Whether ISIS is enough of an Evil Club of Evil (relative to other Evil Clubs of Evil that are our pals) that We Must Do Something is perhaps too complicated to decide in the margin of this blog post, but I was struck by a caption I saw on CNN screen I saw through a restaurant window as I was walking by. It was something like "ISIS DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO US SOLDIERS."
Those soldiers aren't in New Jersey.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Maybe We Should Go Back To Painting Schools
All we have to do is keep training...
Another 10 years should do the trick.
But at the same time, Iraqi commanders, soldiers and police officers who could play a central role in any offensive are raising doubts about the readiness of Iraq’s ground forces. The army has struggled to recapture even smaller towns that pose less of a challenge than Mosul — Iraq’s second-largest city, which is still full of civilians and heavily defended by the militants, they say.
Another 10 years should do the trick.
Watch Out Where The Huskies Go
And don't you eat the...blue snow?
MOSCOW — In some places, say New York, the panic over snow often begins as soon as there is a forecast for it. In Russia, where it is a bit more familiar, there is typically no fear, unless the snow on the ground happens to be blue, as it was in Chelyabinsk this week, or orange, as it was earlier this month in Saratov on the Volga River.
In Chelyabinsk, a city on the eastern side of Ural Mountains and known as the gateway to Siberia, the authorities were trying to reassure residents that there was no cause for alarm from the blue snow. However, some people who walked through it complained of sore throats and said they had also detected a sweet taste in their mouths.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Accidental Governor
Must be a bit weird to suddenly go from Secretary of State to governor, as Oregon's Kate Brown is about to do. Know little about her career and nothing about her aspirations, but suddenly becoming the head honcho is a BFD.
I am completely unsuited to be an executive (mayor, governor) and am also completely unsuited for actually running for office, but it'd be fun to, say, serve out a relatively short remainder of a Senate term by special appointment. Not that it would happen, of course.
I am completely unsuited to be an executive (mayor, governor) and am also completely unsuited for actually running for office, but it'd be fun to, say, serve out a relatively short remainder of a Senate term by special appointment. Not that it would happen, of course.
New Guy Being Good
Excellent news.
Harrisburg, PA – Today, Governor Tom Wolf announced a moratorium on the death penalty in Pennsylvania that will remain in effect until the governor has received and reviewed the forthcoming report of the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Commission on Capital Punishment, established under Senate Resolution 6 of 2011, and there is an opportunity to address all concerns satisfactorily.
Hopefully There Is A Nap In My Future
Second night of bad sleep. Woke up screaming because I was dreaming that someone was trying to kill me. Such fun.
How Does This Keep Happening
Maybe the only way to win is not to play?
Let's just keep adding weapons, arming whichever "side" John McCain thinks are the good guys who want guns. It always works!
Nick Rasmussen, who directs the National Counterterrorism Center, told the Senate intelligence committee that Yemen's American-funded army failed to oppose advancing Houthi rebels in the same way the U.S.-supported Iraqi military refused to fight Islamic State militants last year.
What happened in Iraq with the onslaught of the Islamic State group "happened in Yemen" on "a somewhat smaller scale," he said. "As the Houthi advances toward Sanaa took place ... they weren't opposed in many places. ...The situation deteriorated far more rapidly than we expected."
Let's just keep adding weapons, arming whichever "side" John McCain thinks are the good guys who want guns. It always works!
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Oh, It Was Just About Parking?
It's good to know the truth here, and whether or not it was an racial/ethnic motivated crime or not, it's hard to not think that the general dehumanization of Muslims in this country made the act, well, a bit easier to do, as horrifying as that is. But if the guy killed 3 people I would hope that the "it was about parking" defense really doesn't make things much better for him.
By the time the police arrived, three people were dead — a newlywed couple and the woman’s sister. They were young university students, Muslims of Arab descent, and high achievers who regularly volunteered in the area. A neighbor, a middle-aged white man, was missing — then under arrest and charged with three counts of murder.
The victims’ families described it as a hate crime. The police said that the shooting appeared to have been motivated by “an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking,” but that they were investigating whether religious hatred had contributed to the killings.
“To have him come in here and shoot three different innocent people in their head — I don’t know what kind of person that is,” said Namee Barakat, the father of the male victim, Deah Shaddy Barakat.
Stay Classy, Rusty
I don't care if someone has graduated from college or not, but Rusty brings his extra charm to the subject.
Progress
We really shouldn't want sick people to come to work, especially if they're working in service industries.
It isn't much, but it's something.
City Councilman Bill Greenlee won his seven-year fight Thursday to pass legislation requiring Philadelphia businesses to provide paid sick leave to their employees.
The legislation mandates that companies with at least 10 employees offer the benefit. Employees would earn one hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours worked, for a maximum total of five days annually.
It isn't much, but it's something.
Cons
I've been to two conventions. I doubt I'll go to another one, including this one. The events surrounding the conventions are more interesting than the conventions themselves. The security is nuts, and you just can watch the main bits on the teevee. For reasons nobody understands, news agencies send 4 billion journalists to cover it and the arenas are overcrowded. Those arenas just aren't the big.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Ruh Roh
Incoming.
As Secretary of State Kate Brown cut short a trip to Washington, D.C. to return to Oregon Wednesday, reports swept Salem that Gov. John Kitzhaber was preparing to resign.
The governor's office did not respond to requests for comment but made no attempt to tamp down a series of reports that Kitzhaber was getting ready to leave office amid controversy over fiancee Cylvia Hayes' consulting contracts and how he and his aides handled them.
Walking While Blah
I'm just trying to figure out the mindset of the busybody who looks out the window, sees a pedestrian, and calls the cops. And the cops who decide that doing anything more than a slow driveby is appropriate.
Because Rich People
Not really a mystery.
But some poors have an extra bedroom, so we gotta kick them.
Ministers were under increasing pressure to explain why they did not take earlier action against massive tax evasion involving HSBC’s banking in Switzerland.
A document unearthed by the Evening Standard shows that ministers were aware in 2010 that large numbers of wealthy customers were hiding money from the UK tax authorities in accounts at the HSBC branch in Geneva.
But some poors have an extra bedroom, so we gotta kick them.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Gangs
Post-Katrina, New Orleans was treated like a war zone, not a disaster zone filled with people in need of aid, because black people. I'm sure this didn't help.
Lower It
It's absurd that the legal drinking age is 21. It prevents adults from socializing as adults, and puts colleges in the position of pretending not to notice. Make it legal and it would be easier to monitor and manage something which has been driven underground.
Mmmm.... Tasty Poison...
Pretty sure I know which side of the stupid or evil question this falls on...
The Little Things
It's always the small scale corruption the trips people up, because it's so petty.
(ht nickbaumann)
The subpoena issued last month appears to be part of a probe into a flight route initiated by United while Samson was chairman of the transportation agency that operates the region’s airports. The route provided non-stop service between Newark and Columbia Metropolitan Airport in South Carolina — about 50 miles from a home where Samson often spent weekends with his wife. United halted the non-stop route on April 1 of last year, just three days after Samson resigned under a cloud.
Samson referred to the twice-a-week route — with a flight leaving Newark on Thursday evenings and another returning on Monday mornings — as “the chairman’s flight,” one source said. Federal aviation records show that during the 19 months United offered the non-stop service, the 50-seat planes that flew the route were, on average, only about half full.
(ht nickbaumann)
Remember All Those News Reports About Horrific Crimes On Buses
No, actually you don't, because it'd be a really stupid place to try to commit a crime.
People just are afeared of the poors.
People just are afeared of the poors.
Buses Can Be Great
Bus stigma is a really strange thing. Sure trains can and do have some advantages over buses, depending on how they're built, but there's really nothing wrong with riding a bus.
Monday, February 09, 2015
We Spend Money On This
I object to the surveillance state on basic civil liberties grounds, too, but increasingly I think it's just a tremendous money pit. Obviously these are not mutually exclusive objections.
HAMP'd
Rightly or wrongly, a lot of the bad stuff of the Obama era can plausibly be blamed on political constraints. The failures of HAMP are on his administration entirely.
Once upon a time I had an opportunity to ask Obama a question. Some very serious journalist somewhere mocked it, but I still think it was the right one. I asked something like, "Are you happy with the federal response to the foreclosure crisis?" I made it open ended, deliberately, because...well, how could you be happy?
Once upon a time I had an opportunity to ask Obama a question. Some very serious journalist somewhere mocked it, but I still think it was the right one. I asked something like, "Are you happy with the federal response to the foreclosure crisis?" I made it open ended, deliberately, because...well, how could you be happy?
Elections Matter
Our outgoing horrible governor tried to ram through a bullshit version of Medicaid expansion before he left office. The new guy is making it real.
Accounting
Amtrak's problem is that makes an operating profit on the NE corridor and loses money everywhere else. The recent obsession with the fact that it loses money on food services on its long distance routes is silly. It's a bundled good. Charge people for a seat or a sleeper on a long distance train and they want to have access to reasonably priced food, too. We aren't always perfectly rational in these decisions, but it probably makes sense for Amtrak to keep ticket prices a bit higher while "subsidizing" the food on these trains. People can have a more honest fight about whether to keep these routes, but the food issue is silly.
Last year, the NEC profit was nearly $400 million, Amtrak said, while the operating deficit of the long-distance routes was about $600 million.
The bill proposes to eliminate Amtrak's losses in its food and beverage services within five years, as Amtrak has promised to do.
In recent years, Amtrak has been losing about $80 million a year on food and beverage services, 99 percent of that on its long-distance routes. Cafe cars on the NEC break even or make a small profit, Amtrak says.
CoT: Crusade
Translation.
And exegesis.
Also, whenever you hear National Prayer Breakfast, remind people that Jeff Sharlett documented this C Street project.
'
And exegesis.
Also, whenever you hear National Prayer Breakfast, remind people that Jeff Sharlett documented this C Street project.
'
Sunday, February 08, 2015
Don't Arse It Up
Help people. Give them free money. Make it simple. Don't make them spend hours and days on the phone and doing paperwork. Be like Apple in the supposed good old days when "it just worked" (it certainly doesn't now). Give people economic security. Don't make them devote their lives to "shopping" for the best deal. You really don't need 200 policy advisers. Just one. Me.
Don't vilify the wealthy, just make them pay some taxes for the state apparatus which devotes itself to preserving their wealth.
With advice from more than 200 policy experts, Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to answer what has emerged as a central question of her early presidential campaign strategy: how to address the anger about income inequality without overly vilifying the wealthy.
Don't vilify the wealthy, just make them pay some taxes for the state apparatus which devotes itself to preserving their wealth.
Kidding On The Square
Franken is adept at being a dick, and hopefully after spending his first term with his head down as is the custom in the world's greatest deliberative body, he starts using his superpower a bit more often.
But We Are Awesome
Great White Father Kristof is shocked to discover that countries with a lot of people sometimes do things better than we do!
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