Month: January 2015

Check out this genius:

[Richard] Malley was arrested in August 2013, when he and two other members of a “Minuteman militia group” were scouting for smugglers in the desert area near Gila Bend.

Malley mistook an undercover Sheriff’s deputy for a drug smuggler, and soon the deputy found himself staring down the barrel of an AR-15 rifle.

The approach prompted a tense standoff between the two, with Malley only standing down once the deputy produced enough identification to satisfy the defendant.

“He thought he was one of the good guys,” said defense attorney Jason Squires. But, he said, “There is no excuse for ever putting somebody whose job is to be law enforcement in danger. Even if they’re wearing weird clothes, pretending to be a drug dealer, that’s their job.”

This clown just got sentenced to six months in jail. Of course, he’ll be able to leave his prison six days a week to go to work, so he’ll be getting plenty of fresh air. Hopefully, he won’t use this opportunity to play at vigilante. Hopefully, he’s got that out of his system.

“He should be ashamed. And I think people really need to know what type of person he is. To bring as much pain as he did, to me and my family, that should be an issue.” – Michael Schiavo on Jeb Bush.

Selzer & Company, an Iowa-based firm, did some polling of “likely Republican caucus-goers” and the results are pretty bad for Jeb Bush. Iowa Republicans gave Mitt Romney better numbers across the board, from being a strong candidate against Hillary Clinton, to understanding their problems, to creating jobs, to combating terrorism. Romney’s biggest advantage (49%-22%) was in “having a vision for the future.”

I think that last result is a pretty strong indication that voters see Jeb primarily as a Bush, and therefore as something past tense. In this kind of poll, you always have to consider the role of name recognition, but that’s complicated by everyone’s familiarity with the Bush family. So, in this case, a lack of familiarity with Jeb specifically means that’s he’s carrying the burden of people’s opinions of his brother and, to a lesser degree, his father.

It’s not that people will change their opinions of Jeb simply by getting to know him better. They’ll change their opinions to the degree that he defies their preconceived notions about him and differentiates himself. If his vision for the future is significantly different from what was on offer during his brother’s presidency, then his poll numbers will move in one direction or the other.

What’s clear from the polling data, though, is that being a Bush is not a plus among Iowa’s Republican base. It’s an anvil around Jeb’s neck.

If we’re talking about just the Iowa caucuses, Jeb has one notable disadvantage over his brother. He’s Catholic, but 56% of the electorate in 2012 was white evangelical. George W.’s conversion was much better suited to winning Iowa than Jeb’s.

Nonetheless, acting super-religious can somewhat compensate for having the wrong religion, as Rick Santorum understood and exploited to win the Iowa caucuses in 2012. The Jeb team is prepared:

A memo from a top adviser to Jeb Bush gives a clue as to how he could connect with the conservative base of his party if he runs for president: talking about his religious faith.

Faith is listed as one of nine “issues you care about” in a memo to Mr. Bush’s supporters from Sally Bradshaw that quotes Mr. Bush on each topic, offering an on-message preview of his potential bid for the Republican nomination.

Referring to his conversion to Catholicism, Mr. Bush says, “My faith was strengthened when I converted to my wife’s faith…It gives me a serenity that, in a world of a lot of turbulence, is really important. It creates a moral architecture that simplifies things. There are views that I have, that are grounded in faith, that really aren’t negotiable and it just simplifies things.”

That memo listing the things that Jeb “cares about” reminds me of his father accidentally reading “message: I care” off a teleprompter during the 1992 New Hampshire primary contest.

In any case, a Catholic (or even a Mormon) can win the Republican caucuses in Iowa, but it’s easier for a Protestant to do so, and the more evangelical the better. This might be even more true in South Carolina where 64% of the 2012 Republican primary voters were white evangelicals.

There’s some national polling from Fox News that suggests that Jeb will be the main beneficiary of Romney’s decision not to run, but national polling doesn’t matter much since very few voters will ever cast a meaningful vote in the Republican caucuses and primaries.

The transfer of support from Romney to Bush may happen organically, but it won’t be due to anything Mitt Romney has done. He’s made clear through selected leaks that he doesn’t think much of Jeb, and in his announcement that he wouldn’t run he said that he hoped and expected that the eventual nominee would be relatively unknown at this point, meaning that it wouldn’t be Jeb among others.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Boeing C-97 in my extended detour from the Cape May 2nd Empire Victorian house.  I will be using my usual acrylics on an 10 by 10 inch gallery-wrapped canvas.  I will be using the photo seen directly below.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time, I have continued to work on the painting.

You’ll have to scrutinize the fueselage for this week’s most significant changes.  I’ve continued to add shading to the plane.  Notice that it now carries above the beltline up to the front numbers.  Note also the faded “US AIR FORCE” along the side.  This aspect took considerable effort but was well worth it.  The stripe along the side has been rivised in a similar fashion.  Out front, the electronics bulge has been reshaped to be consistent with the photo.  Above, the cockpit windows have been revised with the details seen through the broken one to the left.  Linear details have been added around the windows.  Other changes include revisions of both wings.  Finally, I’ve added paint to the front landing gear but more detail is yet to come.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week.  See you then.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

Always handy to leak this story to discredit the US during the last phase of negotiations with Iran over the nuclear issue. No holds barred … Backlash Grows Against Bibi’s Congressional Speech on Iran and Terrorism.

CIA, Israel plotted senior Hezbollah commander’s killing: report | AFP |

Citing former intelligence officials, the newspaper reported that US and Israeli spy agencies worked together to target Imad Mughniyeh on February 12, 2008 as he left a restaurant in the Syrian capital Damascus.

He was killed instantly by a car bomb planted in a spare tire on the back of a parked car, which exploded shrapnel in a tight radius, the Post said.  

The bomb, built by the United States and tested in the state of North Carolina, was triggered remotely by Mossad agents in Tel Aviv who were in communication with Central Intelligence Agency operatives on the ground in Damascus.

“The way it was set up, the US could object and call it off, but it could not execute,” a former US intelligence official told the newspaper.

A senior Hezbollah commander, Mughniyeh was suspected of masterminding the abduction of Western hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s and of the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina that killed 29 people.

He was also linked to the bombing of the US marine barracks at Beirut airport in 1983, in which 241 American servicemen died, and the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, in which a US navy diver was killed.

According the newspaper, the authority to kill required a presidential finding by George W Bush. Several senior officials, including the attorney general, the director of national intelligence and the national security advisor, would have had to sign off on the order, it added.

Papa Bush and the 1963 Dallas FBI Memo

○ CIA and Mossad killed senior Hezbollah figure in car bombing | Washington Post |

Was the Hariri killing a CIA/Mossad false flag operation to dislodge Syria from Lebanon? Seem more likely after all false leads and planted evidence to blame Syria and or Iran/Hebollah. How is the FBI investigation going? The crime scene was swept clear of all evidence and DNA traces. The jihad terror Prince Bandar was fired from his position late in 2005 and again in the Palace Revolution of King Salman today.

○ The Saudi-Israeli Alliance and Piggy-back Coup of 2005
○ Saudi spy chief ousted under US pressure | Feb. 2014 |
○ New Saudi king Salman announces major government shake-up

While news reports of Mr. Epstein engaging in sexual activities with or assaults on underage girls first appeared in 2006 and continued through 2009 when he was released from prison and then briefly resurfaced in 2011 when Epstein was photographed with Prince Andrew and Jane Doe #102 (in an earlier lawsuit and #3 in a current and open lawsuit) publicly revealed that she had had encounters with Prince Andrew, this scandal seems not to have become high-profile until a few weeks ago.  Or not on the radar of many like me until now.  Curious considering that the story had sex, big money, and big names in politics, business, and society.  (The only thing missing was drugs.)

The Guardian report by Paul Lewis and John Swain Jeffrey Epstein: inside the decade of scandal entangling Prince Andrew is by far the best in reviewing the “who, what, why, when and how” of this story.  If there’s a material factual error in it, I couldn’t find it.  (Although IMHO, the title was an unfortunate mistake.  Prince Andrew may be relevant to the story, but seems to be at best a minor character in it.)  What I particularly like about this report is that the writers included suggestions, hints, and questions that others have dismissed, downplayed, or not seen at all.  
If the scandal still interests you (and even if you think you know the facts ), Lewis and Swain’s article is well worth reading in its entirety.  To entice you, here’s the opening:

The desperate woman who telephoned Detective Michele Pagan of the Palm Beach police declined to give her name and would not leave a call-back number. But she had some information that she had to tell someone.
Her stepdaughter, a 14-year-old pupil at Royal Palm Beach high school, had told a friend that she’d had sex with a middle-aged man who gave her money.
The man was said to have a long face and bushy eyebrows and he lived in a big house at the end of a dead-end street. His name was Jeff. A teacher found $300 in the 14-year-old’s purse.
That call to police – made 10 years ago this March – soon led Florida detectives to 358 El Brillo Way, a mansion owned by Jeffrey Epstein, one of America’s wealthiest hedge fund tycoons. …
…

SG told detectives that Epstein had made her remove her clothes and give him a massage while he masturbated, according to a police report.

Those details conform with the Palm Beach Police Department Probable Cause Affidavit that covers their evidence collection from March 15, 2005 through February 2006.  The affidavit was filed to secure a search warrant of Epstein’s Palm Beach  house which was issued in May 2006. (The redactions make it somewhat difficult reading.)

Lewis and Swain then add:

Within weeks the FBI was listening to Epstein’s calls, rifling through his trash and searching for other potential victims. They eventually identified around 40.

There is no mention in the police affidavit of FBI participation in the investigation, but that may be nothing more than SOP.    Except there is something at least curious about the police investigation.  The  investigators seemed to hit the ground running from March 15th until April 5th.  Then nothing other than continuing with trash pulls until October when they began interviewing young women that had been identified as having some involvement.  While not specifically stated as such, it looks as it was an unrelated marijuana arrest in September 2005 of a young woman that put the case back on the front burner.  This young woman was aware of the existence of an investigation in Epstein’s activities and claimed to be a victim and was willing to talk.

Regardless of the veracity of that young woman’s statement, what seems key to me is that a circle of potential victims and the culprits were onto the investigation well in advance of being asked to make statements.  The stories many of them told later have a sameness that make them almost boring to read.  Doesn’t mean they aren’t true, but does suggest some questions.  Did they edit their stories down to close to whatever the 14 year old SG could have or been known to have reported?   Did any of them have any assistance before making statements to the police?  An investigator hired by Epstein or one or more of his associates (will refer to as EpCo) had contacted at least one of these girls.  Two of the young women were provided with cars by EpCo subsequent to the initiation of the police investigation.  Was that a payoff for keeping their mouths shut?

Unvarying key elements in the girls’ stories are:

1. They were solicited to give an older man a massage for money (ranging from $200-$300) and would do so partially undressed.
2. They were introduced to the man and his female assistant in the kitchen of his home.
3. The man left the kitchen and separately his female assistant ushered the girl to an upstairs bedroom that was equipped with a massage table.
4. The assistant told the girl to undress and she then left the room.
5. The man entered the bedroom wearing a towel around his waist which at some point he removed when he was on the massage table.
6. If the girl wasn’t sufficiently undressed, the man would ask that she undress further but didn’t push if she balked at taking off a thong and/or bra.
7. As for the sexual activities, the girls were urged to go beyond their comfort zone but they weren’t compelled to go further if they resisted.

Some could rightly object to my speculation that any of the girls’ statements could have been prepared for them on the basis that many of them disclosed more sexual contact with Epstein than what SG reported.  However, once SG had put Epstein in statutory rape territory, whatever other girls could and might say about the specific sexual activities they engaged in was of lesser importance than that they said they hadn’t been coerced and had been paid.  Epstein then denied any knowledge that the girls were underage.  And, presto the FL State Attorney Barry Krischer put on his kid gloves and in 2006 the grand jury returned a single charge of felony solicitation of prostitution from an underage girl.  (The Palm Beach police chief was, to say the least, not pleased.)  Epstein pleaded not guilty.

Lewis and Swain include information the US attorney Ann Marie Villafaña provided to Epstein’s attorneys in a 2007 letter and evidence that was collected when Epstein’s house was raided in 2006.  The number of claimed victims mushroomed and more reported sexual intercourse, and the photos and sexual paraphernalia seized in the raid were extensive.  To all objective appearances there had been no witness nor evidence tampering.  What happened next is curious.  

Using her personal Gmail account, for example, Villafaña proposed to one of Epstein’s lawyers that they could file associated legal papers in a different jurisdiction, a move she said “will hopefully cut the press coverage significantly.”

In 2015 The Daily Mail reported

According to official documents, Epstein’s attorney Jay Lefkowitz – a former deputy director of domestic policy at the White House under George W Bush – sent a one-line email to the US Attorney’s Office on September 24, 2007: `Please do whatever you can to keep this from becoming public’.

On November 29, 2007, Lefkowitz called for more secrecy in a letter to the Florida state attorney: `We don’t understand the basis for your Office’s belief that it is appropriate for any letter to be sent to these individuals at this stage – before Mr Epstein has either entered a plea or been sentenced.’

After wrangling for a year, the US attorney and Epstein signed a secret  NPA (non-prosecution agreement).  Several months later, Epstein agreed to plead guilty to the FL solicitation of prosecution charge.  He received an eighteen month sentence and served thirteen months (released during the day to conduct his business operations and reportedly was allowed also to take a few out of state trips).

(A note about The Daily Mail reporting on this scandal –  check out its September 2007 report.  After two years of investigation, claim and counterclaim, Epstein is about to plead guilty to a charge of soliciting underage girls for sex and is likely to spend 15 months behind bars.  That was when the feds were putting the final touches on the secret NPA, but Epstein didn’t plead guilty to the FL charge against him until June 30, 2008!  Appears to me that DM has had a well connected inside source on this story.)

Making a story that the general public could understand, and a large portion of whom would be outraged that prosecutors at the state and federal levels didn’t throw the book at Epstein, quietly disappear is a neat trick.  But why would so many in high places want this one to go away?  

Does Epstein’s reported wealth and reported connections explain the actions of the prosecutors?  The slowdown in the Palm Beach Police investigation from April to October?  What about Epstein’s apparent willingness from early in the investigation to practically hand over evidence of having a fetish for under age girls and having engaged in sexual activities with them?  Is “Epstein the perv with friends in high places and the best defense attorneys money can buy” the whole story?  Perhaps.

I’m not buying it.  Too much about this man doesn’t add up.  Vicky Ward in her fine 2003 Vanity Fair piece The Talented Mr. Epstein couldn’t crack open the mystery of how he got so rich, so fast.    Although she indicated some skepticism that he was really that rich.  His business model – flat multi-million dollar ($25 to $100 million) annual fees to manage all assets of only undisclosed billionaire clients – makes no sense to any finance professional.  He’s not a hedge fund manager – he does no stock portfolio trading.  Employs no stock analysts nor traders.  If he were engaged in a Madoff style Ponzi scheme, it would have crashed when he was busted for sexual assaults.    

In the high finance arena, his deals with Steven Hoffenberg in the latter half of the 1980s were relatively small (and sleazy).  He claims to have purchased the Palm Beach house in 1989 (public records list the sales date as 9/1/90 for $2.5 million, but any mortgage on it is unreported.)  His two known main squeezes have been Les Wexner and Ghislaine Maxwell.  (Publicly Wexner has parted ways with Epstein since his arrest.)  He claims to have purchased Wexner’s impressive NYC townhouse sometime from the mid to late 1990s and the terms, etc. seems to be as hidden and secret as his billionaire client list.

What someone like Epstein needs to maintain his standard of living with the multiple residences, vehicles, airplanes, and a helicopter is substantial annual positive cash flow.  His net worth could for all practical purposes be close to zero as long as the cash keeps rolling in.  Not in $100 million dollar chunks but not chump change either.  If his business income earnings are derived from management fees as he says they are, he may not spend (or need) much that isn’t deductible for income tax purposes.   (That’s a tax return I’d like to have a peek at.

A more authoritative word on this aspect:

…media outlets on both sides of the pond have described him as a “billionaire”. Because we here at Forbes are in the billionaire business, I feel compelled to point out, as I did last summer, that Epstein may deserve all manner of colorful descriptors (“sex offender”, “scum bag”, etc) but “billionaire” isn’t one of them. Here, from my last report on the matter, is why he’s never made the Forbes 400:  

The source of his wealth — a money management firm in the U.S. Virgin Islands — generates no public records, nor has his client list ever been released. …

…”It was a bone of contention with Esptein’s lawyers,” said Spencer Kuvin, an attorney who represented three of Epstein’s alleged victims on the case, of the “billionaire” designation. “In the litigation itself we were never able to get him to produce verified financial information. …

So, have we yet only seen the proverbial tip of the iceberg?

I love The Highwaymen’s version of this song.

I’ve got some serious writer’s block, so here’s a musical interlude while I get my shit together.

Anyone else wish that Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash could team up to tell more stories?

I see Suge Knight may have crossed the final line beyond which society will not allow him to walk around free, ever again. I’m disappointed that this originated on the set of a movie about N.W.A., because it will reinforce every negative stereotype about that group and it will completely shutdown any thoughtful discussion of the politics of early rap and their positive influence.

We’ll get all the gangsta. We’ll get none of the legitimate beef.

Let no one say that Mitt Romney left the political stage gracefully or with even a shred of dignity left. The best you can say is that he somehow mustered the self-awareness to avoid even further indignities. He will not run for the presidency a third time, which pretty much hands the reins to Jeb, if Jeb can somehow ride the bucking clown car all the way to the acceptance stage in Cleveland next summer.

In the end, he signed off calling for an “end to the grip of poverty,” causing something between a collective shrug and a guffaw. He then reiterated the importance of electing a “conservative” president, thereby eliminating any hope that he might stand for something within the modern Republican Party that could ultimately save or redeem it.

For such a rich man, it is hard to believe how worthless he is.

In 2005, Isaac Freund, an Israeli physicist, had this astounding idea. He predicted that, under certain conditions, light could be twisted into the shape of a one-sided mobius strip. In other words, he claimed that elliptical polarization of light could produce light which would conform to geometrical shapes and dimensions previously only seen in math textbooks and works of art designed to trick your mind. If you don’t recall what a mobius strip looks like, here’s one to jog your memory:

In 2010, Freund proposed an experiment to test his hypothesis. And now an experiment conducted by German scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light has proven that Freund’s theories about polarized light were correct:

“Light can kind of turn one-sided and single-edged under certain conditions,” says Peter Banzer of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany. […]

Banzer’s team scattered two polarised green laser beams off a gold bead that was smaller than the wavelength of the light. The resulting inference introduced a polarisation pattern with either three or five twists, giving it a Möbius-like structure.

One of the practical applications that may come out of this result would be the use of polarized light “to trap tiny particles for biomedical purposes.”

So congrats to the Israeli and German scientists for furthering our basic understanding of how light works and for paving the way for further studies that may benefit humankind. Good job, people.

Once upon a time, this sort of ground-breaking research might have been conducted at an American university or science institute, but we live in a country where one political party can unilaterally determine whether to fund government funds into basic research into many scientific field, from biology, medicine, climate and physics, among others. That same party has consistently opposed spending on essential scientific research as well as funding for critical medical research by the NIH and the emergency response funding for the CDC. In general, Republicans have promoted illegitimate junk science, attacked scientists because their research did not conform to the GOP’s political agenda, and they even promote weakening our kids’ education by requiring the teaching religious dogma as legitimate science.

The Republicans have made it a point of pride to declare themselves scientifically illiterate, even to the point of advancing politicians, men with little respect or understanding of scientific principles and practices, to chair powerful committees where they have the capability to do great harm to our nation’s future.

Indeed, they have already taken steps to prohibit government agencies tasked with performing scientific assessments from seeking the advice of experts in the fields relevant to that task.

Among a few other quietly nefarious measures the House has passed since being sworn in was this: H.R. 1422, the Science Advisory Board Reform Act. Sponsored by former Mormon missionary Chris Stewart (R-UT, naturally), this act would effectively lobotomize the EPA’s frontal lobe by keeping the people who know what they’re talking about and have published papers on it from sitting on the SAB. It states in par that:

“Board members may not participate in advisory activities that directly or indirectly involve review or evaluation of their own work.”

Which isn’t to say that people with degrees can’t advise the EPA…as long as those people with degrees never actually studied the environment. For instance, a geologist could advise them on atmospheric carbon. A chemical engineer could advise them on the impact of logging on California beavers. A person with a degree in business management and economics could advise them on effective industry regulatory strategies.

Too bad. Once we led the world in scientific advances. The way things are going, however, we will soon be just another backward banana republic with atom bombs and missiles, but little else to provide for our security, jobs and a sustainable future. In short, we will become a country not that different in kind from North Korea, except our leaders will belong to a different cult of personality: The Cult of Republican Jesus.