Tag: Wanker

The Washington Post Just Got a Bit Better

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OP/ED columnist Richard Cohen has left the Washington Post.

It appears that whatever happened, it was sudden.

My guess is that they discovered something bad, and had no choice.

Bad for him, good for the public discourse of the United States:

Richard Cohen will no longer write columns for the Washington Post, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt tells staffers in an unusually short email sent via editorial board executive assistant Nana Efua Mumford. Seriously, this is the whole thing:

After 43 years of writing a column for The Washington Post, Richard Cohen has decided to move on to other challenges. Whether he is writing about politics, movies, history or his glory days in the U.S. Army, Richard is a master of the form. Readers of The Post and the many other publications that carry his column will miss his insight, humor and occasional outrage. As Richard takes on new ventures, we wish him all the best and remain hopeful that he will come back to write for the oped page from time to time.
Fred

This was clearly sudden.

Just to remind you, some of Cohen’s greatest hits:

  • Suggesting that jewelry store owners are justified in not letting black people in his store.
  • Sexually harassed a staffer.
  • Suggested that interracial marriage made observing such couples ill.
  • Lauded Trayvon Martin’s murderer.
  • Suggested that the Steubenville rape was not “real” rape. 

Even by the egregious standards of the Washington Post OP/ED pages under Fred Hiatt, he was a toxic and stupid man.

WATB Central

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For those of you who don’t know, WATB stands for Whiny Ass Titty-Baby, and in this case it is referring to the delicate snow flakes in Silicon Valley who will brook no criticism of the dumbest and most ill informed business plans:

The first rule of Silicon Valley venture capital is never insult a start-up. Founders are always killing it, disrupting the world or just plain 🙌🙌🙌.

 If a start-up is fizzling, shuttering or caught scamming? The socially acceptable response is total silence.

Everyone knows that. Except Jason Palmer.

 The start-up in question was AltSchool, a Mark Zuckerberg-backed project to turn school into a start-up experience. It had just announced it was pivoting out of existence after raising $174 million.

$174M lessons here. We passed on @Altschool multiple times, mainly because disrupting school was a terrible strategy, but also b/c founders didn’t understand #edtech is all about partnering w/existing districts, schools and educators (not just “product”) https://t.co/nPCjV83Zi4

— Jason Palmer (@educationpalmer) June 29, 2019

That single jab at a failed company sent the investor elite into conniptions.

……

Mr. Palmer believed he would save his investors money by not investing in a start-up that would have lost it. He was right. But in the cacophony of venture capitalist boosting, that became about emotion, and even soul.

……

By not knowing the rules, he showed exactly what those rules are, and just how the Silicon Valley positivity machine runs. For venture capitalists, Twitter is a place to sell. It’s a place to talk up portfolio companies. It’s a place to perform the industry pastime of “thought leading.”

What this sh%$ storm sounds like is what happens when someone running a Ponzi scheme gets challenged.

The idea that the white dudes, and they are very white, and very dude as a rule, must be handled with kid gloves because they are saving (or disrupting) the universe, when most of them are just working on brave new ways to break the law, or suck the marrow out of the public commons, is complete crap.

I long for the day when an aggressive anti-fraud investigation targets the Silicon Valley.

Stay Classy, Republicans

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North Carolina Republicans lacked the necessary votes to override Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of their budget, so they held a surprise vote while Democrats were at a 911 commemoration ceremony.

What a revolting group of pissants:

While most North Carolinians were remembering the lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001, the Republican leaders in the General Assembly took advantage of a half-empty House and voted to override the governor’s budget veto Wednesday morning.

Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said in a news conference that House Republicans called for a “surprise vote” while he and House members were honoring first responders on the anniversary of 9/11.

“Republicans called a deceptive surprise override of my budget veto,” Cooper said. “Unfortunately, it’s the people of North Carolina who lose.”

House Minority Leader Darren Jackson (D) said he told his caucus members that they did not need to be in attendance and that state Rep. David Lewis (R), chairman of the Rules, Calendar and Operations Committee, gave Jackson his word that there would be no votes, according to the News & Observer.

………

Republicans were unable to override the veto for about two months as long as Democrats were present in the chamber, Cooper said. The General Assembly needs a three-fifths majority to override a veto, which Republicans lack.

The House is allowed to conduct business as long as at least 61 of 120 members are present. There were 64 members present Wednesday morning.

This is beyond contempt.

Karma, Neh?

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California authorities issued an arrest warrant for blundering conservative operative Jacob Wohl, who is now due to be arraigned on a felony charge next month, court records show.

As The Daily Beast first reported earlier on Wednesday, Wohl and a former business partner were both wanted on a warrant signed in Riverside County on Aug. 19.

The warrant was recalled after Wohl—best known for a spree of bizarre, half-baked political schemes—appeared in court on Wednesday. He was released on his own recognizance until his Oct. 24 arraignment on a charge of unlawful sale of securities, prosecutors said.

The allegation that Wohl and Johnson unlawfully sold securities centers on one of Wohl’s financial companies, Montgomery Assets. A warrant application filed by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office notes that the three-year statute of limitations on the case was set to expire at the end of August 2019, meaning prosecutors had to file by the end of last month if they wanted to pursue charges.

“In 2016 Jacob Wohl and Matthew Johnson represented themselves as members of a company called Montgomery Assets,” the warrant application reads. “On July 27, 2016 through August 27, 2016 Jacob Wohl and Matthew Johnson offered for sale unqualified securities in violation of California Corporations Code 25110 which has a three year statute of limitations and must be tolled by the issuance of an arrest warrant.”

………

In November 2018, Wohl teamed up with Washington lobbyist Jack Burkman for a spectacularly failed attempt to concoct a bogus sexual assault smear against then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The pair also attempted to fake a similar allegation against Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, which flopped after The Daily Beast obtained audio of Wohl and Burkman trying to pressure a potential “victim” into making a false allegation against Buttigieg.

In February, Wohl faked a death threat against himself, then reported the bogus crime to Minneapolis police. This summer, a phone number associated with Wohl was used to threaten a former GOP campaign worker, although Wohl denied involvement in the incident.

Churchill on Steroids

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I’ve always felt that Winston Churchill was overrated.

His life was a string of failures, and he inexplicably failed up. (His mismanagement of the Norway campaign led to his becoming Prime Minister, & Gallipoli, for example)

Boris Johnson sees himself to be a politician in the tradition of Churchill, and I’m inclined to agree.

  • Fired for making sh%$ up at the Times of London.
  • A long history of racist statements.
  • Fired as shadow arts minister for lying about an affair.
  • The zip-line incident.

And now we have a a senior party member quitting as MP and business minister.

By Boris standards, this will normally not amount to a blip, only said MP and business minister is one Jo Johnson, Boris’ little brother:

Jo Johnson, the younger brother of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is resigning as an MP and minister, saying he is “torn between family loyalty and the national interest”.

The business minister and Tory MP for Orpington, south-east London, cited an “unresolvable tension” in his role.

BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said it was “unbelievable timing”.

Mr Johnson voted Remain in the 2016 EU membership referendum, while his brother co-led the Leave campaign.

Mr Johnson’s resignation follows the removal of the Tory whip from 21 MPs this week for supporting moves to prevent a no-deal Brexit.

………

Jo Johnson’s resignation also comes as the government announced it would give MPs another chance to vote for an early election on Monday.

………

A Downing Street spokesman said: “The PM, as both a politician and brother, understands this will not have been an easy matter for Jo. The constituents of Orpington could not have asked for a better representative.”

Former cabinet minister David Gauke, one of the MPs who lost the Conservative whip, tweeted: “Lots of MPs have had to wrestle with conflicting loyalties in recent weeks. None more so than Jo. This is a big loss to Parliament, the government and the Conservative Party.”

Labour’s shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said: “Boris Johnson poses such a threat that even his own brother doesn’t trust him.”

This is truly Churchillian, and not in a good way.

“Unleash,” Huh?

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Obviously, fixing healthcare is not easy, at least not if you are devoted to looting the market.

For the rest of us, Single payer, or better yet a government owned National Health Service, works.

For the Free Market Mousketeers™ though, they have to come up with a “solution” that will, “Unleash entrepreneurs.”

Yes, the problem with looters infesting our healthcare system is more looters.

Change a few words, and you have the National Rifle Association to everything, “More Guns.”

If you add the word, “Disruption,” you would win bullsh%$ bingo.

Making a List and Checking it Twice

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I am not referring to Santa Claus, I am referring to Jeff Bezos and Amazon who have created an enemies list.

How charming:

When Amazon scrubbed plans to build a second headquarters in New York City earlier this year, the reason appeared rooted in a debate about unions, tax subsidies and housing costs.

Then there was the burn book.

In a private dossier kept at the time, whose existence has gone previously unreported, Amazon executives cataloged in minute detail the insults they saw coming from New York politicians and labor leaders, according to a copy viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

By late January, Amazon executives had been pummeled at two public hearings. The burn book, which was kept in a Microsoft Word document called “NY Negative Statements,” had separate sections for a half-dozen politicians and officials who had gone from thorns in the company’s side to formidable opponents of a deal that now looked to be in jeopardy.

The document recorded how opponents mocked the helipad Amazon planned to build, pushed the Twitter hashtag #scamazon, and brought up the company’s work for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a sore spot among some Amazon employees. It was an eight-page, bullet-pointed, Calibri font testimony to Amazon’s sensitivities.

………

After this article was published online, an Amazon spokeswoman said the document was compiled as preparation for city council hearings.

No, it wasn’t a prep for council meeting, it was the airing of grievances by and for a billionaire and a company that believe that they should be lauded as visionary prophets, and not the abusive and extortative sh%$-heels that they actually are.

Bret “Bedbug” Stephens

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The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens. https://t.co/k4qo6QzIBW

— davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 26, 2019

Unfair to Bedbugs

The latest Twitter sh%$-storm comes courtesy of Brett Stevens.

There was a news report of (not kidding here) of a bedbug infestation at the New York Times offices, and GWU professorr David Karpf made what he himself admits was a throw away tweet that this was a metaphor for Times columnist Brett Stevens.

Until this all blew up, it had 9 likes and no retweets.

Then Stevens sent him an email, which was cc:ed to the university Provost, subject line, “From Bret Stephens, New York Times”, demanding that he show up and say it to his face.

This was clearly an attempt to use his position at the NYT to intimidate and threaten what he thought (incorrectly) was an non-tenured professor.

As a so-called journalist who has made the condemnation of safe spaces and hyper-sensitivity, (spoiler, it’s really about him justifying bigotry and lying) the hypocrisy is stunning:

David Karpf is a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University in D.C. On Monday night, he became a subject of great media interest himself after reading reports about the bedbug infestation at the New York Times and writing in a tweet that the bedbugs were perhaps a metaphor for the continuing presence, at the paper, of conservative columnist Bret Stephens. (Stephens has developed a reputation in certain circles for writing provocative but intellectually flimsy columns about climate change and the alleged threat of political intolerance on college campuses; Karpf, in addition to being an academic, is a former member of the Sierra Club board of directors.)

While the tweet might have seemed like an innocuous remark, Stephens apparently didn’t think so: He emailed Karpf—in a message with the subject line “From Bret Stephens, New York Times” on which George Washington provost Forrest Maltzman was CC’d—to accuse him of setting a “new standard” for online incivility and to challenge Karpf to “come to my home,” “meet my wife and kids,” and “call me a ‘bedbug’ to my face.” (Stephens wasn’t tagged in Karpf’s original post, so it wouldn’t have shown up in his Twitter notifications; he wrote in his email to Karpf that someone had “pointed out” the tweet to him.)

Karpf described Stephens’ email in a tweet without specifically naming the columnist, then, about an hour later, uploaded a screenshot of it that included Stephens’ name. The posts together created a frenzy of disbelief and derision that led Stephens to delete his own Twitter account, then, during a Tuesday morning appearance on MSNBC, to deny that he’d been trying to get Karpf in trouble with the university (Karpf, in any case, is tenured) and to claim that the “bedbug” remark resembled the kind of dehumanizing language that “totalitarian regimes” use toward ethnic outgroups. On Tuesday morning, I spoke to Karpf about the experience of being a viral figure and the state of bedbug discourse in the digital age. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Slate interviewed Karpf, who added some necessary perspective:

The two things that stand out are that it’s entertaining, and distracting. It does keep occurring to me the reason why this is actually pretty fun for me is that I’m a white guy with tenure, which means that—if he had sent this to me before I had a tenured job, that would have been a powerful and terrifying message, and I’m 100 percent sure that that’s what he expected it to do. When he writes a message where it says, “From Bret Stephens, New York Times,” from his New York Times account, it means that he’s trying to indicate that he’s above me in the social hierarchy. But I’m a professor of strategic political communication, and I have tenure, and I really didn’t do anything wrong. That makes the entire thing bizarre and fun. If I was pre-tenure or I was a woman and had to deal with harassment on Twitter all the time, then I imagine this would be a lot less fun.

………

If he hadn’t CC’d the provost, then I would think, “Wow, he took this far more personally than he should have.” But also that would mean that an op-ed writer from the New York Times was reaching out to me and wanted to discuss civility in the digital age. And I would have tried to reply to it and said, “First of all, is this a bit? I’m surprised you found this and were upset by it. But second of all, here’s the thinking behind it. Here’s why I thought it was a decent joke. And also here’s why I think it’s entirely appropriate because, being a public intellectual as you are, people get to make silly jokes about you on the internet like I did.”

But the fact that he was CCing the provost, and I assume that he doesn’t know I have tenure when he writes that message, means that he’s not actually asking, “Where is the civility?” He’s certainly not inviting me to come to his house and have this little conversation. What he’s trying to impress upon me is that he’s more powerful than me and I should feel fearful and ashamed.

Conservatives are such delicate snowflakes.

Also, Brett Stevens should be fired for abusing his position as a Times columnist.

This is about as flagrant abuse of his position, and journalistic ethics as I’ve seen since ……… checks notes ……… The entire career of Judith Miller.

Journalism Should Not Be All about Journalists

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The fact that conservative activist are looking into journalists’ history with an eye toward criticizing them is not the end of the world.

In fact, this sort of activity qualifies as journalism, but the mainstream press has never been sanguine about scrutiny being applied to them, just witness their meltdown over Bernie Sanders fairly anodyne condemnation of the pollution of media by finance and mergers:

Many journalists are very indignant that Trump allies are reportedly combing through social media to identify embarrassing things they may have posted long ago that can be used to discredit them. In this case, I’m afraid, the outrage seems to be missing the point.

What exactly is happening here? According to the New York Times, a “loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House” has “compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements” by lots of people who work at major media outlets. They plan to release these tidbits at politically advantageous times in order to discredit the employees and the media outlets themselves. This is all portrayed in formal and quite ominous language. There is a name for this that political reporters are all familiar with: opposition research.

But there is another name for this that is also accurate: media reporting.

Considering the fact that stupid tweets by New York Times (and Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, etc) journalists and columnists is something that crosses my twitter feed on a daily basis, the freakout over conservatives doing the same is silly.

Personally, I’m thinking that this is more an attempt to distract the press than it is to shame them:  Every time that some public figure criticizes the press, it seems that all other journalistic activity is subsumed in an orgy of defensiveness.

Quote of the Day

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For all this, every time Trump seems headed for the dustbin of history, he bounces up again off the messageless paralysis of his Democratic opposition. When Trump vanquished a giant primary field of Republicans in 2016, Democrats cheered. When they lost the general election, they acted like it was an unrelated surprise event, an outrage to decency itself. They remain ineffective as anything but a punchline to the Trump story.

—Matt Taibbi

The Democratic Party is the Washington Generals of  ……… well ……… Washington.

Bye Felicia

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John Hickenlooper, corporate tool and friend of the fracking industgry, is suspending his Presidential campaign.

Still, he thinks that there is a place for him in politics, standing athwart progress saying, “Better things aren’t possible.”

John Hickenlooper, the former Colorado governor whose low-key brand of moderate politics made him popular in his home state but limited his appeal in a Democratic primary filled with urgent progressive energy, announced on Thursday that he was ending his presidential campaign.

Mr. Hickenlooper has been seriously considering a run for the Republican-held Senate seat in Colorado that is up for election in 2020 — a key pickup target in the Democrats’ strategy to try to retake control of the Senate.

“Today, I’m ending my campaign for president,” he said in a videotaped statement. “But I will never stop believing that America can only move forward when we work together.”

“I’ve heard from so many Coloradans who want me to run for the United States Senate,” he added. “They remind me how much is at stake for our country. And our state. I intend to give that some serious thought.”

Dude, go back to your f%$#ing brew pub.

Poster Child for Lack of Moral Standing

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I am referring to the organization generally known as the US Olympic Committee (It’s actually the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee).

They have gotten their panties in a bunch because athletes have used the medal awards ceremonies to protest issues of racism and law enforcement misconduct.

Some have kneeled, some have used an outstretched fist, and not the OSOC is threatening sanctions.

This is an organization that covered up the sexual abuse of Larry Nassar,  was complicit in corruption at the 2002 winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and was the proximate or contributing cause of dozens of other scandals.

F%$# them.  They  have no moral standing whatsoever to claim to be guardians of the Olympics or of the Olympic ideal.

Do You Want Some Cheese to Go with That Whine?

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The NY Times published a searchable database and 4870 pages of donor names, all 146,000, all the way down to donors who gave $1 to the Clinton Foundation.

What’s the public interest in publishing a donor who gave $1? https://t.co/Qo1ISmxSJP

— amicable stationery helper 📎 (@xiruxi) August 7, 2019

Hypocrisy Much

Joaquin Castro is Presidential candidate Julian Castro’s twin brother, he grew a beard so that they are not confused, and he just
tweeted the names of people who have donated the maximum to the Trump campaign, and the Republicans, and the press has completely lost their sh%$.

This information is publicly available on the web, and, as death threats and doxxing is central to right wing communication, the pot is calling the kettle back:

Joaquin Castro, a Democratic congressman from Texas and chairman of the presidential campaign of his twin brother, Julián, fired back on Tuesday after being castigated on social media for tweeting the names and occupations of his constituents who’d maxed out their donations to President Donald Trump.

His tweet contained a graphic titled “Who’s funding Trump?” and listed the names of 44 people who purportedly contributed the maximum amount allowed by campaign finance laws. Their occupations, which, like donor names, are public record, were also listed. Close to a dozen of the donors shown are retirees.

“Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump,” Castro wrote, naming local businesses whose owners were on the list. “Their contributions are fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.’”

The graphic, which Castro indicated had originated with a Democratic activist group, was blasted out to the more than 27,000 followers of his congressional campaign account on Tuesday afternoon. It came as politicians’ loaded rhetoric has come under closer scrutiny after a mass shooting over the weekend in El Paso that killed 22 and wounded dozens of others. Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, which mirrored language used by the suspected shooter in a racist manifesto, has loomed over the tragedy in the days since.

You are supporting a racist ratf%$#, in any decent society, opprobrium should be a consequence of this, you delicate snowflakes.

What the F%$# is Wrong with the New York Times?

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The New York Times, and by that I mean their editorial board, just published an editorial, which among other things, appeals to the conscience of the good Nazis and white supremacists out there.

This is unbelievably stupid.  There are no good Nazis, but they ask for their goodwill anyway:

Those who sympathize with the white nationalist ideology but who deplore the violence should work closely with law enforcement to see that fellow travelers who may be prone to violence do not have access to firearms like semiautomatic assault-style weapons that are massively destructive.

(emphasis mine)

There are no white supremacists who eschew violence.

Violence is inextricable from white supremacist and Nazi ideology.

You can enforce neither without violence and the threat of violence.

Think about it:  Without lynchings and shooting, Jim Crow would never have had any force.

Asking for a few good Nazis to do their civic duty is dangerously misguided.

H/t Atrios.

We Are Doomed

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Welcome to your gerontocracy. pic.twitter.com/yTjdkfDHxQ

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) August 5, 2019

Un-F%$#ing-Believable

Both of the Septuagenarian front runners for the major Presidential nominations got the locations of this weekends mass shootings wrong:

President Donald Trump and Democratic 2020 presidential hopeful Joe Biden both got confused in regards to the locations of mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton over the weekend, mentioning inaccurate cities when discussing the violence.

During a Monday address from the White House, Trump, 73, shared condolences for the victims “in Toledo,” apparently mixing up the Ohio city with Dayton, where nine people were killed and dozens more were wounded on Sunday morning.

“May God bless the memory of those who perished in Toledo,” the president said toward the end of his speech. “May God protect them.”

Biden, 76, who previously served as vice president under former President Barack Obama and is currently leading in the Democratic presidential primary polls, made a similar gaffe on Sunday evening while addressing attendants of a fundraiser in California. He referred to the mass shooting as “the tragic events in Houston today and also in Michigan the day before.” Although the politician later corrected his mistake, he seemed to be confusing Houston, which is also in Texas, with El Paso and mixing up Ohio with its fellow midwestern state of Michigan.

It really is remarkable how dysfunctional and corrupt the two parties are.

A Monument to His Ego

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This is an Architectural Atrocity

I am referring of course to Barack Obama’s proposed Presidential library.

I think that his presidential complex would rip the heart out of one of Fredrick Law Olmstead’s most significant works, and the Federal Highway Administration’s review of the project has determined that it would diminish the integrity of the park.

Here’s hoping that this, along with the fact that Obama crony Rahm Emanuel is no longer mayor, will result in some much need accountability on this project.

There is also the matter that the Obama Foundation has refused to even consider a community benefits agreement, which would provide guarantees for the local residents regarding jobs and affordable housing:

Construction of the $500 million Obama Presidential Center will have an “adverse impact” on historic Jackson Park that must be mitigated, a federal review has concluded.

In a report triggered by Jackson Park’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places, the Federal Highway Administration homed in on the negative impact the four-building complex would have on the majestic Midway Plaisance and the Jackson Park Historic Landscape District.

The project would diminish the “the historic property’s overall integrity by altering historic, internal spatial divisions that were designed as a single entity” by renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the FHA concluded.

It also concludes the “size and scale of new buildings” would “diminish the intended prominence of the Museum of Science and Industry building and alter the overall composition and design intent of balancing park scenery with specific built areas.”

………

The finding puts pressure on the Obama Foundation to find a way to “resolve adverse effects” and turns up the heat on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to order the foundation to make those changes.

“The Obama Foundation has yet to show any interest in compromising on any of this. It may take [Lightfoot] to bring them to the table,” said Margaret Schmid, co-president of Jackson Park Watch.

“It means there are lots of new obstacles facing this proposal. A big question is, does Chicago want to go on record as having allowed a project that has major adverse impacts on this important historic park or can the project be redesigned to be compatible with this historic landscape?”

It’s not a surprise that the Obama Foundation is refusing to do anything for the poor and minority residents of the neighborhood, that was pretty much the Obama administration’s policy for or the poor and minority residents of the country.

They were too busy, “Foaming the runway,” for the big banks.

Live in Obedient Fear. Citizen!

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It appears that people are taking to dumping water on police officers in New York as a way of showing their disrespect for the local constabulary, much in the same way that dumping a milk shake on a Tory politician is in the UK indicates a lack of approval.

Obviously, this is a crime, assault, and if you do the crime, you should do the crime.

However, some wannabee fascists in the New York State Assembly decided that a simple assault charge isn’t enough, and so have drafted a bill making “disrespecting the police” a felony.

That sound you hear is Eric Arthur Blair spinning in his grave at relativistic velocities:

New video surfaced Tuesday evening of more NYPD officers being doused with water.

The most recent incident in Queens has compelled lawmakers to announce a new bill that cracks down on anyone who disrespects the badge, CBS2’s Natalie Duddridge reported.

………

“We will not wait until these attacks spread like wildfire,” said Assemblyman Mike LiPetri, R-Long Island. “This time, it’s water. What’s next? Gasoline? Acid?”

At a rally on the steps of City Hall on Wednesday morning, LiPetri and Assemblyman Michael Reilly, R-Staten Island, proposed a new law to stop what some call a disgusting trend.

“What we are witnessing in New York City is disgraceful. A culture of blatant disrespect for law enforcement has been fostered and encouraged simply for political gain which has resulted in such despicable acts of hate becoming acceptable in our communities,” LiPetri said. “New York State must send a message that this will not be tolerated and I am confident that this bill provides law enforcement the tools they need to properly react.”

According to LiPetri and Reilly, the new bill would make it a Class E felony to throw or spray water, or any other substance, against an on-duty police or peace officer. The charge would be punishable by up to 1 to 4 years in prison. 

Because clearly disrespect of cop is worse than, I don’t know, stock fraud.

Here’s an idea, do something about the culture of impunity that has people so fed up with cops that they are dumping water on them.

Also, fire Pantaleo.

Headline of the Day

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Better to Have a Few Rats Than to Be One

—Baltimore Sun Editorial Board

This is in response to Trump’s latest tirade against Elijah Cummings, where he slams the Congressman and his district, basically relegates Baltimore to his list of “sh%$ holes”.

Needless to say, residents of the Charm City, and I consider myself one, though I live in the suburb of Owings Mills, are less than amused at the Donald’s latest tantrum.

On edit.

Nancy Pelosi, Baltimore native and daughter of former mayor Tommy D’Alesandro, is unamused by this as well.

Headline of the Day

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Moderate Democrats Warn That AOC Is Distracting From Their Nonexistent Message

—NY Magazine

The final paragraph pretty much says it all:

If your mission in politics is to cower from controversy — even on issues where your party has a clear advantage, and your constituents have a vital interest — then you shouldn’t be surprised when people aren’t interested in all of the nothing that you have to say.