How does it feel being the willing enablers of an Evil Empire?

This video starts off with a Fox News interview in which a couple of apologists for Blackwater explain an incident in Iraq in which mercenaries “neutralized a threat” at an intersection, a very bland and seemingly everyday event in an occupied country. After seeing Fox misrepresenting the whole affair and calling the mercenaries heroes, the video reveals that this was the Nisour Square Massacre, in which a group of unprofessional gun-toting American assholes went on a murder spree, killing 17 civilians and blowing up vehicles left and right. Fox avoided mentioning the victims and was shockingly dishonest in their misrepresentation; this report pulls no punches and describes their murder.

Fox News is a criminal propaganda front, and we might as call it what it is, the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda of the Republican Party. Erik Prince is pure evil, and the use of trigger-happy hirelings to run rampant in a country we ought to be trying to reconstruct is unconscionable and self-destructive. Iraqis are justified in regarding Americans as unforgivable villains.

That is the most on-brand thing I’ve ever seen

It’s a masterwork. Some advertising genius was asked to encapsulate Joe Biden in a single phrase, and they thought hard about it, and distilled him down to two words.

It’s perfect! You see “malarkey”, and you think “antiquated, old-fogeyish” and it’s a natural to associate that with Biden. It’s going to go over well with timid old boomers.

In a particularly nice touch, in smaller print on the back of the bus, it includes a dictionary definition of “malarkey”. I guess that’s their idea of outreach to the young folks.

Where is Patrick Kessler, and how much was he paid?

Didn’t the NY Times find it suspicious that this is the only photo of Kessler they’ve got?

This guy calling himself Patrick Kessler sure had a brilliant scam. He talked to rich people and institutions and told them that he used to work for Jeffrey Epstein, and had been hired to set up encrypted servers that stored the thousands of hours of secret video recordings Epstein had made of rich, famous people raping young girls at his house, and that he now had the keys to the server and was willing to make them available to lawyers and the media. As proof, he’d show them grainy, porny still photos on his phone and say, “That’s Prince Andrew” or “That’s Alan Dershowitz”, and the gullible lawyers would fall for it. He kept the scam going for months, constantly evading any attempt to get any concrete evidence out of him.

He played off multiple marks. First he’s negotiating with David Boies and John Pottinger, two lawyers who were supposedly representing Epstein’s victims, and then he’d sneak off to the NY Times and tell them he didn’t trust the lawyers and wanted to deal with them. He invented convoluted schemes for transferring files, and would then at the last minute announce, “Oh no, the servers are on fire!” Everyone was dancing to his tune.

Then, the best part is unstated. The NY Times finally reports on this story, and I notice something is missing. Read it yourself, you’ll notice that the con artist, Patrick Kessler, just quietly drops out of the picture as his marks start turning on each other and pointing fingers. Has he been arrested? Has he fled the country? We don’t know. Apparently the reporters don’t care, either, since they just stop mentioning him. I might also ask if Kessler had been paid anything — he strung them along for months, are you saying he kept the con going just to sponge off the lawyer’s expense accounts for dinners and alcohol?

I’m actually impressed. He scammed a couple of high-priced New York lawyers, and he scammed the NY Times, and now he has disappeared and none of his targets will admit that they were stupid and got taken. If this were a crime novel, it would be a page turner. I want Carl Hiaasen to write it, because I think only he could adequately skewer Boies, Pottinger, and the NY Times while laying out the story.

And this is just legal corruption.

Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger discussed a plan. They could use the supposed footage in litigation or to try to reach deals with men who appeared in it, with money flowing into a charitable foundation. In encrypted chats with Kessler, Mr. Pottinger referred to a roster of potential targets as the “hot list.” He described hypothetical plans in which the lawyers would pocket up to 40 percent of the settlements and could extract money from wealthy men by flipping from representing victims to representing their alleged abusers.

The possibilities were tantalizing — and extended beyond vindicating victims. Mr. Pottinger saw a chance to supercharge his law practice. For Mr. Boies, there was a shot at redemption, after years of criticism for his work on behalf of Theranos and Harvey Weinstein.

Who is the real con artist here, Kessler or Boies/Pottinger? It seems to me that the lawyers were drooling at the prospect of getting blackmail material they could use as leverage to get rich people to cough up large sums of cash in return for suppressing the evidence, and they got to skim 40% off the top, while the rest would go to the clients they represented, or to charities, to make it look “ethical”. Further, they could get paid by billionaires who aren’t even in the recordings, like the contemptible Sheldon Adelson (at least, I don’t think Epstein would have had an Adelson sex tape, but who knows…). Adelson wanted to influence elections in Israel by buying incriminating videos of politicians he didn’t like.

Mr. Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate in Las Vegas, had founded one of Israel’s largest newspapers, and it was an enthusiastic booster of Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Pottinger wrote that he and Mr. Boies hoped to fly to Nevada to meet with Mr. Adelson to discuss the images.

“Do you believe that adelson has the pull to insure this will hurt his bid for election?” Kessler asked the next morning.

I guess this isn’t illegal? Or it is, but we’re going to quietly sweep it under a filthy rug somewhere?

It’s also weird how, throughout this story, they get all sensational about what men were possibly engaging in sex with underage girls in these photos. “Could that bearded man be…?” or “Is that actually Famous Man having sex…?” and the women are all invisible. No one seems to stop to consider that juicy compromising photo of some guy is also a photo of a victim — a victim who ought to have some rights, rather than being nothing but a pawn in photographic evidence of a crime.

But mainly, I read the entire NY Times story and wondered how bad journalism can get, when they don’t even ask, let alone try to answer, the major questions.

Where is Patrick Kessler, and how much was he paid?

Regressive taxes are good!

That’s what Bloomberg says, anyway. We should tax poor people more, so they can’t afford to buy things like sugary soft drinks, which would shorten their lifespan. Apparently, if you’re rich, you never indulge in stuff that might harm you.

Some people say, well, taxes are regressive. But in this case, yes they are. That’s the good thing about them because the problem is in people that don’t have a lot of money. And so, higher taxes should have a bigger impact on their behavior and how they deal with themselves. So, I listen to people saying ‘oh we don’t want to tax the poor.’ Well, we want the poor to live longer so that they can get an education and enjoy life. And that’s why you do want to do exactly what a lot of people say you don’t want to do.

The question is do you want to pander to those people? Or do you want to get them to live longer? There’s just no question. If you raise taxes on full sugary drinks, for example, they will drink less and there’s just no question that full sugar drinks are one of the major contributors to obesity and obesity is one of the major contributors to heart disease and cancer and a variety of other things.

So…who in New York has a guillotine? I think it’s time to wheel it out and take care of some patronizing jerks.

I guess I have to take “Eat the Rich” literally

Look who WholeFoods magazine selected as their “Man of the Year”. It’s not very delectable, but OK. Can I get it delivered? Do I have to clean and dress it myself? Can I order just a few select cuts?

WholeFoods magazine is a trade magazine that bills itself as “informing and educating the natural foods industry”, peddling supplements to retailers. They seem to be very gung ho about CBD and hemp farming, and like McConnell because he’s sponsored legislation to encourage more hemp. OK.

Still, that’s a distasteful and unappetizing slab of meat they’re selling.

Mayor Pete gets a bad burn

Ow. Michael Harriot responds to Buttigieg’s claim that black folk just need more inspiration to succeed.

It proves men like him are more willing to perpetuate the fantastic narrative of negro neighborhoods needing more role models and briefcase-carriers than make the people in power stare into the sun and see the blinding light of racism. Get-along moderates would rather make shit up out of whole cloth than wade into the waters of reality. Pete Buttigieg doesn’t want to change anything. He just wants to be something.

Read the whole thing. Especially you, Mr Buttigieg, and after you finish you can just go off and quietly retire from the race.

A remarkable instance of sneaky corruption

Stephen Ruth is a man with a mission: he’s busy painting over the lenses, or cutting the wires, of traffic cameras at intersections. At first, I thought it was petty vandalism, throw the book at him, or some deep obsession with privacy…but no. There’s an ethical reason for it.

Wherever the cameras were installed, the county intentionally shortened the duration of the yellow lights from 5 seconds to 3 seconds, knowing that it would increase the frequency of traffic violations (and traffic accidents).

The shortened duration times at the traffic lights generate $32 million for Suffolk County, which is why the county allows the practice to continue despite their own study showing they lead to an increase in accidents with injuries.

Such a little thing, and it brings in $32,000,000. I would call that an elegant scam, except that it’s killing and injuring people. And surprise — the police are supporting Ruth.

And after he cut the wires, he called the news to cover his act of civil disobedience, which resulted in his arrest after police received pressure from politicians. Ruth said police and sheriff deputies support him, because they’re aware of the shortened yellow lights.

Some may even testify on his behalf if his case goes to trial. When he was in jail for his most recent arrest, a sheriff’s deputy even offered to bail him out.

You want another surprise? The county is in bed with Xerox.

Ruth pointed out some cameras that were put up have been taken down after they fell short of daily contract-quota with Xerox to produce 25 citations, per camera, between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., which costs Suffolk County $2,132 per day, according to the Xerox contract with the county.

Xerox collects $13 from Suffolk County for each ticket, which increases to $33 per ticket when a camera generates more than 90 tickets in a month.

Shouldn’t the goal of law enforcement be to reduce the number of violations? These guys have incentives to increase the number!

There are ways to rid oneself of troublesome professors

It’s a given that Eric Rasmusen of Indiana University is a racist, a sexist, and an all-around horrible person. I agree that, as a tenured professor, he can’t be fired for that. However, I am bothered by this statement from the executive vice president of the university.

The First Amendment is strong medicine, and works both ways. All of us are free to condemn views that we find reprehensible, and to do so as vehemently and publicly as Professor Rasmusen expresses his views. We are free to avoid his classes, and demand that the university ensure that he does not, or has not, acted on those views in ways that violate either the federal and state civil rights laws or IU’s nondiscrimination policies. I condemn, in the strongest terms, Professor Rasmusen’s views on race, gender, and sexuality, and I think others should condemn them. But my strong disagreement with his views—indeed, the fact that I find them loathsome—is not a reason for Indiana University to violate the Constitution of the United States.

This is a lesson, unfortunately, that all of us need to take seriously, even as we support our colleagues and classmates in their perfectly reasonable anger and disgust that someone who is a professor at an elite institution would hold, and publicly proclaim, views that our country, and our university, have long rejected as wrong and immoral.

I don’t think that’s true! Is she suggesting that IU would be unable to fire a custodian who showed up for work in a swastika armband, because of the Constitution? That if a non-tenured administrator started suggesting exclusionary racist admission policies, they wouldn’t be dismissed because of the First Amendment? Does she think the principle of academic freedom only holds true in universities blessed to exist under the Constitution of the United States of America?

Rasmusen can’t be fired because he is employed under an explicit, lifetime contract that defines what actions violate the terms of the contract, and being a racist asshole isn’t one of them. Universities recognize the value of being able to express ideas outside the cultural norm so that they can be discussed and argued over by people who aren’t suppressed by the fear that they could be fired for uttering them. This is generally a good thing. Occasionally someone speaks out in a way that makes everyone regret it, but that’s the price you pay for academic freedom.

There are workarounds. The University of Illinois is using public shaming against a professor found guilty of sexual harassment — his offenses are publicly posted where students can read them. Christian Ott was suspended for a year, and denied the privilege of having grad students until he was adequately mentored, and eventually resigned from Caltech. Geoff Marcy resigned after being found guilty of Berkeley’s sexual harassment policy, and under pressure from his colleagues. This was after years of cover-up by the administration; are we to believe that they’d been slow to expel him because of the First Amendment, or that Berkeley violated the Constitution when they eventually dumped him?

I haven’t read my contract in ages, but I’m pretty sure that if I committed a criminal act, like knocking over a bank, my tenure would be revoked, not because of the Constitution, but because there are various specific clauses declaring grounds for revocation, and committing a felony is one of them. Rasmusen is not being fired because there is no “racist asshole” clause in his contract. IU does not and has not considered that a requirement in their rules for admission to the tenured professor club. Although, you know, I think violating Title IX regulations might be grounds for dismissal.

That’s the thing. Tenured professors have been and will continue to be dismissed for violating regulations at their place of employment. Sometimes it’s about peers using social pressure to get them out; I’m sure Rasmusen’s colleagues are unhappy about the added restrictions on his engagement with students, and would much prefer to replace him with a fresh young face who isn’t a racist asshole and can participate in the teaching responsibilities of the department fully. Sometimes it’s about getting the jerk to leave with voluntary inducements, like a better retirement package.

There are remedies. IU should stop hiding behind the Constitution.