Posts from — October 2011

The M$M are reporting that the Occupy movement has turned violent, but tend to gloss over who is committing the violence. Press releases from police departments are printed or broadcast as facts, without a mention of the hours of video from the action that clearly show who the aggressors are.

The Oakland Police say they have collected the contents of the camp and are storing them until the rightful owners claim them, despite the video evidence showing them destroying everything. They kept the media away from their assault on the encampment, so there is no ‘unbiased reporting’ of what happened. The police have also been sending requests to Google to have videos taken down from YouTube – videos that show the attacks for anyone to judge who was violent.

One of the more egregious videos is of an individual laying in the street right in front of a cluster of officers who made no effort to assist him, but when others went to help him, they tossed in another tear gas canister.

Now cities are using the excuse of violence to clear out Occupy encampments. I would tell the mayors that if they don’t want violence in the streets, don’t let their police departments attack people.

I hope everyone is aware that the ‘laws’ that the encampments are breaking were enacted to hide the homeless, not to maintain public safety. The sole purpose of these ordinances is to make the homeless as invisible as possible.

Update: From the Baltimore Sun blog: Unions, including police, ask mayor to “stand down” on Occupy protest. These people don’t want violence, they want negotiations. It is up to the mayor to decide if she wants all hell to break loose, like Oakland.

I have read that Governor ‘Goodhair’ of Texas wants an income tax form that fits on a post card.

Obviously, no one with more that two neurons wants to put their legal name, Social Security number, and annual income on a post card. Besides you need to include your W-2, so an envelop is required.

On the other hand, Mr. Perry is obviously unaware that for decades you could use the form 1040EZ if you only had wages to report and took the standard deduction. The information required certainly would fit on a post card and it only takes a W-2 form from your employer and a few minutes to work out.

If you are part of the 1%, like most politicians in Washington, you need an accountant and a tax lawyer to take advantage of all of the loopholes you had inserted into the tax code so you could avoid paying taxes.

It is easy to simplify the tax code – all income treated the same, the standard deduction and the individual per person deductions the only things allowed. The only problem with the tax code are all of the special deductions for the 1% that Congress keeps inserting.

Position: 18.5N 86.5W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [320°] near 6 mph [ 9 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 85 mph [140 kph].
Wind Gusts: 105 mph [165 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 80 miles [130 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 15 miles [ 20 km].
Minimum central pressure: 979 mb.

Currently about 120 miles [ 190 km] East of Chetumal, Mexico.

A Hurricane Warning is in effect for the Northeast Coast of the Yucatan Peninsula from Punta Gruesa North to San Felipe.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the East Coast of the Yucatan Peninsula from Chetumal North to Punta Gruesa and the North Coast of the Yucatan Peninsula from San Felipe to Progreso.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for the coast of Belize from Belize City northward.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Proving they are a ‘class act’ the ABC reports that the Occupy protesters spare Queen’s Melbourne visit.

In the US some of young people really need to find useful work, rather than making bombs to throw at the people in Occupy Portland [Maine]. Imagine the howling if this had happened to a Tea Party gathering.

The city of Oakland continues to destroy its police-community relations by excessive use of force. The corporate shill version is provided by the LA Times and then a live blog version by the Mercury News. Guess what? The Albany [New York] police chief was right – Oakland is now facing a huge demonstration downtown, and more and more people are getting arrested as clashes with the police continue.

Thers has a look at Police Priorities, as NYC experiences a spike in crime. The NYPD, of course, blames Occupy Wall Street for pulling all of the officers in the City down to Zuccotti Park to watch people camp and hold meetings, rather than patrolling their normal beats. I guess I missed the report of the General Assembly that passed a resolution demanding that hundreds of police officers surround the park. In my day manning decisions were made by the police department. Maybe they should send a few ‘white shirts’ up the Hudson to Albany to learn how to deal with protests.

Occupy Baltimore attracted the reporting of the Scientific American with signs like PhD ≠ Job. There are a lot of scientists at the protest because of the degradation of science in the US. The woman who carried the “PhD ≠ Job” is near the end of her studies for her doctorate specializing in breast cancer research, and she doesn’t see much chance for employment after nearly a decade of work.

Via Earth-Bound Misfit

Position: 17.5N 84.8W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [270°] near 3 mph [ 6 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 110 mph [175 kph].
Wind Gusts: 130 mph [215 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 140 miles [220 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 30 miles [ 45 km].
Minimum central pressure: 966 mb ↓.

Currently about 240 miles [ 385 km] East-Southeast of Chetumal, Mexico.

A Hurricane Warning is in effect for the East Coast of the Yucatan Peninsula from Punta Gruesa North to Cancun.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the East Coast of the Yucatan Peninsula from Chetumal North to Punta Gruesa.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for the coast of Belize from Belize City northward and for the Bay Islands of Roatan and Guanaja.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

In Austerity for dummies, Digby finds Paul “Kill Medicare” Ryan attempting to redefine the word, as people have a negative reaction. Slashing budgets and throwing people out of work is something that happens in Europe, not the US. The Republicans are showing ‘thrift’, not ‘austerity’.

When Michele Norris, host of All Things Considered reported that her husband has accepted a position in the Obama re-election campaign, she said that she would step down from hosting and will report on non-political stories until after the election. I assume that opera won’t be one of those stories, because those involved with opera are not allowed to be political in any way, shape, or form, and if they are, they are fired.

At Corrente they note that some police departments do follow procedure, as taught in the police academy. Despite pressure from the governor and the mayor, neither the Albany city police, nor the New York State Police have any intention of clearing the local Occupy group from the park across from the state capitol building. Their reasons are right out of the manual, the basic one being keeping the peace.

Position: 17.2N 83.2W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [295°] near 3 mph [ 6 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 80 mph [130 kph].
Wind Gusts: 100 mph [155 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 115 miles [185 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 15 miles [ 30 km].
Minimum central pressure: 985 mb ↓.

Currently about 340 miles [ 550 km] East-Southeast of Chetumal, Mexico.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Position: 16.4N 82.2W [10Pm CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North-Northwest [335°] near 8 mph [13 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph [ 65 kph].
Wind Gusts: 50 mph [ 85 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 70 miles [110 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1004 mb.

Currently about 115 miles [ 190 km] Northeast of Cabo Gracias a Dios on the Nicaragua-Honduras border.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for the coast of Honduras from Punta Castilla eastward to the Nicaragua border.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

The BBC reports on the earthquake in Turkey near the Iranian border at 5:41AM CDT: Hundreds die as strong quake rocks eastern Turkey

A strong quake has shattered buildings near the Turkish city of Van, killing more than 200 people and trapping an unknown number under rubble.

Casualties are reported to be particularly high in the town of Ercis, close to the Iranian border, where dozens of buildings fell.
…

The earthquake struck at 13:41 (10:41 GMT) at a depth of 20km (12.4 miles), with its epicentre 16km north-east of Van in eastern Turkey, the US Geological Survey said.

It was followed by a series of powerful aftershocks, also centred north of Van, including two of magnitude 5.6 soon after the quake and one of 6.0 late on Sunday.

There have been two dozen aftershocks, ranging from 4.0 to 6.0 which makes recovery dangerous, and the temperatures will be in the freezing range overnight.

The area gets a lot of earthquakes, and there are building codes that should have limited the loss of life and damage, but they are often badly enforced, especially when large projects are involved, which is why so many of those killed and trapped are in newer buildings that have ‘pancaked’.

Most people are familiar with the Upton Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” Sinclair was a socialist and author, perhaps best known for revealing the facts about the working conditions in the meat packing industry in The Jungle [the Polish sausage could include real Poles].

In 1919 he wrote: “Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters.” Sound familiar?

With that in mind, go to Rook’s place and watch this video of a New Yorker explaining the con game that is Wall Street, especially the role of the ‘shill’ in the game.

It should surprise no one that when the station that actually produces World of Opera refused to fire Lisa Simeone for her activities on her own time, NPR dumps opera show over D.C. protest. When you’re a shill, you can’t allow people to question the game. I assume that people have noticed that NPR has produced almost no coverage of the Occupy movement.

Of course, the dealer doesn’t always win, as Kevin Drum notes at Mother Jones.

University of California-Berkeley physicist Richard Muller doubts the ability of anyone except him to understand analysis, a common trait among physicists. He doubted the methods of the climatologists who were reporting global climate change, despite the peer review of their articles, and decided to analyze the data himself.

Big Oil, including the Koch Brothers, rushed to finance his Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project (BEST), thinking he was a ‘true believer’ in their cause.

Muller, alas, was just a contrary physicist who accurately reported the results of his analysis – global climate change is real, and humans are doing it.

The salaries of tenured professors are not dependent on much more than a pulse. They are like Federal judges in that regard.

Or, you could: Occupy Mordor

Via Susie, an article in the New Scientist by Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie, Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world, tells about a study that reveals the interlocking ownership of major multinationals that allows a relatively small number of corporations control global business.

They make one common error – they identify it as ‘capitalist’, when it is corporatist, and every bit as distant from capitalism as communism is.

Bruce Judson at New Deal 2.0 has decided to wade in on the issue with several posts, the first being, The Kids Camping on Wall Street Are The Capitalists, Not the People in the Buildings.

In the real meaning of the words, I am a conservative capitalist, in that I don’t believe in subsidies or tax loopholes, and do believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Today that makes me a leftwing radical socialist and DFH.

No Clue

What was that?!

[Editor: The Big Tipper was not prepared for the flash, and dashed off immediately afterwards. It’s cold and the others are in hiding.

Friday Ark

Note: It is late because it has been cold and the cats were hiding and so was I. Then M$ and HP decided to battle over how the same down-load process that has worked forever would work today which required downloading drivers from both until I found one that the camera liked. This is ‘Plug ‘n Play’ – Plug it in and play around on the ‘Net to get it to work.