Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Quick Holly update (my friend who had the aneurysm), not only did she move back here and started teaching again, but she was engaged over the summer and they chose to have a simple wedding in NYC. That was yesterday, and here is the picture:
Such a good looking and nice couple, and I just love that outfit. It’s just so, well, Holly.
Well, I joked first thing this morning about a Friday doc-dump, and (as commentor Cat pointed out) then this happened, per Annie Lowrey at NYMag:
ProPublica and “This American Life” are out with a blockbuster story, so blockbuster they got none other than Michael Lewis to tease it. It is the tale of one Carmen Segarra, a former regulator for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A compliance specialist, Segarra was embedded in Goldman Sachs to ensure that the megabank followed the rules.
For instance, in an incident that seems to have contributed to Segarra’s firing less than a year after she started on the job, she questioned whether Goldman had an adequate conflict-of-interest policy, ultimately determining that it did not. Her superiors pressured her to change her finding. Soon after, they canned her.
Of course, Goldman strongly disputes Segarra’s version of events, as does the New York Fed. And of course, Segarra is not an impartial observer — she’s a disgruntled former employee. But the brilliant thing is that we do not have to take her word for any of it. Shocked by what she saw, Segarra snuck a recording device into work. There are two days’ worth of tape supporting her version of events…
There will, I hope, be a lot more discussion about this over the weekend and into next week…
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Apart from confirming all our worst fears about the new Gilded Age, what’s on the agenda for the start of the weekend?
Open Thread: The Vampire Squid Pwns Its (Supposed) RegulatorsPost + Comments (99)
A five day old boy was shot in the head “accidentally” by nearby hunters as he was being held by his father on their couch. Initial reports were that the child’s head was “grazed,” but a new report states the injury was more severe than initially stated and the bullet penetrated the child’s head:
The 5-day-old boy who was accidentally shot by hunters near Saltsburg Thursday night is more seriously injured than authorities first thought, according to Indiana County District Attorney Pat Dougherty.
“It was originally reported that the bullet had grazed the child’s head, but it had actually penetrated the child’s head,” Dougherty said.
***The injuries to the baby were an improbable accident, Dougherty said.
“Nobody would be able to make that shot if they tried,” he said. “It’s unbelievable.”
Who the fuck is trying to shoot a baby in the fucking head? And as someone in law enforcement, you’d think by now with the rash of accidental shootings that it is quite believable.
Trying to think positively, if the kid survives, the rest of his life just has to be easier. I mean, if you get shot in the head when you are five days old, karmically he’s pretty much owed some easy sailing from here on out.
The rain just keeps coming here. I hope you’re enjoying more pleasant weather wherever you are. Open thread.
ETA: Here’s one for the “self-awareness, lack thereof file” — “Rand Paul blasts Obama as arrogant ‘autocrat.'” Jesus H. God. That’s like Donald Trump criticizing, well, anyone’s hairdo.
On September 4 at a South Carolina gas station, a white highway patrol officer shot a black unarmed man at a routine traffic stop after asking him for his license. The incident happened so quickly and the shooting so without provocation, that the victim, Levar Jones, was dumbfounded as shown in this exchange:
“Can I see your license please?” [highway patrol officer Sean] Groubert asked.
But something quickly changed. As Jones turned around and reached into his vehicle, Groubert could be heard shouting, “Get out of the car! Get out of the car!”
The officer then fired multiple times.
Jones stumbled away from his vehicle with his hands in the air and then fell to the ground. As Groubert radioed for medical help, the two men could be heard talking.
“I just grabbed my license. You said get my license!” Jones said. “What did I do, sir? I don’t know what happened. … Why did you shoot me?”
“Well, you dove headfirst back into your car,” Groubert said.
While this incident shows how important dash cams are (Groubert has been fired and is facing aggravated assault charges with a possible 20 year jail sentence), it also speaks truth to every fear that a black person has when he or she is stopped by the police. Being black is not a crime.
Team Blackness also discussed Eric Holder stepping down, the NAACP report on racial profiling, and a Texas man accused of buying school board votes with cocaine.
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It’s been awfully rainy here. The ground is completely saturated, and the ditches are brimming with standing water. When that happens in Florida, insects will seek shelter in your home, no matter how often you spray poisons to repel them or how scrupulously clean you keep your abode (not that I’ve ever tried the latter, but so I hear).
A particularly large specimen made its way inside earlier, and it must have been addled by the chemicals we use to try to keep them out because it charged me, running straight in my direction across the kitchen floor instead of scuttling behind an appliance or something. So I grabbed the broom and whaled on it until the broom head sheared off against the tile.
But the motherfucking palmetto bug kept coming, so I continued beating it with the broom handle, screaming, “DIE! DIE! DIE!” with each blow until I finally cracked its Kevlar carapace and dispatched it to Roachy Valhalla, where it need not be ashamed in the company of its mighty forefathers.
This is not an unusual occurrence. In fact, I may have shared a similar episode with you before, broken broom and all. I forget. Anyhoo, I texted the mister that I’d wrecked yet another broom, expecting a mild reproof about just using a rolled up magazine or shoe (as if I would come that close!) to kill bugs. But instead he replied, “Maybe you should get a four door,” which was not very nice, but I admit I sort of walked right into that one.
Open thread.
The Ferguson Police Department’s new PR flak was convicted of reckless homicide 10 years ago. No, really.
But he should be fired for cause if he orchestrated yesterday’s PR debacle, in which Police Chief Tom Jackson first issued a video apologizing to the Browns six weeks after Jackson’s officer gunned their unarmed son down and left the kid’s body in the street for several hours. Then Jackson tried to join a protest against…Jackson. Astoundingly, the gesture wasn’t well received:
St. Louis Alderman Antonio French:
I don’t think he was marching with the protesters more than 30 seconds before the riot cops came out into the crowd and tried to get themselves closer to him and protect him,” said French, a St. Louis elected official who has been following demonstrations since the Aug. 9 shooting and who supports calls for Jackson’s resignation. “Just them being out there pushing started stuff — it’s a complete misread of the situation. His very presence agitated the crowd.
Resign already, asshole.