The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    In the News

    Venezuela issues arrest warrant for opposition leader after clashes

    By Phil Gunson, CNN, Feb. 13, 2014

    Caracas  -- A day after political violence in Venezuela left three dead on the streets of Caracas, authorities issued an arrest warrant for an opposition leader on charges including conspiracy and murder in connection with the clashes, an official with Venezuela's justice ministry said Thursday.

    Before his government issued an arrest warrant for opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, President Nicolas Maduro had already threatened him with a permanent ban on holding public office. Lopez's party, Popular Will (known as VP after its initials in Spanish), has accused the government of responsibility for violence during anti-government protests Wednesday.

    The violence, which left three dead in Caracas and dozens more injured or detained across the country, has exacerbated an already tense situation.

    Maduro insists he is facing a slow-motion coup [....]

    Also see:

    Twitter reports image blocking in Venezuela
    Associated Press, Feb. 14, 2014

    LIMA, Peru  — Twitter said Friday that Venezuela had blocked images on its service following an anti-government protest that turned bloody, and it offered a workaround for users who want to get tweets via text message on their cellphones.

    Hacktivists, meanwhile, defaced and knocked various government websites offline, organizing and choreographing online denial-of-service attacks that flood sites with traffic, making them temporarily unreachable.

    Twitter spokesman Nu Wexler said Friday via email in response to an Associated Press query that "Twitter images are currently blocked in Venezuela." [....]

    And:

    Venezuela Protests Leave 5 Injured in Fourth Day of Unrest
    By Corina Pons and Eric Martin, Bloomburg News, Feb. 15, 2014

    artappraiser 10 years 11 months ago

    Nina Hartley, Candida Royale discuss feminism and erotica, and other stuff

    Disclaimer: I know Nina Hartley from when she was still getting her RN at Cal, and I did her horoscope.  I knew when I met her she was destined for greatness, and I was not disappointed.  

    I stumbled on this segment, incidentally, while following up on O-K's huffpost cite on he backstabbing Georgia judge issue.

     

    Serendipity.

    jollyroger 10 years 11 months ago

    Obama Sparks All-Out Revolt Over Socially Conservative Judicial Nominee

    Boggs appears so out-of-step with Obama's past nominees because he is part of an all-or-nothing package of six judicial nominees agreed to by the president and Georgia's two Republican senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, months ago. Obama made some pretty big concessions: Four of the six nominees are GOP picks, and just one of the six is African American -- a lack of diversity that Georgia Democrats argue doesn't reflect the population those judges will oversee.

    Lowery, for one, was so baffled by the president's choice that he said it must have been a staff error.

    ocean-kat 10 years 11 months ago

    Deferential Remarks in Martyrdom Video Said to Show Briton’s Last Words Before Suicide Attack in Syria

    By Robert Mackey and Christine Hauser, The Lede @ nytimes.com, Feb. 14, 2013

    Peering into the camera and shaking his head slowly, a British man in Syria, dressed in the white robe worn by suicide bombers, apologized for being at a loss for words. “Sheikh, I can’t speak,” the man said to the militant acting as his translator in video apparently recorded last week, just before he got behind the wheel of an explosives-laden truck. “My tongue’s got like a knot in it,” he explained. “Tell him I can’t speak.”

    The man, whose appearance matches that of Abdul Waheed Majeed, a 41-year-old father of three from the English county of West Sussex who traveled to Syria recently to work with refugee children, seemed to be politely declining a request to speak in his own martyrdom video. “What I say should come from the heart,” he demurred. “I can’t do it.”

    The video, which seems to have been recorded by a Russian-speaking jihadist brigade, then cuts to images of the truck, bearing the black flags of the Qaeda-linked Islamist militants Jabhat al-Nusra [....]

    artappraiser 10 years 11 months ago

    Russian Environmentalist, and Critic of Olympics, Gets 3-Year Prison Sentence

    By Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, Feb. 12/13, 2014

    SOCHI, Russia — An environmentalist and leading critic of Russia’s preparations to host the Winter Olympics was sentenced Wednesday to serve three years in a penal colony, in a ruling that rights groups condemned as legally flawed and obvious retribution for his political activities.

    Even before the ruling on Wednesday, a court had sentenced the activist, Yevgeny Vitishko, to 15 days in jail on a charge of hooliganism for swearing in public, a conviction that other environmental activists called a pretext to jail Mr. Vitishko during the Games.

    The more severe sentence was handed down on Wednesday by an appeals court in Krasnodar, the capital of the region where Sochi is. It upheld a lower court ruling from December that Mr. Vitishko had violated the conditions of a suspended sentence, akin to parole, for an earlier conviction of spray painting graffiti on a fence [....]

    artappraiser 10 years 11 months ago

    Tennessee Threatens VW over Union Vote

    I don't see much discussion of this, but as by-stander, this strikes me as a very big deal. Especially, of course, if they win. Bruce?

    Peter Schwartz 10 years 11 months ago

    CAESAR IS DEAD; ETTU BRUTES!

    My favorite year.jpg

    My mind is reeling.

    I grew up with Sid Caesar on the ole Black & White.

    HE WAS FUNNY!

    He lived a long life, a good life.

    I am watching a tribute of THE BEATLES; with two Beatles present on CBS.

    I am getting so ooooold.

    the end

    Richard Day 10 years 11 months ago

    Copyrighted quilts: Lawyers put shops, fire companies and mud sales on notice
    Quilters, drop your needles.  Or at least pause and double-check what pattern you are quilting.
     
    From now on, Light in the Valley, a quilt pattern that creates an optical illusion that lends it a three-dimensional effect, can no longer be quilted.
     
    That particular pattern has been copyrighted, and Almost Amish, the company that bought the copyright, has sent letters from its attorney to representatives of Lancaster County quilt shops and nearly every volunteer fire company here that hosts a mud sale, telling them to cease and desist selling that quilt.
     
    Not exactly what quilters and quilt sellers like to hear.

     

    EmmaZahn 10 years 11 months ago

    Whatever Happened to ‘Every Man a King’?

    By Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times Op-Ed, Feb. 11/12, 2014

    A passionate group of labor economists has taken up a cause championed 40 years ago by the late Senator Russell Long of Louisiana: to turn every worker into a capitalist.

    Long, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee from 1966 to 1981, inherited a populist commitment from his father, Huey Long, the Louisiana governor who famously campaigned on the slogan “Every Man a King.”

    In 1973, Long became intrigued by the idea of granting corporations generous tax incentives to distribute stock to employees through Employee Stock Ownership Plans, or ESOPs.

    Long’s question was, could ESOPs “make haves out of the have-nots without taking it away from the haves?” Working on assurances that this was indeed the case, Long said, “That’s the kind of populism I can buy.”

    Beginning in 1974, Long won enactment of a series of bills establishing tax incentives favorable to corporations that transferred company stock into ESOPs. In 2012, the National Center for Employee Ownership estimated that the number of ESOPs had grown to 12,000, covering 11 million workers with $858 billion in assets [....]

    artappraiser 10 years 11 months ago

    Vast Study Casts Doubts on Value of Mammograms

    By Gina Kolata, New York Times, Feb. 11/12, 2014

    One of the largest and most meticulous studies of mammography ever done, involving 90,000 women and lasting a quarter-century, has added powerful new doubts about the value of the screening test for women of any age.

    It found that the death rates from breast cancer and from all causes were the same in women who got mammograms and those who did not. And the screening had harms: One in five cancers found with mammography and treated was not a threat to the woman’s health and did not need treatment such as chemotherapy, surgery or radiation.

    The study, published Tuesday in The British Medical Journal, is one of the few rigorous evaluations of mammograms conducted in the modern era of more effective breast cancer treatments [....]

    The study seems likely to lead to an even deeper polarization between those who believe that regular mammography saves lives, including many breast cancer patients and advocates for them, and a growing number of researchers who say the evidence is lacking or, at the very least, murky [....]

    artappraiser 10 years 11 months ago

    The TR Show

    By Susan Dunn, New York Review of Books, Feb. 20 issue and available online now

    Review of Doris Kearns Goodwin's new book: The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism.

    Excerpt:

    ....As president, too, Roosevelt would view himself as the hero of the people—with the emphasis on the hero, not on the people. “I believe that whatever value my service may have comes even more from what I am than from what I do,” he wrote in 1908, as his presidency drew to a close. The chief service he could render to the “plain people who believe in me is, not to destroy their ideal of me.”

    At the onset of World War I, that heroic leader devolved into a demagogue as his hypermasculine, martial values ran amok. [....]

    The hero and the demagogue were not the only Roosevelt incarnations. There were two others: the conservative reformer and the radical progressive [.....]

    artappraiser 10 years 11 months ago

    The Collapse of Big Law: A Cautionary Tale for Big Med

    The legal industry's obsession with performance metrics has contributed to its dramatic collapse. Could the same happen with physicians and hospitals?

    By Richard Gunderman and Mark Mutz, The Atlantic, Feb. 11, 2014

    Lawyers have something to teach doctors. But it is not how to avoid medical malpractice claims, protect patients’ rights, or negotiate better contracts with hospitals and insurance companies. Instead it is a cautionary tale—a tale of woe, really—about pitfalls the medical profession needs to guard against if it wants to avoid reprising the epidemic of de-professionalization and demoralization that has beset lawyers and the legal profession.

    Part of the explanation is simply economic [....]

    But look deeper still and other more fundamental problems emerge [....]

    Medicine lags behind the law by several decades, but it is now proceeding down the same path [....]

    artappraiser 10 years 11 months ago

    Former Miami-Dade lawmaker switches political parties, prompting speculation

    I expect her to run for the state house again in Miami as a Democrat.  The person that is running for House in FL-19 is Alice Freeman and she is a former Republican switched to Democrat for the same reason.  There is plenty of enthusiasm with the Florida Democrats.  

    Former state Rep. Ana Rivas Logan is leaving the Republican Party, she announced Monday.

    She plans to register as a Democrat, she said.

    "The GOP of today is not the party I joined," said Rivas Logan, who also served on the Miami-Dade School Board. "It's not the party of my parents. It's a party that has been radicalized and held hostage by a group of extremists."

    trkingmomoe 10 years 11 months ago

    Testosterone fueled Hockey fights? It's the stick, not the dick

    Those of us who have long deplored the  habit of hockey players to commence to wailing on each other at the drop of their gloves frequently refer to the seething male rivalries simmering in a testosterone laced cauldron as the proximate cause.

    Nuh-uh.  There must be something intrinsic about whizzing around the ice carrying a lethal weapon.

     

    Olympic officials fear a repeat brawl between the US and Canadian skaters...kinda like roller derby but with clubs and razor sharp skates.

    jollyroger 10 years 11 months ago

    Obamacare changes thread: 1) Administration will allow people to switch health-care plans to a limited degree

    By Amy Goldstein, Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2014

    The Obama administration has quietly reworked rules and computer code for HealthCare.gov to try to stem an outpouring of discontent by some Americans who have discovered that the health plans they bought do not include their old doctors or allow them to add new babies or spouses.

    Under changes that have not been disclosed to the public, the government will temporarily allow consumers who have gotten coverage through the new online insurance marketplace to switch health plans to a limited degree.

    In a memo distributed Thursday night to insurers, federal health officials said that people may pick a different health plan before the end of March if they are dissatisfied with the one they chose, but only if they stay with the same insurer and generally the same level of coverage. The 14-page memo, obtained by The Washington Post, also says people will be given more freedom and a longer opportunity to get a new health plan if they can prove that HealthCare.gov, the Web site for the new marketplace, displayed inaccurate information about the benefits that a health plan offers.

    In addition, HealthCare.gov now has a “Report a Life Change” button, the memo says, enabling people to tinker with their plans if they have added members to their family, moved, gotten out of prison, or undergone other changes that affect the insurance they want. Even as the improvement was being announced to insurers, this aspect of the computer system still is not working reliably, [....]

    artappraiser 10 years 11 months ago

    Suicide Bomb Training Class Blows Up in Iraq

    Are there student loans for suicide bombing classes? Thanks to George W. Bush they now have educational programs for terrorists in Iraq.

    BAGHDAD — A group of Sunni militants attending a suicide bombing training class at a camp north of Baghdad were killed on Monday when their commander unwittingly conducted a demonstration with a belt that was packed with explosives, army and police officials said......

    NCD 10 years 11 months ago

    AOL CEO:Cuts to 401K because, 2 $1 mill.babies...

    Just bring back the fuckin' Guillotine. 

     

    Meanwhile, the pool is open...how long before this asshole moves on "to pursue other opportunities..."?

    jollyroger 10 years 11 months ago

    The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program

    The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.

    A Guy Called LULU 10 years 11 months ago

    Joe Scarborough: Chris Christie ‘distraction’ for RGA

    Lyndon Johnson famously knew that he was toast when Walter Kronkite turned against the Vietnam War "We've lost Kronkite" was how he put it".  Well, Little Joey Sycophant has turned on Big Boy, and now there's only Rudy Giuliani left to pimp for him.  If Christie could dance, the jig would be up.

    jollyroger 10 years 11 months ago

    A campaign that is gathering weight

    ONCE derided as the scheming of crackpots, the campaign for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel, widely known as BDS, is turning mainstream. That, at any rate, is the fear of a growing number of Israelis. Some European pension funds have withdrawn investments; some large corporations have cancelled contracts; and the American secretary of state, John Kerry, rarely misses a chance to warn Israel that efforts to “delegitimise” and boycott it will increase if its government spurns his efforts to conclude a two-state settlement of its conflict with the Palestinians.

    A Guy Called LULU 10 years 11 months ago

    47 years a slave: A new perspective on the occupation

    Very few struggles in history have centered on how a nation should treat a third group of people, but there are strong parallels between black slavery and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

    A Guy Called LULU 10 years 11 months ago

    Teaching-Track Tenure?

    If we created three kinds of tenure rather than one, we might see net gains in both research and teaching.

    A research-only tenure track would be for professors who have the passion and talent for discovering knowledge, but lack the motivation or ability to teach well. This would allow them to do more groundbreaking studies and produce more patents, while sparing students the sorrow of shoddy courses.

    Creating more full-time research professorships could combat the decline of research productivity post-tenure, as many productive professors see their nonteaching time consumed by administrative responsibilities. If research professors didn’t teach, administrative duties wouldn’t impede their work.

    A teaching-only tenure track would be for professors who excel in communicating knowledge. Granting tenure on the basis of exemplary teaching would be a radical step for research universities but it might improve student learning. In a recent landmark study at Northwestern, students learned more from professors who weren’t on the tenure track. When students took their first course in a subject with a professor who didn’t do research, they got significantly better grades in their next class in that subject.

    Bruce Levine 10 years 11 months ago

    Renowned Japanese Composer Admits Fraud

    By Martin Fackler, New York Times, Feb. 6, 2014

    [....] His deafness won him praise as Japan’s modern-day Beethoven.

    It turns out his magnum opus was his own masquerade.

    On Thursday, Japan learned that one of its most popular musical figures, Mamoru Samuragochi, 50, had staged an elaborate hoax in which someone else had secretly written his most famous compositions, and he had perhaps even faked his hearing disability [....]

    artappraiser 10 years 11 months ago

    How Goldman Sachs Rescued Libya
    Note: tongue in cheek, fairly typical finance humor
     
    In October of 2011, Libya was finally freed from autocratic rule after 42 years of oppression under the dictator Muammar Gaddafi. There were many contributing causes to the fall of the Colonel, from the rebellious uprising of National Transitional Council (NTC) armed forces to the sanctions imposed by the West, including the freezing of bank accounts and the boycott of the nation’s oil exports.
     
    But of all these factors in the liberation of the Libyan people, none are quite so unsung as those made by the American investment bank, Goldman Sachs.
     
    Goldman, you see, may have actually been instrumental in the fall of the dictator, in an operation so devious and brutally effective that we can only assume it had been carried out at the behest of the Department of Defense or, at least, with their tacit approval. While no proof of this cooperation between the bank and the United States exists (officially), it is hard to witness the effectiveness with which the bankers neutralized their target and not conclude some sort of intentionality.
     
    EmmaZahn 10 years 11 months ago

    The Koch Brothers Left a Confidential Document at Their Last Donor Conference—Read It Here

    In the past, Koch Industries has distanced itself from AFP and its political activities. The company has said the group is just one of "hundreds of organizations" that receive funding from the Kochs and that it operates "independently" of Koch Industries. But the document suggests a close collaboration between officials of Koch Industries, AFP, and Freedom Partners, whose staff and board are stacked with numerous current and former Koch Industries employees.

    According to the article, the Americans for Prosperity "has spent more than $20 million on ads clobbering congressional Democrats for supporting Obamacare."

    Michigan is one of the target states for the "Lie of the Year" campaign.

    wabby 10 years 11 months ago

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