LONDON – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange surrendered to London police on Tuesday as part of a Swedish sex-crimes investigation, the latest blow to an organization that faces legal, financial and technological challenges after releasing hundreds of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.
[And via Greenwald, MasterCard is refusing to let anyone use their MasterCard brand credit cards to donate money to Wikileaks, saying that they’re committing “illegal activities”, which they aren’t. But it’s nice to know that MC gives a shit about people giving money to lawbreakers, and I’m sure the same standard will be applied to any worldwide group hazily asserted to be breaking “the law”, some law, somewhere or other. If I didn’t think the other credit companies would follow suit, I’d drop any MC I had faster than a bag of flaming shit.]
Mornin Joe et al are predicting a huge end-of-the-year market rally because the Uncertainty is lifted!
And businesses will now start investing and hiring everyone back because when the market rallies, suddenly it means that a lack of demand by consumers who don’t have the money to buy stuff will go away by magic!
6.
scav
If people haven’t figured out by now that the market, rallied or unrallied, has now basically fuck-all to do the actual, let alone sane, economy, then basically we can’t help them. They’ve made their beds in 400-count drool: they’re going to have to lie in them.
7.
Ranger 3
@El Cid: It’s not hard to figure out. The folks who are giving money to Wikileaks hate America and want the terrorists to win. This is why they won’t let you give money to Wikileaks. That’s the Cliff’s Notes version anyway.
I suppose I could put it a different way… Wikileaks supporters are critical of the U.S. Government, especially with regard to it’s foreign policy. They tend to be sensitive to the concerns of people living in Southwest and Southcentral Asia, even though these populations are often sympathetic to groups such as Hamas and, to a lesser degree, AQ and the Taliban. Therefore corporations such as Mastercard are going to try and distance themselves from these dirty America hating hippies.
I like the first version better. More direct and to the point. You hate America. So does Wikileaks. Mastercard drinks your milkshake. The end.
8.
Xenos
Of course, if we shut down wikileaks, the problem is solved, right? There is now way that thousands of bitter and angry and technically competent people could look at what Assange has done and can not come up with hundreds of copycat systems for achieving the same thing?
@Xenos: yeah, if somebody arrests Bill Gates, don’t all MickySoft bugs magically mistappear and the blue screen of death is no more?
11.
Karen
If I can mention something that isn’t political but makes me wonder if I lived in a parallel universe or something.
I went to the supermarket yesterday and they have a rubbermaid section. I was not able to find a pitcher anywhere in the store. I will have to probably order it from Amazon but I’d have thought that a pitcher would be a simple item since it’s useful and not obsolete but apparently not.
Also, I was auditing my office’s accounts for errors, typos or things that just don’t make sense. I put in the customer’s birthdate (not the actual Date of Birth because of privacy concerns but the year is correct) 02/03/29. The computer said that day didn’t exist. I tried several times because I was looking right at the DOB yet it kept coming up wrong. When I finally looked at why the error happened it was because the computer saw the year as 2029. Have we finally reached a point where computers will default to the 21st century when it comes to dates?
There is now way that thousands of bitter and angry and technically competent people could look at what Assange has done and can not come up with hundreds of copycat systems for achieving the same thing?
Uncertainty? I’ll give you some: Mrs J has been pounding the snooze button on her alarm every five minutes for at least 30 minutes now. When will she rise? Will the dogs approve?
Hell yes! They will sing and dance!
Bastards…
I wake up and roll outta bed, the pooches are all ::yawn:: hey man, we could pee ya know? We wanna go out, OK? And then they are bangin on the door to get back in because it’s cold. And run straight back to their doggie momma’s warm bed.
14.
El Cid
@Karen: You should not need a pitcher because any beverage you need should be purchased in its own packaging. That’s why the plastics industry makes all those bottles and tubs. Try to be more patriotic.
15.
THE
@Karen:
That’s just amazing.
If it’s one thing we should have learned from the millennium bug era,
it is that years have to be entered in four-digit form.
If people haven’t figured out by now that the market, rallied or unrallied, has now basically fuck-all to do the actual, let alone sane, economy, then basically we can’t help them.
A gentleman I know once put it this way: “Saying the economy is good because the markets are up is like saying ‘this cancer patient isn’t sick– his blood pressure is great!'”
When I finally looked at why the error happened it was because the computer saw the year as 2029. Have we finally reached a point where computers will default to the 21st century when it comes to dates?
Most database software systems have settable options on how to handle the “range” for a two-digit year. Your example is the result of bad programming on someone’s part. A DOB field should never default to, or allow, a date in the future (assuming the person has already been born).
As for the pitcher, I, too, have been occasionally surprised at things I couldn’t find at the supermarket that I had to get at Target or Home Depot.
@stuckinred: The market will rally but jobs won’t be created, because businesses hate Obama for his anti-business agenda and are doing everything in their power to make sure he is a one term President.
Lowering payroll taxes, in no way is “pro-business”. It is clearly a communist plot to undermine the free market.
I don’t expect much to improve.
Businesses just don’t want to spend money, because they don’t have to, since they are making money.
22.
Svensker
Cranky cranky cranky. Assange arrested, everyone screaming about Obama, no ponies, Jets creamed, business deal goes south, BJ posts filled with yelling and meanness…
Where’s all the kitties at? I. Need. Kitties. (or doggies).
23.
danimal
The uncertainty over the next two years (assuming this deal passes, which itself is NOT certain) will be a tremendous drag on the economy.
Look around – uncertainty is everywhere! We’re dooooomed!
24.
Geeno
@Karen: Lazy coding irks me. I always coded date defaults so that if the entered year was greater than the current year (29 is greater than 10 in your example) it would default to 19xx otherwise 20xx, unless there was a much greater likelihood of entering future dates rather than past dates in the specific application.
I believe Microsoft uses 50 as it’s switch year, greater then 50 to 19xx – less than 50 to 20xx, because they have no idea what people will be entering in their apps, but it’s still lazy coding to fall on their defaults when putting together an application.
25.
gene108
I was listening to Radio Times on the Philadelphia NPR station and she had some guest talking head on about the tax bill compromise and the point was brought up about whether this was capitulation or triangulation and he said it was capitulation, because Obama and the Democrats ran on a platform of ending the Bush & Co. philosophy on taxes.
He likened it to Bush, Sr. agreeing to raise taxes in 1990, as part of a budget compromise with Congressional Democrats, because Bush, Sr. effectively went back against his pledge of “read my lips, no new taxes”, which resulted in a backlash by the base.
I think the biggest difference in this historic parallel is one of Obama’s first acts as President was to kick-the-can down the road on resetting tax rates for the rich, because of the recession and the base already started bailing on Obama, sometime between December 2008 and February 2009, when Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, and other “corporatist whores” were appointed to his Administration. They’ve been looking for excuses to jettison support for this President ever since.
Any way it’s interesting how Obama seems to have lost all his support, as the conventional wisdom, though his approval rating has held steady.
I don’t know how these narratives get driven or why they do. He’s in better shape than President Reagan was at this point in his Presidency, with regards to approval / disapproval numbers, yet everyone assumes he’s lost all his support.
I just don’t get why the loudest cry babies get all the attention.
26.
Jay in Oregon
The Daily Show’s bit on Gretchen Carlson was pretty good.
My thought upon watching her interview was that “it would be nice if she got that outraged over, say, the Wall Street crisis or GOP obstructionism.”
27.
meander
Jonahtan Chait has a short, sharp strike on the GOP’s mixed message on uncertainty and the tax deal:
So, Republicans had a choice. They could accede to certainty with Clinton-era rates on the rich, or uncertainty with Bush-era rates on the rich. They chose uncertainty. The Bush-era rates will live on for two years, after which nobody knows if they’ll be extended or not.
For those still clinging to any naive notion that Republicans meant this as anything more than a slogan, the answer is now clear. They want low tax rates for the rich. They don’t care about certainty.
I have my own modest proposal for the GOP: if your party wants to strike a major blow against uncertainty, do not run anyone against Obama in 2012. For the business community to know that Obama will be in office for another four years would significantly reduce uncertainty related to the executive branch. (but then again, how can anyone predict what any executive would do, e.g., regulations from various agencies, actions by Treasury to handle unexpected events that happen in the economy like a European collapse, etc.)
I can’t really recall, in my short life, many more certain times for the rich and affluent than this. Seems the only ‘uncertainty’ is whether the milk and honey will continue to flow freely indefinitely.
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Napoleon
Radio says Wikileak’s Assage (sp?) has been arrested.
stuckinred
And Mornin Joe is horrified by the tax cut deal. What a fucking joke.
El Cid
Assange is now in custody.
[And via Greenwald, MasterCard is refusing to let anyone use their MasterCard brand credit cards to donate money to Wikileaks, saying that they’re committing “illegal activities”, which they aren’t. But it’s nice to know that MC gives a shit about people giving money to lawbreakers, and I’m sure the same standard will be applied to any worldwide group hazily asserted to be breaking “the law”, some law, somewhere or other. If I didn’t think the other credit companies would follow suit, I’d drop any MC I had faster than a bag of flaming shit.]
stuckinred
Mornin Joe et al are predicting a huge end-of-the-year market rally because the Uncertainty is lifted!
El Cid
@stuckinred:
And businesses will now start investing and hiring everyone back because when the market rallies, suddenly it means that a lack of demand by consumers who don’t have the money to buy stuff will go away by magic!
scav
If people haven’t figured out by now that the market, rallied or unrallied, has now basically fuck-all to do the actual, let alone sane, economy, then basically we can’t help them. They’ve made their beds in 400-count drool: they’re going to have to lie in them.
Ranger 3
@El Cid: It’s not hard to figure out. The folks who are giving money to Wikileaks hate America and want the terrorists to win. This is why they won’t let you give money to Wikileaks. That’s the Cliff’s Notes version anyway.
I suppose I could put it a different way… Wikileaks supporters are critical of the U.S. Government, especially with regard to it’s foreign policy. They tend to be sensitive to the concerns of people living in Southwest and Southcentral Asia, even though these populations are often sympathetic to groups such as Hamas and, to a lesser degree, AQ and the Taliban. Therefore corporations such as Mastercard are going to try and distance themselves from these dirty America hating hippies.
I like the first version better. More direct and to the point. You hate America. So does Wikileaks. Mastercard drinks your milkshake. The end.
Xenos
Of course, if we shut down wikileaks, the problem is solved, right? There is now way that thousands of bitter and angry and technically competent people could look at what Assange has done and can not come up with hundreds of copycat systems for achieving the same thing?
cleek
racist!
scav
@Xenos: yeah, if somebody arrests Bill Gates, don’t all MickySoft bugs magically mistappear and the blue screen of death is no more?
Karen
If I can mention something that isn’t political but makes me wonder if I lived in a parallel universe or something.
I went to the supermarket yesterday and they have a rubbermaid section. I was not able to find a pitcher anywhere in the store. I will have to probably order it from Amazon but I’d have thought that a pitcher would be a simple item since it’s useful and not obsolete but apparently not.
Also, I was auditing my office’s accounts for errors, typos or things that just don’t make sense. I put in the customer’s birthdate (not the actual Date of Birth because of privacy concerns but the year is correct) 02/03/29. The computer said that day didn’t exist. I tried several times because I was looking right at the DOB yet it kept coming up wrong. When I finally looked at why the error happened it was because the computer saw the year as 2029. Have we finally reached a point where computers will default to the 21st century when it comes to dates?
Karen
@Xenos:
Didn’t he claim there was a poison pill?
jeffreyw
Uncertainty? I’ll give you some: Mrs J has been pounding the snooze button on her alarm every five minutes for at least 30 minutes now. When will she rise? Will the dogs approve?
Hell yes! They will sing and dance!
Bastards…
I wake up and roll outta bed, the pooches are all ::yawn:: hey man, we could pee ya know? We wanna go out, OK? And then they are bangin on the door to get back in because it’s cold. And run straight back to their doggie momma’s warm bed.
El Cid
@Karen: You should not need a pitcher because any beverage you need should be purchased in its own packaging. That’s why the plastics industry makes all those bottles and tubs. Try to be more patriotic.
THE
@Karen:
That’s just amazing.
If it’s one thing we should have learned from the millennium bug era,
it is that years have to be entered in four-digit form.
There is no excuse.
Mumphrey
I saw that cartoon on Saturday in the paper. I thought it was the best editorial cartoon I’d ever seen, so I cut it out and hung it up on the icebox…
R-Jud
@scav:
A gentleman I know once put it this way: “Saying the economy is good because the markets are up is like saying ‘this cancer patient isn’t sick– his blood pressure is great!'”
Steeplejack
@Karen:
Most database software systems have settable options on how to handle the “range” for a two-digit year. Your example is the result of bad programming on someone’s part. A DOB field should never default to, or allow, a date in the future (assuming the person has already been born).
As for the pitcher, I, too, have been occasionally surprised at things I couldn’t find at the supermarket that I had to get at Target or Home Depot.
Elizabelle
Perfect cartoon, Annie Laurie.
Linda Featheringill
@Elizabelle:
Yes.
gene108
@stuckinred: The market will rally but jobs won’t be created, because businesses hate Obama for his anti-business agenda and are doing everything in their power to make sure he is a one term President.
Lowering payroll taxes, in no way is “pro-business”. It is clearly a communist plot to undermine the free market.
I don’t expect much to improve.
Businesses just don’t want to spend money, because they don’t have to, since they are making money.
Svensker
Cranky cranky cranky. Assange arrested, everyone screaming about Obama, no ponies, Jets creamed, business deal goes south, BJ posts filled with yelling and meanness…
Where’s all the kitties at? I. Need. Kitties. (or doggies).
danimal
The uncertainty over the next two years (assuming this deal passes, which itself is NOT certain) will be a tremendous drag on the economy.
Look around – uncertainty is everywhere! We’re dooooomed!
Geeno
@Karen: Lazy coding irks me. I always coded date defaults so that if the entered year was greater than the current year (29 is greater than 10 in your example) it would default to 19xx otherwise 20xx, unless there was a much greater likelihood of entering future dates rather than past dates in the specific application.
I believe Microsoft uses 50 as it’s switch year, greater then 50 to 19xx – less than 50 to 20xx, because they have no idea what people will be entering in their apps, but it’s still lazy coding to fall on their defaults when putting together an application.
gene108
I was listening to Radio Times on the Philadelphia NPR station and she had some guest talking head on about the tax bill compromise and the point was brought up about whether this was capitulation or triangulation and he said it was capitulation, because Obama and the Democrats ran on a platform of ending the Bush & Co. philosophy on taxes.
He likened it to Bush, Sr. agreeing to raise taxes in 1990, as part of a budget compromise with Congressional Democrats, because Bush, Sr. effectively went back against his pledge of “read my lips, no new taxes”, which resulted in a backlash by the base.
I think the biggest difference in this historic parallel is one of Obama’s first acts as President was to kick-the-can down the road on resetting tax rates for the rich, because of the recession and the base already started bailing on Obama, sometime between December 2008 and February 2009, when Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, and other “corporatist whores” were appointed to his Administration. They’ve been looking for excuses to jettison support for this President ever since.
Any way it’s interesting how Obama seems to have lost all his support, as the conventional wisdom, though his approval rating has held steady.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20024518-503544.html
I don’t know how these narratives get driven or why they do. He’s in better shape than President Reagan was at this point in his Presidency, with regards to approval / disapproval numbers, yet everyone assumes he’s lost all his support.
I just don’t get why the loudest cry babies get all the attention.
Jay in Oregon
The Daily Show’s bit on Gretchen Carlson was pretty good.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-december-6-2010/the-gretch-who-saved-the-war-on-christmas
My thought upon watching her interview was that “it would be nice if she got that outraged over, say, the Wall Street crisis or GOP obstructionism.”
meander
Jonahtan Chait has a short, sharp strike on the GOP’s mixed message on uncertainty and the tax deal:
I have my own modest proposal for the GOP: if your party wants to strike a major blow against uncertainty, do not run anyone against Obama in 2012. For the business community to know that Obama will be in office for another four years would significantly reduce uncertainty related to the executive branch. (but then again, how can anyone predict what any executive would do, e.g., regulations from various agencies, actions by Treasury to handle unexpected events that happen in the economy like a European collapse, etc.)
Sentient Puddle
@Svensker: Kitty snuggling a teddy bear. You’re welcome.
Svensker
@Sentient Puddle:
Thank you!
Tim
I can’t really recall, in my short life, many more certain times for the rich and affluent than this. Seems the only ‘uncertainty’ is whether the milk and honey will continue to flow freely indefinitely.