secrets. (See also here)

They have also apparently sued the poster.

There, are of course any number of problems with this:

  • The Digital Millennium Copyright Act applies to copyright, not trade secrets.
  • The idea that the oaths, robes, secret handshakes, secret knocks, and seating arrangements are trade secrets is kind of laughable.
  • The post was made 3½ years ago, and has been publicly available since then, so the idea that it is a secret any more is ludicrous.
  • The Streisand Effect, wherein an attempt to censor information results in its wider dissemination.

In any case, this makes the description of rituals on Penny Arcade a legitimate topic for discussion.

Phi Sigma Sigma (PSS) secretly stands for Philanthropic Social Society. However, this is never written down or recorded (until now) because it is so “sacred”. The Handshake consists of a series of motions. Member A first begins with the pointer finger and the thumb surrounding Member B’s pointer finger and thumb. This is the “Phi”. Then Member A wraps the remaining fingers, middle, ring and pinky around the hand as a symbol of the “Sigma”. Depending on who is the senior member, the pinky finger is wrapped around the older member’s hand. Next is the hand knock. It goes Knock. Pause. Knock. Pause. Knock, knock, knock. The meetings are set up usually with the President, VP and other officers sitting at the front. The President wears a yellow or gold robe and the officers wear royal blue robes. The remaining members sit across from the officers in a pyramid formation with the base closest to the officers and the apex farthest from the officers. Members are seated by class order, then by alphabetical order. The table at which the President and Vice President are seated consists of candles on each side. Two gold candles and one blue at each corner of the table. Members usually recite an oath, “We, the members of Phi Sigma Sigma, promise to keep secret and sacred all of our proceedings.” The way to enter the pyramid is by using the hand knock to notify the members you are wanting to enter the room. The President will respond back with her gavel by repeating the knock. The person will enter then travel to the apex of the pyramid formation. The President will say the secret and sacred words “Remove the Veil” and then the member will respond back with the Chapter’s name, example, “Zeta Eta.” The Gold and King Blue symbolize “Perpetuity” and “Sincerity”. At initiation, blue “veils” (tulle from the local fabric store) are placed on the heads of the potential new members and are later removed to symbolize some sort of occult transformation and that they are full-fledged members.

This story has made it to the ΦΣΣ Wikipedia page I think that it’s time to understand that it’s game over, and any additional attempt to suppress this information serves neither the public nor the sorority.

The Clown Car Gets Even More Full

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The Abridged version of CarlyFiorina.org.


Her campaign forgot to register it.


This is unsurprising, seeing as how in her last campaign, she put out the notorious: 


Demon Sheep Ad (Not a parody, really)

Carly Fiorina has formally announced that she is running for President.

In what is an amazing amount of hubris, even by the standards of a Presidential campaign, she will be running on her record as CEO of Hewlett Packard:

Carly Fiorina became the second woman and the first former chief executive to enter the 2016 presidential campaign when she announced on Monday that her private-sector background and conservative credentials made her best positioned to capture the Republican nomination and take on Hillary Rodham Clinton.

 Ms. Fiorina’s long-shot campaign — polls show only a sliver of Republicans would support her at this stage — has nevertheless attracted the attention of conservatives in early nominating states, largely because of her increasingly pointed attacks on Mrs. Clinton and her impassioned anti-abortion position. (“Liberals believe that flies are worth protecting but that the life of an unborn child is not,” she said in January.)

 “I think I’m the best person for the job because I understand how the economy actually works,” Ms. Fiorina told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News on Monday. “I understand executive decision-making, which is making a tough call in a tough time with high stakes.”

Her record is that she nearly destroyed HP.

Employees began spontaneously singing, “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” at multiple HP sites when the news of her firing broke.


She also approved Lucent’s infamous “Brown Ring of Ambivalence” Logo

Before that, she was the,  president consumer products and later also the president for the global service provider business at Lucent, where she oversaw financing deals that essentially had Lucent paying money to customers to buy their gear:

Dig under the surface, however, and the story grows more complicated and less flattering. The Lucent that Fiorina walked away from, taking with her $65 million in performance-linked pay, was not at all what it appeared. Nor were several of her division’s biggest sales, including the giant PathNet deal.

 The Lucent-Fiorina story starts in 1995, when AT&T began to consider selling one of its crown jewels, its equipment-making division. The group had $21 billion in annual revenue and housed the famed Bell Labs, birthplace of the transistor and corporate America’s preeminent research outfit.

 Spinning off the equipment group into a separate company had instant appeal. As a separate company, Lucent could sell gear to AT&T’s competitors on an even footing with Nortel, Cisco and others. The timing was also perfect. In the late 1990s companies like Worldcom, Qwest and Global Crossing were laying fiber optic cables around the country and the world. Start-ups like Winstar were spending billions on new-fangled wireless networks. Dozens of small companies including PathNet came up with designs for other types of telecom networks.

 ………

 In the giant PathNet deal that Fiorina oversaw, Lucent agreed to fund more than 100% of the company’s equipment purchases, meaning the small company would get both Lucent gear at no money down and extra cash to boot. Yet how could such a loan to PathNet make sense for Lucent, even based on the world as it appeared in the heady days of 1999? The smaller company had barely $100 million in equity (and that’s based on generous accounting assumptions) on top of which it had already balanced $350 million in junk bonds paying 12.25% interest. Adding $440 million in loans from Lucent to this already debt-heavy capital structure would jack the company’s leverage up to 8 to 1, and potentially even higher as they drew more of the loan.

 Fiorina says in her autobiography that she pushed back against the pressure for short-term growth at any cost, and two former Lucent collegues with whom she remains friendly back her up. On the other hand, this 2001 Fortune story, which described Lucent’s irresponsible growth habits, cites sources saying Fiorina made it known that Wall Street would generously reward companies that emphasized and delivered robust revenue growth. And an executive who sat across the table from Fiorina in a big vendor financing negotiation, when asked this week about what he remembers of the bargaining, described Fiorina as being dead set on chalking up a huge sale. He adds: “The press release was always very important to her.”

(emphasis mine)

And she thinks that she can run for President, or more likely, she thinks that the Presidential run will set the table for another future Senate bid.

It appears that she has learned nothing from her shellacking by Barbara Boxer. (10% in 2010, which was a Republican wave election)

Pamela Geller Wanted a Terrorist Attack, and She Got One

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Well, Pamela Geller has finally gotten her wish, and trigger an attack from deranged Muslim fundamentalists:

Two gunmen were killed after they opened fire Sunday evening outside an event hosted by an anti-Islam group in Garland, Tex., featuring cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, local officials said. According to the authorities, the two assailants shot a security guard and were, in turn, shot and killed by police officers.

Officials did not name the gunmen or assign a motive for the attack. A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Dallas said the agency was providing investigative and bomb technician assistance to the Garland police.

The City of Garland confirmed the episode in a Facebook posting.

The shooting began shortly before 7 p.m. outside the Curtis Culwell Center at an event organized by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an anti-Islam organization based in New York.

“As today’s Muhammad Art Exhibit event at the Curtis Culwell Center was coming to an end,” the Facebook posting said, “two males drove up to the front of the building in a car. Both males were armed and began shooting at a Garland I.S.D. security officer.”

The “American Freedom Defense Initiative” has, among other things, campaigned against a mosque being built in Manhattan, because ……… Muslims.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified this group, along with most of the other groups she is affiliated with.

Geller is one of the founders of that organization.

Much like issue of the Nazis who wanted to march in Skokie, Illinois, I defend her right to free speech, but like those Nazis, we need to understand that she is a contemptible bigot who should be shunned by all right thinking people.

Instead, I expect to see her on mainstream news media (primarily Fox, but also the others) at least a dozen times over the next few months.

The Clown Show Abides

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Surgeon, and right wing nut-job Ben Carson has announced that he is running for President:

Ben Carson confirmed on Sunday that he will be announcing his presidential bid on Monday.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, made the announcement in a television interview with Sinclair Broadcasting ahead of his formal campaign kickoff event, still scheduled for Monday in Detroit . Carson suggested to POLITICO the interview was a pre-interview to be released around the time of the announcement but said in it: “I’m willing to be a part of the equation, and, therefore, I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”
Carson later acknowledged that he did informally disclose his candidacy. His comments came at the Detroit Music Hall, where he was preparing to rehearse for his announcement.

So many Republican candidates, and most of them are walking advertisements for psychotropic medication.

An Article that Needs Musical Accompaniment

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Green Day’s American Idiot

Amanda Marcotte writes of the
anti-science bent and the enthusiastic embrace of ignorance by the American right wing:

Spouting off about stuff you know nothing about is traditionally considered unwise. But as the Republican war on science intensifies, ignorance has started to become not only less of a handicap, but a point of pride. In the face of expertise and facts, being belligerently ignorant—and offended that anyone dare suggest ignorance is less desirable than knowledge—has become the go-to position for many conservative politicians and pundits. Sadly, it’s a strategy that’s working, making it harder every day for liberals to argue the value of evidence and reason over wishful thinking and unblinking prejudice.

 The strategy of holding out ignorance to be the equivalent of expertise and simply daring your opponents to try to do anything about it was epitomized recently in the Ohio legislature. Republican state legislator John Becker introduced a bill that would ban all insurance plans in the state from covering abortion. It was a horribly misogynist and intrusive bill, but Becker didn’t stop at just trying to outlaw abortion coverage. He also insisted that IUDs, the most effective contraception available, be outlawed from insurance coverage. His reasoning was that he believes IUDs cause abortion, because he believes they work by killing fertilized eggs.

 He is, of course, factually wrong in multiple ways.

 An “abortion” is a procedure that stops a pregnancy, and if a fertilized egg fails to implant—and about half fail to implant, regardless of a woman’s choices—then you were never pregnant in the first place and therefore cannot get an abortion. But it’s also factually wrong that IUDs work by killing fertilized eggs. Like nearly all other forms of contraception, IUDs work by preventing sperm from meeting egg.

 When confronted with the facts, Rep. Becker just blew them off. “This is just a personal view,” he said. “I’m not a medical doctor.”

Well then, sir, by all means. Let your random “view” pulled directly out of your hiney supersede the actual opinions of people who are considering the evidence before drawing conclusions.

There is just one problem with the article, no musical accompaniment, so I have posted an appropriate music video.

Of course, Green Day is the obvious choice.

Bullsh%$ Bingo, Education Edition

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I understand that there are a number of different views on how education might change over the next few decades, but this melange of incomprehensible argle bargle that serves as a justification for paying slave wages and breaking teachers unions.

Basically, he is describing the private equity wet dream for charter schools:

Whenever a college student asks me, a veteran high-school English educator, about the prospects of becoming a public-school teacher, I never think it’s enough to say that the role is shifting from “content expert” to “curriculum facilitator.” Instead, I describe what I think the public-school classroom will look like in 20 years, with a large, fantastic computer screen at the front, streaming one of the nation’s most engaging, informative lessons available on a particular topic. The “virtual class” will be introduced, guided, and curated by one of the country’s best teachers (a.k.a. a “super-teacher”), and it will include professionally produced footage of current events, relevant excerpts from powerful TedTalks, interactive games students can play against other students nationwide, and a formal assessment that the computer will immediately score and record.

I tell this college student that in each classroom, there will be a local teacher-facilitator (called a “tech”) to make sure that the equipment works and the students behave. Since the “tech” won’t require the extensive education and training of today’s teachers, the teacher’s union will fall apart, and that “tech” will earn about $15 an hour to facilitate a class of what could include over 50 students. This new progressive system will be justified and supported by the American public for several reasons: Each lesson will be among the most interesting and efficient lessons in the world; millions of dollars will be saved in reduced teacher salaries; the “techs” can specialize in classroom management; performance data will be standardized and immediately produced (and therefore “individualized”); and the country will finally achieve equity in its public school system.

………

I’ve started recognizing a common thread to the latest trends in teaching. Flipped learning, blending learning, student-centered learning, project-based learning, and even self-organized learning—they all marginalize the teacher’s expertise. Or, to put it more euphemistically, they all transform the teacher into a more facilitative role.

I believe that a good adjective to describe this vision is, “Dystopian“.

A good adjective to describe the article is, “Incomprehensible”.

A good summary is, “Education changes ……… Because ……… Internet.”

The Technical Term is Lying Sack of Sh%$………

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In this case, the term can be applied to the President of the Maryland Police Union:

Protests escalated in Baltimore on Saturday over the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered a serious spinal cord injury while in police custody. The mysterious injury raised suspicions that he was taken on a “rough ride,” in which officers deliberately drive erratically to injure unbuckled and handcuffed passengers. But the president of Maryland’s police union told ThinkProgress he is unaware of the unsanctioned police practice.

In a word, bullsh%$.

“Rough rides”, a procedure where a person is placed in a paddy wagon, handcuffed but not buckled in, and then subjected to a ride that consists of sudden starts, stops, and abrupt maneuvers, and so tossing them around the inside of the vehicle.

I understand that Mr. Canales has a responsibility to represent his union members, but this sort of bald faced lie, much like the boneheaded statement by Gene Ryan, president of the Baltimore FOP that the earlier peaceful protests were akin to a lynching, are transparently false.

What’s more these statements are clearly inflammatory, and so both of these folks served to put their own members at risk.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that term before,” Maryland Fraternal Order of Police President Vince Canales said when asked about the event that may have caused Gray’s death.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts acknowledged on Friday that Gray’s injuries could have been caused by a “rough ride,” but said the investigation into the circumstances of his death will continue even after the police findings are given to prosecutors on Wednesday.

A Baltimore Sun investigation found that Gray is not the only person to emerge from a Baltimore police van with serious injuries — others have won multi-million judgments after suing the police department for their injuries. But despite the repeated brutal incidents, Canales and others closely entwined with the city police are still unaware of the practice.

Baltimore deputy public defender Natalie Finegar told the Baltimore Sun she has no personal knowledge of “rough rides,” but others in her office are aware of the practice. “It is common knowledge among public defenders that [the Baltimore Police Department] has paid out significant judgments in ‘rough ride’ and other cases,” James Johnston, a Baltimore public defender, told the Sun. “In my experience, it is not uncommon for clients to suffer injuries during an arrest.”

When asked about a series of cases of police brutality in Baltimore, Canales presented a very different view from advocates who say the recent incidents in Ferguson, New York City, Cleveland and elsewhere were part of a larger systematic problem with police.

Instead of banning any particular police practices, Canales said each incident should be treated on a “case-by-case” basis because “everyone responds differently to different situations.” But reports from across the country have proved otherwise. In Baltimore, an investigation from 2014 found that the police department has paid around $5.7 million to more than 100 people since 2011 in lawsuits claiming officers beat up mostly African American suspects.

Maybe police officers should turf out Vince Canales and Gene Ryan at the next union election, because they sure as hell aren’t serving their members or the general public.

I Wish that I Were Finnish

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IN Finland, fines are based on daily earnings, so a rich asshole got a a €54,024 fine for doing 64 in a 50 zone:

Getting a speeding ticket is not a feel-good moment for anyone. But consider Reima Kuisla, a Finnish businessman.

He was recently fined 54,024 euros (about $58,000) for traveling a modest, if illegal, 64 miles per hour in a 50 m.p.h. zone. And no, the 54,024 euros did not turn out to be a typo, or a mistake of any kind.

Mr. Kuisla is a millionaire, and in Finland the fines for more serious speeding infractions are calculated according to income. The thinking here is that if it stings for the little guy, it should sting for the big guy, too.

The ticket had its desired effect. Mr. Kuisla, 61, took to Facebook last month with 12 furious posts in which he included a picture of his speeding ticket and a picture of what 54,024 euros could buy if it were not going to the state coffers — a new Mercedes. He said he was seriously considering leaving Finland altogether, a position to which he held firm when reached by phone at a bar where he was watching horse races.

“The way things are done here makes no sense,” Mr. Kuisla sputtered, saying he would not be giving interviews. Before hanging up, he added: “For what and for whom does this society exist? It is hard to say.”

………

But the idea that the rich should pay heavier fines did not seem to be much in question. “It is an old system,” said Pasi Kemppainen, chief superintendent at the National Police Board. “It may lead to high fines, but only for people who can afford it.”

In fact, the Finnish “day fine” system, also in use in some other Scandinavian countries, dates to the 1920s, when fines based on income were instituted for all manner of lesser crimes, such as petty theft and assault, and helped greatly reduce the prison population.

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The fines are calculated based on half an offender’s daily net income, with some consideration for the number of children under his or her roof and a deduction deemed to be enough to cover basic living expenses, currently 255 euros per month.

Then, that figure is multiplied by the number of days of income the offender should lose, according to the severity of the offense.

Mr. Kuisla, a betting man who parlayed his winnings into a real estate empire, was clocked speeding near the Seinajoki airport. Given the speed he was going, Mr. Kuisla was assessed eight days. His fine was then calculated from his 2013 income, 6,559,742 euros, or more than $7 million at current exchange rates.

Someone committing a similar offense and earning about 50,000 euros a year, or $54,000, none of it capital gains, and with no young children, would get a fine of about 345 euros, or about $370. Someone earning 300,000 euros ($322,000), would have to pay about 1,480 euros ($1,590).

My heart bleeds borscht for Reima Kuisla.

Man up you over-pampered parasite.

The Shrill One is Sick of Those Muthaf%$#ing Liars on this Muthaf%$#ing Campaign

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Among other things, he appears to be calling out the New York Times, though not by name, who publishes his opinion pieces:

So there’s a lot of buzz about alleged scandals involving the Clinton Foundation. Maybe there’s something to it. But you have to wonder: is this just the return of “Clinton rules”?

If you are old enough to remember the 1990s, you remember the endless parade of alleged scandals, Whitewater above all — all of them fomented by right-wing operatives, all eagerly hyped by mainstream news outlets, none of which actually turned out to involve wrongdoing. The usual rules didn’t seem to apply; instead it was Clinton rules, under which innuendo and guilt by association were considered perfectly OK, in which the initial suggestion of lawbreaking received front-page headlines and the subsequent discovery that there was nothing there was buried in the back pages if it was reported at all.

Some of the same phenomenon resurfaced during the 2008 primary.

So, is this time different? First indications are not encouraging; it’s already apparent that the author of the anti-Clinton book that’s driving the latest stuff is a real piece of work.

The link that he mentions it sites dates that are wrong, conflating paid and unpaid speaking gigs, and the use of hoax press releases by parody sites.

I really don’t want to defend Hillary Clinton.

The dynastic issue is of concern, and it is clear, notwithstanding her recent statements regarding finance and inequality, that she is a tool of the banksters. (And then there is that whole frothing at the mouth war monger thing)

So damn the Times and the Post for making me defend her.

The only bright note to this, as Krugman observes later in his post, is that, “There’s a much more effective progressive infrastructure now, much more scrutiny of reporting, and the kinds of malpractice that went unsanctioned 20 years ago can land you in big trouble now.”

Truth be told, I don’t think that the progressive infrastructure will make a difference, but I do think that things like Twitter and Facebook, which make it a lot easier to point out unprofessional journalism, have become a much bigger part of the media landscape, if only because they influence what organizations like Politifact, the WaPo‘s Fact Checker, and FactCheck.org, who do a little bit of separating the wheat from the chaff.

The Middle East is a Truly F%$#ed Up Place

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You may recall that Palestinian terrorists abducted and killed three Israeli Jewish students, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah a while back.

It was a part of the ostensible justification for the latest military operation against Gaza.

A day after they were buried, Israeli terrorists kidnapped and burnt to death Palestinian teen Mohammed Khudair.

Well, it just got more screwed up, because after the Israeli government placed Khudair’s name on a memorial to terrorist attacks, both Israelis and Palestinians flipped out:

Israel has added the name of a Palestinian teen to its “Monument to the Memory of the Victims of Terrorism”, upsetting the youth’s parents and a group representing families of slain Israelis with both demanding his name be removed.

………

The Almagor Terror Victims Organisation, a group founded in 1986 and representing the families of Israelis killed in Palestinian attacks, demanded the government remove the plaque honoring Khudair.

“(Khudair’s) name on the memorial debases the memory of all the other fallen people,” Yossi Tzur, an Almagor member whose 17-year-old son was killed in a Palestinian suicide bombing in 2003, told Israel Radio.

“He is not part of the Israeli ethos. He is not part of the sacrifice our children made at the altar for the sake of Israel’s establishment and existence,” Tzur said.

Khudair’s parents told Reuters they had not been consulted by Israel about adding their son’s name to the memorial, which lists more than 4,000 people.

“We can’t accept that his name be included among soldiers who killed his relatives in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank,” said Khudair’s father, Hussein.

His mother, Suha, said her son was “a Palestinian martyr, and not Israeli”, and their family felt shamed.

This is incredibly depressing.

This kid is a victim of terrorism, and neither side can move themselves to move past a tribal inability to feel any smidgen empathy for the other.

It’s all degenerated into a contest over whose suffering is more righteous.

Quote of the Day

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Alas, reality trumps theory. As we have seen almost every time this thesis has been put into practice, it fails. The tax cuts don’t magically kick the economy into higher gear and the government ends up short of money. Remember former President George W. Bush and his tax cuts? Same deal.

—Barry Ritholtz, on Kansas’ fiscal implosion from worshiping at the alter of supply side economics and tax cuts.

If You are the Subject of the Sentence, “Some Moron in an Autogyro………,” It Will not End Well

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He says that, “No sane person would do what he is doing.”
The insanity defense might be a good idea.


And here is the landing, and the inevitable freakout.

Case in point:

U.S. Capitol Police said that a small gyrocopter with one occupant landed on the West Lawn of the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon.

 One person has been detained, Capitol Police spokeswoman Kimberly Schneider said in an e-mail.

 Eyewitnesses in Capitol offices reported seeing police run toward the aircraft and take the pilot away. The small craft landed in the middle of the West Front Lawn, where the annual Christmas tree and Fourth of July concert stage are set up.

 All was calm as of about 1:45 p.m., but police blocked access to the lawn. Schneider, at about 3:13 p.m., sent out an e-mail saying bomb squad had cleared the craft and was preparing to move it to a secure location.

………

The Tampa Bay Times wrote about Doug Hughes, a 61-year-old mailman from Florida, who planned to fly to the Capitol.

 From their report:

His stated intent: to buzz through the air at 45 miles per hour at about 300 feet up in an ultralight gyrocopter toward Washington, D.C., toward protected airspace, where, if his plan works, he’ll land on the lawn of the United States Capitol building and deliver the mail.

Of course, Doug Hughes might be shot out of the sky. He knows this. He has thought about it day and night for more than two years, wrestling with the tiniest details of his insane plan.

“No sane person,” he said, “would do what I’m doing.”

Rather unsurprisingly, he is currently in custody.

I don’t expect a long jail sentence, but I would expect that he is likely to be fired by the US Post Office, and his pension might be at risk, and he is going to be in for a world of petty harassment by the authorities.

Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico?

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In response to the spate of cops caught on video abusing and murdering people, Texas lawmakers are looking to ban recording police officers:

Oh, come on. We all know why they want to pass this bill — they want cops to get away with abusing and killing people! (As long as they’re the right people.) The right to record, in addition to being upheld by the appellate courts, is one of the best tools we have to deter police violence, and to see that those who break the law are held accountable — as we just saw last night:

A bill introduced in the Texas House of Representatives would make it illegal for private citizens to record police within 25 feet.

House Bill 2918, introduced by state Rep. Jason Villalba (R-Dallas) on Tuesday, would make the offense a misdemeanor. Citizens who are armed would not be permitted to record police activity within 100 feet of an officer, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Only representatives of radio or TV organizations that hold an FCC license, newspapers and magazines would have the right to record police. The legislator disagreed with people on Twitter who said he’s seeking to make all filming of cops illegal.

“My bill … just asks filmers to stand back a little so as not to interfere with law enforcement,” Villalba tweeted.

The bill would go against precedent set in 2011 by an appeals court, which found that citizens are allowed to record police, according to the ACLU.

Seriously.

I cannot see any justification for proposing such a law is because they want to ensure that minorities are in fear for their life.