Cops

A good percentage of cops are just dicks.

Israel

Such a biblical group of people.

BBC News - Israel's ex-PM Ehud Olmert convicted of bribery:

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Adelson

Christie's not the only one kissing Adelson's ass.

Christie, Walker, Kasich, Bush: Sheldon Adelson's Toadies | Crooks and Liars:

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Chris Christie

The tough guy apologizes to the boss.

Chris Christie apologizes for ‘occupied territories’ remark - Kenneth P. Vogel - POLITICO.com:

Occupied Palestine

Christie met with Adelson privately in the casino mogul’s office in the Venetian hotel and casino, which hosted the RJC meeting. 

The source told POLITICO that Christie “clarified in the strongest terms possible that his remarks today were not meant to be a statement of policy.” 

Instead, the source said, Christie made clear “that he misspoke when he referred to the ‘occupied territories.’ And he conveyed that he is an unwavering friend and committed supporter of Israel, and was sorry for any confusion that came across as a result of the misstatement.”

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Justice...

How much can you afford?

The Ladder of Law Has No Top And No Bottom - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money:

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US Politics....

.... is fucked up.

The Shame of American Politics: GOP Presidential Hopefuls now Trek to Las Vegas seeking Adelson Blessing | Informed Comment:

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American Christians

True but it'll piss-off the bible-thumpers and give Fox News a month's worth of stories.

The bitter tears of the American Christian supermajority | Al Jazeera America:

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Big Business vs the People

Who's the bad guy here, government or business?

TurboTax Maker Funnels Millions To Lobby Against Easier Tax Returns | TechCrunch:

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Hoosiers' income still lags U.S. growth

Hoosiers' income still lags U.S. growth | Palladium-Item | pal-item.com:

Indiana’s income ranking has dropped from 30th in 1980 and 21st in 1950. The drop has been tied largely to the decline in high-paying manufacturing jobs.

yeah but we're at least we have the second lowest corporate income tax in the nation. 

Income growth last year in Indiana was greatest in health care, professional services and manufacturing.

healthcare? see this....Gin and Tacos

The value of goods made in Indiana last year is expected to set a state record, according to Michael Hicks, director of Ball State University’s Center for Business and Economic Research. But because of technology and other production gains, it takes far fewer people to make that record amount of goods as it would have in 1970.

Yes, it takes fewer people to make that amount of goods but also, a smaller portion of the revenues from those goods goes to the people who make them. The owners are taking a bigger slice of the pie than they did in 1970.

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Dying

BUSINESS IS BOOMING | Gin and Tacos:

Visit the website of any derelict Rust Belt city and search for references to the number of hospitals or the strength of the health care sector. It won't take long to find them. It turns out that along with local government and, of course, prisons, hospitals are one of the few things that remain open when everything else closes. They may not have jobs anymore, but someone still needs to lock 'em up and occasionally stitch 'em up. 

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Economic warfare

Could economic warfare spark a  real war?

Russia to Recession? | Econbrowser:

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Things Go Better With Kochs

Things Go Better With Kochs - NYTimes.com:

Koch bashing on the left. Soros bashing on the right. It's a good way for the power elite of  the parties to put an evil face on the opposition, unite their supporters, and as the article above shows, raise cash. It's a lot easier to unite a group, and keep your power,  if you have a good, common enemy out there somewhere.

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America and taxes

What America Isn't, Or Anyway Wasn't - NYTimes.com:

... many people nowadays imagine that redistribution and high taxes on the rich are antithetical to American ideals, indeed practically communism. They have no idea (and wouldn’t believe) that redistribution is in reality as American as apple pie.

Real Americans also mostly misunderstand taxes. Workers who like the tax system because they got a big refund regardless of how much they paid, don't like overtime work because "the government will just take it all anyway", think they pay a huge rate but in reality pay very little. Retirees with 200,000 dollars in savings who think the "death tax" is going to get it all when they die. Many think a flat tax would be more fair to everyone.


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Egypt: Plan for Mass Execution

This'll add to that group that "Hates us for our Freedoms". Aren't you glad we backed the "not-a-military-coup" military coup?

Egypt Shocks the World with Plan for Mass Execution of 528 Muslim Brothers | Informed Comment:



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Indiana Justice?

These are both tragic cases but this is a great example of justice in the backwaters of the US. 

• March 2014, Greensburg, Indiana.  A man is arrested and charged with neglect after he leaves a loaded gun around and his kid is accidentally shot and killed.

• February 2011, Brookville, Indiana (about 40 miles from Greensburg). A man leaves a loaded gun around and his kid is accidentally shot and killed. The prosecutor does not file charges. No one is arrested.

The difference? The gun owner in the "no-one-is-arrested" case is a Deputy Sheriff. 

------------ more on the shootings -------

Greensburg Man Faces charges [link1] [link2]

GREENSBURG, Ind. (AP) — A southeastern Indiana man faces felony charges alleging that he left a loaded rifle unattended shortly before a 13-year-old boy was fatally shot by a sibling who picked up the weapon. 

Thirty-four-year-old Jason L. Forshee of Greensburg was arrested and charged Friday with neglect of a dependent resulting in death and dangerous control of a child. 

The Greensburg Daily News reports (http://bit.ly/1nNTYAZ ) Craig A. Roberts died March 11 after his 6-year-old sibling picked up the weapon, pointed it at him and it accidentally discharged. 

A bullet in the rifle’s chamber struck Craig in the chest and he was later pronounced dead.
Court documents state that Forshee told police he was cleaning the weapon and had removed its magazine, but did not realize a bullet was in the rifle’s chamber.

 [Justice for all 1]   [Justice for all 2] [link1] [Link2]

BROOKVILLE, Ind. -- Criminal charges will be not filed in the shooting death last week of the 4-year-old son of a Franklin County deputy. 

Franklin County Prosecutor Mel Wilhelm announced Tuesday through the Indiana State Police that his office would not seek charges in the Feb. 16 accidental shooting death of Aiden Mehlbauer. 

The preschooler's funeral was held Tuesday at the St. Louis Catholic Church in Batesville.
Last week, Aiden and twin brother Mason were playing in the basement when they found a loaded, .40-caliber semi-automatic Glock handgun in the "office" area where their father, Deputy Greg Mehlbauer, kept his uniforms and other law enforcement equipment. 

The boys were handling the gun when it discharged, striking Aiden in the abdomen, Indiana State Police Sgt. Noel Houze said. 

Aiden's mother, Shavonne, was upstairs helping her 6-year-old daughter with her homework and Greg Mehlbauer was on duty when the shooting occurred. Aiden died about 2 hours later at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. 

Indiana prosecutors often recuse themselves from cases involving local police officers with whom they work on a regular basis, but Wilhelm told the state police the circumstances surrounding the incident did not meet the elements of a crime under Indiana code. 

Wilhelm said he had carefully reviewed the state police reports and spoken at length with investigators concerning their findings in the case

City vs. Country #2

City vs. Country: How Where We Live Deepens the Nation's Political Divide - WSJ.com:

"The historic downtown has a park with a bandstand for summer concerts, and a spot to taste the spring waters that attracted early settlers. But across Main Street sits one vacant storefront after the next."

This could be described as a corporate vs individual economic divide. Those empty storefronts in small towns used to hold businesses owned and operated by local people. Those are mostly gone and the buildings are empty because we now operate in a corporate business environment. Most businesses now are sheet-metal buildings on the edge of town, owned by large, out-of-town corporations who really don't care about local communities,.. well,... as long as the people living there send a decent portion of their government-supplied checks back to the corporate owners. The rural areas are being "mined" for their wealth.

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City vs. Country

City vs. Country: How Where We Live Deepens the Nation's Political Divide - WSJ.com:

"For example, rural residents are 47% more likely to shop at a Dollar General DG +0.78% store than is an average American, according to surveys by the research firm Experian Marketing Services."

As"Jeff Foxworthy would say,...  "If you have a dollar store in your town,.... you might be a redneck".


 
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Group Memories

Stumbling and Mumbling: Memories, & mechanisms:

"My favourite example of this is Andrew Newell's explanation of why the inflation/unemployment trade-off worsened in the late 60s. It was, he says, because a generation of workers who remembered the depression of the 1930s retired and were replaced by a generation that had known nothing but security and full employment and so were more emboldened to push for higher wages."

I believe this and think it is one thing that the US has going for it, the Reagan generation is getting old and dying off. There's a good chance that the next generation-to-take-control's memory will be "Big banks and big corporations are the problem" not,..  "Government is the problem".

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That Damn Liberal Media

You won't hear about this [budget plan] from the US media.

Paul Ryan isn't the wonk of Washington – it's time to listen to more good ideas | Dean Baker | Comment is free | theguardian.com:



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The War on Drugs

Needs to end.

America Has a Black-Market Problem, Not a Drug Problem - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic:

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Big Money in Jesus

Huge Money Stolen From MegaChurch, But That's Not The OMG Moment | Crooks and Liars




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Take this job and shove it.

A damn good post from Gin and Tacos this morning.

MONOPOLY | Gin and Tacos:

"...the Job Market doesn't feel like much of a market at all. It feels like a thousand people in the water scrambling for 50 spots on a lifeboat. If you make it on board, someone else controls your fate. If you don't like it, you can always jump back into the water and drown."

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Fed Board Nominees

At Hearing, Fed Board Nominees Endorse Current Path - NYTimes.com:

Coming to the US FED,.. Stanley Fischer (an Israeli), Jerome Powell (a banker) and [Lael_Brainard], (a Harvard educated, daughter of an American diplomat, think-tanker, married to another long-time government/think-tanker Kurt M. Campbell).

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Large Cost of Telling Small Lies

The Surprisingly Large Cost of Telling Small Lies - NYTimes.com:

"Every time you over-report a metric, under-report a cost, are less than honest with a client or a member of your team, you create a false reality and you start living in it."

This applies to the lies we tell ourselves. You can't fix problems in your life if you don't look at the problem honestly.

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Police State

HORROR: Five Cops Beat Innocent, Unarmed Father to Death Outside Cinemas | Alternet:

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Dianne Feinstein

Feinstein (D-Calif.) needs to go.

Dianne Feinstein Upset that CIA Is Spying on Dianne Feinstein | Mother Jones:


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The best Government,..

... money can buy.

Ready for a surprise? Money DOES equal access in Washington:

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Terrorism

Eventually we'll all be accused of being terrorists.

The War on Terror Jumps the Shark as Everyone in the Mideast accuses everyone else of Terrorism | Informed Comment:


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The power of the 1%

Stumbling and Mumbling: The power of the 1%:

"I suspect that one reason is that people don't see top incomes as affecting them; they don't look at Euan Sutherland's pay and think "that's coming out of my pocket""

I'd agree. The big battle in US politics is for the backing of the middle class. Democrats spend time trying to convince the middle that its the rich who are stealing from them. Republican propaganda says it's "those welfare slackers" who are doing the stealing.



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Reaganites - NED

This is for the Reagan lovers.

Reagan appoints Carl Gersham to head the NED in 1984. He been in the position ever since.

Carl Gershman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "From 1970–1974, Carl Gershman was a national leader of the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL), the youth section of the Socialist Party of America; he served as Vice Chairman, Co-Chairman, and then Chairman of YPSL.[1][5] [7]"

More on the NED [here and here].


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NSA-like

NED sounds a little like the NSA. Created for a reason but has taken on a life, and policies, of its own.


A Shadow US Foreign Policy | Consortiumnews:

"The National Endowment for Democracy, a central part of Ronald Reagan’s propaganda war against the Soviet Union three decades ago, has evolved into a $100 million U.S. government-financed slush fund that generally supports a neocon agenda often at cross-purposes with the Obama administration’s foreign policy."

and

NED has invested in projects in Russia’s close neighbor, Ukraine, that fueled violent protests ousting President Viktor Yanukovych, who won election in 2010 in balloting that was viewed by international observers as fair and reflecting the choice of most Ukrainian citizens. 

Thus, a U.S.-sponsored organization that claims to promote “democracy” has sided with forces that violently overthrew a democratically elected leader rather than wait for the next scheduled election in 2015 to vote him out of office.

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Neocons

Can the Neoconservatives make a comeback via the Ukraine Crisis? | Informed Comment:

Though I’m told the Ukraine crisis caught Obama and Putin by surprise, the neocon determination to drive a wedge between the two leaders has been apparent for months, especially after Putin brokered a deal to head off U.S. military strikes against Syria last summer and helped get Iran to negotiate concessions on its nuclear program, both moves upsetting the neocons who had favored heightened confrontations. 

Putin also is reported to have verbally dressed down Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan over what Putin considered their provocative actions regarding the Syrian civil war. So, by disrupting neocon plans and offending Netanyahu and Bandar, the Russian president found himself squarely in the crosshairs of some very powerful people.

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U.S. oil and natural gas

Relaxing restrictions on U.S. exports of oil and natural gas | Econbrowser:

I like the idea of keeping our energy reserves here, even left in the ground if necessary. Why extract and sell them off?  Having a big pot of oil or natural gas around is like a big strategic, savings account.Why empty it just so a few already rich, energy overlords can increase their bank accounts. In a few years we'll be back to complaining that we have to import too much energy.

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Singer James Blunt 'prevented World War III'

BBC News - Singer James Blunt 'prevented World War III':

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Russia and the Ukraine

Man, check out the comments here...... it sounds like we're giving another bunch of people a reason to "Hate us for our freedoms".

 “Consequences” for Russia over the Ukraine | Ian Welsh:

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The Indoctrinated West

wow.

The Indoctrinated West » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names: "Indoctrinated"

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Saudis Bankrolling Israel's Mossad

Saudis Bankrolling Israel's Mossad: More confirmation? | MyFDL:

...strong likelihood that Saudi Arabia was bankrolling Israel’s Mossad. Those funds paid for, among other things, the assassinations of several of Iran’s top nuclear experts over the past couple of years.

I believe this. Saudi Arabia has been in lock-step with the Israel and US on Iran.

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Economic Inequality

Why isn't there more outrage about inequality? Lots of ideas in the comments.

Economic Inequality: Why Isn’t There <em>More</em> Outrage? by Kathleen Geier | Political Animal | The Washington Monthly:

to put it all together,..

We're all poor, lazy, misinformed, ultra-religious, debt-ridden, welfare-fed slackers who will vote for either of the two, rich, mostly-white, elite-supported candidates we're given as long as they promise to 1. protect our ability to go in debt to buy giant flat-screened propaganda viewing devices, guns and other cheap Chinese junk, and 2. protect us from THOSE poor, lazy, misinformed, ultra-religious, debt-ridden, welfare-fed slackers.

oh,... and this too....



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Amuraca: We're #1

We're getting old......

Noahpinion: Ming America:

America shows signs of falling into this trap. We tell ourselves robotically that we have "the best health-care system in the world," when in fact it underperforms most other rich countries. We gape and gawk when we first travel to Japan or Switzerland and find that all the trains run perfectly on time — not to mention the fact that there are trains in the first place. We ignore our sky-high infrastructure costs and grumble about potholed roads, never pausing to wonder why West Europe and East Asia don't have these problems. We tell ourselves that we're the "land of the free," ignoring the fact that in Japan you can drink a beer in the park without getting arrested. We say that anyone in America can get rich, ignoring the fact that economic mobility is lower here than in almost any other rich country.  

The fact is, America had an extraordinary run of success in the 20th century. We got used to thinking of our country as The Future, as No. 1, as the place where everything happens. But other countries have been racing to catch up with us, and in some ways they have already succeeded. We need to get out of our bubble and recognize the innovations other countries have achieved, and reform our institutions in order to keep up. Otherwise, we risk becoming a stagnant superpower. "Ming America" must be avoided at all costs.

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Pedal or push?

Pedal or push? An energy question with hidden complexity - Energy Realities - A Visual Guide to Global Energy Needs:

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Microsoft's 64-bit ODBC administrator

ODBC Administrator tool displays both the 32-bit and the 64-bit user DSNs in a 64-bit version of Windows:

A 64-bit version of the Microsoft Windows operating system includes the following versions of the Microsoft Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) Data Source Administrator tool (Odbcad32.exe):

• The 32-bit version of the Odbcad32.exe file is located in the %systemdrive%\Windows\SysWoW64 folder.

• The 64-bit version of the Odbcad32.exe file is located in the %systemdrive%\Windows\System32 folder.

So.....

• There's a 32 bit ODBC administrator and a 64 bit ODBC Administrator tool. Understandable. 
• Both have the same file name Odbcad32.exe. Dumb....but OK.
• The 32 bit version is in a folder with 64 in the name and the 64 bit version is in a folder with 32 in the name. WTF? 

Time to sell the Microsoft stock.

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Stanley Fischer

Fed Nominee Stanley Fischer Has a Citigroup Problem:

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Hypocracy

Jamiol's World Web Home:



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Democrats vs White Men

Democrats Try Wooing Ones Who Got Away: White Men - NYTimes.com:

Mr. Houston is part of an internal debate at all levels of his party (democrat..  tnb...) over how hard it should work to win over white men, especially working-class men without college degrees, 

The answer is guns...Midwestern white males like guns. They had a choice between unions and guns and they chose guns. They're not going to vote for Democrats until the party gives up on gun control.


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Fascism and the Future

I linked to a couple of these a few days back but they're good and deserve a link to the set.

the site: The Archdruid Report

The three essays

The Archdruid Report: Fascism and the Future, Part One: Up From Newspeak:

Fascism and the Future, Part Two: The Totalitarian Center

Fascism and the Future, Part Three: Weimar America

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The Electoral Integrity Project

The Year in Elections, 2013 - The Electoral Integrity Project:

"By contrast, the United States ranked 26th out of 73 elections under comparison worldwide, the lowest score among Western nations, falling into the Moderate Integrity category."

One spot higher than Mexico and six higher than Cuba... Go uhmurica!!!!!

On problems with elections

In fact, however, campaign finance and campaign media coverage are the weakest links in the electoral cycle.  

Contrary to much attention by journalists and scholars, the end-stages of the electoral cycle, involving the process of vote tabulation, electoral procedures, and the announcement of the final results, were assessed by experts as the least problematic stage.

The major flaws of elections are campaign finance and media coverage or,..  money and propaganda, a couple of things American Capitalism does very well.  We're advertising and buying our way to the bottom

Once again, Go uhmurica!!!!!

and,. on a related note

[The Big Money].

At some point it would be easier/less expensive to just buy the other guy. you know,.. free markets and everything. Everyone has their price. A few people have the money. There's no reason the Koch's couldn't just buy Obama.

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The Totalitarian Center

The Archdruid Report: Fascism and the Future, Part Two: The Totalitarian Center: "

 The further you get from that midpoint, the closer you are to “extremism.”  (Think about that last word for a moment.) What happens, though, if the common ground where the two major parties meet and shake hands is far removed from the actual beliefs and opinions of the majority? 

 That’s the situation we’re in today in America, of course. Americans may not agree about much, but a remarkably large number of them agree that neither political party is listening to them, or offering policies that Americans in general find appealing or even acceptable. Where the two major parties can reach a consensus—for example, in giving bankers a de facto amnesty for even the most egregious and damaging acts of financial fraud—there’s normally a substantial gap between that consensus and the policies that most Americans support. Where the parties remain at loggerheads, there are normally three positions: the Democratic position, the Republican position, and the position most Americans favor, which never gets brought up in the political arena at all."

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Weimar America

A good thought experiment here:

The Archdruid Report: Fascism and the Future, Part Three: Weimar America:

"A good many of the people who liked to insist that Weimar Germany was a fascist state got to find out—in many cases, at the cost of their lives—that there really is a difference between a troubled, dysfunctional, and failing representative democracy and a totalitarian state, and that a movement that promises to overturn a broken status quo, and succeeds in doing so, is perfectly capable of making things much, much worse."
...
For Democrats, the standard target until recently was an image of George W. Bush dressed up as Heinrich Himmler, lighting a bonfire using the Constitution as tinder and then tossing endangered species into the flames; for Republicans right now, it’s usually a picture of Barack Obama dressed up as Ho Chi Minh, having sex with their daughters and then walking off with their gun collections. Either way, the effect is the same.
...
 The hardest of all political choices, though, comes when the conflict lies between the bad and the much, much worse—as in the example just sketched out, between a crippled, dysfunctional, failing democratic system riddled with graft and abuses of power, on the one hand, and a shiny new tyranny on the other.

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