Category: Wanker

Guck Foogle

No Comments

After requiring that blogs with adult content to label themselves as such for over a decade (forever in internet time) Google is now using this labeling to kick the blogs out:

Google is banning public explicit photos and videos from its blogging service Blogger, and giving affected users just one month to comply.

The new rules require any blog with “sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video” to take them down by 23 March, or the blog will be made private by Google. A private blog can only be seen by the owner or admins of the blog, and people who the owner has shared the blog with.

Google promises that the majority of users of the service, which Google acquired from Twitter co-founder Evan Williams’ Pyra Labs in 2003, won’t see any change from the new rules. But many users are concerned that the new rules represent a huge about-turn from Google’s previously stated support of explicit material on its platform. The company’s previous policy said: “We do allow adult content on Blogger, including images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity … All blogs marked as ‘adult’ will be placed behind an ‘adult content’ warning interstitial.” Its only exceptions were to ban illegal explicit content, explicit images shared without the subject’s consent (commonly known as “revenge porn”) and making money on adult content.

Zoe Margolis, author of the Girl with a One Track Mind books and sex blog, joined Blogger in 2004. She says that “either Google believes in freedom of expression, or it doesn’t. Restricting blogs which contain explicit content to ‘private only’ effectively kills them off. This is like offering a library where all the books in it are invisible to the readers unless an author is standing there and personally hands each reader a copy of their book.”

Let me note that my ox is not gored on this.

While I may be f%$#ing profane, I tend to %$# out that sh%$ when I use those f%$#ing words.

Google needs to get its f%$#ing head out of its f%$#ing ass.

They should also admit that they have dropped the word, “Don’t,” from its favorite logo.

Their new logo is, “Be evil.”

A Well Deserved Burn in Less than 140 Characters

No Comments

As you are no doubt heard, Rudy Giuliani said that Barack Obama did not love the United States.

Representative Steve Cohen completely pwn35 (Owns) him in a single tweet:

Rudy Giuliani questioned how much,or even if, President Obama loves America.Maybe he thinks he loves it 3/5 as much as Giuliani & his pals
— Steve Cohen (@RepCohen) February 20, 2015

Of course, Rudy Giuliani’s entire political career has been based on demonizing “Blah people”, so this is a particularly justified critique.

USAF to English Translation: If You Cannot Dazzle Them With Brilliance, Baffle Them With Bullsh%$

No Comments

Now that the US Air Force’s ongoing (As in: the wild blue yonder crowd has been trying to kill the plane since it was fielded) attempt to retire the A-10 close air support (CAS) aircraft is running into opposition, they are looking to, “reshape the discussion away from a binary A-10 versus F-35 fight.”

This translates to, “F%$# you. We want our new toy, and we don’t like doing CAS anyway”.

The Air Force even went so far as to release dishonestly cherry picked data to support getting rid of the A-10.

And now they want to redefine the debate:

Few procurement issues—with the exception of the unsuccessful fight to continue F-22 production—spark the kind of impassioned pleas among U.S. Air Force officers as the unsuccessful struggle to retire the A-10 and make way for the Lockheed Martin F-35.

………

Not so in the case of the A-10. The Air Force is for the second year pushing to quickly retire the fleet in part because it is a single-mission aircraft, designed to provide close air support (CAS). Amid the budget crunch, the Air Force is shedding single-mission fleets.

Yet, the focus of its mission is exactly what has congealed support for the aptly named Warthog. The A-10 has been a visible savior for ground troops for decades and especially so in recent fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is being replaced by the multi-mission, single-engine, stealthy F-35. A-10 boosters fear the CAS mission will be lost if it is only one among a host of missions to be handled by the F-35, which is also replacing F-16s in the Air Force. Some say the Air Force has lost it way on the CAS mission. “That’s a ridiculous statement,” says Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, bristling at the notion during a roundtable with reporters Feb. 13 at the annual Air Force Association symposium in Orlando. “Guess how many CAS sorties we’ve flown? It’s about 20,000 a year. When is a little bit of credit given for that? . . . Let’s not change the facts to match whatever story we’re trying to tell.” Welsh also notes that CAS is “all the Marine Corps is buying [the F-35B] for, to replace the Harrier.”

………

Now the Air Force is on the offense, reaching out to officers in its sister services to outline the future of CAS in an attempt to reshape the discussion away from a binary A-10 versus F-35 fight.

Air Combat Command chief Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle is hosting a week-long, multiservice summit on CAS early in March. Among the topics to be discussed are conducting CAS in a “contested” environment, a term referring to airspace that is defended, though not with high-end integrated defenses seen in the anti-access area-denied (A2AD) situations. An example would be if the Islamic State posed a strong threat to allied jets in Iraq and Syria—although the A-10 has an armored cockpit, it would be susceptible to such a threat and CAS sorties would be forced to fly higher and to use different tactics.

The summit will address CAS as it stands today, as well in the future when the F-35 enters service, Carlisle told reporters at the annual symposium. Among the alternatives, already in use for years, are precision-guided munitions deployed from a host of aircraft—B-1s, B-52s, F-16s, F-16s, and others—to provide support for troops in the midst of a fight. The F-35, however, will bring stealth to the table. “We just have to get to the point where the services all understand what the future looks like in this arena because there is a thread of conversation going on that really has become a little ridiculous,” Welsh, an A-10 pilot himself, said. The F-35 “will be a good CAS platform. It will take us a while to get to the point we want it to be, like it has with every other airplane [with which] we’ve fought, including the A-10,” he argues.

………

Welsh says that the CAS discussion is intended to reset the mindset about the mission to allow for new operational concepts and technologies, including the next-generation of CAS weapons. “How do you just change our mindset? Let’s have gun pods with bullets this long and put 50,000 of them in the pod instead of everybody trying to get 1,000 or 600 out of the airplane during a CAS sortie,” Welsh said. “There are just different ways to look at this problem that technology can help us solve. . . . None of this is new. But we’ve just got to energize it.”

I want to have the bullsh%$ concession at the CAS discussion, because the demand for bullsh%$ when the USAF presents their case will be at levels approaching that of a Republican Presidential debate.

Headline of the Day

No Comments

The rolling disaster of John Boehner’s speakership

Here is the last ‘graph and money quote:

So on the whole, Boehner is managing to combine legislative incompetence with PR incompetence. He’s already sure to be known as one of the weakest speakers in American history, for at least some reasons that are out of his control. But he might also be known as one of the least effective. Perhaps no one could have done a better job in his place, but since no other Republican seems to want the job, we may never know.

This is the Washington Post, so it’s the very definition of a mainstream assertion.

I am not sure why he has remained speaker, he has failed the most basic job of that role, the ability to count votes, repeatedly.

I gotta figure that Boehner has convinced everyone on the Republican side of the aisle that speaker is the worst job in the world.

Considering his record, it’s clear that he has certainly shown that it is an awful job.

He may have screwed up in reverse.

What a F%$#ing Coward

No Comments

The Universe was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, hallowed be his noodly appendage, Ramen

Scott Walker traveled to London, the graveyard of gravitas for Republican Presidential candidates like Mitt Rmoney and Chris “Jabba the Governor” Christie, and when he is asked about evolution, he punts on it.

I mean that literally. He said, “I’m going to punt on that one as well.”

 I’m not surprised that Walker is a chickensh%$. It’s been obvious to me since he started to make national news, but I think that the press, and voters on both the myth and reality sides of the evolution will notice as well:

Likely 2016 presidential candidate Scott Walker refused to say Wednesday whether he believes in the theory of evolution, dodging that question and several others about foreign policy after delivering a speech about global trade in London.

“I’m going to punt on that one as well,” said Wisconsin’s Republican governor when asked about evolution at the end of an hour-long appearance at the prestigious Chatham House think tank. “That’s a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or the other. So I’m going to leave that up to you.”

Real profile in courage there, Scotty boy.

In Addition to Everything Else, Benjaman Netanyahu Could Not find his Ass with both Hands

No Comments

Netanyahu decided on some political meddling on the judging panel for the Israel prize for Literature, and in response, the judging panel resigned en mass:

The Education Ministry fears the Israel Prize in literature may not be granted this year, after the entire judges panel resigned this week to protest efforts by the Prime Minister’s Office to intervene in its composition.

Now literary lions are likely to shun the panel, making it hard to establish a replacement, ministry sources warned.

In an unusual move, the Prime Minister’s Office vetoed two people originally nominated as judges for the prize – professors Avner Holtzman and Ariel Hirschfeld. After Haaretz reported this on Sunday, all five of the people ultimately appointed to the panel resigned, to protest “the clear politicization of the prize and the vote of no confidence in the professionals’ professional judgment,” as one of the five, Prof. Nissim Calderon, put it.

Moreover, Prof. Yigal Schwartz, who was one of the candidates for the prize in the field of literary research, announced Tuesday night that he is withdrawing his candidacy in protest.

“This is an unparalleled scandal,” said Schwartz, a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and editor-in-chief of the Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir publishing house. “I’m withdrawing my candidacy and urge other candidates to do the same. This isn’t a mistake; it’s a continuation of Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s deliberate policy of undermining Israel’s elites to gain votes from other groups. This is sabotage that it’s impossible not to oppose. Even this institution, the Israel Prize, which had remained untainted, they have sabotaged.”

“No such thing has ever happened before,” Calderon agreed.

Tuesday, it emerged that Netanyahu’s office had also vetoed a nominee to the judges’ panel for the Israel Prize in film – producer Chayim Sharir. Another member of that panel, producer Ram Loevy, has also resigned in protest.

Over the past few weeks, Education Ministry staffers had repeatedly warned Netanyahu’s aides against intervening in the panel’s composition, but the bureau dismissed these warnings, they said.

Now, the ministry is awaiting “instructions from the prime minister’s bureau” on how to fill the judges’ panel, they said.

Aside from Calderon, the other judges who resigned were Prof. Nurith Gertz, Prof. Ziva Ben-Porat, Prof. Ephraim Hazan and Dr. Uri Hollander. Author Gail Hareven had resigned earlier, after learning independently of the veto imposed on Hirschfeld and Holtzman.

In their resignation letter, the five scholars said the intervention by Netanyahu’s bureau constituted “politicization of Israel’s most important prize, which is supposed to be granted solely on the basis of professional and artistic considerations,” and raised fear that extraneous considerations would taint the award.

At first, the bureau declined to say why it suddenly decided to veto Hirschfeld and Holtzman after the two had already begun work. Tuesday, it said in a statement that it “decided to review the panel’s composition” after discovering that Hirschfeld supported refusal to do army service. The statement did not say why Holtzman was nixed.

Note that Bibi is minister of education in addition to being PM.

He took the portfolio when the previous minister, and his party, left the coalition government.

Netanyahu is claiming that the panel contains, “Too many anti-Zionist extremists.”

I call bullsh%$ on this.

If Netanyahu really had issues, they could have been presented 2-3 months ago, at the start of the process.

This is not a firm stand on his principles (as if he had any), this is yet another case of him fomenting conflict for political gain:   He is going for the Nixonian option of campaigning against academics to create the illusion that he cares for the ordinary Israeli.

Or, to quote Spiro Agnew, he is playing the, “Effete intellectual snob,” card.

Anonymous Source Says that Netanyahu Speech is Just to F%$# with Obama

2 Comments

You know an evil plan is starting to go pear shaped when the rats start leaving the sinking ship insiders start talking to the press.

Case in point, an Israeli source is telling the press that Boehner and Netanyahu actively conspired just f%$# with Obama and the Iran nuclear negotiations:

Retribution is some form of punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong, whether the wrong is perceived or real. For the past four years, Speaker of the House John A. Boehner (R-OH) has likely perceived that President Barack Obama has inflicted all manner of wrongs on him due to the ease the President is able to thwart Republican efforts to rule America according to their masters the Koch brothers. Obviously Boehner is frustrated that he has been outplayed and out-maneuvered at every turn by the President, and lacking the wherewithal to take on the President himself, he marshaled support and conspired with a foreigner, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to “defy and humiliate President Obama.”

Many political observers, the White House, and Democrats were rightly incensed when Boehner invited the foreigner to address a joint session of Congress without going through normal State Department protocols, and their supposition that Boehner deliberately went around the normal diplomatic channels as an act of defiance against the Executive Branch seemed more than credible. Now it is official; Boehner’s illegal invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress represents a coordinated attack on President Barack Obama by the radical Republican right-wing and all its bad actors. This official reiteration of what many Democrats suspected all along is according to the Israeli consul general.

As reported [Paid subscription] in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yaron Sideman said that Speaker of the House John Boehner, congressional Republicans, the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Zionist Organization of America, and radical Christian leaders’ only purpose “in inviting and supporting Netanyahu’s speech is to defy and humiliate President Barack Obama by addressing the Iranian issue.” In most people’s minds, Boehner and Netanyahu’s conspiracy was more than just to defy and humiliate the President on Iran; it was an attempt to subvert America’s negotiations with Iran over its nuclear ambitions to start another Middle East war at the behest of Israel. In fact, according to Boehner, his illegal conspiracy was specifically to allow Netanyahu “send a clear message to the White House” that in matters regarding America’s Middle East policy, Republicans are committed to Israel.

This has turned into a disaster for both Boehner and Netanyahu.

It’s probably worse for Bibi, because it’s just a few weeks until parliamentary elections.

The two big issues for any party leader in Israel are security and managing their relationship with the United States, and Netanyahu has completely botched the latter.

I disagree with the author as to Boehner’s motivations: I don’t think that this was driven by a desire for vengeance by he speaker.  I think that was driven by the precarious nature of his speakership.

He is the least competent House Speaker in recent memory, having demonstrated that he can neither count nor control his caucus, and the only way that he can hold onto his position is by appealing to the basest instincts of the House Republicans.

It ain’t a lust for vengeance, it’s, it’s incompetence, fear, and a complete lack of any deeply held beliefs.

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

How Bibi Pulled Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

No Comments

So, John Boehner invites Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress without consulting Obama, and what’s more, he does it a few weeks before Israeli elections.

I’m sure that he expected to jack Democrats up over this, and force them to choose between rebuking what is a clear violation of protocol or demonstrating support for the Jewish state.

It turns out that the choice for Democrats was not difficult, and they chose to make the House Speaker look like a complete prat:

Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein rushed to meetings on Capitol Hill on Wednesday trying to calm a furor created by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress next month and quell a Democratic revolt that has dozens threatening a boycott.

 It didn’t work.

 If anything, Democrats finished the day more frustrated. According to a source in the room, one Jewish Democratic member of Congress even accused Dermer of being insincere when he claimed not to have anticipated the partisan uproar he’d ignite when he skirted protocol and went around the White House and scheduled the speech only with House Speaker John Boehner.

 White House press secretary Josh Earnest, meanwhile, dangled the possibility that the White House would have Vice President Joe Biden skip the speech in what the West Wing acknowledges would be a serious snub.

Actually, the possibility is now a certainty.

Biden has officially announced that he will not attend the speech, and at least a dozen other Dems who appear to be busy washing their hair at that time as well.

It’s gotten so bad that Netanyahu is trying to walk back his diss of Obama:

A senior Israeli official suggested on Friday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been misled into thinking an invitation to address the U.S. Congress on Iran next month was fully supported by the Democrats.

Netanyahu was invited by the Republican speaker of the house, John Boehner, to address Congress on March 3, an invitation Boehner originally described as bipartisan.

The move angered the White House, which is upset about the event coming two weeks before Israeli elections and that Netanyahu, who has a testy relationship with Democratic President Barack Obama, is expected to be critical of U.S. policy on Iran.

“It appears that the speaker of Congress made a move, in which we trusted, but which it ultimately became clear was a one sided move and not a move by both sides,” Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi told 102 FM Tel Aviv Radio on Friday.

The interviewer asked if that meant Netanyahu had been “misled” into believing Boehner’s invitation was bipartisan, a characterization Hanegbi did not contest.

Asked whether the prime minister should cancel or postpone the speech, Hanegbi said: “What would the outcome be then? The outcome would be that we forsake an arena in which there is a going to be a very dramatic decision (on Iran).”

To be fair, Bibi is not just dissing the President, he is also trying to sabotage the Iranian nuclear negotiations, and he is also trying to make political hay of this just before elections for the Knesset.

It now looks like both Boehner and Netanyahu will both look like intemperate fools, and if anything this controversy will hurt the chances of the Likud in the upcoming elections.

Jabba the Governor Has Been a Very Busy Boy

No Comments

Federal law enforcement officials have launched a criminal investigation of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and members of his administration, pursuing allegations the governor and his staff broke the law when they quashed grand jury indictments against Christie supporters, International Business Times has learned.

Two criminal investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday interviewed the man who leveled those charges, Bennett Barlyn. He was fired from the Hunterdon County prosecutor’s office in August 2010, and subsequently brought a whistleblower lawsuit against the Christie administration, claiming he had been punished for objecting to the dismissal of the indictments of the governor’s supporters for a range of corrupt activities.

Barlyn told IBTimes that he met with the federal investigators at his Pennsylvania home for more than an hour on Wednesday afternoon. He said they specifically focused on why Christie’s then-attorney general, Paula Dow, had moved to expunge the indictments. The investigators are examining what state and federal laws may have been broken in the process. Barlyn said the investigators appeared to be at an exploratory stage, with no certainty that criminal charges would ultimately be filed. The meeting followed a June letter to Barlyn from New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney, Paul Fishman, instructing Barlyn to be in touch with his office’s investigative team about the case.

This is not particularly surprising.

When Christie was the US Attorney for New Jersey, he routinely leaked grand jury proceedings to target political opponents.

Ethics is not his strong suit.

We knew this when he was booking excessively expensive hotels when he was US attorney, and these days, he is getting the luxury treatment paid for by campaign contributors and state contractors:

As Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey waited to depart on a trade mission to Israel in 2012, his entourage was delayed by a late arrival: Mr. Christie’s father, who had accidentally headed to the wrong airport.

A commercial flight might have left without him, but in this case, there was no rush. The private plane, on which Mr. Christie had his own bedroom, had been lent by Sheldon G. Adelson, the billionaire casino owner and supporter of Israel. At the time, he was opposing legislation then before the governor to legalize online gambling in New Jersey.

Mr. Christie loaded the plane with his wife, three of his four children, his mother-in-law, his father and stepmother, four staff members, his former law partner and a state trooper.

King Abdullah of Jordan picked up the tab for a Christie family weekend at the end of the trip. The governor and two staff members who accompanied him came back to New Jersey bubbling that they had celebrated with Bono, the lead singer of U2, at three parties, two at the king’s residence, the other a Champagne reception in the desert. But a small knot of aides fretted: The rooms in luxurious Kempinski hotels had cost about $30,000; what would happen if that became public?

………

As United States attorney for New Jersey, Mr. Christie developed a reputation for flouting the rules on travel. A Justice Department report after he left office found that he was the prosecutor who most often exceeded the charges allowed for hotel stays in different cities, without properly searching for a cheaper alternative, or justifying any exemption from the rules. He stayed at a Four Seasons in Washington and a new boutique hotel in Boston, for example, at more than double the cost allowed for those cities.

It’s therefore no surprise that while all of this is going, he is also aggressively ignoring New Jersey open records laws:

On his first day as governor of New Jersey, Republican Chris Christie promised “a new era of accountability and transparency.” But five years later, local reporters and watchdog groups accuse Christie’s administration of making unprecedented efforts to keep public records a secret.

Stonewalled by the Christie administration, media outlets have been forced to sue to obtain even routinely disclosed information, such as payroll data. Rather than release documents connected to the George Washington Bridge scandal, pay-to-play allegations, possible ethics violations, and the out-of-state jaunts Christie has made while weighing a run for president, Christie’s office and several state agencies have waged costly court battles. As the 2016 presidential primary race draws closer, and Christie considers jumping in, his administration is fighting 23 different open-records requests in court.

“The track record is abysmal,” says Jennifer Borg, general counsel for the North Jersey Media Group. Her organization, which publishes the Record, has sued the state for public documents a half-dozen times since Christie took office. When a judge determines that the state withheld records illegally—which happens frequently—her group wins legal fees. As of September 2014, Christie’s administration had paid $441,000 to North Jersey Media Group and other media outlets for records. And that doesn’t count the cost of government lawyers’ time.

The fight has become so expensive for the state because when newspapers go to court for these records, they usually win. But winning doesn’t automatically produce the sought-after records. “We can and do beat them in court. But as long as they’re appealing—I don’t want to call it a pyrrhic victory, but we’re not going to get the records,” says Walter Luers, an attorney who helped a transparency project run by the state Libertarian Party sue for public access for Christie’s travel expenses. “Appeals take two to three years. We’re already into the presidential elections. By the time we get these records, Christie could have a new address.”

 And then we have his not-corrupt-but-harebrained vaccine statements, which appear to have a pretty long track record, and so it appears to be an actual statement of beliefs, not a gaffe:

New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s administration does not participate in a national program embraced by several of his potential rivals for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination that advises new parents to vaccinate their young children against measles and other diseases.

Governors and senior health officials from 28 states send signed cards to new mothers congratulating them on giving birth and providing them with a detachable checklist of immunisations that their infants should obtain before they are two years old. Christie is not among them, according to the New Jersey department of health.

“One of your most important roles as a parent is to make sure your baby is immunised,” says the message in a recent version of the card. “Keeping your little one healthy means starting immunisations by two months of age.” The advice and checklist are reviewed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The card lists recommended vaccinations, including the combined shot against measles, mumps and rubella that some campaigners continue to link to cases of autism in children, despite this claim’s having being repeatedly and comprehensively debunked by medical researchers.

………

New Jersey participated in the program under former Republican governors such as Christie Whitman and Donald DiFrancesco. Yet Donna Leusner, the communications director for Christie’s department of health, said the state had not taken part under the administrations of Christie or his predecessor Jon Corzine, a Democrat.

Jon Corzine, who should be sharing a cell with Chris Christie, though the former should be in jail for fraud in his business practices, and the latter should be in jail for official corruption.

We haven’t even begun the Republican Presidential debates, and it looks like the clown show has already begun.

Can We Please Give them back to Mexico?

No Comments

In Texas, boy was suspended for bringing the “one ring to rule them all” to school to make a classmate vanish:

Tolkien lore led a Texas boy to suspension after he brought his “one ring” to school.

Kermit Elementary School officials called it a threat when the 9-year-old boy, Aiden Steward, in a playful act of make-believe, told a classmate he could make him disappear with a ring forged in fictional Middle Earth’s Mount Doom.

“It sounded unbelievable,” the boy’s father, Jason Steward, told the Daily News. He insists his son “didn’t mean anything by it.”

The Stewards had just watched “The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies” days earlier, inspiring Aiden’s imagination and leading him to proclaim that he had in his possession the one ring to rule them all.

“Kids act out movies that they see. When I watched Superman as a kid, I went outside and tried to fly,” Steward said.

Aiden claimed Thursday he could put a ring on his friend’s head and make him invisible like Bilbo Baggins, who stole Gollum’s “precious” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy series “The Lord of the Rings.”

“I assure you my son lacks the magical powers necessary to threaten his friend’s existence,” the boy’s father later wrote in an email. “If he did, I’m sure he’d bring him right back.”

It gets better.

This kid has been suspended for referring to another student as “Black”, and for the 2nd suspension, it was for bringing a science book to school:

Two of the disciplinary actions this year were in-school suspensions for referring to a classmate as black and bringing his favorite book to school: “The Big Book of Knowledge.”

“He loves that book. They were studying the solar system and he took it to school. He thought his teacher would be impressed,” Steward said.

But the teacher learned the popular children’s encyclopedia had a section on pregnancy, depicting a pregnant woman in an illustration, he explained.

They suspended a kid from school for bringing a science book.

Can we please give the whole state back to Mexico?

One Can only Hope that California will foll of the Example of ……… Mississippi

No Comments

H/t Neo at Stellar Parthenon for the Pic

In California, a state with one of the highest rates of unvaccinated children in the nation, multiple schools have been sending non-inoculated children home in the wake of the Measles outbreak:

A California high school barred dozens of non-vaccinated students from school on Wednesday over concern that a classmate may have contracted measles in a rare outbreak of the highly contagious disease that began at a Disneyland resort last month.

 The order, which affects 66 students at Palm Desert High School near the resort community of Palm Springs, marks at least the second time a California school has prohibited non-vaccinated students from classes since the outbreak began.

 Earlier this month, a school in the Los Angeles suburb of Huntington Beach ordered non-vaccinated children to stay home until this Thursday. And in nearby Arizona, officials in Maricopa County asked non-vaccinated students who were potentially exposed to the disease to stay home.

 “We are simply responding, being very careful and making sure we’re taking the best care of students and staff,” said Mary Perry, a spokeswoman for the Desert Sands Unified School District, which overseas Palm Desert High. She said the non-vaccinated students have been ordered to stay home until Feb. 9.

All the while, Mississippi has the best child vaccination rate in the nation:

It’s tough being a child in Mississippi. The state has the nation’s worst rates for infant mortality and low-weight newborns. Its childhood poverty rate ranks as the nation’s second worst. Overall, the residents of Mississippi are the unhealthiest in the country.

 But there is one notable exception to these dour health stats: Mississippi has the highest vaccination rate for school-age children. It’s not even close. Last year, 99.7 percent of the state’s kindergartners were fully vaccinated. Just 140 students in Mississippi entered school without all of their required shots.

 Compare that with California, epicenter of the ongoing Disney measles outbreak, where last year almost 8 percent of kindergartners — totaling 41,000 children — failed to get the required immunizations against mumps, measles and rubella. In Oregon, that number was 6.8 percent. In Pennsylvania, it was nearly 15 percent, or 22,700 kindergartners. And each of these states has suffered measles outbreaks in the last two years.

 “It’s nice not having measles in Mississippi,” said Mary Currier, Mississippi state health officer.

 The secret of Mississippi’s success stems from a strong public health program and — most importantly — a strict mandatory vaccination law that lacks the loopholes found in almost every other state.

I am not quite sure just why Mississippi has the best policy in the nation, no exemption except for real medical issues, things like compromised immune systems.

The antivaxxers endanger all the rest of us on the basis of myths promulgated by a doctor who was paid off by lawyers who wanted a ready pool of rubes plaintiffs.

The final word of the day has to come from Nigerian writer and lawyer Elnathan John:

Our thoughts are also with the measles-ravaged country America. I hope we are screening them before they come to Africa.
— Elnathan John (@elnathan) February 1, 2015

Alan Grayson Was Right! They Want You To ‘Die Quickly’*

No Comments

Michael R. “Andromeda” Strain. a resident “scholar” for the American Enterprise Institute, penned an OP/ED, and the moral pygmy that is Washington Post editorial editor Fred Hiatt, published a work titled, “End Obamacare, and people could die. That’s okay.”

He wants the death penalty for poverty.

What’s more, he tacitly admits that Obamacare saves lives.

 Seriously, the Washington Post has the 2nd worst opinion pages in the nation.

*This is not my bon mot, it is courtesy of Crooks and Liars.

FCC to Marriott: Go Cheney Yourself

No Comments

The FCC just made it clear to hotels and convention centers, you block WiFi, and there will be sanctions:

After Marriott blocked Wi-Fi hotspots in parts of its hotels, the FCC sent a stern warning: don’t even think about trying that again.

“The Communications Act prohibits anyone from … interfering with authorized radio communications, including Wi-Fi,” said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a statement. “Marriott’s request seeking the FCC’s blessing to block guests’ use of non-Marriott networks is contrary to this basic principle.”

Wheeler pointed out that the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau fined Marriott (MAR) $600,000 for blocking Wi-Fi, and said the agency will fine other hotels if they try anything similar.

After being fined, Marriott petitioned the FCC to change the Communications Act so that it could block access to Wi-Fi devices in its conference spaces. The hotel chain said it needed to block Wi-Fi hotspot access in conference centers because attendees could launch cyberattacks on the company’s network or disrupt Wi-Fi service for the conference or guests.

Many customers were outraged by the petition, claiming that Marriott’s request for a conference center Wi-Fi ban was a veiled attempt to ban access in hotel rooms and lobbies as well.

Of course it was.

Overpriced phone and internet has been a major profit center for hotels, and they are eager to find ways to get that money back.

The law is pretty simple though:  Civilians operating radio jammers is illegal.

In fact, it’s illegal for most law enforcement as well.

F%$# the Cable Companies

No Comments
The FCC is proposing that broadband be defined as 25 mbps download and 3 mbps upload, and the cable companies are having kittens:

The cable lobby is opposed to a Federal Communications Commission plan to define “broadband” as speeds of at least 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps up.

Customers do just fine with lower speeds, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) wrote in an FCC filing Thursday (thanks to the Washington Post’s Brian Fung for pointing it out). 25Mbps/3Mbps isn’t necessary to meet the legal definition of “high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology,” the NCTA said.

“Notably, no party provides any justification for adopting an upload speed benchmark of 3Mbps,” NCTA Counsel Matthew Brill wrote. “And the two parties that specifically urge the Commission to adopt a download speed benchmark of 25 Mbps—Netflix and Public Knowledge—both offer examples of applications that go well beyond the ‘current’ and ‘regular’ uses that ordinarily inform the Commission’s inquiry under Section 706″ of the Telecommunications Act.

Hypothetical use cases showing the need for 25Mbps/3Mbps “dramatically exaggerate the amount of bandwidth needed by the typical broadband user,” the NCTA said.

“Netflix, for instance, bases its call for a 25Mbps download threshold on what it believes consumers need for streaming 4K and ultra-HD video content—despite the fact that only a tiny fraction of consumers use their broadband connections in this manner, and notwithstanding the consensus among others in the industry that 25Mbps is significantly more bandwidth than is needed for 4K streaming,” the NCTA said. “Meanwhile, Public Knowledge asserts in conclusory fashion that an ‘average’ US household constantly streams at least three high-definition movies simultaneously while also running various ‘online backup services and other applications’—without providing any evidence indicating that such usage is at all ‘average.'”

The commission defines broadband as 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up but hasn’t changed the definition since 2010. The FCC is required under Section 706 to determine whether broadband is being deployed to Americans in a reasonable and timely way, and the group must take action to accelerate deployment if the answer is negative. Raising the definition’s speeds provides more impetus to take actions that promote competition and remove barriers to investment, such as a potential move to preempt state laws that restrict municipal broadband projects.

Here is the money quote:

Though a majority of Americans can purchase broadband of at least 100Mbps, Wheeler has focused on the lack of competition at higher Internet speeds. While 75 percent of American homes have at least two options for wired broadband of 4Mbps/1Mbps, only 25 percent have a choice of at least two providers at the 25Mbps/3Mbps threshold:

4/1 download is the telco’s old DSL, which hasn’t been upgraded since the early 200s.

What’s more, it never will be upgraded, as the phone companies have decided that there is not sufficient profit there.

By upgrading the definition of broadband to something that actually describes the way that broadband is used today, it makes it far more difficult for states to prevent municipal broadband.

Seriously, just f%$# the cable companies.

Come to think of it, “F%$# the Cable Companies,” would be a good platform for a political party.

The Push-Back Against the Lindsey Graham Presidential Needs to Get Less Awful

1 Comment

Let’s be clear here:  Senator Lindsey Graham is a blithering idiot, whose only claim to policy expertise is his playing ventriloquist dummy to petulant child Senator John Sidney McCain III’s harebrained “Forever War” foreign policy initiatives.

This is a guy who has literally been wrong on absolutely every foreign policy initiative that he has ever been a part of.

He makes Richard Bruce Cheney look level headed and competent.

These are all legitimate reasons for him to be criticized, and ridiculed, for his recent statements about running for President.

There is also the issue of his personal affect.

Specifically, for lack of a better term, he minces almost as much as Michelle Bachmann’s husband Marcus.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that)

So, over the past few days, we have been bombarded with tasteless cartoons and Photoshop jobs mocking the (never Married, not that there’s anything wrong with that) distinguished gentleman from South Carolina.  (I’m talking to you, Howie Klein)

Lindsey Graham sucks, both as a potential candidate, and even more so as a potential President.

It simply does not matter whatever else he does, or does not suck.

Republican Family Values in Action

No Comments

The Teabagger is the one on the Left

Teabagger heroine, and terrorist wannabe, Holly Fisher has been exposed exposed cheating on her military veteran husband:

In July, liberals were delighted by the moronic antics of a woman who quickly became known as “Holly Hobby Lobby.” Shortly following the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court ruling that allowed companies to inject their religion into female employees’ healthcare, Holly Fisher decided to poorly “troll” liberals a bit.

Our heroine bravely stood in front of a Hobby Lobby store wearing a “PRO-LIFE” t-shirt and holding a Chick-Fil-A cup. She captioned her photo “HOW TO MAKE A LIBERAL’S HEAD EXPLODE,” and set it loose on Twitter.

………

This photo gained Holly the admiration of the conservative world. Quickly, she became a hero to all who have trouble figuring out how to work a microwave. [I love that turn of phrase MGS] Unfortunately, her new photo — the one conservatives adored — bore a striking resemblance to “the White Widow,” a jihadist suicide bomber who blew herself and four other people up in 2004.

………

“The conservative woman behind several viral photos cheated on her combat veteran husband repeatedly & then lied about it, Gotnews.com has learned,” [The world’s worst undeserving claimant of the term “Journalist”, and member of the class Myxogastria, Charles C.] Johnson wrote.

According to Johnson, multiple sources within the Tea Party confirmed that Fisher had a prolonged affair with Joel Frewa, a now-former video editor for the Tea Party News Network. Johnson says Frewa resigned after word of the affair began to leak out.

“The affair took place at a “Restoring the Dream” event, a Faith & Freedom conference, and on Election night 2014,” Johnson said.

The irony here is delicious, but it is far from surprising.

H/t Blade at the Stellar Parthenon.

Seriously, the USAF Has Degenerated into a Shill for Defense Contractors

2 Comments
Case in point, Major General James Post, USAF, just said that praising the A-10 close support aircraft to Congress is treason:

A top U.S. Air Force general warned officers that praising the A-10 attack plane to lawmakers amounts to “treason,” according to a news report.

Maj. Gen. James Post, vice commander of Air Combat Command, was quoted as saying, “If anyone accuses me of saying this, I will deny it … anyone who is passing information to Congress about A-10 capabilities is committing treason,” in a report published Thursday on The Arizona Daily Independent.

This is all about making sure that Lockheed Martin gets it’s vig, and that retiring generals get their cut.

They just deployed the A-10 to fight ISIS because they don’t have anything else than can do the job, and an Air Force senior leader is telling his subordinates to conceal information.

Making the USAF an independent branch of the military was a seriously stupid thing to do.

Obama Wants More Dead Aaron Swartzes

No Comments

At the State of the Union address, Obama will announce plans to increase penalties and increase the penalties and broaden the scope of the already over-broad Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFPA):

The Obama administration, currently engaged in a war of words with North Korea over the recent hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment, is calling on Congress to increase prison sentences for hackers and to expand the definition of hacking.

During next week’s State of the Union address, the president is set to publicly urge increased prison time and other changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act—the statute that was used to prosecute Internet activist Aaron Swartz before he committed suicide in 2013.

The Obama administration, currently engaged in a war of words with North Korea over the recent hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment, is calling on Congress to increase prison sentences for hackers and to expand the definition of hacking.

During next week’s State of the Union address, the president is set to publicly urge increased prison time and other changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act—the statute that was used to prosecute Internet activist Aaron Swartz before he committed suicide in 2013.

………

Among other things, penalties under Obama’s plan would increase from a maximum five-year penalty to 10 years for pure hacking acts, like circumventing a technological barrier. What’s more, the law would expand the definition of what “exceeds authorized access” means. A hacker would exceed authorization when accessing information “for a purpose that the accesser knows is not authorized by the computer owner.”

So, under Obama’s proposal, if you browse Facebook on a work computer, that’s 10 years in the slam.

Note that Aaron Swartz was driven to suicide by an abusive prosecution using the current (far less broad and far less punitive) version of the CFPA.

The CFPA is already a petri dish for overzealous prosecution, and Obama wants to make it worse.

Seriously, has there been a single case where Obama has not chosen the most authoritarian option?

I Guess I Need to Invoke Bishop Shelby Spong Again

No Comments

I have quoted the controversial theologian’s question, “Has religion in general and Christianity in particular degenerated to the level that it has become little more than a veil under which anger can be legitimatized?” repeatedly.

Well, a poster child for using religion as a justification for hate and bigotry, one Jennifer LeClaire, is now wondering why Christians are turning away from the faith, but studiously ignores just how offensive she and her coreligionists can be.

Well over at Patheos, Hemant Mehta is having none of that:

Sometimes, Christian journalists miss the elephant in the room with their stories. Like this one in Charisma Magazine asking “Why Are So Many Christians Turning Into Atheists?”

 ………
Ah, yes… the End Times are near and we’re all just fulfilling biblical prophecy. Makes perfect sense.

 Here’s another thought.

 People are taking a look at certain brands of Christianity and realizing they want nothing whatsoever to do with it. And when they back away from one form of Christianity, they realize there’s no reason to stick with the other forms of it, either.

 For example, just look at a sampling of what LeClaire herself has written in the past couple of years:

Like I said, that’s just a sampling.

 There’s this anti-gay, anti-reality, anti-science, conspiratorial mindset that plagues conservative Christianity. Even progressive Christians are ashamed to share a label with that group, pushing some of them to shed the “Christian” label despite believing in Christ’s divinity.

 ………
 Really, we all owe Jennifer LeClaire a thank you for answering her own question.

 Why are so many Christians turning into atheists?

 Because of people like her.

To quote Abraham Lincoln, “I care not for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”

Ms. LeClaire, perhaps if you stopped proclaiming your Christianity, and started demonstrating your Christianity through good acts, people would stop being horrified what comes from your poison pen.