Category: Stupid

Well, It Looks Like Texas Has Pulled Ahead in the Backwards State Derby

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Yep, Texas is heading for a new monkey trial.

Chris Comer, former science director of the Texas Education Agency (TEA) was fired because he forwarded an announcement about an evolution event, and she has now sued for illegal termination on the basis that:

  • That creationism is illegal religious dogma in public schools.
  • The TeA’s “neutrality” on evolution/creationism is in fact an endorsement of the latter.
  • That her firing is an illegal establishment of religion.

The think is that this is fairly settled law, see Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, so I imagine that Comer will win this.

It’s why I left Texas in 2001. I did not want my children to grow up in the backward political and social environment there.

Polish MP Says Missile Defense Deal Basically Done

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Yep, with 6½ months to go in the Bush regime, it appears that Poland may have completed an agreement to place a US ABM system in their country.

As I’ve said before, it’s diplomatically disastrous and it’s poorly located to deal with the stated threat, Iran.

Bush and His Evil Minions™ want the missile site there because they want a hostile and threating Russia, because they feel that it benefits them politically.

Unbelievably F&%$ing Bad Ideas: London Stock Exchange Edition

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So it appears the bright young (but evil) men from Lehman have been talking to the bright young (but evil) men from the London Stock Exchange, and they will be working together to make our world a worse place:

London Stock Exchange Group said Thursday that it would create a pan-European trading system in partnership with Lehman Brothers, as the exchange sought to regain its leading role in the region.

The deal creates a system for so-called dark liquidity pool trading. The exchange, known as the LSE, said the trading facility, to be named Baikal, would be open to other investors and was expected to begin operating in the first quarter of 2009. Lehman, based in New York, operates its own dark pool network. It is bringing sophisticated trading technology and an established customer base to the table.

……..

Dark liquidity pools are off-market trading networks where large orders can be executed anonymously, without divulging prices to public exchanges. Off-market trading has always existed in the form of over-the-counter transactions, but the technology now exists to bring investors together electronically in anonymity. Dark liquidity in European equities is growing rapidly, according to the LSE, and currently accounts for around €12 billion, or nearly $19 billion, in daily trading value.

…….

…..

David Shrimpton, head of equity market development at the London Stock Exchange, said that the LSE was hoping to bring other investors aboard as partners, and the response to the announcement had been “very positive.”

He said it might be possible for a quite a few trading systems to co-exist. “You’ve got 50 broker dark pools in the U.S.,” he added, “and they share about 10 percent of the market.”

…..

Yep. There’s a recommendation. Let’s get into a new anonymous and unregulated type of exchange pioneered by the Americans, whose toxic financial products currently threaten to poison the world financial systems.

Evil, unregulated, dangerous, and will likely be disasterous.

Too Stupid for Silverware

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New York Times Columnist Thomas L. Friedman is a complete pratt. Really….

That also helps explain why Iraqis initially never took ownership of their governing institutions, like the Coalition Provisional Authority, or C.P.A. They never fought for it. It was handed to them. People have to fight and win their own freedom, and that’s what gives their institutions legitimacy.

Anyone who does not understand that the CPA was a US institution, enforced at the barrel of a rifle by the US military, and answerable only to Bush and His Evil Minions™ is too stupid to cut his own meat.

GAO: Surgee No Workee

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The GAO has just issued a report on the surge, and it has determined that, “The American plan for a stable Iraq lacks a strategic framework that meshes with the administration’s goals, is falling out of touch with the realities on the ground and contains serious flaws in its operational guidelines.”

You mean Bush and His Evil Minions™ screwed it up???? I’m shocked.

Once again, I am compelled to make the repeat the wisest thing that I’ve read this century:

But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:

  1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
  2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
  3. It wasn’t in some important way completely f#$@ed up during the execution.

Seriously. I’ve yet to see anything wiser yet, and I’m using the loose definition of the 21st century which includes the year 2000.

More F$#@ed Up Real Estate Press Coverage

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So, the real estate market in Manhattan is finally softening, and what lead article from blithering idiot Leslie P. Norton?

Signs of cracks in Manhattan’s property market could mean the rest of the country is on the road to recovery, since New York tends to feel the effects of a slowing economy later than the nation does. One segment still in the stratosphere: luxury condos and co-ops in exclusive buildings.

So, it could mean that the market is turning around…..or it could mean that that space aliens have abducted you and replaced you with a robot.

What it means that prices are dropping in Manhattan, which indicates a down market in Manhattan.

How does that saying go, ahhh…yes:

For example, given the premise, “all fish live underwater” and “all mackerel are fish”, my wife will conclude, not that “all mackerel live underwater”, but that “if she buys kippers it will not rain”, or that “trout live in trees”, or even that “I do not love her any more.” This she calls “using her intuition”. I call it “crap”….

And it gets me very irritated too.

People Who Need to Get a Life, Or At Least a Sense of Humor

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The American Medical Association (AMA):

Last week, the advocacy arm of the powerful physicians’ group unleashed a tsk-tsk campaign against “The Incredible Hulk,” a Marvel film that opened on Friday and is distributed by Universal Pictures. The complaint was of “gratuitous depictions of smoking.”

In the movie, which drew a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, General Thunderbolt Ross, a bad guy played by William Hurt, is rarely seen without a smoke-spewing cigar. (Presumably, the physicians’ association worries that children who identify with the authoritarian general — who wants to annihilate the Hulk, played by Edward Norton — may be tempted to pick up the habit.)

Dianne Fenyk, president of the advocacy group, AMA Alliance, is particularly infuriated because General Ross did not smoke in “Hulk,” the 2003 film directed by Ang Lee, though he always smoked in the comic books. …..

Dianne Fenyk is arguably the 2nd most overemployed induhvidual in the United States.

Surprise, Torture and Abuse Readicalizes Non-Terrorists

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We discover, to our surprise, that people with no connection with al Queida, following imprisonment and abuse by the United States, they become they tend to find common cause with terrorists.

It’s not just our torture that does it, it’s also that the innocent people in these prisons mix with real terrorists, and they learn from their inmates.

Once again, I am compelled to make the repeat the wisest thing that I’ve read this century:

But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:

  1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
  2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
  3. It wasn’t in some important way completely f#$@ed up during the execution.

Seriously, these people couldn’t screw up anything any more if they were an actual al Queida sleeper cell.

AP Goes RIAA Route

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Well, it looks like the Associated press has decided to try and go the route of the RIAA and MPAA, and create a new “property” right on their material which completely eschews the idea of fair use.

Specifically, they have gone after the Drudge Retort, asking them to take down 7 links, “ranging from 39 to 79 words”.

This places me in the unpleasant position of agreeing with Jeff Jarvis, Liebercrat extrordinaire, that they are stupid, or insane, or both.

According to Whiskey Fire, the AP now has a schedule of licensing fees which start at $12.50 for 5 words…I’m not joking here….Also, it appears to apply to blog comments too.

Interestingly enough, the terms of service are even more restrictive than that. According to Patrick Nielsen Hayden, they also want to prohibit you from criticizing the Associated Press, which means that all those folks following the hacktacular exploits of Nedra Pickler are simply out of luck, I guess.

As a result, TechCrunch, and some other bloggers, including me, will boycott AP stories for the foreseeable future.

Boycott link here.

Shoot Me, I Agree With Canuck Flying Monkey Right Winger David Frum

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David Frum, writing in The New Republic, in yet another example of how that magazine has fallen, actually writes something that I wholeheartedly support, though for very different reasons:

I have my own personal nomination for vice president for McCain. It’s Rudy Giuliani, precisely because he shares the vision of a practical, reforming, war-winning Republican Party that inspires John McCain, plus the stronger-than-usual grounds for hoping that he might be the rare candidate who can make a difference in an essential state–in this case, New Jersey.

Simply put, it’s been way too long since I’ve had the opportunity to use the phrase, “Clown Show”, but making a your vice-presidential running mate the man who:

  • Chose a police commissioner who was mobbed up.
  • Who recommended said mobbed up police commissioner to be head of homeland security.
  • Who broke up with his wife at a press conference on mothers day
  • Whose first wife was his cousin
  • Bailed on the Iraq study group so he could get fat speaker fees.
  • Lobbyied for unsavory clients, including Saudi Arabia, Tobacco, and Coal.

Would give me plenty of opportunity.

Of course, I can’t hope to own him the way that Joe Biden did when he said that when Rudy talks, “there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11.”

That one is one of the classics of the ages, up there with George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill.

OMFG!!! This is So Lame!!!

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Scott Bloch, the head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, who had a computer consultant wipe his hard drive, and whose office was raided by the FBI with accusations of abuse of authority, retaliation, political bias, and obstruction of justice, now has a new title Sock Puppet* by Proxy. It appears that he ordered subordinates to post stuff supporting him on blogs when they posted bad news about him.

This is so incredibly pathetic.

*Full disclosure, I’ve sock puppeted. I acknowledge that this means that I have no personal credibility. Confirm what I write by going to the links I cite, and reviewing my arguments. Seriously. FWIW, I’ll try not to sock puppet in my own comments section. I haven’t yet.

Seriously, if I say the sky is blue, go check the Weather Channel to confirm this.

Who is Eligible for the Presidency, For the Morons Out There

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By which I mean the denizens of Larry Johnson’s No Quarter (no link, just like Malkin).

The Constitution does not require that a President be born in the US. It requires that a President be a natural born citizen.

Section 1 of Article II of the Constitution contains the clause:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

If you look at the case law, a child born to an American parent where the paternity is established before the age of majority is a natural born citizen.

All the stupidity over the borders of an image of a Hawaiian birth certificate will not change that.

Here’s hoping that Johnson gets a clue over the next few months.

California Gay Marriage Amendment May Also Bans Straight Marriage

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Looks like the Talibaptists may have screwed up, bit time:

Should voters approve the measure, Cruz said, offering another potential outcome, it could inadvertently affect traditional marriages. That’s because the amendment would undo only part of the court’s decision — allowing gay couples to marry — but not the rest, which says that same-sex couples cannot be recognized differently than opposite-sex couples, he said.

“If you’ve got those two rules — that you can’t let them marry, but you can’t give different options to gay and straight couples — then one possible outcome, if the amendment were to pass, is that no one could get married in California,” Cruz said.

Oopsie.

Piling On David Brooks

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As John Amato of Crooks and Liars notes, along with half the liberal blogosphere, that when David Brooks says the following:

DAVID BROOKS, “NEW YORK TIMES”: Obama‘s problem is he doesn‘t seem like a guy who can go into an Applebee’s salad bar and people think he fits in naturally there. He has to change to be more like that Applebee’s guy and as he‘s done that he‘s become much more transactional. Much more, I‘m going to deliver this and this and this to you on policy.

He gets one fact wrong, there is no salad bar at Applebee’s.

I guess he’s never been to one.

Titanic — Deck Chairs

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Deutsche Bank asset management devision is looking to, “repackaging their home-loan bonds into new securities without creating collateralized debt obligations, which are being shunned by investors“.

They are called REMICs, are real estate mortgage investment conduits:

REMICs are real estate mortgage investment conduits, the tax-exempt vehicles used to turn mortgages into bonds by passing payments from the loans to different investors in varying orders of priority or at different times. Re-REMICs repackage some of those securities or a single class into new bonds in which payments are also directed in different ways.

I’m not seeing a difference here. It appears to me that they are putting a new wrapper on the big sh$#pile, as Atrios is wont to call it, and calling it George.