You decide to look something up, in my case it was the, R-60 missile, and suddenly you realize that it is more than an hour later, and you are looking at a page about the spice trade of the 1700's, you ask yourself, "Well...How did I get here?"
In a dramatic shift in policy, the United States is preparing to send about 50 special operations forces to Syria within days to begin training and assisting “moderate” rebels fighting the Islamic State.This is nucking futs.
The U.S. military has sent elite forces into Syria before to conduct short in-and-out raids, but the move will for the first time keep American service members on the ground — and in harm’s way — in a four-plus year conflict that has killed over 200,000 people. It marks a significant departure in strategy for a White House that has repeatedly ruled out any U.S. “boots on the ground” in either Iraq or Syria and bristled at any suggestion that the American forces would take part in combat.
The U.S special operations forces being deployed to Syria will not play a direct combat role, at least initially, a senior defense official said Friday. Instead, the small number of commandos will focus more on advising local Arab and Kurdish rebels who are fighting the Islamic State in northern Syria.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Defense Department is not ruling out direct action raids in the future, but for now, “they will remain singularly at the headquarters” of the rebel groups, to ”help with operational planning.”
Still, the American forces could come under fire in their new mission, which could last weeks or months, officials said.
Faced with mounting and bipartisan opposition to increased and often high-stakes testing in the nation’s public schools, the Obama administration declared Saturday that the push had gone too far, acknowledged its own role in the proliferation of tests, and urged schools to step back and make exams less onerous and more purposeful.(emphasis mine)
Specifically, the administration called for a cap on assessment so that no child would spend more than 2 percent of classroom instruction time taking tests. It called on Congress to “reduce over-testing” as it reauthorizes the federal legislation governing the nation’s public elementary and secondary schools.
“I still have no question that we need to check at least once a year to make sure our kids are on track or identify areas where they need support,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, who has announced that he will leave office in December. “But I can’t tell you how many conversations I’m in with educators who are understandably stressed and concerned about an overemphasis on testing in some places and how much time testing and test prep are taking from instruction.”
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As a new generation of tests tied to the Common Core was rolled out last spring, several states abandoned plans to use the tests, while others renounced the Common Core, or rebranded it as a new set of local standards. And some parents, mostly in suburban areas, had their children opt out of the tests.
From the, "Even this Jew Knows This," department, we have a group of Catholic theologians objecting to Ross Douthat's writings on the Church and the Pope, not because there is anything inherently heretical about his writings, but because he os so ignorant of the basic principles of the Church that it is embarrassing:If you haven’t read Mr. Douthat’s piece, it’s worth a look—just keep a nitroglycerin pill handy, because it is a shocker, depicting the pope as a figure of “ostentatious humility” (naughty pope, rubbing his simplicity in our overfed faces) who is attempting to change that which Mr. Douthat says “the pope is supposed to have no power to change,” namely “Catholic doctrine.”I've known of this difference for years, even though there really is not an equivalent in Judaism, formalized doctrine implies a central authority that is lacking in Judaism, but it appears that Mr. Douthat does not.
Now, if you find yourself wondering, since when is the pope (or a synod, for that matter) unable to call for a change in church doctrine, well, that's a good question. The pope and the synod can in fact change doctrine, but not dogma.
Put simply, dogma is the stuff you have to accept if you’re going to call yourself Catholic. It's the Creed we recite every Sunday—things like the incarnation, the Trinity and the communion of the saints that we hold as undeniable tenets of our faith—plus any pronouncements that popes have invoked infallibly, which has happened almost never. The Assumption of Mary was such a pronouncement; so is the Immaculate Conception.
Doctrine, as the term is most commonly used (including here by Mr. Douthat), refers to the church's moral teachings, which develop over time as new questions and also new insights arise. Doctrinal teachings—of which the church’s stance regarding divorce is one—do not change often or easily. They can even be mistaken for dogma by the amount of resistance made at the suggestion of any alteration. But they are certainly capable of development. In fact that was one whole point of the synod—to reflect on the various questions of family today, in light of our tradition and the lived experience of Catholics, and consider what if any comments, including potentially changes in practice, should be offered.
NG beat out a coalition of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. (paid subscription required)Northrop Grumman is the winner of the Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) contest, beating a rival team with six times its annual sales.Note that the range is less than half that of the B-52 and the B-2, and 15 less than that of the B-1, which has been criticized for excessive use of tankers in combat operations.
The U.S. Air Force announced Oct. 27 that Northrop Grumman beat a Boeing/Lockheed Martin team in a competition to develop and build 100 of the bombers, which are expected to reach initial operational capability in the mid-2020s. The Pentagon says the next phase of the work, engineering and manufacturing development (EMD), should cost $21.4 billion in 2010 dollars, including the delivery of an unspecified number of test aircraft.
Another $1.9 billion has already been spent on risk reduction, bringing both competing teams through the initial design phase. In 2016 dollars, the estimated EMD cost is $23.5 billion, the Pentagon says. The B-2 cost $37.2 billion to develop in 2016 dollars.
The Air Force also says that the average procurement unit cost for the Northrop Grumman bomber (which does not have a formal designation yet) will be $511 million in 2010 dollars, assuming a 100-aircraft buy ($564 million in 2016 dollars). This figure, the result of two independent Pentagon estimates, is lower than the $550 million (2010 dollars) goal that was set in 2011, when then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates approved the start of the program.
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For the time being, however, the make-up of Northrop Grumman’s team is a secret, as are most attributes of the program. Not even the engine subcontractor is disclosed, although the Air Force said today that all major subsystems have been selected. Although most analysts agree it is overwhelmingly likely that the bomber will resemble a smaller cousin of the B-2, a blended wing-body aircraft with two engines and an unrefueled radius of action of around 2,500 nm, no such details have been confirmed.
Details of the selection process also remain highly classified, but it is likely that the winning bid rested on Northrop Grumman's operational experience with wide-band, all-aspect stealth technology on the B-2 bomber and the still-secret RQ-180 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) unmanned air vehicle.The USAF wants its strategic bomber, and because its first pass at this, the Next Generation Bomber, was expensive enough to make the B-2 look cheap, they trimmed away enough requirements to end up with something equivalent to the FB-111, which really isn't a strategic bomber at all.
But the winning formula was most likely not just a question of delivering more stealth or more range. In LRS-B, the winner had to meet a complex set of requirements that stress risk reduction, an open systems architecture, agile management and manufacturing technology.
Leaders of almost every major political party in the United Kingdom have signed an appeal not to allow a transatlantic trade deal known as TTIP become the Trojan horse that allows American business interests to take over the NHS.The Tories have been wanting to privatize the NHS since it began operations in 1948, and the Liberal Democrats have specialized in being completely useless and ineffectual since before Lloyd George died, so their actions are not surprising.
The appeal, organised by the trade union Unite, has achieved the rare feat of bringing together all of Northern Ireland’s main political parties. TTIP, or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, would free up trade between the US and the EU, by allowing companies from either side of the Atlantic to operate under the same rules.
One of its most controversial elements would be the creation of a new supranational court, the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) through which foreign investors could sue governments, or the EU, over any action or legislation that hurt their businesses. It is feared that an American private healthcare firm which was prevented from buying up part of the NHS would be able to go to the ISDS and claim millions of pounds in compensation from the British government for lost business.
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The appeal has also been signed by the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, the Ukip leader Nigel Farage, the Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, and Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood, and by Peter Robinson of the Democratic Unionist Party, and Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness.
The organisers, from Unite, say that they approached the Conservatives asking for support but were refused, and are awaiting a reply from the Liberal Democrats.
The South Carolina Sheriff's deputy captured on video forcefully removing a student from class has been fired, the local sheriff said Wednesday, less than a week after the incident at Spring Valley High School first came to the public's attention.Of course he is sorry that it all happened.
Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields was already suspended after videos of him flipping and tossing a black female student across a classroom went viral online.
Fields was told of his firing late Wednesday morning
"What he should not have done is throw the student," Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said. "Police officers make mistakes too. They're human and they need to be held accountable, and that's what we've done with Deputy Ben Fields."
Lott said he wouldn't describe Fields as remorseful, but rather sorry it all happened.
………(emphasis mine)
Fields said in during his deposition for a federal lawsuit filed against him that he is a competitive power lifter, saying it is a “sport,” where you “try to lift as much as you can at one time.”
In his deposition, Fields says he does not take steroids, but has not been tested for steroids in the past. He said he has taken supplements, including Creatin, to help build muscles.
As far as trade agreements are concerned, the recent focus here on Techdirt and elsewhere has been on TPP as it finally achieved some kind of agreement -- what kind, we still don't know, despite promises that the text would be released as soon as it was finished. But during this time, TPP's sibling, TAFTA/TTIP, has been grinding away slowly in the background. It's already well behind schedule -- there were rather ridiculous initial plans to get it finished by the end of last year -- and there's now evidence of growing panic among the negotiators that they won't even get it finished by the end of President Obama's second term, which would pose huge problems in terms of ratification.This is how this is really supposed to work.
One sign of that panic is that the original ambitions to include just about everything are being jettisoned, as it becomes clear that in some sectors -- cosmetics, for example -- the US and EU regulatory approaches are just too different to reconcile. Another indicator is an important leaked document obtained by the Guardian last week. It's the latest (29 September) draft proposal for the chapter on sustainable development. What emerges from every page of the document, embedded below, is that the European Commission is now so desperate for a deal -- any deal -- that it has gone back on just about every promise it made (pdf) to protect the environment and ensure that TTIP promoted sustainable development. Three environmental groups -- the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth Europe and PowerShift -- have taken advantage of this leak to offer an analysis of the European Commission's real intent in the environmental field. They see four key problems:The leaked text fails to provide any adequate defense for environment-related policies likely to be undermined by TTIP. For example, nothing in the text would prevent foreign corporations from launching challenges against climate or other environmental policies adopted on either side of the Atlantic in unaccountable trade tribunals.
The environmental provisions are vaguely worded, creating loopholes that would allow governments to continue environmentally harmful practices. The chapter lacks any obligation to ratify multilateral agreements that would bolster environmental protection and includes a set of vague goals with respect to biological diversity, illegal wildlife trade, and chemicals.
The leaked text includes several provisions that the European Commission may claim as "safeguards," such as a recognition of the "right of each Party determine its sustainable development policies and priorities" but none would effectively shield environmental policies from being challenged by rules in TTIP.
There is no enforcement mechanism for any of the provisions mentioned in the text. Even if one were included, it would still be weaker than the enforcement mechanism provided for foreign investors either through the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism or the renamed investment court system.
The U.S. military has two giant, unmanned surveillance blimps it uses to watch the East Coast from a base in Maryland. And one of them escaped its tethers Wednesday and floated aimlessly over Pennsylvania, downing power lines and cutting off electricity for tens of thousands of residents.I am sure that the 35,000 people who lost power would agree with Representative Speier.
The incident started shortly after noon, when the blimp became detached from its anchor, NORAD said. Two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled to ensure it didn’t collide with other aircraft. By late afternoon, the dirigible had come down to the ground near Moreland Township in Pennsylvania — after drifting more than 100 miles — but not before leaving a trail of damage in its wake.
It was unclear how the aerostat got loose and how it came down, said John Cornelio, a spokesman for NORAD. He added it was possible that the aerostat's helium could have run out.
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The blimp wreaked plenty of havoc. Frederick Hunsinger, the public safety director for Columbia County, Pa., said in an interview that the blimp’s heavy tether dragged for 20 miles across his county. There were no injuries within county borders, but the damage caused 35,000 to lose electricity, he said. Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania canceled classes as a result; 911 phone lines were overwhelmed.
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Known as the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, or JLENS, the blimp is technically an aerostat -- a term for a lighter-than-air craft that is tethered to the ground. The $2.7 billion program is on a three-year test run to see whether it can help detect cruise missiles or enemy aircraft from 10,000 feet above ground.
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The JLENS program “continues to drain money from taxpayers even though it serves no strategic purpose,” Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) said. “This incident is just another example of the problems inherent in an ill-conceived network of floating blimps that don’t provide any advantage over aircraft we’ve already bought.”
This is how it's done. Oligarchs pillage and loot so they can push their own version of history on everyone.Here's hoping that there will be a criminal prosecution, and a very pious Muslim cellmate, in their future.In 2011, a shipment of somewhere between 200 to 300 small clay tablets on their way to Oklahoma City from Israel was seized by U.S. Customs agents in Memphis. The tablets were inscribed in cuneiform—the script of ancient Assyria and Babylonia, present-day Iraq—and were thousands of years old. Their destination was the compound of the Hobby Lobby corporation, which became famous last year for winning a landmark Supreme Court case on religious freedom and government mandates. A senior law enforcement source with extensive knowledge of antiquities smuggling confirmed that these ancient artifacts had been purchased and were being imported by the deeply-religious owners of the crafting giant, the Green family of Oklahoma City. For the last four years, law enforcement sources tell The Daily Beast, the Greens have been under federal investigation for the illicit importation of cultural heritage from Iraq.For their part, Hobby Lobby is claiming it's just screwed-up paperwork. Nothing more than that. Just a customs mix-up that has taken well over 4 years to resolve. Not really.
These tablets, like the other 40,000 or so ancient artifacts owned by the Green family, were destined for the Museum of the Bible, the giant new museum funded by the Greens, slated to open in Washington, D.C., in 2017. Both the seizure of the cuneiform tablets and the subsequent federal investigation were confirmed to us by Cary Summers, the president of the Museum of the Bible.
A US tank has forced its way into the shell of the Afghanistan hospital destroyed in an airstrike 11 days ago, prompting warnings that the US military may have destroyed evidence in a potential war crimes investigation.And now we have another MSF hospital bombed, this one in Yemen.
As calls grow for independent inquiry into Kunduz airstrikes, the president of Médecins Sans Frontières demands that those responsible are held to account
The 3 October attack on the Médécins sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz killed 10 patients and 12 staff members of the group.
In a statement on Thursday, the medical charity, also known as Doctors Without Borders, said they were informed after Thursday’s “intrusion” that the tank was carrying investigators from a US-Nato-Afghan team which is investigating the attack.
“Their unannounced and forced entry damaged property, destroyed potential evidence and caused stress and fear,” MSF said.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reported intrusion, which came as new evidence emerged that US forces operating in the area at the time of the attack knew that the facility was a hospital.
Airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition targeting rebels in Yemen have destroyed a small hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in the northern province of Saada, although there were no deaths and only one injury, the aid group said Tuesday.MFS treats anyone regardless of politics, and I'm beginning to think the Pentagon, and the Saudi state security apparatus, don't like this.
The first of several strikes came around 11 p.m. on Monday and hit a building housing the facility’s administration offices, according to Hassan Boucenine, the aid group’s head of mission in Yemen who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone from the southern port city of Aden.
No one was inside at the time, he said, adding that by the time a second strike targeted the main nearby building about 10 minutes later, its occupants — some 12 staff and patients — had been evacuated.
“This attack is another illustration of a complete disregard for civilians in Yemen, where bombings have become a daily routine,” Boucenine said later in a statement by the group, also known by its French acronym MSF.
It urged coalition forces to explain the circumstances around the attack, saying that the hospital’s GPS coordinates were regularly shared with the Saudi-led coalition and its roof was clearly identified with its logo. The bombing of civilians and hospitals is a violation of international humanitarian law, it added.
The group operates in eight Yemeni governorates at a time when many foreign aid groups and even United Nations personnel have been evacuated. In its statement, it said the destroyed hospital had treated roughly 3,400 patients were since MSF began supporting it in May.
The Saudi-led, U.S.-backed coalition has been launching airstrikes against Yemen’s Shiite rebels, also known as Houthis, and their allies since March. Saada, the Houthis stronghold, has faced a particularly intense bombardment.
The United Nations said the facility was the 39th health center hit since the violence escalated in March, adding that critical shortages of fuel, medication, electricity and water could mean many more will close. Amnesty International said the strike may amount to a war crime and called for an independent investigation.
If you're keeping score at home, in Syria, we'll be fighting alongside the people against whom we'll be fighting in Syria. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And the friend of my friend is the enemy of the enemy of my friend. And the friend of the devil is a friend of mine. This isn't foreign policy. It's a Lewis Carroll poem, and it's getting to be a longer one.It appears that Obama's statements in 2003 that he opposed "Stupid Wars" is now inoperative.—Charlie Pierce on how the misruling class in DC seems determined to put boots on the ground in Syria.
Britain's opposition Labour Party haemorrhaged Scottish voters and seats in this year's General Election but newly installed leader Jeremy Corbyn may have a novel new way to get Scots back on the party's side.Labour has taken Scotland for granted for decades, and in the last election, they literally ran against Scotland, publicly refusing to deal with the Scottish National Party under any circumstances, even if it means that Labour would be unable to form a coalition government.
His idea is to hive off Scottish Labour altogether, meaning that the party north of the border will be able to propose tailor-made policies that are more attractive to voters in Scotland.
Policies on welfare and Trident, Britain's nuclear weapons programme, are said to be targeted by Scottish Labour.
Corbyn, who won by a landslide leadership victory vote just over a month ago, told The Sunday Times that he is aiming to create a "federal" party in Scotland.
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale supports this idea as she aims to tell parliament on Monday that Labour will seek greater "autonomy" in Scotland and use the powers of Holyrood [the capitol district of Edinburgh, Scotland] to have greater control over policies such as welfare.
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Not everyone in Labour is happy about. One source inside the party's National Executive Committee told The Times, “This looks worryingly like Jeremy Corbyn and Kezia Dugdale are trying to sneak through a secret plan to break up the Labour party.”
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The Labour Party depends on voter support from Scotland. Usually, according to electoral data, Scots vote for the Scottish National Party or Labour. In 2010, Scottish voter support for Labour cratered and the party lost 91 seats across Britain. The Scottish National Party stayed the same with only 6 seats.
However, the Scottish referendum in September 2014 boosted support for the SNP. In the 2015 General Election, Labour was more or less wiped out in Scotland, and the SNP gained 50 seats. The former Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont resigned a month after the referendum and quipped that the Labour party north of the border was being treated like a "branch office."
So, Corbyn's plans to create a federal party seems to be a good idea to win back voters.
Trump defends Islamic head coverings, says women want to wear them: "It's easy—you don’t have to put on makeup.”
https://t.co/tfLYhDv8ir
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) October 26, 2015Trump was speaking about foreign policy, which lead into his critique of anti-Muslim sentiments.Seriously.
Here are his comments in full:Then I saw women interviewed. They said, 'We want to wear them. We've worn them for a thousand years. Why would anyone tell us not to?' They want to! What the hell are we getting involved for? Fact it's easier. You don't have to put on make-up. Look at how beautiful everyone looks. Wouldn't it be easier? Right? Wouldn't that be easy?
What we have seen take place is nothing less than a feral and unhinged scream from the swamp of reaction that resides in our culture, where every crank with a computer resides, consumed with bitterness and untreated angst, much of it in the form of self loathing over their own inadequacies and lack of talent – not to mention in some cases a jump from the extreme left to extreme right of the political spectrum, with all the psychological dysfunction such a metamorphosis describes.Seriously, the public freak-out over Labour being run by a guy who is ……… Labor ……… is kind of a major mindf%$#.—John Wight at Counterpunch on observing the torrent of abuse that Seumas Milne has endured since become Jeremy Corbyn's communications chief
It's Kansas Governor Sam Brownback:Only 18 percent of Kansans are "very" or "somewhat satisfied" with Gov. Sam Brownback's (R) job performance, according to a poll from Fort Hays State University released Friday.It appears that the people of Kansas aren't evil, they are just kind of slow.
In comparison, President Barack Obama (D) had a job approval rating 10 points higher in the deep red state than the Republican governor: 28 percent.
“This could be some of the lowest approval ratings of any Kansas governor in history,” Bob Beatty, a political scientist at Washburn University, told the Topeka Capital-Journal on Saturday.
The EU appears to have broken a promise to reinforce environmental protections in a leaked draft negotiating text submitted in the latest round of TTIP talks in Miami.This is what always happens, because the goal of all of these deals has been to encourage a race to the bottom in terms of labor and environmental standards while making sure that the interests of parasitic financial interests are protected at all costs.
In January, the bloc promised to safeguard green laws, defend international standards and protect the EU’s right to set high levels of environmental protection, in a haggle with the US over terms for a free trade deal.
But a confidential text seen by the Guardian and filed in the sustainable development chapter of negotiations earlier this week contains only vaguely phrased and non-binding commitments to environmental safeguards.
No obligations to ratify international environmental conventions are proposed, and ways of enforcing goals on biodiversity, chemicals and the illegal wildlife trade are similarly absent.
The document does recognise a “right of each party to determine its sustainable development policies and priorities”. But lawyers say this will have far weaker standing than provisions allowing investors to sue states that pass laws breaching legitimate expectations of profit.
“The safeguards provided to sustainable development are virtually non-existent compared to those provided to investors and the difference is rather stark,” said Tim Grabiel, a Paris-based environmental attorney. “The sustainable development chapter comprises a series of aspirational statements and loosely worded commitments with an unclear dispute settlement mechanism. It has little if any legal force.”
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US officials maintain that few such cases are ever likely to be brought under the TTIP, which could wipe away tariffs in the world’s largest ever free trade deal.
However, environmental cases accounted for 60% of the 127 ISDS cases already brought against EU countries under bilateral trade agreements in the last two decades, according to Friends of the Earth Europe. Europe’s taxpayers paid out at least $3.5bn to private investors as a result.
Natacha Cingotti, a trade campaigner for the group, said that only a carve-out of environmental protections from the tribunal process could prevent such cases mushrooming after a TTIP deal.
“This new leak illustrates that the European commission is not serious about protecting essential safeguards for citizens and the environment in the context of the TTIP talks,” she told the Guardian. “Powerful corporate polluters are likely to get VIP treatment under it, while the only chapter that could bring strong language to protect essential regulations to build a sustainable future is weak and unenforceable.”
The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said on Friday that the additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers in the wake of highly publicized episodes of police brutality may have led to an increase in violent crime in some cities as officers have become less aggressive.Yes, we should embrace greater police accountability.
With his remarks, Mr. Comey lent the prestige of the F.B.I., the nation’s most prominent law enforcement agency, to a theory that is far from settled: that the increased attention on the police has made officers less aggressive and emboldened criminals. But he acknowledged that there is so far no data to back up his assertion and that it may be just one of many factors that are contributing to the rise in crime, like cheaper drugs and an increase in criminals who are being released from prison.
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Mr. Comey’s remarks caught officials by surprise at the Justice Department, where his views are not shared at the top levels. Holding the police accountable for civil rights violations has been a top priority at the department in recent years, and some senior officials do not believe that scrutiny of police officers has led to an increase in crime. While the department had no immediate comment on Friday, several officials privately fumed at Mr. Comey’s suggestion.
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After civil rights leaders and the Justice Department accused the Seattle Police Department of discriminatory policing and excessive force, the number of officer-instigated stops declined and crime ticked upward, said Kathleen O’Toole, the police chief.
Chief O’Toole said it was up to police leaders to insist on reversing that trend. The critiques made the department better, she said. Crime is down this year, and her city has hosted police officials from places such as Baltimore wanting to understand why.
“There’s never been as much scrutiny on police officers as there is now,” Chief O’Toole said. “We should embrace it.”
For the third time in a week, a Democrat has bowed out of the 2016 presidential race.While I agree with his two signature positions, pardoning Snowden and going metric, I also wonder why on earth anyone would make these items signature positions.
Lincoln Chafee, the former Rhode Island governor and senator, halted his long-shot quest for the Democratic nomination Friday.
"As you know I have been campaigning on a platform of prosperity through peace. But after much thought I have decided to end my campaign for president today," Chafee said in a speech before a Democratic National Committee women's event Friday morning.
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He unfurled a platform of freeing Edward Snowden and transferring the U.S. to the metric system. He raised just $15,000 for his campaign, and his awkward performance in the first Democratic debate left many wondering what his goal was in running.
Natalie is down for the weekend.
It's only been a month, but seems longer to me.
This begs the question: how do you get your newly minted college kid to visit occasionally, particularly when they live in the greatest city in the world.
This seemed to work.
For the past week and a half, I have been unable to get a song out of my head: Paul McCartney's Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.
While it is among my favorite works of his post Beatles, after a week and a half I am willing to drive an ice pick into my skull.
GAH!!!!
https://youtu.be/XsWufNDJl4M
The Navy is poised to promote the admiral in charge of its elite SEAL teams and other commando units even though Pentagon investigators determined that he illegally retaliated against staff members who he mistakenly suspected were whistleblowers.This sort of crap is one of the reasons that our military has had a long run of failures since 2001.
Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey was investigated five times by the Defense Department’s inspector general after subordinates complained that he had wrongly fired, demoted or punished them during a vengeful but fruitless hunt for the person who had anonymously reported him for a minor travel-policy infraction, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
After conducting separate, years-long investigations that involved more than 100 witnesses and 300,000 pages of e-mails, the inspector general upheld complaints from three of the five staff members. In each of those cases, it recommended that the Navy take action against Losey for violating whistleblower-protection laws, the documents show.
The Navy, however, dismissed the findings this month and decided not to discipline Losey, a preeminent figure in the military’s secretive Special Operations forces who once commanded SEAL Team 6, the clandestine unit known for killing terrorist targets such as Osama bin Laden. He now leads the Naval Special Warfare Command and has served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Panama, Bosnia, Somalia and other conflict zones.
Senior Navy leaders reviewed the inspector general’s investigations but “concluded that none of the allegations rose to the level of misconduct on Admiral Losey’s part,” Rear Adm. Dawn Cutler, the Navy’s chief spokeswoman, said in a statement. She added that “no further action is contemplated.”
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Critics say the previously undisclosed investigations into one of the Navy’s top SEALs underscore the weakness of the military’s whistleblower-protection law and how rarely violators are punished.
Under the law, commanders or senior civilian officials are prohibited from taking punitive action against anyone who has reported wrongdoing in the armed forces to the inspector general or members of Congress.
In comparison with other federal employees, whistleblowers working in the military or national security agencies must meet a higher burden of proof to win their cases. The odds are stacked against those who seek redress.
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The complaints against Losey also illustrate the Pentagon’s long-standing reluctance to discipline top brass for wrongdoing and how the military typically conceals misconduct investigations from public view. The armed forces rarely disclose the existence of such cases except in response to public-records requests, which usually take months to process.
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The turmoil began in July 2011, three weeks after Losey took charge of the military’s Special Operations Command for Africa, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany.
Someone filed an anonymous complaint with the inspector general alleging that Losey had improperly sought a government-paid plane ticket for his adult daughter when his family relocated to Germany.
In fact, Losey had paid for the plane ticket himself, and the complaint was soon dismissed. But enraged by what he saw as an act of disloyalty, the admiral became determined to find out who had reported him, according to the inspector general reports.
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“I don’t understand why Brian did what he did. He went hard over stupid on it,” said a senior military official who knew Losey well and served at the time with the U.S. Africa Command, the parent command for Losey’s group.
“He was concerned about disloyalty. But as I had another commander tell me, loyalty goes both ways,” said the military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of the investigations.
In the end, it turned out that Losey had the wrong people on his list of suspects.
Investigators determined that none of the people he retaliated against had filed the original complaint about his daughter’s plane ticket.
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The official said the Navy issued Losey a formal letter of counseling this month, advising him to be thoughtful and careful when handling such matters in the future but finding no wrongdoing on his part.
Meanwhile, the inspector general also recommended that the armed forces take action against two colonels who served as senior aides to Losey. Investigators determined that they had punished suspected whistleblowers, effectively acting on behalf of the admiral.
The price inmates pay to call their friends and family is set to decrease after the Federal Communications Commission voted Tuesday to cap the rates.I understand that a part of the corrections is punitive, but that is not an excuse to gouge prisoners and their families, particularly when the rest of us bear the cost of though increased recidivism and general misery.
The vote was part of a years-long push to decrease the cost of prison and jail calls, which have been described as predatory and are dramatically higher than general rates for the public.
"The truth is that each of us is paying a heavy price for what is now a predatory, scaled market regime," said Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a Democrat, who has led the charge. "None of us here would ever consider paying $500 a month for a voice only service where calls are routinely dropped for no reason."
The FCC also implemented new rules it said would “discourage” advance payments [kickbacks to the jails] that the few dominate calling services give to prisons to win exclusive contracts, sometimes described as "kickbacks." Advocates and even the phone companies themselves pushed the FCC to go further to end the payments altogether, which are technically called site commissions. But the FCC said its authority to do that is questionable.
Clyburn encouraged states to reevaluate those payments and to cap rates at even lower levels at the local level, as a few states have already done.
Most inmates' calling rates will drop to 11 cents per minute, though rates will be capped at higher prices in smaller prisons and jails. Other transaction fees will be capped between $2 and $6.
The cap is a more than 50 percent drop from previous limits, and those only applied to calls between states. The new cap will apply to all calls within a state and between states.
Civil rights groups and others have pointed to the benefits of inmates being able to make calls affordably and how close contact with family can help reduce recidivism.
Phone companies have been required to ensure that their rates for inmate calls are reasonable and fair. One way they have justified higher-than-normal prices in the past is by factoring in the upfront payments for contracts.
The new order would allow these payments to go forward but would prevent phone companies from factoring them in when calculating phone rates.
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has visited Moscow on his first overseas trip since the civil war broke out in his country in 2011.Russia is looking for an end to the civil war that serves their broader foreign policy goals.
During the surprise visit, he had talks with President Vladimir Putin.
Russia launched air strikes in Syria last month against the so-called Islamic State (IS) and other militant groups battling Mr Assad's forces.
Mr Assad said Russia's involvement had stopped "terrorism" becoming "more widespread and harmful" in Syria.
For his part, Mr Putin said Moscow's hope, in providing a "positive dynamic in the fighting", was that a "long term resolution can be achieved on the basis of a political process with the participation of all political forces, ethnic and religious groups".
The visit happened on Tuesday evening, but was not announced until Wednesday - after Mr Assad had returned to Damascus.
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President Assad's surprise visit to Moscow represents a sign of growing confidence by the embattled Syrian president. He feels it safe to leave Damascus for the first time since the civil war in Syria erupted.
It is also a visible symbol of Russia's confidence in the current Syrian regime. Having Mr Assad turn up in Moscow shows that there is little doubt that for now at least, President Putin is intent on shoring up Mr Assad's position.
But the trip may also mark a new stage in Russia's efforts to roll out a diplomatic plan alongside its military intervention in Syria; an illustration that Russia deals with Mr Assad, and that for now at least Mr Assad has to be part of any interim solution.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi is alleged to be under “enormous pressure” from Shiite militiamen and hardliners to seek Russian airstrikes on Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) targets. On Oct. 1, he had announced that such Russian intervention in his country would be welcome.Our foreign policy is morally and intellectually bankrupt, and seems to have as its only goal the maintenance of American dominance.
On Wednesday, the largest bloc in parliament, the Shiite Da’wa Party from which al-Abadi springs, sent a letter to the Prime Minister asking for Russian intervention.
He has established a joint intelligence center in Baghdad where reports are shared among Iraq, Iran, Russia and Syria.
But this week the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, visited Iraq and said he got assurances from PM al-Abadi that Russia would not fly missions against Daesh on Iraqi soil.
He said that there had been “angst” in the Pentagon when al-Abadi mentioned this possibility.
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In any case, the Iraqi press and parliament think that Gen. Dunford is being far too categorical in the way he describes Baghdad’s pledge. The Shiite militias, such as the Badr Corps and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq, intend to go on lobbying for Russian intervention. And, Parliament will take up the matter later this month.
From the point of view of the Shiite militias and politicians, the US air strikes have been way too leisurely. For the most part they seem to aim at containment of Daesh rather than rollback. The Shiite militias have been watching the extensive air strikes by Russia on rebel targets, with increasing envy. They want that kind of action.
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My guess is that the Obama administration hasn’t wanted to roll back Daesh quite yet, precisely because it would be the Badr Corps and similar hard line pro-Iran Shiite militias that would conduct the attack on Mosul. And that configuration would enrage the Sunni Iraqis further. The US is reaching out to Sunni tribal chieftains and wants to delay the taking of Mosul until there are enough such Sunnis and they can be positioned as the leading edge of the attack.
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The US desire to keep Russia out is likely in part a declaration of an old 19th-century style “Sphere of Influence.” Spheres of influence are exclusive. ………
If there are two edicts I try to follow whenever I'm writing, they are, first, write what is true and, second, avoid cliche at all costs. I bring that up only as a preface before saying the following: the UK is walking down an Orwellian path. It's nearly the cliche of cliches to say something like this, and yet it happens that the cliche is true. While there is most certainly a real thing known as a threat from Islamic terrorism, there is also such a thing as overreaction. What started as the British government's attempt to ban extremist thought from social media and television (under the notion that some thoughts are too dangerous to enjoy the freedom that other thoughts deserve) then devolved into the conscripting of teachers that were to be on the lookout for children that might become radicalized. To assist them with this, the government helpfully provided spy-software to use against students. Spy-software which itself was found to be exploitable in the most laughably easy of ways. This employed two of the most horrifying aspects of Orwell's Oceania: the concept of thought-crime and the employ of citizens to fearfully surveil one another.Crap like this happens, because we as a society have made a conscious decision to encourage rent of this sort behavior.
And now it seems the UK is going even further, adopting Oceania's reputation for the swallowing up of citizens should they be found suspect of thought-crime by those watchful citizens. Specifically, the Family Division of the Judiciary has put out a memo declaring exactly how it will remove children from the homes of anyone it suspects might radicalize those children. Here's a snippet.
Recent months have seen increasing numbers of children cases coming before the Family Division and the Family Court where there are allegations or suspicions: that children, with their parents or on their own, are planning or attempting or being groomed with a view to travel to parts of Syria controlled by the so-called Islamic State; that children have been or are at risk of being radicalised; or that children have been or at are at risk of being involved in terrorist activities either in this country or abroad.
Only a local authority can start care proceedings (see section 31(1) of the Children Act 1989 – the police powers are set out in section 46). However, any person with a proper interest in the welfare of a child can start proceedings under the inherent jurisdiction or apply to make a child a ward of court.2 Usually, in cases falling within the description in paragraph 1 above, it will be the local authority which starts proceedings under the inherent jurisdiction or applies to make a child a ward of court, and the court would not expect the police (who have other priorities and responsibilities) to do so. There is, however, no reason why in a case where it seems to the police to be necessary to do so, the police should not start such proceedings for the purposes, for example, of making a child a ward of court, obtaining an injunction to prevent the child travelling abroad, obtaining a passport order, or obtaining a Tipstaff location or collection order. Given the complexities of these cases, I have decided that, for the time being at least, all cases falling within the description in paragraph 1 above are to be heard by High Court Judges of the Family Division.
In other words, the High Court Judges within the Family Division are now tasked with determining whether children will be made wards of the state based solely on suspicions of possible radicalization. Children torn from mothers and fathers in Muslim homes will be subject to the whims and inherently flawed watch of the larger citizenry. A citizenry, mind you, that has had its vigilance unduly ramped up by the government's past actions and requests. It's hard to imagine a better recipe for the unfair targeting of Muslim families than this. Unfortunately for all concerned, this same memo imagined just such a recipe, making things even worse.
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Tax avoidance [Note: Tax avoidance uses legal, though frequently unethical, techniques to lower the tax burden. Tax evasion is a crime.] is a sore point in the United States, where the largest companies, including Apple, Amazon and many others, routinely try to minimize their bills. In Europe, the cases have hit a raw nerve in countries where citizens have been squeezed by years of austerity, and stoked friction among member states that are jockeying with one another for jobs and investment.
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After asking Dutch tax authorities and Starbucks to provide details of their tax deals last year, the commission determined the company’s tax setup with the Netherlands had no realistic economic justification. The case zeroed in on Alki, the British-based entity at the center of Starbucks’ efforts to reduce its Dutch and European tax bills.
In 2001, Starbucks installed its European corporate headquarters and a massive new coffee roasting plant in Amsterdam after conferring with Dutch tax authorities. The setup proved beneficial: Starbucks created several Dutch partnerships that were not subject to the country’s corporate tax, including one named Emerald City, a nickname for Seattle.
Emerald City owned Alki, which was set up in London to house Starbucks’ intellectual property. The intellectual property included logos and the recipe for roasting coffee beans, which Starbucks subsidiaries pay Alki a royalty to license. Because of its structure, Alki was not subject to corporate tax in the Netherlands or Britain.
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The recipe was basically the temperature for roasting beans, and appeared to be more like instructions than intellectual property. Yet counting it as such allowed Starbucks’ roasting unit to reallocate most of its profit to Alki in the form of royalties, the commission said, nearly wiping out the Dutch tax bill. No other Starbucks companies or roasters paid royalties for the same information, the commission said.
If there are two edicts I try to follow whenever I'm writing, they are, first, write what is true and, second, avoid cliche at all costs. I bring that up only as a preface before saying the following: the UK is walking down an Orwellian path. It's nearly the cliche of cliches to say something like this, and yet it happens that the cliche is true. While there is most certainly a real thing known as a threat from Islamic terrorism, there is also such a thing as overreaction. What started as the British government's attempt to ban extremist thought from social media and television (under the notion that some thoughts are too dangerous to enjoy the freedom that other thoughts deserve) then devolved into the conscripting of teachers that were to be on the lookout for children that might become radicalized. To assist them with this, the government helpfully provided spy-software to use against students. Spy-software which itself was found to be exploitable in the most laughably easy of ways. This employed two of the most horrifying aspects of Orwell's Oceania: the concept of thought-crime and the employ of citizens to fearfully surveil one another.The UK is beginning to resemble the movie "V", and a that the local media seems transfixed and appalled by the fact Jeremy Corbyn doesn't hate poor people for being poor.
And now it seems the UK is going even further, adopting Oceania's reputation for the swallowing up of citizens should they be found suspect of thought-crime by those watchful citizens. Specifically, the Family Division of the Judiciary has put out a memo declaring exactly how it will remove children from the homes of anyone it suspects might radicalize those children. Here's a snippet.
Recent months have seen increasing numbers of children cases coming before the Family Division and the Family Court where there are allegations or suspicions: that children, with their parents or on their own, are planning or attempting or being groomed with a view to travel to parts of Syria controlled by the so-called Islamic State; that children have been or are at risk of being radicalised; or that children have been or at are at risk of being involved in terrorist activities either in this country or abroad.Only a local authority can start care proceedings (see section 31(1) of the Children Act 1989 – the police powers are set out in section 46). However, any person with a proper interest in the welfare of a child can start proceedings under the inherent jurisdiction or apply to make a child a ward of court.2 Usually, in cases falling within the description in paragraph 1 above, it will be the local authority which starts proceedings under the inherent jurisdiction or applies to make a child a ward of court, and the court would not expect the police (who have other priorities and responsibilities) to do so. There is, however, no reason why in a case where it seems to the police to be necessary to do so, the police should not start such proceedings for the purposes, for example, of making a child a ward of court, obtaining an injunction to prevent the child travelling abroad, obtaining a passport order, or obtaining a Tipstaff location or collection order. Given the complexities of these cases, I have decided that, for the time being at least, all cases falling within the description in paragraph 1 above are to be heard by High Court Judges of the Family Division.In other words, the High Court Judges within the Family Division are now tasked with determining whether children will be made wards of the state based solely on suspicions of possible radicalization. Children torn from mothers and fathers in Muslim homes will be subject to the whims and inherently flawed watch of the larger citizenry. A citizenry, mind you, that has had its vigilance unduly ramped up by the government's past actions and requests. It's hard to imagine a better recipe for the unfair targeting of Muslim families than this. Unfortunately for all concerned, this same memo imagined just such a recipe, making things even worse.
On Tuesday night, Rep. Paul Ryan announced that he'll run for speaker of the House — if he gets the endorsement of every major Republican caucus by this Friday, and they agree to sign on to rules changes making it much harder for the far right to depose the speaker in the middle of a session.So I guess that we can add prima donna to his resume as well.
In a meeting with his House Republican colleagues, Ryan laid out several conditions that he'd want in exchange for taking the job. According to a statement issued by Ryan's office, he said:The last of those is particularly important. The statement from Ryan's office says he will only run "if he is a unity candidate — with the endorsement of all the conference's major caucuses," and that members should "make clear whether they support" him by Friday.
- That the next speaker should be "visionary" and "needs to use the platform to create a clear policy choice for the country"
- That rules should be changed to make it much more difficult to challenge the speaker's leadership in the middle of a House term
- That he wanted to spend "less time on the road" (meaning less than the three weekends a month Boehner spends fundraising)
- And that the next speaker should be "a unifying figure across the conference"
………This really is going to be the worst job in the world, and at the rate that this is going, I would expect half of the Republican Caucus to exhume the body of Ronald Reagan, and make him Speaker.
Comes now Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, who apparently will deign to become Speaker of the House, but only if the entire Republican caucus in the House supports him, and only if the more recalcitrant members of the caucus agree not to turn on him. This very much includes the 40 members of the so-called "Freedom Caucus," the prion-addled Patient Zeroes of movement conservatism, and the people who defenestrated John Boehner and also ended Kevin McCarthy's aspirations. So far, these folks seem reluctant to accept the conditions proposed by "Uncle Paul" Ryan.Ryan's conditions include rules changes that would make it more difficult to overthrow a sitting speaker - a provision that Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, a leader of the Freedom Caucus, said is a "non-starter." "We have to remember everything in the House and everything in Congress is about checks and balances," Labrador said. "We have two houses of Congress for that reason. We have three branches of government for that reason, and one of the reasons that every board has the freedom to vacate (the chair)." And fellow Freedom Caucus member Rep. Mo Brooks said in addition to that concern, he takes issue with Ryan's track record on immigration. "Paul Ryan's support for amnesty and open borders, that is a significant factor," the Alabama Republican said.Plainly, Paul Ryan wants to be granted the authority and prerogatives of a being powerful Speaker without having to earn them through the process of persuasion that became a requirement of the office beginning with the breaking of [Despotic House Speaker from the turn of the last century] Joe Cannon. Now, having Paul Ryan two heartbeats from the presidency is a goddamn awful idea merely on its merits. But, beyond that, his demands seem to me to be based on a fundamental misreading of the current political landscape. For the past 30 years, through the deliberate development of the political identity that infected the party with the prion disease, no Republican politician ever will be allowed to be truly safe. The party handed the skunks the weapons, and the skunks learned how to use them. You're their huckleberry now, sport.
Pakistani actress Veena Malik just appeared nude on the cover of FHM India sporting ink on her left arm saying "ISI".In this month’s issue of FHM India, an international men’s magazine, Pakistani actress Veena Malik made worldwide headlines with a risqué nude photo shoot. While much of the attention has been on what Malik wasn’t wearing, one of the most powerful elements of her photo shoot was what she was sporting: a big, bold tattoo on her left arm, stating very simply, "ISI," for Pakistani’s secretive Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.I am sure that there are some deeper sociological points here, but this tempest in a teapot also amusing as hell.
The cover headline: "Pakistani W.M.D. Veena Malik Shows You How to Throw a Grenade!"
Indeed, the cover has been explosive; PakAlertPress.com, for instance splashed a headline on its blog: "India and Pakistan Are Going Nuclear Over Provocative Political Tattoo." And the photo has elicited a furious reaction in Pakistan’s media and in its living rooms.
In one fell swoop, the enormous tattoo on a bare woman’s body managed to demystify, emasculate and parody the ISI — something most people have been afraid to do in public since the inception of the agency a year after the birth of the nation in 1947. Founded with a mission of coordinating intelligence in the country after Pakistan’s loss to India in the 1947 war in Kashmir, the agency has become a feared, though privately mocked, enterprise, its hands allegedly in every back-room Pakistani deal; rigging elections, training militants for battle in India and Afghanistan, and monitoring its own citizens. The tattoo’s location on Malik’s body takes on special meaning in light of retired Adm. Mike Mullen’s statement in September that the militant Haqqani Network, considered by most Western analysts and experts to be based in the tribal areas of Pakistan, is a "veritable arm" of the ISI.
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Kabeer Sharma, editor of FHM India, says the ISI tattoo was meant to be a sardonic reflection of India’s own conspiracy theories about the intelligence agency. "In India, you say, ‘The milk has gone bad. The ISI did it,’ They blame all of their problems on ISI," says Sharma.
Sharma, the son of an Indian satirist and New Delhi bookstore owner, says that a dilemma on the subcontinent is that folks don’t laugh enough over the absurdities of politics. "The problem," he says, "is that we all blame our problems on this imaginary force. Who is this ISI?" Meanwhile, on the Pakistan side, everything is blamed on RAW. "We collectively have no sense of humor. We have no sense of irony," he says.
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But this isn’t just a conspiracy hatched in India (though the magazine was produced there), feeding the siege mentality behind so much of the rhetoric in Pakistan. In a country where the "ghairat brigade," or honor squad, of talking heads takes regularly to the airwaves to defend Pakistan’s honor against enemies — perceived and imagined — the photo shoot was a victory for a new movement that is emerging in Pakistan: the beghairat brigade, or the squad "without honor," or more aptly the "shameless brigade."
To many, the beghairat brigade offers a counter to the conspiracy theories that so permeate debates in Pakistan. Josh White, a scholar on Pakistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace, says, "I think the significance of the small but interesting beghairat movement is that it is trying to forge a way of being genuinely nationalistic without accepting the narrative that all of Pakistan’s problems are the result of someone else’s meddling."