Category: Wanker

I am Amused

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In the latest Fox News Poll, Donald Trump is the 2nd most popular candidates in the Republican primaries:

There’s been a lineup change in the race for the GOP nomination, as businessman Donald Trump moves up after declaring his candidacy. He’s now second in the order after former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who also got an uptick in support after his formal announcement.

For Democrats, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is still — by far — the team leader, according to a new Fox News national poll on the 2016 presidential election.

Bush tops the list of GOP contenders with 15 percent support among Republican primary voters. That’s up from 12 percent last month and his best showing yet. Support for Trump more than doubled since his announcement and that catapults him into the top tier at 11 percent. He’s followed by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 10 percent. No one else receives double-digit backing.

Bush officially kicked off his campaign June 15 and Trump launched June 16. It’s common for candidates to see a bump in their numbers in the days following their formal announcement and the media coverage that comes with that.

The bad news for Trump is that only 29 percent of GOP primary voters consider him a serious candidate. More than twice that many — 64 percent — think he’s a side show. Among all registered voters, nearly 8 in 10 say Trump is a side show (77 percent).

This appears to mean that the “2nd worst Donald on Earth,”*Fox News, much to the chagrin of the voters, is trying to limit its debates to the “top 10” candidates, which has the effect of eliminating those at positions 11 and below from having a meaningful chance in Iowa or New Hampshire, and hence the primaries.

And it appears that the biggest joke in Presidential politics will get one of those seats at the table.

It so sucks to be a Republican right now.

Heh.

*Larry Wilmore called Donald Rumsfeld, “The Only Donald Worse than Trump,” and I wholeheartedly agree.

Why Does this Remind Me of Stalinist Architecture?

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Positively Hideous

It seems to me that whenever a reactionary government remains in power too long, it seems that they develop an edifice complex:

A plan to erect a 10-storey statue in a national park on one of Canada’s most scenic shorelines has prompted outrage and sparked a growing political row as the country heads towards a general election this fall.

The statue of Mother Canada – a cloaked female figure with her arms outstretched towards the Atlantic Ocean – is intended to honour the country’s soldiers who died overseas.

But growing anger over the plan has made it a new focus of opposition to the increasingly unpopular government of Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper.

The proposed monument is an awkwardly remodelled, vastly upscaled version of an earlier statue, known as Canada Bereft, which adorns the memorial to the country’s first world war dead near Vimy, France.

The design has been widely lambasted both for its design and its proposed location in Cape Breton Highlands national park. In an editorial this week, the Globe and Mail newspaper described it as “offensively tasteless” and a “hubristically arrogant act of arrogant unoriginality”.

“The bigger-is-better approach to art is best left to Stalinist tyrants, theme park entrepreneurs and insecure municipalities hoping to waylay bored drive-by tourists,” the paper wrote.

Stephen Harper has gagged government scientists,  used the Canadian Revenue Agency to target charities who protest his agenda, and gutted the census, among other things, and now we have this.

My condolences to my friends in Canada, because this cannot be good, particularly if the Conservatives are not turfed out in the 2015 elections.

Clarence Thomas Is a Miserable Excuse for a Human Being

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First, in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, he suggested that racist impact of government policy might be a good thing, because ……… the NBA:

In a less headline grabbing decision today, the Supreme Court ruled that those affected by discriminatory housing decisions can sue even if they can’t prove the discrimination was intentional.

Civil rights groups were handed an unexpected victory when in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court endorsed the consideration of disparate impact to establish racial discrimination in housing cases under the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

The otherwise pro-business Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion but one of the other noteworthy opinions came from conservative Justice Thomas’ dissent, in which he wrote, “the fact that a practice has a disparate impact is not conclusive evidence that a practice is discriminatory.”

A well enough point, but it was the example he used to illustrate this point that proved most curious.

“Over 70 percent of National Basketball Association (NBA) players have been black,” Thomas pointed out, arguing that “racial imbalances do not always disfavor minorities.”

“If, for instance, white basketball players cannot bring disparate-impact suits— then we as a Court have constructed a scheme that parcels out legal privileges to individuals on the basis of skin color,” he continued.

Thomas went on to cite examples of minorities who “have owned or directed more than half of whole industries in particular nations” including “Jews in Poland” and “the Chinese in Malaysia” to argue that not all disproportional representation is bad.

Seriously?

Bigotry is OK because of the percentage of blacks in the NBA? Or the because of the relative prosperity of the Chinese in Malaysia?*

And then, in his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges, the gay marriage case, he suggests that slavery did not cause any loss of dignity in its subjects:

Clarence Thomas slammed the majority that ruled in favor of marriage equality, saying the five U.S. Supreme Court justices had engaged in misguided efforts to advance dignity for same-sex couples.

Thomas – who wrote his own opinion, along with the court’s three other dissenters – argued that the Constitution contained no “dignity” clause.

………

“Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved,” Thomas said. “Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.”

This is pure crap, and I say it as someone who is required to thank God on a yearly basis because of, “What he did for me when I went forth from Egypt,” on Passover.

Not only is this a failure as a human being, it is a miserable failure as a legal dissent.

Yale Law School needs to apologize to the nation.

*Which was largely a result of the British Empire using ethnically divisive policies in order to maintain control.

F%$# Me, I Agree with that Bigot Jeff Sessions*

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Yesterday, the Senate voted for cloture on Fast Track authority (TPA), and today, they voted to pass the measure, which will require the House and Senate to vote on any trade agreements within 60 days, and prohibit any amendments or meaningful discussion, which would include including the noxious Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP):

Barack Obama was given the authority he has long sought to expedite negotiations for a massive trade deal with countries on the Pacific rim, propelling the US toward a landmark agreement that, both proponents and critics agree, will reshape the global economy.

The Republican-controlled Senate finally passed legislation on Wednesday that gives the president the power to “fast-track” negotiations with the 11 other countries party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The vote, which passed 60-38, was a significant victory for multinational corporations which have been lobbying hard for a trade agreement expected to lower tariffs and create new regulations for sectors as diverse as agriculture, banking and the pharmaceutical industry.

Let’s note that the tariffs among the largest economies in the deal are already around 1%.

What this is really about is aiding rent seeking industries, primarily pharma and finance, by creating new “rights” and forestalling meaningful regulation, because 7 figure lobbying salaries following retirement from politics don’t grow on trees.

It is the very apotheosis of rent seeking, and I oppose this bill.

BTW, here is a list of Vichy Democrats who voted for cloture, They should not be supported in ay primary, nor should they be supported in a general election.

In the long run, and in the medium run as well, this would be a good thing, one need only remember how the 1994 electoral debacle, which was driven by NAFTA.

  1. Bennet (D-CO)
  2. Cantwell (D-WA)
  3. Carper (D-DE)
  4. Coons (D-DE)
  5. Feinstein (D-CA)
  6. Heitkamp (D-ND)
  7. Kaine (D-VA)
  8. McCaskill (D-MO)
  9. Murray (D-WA)
  10. Nelson (D-FL)
  11. Shaheen (D-NH)
  12. Warner (D-VA)
  13. Wyden (D-OR)

I would also note that those Democrats who voted for cloture who are up for reelection in 2016, Patty Murray, Michael Bennet, and Ron Wyden are dead men walking anyway, because they have given their opponents such a heavy club..

My Senator, Ben Cardin, would probably have voted for cloture if they needed another vote, but I’ll leave him for a later discussion.

As to my agreeing with Jeff Sessions on this (God Help Me), when he says, “President Obama, and allies in Congress, have won this fast-track vote. But, in exchange, they may find that they are losing something far greater: the trust of the American people, I have to honestly agree. (His full statement after break)

This is a bad deal, and a bad thing, and much like in 1994, the Republicans are going to spot weld this on the Democratic Party, which will probably lead to their keeping the Senate.

*Before his Senate career, he was a US attorney, and then he was nominated by Reagan to the Federal Judgeship, but he was rejected by the Senate because of credible allegations of bigotry.

Sessions Comments On Senate Vote To Advance Fast-Track Authority For Executive – News Releases


Senator Jeff Sessions

“President Obama, and allies in Congress, have won this fast-track vote. But, in exchange, they may find that they are losing something far greater: the trust of the American people.”  


WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) issued the following statement today after the Senate voted to advance six-year fast-track executive authority:

“Americans increasingly believe that their country isn’t serving its own citizens. They need look no further than a bipartisan vote of Congress that will transfer congressional power to the Executive Branch and, in turn, to a transnational Pacific Union and the global interests who will help write its rules.

The same routine plays out over and again. We are told a massive bill must be passed, all the business lobbyists and leaders tell us how grand it will be, but that it must be rushed through before the voters spoil the plan. As with Obamacare and the Gang of Eight, the politicians meet with the consultants to craft the talking points—not based on what the bill actually does, but what they hope people will believe it does. And when ordinary Americans who never asked for the plan, who don’t want the plan, who want no part of the plan, resist, they are scorned, mocked, and heaped with condescension.

Washington broke arms and heads to get that 60th vote—not one to spare—to impose on the American people a plan which imperils their jobs, wages, and control over their own affairs. It is remarkable that so much energy has been expended on advancing the things Americans oppose, and preventing the things Americans want.

For instance: thousands of loyal Americans have been laid off and forced to train the foreign workers brought in to fill their jobs—at Disney, at Southern California Edison, across the country. Does Washington rush to their defense? No, the politicians and the lobbyists rush to move legislation that would double or triple the very program responsible for replacing them.

This ‘econometarian’ ideology holds that if a company can increase its bottom line—whether by insourcing foreign workers or outsourcing production—then it’s always a win, never a downside.

President Obama, and allies in Congress, have won this fast-track vote. But, in exchange, they may find that they are losing something far greater: the trust of the American people. Americans have a fundamental, decent, and just demand: that the people they elect defend their interests. And every issue to come before us in the coming months will have to pass this test: does it strengthen, or weaken, the position of the everyday, loyal American citizen?”

Chuck Todd, go F%$# Yourself

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I understand that gun control is an incendiary issue, so it makes sense to have a discussion, and even to have a discussion about guns that involves talking with felons, but there is no excuse for Meet the Press decide to have all the felons in its video to be black:

While the country — and South Carolina, in particular — is once again debating racism in America, NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday offered a video of men in prison expressing regret for their own gun violence. All of the men in the video are black.

The segment was part of Sunday’s show, which focused on the recent killing of nine black people at a bible study group in Charleston, South Carolina. The alleged shooter, Dylann Roof, is accused of making racist statements during the rampage and in an online manifesto that describes black people as “stupid and violent.” He has been seen in photos online holding a Confederate flag and wearing the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and white-ruled Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

“The circumstances you are about to see are very different from the racist violence in Charleston,” Meet the Press host Chuck Todd said in the introduction to the video.

“The last thing we wanted was to cloud the discussion of the topic,” Todd wrote on the NBC website after receiving a wave of negative feedback on social media about the video.

“The original decision to air this segment was made before Wednesday’s massacre. However, the staff and I had an internal debate about whether to show it at all this week. When we discussed putting it off, that conversation centered around race and perception – not the conversation we wanted the segment to invoke,” he said.

In a panel discussion responding to the blowback, Todd said, “It wasn’t meant to be a black and white issue. And I understand maybe it’s one of those moments when people are only seeing through black and white.”

 This has to be the lamest non-apology apology that I have ever heard in my life.

Translated to English, Todd is saying, “Who cares if the only felons we show are black?  You are too hung up on race.”

I’ve always thought that Todd was a lame and shallow product of the insular and narcissistic White House press corps(e), but this is a whole new level of wankitude.

Another Clown Exits the Republican Presidential Primary Car

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I am referring, of course, to John Ellis “Jeb” Bush, who has finally made his run for the Presidency official.

While many in the Republican Party see him as a potential respite from the clown car, the fact that his staff is suggesting that they should go all “Pickett’s Charge” on his opponents, which I guess means slowly marching ¾ of a mile against an entrenched opponent backed up by artillery that is both copious and highly competent:

………

Mr. Diaz, who seared John Kerry in 2004 and Mitt Romney in 2007 with charges of flip-flopping on issues, and other Bush aides are determined to develop new lines of attack against Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, the two Republicans who represent the greatest threats to Mr. Bush’s nomination, according to his advisers and allies.

The Bush campaign sees Mr. Rubio as vulnerable on his Senate record, which is short on legislative success and includes shifts on immigration, and on his history of managing his finances. And they regard Mr. Walker, too, as susceptible to attack on issues on which he has changed his positions, according to the advisers. By hiring Mr. Diaz, Mr. Bush wanted to send a clear signal that “the culture of the Bush operation will now be a Pickett’s Charge engagement campaign with his main opponents,” according to one Bush ally.

(emphasis mine)

So, yeah, they are clown car too, though what is likely the biggest clown in the 2016 Republican Presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, looks to be announcing his candidacy tomorrow.

I cannot believe that we will have a more absurd candidate than “The Donald”, but if one turns up, I will be there, staring at the spectacle with a stunned look on my face that will resemble that of a cow that has just stepped on its own udder.

(H/T Paul Krugman for that quote.)

Blue Dog Democrat Comes Home

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Former Democratic Congressman Joe Baca has become a Republican:

Joe Baca, a longtime Democrat who represented San Bernardino County citizens for more than 30 years as a trustee for the San Bernardino Community College District, an assemblyman, state senator and congressman, is now a registered Republican.

Baca, 68, of Fontana, changed his party affiliation on June 2, said Melissa Eickman, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Elections Office.

Prior to making the switch, Baca had been a registered Democrat in San Bernardino County since January 1976, Eickman said.

Baca said Friday he and his wife thought long and hard about the decision, which he said reflects his “core Christian values” and his pro-growth, pro-business philosophy.

As a legislator, Baca said he often voted conservatively on many issues. He said he secured funding for transportation and infrastructure projects in his district, and fought to delist from the endangered species list the kangaroo rat, the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly and the Santa Ana sucker fish, all of which he said were hindering commercial development and growth in his district.

“I’ve always been very conservative in nature,” Baca said, adding that in the House of Representatives he was often accused of being a Republican and asked why he didn’t change his political party.

Baca is a former member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a congressional caucus of moderate and conservative Democrats whose members are referred to as “Blue Dogs.”

Baca said he was a Blue Dog during his entire seven-term stint as a ongressman.

Good.

The ‘Phants can keep him.

H/T, Down with Tyranny.

F%$# Them if They Can’t Take a Joke

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Sepp Blatter is still running FIFA, and he just fired FIFA’s public relations weasel for telling a very funny joke about the current scandal:

Fifa communications director Walter De Gregorio has been sacked after sealing his fate with a joke about the governing body on Swiss TV.

Gregorio told Swiss chat show Schawinski: “The Fifa president, secretary general and communications director are all travelling in a car. Who’s driving? The police.”

Fifa announced in a statement that De Gregorio had “relinquished his office”.

But the BBC understands he was asked to leave by president Sepp Blatter.

Sorry, but this is funny, and Sepp Blatter is such a delicate flower.

It’s amazing how sensitive corrupt bureaucrats are.

The Only Donald Worse than Trump

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Larry Wilmore, who I had neglected to put on my list of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off, (Since corrected) was rather put out by Donald Rumsfeld’s rewriting history on Iraq and claiming that he never suggested that he was bringing a stable democracy to Iraq.

Rumsfeld, 2003:

From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it’s never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been.

Rumsfeld, 2015:

Over a decade after presiding over the invasion of Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the country may not have been ready for a democracy.

In an interview with British newspaper the Times, the former Secretary of Defense reflected on America’s role in shaping the Middle East, and suggested expecting Iraq to seamlessly transition to a democracy was “unrealistic.”

“I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories,” Rumsfeld told the Times. “The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words.”

Larry Wilmore rightly said the Rumsfeld is, “The only Donald worse than Trump.”

And I am saying that Larry Willmore is a part of the sacred and hermetic order of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off.

The Political Acumen of Little Orphan Annie

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Hillary Clinton gives a major speech against Republican’s racist voter suppression plans, and Richard Hanson, who is generally considered one of the more knowledgeable academics on this phenomenon has a sad because moderate Republicans who support voting rights will be scared off by this.

My first response is, “Name 3 moderate Republicans on the national scene who have come out against voter suppression.”

My second response is that voting rights have already been politicized by the Republican Party.

Voter fraud is rarer than getting struck by lightning in the United States, and the Republicans have passed so called “Ballot Integrity” laws without regard to the facts, and in a totally partisan manner.

Dr. Hanson looks at the world, and sees it as he wants it to be, not how it is:

Hillary Clinton spoke at Texas Southern University last week, where she put forward some good and provocative ideas for improving our elections. She wants Congress to fix the part of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court gutted in 2013. She wants to expand early voting periods nationally to at least 20 days. And most provocatively, she advocates automatic universal voter registration across the country, including a program to automatically register high school students to vote before their 18th birthdays.

But the partisan way she’s framed the issue—by blaming Republicans for all the voting problems—makes it less likely these changes will actually be implemented should she be elected president. Instead, she’s offering red meat to her supporters while alienating the allies she would need to get any reforms enacted.

………

However, talking about election reform so provocatively may also doom the chances for meaningful election reform. Clinton used her speech not only to advance these ideas but to bash Republican opponents, including Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, both of whom passed restrictive voting laws in the last few years. “What part of democracy are they afraid of?” she asked.

Republicans are not being sincere about their concern for voter fraud.

They use it as a fig leaf to keep black, brown, and young people voting.

Republicans do not want to fix the voting system. They want to manipulate it to partisan advantage.

Has John Thune Been Dining on Lead Paint?

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It is amazing just how much stupid can be jammed into just 140 characters:

Six million people risk losing their health care subsidies, yet @POTUS continues to deny that Obamacare is bad for the American people.

— Senator John Thune (@SenJohnThune) June 8, 2015

I am not a big fan of Obamacare, but to claim that Obamacare might be responsible for ending the subsidies that it created is a level of stupid that buggers the mind.

Oh, Snap!

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In arguments before the Supreme Court, Antonin “Fat Tony” Scalia presented the case of convicted murderer Henry Lee McCollum as a perfect justification for the death penalty.

It turns out that McCollum was innocent:

A little over two decades ago, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was dismissive of then-Justice Harry Blackmun’s concerns about the death penalty. In fact, Scalia had a case study in mind that demonstrated exactly why the system of capital punishment has value.

 As regular readers may recall, Scalia specifically pointed to a convicted killer named Henry Lee McCollum as an obvious example of a man who deserved to be put to death. “For example, the case of an 11-year-old girl raped by four men and then killed by stuffing her panties down her throat,” Scalia wrote in a 1994 ruling. [Callins v. Collins, which involved Texas, not North Carolina] “How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection compared with that!”

 For Scalia, McCollum was the perfect example – a murderer whose actions were so heinous that his crimes stood as a testament to the merit of capital punishment itself.

 Yesterday, McCollum was pardoned. Scalia’s perfect example of a man who deserved to be killed by the state was innocent. North Carolina’s News & Observer reported:

Gov. Pat McCrory on Thursday pardoned two half-brothers who were exonerated of murder after spending three decades in prison.

The governor took nine months to make the decision, saying he thoroughly reviewed the pardons sought by Henry McCollum and Leon Brown. Both men are intellectually disabled.
If this story sounds at all familiar, it was last fall when a judge ordered the men released. The confessions appeared to have been coerced 30 years ago and new DNA evidence implicated another man whose possible involvement had been overlooked at the time.

As recently as 2010, the North Carolina Republican Party used a McCollum photo on campaign fliers to attack a Democratic candidate as “soft on crime.”

 McCollum hadn’t done anything wrong.

(emphasis mine)

Scalia’s habit of assuming facts not in evidence is really starting to wear thin.

This is something that judges, at least judges outside of Texas, should never do.

Governor Ratf%$# Outdoes Himself

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Our Governor, Larry Hogan, wants to kill the Purple Line light rail line that will run east and west north of the District.

He thinks that it is too expensive, but he wants to drop $10 billion on a 500km/h magnet levitation line:

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan campaigned on cutting costs. Since taking office, however, he’s expressed interest in throwing big money at numerous transportation programs—just not the transit lines that actually work and which businesses and residents want. His latest big spending idea: A $10 billion maglev between DC and Baltimore.

Hogan is in Japan right now on a trade mission, and according to WAMU’s Martin di Caro, has agreed to work with Japan and seek federal funds for a study of what it’d take to build a maglev line here at home.

The Federal Railroad Administration has $27.8 million available for a maglev study, but Maryland is the only state in the nation that’s interested in seeking the money. Japan is offering $5 billion in loans to help make the line happen, but that money would still have to be paid back.

The maglev line could run over 300 miles per hour and, di Caro reports, possibly go from DC to Baltimore in 15 minutes (though time estimates for transportation facilities often are rosier, before the gritty details come in).

However, to run that fast, the tracks would have to be very straight. There’s no place to put very straight tracks right through the mostly-suburban area in between; instead, maglev supporters expect the line to be mostly in a tunnel. According to contributor and maglev supporter Peter Dovak, Japan’s maglev (which is different from its well-known “Shinkansen” high-speed trains) will run in a tunnel for 85% of its length.

That makes it very expensive.

This guy is a complete tool.

People Who Should Have Been Drowned at Birth

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The Los Angeles Times editorial board, who are calling for the prosecution of Edward Snowden:
They praise the fact that his leaks created some reforms in our state security apparatus, and then they say that he should go to jail, because, (I guess) confidential press sources and whistle blowers are bad people who should be tortured.

It is an incontrovertible fact that if Snowden returns, and if he is tried, he will be placed in solitary confinement for years, even if just while awaiting trial.  One need only look at the case of (innocent) Wen Ho Lee, who was held in solitary for over a year in an attempt to extort a confession.

It has been the universal conclusion of all civil society organization that have chosen to study this issue have declared extended solitary to be torture.

The LA Times which covered the Lee matter extensively knows this, but even knowing this, they are calling for Snowden to be prosecuted for under an archaic law, and tortured in the process, even if he is eventually found not guilty:

Yet there are serious arguments against a pardon. One is that, in a society of laws, someone who engages in civil disobedience in a higher cause should be prepared to accept the consequences. A stronger objection, in our view, is that Snowden didn’t limit his disclosures to information about violations of Americans’ privacy. He divulged other sensitive information about traditional foreign intelligence activities, including a document showing that the NSA had intercepted the communications of then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during a Group of 20 summit in London in 2009. A government contractor who discloses details of U.S. spying on another country is not most Americans’ idea of a whistleblower.

A pardon for Snowden now would be premature. But if he were to return to this country to face the charges against him, the fact that he revealed the existence of a program that has now been repudiated by all three branches of government would constitute a strong argument for leniency. Snowden should come home and make that case.

Otis Chandler would be spinning in his brave.

Quote of the Day

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I’ve seen lemmings with shallower learning curves. Because of the last war for which Fred Hiatt shook his moneymaker, the influence that the United States can bring to bear on centuries-old internal conflicts in Iraq is slightly less than that wielded at the moment by the Carolina League. Our aid makes us one friend and makes for that friend a hundred enemies.

—Charlie Pierce on WaPo editorial page editor Fred Hiatt’s repeated calls for boots on the ground.

Why does Fred Hiatt still have a job?

I don’t buy into the Post‘s self image of greatness, but they deserve better than to have the 2nd worst* opinion page in the nation.

*It is self evident that the worst OP/ED page in the nation belongs to The Wall Street Journal.

Bloated Billionaire Bellyaching Bitch Bleats Bogus Beef*

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It appears that yet another hedge fund billionaire is upset that politicians don’t fawn over him like the people he employs:

“I don’t need anybody crapping all over what I do for a living,” Cooperman told CNNMoney’s Cristina Alesci Monday.

Cooperman is the founder of hedge fund Omega Advisors, which has about $9 billion in assets.

He thinks Clinton is a hypocrite for painting a nasty picture of hedge fund managers and then asking them for money and trying to befriend them.

“[She] hangs out with all these people in Martha’s Vineyard and in the Hamptons and then the very first thing she has to say is to criticize hedge funds,” Cooperman, said.

Cooperman, 72, said he isn’t looking for praise, but declares he’s the living embodiment of the American Dream.

“I have nothing to apologize for. I’ve made a lot of money. I’m giving it all back to society,” he says, emphasizing his large donations to places such as Hunter College in New York, Columbia University and Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey.

You are not the embodiment of the American dream, motherf%$#er, you are a parasite who got particularly lucky.

You poor delicate little flower.

How about you take your billions of dollars and a nice warm warm cup of shut the f%$# up.

*Yes, the fact that I could use this amusingly alliterative title was one of the reasons that I Posted this.†
†Yes, I did spend more time on the hed than I did on the article. I’m kind of lame that way.

Run Away from These People

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On a web site dedicated to people who do consumer electrical work, someone posits that Tesla’s new home battery packs will force homes to go voltage DC current. This is absolutely and completely wrong, because fails to get even a single fact right, as would be clear to anyone who knew the most basic physics:

CE pros might be sitting in the proverbial catbird seat when it comes to the future of wiring homes.

 With the solar revolution seemingly in full swing all across the nation, consumers are enamored with “going off the grid.” And many homeowners are counting on home batteries to be the next phase of their off-the-grid plans. Companies likes Tesla and RoseWater Energy Group are leading the way in the development of these new power storage devices for homes.

 But if the battery power trend takes off, it must lead to a new paradigm in which homes will be powered more with low voltage wiring than line voltage electrical, according to a blog by CE veteran Paul Self on Buildz.com.

Indeed, will the pure science limitations of AC/DC conversion eventually force a gigantic sea change from builders, electricians and the National Electric Code itself in the way homes are constructed and wired? The answer is “Yes” that might have to happen, says Self.

Here is Self’s logic: [Or more accurately, here are his completely incoherent thoughts]

“An underlying issue with solar power and the Tesla battery is the fact that they run on DC while the power infrastructure in buildings is AC. Stepping power up and down from AC to DC and vice-versa wastes energy, about 20 percent is lost in the conversion. Some converters do a better job than others, but resolving this 20 percent loss is very important when working on a battery stored energy supply.

Ummmm. No. Inverters operate at efficiencies of about 95% at their design points, and if you are connected to the grid, as Tesla envisions, you will only use the inverter .

Many devices in a home could run on DC. Almost all non-incandescent light bulbs can run on DC and require a transformer to step the 110 VAC down to a 12 – 5 VDC signal for the bulb.

No. The a fluorescent light ballast operates as follows: It uses a transformer to jump UP the voltage (not down), then rectifies it to DC, and then uses an inverter (square wave, because unlike motors, that is fine for gas tubes) to hop the frequency from 60hz in the wall, to 1+ Khz to eliminate flicker.  (For incandescents, it’s not an issue, because even as the AC current goes through them they hot.  CFLs are generating lights from individual sparks).

Other devices like computers, TVs, cable boxes, and cell phone chargers all operate similarly.

No again. They cannot use line current, they need to condition the power, and it is easier to do this with AC current.

Appliances like electric ovens, electric water heaters, and air conditioners will require 110VAC, but most of the house is on DC.
Let me paint you a picture.

They reacquire 110VAC because they are high power, and at low voltage, the amperage, and wire size go through the roof. (Details follow)

  • Sun generates 12VDC via the solar panel

Yes, a panel will generate relative low voltage DC, but if arranged in series, you can generate 100s of volts, and have smaller and cheaper wiring with less transmission losses.

  • Solar panels push power to a battery

Again, note arranging in series. In their cars, for example, Tesla battery packs operate at DC voltages between 250V and 425V.

  • The battery or the solar panel push 12VDC to a DC to AC converter (20% loss of power).

From an info page for an inverter for solar vendor

Again. Inverters are around 95% efficient these days.

  • AC is distributed throughout the house

  • Many devices then convert the power BACK to DC (20% loss of power)

Again, the efficiencies of rectifiers is about 95%, not 80%, and the devices that have to convert it back to DC would have to do so anyway, because power from the batteries is not as uniform as their electronics requires.

  • This all seems pretty silly to lose this much power. I am sure it is less than a cumulative loss of 40 percent power, but when your trying to free yourself of the power company, this really adds up.

Also note that he knows no math.  Two devices operating at a 20% loss (80% efficiency) would give us losses of 80% x 80% = 64%; 100% -64% = 36%.

This guy cannot even do basic multiplication.

You know what also “really ads up”?

Copper.

Let’s take a 40 W light bulb.

Power is Voltage x Current = V x I, so for a 120V source, the current is ⅓ amp. For his 12 Volt DC system, the current would be 3⅓ amps, 10 times more current.

You can also express power in terms of current and resistance, P=I2R, so losses in transmission would go through the roof.

Well, they would, except if you look up the charts, it turns out for a typical (I chose 50 feet) length, the DC wiring has much lower resistance, because it is much thicker.

How much thicker? Well the table for wiring for 12VDC gives us 6 Ga wire, and the worksheet for 120VAC gives us 14 Ga wire, and the wire gauge size table gives us conductor diameters of 0.17″ and 0.064″ respectively.

That is a lot of copper you end up paying for, and for many applications.

He also ignores the fact that DC Motors (the kind with brushes) are less efficient, run hotter, and wear out more quickly.

The motor on your furnace, and dryer, and washing machine, are typically induction motors, that operate directly off of  your house current, and with a DC house you would need inverters for the motors.  (So called “Brushless DC motors” contain their own power circuitry linked to an induction motor).

If you see this guy, do not let him near your electronics.  He will kill himself, or kill you, or set your house on fire.

Note that I am NOT an electrical engineer, though I got the basics in school, but this is so ignorant, and so wrong, that I felt compelled to Fisk this bit of  bovine scatology.

H/T /.

      In the Interest of Fairness, I Must Praise Uber

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      Rather unsurprisingly, the thing that they did right was dissing New York Times columnist, and perpetual middle school doyenne Maureen Dowd.

      It seems that our lady of shallow cattiness was in Hollywood, and called for an Uber ride, and she saw the cars fleeing her on the app:

      ………

      Even in the land of movie stars, you could feel like a movie star when your Uber chauffeur rolled up. Standing in front of the Sunset Tower Hotel, I tapped my Uber app and saw five little cars swarming around my location. But, suddenly, they scattered in the opposite direction. I stood in the driveway, perplexed. Finally, a car pulled up, and the driver waved me in.

      “Do you know why no one wanted to pick you up?” he asked. “Because you have a low rating.”

      (Uber drivers see your rating once they accept the request and then can cancel.)

      I was shocked. Blinded by the wondrous handiness of Uber, I had missed the fact that while I got to rate them, they got to rate me back.

      Revealing that I had only 4.2 stars, my driver continued to school me. “You don’t always come out right away,” he said, sternly, adding that I would have to work hard to be more appealing if I wanted to get drivers to pick me up.

      To the degree that we can tell, the firms fares are opaque and confusing, Uber does not charge by the hour, it charges on the basis of distance + some sort of weird “special sauce”.

      The drivers are paid on the basis of what is charged, so by leaving drivers to cool their heels while she does her nails, or finishes packing, or whatever, she is requiring the drivers to wait unpaid for her.

      Given that with a glance at the app, you can see where the nearest drivers are, it would be a simple thing to wait until just before she was ready to leave, or to post for a driver at some point in the near future so that you can be assured that she is ready to ride when they arrive.

      Ms. Dowd comes to a completely different conclusion:

      Except then I learned that sitting in an Uber car was pretty much like sitting in my office: How much have you developed your audience? How much have you been shared? How much have you engaged your reader? Are you trending?

      I was trending on Uber, all right, and not in a good way. I had avoided Lyft not only because of that pink mustache but because I had heard that you were encouraged to sit up front with drivers and give them fist-bumps. It seemed more like The Flintstones’ car than Cinderella’s pumpkin coach.

      But, now, instead of quietly sitting in the back seat of my Uber and checking my phone or reading the paper, I had to start working to charm.

      “Your husband likes oysters?” I enthused to one woman driving me in San Francisco.

      “What are the kids up to this summer?” I chirped to another.

      It was starting to have the vibe of friending, liking and sharing on Facebook, and that always gives me acid flashbacks to the ’80s when I was forced to go to my brother’s house and watch slides of his wedding. Finally, my nephew explained that I didn’t need to grovel or gush. I simply needed to say, as I got out of the car, “Five for five.” If I promised to give them five stars — even in the Wild West of Uber X, where the drivers often seem so unfamiliar with the local terrain it’s as though they’ve arrived from Mars — they would give me five stars.

      So her solution is to go and subject the drivers that she is paying to be her hostage to the wondrous personality that is Maureen Dowd.

      You are treating Uber drivers like sh%$, and no amount of small talk will fix that.

      Just don’t leave the driver waiting.

      Also, tips, particularly in cash, where Uber won’t take a cut, can’t hurt.

      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.