Your Daily Schadenfreude

Almost two years ago, I mocked hedge fund manager Bill Ackman's jihad against Herbalife.

The nickel tour was that he went heavily short on Herbalife, and then he aggressively lobbied regulators to shut the company's business model down.

Ackman's actions were a primer on how Wall Street types used the political and regulatory processes in an attempt to enrich themselves.

He asserted that Herbalife's business model was essentially a pyramid scheme, and now the FTC has ruled against some of the supplement manufacturer's business practices, but the ruling was limited, and Ackman's short bets will not pay off:

For nearly four years, Herbalife has been locked in a fierce Wall Street battle with billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. But on Friday the dietary supplements seller scored an enormous victory in this fight.

The Federal Trade Commission said on Friday that it had charged Herbalife with deceiving consumers into believing they could earn substantial money selling diet nutritional supplements, but it did not determine that Herbalife is a pyramid scheme or fraud like Ackman had alleged for years. Herbalife said on Friday it will pay $200 million in a settlement with the FTC. The settlement will force Herbalife to change some of its key business practices, but the regulatory investigation of Herbalife will not end with the type of knock-out blow that Ackman clearly had hoped.

The FTC did make strong accusations against Herbalife, claiming that Herbalife’s compensation structure was unfair because it “rewards distributors for recruiting others to join and purchase products in order to advance in the marketing program, rather than in response to actual retail demand for the product, causing substantial economic injury to many of its distributors.”

………

Still, the FTC settlement looks to be another big setback for Ackman, whose Pershing Square hedge fund is under pressure after suffering large losses over the last 12 months, mostly from a disastrous big bet on Valeant Pharmaceuticals, a company with a stock that has crashed. Pershing Square has a long-running and very large short position in Herbalife.

………

Ackman’s Pershing Square Holdings has already plunged by 19.1% this year after falling by 20.5% in 2015, and Ackman’s assets under management have fallen sharply. Ackman has suggested that he would continue to pursue his crusade against Herbalife even if his effort to get U.S. regulators to shut the company down was unsuccessful. He once said he would go “to the end of the earth” in his battle against the company and became teary eyed on a stage when describing the damage he believed it had done.

………

Michael Johnson, Herbalife’s longtime CEO who has been at the forefront of the company’s battle against Ackman, argued the settlement was a big win. The company also announced that it had reached a $3 million settlement of an investigation conducted by the Attorney General of Illinois that had also hung over the company. “The settlements are an acknowledgment that our business model is sound and underscore our confidence in our ability to move forward successfully, otherwise we would not have agreed to the terms,” Johnson said in a statement.

It's nice to see a self styled hedgie "geniuses" taken down a few notches.

What a Surprise, The 911 Report on the House of Saud is Dumped on a Friday Evening

The 28 pages on the potential connections between the House of Saud and the 911 hijackers has finally been released.

There are what appear to be connections between Saudi Officials and the 911 hijackers, though they are indirect:

Saudi nationals connected to the government in Riyadh may have aided some of the Sept. 11 hijackers in the U.S. before they carried out their attacks, according to a long-classified portion of a congressional inquiry.

"While in the United States, some of the September 11 hijackers were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi government,” according to the section released Friday by the House Intelligence Committee with some portions blacked out.

But top U.S. intelligence officials who approved releasing the report, as families of some of the 3,000 victims of the attacks have long demanded, emphasized that they didn’t consider it accurate or reliable. Saudi officials have long said the 28 pages from the report written in 2002 provide no evidence that the U.S. ally was involved in the attacks, and that conclusion was echoed by the lawmakers who released the document.

The 28 pages do “not put forward vetted conclusions, but rather unverified leads that were later fully investigated by the intelligence committee,” Representative Devin Nunes of California, the committee’s Republican chairman, said in a statement.

………

The release also was praised by former Democratic Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who has long differed with most fellow lawmakers about the significance of the 28 pages and the likelihood of Saudi involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We’re now at a point where the American people can read the 28 pages and form their own opinion," Graham, a former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, said in a telephone interview. "This makes a very compelling case that the Saudis were the source of assistance to the 9/11 hijackers."

Rather unsurprisingly, there appear to be ties between the hijackers and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan:

One of the individuals cited in the previously classified material is Osama Bassnan, who the FBI and CIA suspected may have been in contact in San Diego with two of the 19 hijackers — 15 of whom were Saudi nationals. The document states that the FBI "confirmed" that Bassnan's wife received money directly from the wife of Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the ambassador to the United States.

Like a bad penny, we find Prince Bandar yet again.

I won't go as far as the folks at New York Post, who flat out declare Saudi culpability, but the history of the Saudi regime, particularly when juxtaposed by efforts to suppress this information by the Saudis, does create the impression that the House of Saud is not the stalwart ally that the conventional wisdom in Washington, DC portrays them to be.

Admittedly, Just One Report, But If True, Nice Was Not Terrorism

There is a report that  Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the alleged perpetrator of an attack in Nice that has killed over 80 people,  may have been depressed because his wife left him.

If this is true, it means that this guy was not ISIS or al Qaeda, but a spree killer driven over the edge by family problems,

That would make him culturally American:

A terrorist who used a hired lorry to kill at least 84 people in a rampage during Bastille Day celebrations in Nice has been named as a convicted criminal well known to the police for armed attacks.

Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel - described as a "weird loner" who "became depressed" when his wife left him - was a French passport holder who lived in the Riviera city and was regularly in trouble with the law.

The 31-year-old delivery driver's wife is this afternoon in police custody as officers question her about his alleged Islamist links. Bouhlel was reportedly not on a terrorist watch list and investigators are seeking to establish his motives - and are also looking for possible accomplices.

………

Neighbours described him as a "very weird loner" and father of three who had recently become estranged from his wife and had become depressed following the breakdown of his marriage.

Seriously, if these reports are accurate, he sounds a lot like the majority of the white mass shooters in the United States.

There is an Ongoing Coup Attempt in Turkey

There is Civilian Resistance

As is frequently the case, the picture of what is going on is unclear:

A military coup attempt plunged Turkey into a long night of violence and intrigue on Friday, threatening its embattled president and injecting new instability into a crucial NATO member and American ally in the chaotic Middle East.

The coup attempt was followed hours later by an equally dramatic public appearance by the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose whereabouts was unknown for hours after the plotters claimed to have taken control. Flying into Istanbul Ataturk Airport from an undisclosed location early Saturday, Mr. Erdogan signaled the coup was failing.

“A minority within the armed forces has unfortunately been unable to stomach Turkey’s unity,” Mr. Erdogan said, after the private NTV television channel showed him greeting supporters. Blaming political enemies, Mr. Erdogan said: “What is being perpetrated is a rebellion and a treason. They will pay a heavy price for their treason to Turkey.”

There were indications that the coup’s leaders, at a minimum, did not have a tight grip on many parts of the country. Supporters of Mr. Erdogan took to the streets of Istanbul to oppose the coup’s plotters. More than 130 people have been arrested in connection with the coup attempt, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in comments to CNN Turk.

Nonetheless, the abrupt turn of events in Turkey left Mr. Erdogan’s grip on power uncertain. The country has been reeling from a wave of deadly extremism by the Islamic State militant group, struggling to accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war in neighboring Syria and fighting a resurgent Kurdish rebellion in the Turkish southeast.

Martial law was declared in the country, which has been convulsed by military takeovers at least three times in the past half-century. Mr. Erdogan, an Islamist who has dominated politics for more than a decade and sought to exert greater control over the armed forces, was forced to use his iPhone’s FaceTime app from a secret location to broadcast messages beseeching the public to resist the coup attempt.

Erdogan has been a disaster for Turkey and the Middle East:  He has systematically dismantled the already meager protections of civil rights in Turkey, and has (at least until recently) been a supporter, along with the House of Saud of the Islamic State terrorist group.

Additionally, he has taken to stoking ethnic tensions with the Kurds, and re-initiated operations in Kurdish regions that is brutal even by the standards of the Turkish-Kurdish convlict.

If he were to leave the political stage it would be a good thing for pretty much everyone who has to deal with him.

On the other hand, a coup d'etat by the military is not a good thing.

There is no upside to this.

And the Former Walmart Board Member Goes Back to F%$#ing the American Worker

Hillary just promised to preserve the H1B Visa in all its corrupt wage depressing glory:

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton vowed on Thursday to uphold the high-skill visas prized by the tech industry as part of comprehensive immigration reform, clarifying media reports that suggested her position on immigration policy would make it harder for Silicon Valley companies to hire talented workers.

“Part of what we have to be strong in standing for is a credible path forward for reform that is truly comprehensive, addressing all aspects of the system. Including immigrants living here today, those who wish to come in the days ahead. From highly skilled workers to family members. To those seeking refuge from violence wherever that might occur,” Clinton said, speaking to a room full of Latino activists during a speech at the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) conference luncheon.

“To families this is an issue that matters more than we can measure. There’s nothing I take more seriously.”

The tech industry has been a major supporter of immigration reform in general, but particularly favors the high-skill or H-1B visa program, which allows companies to hire immigrants to fill technical positions.

The H-1B system is supposed to allow companies to employ foreigners who have unique skills not available in the us.

In truth, it allows the importation of cheap slave labor.

H/t ECop at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

It's Official, Yes Minister is a Documentary

This is almost as prescient as The Onion declaring that "Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over," in January 2001

This is the only explanation for the appointment of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as the new British Foreign Minister by Prime Minister Theresa May:

For the second time in a month, Britain has given the Washington foreign policy establishment a surprise, and not a wholly pleasant one. First there was the startling news of Brexit. Now there is Boris Johnson as foreign secretary.

“In the same way Brexit undermined the British relationship with the EU, Boris Johnson will undermine the British relationship with the rest of the world,” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a political consulting firm headquartered in New York. “So you’ve got the map covered at this point.”

Johnson arrives in his new post under new British prime minister Theresa May with unusually heavy baggage. On Thursday the Washington Post, ever influential among US policymakers, published a digest of his past gaffes under a headline that drew attention to a 2007 Daily Telegraph column in which he backed Hillary Clinton for president and wrote of her: “She’s got dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital.”

 He was similarly colo(u)rful about Vladimir Putin:

Johnson compared the Russian president to a character straight out of the Harry Potter books, in a 2015 column for The Telegraph newspaper about working with Russia to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"Despite looking a bit like Dobby the House Elf, he is a ruthless and manipulative tyrant"

And he also rote a rather rude contest winning limerick about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and he described George W. Bush as, "A cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomizes the arrogance of American foreign policy," as well as the bon mot that, "For 10 years we in the Tory Party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing," which left that island nation's attache in London unamused.

(FWIW, I think that all of this is a hoot, but making him FM is a complete mind f%$#.)


Still, it is not surprising that the rest of the world is wondering if London is just f%$#ing with them.

Like I said, the BritCom Yes Minister is a documentary.

This Has Fail Written All over It

It appears that the brain dead ammosexuals in Ohio have written laws in such a way that protesters at the Republican convention will have the right to open carry firearms:

Cleveland officials said Wednesday that they will uphold the right of protesters at the Republican National Convention to carry firearms even as they expressed opposition to the state’s open carry laws.

Speaking to reporters in advance of the Republican National Convention next week, both Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson and police Chief Calvin Williams they were bound by the state’s laws allowing people to carry guns even if they disagreed with them.

………

“It’s the law in this state. As police chief, I’m bound to uphold the law in this state,” he added.

………

Cleveland has banned a wide array of items inside a broad zone in downtown Cleveland around the convention site, including water guns, toy guns, knives, aerosol cans, rope, tennis balls and others. But because of Ohio’s open carry laws, protesters who legally own a firearm will be allowed to carry it near the convention center.

For their next trick, Ohio Republicans are going to gargle with Plutonium, or French kiss cobras, or some other damn fool bit of lunacy.

This will not end well.

H/t Talking Points Memo.

Where There's a Wool, There's a Way*

It appears that the people fo the Faroe Islands want to have Google cameras taking pictures of them when they are unaware so that the island is covered by Google Street View^™.

I find this odd, but who am I to judge them?

What is odd is that they have a shortage of motor vehicles, so they mounted the Street View^™ equipment on sheep:

Living across 18 tiny sub-polar islands in the north Atlantic, Faroe islanders are used to working in difficult conditions. So tired of waiting for Google Street View to come and map the roads, causeways and bridges of the archipelago, a team has set up its own mapping project – Sheep View 360.

With the help of a local shepherd and a specially built harness built by a fellow islander, Durita Dahl Andreassen of Visit Faroe Islands has fitted five of the island’s sheep with a 360-degree camera.

As the sheep walk and graze around the island, the pictures are sent back to Andreassen with GPS co-ordinates, which she then uploads to Google Street View.

“Here in the Faroe Islands we have to do things our way,” says Andreassen. “Knowing that we are so small and Google is so big, we felt this was the thing to do.”

My mind is officially blown.

Clearly


^*H/t Emptywheel for the joke, which she described as a, "Baaad joke."  Ouch.

Justifiably Speaking Ill of the Dead

One of the longest serving employees of the Department of Justice, Davit Margolis, has died, and he leaves behind a shameful record of institutional coverups and obstruction:

David Margolis was a living legend and giant at the Department of Justice. Now he has passed. Just posted is the following from DOJ:

………

I am sure Mr. Margolis was a kind, personable and decent chap to those who knew and worked with him. I can be sure because there have been many voices I know who have related exactly that. He was undoubtedly a good family man and pillar of his community. None of that is hard to believe, indeed, it is easy to believe.

Sally Yates is spot on when she says Margolis’ “dedication to our [DOJ] mission knew no bounds”. That is not necessarily in a good way though, and Margolis was far from the the “personification of all that is good about the Department of Justice”. Mr. Margolis may have been such internally at the Department, but it is far less than clear he is really all that to the public and citizenry the Department is designed to serve. Indeed there is a pretty long record Mr. Margolis consistently not only frustrated accountability for DOJ malfeasance, but was the hand which guided and ingrained the craven protection of any and all DOJ attorneys for accountability, no matter how deeply they defiled the arc of justice.

This is no small matter. When DOJ Inspectors General go to Congress to decry the fact that there is an internal protection racket within the Department of Justice shielding even the worst wrongs by Department attorneys, as IG Glen Fine did:

………

Said fact and heinous lack of accountability for Justice Department attorneys, not just in Washington, but across the country and territories, is largely because of, and jealously ingrained by, David Margolis. What Glen Fine was testifying about is the fact there is no independent regulation and accountability for DOJ attorneys.

They are generally excluded from the Department IG purview of authority, and it is rare, if ever, courts or state bar authorities will formally review DOJ attorneys without going throughout the filter of the OPR – the Office of Professional Responsibility – within the Department. A protection racket designed and jealously guarded for decades by David Margolis. Even when cases were found egregious enough to be referred out of OPR, they went to…..David Margolis.

In fact, attuned people literally called the OPR the “Roach Motel”:

“I used to call it the Roach Motel of the Justice Department,” says Fordham University law professor Bruce A. Green, a former federal prosecutor and ethics committee co-chair for the ABA Criminal Justice Section. “Cases check in, but they don’t check out.”

If you want a solid history of OPR, and the malfeasance it and Margolis have cravenly protected going back well over a decade, please go read “The Roach Motel”, a 2009 article in no less an authority than the American Bar Association Journal. It is a stunning and damning report. It is hard to describe just how much this one man, David Margolis, has frustrated public transparency and accountability into the Justice Department that supposedly works for the citizens of the United States. It is astounding really.

The OPR is broken beyond repair.

Shut it down, layoff all the employees, and have an IG with real power.

Whether Mr. was a product of the corrupt culture at the OPR, or he was the creator of such a culture, the culture is there, the fact remains that it is a corrupt and opaque organization, and changing it will be next to impossible.

Sigh………

Bernie Sanders has officially endorsed Hillary Clinton.

I knew that this was going to happen, but I'm still bumming.

Oh Crap

One of GM's suppliers just went chapter 11, and it has the potential to shut down automobile assembly across General Motors:

A Massachusetts supplier that filed for bankruptcy protection last week could disrupt production at nearly every General Motors North American plant in coming days, according to documents filed in bankruptcy court.

Clark-Cutler-McDermott, based in Franklin, Mass., supplies acoustic insulation and interior trim products for automobiles, textiles and other transportation manufacturers. But GM is its largest customer and Clark-Cutler-McDermott is losing more than $30,000 a day — and more than $12 million since 2013 — partly because what GM pays for those components "usually decreases annually," CEO James McDermott stated in a court filing.

But GM has no other supplier for the parts CCM provided and any interruption in delivery of those parts would cost the automaker "millions of dollars per day per plant," GM said in another filing.

GM obtained a restraining order last month compelling CCM to continue supplying those items specified in its purchase orders with GM. But that order expired July 1. CCM filed for protection under Chapter 11 of federal bankruptcy law on July 7.

………

In a separate dispute, CCM wants to use $1.9 million of cash it held when it filed for bankruptcy to pay its workers. GM contends it provided most of that cash as part of its temporary restraining order.

GM doesn't object to CCM paying workers for what was produced before the bankruptcy filing, but it does not want its cash used to pay workers if they aren't making GM's parts.

This could get very messy very quickly.

A lot of plants are retooling for the new model year right now, but if they lack the parts to reopen, we are going to see some major issues with the economy just as the presidential election ramps up, particularly in the Midwest.

Quote of the Day

I'm all for pragmatism and common sense in these things. All the regulars here know that. But, in this case, I'd almost rather have an open, declared enemy than this back-stabbing false balancing oligarch sock puppet. He's just a prettier version of Joe Lieberman. He's one of that tiny handful of people who make me sound like the people I deride as the rainbow farting unicorn-mounted purity cavalry.

—a Comment from ncsteve on Talking Points Memo in response to the news that contemptible Evan Bayh is running for Senate Again.

I wholeheartedly agree.

Linkage

• Aspartame intake is associated with greater glucose intolerance in individuals with obesity (Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism) Like we didn't know that diet soda is awful for you.
• A Few Upsides of the Brexit Disaster (The Rude Pundit) "Two words: Bargain corgis."  LOL
• The New Payola: Deals Landlords Cut with Internet Providers (Backchannel) The wonder of the neoliberal free market:  Monopoly rents.
• The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs almost got us, too (The Week) Mammals were hit just as hard, but proved more adaptable.
• The Billionaire Pedophile Who Could Bring Down Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (The Daily Beast) F%$# it.  I am writing Jeremy Corbyn in.
• Is the Supreme Court Clueless About Corruption? Ask Jack Abramoff (The New York Times) A pretty good examination of the Bob McDonnell decision.  (Robert Reich calls it a decision to legalize bribery.)
• New research: ‘competing’ aggressively on tax reduces growth (Foolsgold International) Not a surprise.  Public giveaways to private enterprise does not work.
• The Bahamas’ new U.S. travel advisory: Use ‘extreme caution’ around police (The Washington Post) The citizens of the Bahamas are overwhelmingly of African extraction, and they are warning them US police officers constitute a potential threat.  Who says that Irony is dead?

Coffee: The real truth:

I am So Not Sorry for these Rat F%$#s

The Blairite front benchers have concluded that their attempted removal of Jeremy Corbyn from his leadership of Labour has failed:

Labour rebels are in retreat after admitting that Jeremy Corbyn cannot be removed and would "win easily" if a leadership election is triggered.

One senior Labour MP said: "It's finished" as it emerged that lengthy talks between union bosses and Tom Watson, the party's deputy leader, had failed to find a solution to the deadlock.

MPs have now pinned their hopes on a challenge by Angela Eagle, despite many believing that she will not beat Mr Corbyn because of his support among members.

It follows weeks of stalemate between the Labour leader's office and MPs who want to see Mr Corbyn step down without having to trigger a leadership campaign.

The Labour rules automatically put Corbyn on the ballot, he does not need MP's signatures on the ballot to be listed, and it is clear to anyone with two brain cells to rub together he will win any election that is held by a large margin.

Corbyn should use this as an opportunity to clear house.

I Really Don't Have Much to Say About This

The killings of black men by police early last week, and the shootings of officers in Dallas are clearly both awful things.

It's ironic that this happened in Dallas, because the DPD has been at the forefront of reforms in policing:

………

In the aftermath of the chaotic and deadly scene that unfolded in Dallas on Thursday night, where five law enforcement officers were killed and at least seven others were wounded, government officials and law enforcement experts have noted that the Dallas Police Department has distinguished itself as a model of police reform. As Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings put it in a somber press conference Friday morning, “This police department trained in de-escalation far before cities across America did it. We’re one of the premier community policing cities in the country and this year we have the fewest police officer-related shootings than any large city in America.”

Among the changes the Dallas police have made since 2012: a new foot chase policy aimed at discouraging officers from making risky decisions while pursuing suspects, new guidelines for reporting encounters involving the use of force, and a policy of bringing in the FBI Civil Rights Division to review all police-involved shootings. Since 2014, the department has maintained one website containing a trove of data on more than a decade of police-involved shootings in the city, and another that catalogues all police encounters that result in an officer drawing a weapon, using a baton, or physically restraining a suspect. In 2015, the department received $3.7 million in funding from the Dallas City Council so it could buy 1,000 body cameras over the course of the next five years.

Perhaps the most significant reforms, as suggested by the mayor’s comments, have centered on training. In 2014, Brown introduced a plan to sharply increase the amount of deadly force training required of patrol officers and began to emphasize de-escalation techniques at the Dallas Police Academy.

Brown’s efforts have coincided with a dramatic drop in excessive force complaints. In 2009, the year before he took over the department, there were 147 such complaints filed; as of November 2015, there had been just 13 for the year. Brown told the Morning News in 2015 that he credited the new training methods with a 40 percent year-on-year drop in police shootings and a 30 percent drop in assaults on officers. BuzzFeed’s Albert Samaha points out that, in the years since 2012 (when Dallas police shot 23 people), the frequency of officer-involved shootings has consistently fallen; according to the department’s data, there were 11 last year, and before Thursday, there had been just one in 2016. The fact that Dallas’ murder rate continues to decline, the Washington Post’s Radley Balko has noted, is evidence that a department “can embrace policing policies that are community-friendly, open and transparent, and dedicated to minimizing the use of force and violence ... and still enjoy the same or greater drops in crime we’re seeing elsewhere.”

Modern police training in the US, and the associated legal regime, have institutionalized cowardice as both a strategy used by the police as a justifications for dubious use of force, and as an alibi used by police in the aftermath these actions.

Second, I would suggest that anyone who suggests that Micah Xavier Johnson is somehow the responsibility of the Black Lives Matter movement, or of the greater Black community, (I'm looking at you, Fox News) is an idiot and a bigot.

Yes, Making You Pay to Access Laws is Such a Good Idea (Not)

There are a number of lawsuits trying to enforce copyright on laws and the standards that they reference:

You would think that "the law" is obviously part of the public domain. It seems particularly crazy to think that any part of the law itself might be covered by copyright, or (worse) locked up behind some sort of paywall where you cannot read it. Carl Malamud has spent many years working to make sure the law is freely accessible... and he's been sued a bunch of times and is still in the middle of many lawsuits, including one from the State of Georgia for publishing its official annotated code (the state claims the annotations are covered by copyright).

But there's another area that he's fought over for many years: the idea that standards that are "incorporated by reference" into the law should also be public. The issue is that many lawmakers, when creating regulations will often cite private industry "standards" as part of the regulations. So, things like building codes may cite standards for, say, sheet metal and air conditioning that were put together by the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association (SMACNA), and say that buildings need to follow SMACNA's standards. And those standards may be great -- but if you can't actually read t

he standards, how can you obey the law. At one point SMACNA went after Malamud for publishing its standards. And while they eventually backed down, others are still in court against Malamud -- including the American Society for Testing & Materials (ASTM), whose case against Malamud is set to go to trial in the fall.

In the midst of all of this, various standards making bodies, along with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), have been working over time to get the American Bar Association to adopt a proposal that limits publication of standards that are incorporated by reference. ANSI has pushed for a solution it prefers called "reasonable availability," in which the standard-makers decide by themselves how best to make the standards "available." ANSI, for example, hosts a bunch of incorporated by reference standards on its website -- but the only way to read them is to install a special kind of DRM (Windows and Mac only) that makes the documents purely read only. You are not allowed to save them. You are not allowed to download them permanently. You are not allowed to print them. And it's not all standards that are incorporated by reference. Why do they do this? Well, most of them sell their standards to professionals who need to buy them, and they don't want to give up on that revenue source (especially once those standards are incorporated by reference because at that point they become mandatory).

The technical term for this, "Nucking Futs."

BTW, it does not just occur in law, it is common among international standards bodies for contributors to insert their IP into those standards, and then extract rents.

Our IP system is seriously broken.

And the JSF Clustf%$# Continues

If there was one thing that you would think that the people managing could get right, it would be the rather prosaic ejection seat, which has been in fighter jets since the Korean war.

You would be wrong:

The US Air Force is looking into the possibility of replacing the Martin-Baker ejection seat on the F-35 joint strike fighter with the United Technologies ACES 5 model, Defense News has learned.

While still in the earliest stages, such a move could have have massive repercussions for the F-35 supply chain, impacting the workshare strategy that forms the backbone for the international fleet of the Lockheed Martin-designed fighter.

………

At the core of the Air Force's move is concern over pilot safety following the discovery that F-35 pilots under 136 pounds were at increased, potentially fatal, risk of neck damage when ejecting from the plane aboard the Martin-Baker US16E design. The service has also acknowledged an “elevated level of risk” for pilots between 136 and 165 pounds.

Defense News first broke the news of that issue in October. As a result of the issue, pilots under 136 pounds are prohibited from operating the fifth-generation fighter, which went operational for the Marines in 2015 and is expected to be operational for the Air Force by the end of this year.

That pilot risk, Bunch said, is unacceptable.

………

Based on Bunch's comments, it appears Air Force officials are concerned that another problem could occur with the Martin-Baker seat in the future, which raised the question of why the Air Force is only now starting to look at a backup option, eight months after the pilot safety concerns became public knowledge.

This is a big deal, particularly since changing the seats will mess up the work share with the UK. (Martin Baker is a UK firm)

The fact that this is still up in the air while the various branches are attempting to declare, or have declared, Initial Operating Capability (IOC) .

This is a definition of IOC that I was previously unaware of.

The Cat is Right

H/t Erica Wood on Facebook.

This is brilliant.

And He Would Have Gotten Away with It Too, If It Weren't for That Meddling Journalist

David Sirota has been all over the conflicts of interest and corruption at the heart of the proposed merger between the health insurers Anthem and Cigna:

Late last week, there was some notable news in the arcane world of insurance regulation: Connecticut’s state comptroller, Kevin Lembo, called on Insurance Department Commissioner Katharine Wade to recuse herself from a review of the proposed merger of the nation’s second- and fourth-largest insurers, Anthem and Cigna, in which the state has a lead role. “The revelations and repeated reports about your financial, personal and professional ties to Cigna,” Lembo wrote to Wade, “will make it challenging for the Connecticut public to view the review process of the Anthem-Cigna merger as fair and transparent.”

Lembo’s letter marked the latest turn in a controversy that, while building for more than a year, has come to a head over the past month—driven in substantial part by the ongoing reporting of David Sirota, the Denver-based senior investigations editor for the International Business Times. On June 1, Sirota published a lengthy piece weaving together previously-known and new concerns over conflicts of interest surrounding the merger review: Wade, appointed to her role in 2015 by Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, is a former longtime Cigna lobbyist, her husband is a top Cigna lawyer, her father-in-law works for a law firm that lobbies for Cigna, and her mother worked for Cigna as recently as 2013. Wade’s brother, Sirota reported, also “previously worked as a counsel” for Cigna. Further, after reviewing more than a decade’s worth of campaign finance data, Sirota showed that Anthem, Cigna, and Cigna’s lobbying firm gave more than $2 million to groups linked to Gov. Malloy, with much of that money coming since 2015.

Since then, Sirota has produced more than a dozen follow-ups on the topic—tracking, for example, grassroots groups and state legislators calling on Malloy to remove Wade from the merger review—as what he initially envisioned as a “good little blog item” turned into an investigative series.

 Unfortunately, IBT is suffering financial difficulties, so go to their Political Capital page, and clock on their ads.

Seriously though, this coverage is kicking some major ass.

Headline of the Day

Saturday's Tour De France Stage Might Be Infested with Llamas

This does sound like something out of Llamas with Hats.

Karl!!!!!

And the Con Continues to Unravel

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has been banned from running labs for 2 years:

In a severe turn of events for former blood testing darling Theranos, which has been defending itself against accusations of wrongdoing for months, U.S. regulators slapped strong sanctions against the company and its owner.

Theranos said in a statement issued late Thursday that the certificate for its lab in Newark, Calif., had been revoked, its approval to receive Medicare and Medicaid payments "cancelled," and that it would have to pay an unspecified fine. In addition, chief executive Elizabeth Holmes, the company's founder, will be banned from owning, operating or directing a lab for at least two years.

………

Theranos was perhaps the most celebrated of these young companies. Holmes was at one time compared to Apple's Steve Jobs, and the company's valuation was estimated to be a staggering $9 billion at its peak.

I still don't understand how this company was ever seen as a success.

Their technology never worked., but supposedly sophisticated investors showered them with hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is nuts.

Good Jobs Stats this MOnth

287,000 new jobs in June:

Quashing worries that job growth is flagging, the government on Friday reported that employers increased payrolls by 287,000 in June, an arresting surge that could reframe the economic debate just weeks before Republicans and Democrats gather for their conventions.

The official unemployment rate did rise to 4.9 percent, from 4.7 percent, but that was largely because more Americans rejoined the work force. And average hourly earnings ticked up again, continuing a pattern of rising wages that brought the yearly gain to 2.6 percent.

“Wow, this one takes my breath away,” said Diane Swonk, an independent economist in Chicago.

An unexpectedly grim employment report in May combined with Britain’s vote to leave the European Union had fanned wider concerns that the American economy was in danger of stalling. During its meeting last month, the Federal Reserve unanimously decided to postpone increasing the benchmark interest rate.

It's just one month, and part of that number is Verizon strikers returning to work, and it follows a horrible May.

About all we can say is that the Fed almost certainly won't do anything with rates before the election.

Quote of the Day

Clinton will probably get through this, but if she has any plans to shoot people on major thoroughfares or conduct human sacrifices in honor of the goddess of time and death, she'd be wise to put them on hold.

—Eirc Zorn explaining how he's willing to cut Hillary Clinton a lot of slack because she is not Donald Trump.

The Natives are Restless in Euro Land

It looks like a number of the periphery countries in the EU are unamused that decisions about a response to the Brexit are being made without consulting them:

Janos Lazar's shock revelation on Thursday afternoon came as a growing number of EU members have joined a queue to back leaving the bloc after Britons voted to leave last week.

The Minister for the Prime Minister's office, said: "I couldn't vote whole-heartedly for Hungary to stay in the EU.

"Europe does not equal the EU. The EU is not able to protect the rights and values of Europe."

He said it was his own opinion, and not the government's.

Mr Lazar voted for Hungary to join the EU 12 years ago, but said he has been very disappointed ever since.

Mr Lazar added: "The Hungarian government is not planning on holding a referendum on leaving the EU."

Hungary, which joined the EU in 2004, has become part of a core group of rebels, including Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, who threatened today to draw up their own plans for a less centralised EU.

Poland, which also joined in 2004, is leading the rebellion by nine former communist countries after accusing the old guard - Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands - of monopolising EU discussions after holding private talks in Berlin over the weekend.

Of course, people like the head of the right wing Dutch Freedom Party, Geert Wilders, is calling for Holland to leave the EU, but they have been (rightly) dismissed  as cranks.

Now they are being viewed as a threat.

The real danger of the long standing dysfunction of the EU is that it is increasingly empowering people like Wilders and granting legitimacy to their hatred.

This is not going to end well.

Tweet of the Day

One of those uses the street finds for technology is smartphones finally showing us all how US cops just straight-up murder black people.

— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) July 7, 2016

Yes, this is the author of Neuromancer, and yes, he is completely correct.

The Chilcot Report is Out, and It's 12 Volumes of Whup Ass

The reporting is reveals the mendacity, incompetence, and complete impotenceof Tony Blair on Iraq:

The Chilcot inquiry has delivered a damning verdict on the decision by former prime minister Tony Blair to commit British troops to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It says:

The UK chose to join the invasion before peaceful options had been exhausted
Chilcot is withering about Blair’s choice to join the US invasion. He says: “We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.”

Blair deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein
Chilcot finds that Blair deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by the Iraqi regime as he sought to make the case for military action to MPs and the public in the buildup to the invasion in 2002 and 2003. The then prime minister disregarded warnings about the potential consequences of military action, and relied too heavily on his own beliefs, rather than the more nuanced judgments of the intelligence services. “The judgments about Iraq’s capabilities ... were presented with a certainty that was not justified,” the report says.

Blair promised George Bush: ’I will be with you, whatever’
Tony Blair wrote to George W Bush eight months before the Iraq invasion to offer his unqualified backing for war well before UN weapons inspectors had complete their work, saying: “I will be with you, whatever.” In a six-page memo marked secret and personal, the then British prime minister told Bush, US president at the time, in July 2002 that the removal of Saddam Hussein would “free up the region” even if Iraqis may “feel ambivalent about being invaded”. It was one of 29 letters Blair sent to Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war, during the conflict and in its devastating aftermath, released on Wednesday as part of the Chilcot report.

"I will be with you whatever".

He really was Bush's Poodle.

I would also note that current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is suggesting that the parliament should take some sort of action against blair, which implies that he is generally supportive of efforts by some Scottish National Party MPs to draft bills of impeachment against Blair: (Impeachment is a very different thing in the UK)

Senior figures from Labour and the Scottish National party are considering calls for legal action against Tony Blair if the former prime minister faces severe criticisms from the long-awaited inquiry into the war in Iraq.

A number of MPs led by Alex Salmond are expected to use an ancient law to try to impeach the former prime minister when the Chilcot report comes out on Wednesday.

The law, last used in 1806 when the Tory minister Lord Melville was charged for misappropriating official funds, is seen in Westminster as an alternative form of punishment that could ensure Blair never holds office again.

Triggering the process simply requires an MP to propose a motion and provide supporting evidence as part of a document called the article of impeachment which has no time limit placed upon it. If the impeachment attempt is approved by MPs, the defendant is delivered to Black Rod [kind of like a sergeant at arms] before a trial.

A simple majority is required to convict, at which point a sentence can be passed which could, in theory, involve Blair being sent to prison. However, MPs have said the attempt will be symbolic and is unlikely to result in imprisonment.

Salmond, the former Scottish first minister, said there “has to be a judicial or political reckoning” for Blair’s role in the Iraq conflict. “He seemed puzzled as to why Jeremy Corbyn thinks he is a war criminal, why people don’t like him,” he told Sky News.

“The reason is 179 British war dead, 150,000 immediate dead from the Iraq conflict, the Middle East in flames, the world faced with an existential crisis on terrorism – these are just some of the reasons perhaps he should understand why people don’t hold him in the highest regard.

“[MPs] believe you cannot have a situation where this country blunders into an illegal war with the appalling consequences and at the end of the day there isn’t a reckoning. There has to be a judicial or political reckoning for that.”

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, did not disagree with the suggestion that he and Corbyn were going to “crucify” the former leader for “being a war criminal”.

I really hope that Blair is impeached.

It would result in his living he rest of his life in well-deserved disgrace, and it would also mean that his lucrative consultancy business would likely be dashed.

I'd like to see jail time, but that won't happen, so disgrace is the best one can hope for.

Nice to See a Politician Taking Piss Out of Himself

In this case, Jeremy Corbyn.

This is the Least Surprising News in ……… Ever

One of the theories in modern economics is that people will engage in behavior that will provide them with a perceived benefit.

This is literally Economics 101. (Really. It's in the text books.)

It's called Rational Choice Theory, and it is a bedrock of Neoliberal (free market mousketeer) economics.

One of the blind spots amongst the followers of Rational Choice Theory is that whenever excessive executive compensation or control fraud is brought up, they suggest that managers operate in the best interests of the shareholders, and further argue that their bloated remuneration is what leads them to take this course.

Of course this has never happened in the history of ……… ever:

It won't surprise any market-watcher to learn that in the run-up to earnings season, companies tend to lower the bar for top and bottom line performance, thereby giving themselves better odds of exceeding analysts' expectations.

However, a new working paper suggests that the sins of omission that occur during the corporate "cheating" season, as it was dubbed by Societe Generale Global Head of Quantitative Strategy Andrew Lapthorne, are far more insidious.

Authors Kenneth Froot, Namho Kang, Gideon Ozik, and Ronnie Sadka conclude that managers mislead analysts and shareholders during earnings reports, and that their penchant for massaging expectations downwards may be employed in order to open up a window to buy their stock on the cheap in the near future.

It's not just about buying stocks, its about manipulating the price of stock options.

The researchers developed two hypotheses: either managers make disclosures in a timely matter (and their forward-looking information is quickly reflected in stock prices) or members of the C-Suite actively "lean against the wind" to understate good or bad news — or even offer the completely wrong impression of what's transpired since the last quarter ended.

Their findings suggest that guidance (or "bundled forecasts") provided by managers as well as the general tone of the conference call (analyzed using a "bag of words" approach) "point toward rejection of Timely Disclosure in favor of the Leaning Against the Wind alternative."

"Leaning against the wind," huh?

I would call it lying, and some would call it fraud, but I am an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit!<sup>*

*</sup>I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

No Charges on the Email

The FBI has announced that it has completed its probe, and that it feels that no charges are justified.

It was a whole lot of nothing from the perspective of a criminal investigation, though some people involved should have their clearances pullec.

While at the Other Ocean………

It appears that the elections called by Malcolm Trumbull just made Australia's approval of the TPP next to impossible in the near future:

With a new Senate likely to be hostile to free trade deals, the road to signing the Trans-Pacific Partnership just got bumpy, writes Richard Denniss.

One thing that is certain after Saturday’s election, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is dead, and along with it the Coalition’s economic agenda and narrative. The free trade agreements that Andrew Robb signed with China, Korea, and Japan were some of Tony Abbott’s proudest achievements, yet they are exactly the sort of deals that Pauline Hanson, Nick Xenophon, and Jacqui Lambie believe cost Australian manufacturing workers jobs.

And thanks to Malcolm Turnbull’s new Senate voting rules and double dissolution election, Hanson, Xenophon, and Lambie are now the block of votes that the Coalition will need to win over to pass their legislation when the ALP and Greens are opposed.

This may not kill the TPP, but it has the effect of making the timetable Obama that wants (he sees it as a presidential legacy issus), where there is a lame duck vote, next to impossible.

It is not clear who will win the election, but it is clear that the Colalition will not have the votes to pass TPP without significant support from smaller parties because the Senate is looking to be a complete mess, and unlike other upper houses in the British Commonwealth, the Australian Senate is much more powerful, being somewhat analogous to the US Senate in power.

Again, good news, because much like CETA and the TPIP, the TPP is a horribly flawed "trade deal."

Looks Like the EU Just Threw a Roadblock in Front of CETA

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada now must be approved by individual parliaments, and not the European Council and European Parliament:

The European Commission performed a startling U-turn on its landmark trade agreement with Canada on Tuesday, succumbing to pressure from France and Germany by deciding that national parliaments would have to ratify the deal.

The need for approval from almost 40 national and regional assemblies not only threatens to scupper the Canadian deal itself, but delivers an ominous signal to British politicians who insist that the U.K. could negotiate a quick post-Brexit trade accord with the EU.

Speaking in Strasbourg, Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said the EU had decided to call the Canada deal a “mixed agreement.” This means that the bloc’s most significant trade deal to date is now hostage to hostile lawmakers in parliaments ranging from Romania to the Belgian region of Wallonia.

I think that this development is being driven by two things:

• Concern that the British Brexit vote is spreading to other EU members, particularly on the periphery.
• Setting a precedent of allowing every member of the EU to have a potential veto over the conditions over which the UK would negotiate its leaving the EU.

I think that this also means that the trade deal, which is a kind of mini-TTIP will not happen in the next 12 months or so, if at all:

The decision, taken during a meeting of the EU’s commissioners in Strasbourg, represented a surprising volte-face because the Commission had hoped to treat the accord as an EU-only deal, meaning it would require approval only from the European Parliament and national governments in the Council.

The Canadian deal has stoked sensitivities across Europe primarily because it is seen as a precursor to the far more contentious Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the U.S.

Matthias Fekl, France’s trade minister, said it was “unbelievable” that Brussels had been planning to treat the deal as an exclusively EU competence.

“I find it even more hallucinatory only a few days after the result of the British referendum that one could envisage this type of procedure at the level of the European Commission,” he told the news agency AFP in an interview.

The tortuous path to approve the deal will sound alarms in London, where politicians are pinning their hopes on a quick settlement with the EU after Brexit. Debates in national parliaments could potentially add years of delay to the Canadian accord, which has already taken seven years to finalize.

It isn't often that you get a diplomat using the adjective hallucinatory.

This also does not bode well for the TTIP.

Considering the impacts of such trade deals, inflated pharmaceutical prices, destructive capital flows, increased financialization of economies, etc.  This is a good thing.

Tweet of the Day

The warning signs were there for Team Trump: pic.twitter.com/8Nwc30Ddnl

— Matt Ortega (@MattOrtega) July 5, 2016

If you don't get the reference, just read a f%$3ing newspaper.

I Called This

A few days ago, I made a comment on a Facebook post in response to the an assertion that the British have no leverage in negotiating the Brexit.

I noted that Britain is by far the most EU migrants of any nation in the organization, and that they could use that as leverage in negotiations.

FWIW, the numbers are pretty stark: 1.2 million Britons living in other EU countries versus 3.3 million EU citizens living in the UK.

I would also argue that a larger proportion of the British expats are pensioners than the EU expats, because people don't tend to move to England to retire, they move to England to work.

In any case, the Conservative Party has announced that any decision on the status of EU citizens living in the UK would be the product of the negotiating process:

British immigration minister James Brokenshire told the House of Commons Monday that the government cannot make any promises about the future of EU citizens in the U.K.

It would be “unwise” to tell them they can stay before the U.K. has negotiated with other EU countries about the rights of British nationals living elsewhere in Europe.

Brokenshire added that if the government made a promise now, that could trigger more migrants to come to the EU.

He also said that “EU nationals continue to be welcome here in the meantime.”

“EU nationals can have our full reassurance that their right to enter, work and study in the U.K. remains unchanged.”

………

The debate came after Home Secretary Theresa May, who is in the race to become the next Conservative party leader, on Sunday said that the position of EU nationals remains unclear.

The irony here is that May is an opponent of Brexit, while her opponents for party leader, Michael Gove and Andrea Leadsom, are both saying that expelling EU nationals in the UK should not be on the table.

Needless to say, the status of EU nationals in the UK has to be on the table, particularly if Article 50 is invokes, as Brussels has no reason to negotiate in good faith otherwise, and every reason to allow the clock to run out, so as to punish the UK for leaving.

Quote of the Day

People ignore experts because the experts have been systematically misleading them about what the benefits of policies are likely to be.

—Sandwichman at Angry Bear

He is talking about how various "experts" are perplexed by the fact that a majority of the voters in the UK ignored them and voted for Brexit.

As he notes, the experts for years have been saying that structures can be established for the winners to support the losers, but the policies they support not only make 90% of the population worse off, but it diminishes the political, economic, and, social power of the bottom 90%, which means a withdrawal of support.

This leads to more policies that disadvantage a majority of the population, further increase the power and wealth of the elites.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

This is Good News, Not Bad News

It appears that in response to the Brexit vote, house prices in London have fallen.

This is actually a good thing. Ordinary people have been priced out of London by overpaid parasites from the City of London (investment banking), and foreigners who are using London real estate to as a way to hide and protect their ill gotten gains:

Thousands of London homes have had their prices slashed since the Brexit vote a week ago amid warnings of a slump in the stunned housing market, the Standard reveals today.

An Evening Standard analysis has found a huge spike in nervous home owners cutting their asking prices after the surprise result of the referendum last Friday morning unleashed what was described as “a perfect storm” by one leading investor.

The impact is expected to be most severe in the new luxury development along the river from Vauxhall to Docklands where falls of as much as 40 per cent are feared.

One central London branch manager at one of the capital’s biggest firms said: ”The whole thing is a disaster. The uncertainty will cause the markets to crumble and who knows when that is going to get better.

This is things getting better.

Rich people lose money, and ordinary people may be able to shorten their commute a bit.

A Witness has Left Us

Elie Wiesel, has died at age 87:

Elie Wiesel, the Auschwitz survivor who became an eloquent witness for the six million Jews slaughtered in World War II and who, more than anyone else, seared the memory of the Holocaust on the world’s conscience, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.

Menachem Rosensaft, a longtime friend and the founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, confirmed the death in a phone call.

Mr. Wiesel, a charismatic lecturer and humanities professor, was the author of several dozen books. In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But he was defined not so much by the work he did as by the gaping void he filled. In the aftermath of the Germans’ systematic massacre of Jews, no voice had emerged to drive home the enormity of what had happened and how it had changed mankind’s conception of itself and of God. For almost two decades, the traumatized survivors — and American Jews, guilt-ridden that they had not done more to rescue their brethren — seemed frozen in silence.

He will be missed.

Like a Dog That Has Finally Caught the Car

As more political fallout from the Brexit vote accumulates we have another supporter of leaving the EU is calling it quit.

The head of UKIP, Nigel Farage is stepping down as head of the party:

He spent nearly 20 years pushing for Britain to leave the European Union, and having succeeded in his aim, he is now taking his leave.

Nigel Farage, the politician who probably did more than any other to force the referendum on British membership in the European Union, resigned on Monday as leader of the right-wing populist U.K. Independence Party, saying, “I’ve done my bit.”

Mr. Farage, 52, has quit the post before — twice. But on Monday he sounded as if he meant it this time, telling reporters that “my political ambition has been achieved” and that “I want my life back.”

But since the “Brexit” vote he has also been encouraged to quit by Arron Banks, the self-made insurance millionaire who has been a main funder of the party, known as UKIP, and of the unofficial Leave.EU campaign, and who sees the possibility of a more broadly based political party that can appeal to disaffected Labour voters.

………

But his push for a referendum, first as a member of the European Parliament and then as the leader of UKIP, arguing that Britain could manage immigration and regain full sovereignty only from outside the European Union, struck a deep chord with many Britons. It fed into the euroskeptic wing of the Conservative Party and made many Conservative legislators fear that UKIP would deny them an election victory in 2015.

I don't think that any of them expected to win the referendum, and now they don't know what to do.

This is rather ironic.

Trial By Fire Recap

As I mentioned yesterday, I participated in a historical cooking competition Trial by Fire.

The basic rules are that the medieval dishes must be prepared under camping conditions.

Unfortunately, because the prep took longer than I thought, I could only complete one dish (the apple pastys)
in the 4 hours available, though I did complete all the dishes in the 2 hours following.

Note to self:  I am never going to do two baked dishes in Trial by Fire again.  Camping ovens turn out to be a choke point, and my camp oven was balky, so between the two of these, I ran out of time.

All the recipes turned out well, though.

Recipes are below
Pastys are made with a shortcrust (non-rising) dough, and is the core of any pasty recipe.

Shortcrust Dough

500 g	strong bread flour
120 g	solid fat (shortening, lard, suet, or schmaltz)
25 g	unsalted margarine or butter
5 g	salt
175 g	cold water (important, because you want little bits of fat to make the dough flaky and tender)

Mix salt and flour, and then grate the frozen fat and margarine into the flour, and work until it resembles coarse cookie crumbs.

Slowly add the ice cold water, and work the dough until it pulls together enough to pull off the walls of the mixing container.

Place dough in a cold place (cooler or refrigerator) for at least an hour tightly wrapped so that it can come together.

Making multiple batches instead of making larger batches unless you are using an industrial strength stand mixer, it gets unmanagable

Beef Filling

450 g	quality beef (skirt steak is preferred)
450 g	red potato
250 g	Swede (Rutabaga)
4 tsp	chopped garlic

salt and pepper to taste

Slice ingredients to about a ⅛" thickness by ½" x ½".

Roll out he dough into 4 equal balls, and then flatten into disks about ⅛"-¼" thick, and then add filling by layering, from bottom to top, with Swede, beef, potato, onion, and garlic, putting salt and pepper on each layer as you lay them out.

Seal with an egg wash , and crimp along the side (Cornish) or along the top (Devonian), cut vent holes, and then paint the top side of the pasty with an egg wash.

Bake at 400°F for hour, until the pastry is a golden brown, and shiny from the egg wash.
Allow to rest for at least 10 minutes before eating. Otherwise, you will likely burn your mouth.
It is traditional to eat with a hot English mustard, both this and a Dijon are next to the pasties.

Chicken Filling

As per the beef filling, except for brining the1 lb of chicken strips for 30 min to 2 hours.

2 cups	water
1 tbsp	kosher salt (half that if table salt)
1½ tbsp	brown sugar
¼ tsp	oragano
½ tsp	marjoram

Fruit Dessert Pastys

It's pretty much the same as the meat pastys, except that you divide the shortcrust dough into 8 rather than 4 to make smaller pasties.

Also, sprinkle granulated sugar on the top of the pastys before cutting vents in the pastys and check at about 45 minutes, as it cooks faster.

Apple filling

1	Granny Smith apples, peeled and cut thin
1 tsp	lemon juice
1 tsp	crushed ginger (can also use 1 cube of the frozen)
½ tsp	cinnamon
1 tsp	arrowroot
1	small pinch kosher salt

Mix lemon juice, salt, and arrowroot thoroughly, and then toss with the rest of ingredients and allow to marinate.

Blackberry filling

½ cup	blackberries
1 tsp	lemon juice
1 tsp	crushed ginger (can also use 1 cube of the frozen)
1 tsp	arrowroot
1	small pinch kosher salt

Exhausted

We went to an SCA event today, a historical cooking competition called Trial by Fire.

So, I drove there and back, and spent 5 hours on my feet wrestling with a balky camping oven and dough.

I was making various forms of pastys, both fruit and the Cornish variety.

The dishes went well, but took longer than expected, so only one dish was entered.

But I've spent the day in the sun cooking, and I am completely wiped.

I will post recipes tomorrow.

Posted via mobile.

Oh F%$#

A ruling by the ConstitutionalCourt of Austria means that Austrian presidential election result have been annulled, and a new election must be held.

Last time, the candidate from the right wing Freedom Party came within a fraction of a percent of winning, so what happens in a post Brexit vote is a complete crap shoot:

Austria’s Freedom party will get another go at providing the first far-right president in the European Union, after the country’s constitutional court annulled the result of May’s presidential election.

The court president, Gerhart Holzinger, announced on Friday that the run-off vote, in which Norbert Hofer of the Freedom party (FPÖ) narrowly lost to Green-backed Alexander Van der Bellen, would have to be repeated across the whole country after an investigation revealed irregularities in the count of the vote in several constituencies.

The unprecedented ruling comes a week before Van der Bellen was due to be sworn into office. Hofer had lost out to his rival in a knife-edge election on 22 May by only 30,863 votes.

While the Austrian presidency is a largely ceremonial role, the outcome has been seen as hugely symbolic, with the Freedom party seemingly buoyed by growing anti-refugee sentiment and disaffection with the country’s political establishment.

The Austrian President has one significant power: He can dissolve parliament and force new elections.

The citizens of the EU are living in interesting times.

First Up Against the Wall When the Revolution Comes

Anyone who unironically write an article titled, "It’s Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses," is clearly beyond help.

In this case it's one James Traub.

This man is a fellow at a "think tank".
He probably does not get the irony.

General Strangelove Breedlove Revealed

I have wondered if former SACEUR (military leader of NATO) Phillip Breedlove is completely nuts.

Well, it appears that someone hacked his email and removed all doubt as to his insanity:

Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, until recently the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, plotted in private to overcome President Barack Obama’s reluctance to escalate military tensions with Russia over the war in Ukraine in 2014, according to apparently hacked emails from Breedlove’s Gmail account that were posted on a new website called DC Leaks.

Obama defied political pressure from hawks in Congress and the military to provide lethal assistance to the Ukrainian government, fearing that doing so would increase the bloodshed and provide Russian President Vladimir Putin with the justification for deeper incursions into the country.

Breedlove, during briefings to Congress, notably contradicted the Obama administration regarding the situation in Ukraine, leading to news stories about conflict between the general and Obama.

But the leaked emails provide an even more dramatic picture of the intense back-channel lobbying for the Obama administration to begin a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

In a series of messages in 2014, Breedlove sought meetings with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, asking for advice on how to pressure the Obama administration to take a more aggressive posture toward Russia.

………

Breedlove attempted to influence the administration through several channels, emailing academics and retired military officials, including former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark, for assistance in building his case for supplying military assistance to Ukrainian forces battling Russian-backed separatists.

………

Phillip Karber, an academic who corresponded regularly with Breedlove — providing him with advice and intelligence on the Ukrainian crisis — verified the authenticity of several of the emails in the leaked cache. He also told The Intercept that Breedlove confirmed to him that the general’s Gmail account was hacked and that the incident had been reported to the government.

………

In the European press, Breedlove has been portrayed as a hawkish figure known for leaning on allied nations to ditch diplomacy and to adopt a more confrontational role again Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine. Breedlove, testifying before Congress earlier in February of this year, called Russia “a long-term existential threat to the United States and to our European allies.”

Der Spiegel reported that Breedlove “stunned” German leaders with a surprise announcement in 2015 claiming that pro-Russian separatists had “upped the ante” in eastern Ukraine with “well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of the most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery” sent to Donbass, a center of the conflict.

Breedlove’s numbers were “significantly higher” than the figures known to NATO intelligence agencies and seemed exaggerated to German officials. The announcement appeared to be a provocation designed to disrupt mediation efforts led by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

………

The emails, however, depict a desperate search by Breedlove to build his case for escalating the conflict, contacting colleagues and friends for intelligence to illustrate the Russian threat. Karber, who visited Ukrainian politicians and officials in Kiev on several occasions, sent frequent messages to Breedlove — “per your request,” he noted — regarding information he had received about separatist military forces and Russian troop movements. In several updates, Breedlove received military data sourced from Twitter and social media.

Not just a dangerously bellicose general officer, but an insubordinate one as well.

He wanted war with Russia, and he was using tweets in an attempt coerce the President of the United States to go along with his folly.

That is completely nuts.

Google™ Adsense™ Strikes Again

As near as I can figure out, a bot, and a possibly actual human Google employee, came across this post, which is about a judge dismissing the entire DA's office from a case where they were prosecuting a mass murderer because of prosecutor misconduct.

In any case, I got a notice from Google™ Adsense™(click image for screenshot) warning me not to post pr0n .

The title of the judicial post was, "This is H a r d C o r e", and Google India flagged it as sexually explicit.

Of course, there is no way to contact anyone about this, so I re-titled the post, and clicked "resolved".

Once again, the colossus of the internet proves themselves to be staffed by f%$#ing idiots, both organic and aogorythmic.

My standard disclaimer on any post about the aforementioned service applies:

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google^™ Adsense^™.

Anyone out there know of another (better) internet advertising firm out there?

I would expect better service from a company that is paying me something less than $0.00035/word.

Google™ Adsense™ sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.