Colonel Sanders

One of those quotes that needs no introduction; independent Senator Bernie Sanders:

"I think that with Al Franken coming on board, you have effectively 60 Democrats in the caucus, 58 and two Independents," Sanders said in an interview with the Huffington Post. "I think the strategy should be to say, it doesn't take 60 votes to pass a piece of legislation. It takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster. I think the strategy should be that every Democrat, no matter whether or not they ultimately end up voting for the final bill, is to say we are going to vote together to stop a Republican filibuster. And if somebody who votes for that ends up saying, 'I'm not gonna vote for this bill, it's too radical, blah, blah, blah, that's fine.'"

Exactly. Naturally, no Democrat in the Senate will see it this way, and they'll continue to be feckless drones to whatever the David Broders of the world seem to think constitutes "serious" opinion. Step Two: ? Step Three: Profit!

Stonecutters

Time for prediction accuracy measurement everyone! Yes, it's delicious PAM; this time, we review our psychohistorical analysis re: iPhone, Mac OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard), and the magical mystical marble interface. Let's review. I said:

So, carve it in stone: Snow Leopard will be announced and a full demo given at WWDC, cost $129.00, only run on Intel-based Macs, and probably ship reasonably soon after announcement, say right around 9/1/09.

Alright, Snow Leopard was announced and given demo at WWDC: +1
SL will cost, um, $29.00: -1(00)
SL will indeed run only on Intel-based Macs: +1
SL will indeed ship "in September": +1

75%. Not too shabby. Take that, eternal asshat Rob Enderle.
On Marble: Clearly, that'll be the reason the next update reverts to $129 pricing...

iPhone Mini: I "have my doubts" and still do. +1, huzzah! Also a bonus dose of goodwill for noting the notion that existing iPhone tech takes up the "low end" (whether in Mini form or not) while shiny new iPhonery takes the old price-point with feature/memory extension. Fish in a barrel, that one.

The tablet: too soon to score. Certainly the animus directed at AT&T onstage implies a "hey look, it's that Verizon guy!" attitude amongst the Apple powers that be. We shall see. Score it a zero for now, though.

That gives the staff a 4 out of 5, for a glittering 80%. Everyone feel free to take one extra mint on the way out of the office tonight.

The Kids Are Alright

The horror of sexting! The Wall Street Journal lays it out there for us...but too frequently seems to bob away from the real point of the thing. If only an internet world wide web logging system, or "blog" existed to right such wrongs.

First off, the premise (for those reading from Mars):

The practice of teens taking naked photos of themselves and sending them to friends via cellphones [is] called sexting

Except it turns out that Upstanding DA George Skumanick Jr. has a somewhat broader definition of the "crime":

He has threatened to charge kids who appeared in photos, but who didn't send them, as well as at least one girl who was photographed wearing a bathing suit. One of the accused is 11 years old.

So pretty much anybody under 18 not wearing a burkha, then, is clearly and brazenly guilty of the dread crime: sexting. The WSJ seems to sense as much, and comes back with Louis Natalli's (why, he's a perfessor of something or other!) opinion on the matter:

"The whole tawdry episode seems to call for a little parental guidance and a pop-gun approach, not a Howitzer approach with a felony prosecution,"

Indeed. However, what might you imagine that DA Skumanick Jr. is proposing? (Where did you get that Howitzer? Found it!) Why prosecute (and lose, but we'll get to that) when you can just intimidate? It's the much more personally rewarding approach:

Mr. Skumanick is giving the teens an opportunity to avoid charges [by taking some forced re-education], which he could have filed immediately

Emphasis mine. Translation: charges could have been filed, but Skumanick knew he'd likely lose the case in court. In fact, he already has. But he plans to appeal. Honest. While we're doing that, let's cast our intimidation net as wide as possible, holding out the nuclear CHILD PORNOGRAPHER label over the lives of these, uh, children; then you make sure the media is well aware of your doings. Next step? You hold an assembly:

With the help of school officials, Mr. Skumanick convened a series of assemblies, from fifth-graders to seniors. For the youngest students, he asked them to conjure how they would feel if their grandparents saw a photo of them that is "not nice." He warned the older students that sexting could damage their college or job prospects and could result in felony charges.

I think we've all attended one of those at some point, complete with the requisite runaway authoritarianism:

At one of the assemblies, a student interrupted and accused Mr. Skumanick of trying to ruin the teens' lives. "This isn't a debate," Mr. Skumanick told the senior boy, who was escorted out of the auditorium.

God, that kid was straight out of Central Casting. But then, so was the response.
Next step: Send The Letter to The Parents. How should we word it, though?

On Feb. 5, with the [forced re-education] course outline mostly in order, Mr. Skumanick sent a letter to parents of the students involved, saying their children had been "identified in a police investigation involving the possession and/or dissemination of child pornography." The letter summoned the parents to a Feb. 12 meeting at the Wyoming County Courthouse.

That ought to do. Simple and to the point; no need to panic anyone. Now we get them downtown, tell them their kids are going straight to Statesville for the felony, then stretch out the long pause before the "but...":

...joined a group of about 50 [parents] at the courthouse. Before showing the photos, Mr. Skumanick explained his offer to the crowd, answering one father's question affirmatively, that -- yes -- a girl in a bathing suit could be subjected to criminal charges because she was posed "provocatively."

Mr. Skumanick told them he could have simply charged the kids. Instead, he gave them two weeks to decide: take the class or face charges.

Inconvenient and complete lack of actionable evidence of any crime in otherwise front-page case: solved. Oh, wait:

MaryJo Miller was dumbstruck when she opened her letter, which targeted her daughter, Marissa. Mr. Skumanick later told her he had a photo of Marissa that showed her from the waist up wearing a bra. [...] Neither Marissa nor her mother knows how it got circulated but they don't see the photo as explicit. "It was like an old grandma bra. Nothing skimpy," says Marissa.

Uh oh. Troublemaker alert. Indeed, those pesky bastards at the ACLU subsequently took up the cause:

In the end, parents enrolled 14 teens in the course. But the parents of three other girls, including Marissa Miller, recruited the ACLU's help to sue Mr. Skumanick. At a hearing March 26, a federal judge indicated he thought the girls may be successful in their suit and temporarily blocked Mr. Skumanick from filing charges, pending a June hearing.

That is probably the end of that. But, Skumanick did manage to intimidate 14 families into the courses. Well done, sir. I can only hope you also skimmed a fine or course tuition of some kind.

To its eternal credit, the WSJ includes one extra tidbit; it seems Skumanick included a show-and-tell at his little felony intimidation service:

He then told the parents and teens to line up if they wanted to view the photos, which were printed out onto index cards. As the [anonymous] 17-year-old who took semi-nude self-portraits waited in line, she realized that Mr. Skumanick and other investigators had viewed the pictures. When the adults began to crowd around Mr. Skumanick, the 17-year-old worried they could see her photo and recalls she said, "I think the worst punishment is knowing that all you old guys saw me naked. I just think you guys are all just perverts."

Nail meet head. Perhaps Skumanick Jr. should be prosecuted as a repeat kiddie-porn consumer?

I hardly can believe I'm real

The New Yorker favorably notes the revival of West Side Story, pointing out that certain parts of the libretto have been vastly improved:

Fifty years on, in a multicultural America, this decision makes the production feel fresh; it also allows the show to dispense with some of Sondheim’s rookie mistakes. In “I Feel Pretty,” for instance, he had Maria, an uneducated Puerto Rican teen-ager, only a month in New York, singing with such showy internal rhymes as “It’s alarming how charming I feel.” (“When rhyme goes against character, out it should go,” Sondheim said in 1974, with the wisdom of years.)

Indeed, nothing jerks me out of the gritty cinéma vérité of your typical Broadway Musical than does a bit of overly florid prose or the far too convenient (or clever) rhyme. Why can't those eggheads just let me be gripped by the you-are-there horror of exquisitely choreographed gang wars-of-the-dance and the ever present (and shockingly hardcore) street lingo...any small children may need to leave the web:

Dear kindly Judge, your Honor,
My parents treat me rough.
With all their marijuana,
They won't give me a puff.
They didn't wanna have me,
But somehow I was had.
Leapin' lizards! That's why I'm so bad!

So thank the maker we are prevented from hearing so much as one internal rhyme that defeats the inherent and inexhaustable believability of Maria. And suddenly that name will never be the same to me.

The Graduate Too

It's remarkable how rarely treasured insights from "The Analysts" are called into question. It happened in the NYT with reference to "Up," a forthcoming Pixar film:

With “Ratatouille,” analysts fretted about whether moviegoers would go to see a movie about a rat in the kitchen. They did. With “Wall-E,” people feared the lack of dialogue would bore children. It did not.

As noted in the article, those films banked box-office business of a quarter-billion dollars. Each. Yet it seems the asshats still control the dialogue and, by extension, the purse-strings:

“We doubt younger boys will be that excited by the main character,” he wrote, adding a complaint about the lack of a female lead.

Indeed. We are also Quite Concerned that there is a 17% defect in the sass-back quotient and absolutely no fart jokes. How can you possibly even market a film like that?

Astonishingly, Disney (absolute and unchallenged kings of scarcely animated, direct to DVD cash-ins) even puts some pushback on the side of the creative out there:

“We seek to make great films first. If a great film gives birth to a franchise, we are the first company to leverage such success. A check-the-boxes approach to creativity is more likely to result in blandness and failure.”

That's the best statement I've seen come out of Disney since this comment:

We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.
Walt Disney

That sentiment, however, is clearly too much to hope for.

Poll to Poll

Ladies and gentlemen, the nearly Vice President of these United States:

Of the $288 million that Palin doesn't want, $170 million would go to education, including money that "would go for programs to help economically disadvantaged and special needs students." Other programs affected include "weatherization, energy efficiency grants, immunizations, air quality grants, emergency food assistance, homeless grants, senior meals, child care development grants, nutrition programs, homeless grants, arts, unemployment services, air quality, and justice assistance grants."

Indeed, we don't want to go stimulating those folks or those programs. Next thing you know, Alaskans would be spending less on their energy bills with potentially devastating impact on the OPEC nations...

The John Erwin Act of 2009

Based off the warm reception the recent AIG retention bonuses have received, I forsee no problem at all for Fannie and Freddie's upcoming round of same.

Here's what it's going to take. First, enact the previous post. Up it to 200%, just to be sure, and include any corporation receiving bailout or TARP monies. Funny how the UAW had to reopen their contracts lest the world surely end, but the millionaires: not so much.

Second, an example needs to be made. Ceterum censeo AIG esse delendam. Starting immediately, AIG shall be taken into bankruptcy. The still very valuable and profitable insurance branch: sold off...on the condition that all its related executives must not be retained beyond six months. Their jobs are over. The dread CDS unit: what's sellable is sold. As to the rest of it, the various counterparties will be approached, and workarounds "negotiated." I'm pretty sure their attidues will soften once the default swap is going to yield a) something -or- b) zero (with the attendant and required revelation on the old balance sheet). What's not unwindable or proves unsellable is held by a resolution trust-style operation and eventually sold. Everyone, and I mean everyone currently employed by AIG that makes above $100,000/yr: goes on the fucking breadline. You can safely fire everyone not in the insurance unit starting tomorrow. And you furthermore ensure that they are not legally employable by any company or proxy of said company that is receiving or received bailout or TARP funds.

Then we wait and see which CEO wants to start off the next round of bonuses for all the hard work and genius. Things have changed. Dramatically. These fucktards just refuse to accept it.

And, media, can we quit with all the "Masters of the Universe" crap? It was foolish and obviously quite sad when times were good. Now it's just pathetic.

100%

Resolved: There shall be a 100% tax on all bonuses, remunerations, inducements, extras, fees, and any other income not classified as "regular" (tax code here) on all employees of AIG for fiscal years through and including 2010.
Resolved: Regular incomes in excess of $50,233.00 shall be taxed at 50% in each of those years for any employee of any institution receiving TARP funds. This shall include all meals, airline flights, club memberships, cars or car services, homes, and any other indirect income received as part of an overall "compensation package" by any individual so employed.

The fucking end. Are you listening, Congress?

Are we really meant to believe that retention bonuses for the very same fucking idiots that crushed the global markets are absolutely required to keep these same "best and brightest" around long enough to fix what they hath wrought? Unbelievable.

Insect Authority and 9/11

Has there been any greater boon to / more effective accelerant thrown upon the eternal flame of Insect Authority than that of the pervasive fear, uncertainty, and doubt that 9.11 implanted and Bush et al. carefully husbanded and amplified? Today's example comes from the New York Times, where a fellow was (legally) photographing the subway in action at a particularly godforsaken stop somewhere in the Bronx:

“[...]According to the rules of conduct, we are allowed to take pictures,’ ” Mr. Taylor said. “I showed him the rules — they’re bookmarked on my BlackBerry.”

Rule 1050.9 (c) of the state code says, “Photography, filming or video recording in any facility or conveyance is permitted except that ancillary equipment such as lights, reflectors or tripods may not be used.”

Then a police sergeant arrived.

“He tells me that their rules and the transit rules are different,” Mr. Taylor said. “I tell him, ‘If you feel I’m wrong, give me a summons and I’ll see everyone in court.’ The sergeant told them to arrest me.”

[...I've found the quickest way to an arrest is pointing out a policeman's error in this way; but anyway...]

[Taylor] got a batch of summonses.

The first was for “taking photos from the s/b plat of incoming outgoing trains without authority to do so,” abbreviating “southbound platform.” It cited Rule 1050.9 (c).

The second was for disorderly conduct, which consisted of addressing the officers in an “unreasonable voice.”

And the third was for “impeding traffic” — on a platform that is about 10,000 square feet. “I don’t know if you can impede traffic with 15 people per hour coming on the station,” Mr. Taylor said.

(Emphasis added.)

So, the man here is illegally arrested and held, charged with a bunch of nonsense entirely designed to prevent him from ever asking a question again (nothing here is meant to see to the public safety or even the grudging enforcement of some law that everyone involved in the situation might agree is outdated or silly; this is pure intimidation, and was premeditated intimidation at that: guy asks too many questions, guy goes to jail and subsequently has to appear in court as many times as possible. That all these charges will likely be dropped is immaterial to the officer; the entire punishment is the combination of intimidation and inconvenience.).
And just how many people get arrested for "impeding traffic" or some variant of same every year? Millions? I personally know several in vaguely similar circumstances: police can't actually charge them with anything, and the soon-to-be-arrested know it and have used that knowledge against The Authorities, so they're going downtown for, uh, impeding traffic! Six weeks later, the charge is dropped by a dumbfounded judge, probably at a cost not too far off the $1,500/minute quoted in the piece.

This same pattern extends everywhere, it would seem. I've been questioned by security for looking at a building. From the outside (but on their property, by God, which, to their mind, more than likely extends several feet into the street as well). It seems no structure is sufficiently innocuous to avoid Fort Knox level security measures and potential deportation to Gunatanamo for anyone so much as even slightly stepping out of line. Only when we all decide to start fighting each and every one of these incidents like Mr. Taylor did here will we ever make any progress.

Clarity

Let's just make clear that I agree with the point of this paragraph in its entirety:

As for FISA, while in principle I think legally restricting government spying is a good thing, in practice I'm skeptical it makes much difference. As someone who has had a foot in the harder "left", the one that gets spied on, the old FISA rules didn't stop government infiltrators or all sorts of violations of privacy. [...] I see FISA as a nice issue to huff and puff about, but it's a pretty minor issue compared to just ending the war [and] shutting down torture...

It's not about "making a difference" in a strict "the government shall never spy on its citizens without due process" sense. It's about making a stand. It's about the political optics of the vote. It's about letting your opponent flail about with a bunch of vague claims as opposed to clear, quantifiable, and antithetical viewpoints from you and your campaign over the course of a very few months.
Is this so hard to understand? Is there no Democratic policy adviser that can understand these simple facts? You are the Change Candidate and you choose to side with the least popular President in history? To hand the GOP a bill that they couldn't pass when they held control of both houses of Congress? This is Change we can Belive In?

Let the illegal, warrantless wiretaps expire in August. Tell America why you did so. We still would have the secret FISA court, and plenty of low-barrier, almost-never-denied secret warrants out there avialable for when bin Laden makes that so-frequently-heralded call to somebody in this country. We already know these things were approved on the least scrap of probable cause. That bit of non-action accomplished, you set about prosecuting anyone and everyone who took part in these illegal wiretaps.

But don't take my word for it. Check out this quote:

"This Administration has put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. When I am president, there will be no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens; no more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime; no more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. Our Constitution works, and so does the FISA court."

That would be Obama, back in 2007. I guess he thinks it's better to wait until he's President to live up to those words rather than to do so yesterday when it really mattered.

9/11 didn't happen because law enforcement couldn't tap a phone. Broadly speaking, it happened because when presented with a memo titled "bin Laden determined to strike in US" Bush said "All right. You've covered your ass, now" Period.

Fucktards

NYT reports:

Supporters of the plan, which revised the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, said that the final vote reflected both political reality and legal practicality. Wiretapping orders approved by a secret court under the previous version of the surveillance law were set to begin expiring in August unless Congress acted, and many Democrats were wary of going into their political convention in Denver next month with the issue hanging over them—handing the Republicans a potent political weapon.

So the crack group of thinkers running the Democrat Party responded by...handing the Republicans a potent political weapon. Here, Luthor, have some kryptonite. I know there's nothing you can do with this. Ha, see how I've outmaneuvered you by giving you the thing with which to kill me.

Naturally, the Democrat had a cunning plan:

Democrats pointed to some concessions they had won from the White House in the lengthy negotiations. The final bill includes a reaffirmation that the surveillance law is the “exclusive” means of conducting intelligence wiretaps — a provision that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats insisted would prevent Mr. Bush or any future president from evading court scrutiny in the way that the N.S.A. program did.

Ho ho ho, they sure showed the GOP. First, let me legalize everything illegal you've been doing for years. Then, I'll also let you and your enablers off the hook without EVER checking into what, exactly, it was you were even doing. Then, I'll reaffirm, in a very strongly worded letter, that the law is the law! Amazing, really. Such strict terms.

Worth noting that a GOP Congress couldn't get this piece of shit passed; for that, we needed the Democrats in charge. Brilliant. Thank God Dear Leader is reportedly happy and expected to sign the bill into law quickly. Wouldn't want to inconvenience or annoy the least popular President in the history of polling. Why, that might make the Democrat appear weak and feckless.