Quite a few to choose from Jonathan Kay's recent piece
There is a fine line between responsible gun-rights advocacy and America’s GOP-enabled Yosemite Sam gun-cult carnival — and I feel comfortable drawing that line around the diaper section of my local big-box store.
...for these Canadians, guns are tools, not objects of psycho-sexual religious veneration. There is no Canadian equivalent of Charlton Heston, who declared at the NRA’s 2000 annual meeting that “Sacred stuff resides in that wooden stock and blue steel, something that gives the most common man the most uncommon of freedoms … When ordinary hands can possess such an extraordinary instrument, that symbolizes the full measure of human dignity and liberty.”
To a Canadian shooter, a gun is something used to kill gophers. To his American equivalent of the Heston school, it’s a sort of giant wand for killing Voldemort.
No shit.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Monday, August 25, 2014
Hey Criminals! Here's a Gun!!
Kill someone in Georgia lately? Molest a child there as well? Well, rest easy, friend. You can get your right back to own a gun!
William Alvin Bishop paid for his crime – aggravated child molestation – with nine years in prison. But when he got out, he still wasn’t free. Because he is on Georgia’s sex offender registry, Bishop must notify his local sheriff of any change of address, which then is posted online with his photograph. He cannot live or work within 1,000 feet of a school, a church, a day-care center – any place where, in the expansive language of the state’s sex offender law, “minors congregate.”
He may, however, own a gun.
Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Paroles restored Bishop’s constitutional right to bear arms in 2012 despite the serious nature of his crime and his documented threat of additional violence. He is among a growing number of violent offenders who have received pardons that restore gun rights in recent years – and one of the seven from the sex offender registry.
Ground stood!
Thank goodness that Bishop's right to own a gun was preserved because you never know when he might need it against the federal government.
William Alvin Bishop paid for his crime – aggravated child molestation – with nine years in prison. But when he got out, he still wasn’t free. Because he is on Georgia’s sex offender registry, Bishop must notify his local sheriff of any change of address, which then is posted online with his photograph. He cannot live or work within 1,000 feet of a school, a church, a day-care center – any place where, in the expansive language of the state’s sex offender law, “minors congregate.”
He may, however, own a gun.
Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Paroles restored Bishop’s constitutional right to bear arms in 2012 despite the serious nature of his crime and his documented threat of additional violence. He is among a growing number of violent offenders who have received pardons that restore gun rights in recent years – and one of the seven from the sex offender registry.
Ground stood!
Thank goodness that Bishop's right to own a gun was preserved because you never know when he might need it against the federal government.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Good Words
I think it is far past time I put some quotes up here from conservatives...
"Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose." - George Will
"A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'." - William F. Buckley, Jr.
"A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy." - Benjamin Disraeli
"Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future." - Benjamin Disraeli
"Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose." - George Will
"A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'." - William F. Buckley, Jr.
"A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy." - Benjamin Disraeli
"Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future." - Benjamin Disraeli
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Blogging Comes Back To Haunt HIm
Check this out.
Ah, the sweet sound of a butterfly emerging from his bubble...I mean cocoon...sorry...
It's not like MN-01 was really in play anyway but I found this story amusing on a number of levels. First, there was this...
“On behalf of all red-blooded American men: THANK YOU SENATOR McCAIN, SARAH’S HOT!” he wrote.
How old is Jim Hagedorn? Because he sounds like he's (ahem) an adolescent.
There's also this...
In a 2002 “masterpiece analysis,”...
In a 2008 “masterpiece analysis,”...
Gee, this sounds awfully familiar. The egos on these people..I suppose that's what comes with massive insecurity and the stereotypical inferiority complex.
And I'm SURE that his remarks on gays, women, and American Indians were COMPLETELY satirical...
Ah, the sweet sound of a butterfly emerging from his bubble...I mean cocoon...sorry...
It's not like MN-01 was really in play anyway but I found this story amusing on a number of levels. First, there was this...
“On behalf of all red-blooded American men: THANK YOU SENATOR McCAIN, SARAH’S HOT!” he wrote.
How old is Jim Hagedorn? Because he sounds like he's (ahem) an adolescent.
There's also this...
In a 2002 “masterpiece analysis,”...
In a 2008 “masterpiece analysis,”...
Gee, this sounds awfully familiar. The egos on these people..I suppose that's what comes with massive insecurity and the stereotypical inferiority complex.
And I'm SURE that his remarks on gays, women, and American Indians were COMPLETELY satirical...
Friday, August 22, 2014
Thursday, August 21, 2014
A Cold-Hearted Bastard
The press has been having a field day with the president golfing after delivering remarks on the execution of journalist James Foley by the ISIL. Doesn't he have any feelings!!???!! I suppose if I were advising the president I would have suggested some quiet time with his family...perhaps reading a book.
Yet his golfing and laughing with friends, not giving in to their demands for cash as EU nations do, and continuing to bomb the crap out of ISIL positions in northern Iraq completely decimates the idea that he is weak. In fact, he looks pretty much like he is a cold-hearted bastard.
What sort of a message does that send to ISIL?
Yet his golfing and laughing with friends, not giving in to their demands for cash as EU nations do, and continuing to bomb the crap out of ISIL positions in northern Iraq completely decimates the idea that he is weak. In fact, he looks pretty much like he is a cold-hearted bastard.
What sort of a message does that send to ISIL?
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Is Russia's Takeover of Ukraine About to Fail?
If there was ever any doubt that the people behind the insurgency in Ukraine were Russians who took their marching orders from Vladimir Putin, those doubts have now been put to rest.
The New York Times reports that as the rebellion in the Donetsk "People's Republic" has been slowly collapsing, Putin has pulled the Russians who were leading the insurgency out of the country. These leaders weren't Ukrainians of Russian descent, or Ukrainians who spoke Russian as their first language, but actual Russian citizens and members of the Russian military and FSB (the successor to the KGB).
Why yank the Russians commanders? Perhaps to lend more credibility to the "Ukrainianness" of the insurrection. But more to the point, if the Ukrainian government were to capture the Russian commanders when the insurgency is defeated, they might have some very embarrassing things to tell the world about Mr. Putin's and the Russian government's involvement in the war. This may be a hopeful sign: it may mean that Russia is abandoning the rebels.
They have replaced these Russians with Ukrainians who have less-than-stellar qualifications, including the new deputy defense minister, Fyodor Berezin, who before the rebellion was a science fiction author and purchaser of janitorial supplies for a university.
The Russians who have stepped down include Igor Strelkov (actually, Igor Girkin, the man who initially claimed credit for downing the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine), a Russian citizen and FSB colonel who was behind the takeover of Crimea; Aleksandr Borodai, a Russian citizen, who resigned as the Donetsk prime minister; Valery Bolotov, a Russian citizen, who resigned as the Luhansk prime minister; and Igor Bezler, a citizen of Crimea who was a member of the Russian army. The lone remaining Russian in the command structure is Vladimir Antyufeyev, a reputed spy who was apparently left behind to keep an eye on the Ukrainians.
And they need close watching:
Separatist fighters have taken to carousing drunkenly at night and wearing civilian clothes. This month, three of them crashed a car into the curb outside the Ramada hotel. On Saturday, two separatists again crashed at the same spot, rolling their vehicle and scattering broken glass and bullets on the street. On Tuesday, a drunken rebel, improbably, again crashed at that location, severely injuring four civilians.
As bystanders watched horrified, the drunken gunman, who was not wounded, drew a pistol and proceeded to kick one of the injured civilians, berating him for causing the accident.
As for Mr. Berezin, he seems to think he's living in a science fiction novel:
“Reality became scarier than science fiction,” he said in an interview over iced tea at the Havana Banana bar, a favorite rebel haunt. “I live in my books now. I fell right into the middle of my books.”This brought to mind another man who thinks we're living in a science fiction novel written by a Russian: Paul Ryan.
In 2009, in a multi-part video series posted to Facebook, Paul Ryan said that “what’s unique about what’s happening today in government, in the world, in America, is that it’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now. I think Ayn Rand [who emigrated from the Soviet Union and worked as a Hollywood screen writer] did the best job of anybody to build a moral case of capitalism, and that morality of capitalism is under assault.”
Incredibly, Ryan said this right after the financial meltdown in which immoral and unethical Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers nearly destroyed the world economy. But in a world where finance laws were crafted by Ayn Rand sycophants, most of the worst offenders have escaped prosecution.
I don't know which vision of the future is more depressing: Berezin's Parallel Cataclysm, in which the Soviet Union took over the world in an alternate dimension, or Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, in which unbridled selfishness and greed are portrayed as the apotheosis of human achievement.
I just wish these guys could actually go to these alternate dimensions, and stop trying to screw up this one with their crazy notions.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Monday, August 18, 2014
Killing Four Birds with One Stone?
 |
| Algae Systems' Pilot Plant |
[Algae Systems] has a pilot plant in Alabama that, it says, can turn a profit making diesel fuel from algae by simultaneously performing three other tasks: making clean water from municipal sewage (which it uses to fertilize the algae), using the carbon-heavy residue as fertilizer and generating valuable credits for advanced biofuels.How does it work?
At its heart is a “hydrothermal liquefaction” system that heats the algae and other solids in the sewage to more than 550 degrees Fahrenheit, at 3,000 pounds per square inch, turning out a liquid that resembles crude oil from a well.There's nothing magical or new about this: this is exactly how the crude oil and natural gas were formed that we're drilling out of the ground. Scientists have been piloting processes like this for years.
But there is a sticking point. The energy required to form crude oil naturally was "free:" it came from the sun and geological processes over millions of years. Whether Algae System's process can fulfill its promise depends on where they get the energy to raise the temperature and pressure.
If the process uses power generated by wind and solar, the liquid fuel produced would be carbon neutral. It could not only run vehicles, but also electrical generators that can feed electricity into the grid during the night and when the wind isn't blowing. Burning this oil wouldn't contribute to climate change, unlike the oil and natural gas drilled from the ground whose carbon was sequestered millions of years ago.
Photovoltaic power is getting cheap really fast, and there are many opportunities for installations. The rooftop of one Ikea store in Bloomington, Minnesota, generates a megawatt of electricity. There are thousands of Ikeas, Walmarts, Targets, Kohls and other stores that have big flat roofs that soak up lots of sun, all in cities that use lots of electricity. Cheap solar panels have the potential to generate a lot of electricity during peak times: the hottest part of the day, when everyone cranks up the AC.
If this pans out, wherever we have cities on large bodies of water we can generate crude oil. That's good all the way around: the majority of Americans live near some coast. Shipping oil long distances on rails or in pipelines is energy intensive and dangerous.
Geology has made states like Texas, Alaska, Oklahoma, Louisiana and North Dakota economic winners by happenstance of oil deposits. With this algae technology geography may have a similar influence: all the states on the ocean or the Great Lakes -- remember the toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie that poisoned Toledo's water this summer -- have the potential to become energy independent.
Better yet, if American companies develop and license this technology to other countries we can not only improve our balance of trade, we can undercut regimes like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran, whose vast oil wealth exerts a corrupting influence on their own internal politics as well as the rest of the world.
Complex and Unique
With the recent passing of new guns laws in the state of Massachusetts, I find myself in a reflective mood. The first question that comes to mind is would these laws be applicable to the rest of the country? Let's take a look.
The new law stiffens penalties for some gun-based crimes, creates a Web-based portal within the state Executive Office of Public Safety to allow for real-time background checks in private gun sales and calls for the creation of a firearms trafficking unit within the state police.
It also gives local police chiefs the right to go to court to try to deny firearms identification cards needed to buy rifles or shotguns to people they feel are unsuitable to have access to the weapons.
Another part of the law mandates Massachusetts join the National Instant Background Check System, which requires the state to transmit information about substance abuse or mental health commitments to a federal database that police can use to review firearms applications.
Certainly these are all good refinements and will likely prevent some gun violence. But Massachusetts ranks 33rd out of 50 states (and the District of Columbia) in gun murders per rate of 100,000 people according to the US Census taken in 2010 (1.8). In looking at the list, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Missouri, Maryland, and South Carolina have far worse murder rates and are clearly in need of a change.
Of course, the nature of that change and what it should entail is where the debates always begin. The problems in those states can likely be linked to the urban centers of each of them and not the rural areas. I know for a fact that the town in which I was born (Columbia, MO) has really gone down hill in terms of crime in the last decade. St Louis is pretty awful as well.
Thinking about all of this has led me to a conclusion on how we can best address the issue of gun violence in our country. Obviously, there are some basic things that can be done at a federal level and I have discussed them before. Real time background checks for private gun sales via a Web based portal is a great idea. The federal government should pick up the tab for this and offer it for free to each state.
Yet, the majority of the changes should happen at the state level. Is it really fair to ask Vermont or North Dakota to adhere to any new federal regulations when their gun violence rate is so low? More importantly, what are they doing that their rate is so low? Just a lack of people? If that's the case, why is Oregon, Minnesota and Iowa so low? My home state has more people than South Carolina. Why is Vermont so low and neighboring Delaware so high?
Local crime varies from state to state and must be taken into account. That's why it has always frustrated me when gun rights people point to Illinois and shriek, "See? They have tough gun laws but still have a high rate of violence." The violence in Chicago has no correlation with gun legislation. It has to do with the complexities of the area.
What these numbers show is that there is no easy or quick fix. Each state has to be examined for its own, unique complexity. Any new changes to existing gun laws have to speak to this uniqueness and complexity.
The new law stiffens penalties for some gun-based crimes, creates a Web-based portal within the state Executive Office of Public Safety to allow for real-time background checks in private gun sales and calls for the creation of a firearms trafficking unit within the state police.
It also gives local police chiefs the right to go to court to try to deny firearms identification cards needed to buy rifles or shotguns to people they feel are unsuitable to have access to the weapons.
Another part of the law mandates Massachusetts join the National Instant Background Check System, which requires the state to transmit information about substance abuse or mental health commitments to a federal database that police can use to review firearms applications.
Certainly these are all good refinements and will likely prevent some gun violence. But Massachusetts ranks 33rd out of 50 states (and the District of Columbia) in gun murders per rate of 100,000 people according to the US Census taken in 2010 (1.8). In looking at the list, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Missouri, Maryland, and South Carolina have far worse murder rates and are clearly in need of a change.
Of course, the nature of that change and what it should entail is where the debates always begin. The problems in those states can likely be linked to the urban centers of each of them and not the rural areas. I know for a fact that the town in which I was born (Columbia, MO) has really gone down hill in terms of crime in the last decade. St Louis is pretty awful as well.
Thinking about all of this has led me to a conclusion on how we can best address the issue of gun violence in our country. Obviously, there are some basic things that can be done at a federal level and I have discussed them before. Real time background checks for private gun sales via a Web based portal is a great idea. The federal government should pick up the tab for this and offer it for free to each state.
Yet, the majority of the changes should happen at the state level. Is it really fair to ask Vermont or North Dakota to adhere to any new federal regulations when their gun violence rate is so low? More importantly, what are they doing that their rate is so low? Just a lack of people? If that's the case, why is Oregon, Minnesota and Iowa so low? My home state has more people than South Carolina. Why is Vermont so low and neighboring Delaware so high?
Local crime varies from state to state and must be taken into account. That's why it has always frustrated me when gun rights people point to Illinois and shriek, "See? They have tough gun laws but still have a high rate of violence." The violence in Chicago has no correlation with gun legislation. It has to do with the complexities of the area.
What these numbers show is that there is no easy or quick fix. Each state has to be examined for its own, unique complexity. Any new changes to existing gun laws have to speak to this uniqueness and complexity.
Symbiotic Violence
The violence in Israel and Gaza seems senseless, but there is a cruel logic to it. For years the right wing leaders of Israel have put the screws to Gaza, instituting a blockade that has turned the city of nearly two million into a ghetto that almost resembles a concentration camp.
Israel's leaders claim this is necessary to prevent Hamas from smuggling in missiles and materiel that they use to attack Israel. Yet Hamas smuggled in thousands of missiles anyway. This harsh punishment of the general population for the actions of a small number of Hamas terrorists increases support for Hamas among Palestinians, because they feel that at least Hamas is doing something to fight Israeli oppression.
Hamas's missile barrages against Israel in turn increase support for the right-wing leaders who put the blockade on Gaza that incited the missile attacks in the first place.
Hamas and the Israeli right wing are thus locked in a symbiotic embrace of violence. The two sides gain power by egging each other on and hurting the innocent people in the middle. Every time moderate Palestinians make a conciliatory gesture, the right-wing Israeli housing minister annexes more land in the West Bank or clamps down on Gaza. Every time Israel makes some overture to peace, Hamas lobs more missiles at civilians in Tel Aviv or kidnaps an Israeli teenager or soldier.
Every Hamas attack requires some form of Israeli retribution, which begets another Hamas revenge attack, which incites more Israeli vengeance. Because the Palestinians and Israelis immediately allow violence to derail the peace process, there is no peace process: any kook can sabotage with a single act of terrorism or oppression.
And now we're seeing this same sort of mindset in the United States. In Ferguson, Missouri, the police force is 6% black while the town is 63% black. Eighty-six percent of traffic stops are made on blacks, and 92% of arrests are made on blacks. Similar statistics hold throughout the country, especially arrests for possession of marijuana and other trivial crimes.
Statistics like this make many blacks in the United States feel like they are prisoners in their own cities, ruled by white police forces that regularly use intimidation, brutality and guns to keep blacks in line.
I believe, though, that most white cops try mightily to prevent racism from coloring their judgment. And I know that most blacks in Ferguson are peaceful -- though righteously angry at the treatment blacks regularly receive at the hands of law enforcement.
But a few bad cops and a few black rabble rousers play off each other to make the situation in Ferguson deteriorate into the same sort of mess. It's starting to look a whole lot like Israel and Gaza.
Many police departments now have serious military equipment, including ATVs, ballistic armor, machine guns; they employ military tactics, including SWAT teams that burst into homes and apartments without knocking, as if they were assaulting Osama bin Laden's compound. The streets of Ferguson are almost indistinguishable from the streets of Gaza.
Now Governor Jay Nixon has called out the National Guard in Ferguson. The same National Guard that has been deployed to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What is this country coming to?
Because we have the National Guard, there is no need to militarize our police forces. Turning cops into soldiers is a grave error: as a matter of policy, the military can shoot first and ask questions later. Police forces that adopt that mindset are simply murderers.
This is the legacy of our national overreaction to 9/11. Americans have been hamstrung by fear, allowing themselves to abandon all dignity in airports, letting the NSA to run roughshod over our privacy, wasting hundreds billions of dollars on security and weapons that only increase our sense of fear and allow police to visit indignity and violence on the less fortunate in society.
We can't forget what happened on 9/11, but we have to break that horrible day's grasp on our souls. We can't keep saying "9/11" every time someone wants to take another one of our freedoms away.
Israel's leaders claim this is necessary to prevent Hamas from smuggling in missiles and materiel that they use to attack Israel. Yet Hamas smuggled in thousands of missiles anyway. This harsh punishment of the general population for the actions of a small number of Hamas terrorists increases support for Hamas among Palestinians, because they feel that at least Hamas is doing something to fight Israeli oppression.
Hamas's missile barrages against Israel in turn increase support for the right-wing leaders who put the blockade on Gaza that incited the missile attacks in the first place.
Hamas and the Israeli right wing are thus locked in a symbiotic embrace of violence. The two sides gain power by egging each other on and hurting the innocent people in the middle. Every time moderate Palestinians make a conciliatory gesture, the right-wing Israeli housing minister annexes more land in the West Bank or clamps down on Gaza. Every time Israel makes some overture to peace, Hamas lobs more missiles at civilians in Tel Aviv or kidnaps an Israeli teenager or soldier.
Every Hamas attack requires some form of Israeli retribution, which begets another Hamas revenge attack, which incites more Israeli vengeance. Because the Palestinians and Israelis immediately allow violence to derail the peace process, there is no peace process: any kook can sabotage with a single act of terrorism or oppression.
And now we're seeing this same sort of mindset in the United States. In Ferguson, Missouri, the police force is 6% black while the town is 63% black. Eighty-six percent of traffic stops are made on blacks, and 92% of arrests are made on blacks. Similar statistics hold throughout the country, especially arrests for possession of marijuana and other trivial crimes.
Statistics like this make many blacks in the United States feel like they are prisoners in their own cities, ruled by white police forces that regularly use intimidation, brutality and guns to keep blacks in line.
I believe, though, that most white cops try mightily to prevent racism from coloring their judgment. And I know that most blacks in Ferguson are peaceful -- though righteously angry at the treatment blacks regularly receive at the hands of law enforcement.
But a few bad cops and a few black rabble rousers play off each other to make the situation in Ferguson deteriorate into the same sort of mess. It's starting to look a whole lot like Israel and Gaza.
 |
| Ferguson, MO |
 |
| Gaza |
What is this country coming to?
Because we have the National Guard, there is no need to militarize our police forces. Turning cops into soldiers is a grave error: as a matter of policy, the military can shoot first and ask questions later. Police forces that adopt that mindset are simply murderers.
This is the legacy of our national overreaction to 9/11. Americans have been hamstrung by fear, allowing themselves to abandon all dignity in airports, letting the NSA to run roughshod over our privacy, wasting hundreds billions of dollars on security and weapons that only increase our sense of fear and allow police to visit indignity and violence on the less fortunate in society.
We can't forget what happened on 9/11, but we have to break that horrible day's grasp on our souls. We can't keep saying "9/11" every time someone wants to take another one of our freedoms away.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Good Words
From a question on Quora...
I worked in public schools for many years and am a graduate of public schools in the most conservative region of the country. I have yet to observe anything like indoctrination of any kind.
I'm really not sure how these urban legends or political mythologies start. I don't know any teachers who have time to brainwash children. Most appear to be very busy managing classes, teaching lessons and doing required paperwork.
Anybody who went into the classroom thinking there are all these young minds into which ideologies can simply be poured would find out very quickly that kids have the ability to think for themselves and come to the school with the cultural values they learn at home.
Yep.
I worked in public schools for many years and am a graduate of public schools in the most conservative region of the country. I have yet to observe anything like indoctrination of any kind.
I'm really not sure how these urban legends or political mythologies start. I don't know any teachers who have time to brainwash children. Most appear to be very busy managing classes, teaching lessons and doing required paperwork.
Anybody who went into the classroom thinking there are all these young minds into which ideologies can simply be poured would find out very quickly that kids have the ability to think for themselves and come to the school with the cultural values they learn at home.
Yep.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Benghazi Update
The only sound I have heard lately on Benghazi has been crickets and now we see why. The House Select Committee on Intelligence has concluded the following:
-- Intelligence agencies were "warned about an increased threat environment, but did not have specific tactical warning of an attack before it happened."
-- "A mixed group of individuals, including those associated with al Qaeda, (Moammar) Khadafy loyalists and other Libyan militias, participated in the attack."
-- "There was no 'stand-down order' given to American personnel attempting to offer assistance that evening, no illegal activity or illegal arms transfers occurring by U.S. personnel in Benghazi, and no American was left behind."
-- The administration's process for developing "talking points" was "flawed, but the talking points reflected the conflicting intelligence assessments in the days immediately following the crisis."
This was a committee made up of 12 Republicans and 9 Democrats.
So where does this leave Rep. Trey Gowdy's Benghazi Select Committee? Apparently not open to the public, according to its chairperson.
But when it became clear that he intended to lead the inquiry behind closed doors, far from the spotlight, the requests soon fell silent. “If you want to get on the news, then go rob a bank,” Gowdy, R-S.C., said, recounting his message to several Republicans on both sides of Capitol Hill, dashing their hopes of being featured in what they assumed would be high-profile televised hearings. “It’s going to be a professional investigation, despite folks who may want to see it be something else,” Gowdy told ABC News. “They’re going to be disappointed.”
Disappointed is putting it mildly. The clean up on bowels blown has already begun, hence the silence of late on Benghazi.
My prediction is that they will end up at the same conclusion as the Intelligence committee. What a waste of taxpayer dollars...so much for caring about frivolous, government spending.
-- Intelligence agencies were "warned about an increased threat environment, but did not have specific tactical warning of an attack before it happened."
-- "A mixed group of individuals, including those associated with al Qaeda, (Moammar) Khadafy loyalists and other Libyan militias, participated in the attack."
-- "There was no 'stand-down order' given to American personnel attempting to offer assistance that evening, no illegal activity or illegal arms transfers occurring by U.S. personnel in Benghazi, and no American was left behind."
-- The administration's process for developing "talking points" was "flawed, but the talking points reflected the conflicting intelligence assessments in the days immediately following the crisis."
This was a committee made up of 12 Republicans and 9 Democrats.
So where does this leave Rep. Trey Gowdy's Benghazi Select Committee? Apparently not open to the public, according to its chairperson.
But when it became clear that he intended to lead the inquiry behind closed doors, far from the spotlight, the requests soon fell silent. “If you want to get on the news, then go rob a bank,” Gowdy, R-S.C., said, recounting his message to several Republicans on both sides of Capitol Hill, dashing their hopes of being featured in what they assumed would be high-profile televised hearings. “It’s going to be a professional investigation, despite folks who may want to see it be something else,” Gowdy told ABC News. “They’re going to be disappointed.”
Disappointed is putting it mildly. The clean up on bowels blown has already begun, hence the silence of late on Benghazi.
My prediction is that they will end up at the same conclusion as the Intelligence committee. What a waste of taxpayer dollars...so much for caring about frivolous, government spending.
Friday, August 15, 2014
Enron All Over Again?
Remember Enron, the company that went bankrupt after gaming the electricity distribution system in California, screwing rate payers out of billions of dollars? Enron, the company that invented illegal strategies for shuttling electrical power in and out of California to take advantage of the state's deregulated electricity market, which was supposed to make things "more efficient?" Enron, the company whose traders gave those illegal schemes names like Fat Boy, Death Star and Get Shorty?
Enron, the company whose chief strategy officer, J. Clifford Baxter, was found dead, shot in the head, in his Mercedes-Benz in the middle of the road in suburban Houston, with a revolver and a suicide note? Baxter had complained to a whistleblower about Enron's bookkeeping tactics, and had resigned "to spend more time with his family." Baxter was potentially the star witness against other Enron execs. And then he wound up dead in the middle of the road with a bullet in his head.
Enron, the company whose traders were recorded saying things like:
Employee 1: "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?and
Employee 2: "Yeah, Grandma Millie man.
Employee 1: "Yeah, now she wants her f-----g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a—for f-----g $250 a megawatt hour."
"Just cut 'em off. They're so f----d. They should just bring back f-----g horses and carriages, f-----g lamps, f-----g kerosene lamps."Enron, the company that got Arnold Schwarzenegger elected governor by getting Californians so mad at Governor Gray Davis's inability to control Enron's rapacious behavior they tossed him out on his ear in a recall election?
Enron is dead and gone, as is its CEO and chairman, Ken Lay, who died in 2006 on vacation while still appealing his conviction for fraud, trying mightily to squirm out of a 45-year prison sentence.
But Enron's spiritual successors are alive and kicking. Companies like DC Energy are making a fortune on the electricity market by buying up contracts that pay off big during times of high demand. But DC Energy does not own any power plants, or power lines, or have anything at all to do with generating and distributing electricity. It's just an investment firm, buying and selling contracts. How is this possible?
Several years the electrical grid was deregulated to eliminate old monopolies and make more competitive markets. This was supposed to spur investment in better infrastructure and help companies balance loads. Instead, investment companies like DC Energy and Louis Dreyfus Energy got into the act, buying up contracts that were originally intended for companies that actually generate electricity be able to hedge their bets to avoid rate spikes and brownouts.
These contracts are creating perverse incentives in the electricity market: when there's congestion, they get rich. Really rich. Louis Dreyfus was caught doing manipulating electricity prices in 2009, and paid $7.4 million to settle these allegations. But no one went to jail, or even admitted fault.
When investment companies like DC Energy buy these contracts -- rather than companies who could use profits from those contracts to invest in more electrical generation and distribution capacity to reduce congestion -- all that money, paid by you and Grandma Millie, goes into the black hole of Wall Street.
These companies hire "quants," scientists and engineers versed in physics and math, who analyze demand and the grid to determine where congestion is most likely to occur. Then they buy the contracts for those times and places and make a killing at the expense of the local businesses and families that buy high-priced electricity from distant power plants.
DC Energy doesn't use that information to make the grid work more efficiently and prevent brownouts and huge rate spikes, which was the whole point of deregulation: they do it to cash in on other people's misery.
If you think you've heard the term "quant" before, you probably have. Quants engineered the 2008 financial meltdown, by applying their mathematical models to the toxic mortgage derivatives in another get-rich-quick scheme.
These scam artists will dress their scheme as somehow making the market more efficient. That might be true if power companies were taking the profit and using it balance their losses and improve capacity. But DC Energy is just a middle-man taking advantage of a shortage, gambling that they'll be able to buy electricity somewhere else more cheaply than what they promised to sell it for. They're taking the profits that real power companies would use to invest in eliminating physical bottlenecks and increasing efficiency in the real world of power generation. Not some obscure "marketplace efficiency" that exists only in economics text books.
By hijacking these profits, leeches like DC Energy are actively preventing improvements in the grid, and guaranteeing that our electrical distribution system will never be fixed.
The quants' previous scams resulted in the meltdown of our entire financial system. If we aren't careful, they'll melt down our entire electrical grid this time around.
Cooler Heads In Missouri
It seems like cooler heads are prevailing in Ferguson, Missouri as police and elected officials are finally having the right response.
The image to the left is State Trooper Captain Ron Johnson who is now in charge of maintaining law and order in Ferguson. Why this didn't happen sooner illustrates what a complete failure there was on the part of St Louis county police and the state government. Governor Nixon should have done this immediately after the looting had ceased.
I've also been most heartened to see people across the political spectrum questioning the militarization of the police department. Going all "Fallujah shock troops" as the county police did was ridiculous. It may have been needed for the looting and rioting but not for the peaceful protests. Check out this photo...
This is Tyson Manker, a U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, greeting another protester in Ferguson, Mo., yesterday.
"I have a problem with weapons of war now being used at home on peaceful protesters," said Manker.
Amen and Semper Fi!
I've also been most heartened to see people across the political spectrum questioning the militarization of the police department. Going all "Fallujah shock troops" as the county police did was ridiculous. It may have been needed for the looting and rioting but not for the peaceful protests. Check out this photo...
This is Tyson Manker, a U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, greeting another protester in Ferguson, Mo., yesterday.
"I have a problem with weapons of war now being used at home on peaceful protesters," said Manker.
Amen and Semper Fi!
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