“Was Feinstein a Useful Idiot or What?”

Political Animal What He Said 17 Comments

An interesting conjecture.

ML: I need some help understanding the Feinstein report on the CIA. She had to know it was very damaging to the country, didn’t she? And there’s no reason to think she was trying to accomplish some “worthy” objective, was there? So why?
JJA: Well let’s first underline your last point: the missing “worthy” objective. What’s the dog-that-didn’t-bark in this story? Answer: there are no recommendations. None at all. It’s striking, to me at least, that after producing thousands of pages of text, and bemoaning the Agency’s interrogation methods, there’s no call for new laws, or even for punishments of the “guilty” parties.
ML: Right. So why?

Related: Why The CIA “Torture Report” Is Like the Rolling Stone Rape Debacle.

Developing… Islamists Holding Hostages In Sydney

Uncategorized 119 Comments

9:25am Update: Police have stormed cafe, obvious casualties being removed by ambulance.

Richard Fernandez live blogged for those wanting a review.
(Original post below.)
Bloomberg:

The person behind the siege has reportedly claimed he wants to speak to Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, live on radio.
He reportedly told police negotiators he had “devices all over the city”.
Reports suggest there are between 13 and 40 people inside the café.

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TEAM AMERICA, CALL YOUR OFFICE.

Embrace Hollywood 14 Comments


Roger Simon schadenfreudizes;

Many of us who have spent even part of our lives working in the film industry, particularly those who have committed the unpardonable sin of not adhering religiously to the orthodox liberal line, cannot but grin at the release of the hacked emails from the bosses of Sony Pictures. We were right all along about these self-described liberals and progressives and now we have proof — they are pond scum.

Bravery in the Face of Paper Cuts

Uncategorized 5 Comments

Katherine Timpf reports on academia’s ongoing cultivation of stoicism, fortitude and self-possession:

Princeton University students recently launched Tiger Microaggressions, a service that takes other students’ reports of microaggressions and publishes them on its Facebook page — so that no one has to “carry the burden alone to call out” offences against political correctness… The page, by the way, also refers to microaggressions as “papercuts of oppression,” which are “so small but slice deep.” […] According to the operators, “microaggressions are all around us” and anything can be a microaggression because “there are no objective definitions to words and phrases.”

One of these.

Y2Kyoto: State Of Anorexia Envirosa

Alternative Subsidy Forward! 46 Comments

Sharpen the pitchforks.

For October, he had paid $376. For November, with virtually no change in his volume of work and without having turned up the thermostat in his two-room shop, his bill came to $788, a staggering increase of 110 percent. “This is insane,” he said, shaking his head. “We can’t go on like this.”
For months, utility companies across New England have been warning customers to expect sharp price increases, for which the companies blame the continuing shortage of pipeline capacity to bring natural gas to the region. […]
The utilities argue that they are hamstrung unless they can increase the pipeline capacity for natural gas, which powers more than half of New England. That would not only lower costs for consumers, they say, but also create thousands of construction jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue.
The region has five pipeline systems now. Seven new projects have been proposed. But several of them — including a major gas pipeline through western Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, and a transmission line in New Hampshire carrying hydropower from Quebec — have stalled because of ferocious opposition.

h/t Don B

We Don’t Need No Stinking French Fry Grease

Alternative Subsidy 49 Comments

Remember – as the cost of conventional fuel rises, these projects will become cost competitive!

Court documents confirm Toronto-based KPMG has been appointed as the receiver for Great Lakes Biodiesel (GLB), along with associated companies Einer Canada and Bioversel Trading.
It’s the latest chapter in the rocky history of Great Lakes Biodiesel, which opened the production facility in Welland at the end of 2012 to convert canola and soybean oil into biodiesel.
Luxembourg-based investment company Heridge SARL launched the court case because it says it was only repaid half of a $20-million loan used to get GLB’s Welland plant off the ground.

h/t John Galt

Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors

Media 16 Comments

Mollie Hemingway;

Some writers, such as this Vox.com reporter and this education writer, are calling for the Washington Post to stop pursuing the truth in the Rolling Stone debacle. That’s one extreme. Another extreme is to pretend that Erdely and Rolling Stone are total outliers. They’re not. They were doing what untold numbers of other journalists and media outlets do every day. And they just didn’t cover their tracks quite as well as others do. Unlike The New Yorker’s Packer, we should think about whether we’re making Erdely and Rolling Stone scapegoats for widespread journalistic worship of narrative and advocacy over truth.

ISIS, The Inside Story

Operation Empty Chair Religion Of Submission Syria Terrorism 12 Comments

Brought to you by the Guardian, who are apparently, also on the inside.

Abu Ahmed was an essential member of the earliest incarnation of the group. He had been galvanised into militancy as a young man by an American occupation that he and many like him believed was trying to impose a power shift in Iraq, favouring the country’s larger Shia population at the expense of the dominant Sunnis. His early role in what would become Isis led naturally to the senior position he now occupies within a revitalised insurgency that has spilled across the border into Syria. Most of his colleagues regard the crumbling order in the region as a fulfilment of their ambitions in Iraq – which had remained unfinished business, until the war in Syria gave them a new arena.

An interesting article, nonetheless. (h/t Frank)

The Sound Of Settled Science

Science Unsettled Science 15 Comments

Mother’s Milk, Literature Sleuths, and Science Fairies;

I had that sinking feeling yesterday as I read a killer review. In the text the authors described an exciting dynamic; high food intake, high cortisol concentrations in mother's milk, and high activity in kittens covary while low food intake, low cortisol concentrations in mother's milk, and low activity in kittens covary. Neat. Tidy. Compelling. And there was a gorgeous figure to reinforce this awesomeness! Now, don't get too excited here, because, spoiler alert, none of this turns out to be an accurate representation of the papers they are citing.

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