By popular demand, classic Max. I think we took this pic at about 1 year old.
After reading the crappiness below I think I might take off work a bit early, and someone is getting peanut butter in a Kong toy.
Archives for August 2014
You Can’t Do That On Television: Ferguson Edition
Elon is back from Ferguson, Missouri, and he has a few things to share. From breakdowns on national television to what the experience on the ground has really been like to major mistakes by the mainstream media, we pull back the revolutionary curtain.
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You Can’t Do That On Television: Ferguson EditionPost + Comments (10)
Puppy-Kicking CEO Has Got to Go
Sometimes I’m sorry to be morally certain there is no hell, because there are definitely people who deserve to roast in it for all eternity. Here’s one, via Deadspin, a CEO who was caught on elevator security film abusing a Doberman puppy:
The asshole you see repeatedly kicking and yanking this dog all over the place—at one point lifting the dog up off the ground by the leash—is Desmond Hague, CEO of Centerplate. If you’ve ever been to a sporting event, you’ve probably bought something from him; Centerplate is a food service company that makes the over-priced food in many of the stadiums in North America.
You can see the video at the link. Basically, it shows a heartless prick mistreating a beautiful Doberman puppy who is clearly scared shitless of the asshole at the other end of her leash.
Hague issued a statement saying his behavior was “completely and utterly out of character” and that he was “ashamed and deeply embarassed” by what he had done.
He said a minor frustration with a friend’s dog caused him to lose his composure.
“I have reached out to the SPCA and have personally apologized to the dog’s owner,” he wrote. “At this time, I would like to extend my apology to my family, company and clients, as I understand that this has also reflected negatively on them.”
That’s all bullshit, though, since it turns out the dog is his, and the SPCA found evidence that she’s been serially abused. Man’s inhumanity to man is sickening enough, but I just don’t understand how anyone could treat an innocent puppy that way.
I hope the poor little Dobie gets a good home with a family who will treat her right. And I hope next time Desmond Hague decides to kick a dog, it will be a pit bull who turns around and latches onto his scrotum with a death grip. I also hope Hague loses his fucking job.
The Invisible Hand Fisted New Jersey
Nobody could have predicted that Chris Christie’s decision to move pension funds to Wall Street was a shitty idea:
Between fiscal year 2011 and 2014, the state’s pension trailed the median returns for similarly sized public pension systems throughout the country, according to data from the financial analysis firm, Wilshire Associates. That below-median performance has cost New Jersey taxpayers billions in unrealized gains and has left the pension system on shaky ground. Meanwhile, New Jersey is now paying a quarter-billion dollars in additional annual fees to Wall Street firms — many of whose employees have financially supported Republican groups backing Christie’s reelection campaign. […]
In 2009, the year before Christie took office, New Jersey spent $125.1 million on financial management fees. In 2013, the most recent year for which data is available, the state reported spending $398.7 million on such fees. In all, New Jersey’s pension system has spent $939.8 million on financial fees between fiscal year 2010 and 2013. That’s only a little less than the amount Christie cut from state education funding in 2010 — a cut that played a major role in shrinking the state’s teaching force by 4,500 teachers. That money might also have reduced the amount the state needs to pay into the pension system to keep it solvent.
This may sound like a major mistake, but you have to realize that using the free market is kind of like throwing virgins into volcanos or cutting up lambs on an altar: it’s the ceremony, not the results, that are important.
I’m an Outlaw, Quick on the Draw
More disturbing news from Ferguson:
The FBI has questioned a man who says he recorded audio of gunfire at the time Brown was shot by Ferguson police on August 9, the man’s attorney told CNN.
In the recording, a quick series of shots can be heard, followed by a pause and then another quick succession of shots.
Forensic audio expert Paul Ginsberg analyzed the recording and said he detected at least 10 gunshots — a cluster of six, followed by four.
The funeral of Michael Brown The funeral of Michael Brown“I was very concerned about that pause … because it’s not just the number of gunshots, it’s how they’re fired,” the man’s attorney, Lopa Blumenthal, told CNN’s Don Lemon. “And that has a huge relevance on how this case might finally end up.”
The man, who asked that his identity not be revealed, lives near the site of the shooting and was close enough to have heard the gunshots, his attorney said.
Ten shots. Take it away, of all people, Mark Steyn:
In Ferguson, both parties agree that the first shot was fired from inside the car. The rest were fired by the officer when he’d got out of the car, with Chief Jackson conceding there could have been ten bullets fired. For purposes of comparison:
In 2011 the German police fired 85 bullets. That’s all of them. The entire police force. The whole country. Eighty-five bullets in one year. That’s seven bullets per month. One bullet for every million German citizens.
So the Ferguson PD used as many bullets on Michael Brown as the Polizei used on ten million Germans. But, by American standards, that’s relatively restrained. The same year as those German figures – 2011 – the Miami PD blew through the Polizei’s annual bullet allowance on just one traffic incident:
Police killed Raymond Herisse, 22, of Boynton Beach in a barrage of gunfire after they said he refused an order to pull over while speeding down a crowded Collins Avenue in his Hyundai…
Twelve officers – from Miami Beach and Hialeah – unleashed more than 100 rounds at Herisse, police said. The hail of bullets also struck and wounded three bystanders.
By comparison, those 85 German bullets per annum were aimed somewhat more precisely:
85 Patronen verfeuerten Polizeibeamte in Deutschland im Jahr 2011 bundesweit auf der Jagd nach Verbrechern, 49 davon waren Warnschüsse. 36-mal gaben die Polizisten gezielte Schüsse ab. Dabei wurden 15 Personen verletzt und sechs getötet, wie aus einer Statistik der Deutschen Hochschule der Polizei im westfälischen Münster hervorgeht.
That’s to say, of those 85 bullets, 49 were warning shots. America no longer does “the warning shot”. But whatever happened to “the shot”? With the 36 non-warning bullets fired by German police that year, they killed six people and wounded fifteen. That’s a bullet-and-three-quarters per target. Whether shooting to kill or to disable, they’re trying to do it with a single shot. American policing takes a third of Germany’s annual bullet allowance just to off a dog:
In July, three officers fired 26 shots at a pit bull that had bitten a chunk out of an officer’s leg in a Bronx apartment building. And there have been other episodes: in 1995, in the Bronx, officers fired 125 bullets during a bodega robbery, with one officer firing 45 rounds.
Just what happened on Saturday is still being investigated. Police experts, however, suggested in interviews yesterday that contagious shooting played a role in a fatal police shooting in Queens Saturday morning. According to the police account, five officers fired 50 shots at a bridegroom who, leaving his bachelor party at a strip club, twice drove his car into a minivan carrying plainclothes police officers investigating the club.
The bridegroom, Sean Bell, who was to be married hours later, was killed, and two of his friends were wounded, one critically.
Three months ago I asked this question:
Are American civilians so different from Europeans or Aussies or Kiwis or Canadians that they have to be policed as if they’re cornered rebels in an ongoing civil war?
A startling number of American readers wrote to say, with remarkable insouciance, that the US could not afford the luxury of First World policing. Large tracts of America had too many illegal immigrants, drug gangs, racial grievances, etc. Maybe. But the problem is that, increasingly, this is the only style of law enforcement America’s police culture teaches – not only for the teeming favelas, but for the leafy suburbs and the rural backwaters and the college-town keg party, too.
Which is to say that one day, unless something changes, we will all be policed like Ferguson.
Black people already are…
Medicaid Expansion outlook for 2015
We’re starting to hit the point of no return for any states that want to expand Medicaid with a go live date of January 1, 2015. A state that is authorized to expand Medicaid in anything other than a straight up expansion probably needs a good three to four months to get initial operating capacity built out. They will need six to nine months to get everything working correctly after that. A state that is doing straight up expansion based on current configuration can go live with minimal hassles with a month’s notice.
So what is the state of play on Medicaid expansion for 2015.
Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Women’s Equality Day
Lucy MacCalmont, at Politico:
President Barack Obama designated Tuesday as Women’s Equality Day, noting that women have made many advancements within the last century, but his administration is “committed to tearing down the barriers” that still exist.
“…[W]omen are succeeding like never before. Their contributions are growing our economy and advancing our nation,” Obama said in a statement on Monday, noting achievements in education, business and the armed forces. “But despite these gains, the dreams of too many mothers and daughters continue to be deferred and denied.”…
Obama said Women’s Equality Day, which marks the day in which the 19th Amendment was certified and gave women the right to vote, is to celebrate the achievement of women and promote gender equality…
“In the 21st century, a mother should be able to raise her daughter and be her role model—showing her that with hard work, there are no limits to what she can accomplish,” Obama said.
“When women are given the opportunity to succeed, they do,” Obama said.
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Apart from remembering that progress has been made (if not always in a straight line), what’s on the agenda for the day?
Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Women’s Equality DayPost + Comments (57)