The Bleak House (of Representatives) Finally Sues the President

This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. ~ Charles Dickens, Bleak House

There are reasons for the legislature to sue the president rather than using its legislative powers, but they are entirely to provide perpetual employment to D.C. lawyers. This lawsuit will drone on in judicial purgatory and never decide anything. It will, however, consume entire forests to print the incomprehensible legal briefs.

California Needs It's Slave Labor

At least that's what state lawyers are saying in federal court. My state, my liberal Democratic state, is telling the court that California cannot release non-violent offenders who should be eligible for early release because they are needed as cheap ($2 a day) firefighters.

The extension of 2-for-1 credits to all MSF inmates would likely make fire camp beds even more difficult to fill, as low-level, non-violent inmates would choose to participate in the MSF program rather than endure strenuous physical activities and risk injury in fire camps. ~ Nov. 17 court filing

Some definitions. MSF is "minimum support facility," they are work camps that have few guards and no walls or barbed wire. They are for prisoners who are no risk to the public. "2-for-1 credits" are a program to grants prisoners two days of time served for every actual day served. Usually these credits are only granted as payment to prison labor but the federal court wants all non-violent offenders to be eligible.

What the state is saying in the above quote is that it can't release non-violent offenders early because they need to keep them prisoners so they can work the fire lines.

the extension of enhanced credit-earning to these inmates would result in higher turnover and an even greater demand for minimum custody inmates. ~ ibid

Apparently there is a high demand for prisoner slave labor and early release threatens that supply of slaves.

Of course, the state could actually hire firefighters at a living wage and eschew using prison slaves as fodder for the flames but even in progressive California that is a step too close to democracy.

California currently holds 136,000 prisoners (equal to the population of Pasadena).

The Business of Immigrant Smuggling

I recently finished serving on a Federal jury. The defendant was accused of being part of an immigrant smuggling ring and I learned several things from the immigrants called as witnesses.

Immigrant Smuggling Is a Billion Dollar Business
In my case the rate to be guided across the US-Mexico border on a night-long hike to be picked up at the other end is between $3,000 and $6,000 (it really pays to negotiate the fee), payment due upon delivery. In 2012, about 270,000 Mexicans were estimated to have crossed the border illegally, which means payments were about one billion dollars. If you consider the rest of Latin America that amount more than doubles. The average income for a worker in Mexico is 280 peso a day. That's about $20US. These immigrant smugglers charge up to a year's income to bring one person into the United States.

Mother Jones reported in 2010 that immigrants from Thailand paid between $11,000 and $23,000 to be smuggled into the US. Unskilled workers in Thailand get paid about $120 per month in Thailand. These smugglers charge upwards of eight years of income for their services.

The Smuggling Chain Is Complex
Recruiters wait outside the Casa del Migrante in Tijuana seeking customers. Casa del Migrante is a Catholic charity that helps care for people who have been caught by the US Border Patrol and dumped back at the border with few if any resources. The recruiters negotiate a price for transit. The immigrants then take a taxi to a remote stretch of road in the desert where they are gathered into small groups. Guides lead them on an all night hike through rugged terrain. En route the guides will abandon them with instructions to seek a predominate landmark (in my case well lit wind turbines) where they will be met by vehicles (in my case two pick up trucks). The immigrants were not told what would happen next, what was the next link in the chain.

Sometimes the Next Link Is Servitude
After the case was decided, when I felt free to speculate, I began wondering what the next link is. How do the smugglers insure payment? That same Mother Jones article noted that the occasional answer is indentured servitude. Immigrants might be forced to work at farms the smugglers supply workers for until their debts are paid.

The Immigrants Are Sympathetic People
One immigrant witness was trying to be reunited with his wife living in San Diego. Another, Francisco Beltran, had spent 22 of his 28 years living in the United States. He had been deported a couple years ago and was simply trying to return to the only home he had ever known. None of the immigrants were on trial, had they been I would probably have voted acquittal.

The Defendant Was Not So Sympathetic
The defendant was charged with driving one of the transport trucks and being part of an organized smuggling operation. He did not testify, which is his right. His lawyer offered no witnesses, also his right. His lawyer confined his case to a closing argument where he urged the jury to imagine some alternative reason why his client had stopped to pick up five people who had been hiding in the underbrush and told them to hide on the floor of the truck as he drove off. The defendant never asked them where they wanted to go, he knew where to take them.

Had the defendant been engaged in civil disobedience and altruistically trying to help immigrants build better lives I might have gotten all nullification in the court's face. But he didn't and the evidence clearly shown the defendant was part of a commercial operation exploiting the immigrants for personal financial gain.

I joined the other jurors in finding the defendant guilty on all counts.

Anti-War Music in History

As we enter the "Nobody Knows What the Fuck We're Doing" phase of the third Iraq Was I thought it might be fun to look at some old-timey war songs.

All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight - Civil War

All quiet along the Potomac," they say,
Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
'Tis nothing—a private or two, now and then,
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost—only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death rattle.

Written as a poem by Ethel Beers in 1861 and set to music by the prolific John Hill Hewlett in 1863. As the lyrics state, to generals the death of a common foot soldier is hardly worth mentioning.

I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier - World War I

I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother's darling boy?

Written in 1915 by Alfred Bryan and Al Piantadosi, a couple of Tin Pan Alley professionals. It was popular in pacifist circles and reviled by war mongers like Teddy Roosevelt and so was banned from music halls across the United States. The song quickly became popular in England and Australia where the Great War was killing off the cream of their youth. It became the subject of numerous parodies. A joke told by Groucho Marx regards a card playing mother who says, "I didn' raise my boy, he had a joker."

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda - World War I

They collected the wounded, the crippled, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind and the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And when the ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And thank Christ there was no one there waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity 

This is not contemporary with the war, it was written by Eric Boyle in 1971, but no one can write about war songs without mentioning this as it is one of the most haunting songs I have ever heard. The story of the song is a hobo who joyfully traveled the outback with his swag. He was caught up in war mania, enlisted, and was shipped off to fight in the Battle of Gallipoli. Struck by a Turkish artillery shell and "when I awoke in me hospital bed and saw what it had done, I wished I was dead. I never knew there was worse things than dying." The photo is of the hospital for the wounded soldier of Gallipoli.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition - World War II

Down went the gunner, a bullet was his fate
Down went the gunner, then the gunners mate
Up jumped the sky pilot, gave the boys a look
And manned the gun himself as he laid aside The Book, shouting
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!

During the Great Patriotic War™ none of the waring nations would permit anything like an anti-war song. The closest anyone got was Nazi Germany with the original lyrics to Lili Marlene.  The above ditty was written by famed songster Frank Loesser while serving in the U.S. Army as a propagandist.

I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag - Vietnam War

Come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, and don't hesitate
To send your sons off before it's too late.
And you can be the first ones in your block
To have your boy come home in a box. 

The Vietnam War era was the golden age of war songs. There were pro-war songs (Ballad of the Green Berets) and a plethora of anti-war recordings. Country Joe McDonald wrote this song in 1967, copying the music from a 1927 rag.


Light Up Ya' Lighter - Iraq War

So come on come on, sign up, come on 
This ones nothing like Vietnam 
Except for the bullets, except for the bombs 
Except for the youth thats gone

Michael Franti continued the tradition of thoughtful war songs in 2005 with this cut from his album Yell Fire.

Post Election: Now What?

The election is over but what will be the result?

1. There Will Be No Attorney General
The longest the United States has gone without an Attorney General was ten weeks during the Nixon Watergate scandal. I expect there is no human being currently living on Earth that a Republican Senate will vote to confirm as President Obama's Attorney General. President Obama will have to appoint an acting Attorney General which the Senate will refuse to confirm. The Senate will then claim that all actions of the Justice Department under its acting AG are illegal.

2. Voter ID Laws Will Get Worse
With almost two-thirds of governorships held by Republicans we can expect a major expansion of efforts to disenfranchise students, minorities, and the poor.  Voter ID laws will become more restrictive. More states will limit voting access. In 2016 we can expect hours long waits to vote in heavily Democratic cities in states like Texas and Ohio. Southern states will reimpose Jim Crow voting laws.

3.  Investigations But No Impeachment
I may be wrong here, the crazy may infest Republicans, but I expect that a united Republican Congress will choose to give President Obama death by a thousand cuts than try for a doomed to fail impeachment.

4. President Obama Will Do ... ?
This is the big question. Will the President get angry and fight or will he give up and lay low for the final years of his term? Will his last two years more resemble Harry Truman or James Buchanan? Whatever, expect the next two years to be extremely ugly.

Wither the Mid-Terms

Not whither, this election isn't so much a choosing as a dried up mess of compost. In this shit, Republicans will likely prevail.

There Is No Momentum

Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored ~ Alexander Pope

The "movement" pollsters are claiming to see is an illusion caused by pollsters shifting their screens to reflect what they think the final electorate will be. I'm not saying they are wrong, most will be accurate within the margin of error plus or minus an addition few percent. It's just not electorate shifts but calculation shifts. These screen shifts reflect the perceived...

Enthusiasm Gap

I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat. ~ Will Rogers

Remember "Hope and Change?" Remember when Democratic candidates could articulate some positive reason for electing them? In the one local competitive race (CA, 52nd CD), Democrat Scott Peters' campaign platform is mostly "don't elect the other guy who is a Tea Party follower and may be a gay sexual predator." Democrats across the country are pretty much saying that this is as good as it gets but Republicans will just make things worse. It's a depressing theme that isn't going to engender much enthusiasm.

October Surprises

If you can keep your head when all about you   

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too ~ Rudyard Kipling

Or,

If you can keep your head when all about you   

Are losing theirs,
You clearly don't understand the situation. ~ Murphy's Corollary

The big election surprises this year, ISIS and Ebola, both played badly for President Obama. They made him look indecisive and ineffective. In both cases he did the right thing in keeping calm and not panicking. But most Americans prefer decisive panic to calm response. And what plays badly for the President is bad for all Democrats because...

Midterm Traditions

The United States brags about its political system, but the President says one thing during the election, something else when he takes office, something else at midterm and something else when he leaves. ~ Deng Xiaoping

Midterm elections tend to go badly for the party in the White House. This is because presidents are never as good in office as we hoped they would be. People are disappointed and have only one way to show their dissatisfaction, voting for the opposition.

I'd like to see a November miracle and have Democrats hold the Senate. I just don't think it will happen. 

Three Frighteningly Popular Reality TV Shows

In today's modern multichannel universe there is a television program for just about every bizarre taste.

Monsters Inside Me

You're a hypochondriac and you just can't decide what new symptoms to confound your doctor with next. This is the Animal Plant program for you. They have everything - flukes in your brain, worms in your eye, tiny mites crawling under your skin (scabies, above) - you could possibly believe is inhabiting you. All described in clinical yet gross, and engrossing, detail. The program started specializing on parasites but in recent years have branched out to viruses because they have actually run out of interesting parasites.

Deadly Women

The entire Investigation Discovery channel is dependent on the United States being the most murderous civilization in human history. If the National Rifle Association did not exist the ID channel would have had to create it to keep the kill rate up to network demands. Fortunately, for them, the list of American serial killers is so extensive even a 24-hour a day death channel is not  in danger of running out of subjects. Deadly Women concentrates on murderesses. Angry teens, black widows, old ladies with arsenic are all recreated by actresses in vignettes. Terrifyingly, the show is very popular with women viewers. The show features former FBI profiler Candice DeLong, a real life Clarice Starling. Each vignette ends with the female killer staring, unblinkingly, into the camera. Just like Hannibal Lecter.

Ancient Aliens

Remember the 1994 James Spader, Kurt Russell movie Stargate. It's premise was that the Pyramids were built for a space alien pretending to be the Egyptian god Ra. The movie was followed by successful TV spinoffs. Ancient Aliens contents that every jot and tittle of the Stargate multiverse was absolutely real. This History Channel series posits that everything that has ever happened on Earth is the result of alien intervention.

• Life appears on Earth? The planet was seeded by aliens.
• Dinosaur extinction? Aliens killed them off just a few thousand years ago to protect the humans that lived with them.
• Every god ever? Aliens.
• Noah's flood? Really happened, aliens.
• Moses at Mount Sinai? He was talking to an alien.
• Jesus virgin birth? Aliens inseminated Mary with an alien-human hybrid. (Actually, the series has never touched this because so many of the show's fans are fundamentalist Christians.)
• Da Vinci, Einstein, Tesla? They were only geniuses because aliens talked to them.
• Aliens helped Hitler build a flying saucer and America build its atomic bomb.

I could go on, they sure as hell do. Ancient Aliens is creationism for nerds.  Nothing happens due to physics or chemistry or biology. Everything is the result of space aliens playing with Earth. If you believe this you have to accept that these aliens, who once strode the Earth as gods have been reduced to drawing designs in corn fields, anally probing hicks, and butchering cows.

P.S. I admit I've watched all of these occasionally because I am severely disturbed.

Ted Cruz's Kinky Love Life

I’ll tell you I love my iPhone. ~ Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

I want to be tolerant of alternative lifestyles, I really do. But while Cruz was struggling to sound both sympathetic and hate-filled on the topic of Apple's CEO being gay, he revealed more about his personal sexual identity than I wanted to know.

I don't want to know where Cruz stores his iPhone when it's set on vibrate or whatever else he might use his iPhone for. I mean, what he does with his iPhone in private is his own business and in no way affects my opinion of his qualifications as a presidential candidate.

I'd still sooner vote for an intolerant baboon.

What Real Pandemic Panics Look Like

The Ebola panic in the United States is pathetic in large part because there are many more deadly infectious diseases in this country. Real pandemic panics are much different.

Yellow Fever Epidemic - 1878

Yellow Fever outbreaks occurred periodically throughout the 19th century in cities like New York, Boston, and New Orleans. The 1978 fever probably arrived in New Orleans with war refugees from Cuba. As it spread along the Mississippi Valley, Memphis tried to protect itself by banning travelers from the south entering the town. That didn't stop it. As deaths in Memphis started, the white population (some 25,000 people) of the city evacuated leaving behind less than 20,000 mostly poor or black people behind. The evacuees were frequently turned away by other towns by armed men and barricades. The death rate in Memphis reached 200 per day. The fever burned through the Mississippi Valley for three months killing 20,000 people. Over 5,000 died in Memphis alone.

There is an effective vaccine for Yellow Fever yet is is still endemic in tropical Africa and South America and kills 30,000 people annually world wide.

Spanish Flu Pandemic - 1918

In raw numbers, the deadliest pandemic in human history. In three years, the Spanish Flu killed as many people as died during the six years of  World War Two.

The current best guess is this strain of flu began on a pig farm in Kansas, spread to the Fort Riley army base in March, 1918 where 100 men reported sick the first day. It killed 48 men in Fort Riley is just two weeks. Soldiers carried the disease to East Coast ports and across the ocean into Europe. From there it spread across the globe. Wartime censorship compounded the disease. It was called "Spanish" flu because Spain was not involved in WWI and its appearance in Spain was the first time the pandemic was reported in the public press.

In the second half of 1918, this disease exploded across the world. The death rates were horrifying. One one day (Oct. 10, 1918) in one city (Philadelphia) 759 were killed by the virus. People would become sick and be abandoned to die by their own family. Entire families would get sick and starve in their homes as friends were afraid to help them. Police would enter the homes later to clear out the dead bodies. In Philly that year, priests would actually bring horse drawn carts through neighborhoods calling for people to "bring out your dead."

Over a half million died in the United States in September and October, 1918. Twenty percent of the population of Samoa died in two months. Seventeen million died in India. Entire Alaskan villages were wiped out by the disease. Globally, 25 million people died in just 25 weeks and an estimated 80 million people died during the two year run of the pandemic. To this day, saying the words "swine" and "flu" in the same sentence will send government officials into a panic.

Flu vaccines are developed annually. The flu still kills 30,000 people a year in the United States alone.

Polio - 1952

In 1952, a polio epidemic saw 57,000 cases leading to 3,145 deaths. Many others suffered paralysis, occasionally requiring encasement in iron lungs just to breath. The fear of polio was wide spread because it mostly infected children. Public swimming pools were closed and sporting events were cancelled. Parents were warned to not let their children play with strange children, get tired or cold. Every time a child came down with a sore throat or fever parents were terrified it was polio.

First Jonas Salk then Albert Sabin developed polio vaccines. I remember getting both because my parents wanted to be doubly sure I didn't get polio. Polio has been eradicated in most of the world, the last US case was in 1979. There were only 416 cases globally in 2013, mostly in Somalia and Pakistan.

The Ebola Panic of 2014

In these days of indigestion it is oftentimes a question
As to what to eat and what to leave alone.
Every microbe and bacillus has a different way to kill us
And in time they all will claim us for their own.
There are germs of every kind in every food that you can find
In the market or upon the bill of fare.
Drinking water's just as risky as the so-called "deadly" whiskey
And it's often a mistake to breathe the air. ~ Some Little Bug Is Going to Find You Someday (song lyrics from 1916)

Illuminati Plot

According to this theory, the Illuminati created Ebola so they can impose mass quarantines, "FEMA camps, and global depopulation. The proof is imbedded in the popular cartoons South Park and The Simpsons. A variant of this thesis is the False Flag theory that President Obama is deliberately creating an Ebola pandemic so he can institute martial law.

It's Fake
Another variant concludes there is no such thing a Ebola and that the Red Cross is poisoning people. The reason given range from a depopulation plot, a plot to steal Sierra Leone diamonds, or a takeover of Nigerian oil.

Bio-Weapon
The Ebola outbreak is the result of a US government weapons test that got away from them. If that sounds familiar, it is the plot of the 1995 movie Outbreak. Russia's Pravda and a Delaware State University professor promote this theory.

Redneck Cure
Apparently, beer and tobacco are the cure for Ebola. Which means Rush Limbaugh is perfectly safe and can stop panicking.

The Home of the 'Fraid

There may be nations more pathologically afraid of just about everything than the United States, I just can't think of one. And, as a group, no Americans are more terrified than conservatives.

ISIS Will Kill Us All

This president needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed back here at home. ~ Sen. Lindsey Graham

HotAir breathlessly declares that almost every American is terrified of ISIS even though only 14% in the poll they reference see ISIS as the most important problem facing the country.

Breitbart is pissing its pants over the thought that "homegrown ISIS sympathizers" will turn their guns on Americans. Unstated is that their guns will have been legally acquired because the Second Amendment is holy script.

Over at National Interest, Stuart Gottlieb lists four reasons that ISIS is a "clear and present threat to the U.S. homeland." Among those reasons is their asymmetric advantage; he claims because ISIS is so small and weak they have an overwhelming advantage over large and powerful nations.

Young Conservatives is convinced that ISIS will murder the families of American service members. They fail to notice that this has not happened anywhere in the world.

The Truth Is I have a much greater chance of being gunning down on the street by a trigger happy cop or shot by a pissed off friend or relative. In the last few years, more people in the US have been killed during illegal cockfights that murdered by ISIS.

Ebola Apocalypse

Reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning. ~ Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA)

As I write this there is a community of survivalists diligently preparing for an Ebola apocalypse. Their rules include:

• More guns. Be prepared to shoot anyone approaching your home.
• Never leave your shelter. Anyone stepping outside is lost to you. It goes without saying that they will have to be shot if they try to return.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas (1 Ebola case) has formed a task force to deal with the pandemic. Gov. Rick Scott of Florida (zero cases) has ordered stockpiling of supplies to deal with the outbreak. The City of New York has a website providing Ebola information. Their FAQ effectively says that if you think you have Ebola you should face reality, you don't.

The Truth Is, to date, 0.0000009% of the population of the United States has the disease, and they caught it in Africa.  It's a nasty and deadly disease. Contracting it requires contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person shedding the virus. That's why friends, relatives, and health care workers are vulnerable - they clean up all the infected blood, diarrhea, and vomit of victims.  I am much more likely to die from heart disease, the flu, even malaria (five deaths in 2011).

The Ghey

I honestly think [the homosexual agenda is] the biggest threat that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam. ~ State Rep. Sally Kern (R-OK)

Gays are bullying Christians (even when Christians were trying to be bullies) and stealing children (echoing the anti-Semitic blood libel). They are plotting to destroy marriage and family by (gasp) marrying and having families. Gays caused 9/11 to happen. Eventually, God will destroy America and it will all be the fault of gays.

The Truth Is simply xenophobia, an irrational fear of strangers which Bible Belt conservatives have in spades.

Pretty Much Everything Else

People do weird things when they're hungry. You might run into cannibals at that point. ~ Doug, Doomsday Preppers

The National Geographic Channel's Doomsday Preppers show a sampling of the many Americans who are so terrified of everyday life they must be constantly prepared for any number of totally improbably disasters. The list of things they fear include:

• Yellowstone erupting (Likely to happen any time in the next 500,000 years.)
• Asteroid or comet impact (Tunguska in 1908 did localized damage in Siberia. The last major impact in the United States was 35 million years ago.)
• Earthquakes in New Madrid, MS (a 10% chance sometime in the next 50 years) but, oddly, not Los Angeles or San Francisco (25% chance in the next 30 years).
• World War III (Less likely now than in 1962.)

The Truth Is these Preppers are much more likely to be struck by lighting than inconvenienced by any of the disasters they fear. 

Nate Silver's Hissy Fit

Pythia was prettier and more famous.

A follow up to my previous post. I'm been quite amused by Nate Silver's obsession with Sam Wang from the Princeton Election Consortium over their competing predictions of the Senate election outcome. It's as if Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, got her panties in a twist because the Cumaean Sibyl had disagreed with her prediction of a wet fall on the Attic peninsula.

It doesn't matter. One will end up closer to the mark than the other but neither will be flawless. Both will claim their technique was perfect; it was their data that was imprecise. The one who gets closer to the actual election result will claim it proof of his infallibility. And it's all a bunch of pseudo-scientific hooey.

The Sibyl of Cumae is on the Sistine Chapel.

Political Polling - Season of the Witch

It's a desire as old as humanity, the wish to know the future. That's why palmistry and tarot card reading are still things even though the only thing palm readers can tell is whether I work with my hands and and tarot decks can only reveal how well I shuffle. Modern, scientific polling is more accurate than reading goat entrails but that is not saying much.

Pollsters will acknowledge that their polls are accurate, within a margin of error, except for those times they aren't. Pollsters like to claim to be masters of an arcane craft or, like Nat Silver, genius statisticians. What they are is educated guessers. Out of over 1,000 polls in the last week before the 2012 election, some pollsters were supernaturally accurate while others missed by a country mile. But, hitting your number in roulette does not make you prescient, just lucky.

When you look inside the magic box of pollsters you find a rather clumsy set of gears.

• Margin of Error -  Assuming all other factors are equal, this is the range that a poll encompasses. A standard 1,000 person survey has a MoE of ±3%, meaning that 19 times out of 20 the actual result will be within that range. So, a poll claiming a 52% win could really be showing a 49% loss. Most of the time the "momentum" polls reveal is nothing more than MoE noise. But, this all assumes all other factors are equal and they never are.
• Survey Structure - I once had a pollster explain to me how he could manipulate the results of a survey just by the order he asked the questions. Professional pollsters are aware of this but not even the best of them can catch all the subtle biases created by survey structure.
• Response Rate - Pollsters are annoying and in this era of cell phones and call screening they are an avoidable annoyance. To get 1,000 responses requires over 20,000 attempts. This lead to....
• Sampling Bias - Polls tend to under sample younger, poorer, and minority people. This means the results are not random. This leads to....
• Weighting - When I was in high school my science teacher had what he call "Stowell's Constant," which was the number you added or subtracted from the result you got to get the correct answer. Pollsters do the same thing. They adjust the raw results they get to mirror what they believe is the electorate. Rasmussen Reports notoriously believes there are more Republicans that actually exist and their results tend to skew Republican.
• Weighting Small Samples -  A problem with weighing is when you start parsing polls you get some really small sample sizes. A standard 1,000 person survey would expect 70 African-American males. If the poll only actually reached 30 black men then the MoE is approaching 18%, an error that is magnified by applying weighting adjustments. Pollsters hope the accumulations of these small sample errors will cancel each other out but there is no science to that, it is just hope.
• In Hindsight - Pollsters always come up with explanations for when they screw the pooch but whenever they get close to the mark it is because of their mastery of the art of polling.

I'm not saying that political polls are worthless. They are amusing and, if taken with an appropriate number of grains of salt, mildly illuminating. They can tell you if an election will be close, but so can common sense. Polls are most useful for people who lack any common sense which is why politicians cling to them so desperately.

Mercs R Us

Conservatives have a new (old) idea, hire mercenaries to do America's fighting in Iraq and Syria. Bill O'Reilly and Cal Thomas have both opined on what a really fun idea that is, just like in the movies.

Middle East Mercenaries
Professional warriors have been called the Second Oldest Profession. The most famous mercs in the Middle East were the Khwarezmiyya who were hired by Genghis Khan after he had destroyed the Persian Empire. They were also hired by the Kurdish Ayyubid Empire to drive the Crusaders out of Jerusalem in 1244. Wait. That's not at all what Cal and Bill want.

Post-Colonial Mercenaries
What Bill and Cal want are white, Christian mercenaries. Men like 'Mad Mike' Hoare. Hoare hired himself out to quell bush rebellions in the Congo during the 1960's. Later in life he and a troop of South African soldiers of fortune were hired (through a variety of shell organizations) by the CIA in 1981 to overthrow the government of the Seychelles. Their war never got any farther than the airport tarmac and they had to hijack a plane to escape.

Commercial Mercenaries
Of course, modern mercs are big business. G4S Solutions has the seventh largest army in the world with over 650,000 employees. Blackwater (they change their name every few years) along with her many sister forces within Constellis Holdings boast a fighting force in excess of 30,000 mercs who are not afraid to murder, rape, and maim.

I suspect O'Reilly and Thomas are examples of pundit payola. They were probably paid to promote the business of corporate mercenaries.

Stop and Frisk Explained in Pictures

The detention of Daniela Watts on suspicion of kissing her boyfriend in public and her arrest for refusing a police command to "show me your papers," has led to yet another edition of "The American Police State."

In Nazi occupied Europe a Gestapo command of "Papers, please" was a common street encounter. The Gestapo had a simple philosophy that everyone they encountered is a potential enemy.

These teens were walking to school when spotted by cops.

American police have a very similar philosophy. Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg defended that city's Stop and Frisk policy by declaring that police and the general public are in constant danger from people walking on the street, anyone of which could be a potential threat.

There are several similarities between the Gestapo and the US police street interviews.

• Both stops are random with nothing resembling cause (probable or improbable).
• Both require the victims to raise their hands in humiliating submission.
• Both demand ID papers.
• Both include the clear threat to ruin or even take your life if you do not meekly comply.
• Both pretend politeness, the Gestapo famously said "please," to mask the clear menace. 
• Both frequently execute their victims on the street for the slightest sign of resistance.
• Both target minorities. 

There are also differences.

• The Gestapo faced their victims while US police force their victim to face a wall or car and take a sexually submissive position that is frequently exploited.
• Gestapo officers were in better shape. Let's be honest, the NYPD cop on the left in the above picture would need a mobility scooter for a foot pursuit.
• US prisons don't have death camps but do have slave labor. 
• While both use prisoners in medical research, the US research is less horrific.

I'm not saying that US police are as bad as the Gestapo. They are not, at least not yet. As US police become more paramilitary and less citizens battling crime, the differences are narrowing. "Land of the Free" is becoming less a rousing national anthem and more a cruel joke.

St. Louis SWAT.

"Home of the Brave" is farce too.

A World Full of Duh

So much of the news this past week has bounced between transparent lies, through merely naive, to downright stupid.

NFL Sees No Evil. Really, Justice Is Blind and So Are We.
When the video of Ray Rice dragging his unconscious fiancee out of an elevator became public the NFL was all "naughty, naughty," boys will be boys, take a couple games off and be nicer. The NFL used its prodigious legal resources to get charges dropped and waited for it to be forgotten.

Pudge Heffelfinger may have beat his wife, too. Or not.

This week, when elevator security footage became public and showed Rice brutally cold cocking the girl, the NFL panicked. They made the ludicrous claim that  no one in the NFL has seen the tape. They saw it. They just didn't want to have seen them. They now have hired a career sycophant, Robert Mueller, to apply a thick coat of whitewash.

Bombing ISIS Will Only Get So Much

Berlin, 1945. All this bombing destruction yet Germany only surrendered after Russian ground forces captured Berlin.

I don't know how much of President Obama's speech last night was empty rhetoric and how much was naivety. I support the details of his plan (provide logistical and aerial support to local forces fighting ISIS) because ISIS is, on the scale of genocidal evil, between the Rwanda Hutu and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. The rhetorical goal, "degrade, and ultimately destroy," cannot be achieved with air power alone. At best, bombing can force ISIS to scatter their assets making it easier for opposing forces to chip away at  ISIS occupied land. That paragraph about industrial might is right out of the 1940's and sounds like this ISIS fight is, foremost, about growing US armaments companies.

Insult the Shit Out of Them, Why Don't Ya

Ted Cruz had a slam dunk speaking appearance at an "In Defense of Christians" banquet composed mostly of Arab Christians whose brethren are being butchered by ISIS. It was a perfect setting where he could support persecuted Christians who are being murdered by Muslim extremists. But no, that would have required someone with the IQ of a goat. Cruz is far dumber than that. Cruz started attacking all Arabs as terrorists and belittled the plight of Arab Christians by instructing them to stop being haters and start supporting Israel. Arabs in the room were strangely insulted by his hostility towards them and began booing. Cruz then doubled down and implied that if they didn't support Israel they deserved their fate with ISIS.

It was the kind of diplomatic sensitivity that will make Ted Cruz such a totally terrifying president.

Send Duck Dynasty to War

Here's a plan. It's a good plan that will kill two birds, so to speak, with one stone. Send the Duck Dynasty Klan to fight ISIS.

They have a plan (convert a few, kill everybody else). Republicans are always complaining that President Obama doesn't have a plan. They already have guns so it won't cost taxpayers anything to arm them.

But, don't just send those four wackadoddles, that wouldn't be fair. Recruit an entire army of the "convert them or kill them" crowd. Yes, including Anne Coulter. We could call it the Jesus Brigade. Who wouldn't want to see Sen. Lindsey Graham in combat fatigues backing up his words.

Sen. Graham used to claim to being a Desert Storm veteran until somebody pointed out that he spent the war hiding under a National Guard desk in South Carolina. Still, he did get a shitload of medals for heroic filing and stapling. 

There are problems. People like Ted Nugent, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney (why not send him, too?) are notorious cowards who love seeing other people do the fighting and dying as long as they can stay thousands of miles from the bloodshed. A call for volunteers to fight, without pay, for Jesus and America would go completely unanswered. Their confessed love of God and Country only goes as far as Sunday football services. President Obama should his executive powers as Commander-in-Chief to draft all the warmongers into the Jesus Brigade and send them to the front.

Of course, we know what will happen. The Duck Dynasty troop is only brave when killing unarmed water fowl. Faced with an actual ISIS soldier shooting back they will shit themselves, drop their guns, and quickly convert to Islam.

Whatever Happened to Officer Friendly?

An argument could be made that Officer Friendly was always a myth we told children, like the Easter Bunny. What with the third degree, Bull Connor, John Burge, the Rampart scandal, and the blue code of silence, history is replete with police committing and getting away with every conceivable crime up to and including cold blooded murder.

It is also true that many police officers are fine, brave, upstanding individuals honestly trying to make their communities better places to live and work. The true story of Frank Serpico is a perfect example of both sides of that coin.

Police Are an Isolated Community

When was the last time you passed a police officer on the street and he smiled at you and said hello? My guess is never. Police usually wear those extra dark sunglasses designed to make any kind of eye contact impossible. They maintain a stern, emotionless expression designed to be both intimidating and off putting. Police have an us versus them philosophy where the us is other cops and the them is every other living person. They are taught that everyone they meet, everyone, is a potential enemy. That soon evolves into the belief that everyone IS an enemy.

SWAT Spells Bad

There was a time when Special Weapon and Tactics squad made sense. And, in very limited cases, they still do. In the '60's there were a handful of cases where police were completely outgunned. The two incidents that convinced police of the need for SWAT were the Watts Riots and the Hub pawnshop shootout in San Diego, both in 1965. While these elite squads were initially designed for crowd control and heavily armed opponents, over time uses of SWAT began to blur. It was like, why have an expensive Maserati if your not driving it to the Starbucks. SWAT was designed as a squad that might be need once every few years. Today, SWAT is being used when it is not needed and is, literally, overkill. There are 4.5 SWAT raids every day. SWAT is even being called out for no-knock raids to serve misdemeanor warrants. I'd also like to compare the SWAT officer above to this ISIS terrorist.

Both carry military grade automatic weapons. Both wear thick, probably armored, clothing. Both wear stocking masks to obscure their faces even at the risk of blocking their vision. Really, how can the cop even see with that balaklava covering his eyes. That can't be safe for either the officer or citizens. The point of the masks, in both cases, is to instill terror.

US Police Are Death Magnets

The 2012 Empire State Building shooting saw Jeffrey Johnson shoot one person. Two NYPD cops wildly fired 16 bullets killing Johnson and injuring nine innocent citizens.

It is no surprise that no agency from the Justice Department to any local jurisdiction keeps stats on citizens shot by police officers. No one, no politician and no MSM outlet, want to know the numbers because the truth is absolutely staggering. Jim Fisher's True Crime blog did the research for the year 2011. By his count, in that year alone 1,146 citizens were shot by police and 607 killed. For comparison, in the span of 15 years (1995-2009) United Kingdom police have killed exactly 33 people. UK police kill as many people in 15 years as US police do in three weeks. Estimates are that since 9/11 American police officers have killed over 5,000 innocent citizens.

That doesn't count deaths in custody, which is a stat the Feds do keep. In 2011, 4,238 American prisoners died in custody. In the UK the number is 223, 33 died in police custody and 190 in prison custody.  For reference, the US has 5.5 times the population of the England and Wales.

A lot of this has to do with the American gun culture. There are over 300 million guns in the US; there are less than 4 million guns in England and Wales. Since 1995, 34 British police officers died in the line of duty, six were shot. In the US for the same period, approximately 1,500 police officers died in the line of duty with 628 shot to death.

In 2011, there were 640 murders in the Britain, only 44 killers used guns. In the same period in the US there were 12,664 murders; 8,583 used firearms.

Conclusions

• While the United States is a violent country its murder rate (4.7 per 100,000) is less than the global average (6.3) and half the murder rate in Russia (9.2). It is the highest murder rate of any industrialized nation, second place is Taiwan (3.0). The United Kingdom has a murder rate of only 1.0 per 100,000.
• American police die in the line of duty at a rate eight times more frequent than UK police. They are shot at a rate twenty times more frequently.
• However, American police kill citizens at a rate fifty times more frequently than in the UK.

That last number the most important. Every year American police officers kill more American citizens than the Mafia, than Mexican drug cartels, than terrorists. In the United States, especially in minority neighborhoods, police departments are an ever present, deadly threat.

What to Expect from the Ferguson Grand Jury

The pathetically vague incident report on the Michael Brown shooting indicates how the St. Louis County grand jury investigation will proceed. It will be slow, incomplete, and obviously rigged.

The Grand Jury investigation will take months. As police shootings go, this should be easy. It was broad daylight, witness could see clearly. The whole incident from first contact to fatal shots took less than three minutes. Prosecutors expect to take at least two months, to mid-October, to present evidence, then the grand jury "can meet as long as they want" to reach a conclusion. They probably won't announce a decision until a particularly cold and blizzardly day in mid-December chosen more for suppressing protests than justice.

The result will be "No True Bill." Officer Darren Wilson has not been charged with anything. This means the grand jury will not be deciding whether to indict but simply reviewing evidence. The St. Louis County grand jury requires a 12-vote unanimous decision to indict, unlike other jurisdictions where a majority of a 23-member jury indicts. St. Louis County DA, Robert McCulloch, is a renown "friend of police" who has never seen anything wrong when police shoot a black man. His actions are a nudge-nudge, wink-wink to the grand jury to not indict.

The law is not on the side of justice.  At its loosest interpretation, certainly the one Robert McCulloch will describe to the grand jury, Missouri law says that a police officer can always shoot to kill as long as the officer expresses the lamest justification for the killing. All Wilson need do is claim he "felt" threatened by an unarmed man surrendering 30 feet away and it becomes a righteous shooting.

In case of trial, it will be held in a conservative, lily-white community. Let's say the grand jury goes rogue and files an indictment. The first act of the defense will be to demand a change of venue. As in the Rodney King case, the new venue will be chosen specifically to be sympathetic to the white officer. My early guess is Benton County where there are fewer than 30 African-Americans in the whole county.

There will be no sign of justice in the Michael Brown shooting case. As proof, I offer the fact that St. Louis police gunned down an unarmed man in broad daylight a few days after the Michael Brown shooting. They had absolutely no justification and no fear of any sort of discipline.

Ferguson Debacle In One Quote

Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all– the policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder. ~ Richard J. Daley

There are a few questions regarding the death of Michael Brown.

• Was Officer Darren Wilson an ill-trained incompetent who panicked and shot, repeatedly, an unarmed man?
• Did Officer Wilson believe misdemeanor theft deserved summary execution? (There really is no third option here.)
• Why the fuck would police ever need camo fatigues? (There is no tactical need, it is just playing dress up, playing pretend soldier.)

Ferguson cop training an M4 carbine with sniper scope on civilians.

• What, exactly, is that police officer atop an armored personnel carrier pointing his 45 round per minute weapon at? 
• More importantly, what is he thinking? Where does he think he is?

Ferguson police released a police report accusing the victim of a petty crime in a transparent attempt justify the shooting. In that the report the case status is listed as "Exceptionally Cleared."

• What the fuck does that mean? ("Exceptionally Cleared" is police jargon. In this case it means, "we've got some defenseless, dead nigger we can blame it on so there is no need to actual prove anything.")