Last Call For A Bitter Cocoatastrophe

Supply shortages from growers, exponential increase in demand of emerging markets, political turmoil in Africa and global climate change affecting harvests are playing havoc with the world's chocolate numbers, and indulging your sweet tooth may soon get a lot more expensive.

Juergen Steinemann, head of Barry Callebaut, the leading supplier of cocoa and chocolate to manufacturers and food professionals, doesn't hide his concern despite the Swiss-based company's current sweet performance.

Barry Callebaut has positioned itself well to benefit from growth in emerging markets, where its sales jumped nearly a fifth last year and now account for a quarter of overall sales.

But if consumers in emerging markets quickly develop a sweet tooth for chocolate, a severe shortage of cocoa beans could develop.

At the current moment consumers in emerging markets eat just 50 grams of chocolate per person per year, compared with European and US consumers who gobble up 10 to 12 kilos per person.

Steinemann said even an increase of average annual consumption per head from 50 grams to two kilos in emerging markets would put a major strain on supplies of the cocoa beans that are the key ingredient in chocolate.

And remember, a third of the world's cocoa bean supply comes from Ivory Coast, making an exploitable bottleneck for speculators.

The average size of cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast is just two or three hectares five-seven acres), with most farmers having had little formal agricultural training and using techniques handed down to them by the parents.

"Producers can much improve their yields if they remove old bad fruit, the bad leaves with some kind of disease," said Steinemann. "It's all very simple things to do, it's gardening as you do in your garden."

Fertiliser use is currently scant and could also help in achieving the project's goal of of doubling yields from 400 to 800 kilos per hectare in Ivory Coast by 2020.

"It will be easy to get farmers to return to cocoa if we help them obtain better yields, better quality and thus better profits," said Janvier.

Barry Callebaut doesn't hold out much hope however for genetically-modified cocoa, which Steinemann said doesn't suit the taste as well as health concerns of consumers in Europe, still the biggest market.

The tight supply situation has made the cocoa market attractive for commodity speculators.

"I was very angry, but the fact is that you can't keep them out," said Steinemann.

So yes,  all indications are that cocoa is going to go up, up up.  Chocoholics, beware.

Sunday Long Read: Eric Holder And The Subtle Knife

Attorney General Eric Holder's commencement speech at Baltimore's Morgan State University yesterday was astounding as he spoke to the crowd at this historically black university about Brown v Board of Education, the civil rights movement, and the subtle, institutionalized racism that still exists in America today.  It's your Sunday long read, and it's worth diving into.

Over the last few weeks and months, we’ve seen occasional, jarring reminders of the discrimination – and the isolated, repugnant, racist views – that in some places have yet to be overcome. These incidents have received substantial media coverage. And they have rightly been condemned by leaders, commentators, and citizens from all backgrounds and walks of life.

But we ought not find contentment in the fact that these high-profile expressions of outright bigotry seem atypical and were met with such swift condemnation. Because if we focus solely on these incidents – on outlandish statements that capture national attention and spark outrage on Facebook and Twitter – we are likely to miss the more hidden, and more troubling, reality behind the headlines.

These outbursts of bigotry, while deplorable, are not the true markers of the struggle that still must be waged, or the work that still needs to be done – because the greatest threats do not announce themselves in screaming headlines. They are more subtle. They cut deeper. And their terrible impact endures long after the headlines have faded and obvious, ignorant expressions of hatred have been marginalized.

Nor does the greatest threat to equal opportunity any longer reside in overtly discriminatory statutes like the “separate but equal” laws of 60 years ago. Since the era of Brown, laws making classifications based on race have been subjected to a legal standard known as “strict scrutiny.” Almost invariably, these statutes, when tested, fail to pass constitutional muster. But there are other policies that too easily escape such scrutiny because they have the appearance of being race-neutral. Their impacts, however, are anything but. This is the concern we must contend with today: policies that impede equal opportunity in fact, if not in form.

To hear the Attorney General of the United States of America admit this in any speech is nothing short of amazing, and yet he is absolutely correct.  And yes, no discussion of institutionalized racial bias can be complete without discussion of the incarceration industry in this country, and discussion of voter suppression.

For instance, in our criminal justice system, systemic and unwarranted racial disparities remain disturbingly common. One study released last year by the U.S. Sentencing Commission indicated that – in recent years – African-American men have received sentences that are nearly 20 percent longer than those imposed on white males convicted of similar crimes. Another report showed that American Indians are often sentenced even more harshly. The Justice Department is examining these and other disparities as we speak – and taking a variety of steps to ensure fair sentences that match the conduct at issue in individual cases. Like a growing chorus of lawmakers across the political spectrum, we recognize that disparate outcomes are not only shameful and unacceptable – they impede our ability to see that justice is done. And they perpetuate cycles of poverty, crime, and incarceration that trap individuals, destroy communities, and decimate minority neighborhoods.

And until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, African Americans’ right to the franchise was aggressively restricted based solely on race. Today, such overt measures cannot survive. Yet in too many jurisdictions, new types of restrictions are justified as attempts to curb an epidemic of voter fraud that – in reality – has never been shown to exist. Rather than addressing a supposedly widespread problem, these policies disproportionately disenfranchise African Americans, Hispanics, other communities of color, and vulnerable populations such as the elderly. But interfering with or depriving a person of the right to vote should never be a political aim. It is a moral failing. In recent years, thousands of Americans, the pride of our nation, have given their lives – and deal even today with the scars of war – so that hopeful, striving people who live continents away could proudly hold up their purple fingers after voting in a truly democratic process. America is now 50 years from Freedom Summer. And we must not countenance, within our own borders, practices that would make it difficult or impossible to exercise the right for which so many have given so much.

This is why I deeply respect Eric Holder, and this is why he is despised so much by the right.   This is why I harp so much and so often on voting rights and implore you, the reader, to exercise your right to vote.  There's an entire political party dedicated to make it as difficult as possible to vote in a representative democracy.  It is a core belief and key plank in their platform.  And the nation's top cop recognizes how pernicious and corrosive that is, and is working to stop it.

Republican Sneak Attacks

Mississippi Republicans will be voting in the June 3rd primary to determine if Sen. Thad Cochran merits replacement by Tea Party challenger, state Sen. Chris McDaniel.  So far Cochran seems to be weathering the attack from his right flank fairly well, but if this story can be traced back to McDaniel, the primary is over and Cochran will win in a landslide.

A Pearl man who runs a political blog is accused of sneaking into a nursing home where U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran's wife is bedridden and photographing her, then posting the image in a video political "hit piece" on the internet.

Madison Police arrested Clayton Thomas Kelly, 28, of Pearl on Friday night on a charge of exploitation of a vulnerable adult. He's being held on a $100,000 bond.

Kelly is accused of sneaking into St. Catherine's Village in Madison, where Rose Cochran has resided since 2000, suffering from progressive dementia and now bedridden.

Donald Clark, attorney for Sen. and Rose Cochran, said the Cochrans' "privacy and dignity have been violated."

"We became aware of an unauthorized picture, posted on the internet, of Mrs. Cochran, taken literally in her room by her bedside at St. Catherine's," Clark said. "Sen. Cochran retained my law firm on this matter, and we looked at various legal options. We notified the proper authorities, which in this case is the city of Madison Police Department."

Clark said St. Catherine's is also conducting an internal investigation.

It doesn't matter what McDaniel does at this point.  Distancing himself from Kelly is still going to leave an awful taste in voters' mouths, and screaming that Kelly is somehow a Cochran plant when Cochran was up by double digits makes him look even worse.

Nope, this race is pretty much over, and I'm trying to figure out why any Tea Party douchebag would go to such ridiculous lengths to try to win in what is obviously the most stupid plan imaginable.

Oh wait, I answered my own question.

Last Call For Thirty Million Patriots

So that Operation American Spring thing, where tens of millions of patriots were going to descend upon Washington DC and shut the country down, oust President Obama and the "traitor-enabling" GOP leadership, and issue in a new wingnut utopia the way the Arab Spring brought down tyrants in the Middle East and North Africa, didn't exactly go as planned.

“It’s a very dismal turnout,” Jackie Milton, the head of Texans for Operation American Spring, told The Washington Times. “We were getting over two inches of rain [an] hour in parts of Virginia this morning. … Now it’s a nice sunny day. But this is a very poor turnout. It ain’t no millions. And it ain’t looking like there’s going to be millions. Hundreds is more like it.”

And even that number was being generous.  30 million became, well, thirty.

It's fun to laugh at these idiots, it really is.  But the bottom line is that if these clowns were right about President Obama, he would have them all arrested as traitors.  The fact that they're allowed to protest and go home back to their kids and jobs is more than the people in the Arab Spring ever got under real, actual tyranny where protestors were set upon by the military.

Your First Amendment rights give you the ability to peaceably assemble and voice your opinions and congratulations for exercising them.  It also gives the rest of us the ability to laugh at you for being ignorant morons, too.

Welcome to America.  Don't like Obama?  Vote.  Oh wait, we did.  You guys lost.  Twice.

Deal with it.

Not Sorry In The Least

Yep, good to know racism is dead in America and we're all holding hands and singing songs and crap.

Residents of Wolfeboro, N.H. are demanding that their police commissioner resign for calling President Barack Obama the n-word -- then refusing to apologize.

A Wolfeboro resident wrote to the town's manager to complain that she overheard Robert Copeland, 82, call Obama the n-word in March at a restaurant, according to Manchester TV station WMUR.

Copeland didn't offer an apology after the resident complained to his bosses.

"I believe I did use the 'N' word in reference to the current occupant of the Whitehouse (sic)," Copeland wrote in an email to the resident, as quoted by WMUR. "For this, I do not apologize -- he meets and exceeds my criteria for such."

At least 100 residents gathered at a town meeting Thursday night to demand Copeland's resignation to no avail, according to WMUR. The police commission, which consists of Copeland and two others, planned to meet and determine what further action to take.

The takeaway from this is that Copeland is 82.  His generation is dying out, and today's kids are growing up in an era where a black president is not only possible, but the guy got re-elected.  Pretty sure he'll be joined by the first female president in a couple of years.  But hey, this guy's a town police commissioner and stuff, so.

New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine all have a black population of about 1%, too.  Just throwing that out there.  By the way, if you're wondering, the state with both the smallest number of black residents and the lowest percentage is Montana, according to the 2010 Census.  Kentucky's 7.71% is actually the median of US states.

Game Of Clowns

That famed confederacy of dunces apparently had a bit of a confab this week, as former NRO and now Washington Post GOP beat reporter Robert Costa explains.  It seems the culture warriors and Tea Party darlings aren't going out without that brutal internal GOP civil war I've been talking about, and the situation just got "serious".

Thursday’s gathering at the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner, Va., was coordinated by Reagan-era attorney general Edwin Meese III and former congressman David McIntosh (Ind.) as part of an initiative called the Conservative Action Project.

It included dozens of leaders from across the conservative movement, including tea party organizer Jenny Beth Martin and interest group executives such as Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. The meeting, which featured speeches from Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Mike Lee (Utah), marked the first time this year that prominent national conservatives have come together to candidly assess the GOP and their strategy for shaping it.

The day-long session underscored how simmering tensions between rival factions in the Republican Party appear to be growing, even as polls point to the potential for a major GOP victory in midterm elections in the fall.

Congressional Republicans have been grappling over whether to compromise on immigration, some Republicans are calling for a smaller military, and same-sex marriage is fading as a top issue in this year’s campaigns.

It seems that the establishment GOP isn't going to put up with more Todd Akin-style "legitimate rape" gaffes and want to win enough seats to seriously damage the Democrats, oh and throw aside the Tea Party for good.

Many GOP strategists and party leaders think that tea party activists’ successes in recent years nominating ideological purists resulted in weak candidates and crippling general-election losses. They worry that efforts to revive the base could threaten Republican hopes again.

“What’s clear is that we ought to be focusing on economic security for the future, not divisive social issues. That’s how we lost several key Senate races last cycle and plays into the Democrats’ hand,” said GOP consultant Brian Walsh, a former communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

But the bigots, the misogynists, and the god-botherers won't be denied.

But even in the tightknit room, there was not universal agreement. Norquist, for example, supports legalization for many illegal immigrants and has pushed for more scrutiny of the defense budget. In an interview, he said he attended Thursday’s meeting to back the broad efforts on the right to unite, rather than endorse the document line by line.

Most activists expressed dismay that they seemed to have a diminished voice in the party.

“What we’re doing and saying is not resonating, so we are trying to come to grips with that,” said Grace-Marie Turner, the president of the Galen Institute, a conservative research group. “We have to learn to relate our solutions to people’s struggles.”

What they all have in common is that they're already counting their Senate and House victories six months ahead of time and are already fighting over who will be driving the clown car when it crosses the finish line.

Perhaps they need a rude awakening at the polls in November.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Dr. Robert Petzel, undersecretary for health in the Department of Veteran's Affairs, has resigned in response to growing questions about secret "wait lists" at VA hospitals.
• Minnesota has become the latest state to approve limited legalization of medical marijuana, bringing the total number of states with at least some legalization to 22.
• General Motors will pay $35 million in fines for its failure to address the issue with vehicle ignition switches in a timely manner, putting millions at risk.
• Ukrainian separatists have announced that the Donetsk region of the country has formed their own independent government and will break away from Kiev.
• The FCC's latest figures on cable TV rates find prices went up by over 6% in 2013, in line with yearly increases over the last 18 years.

Last Call For Bridge To Nowhere

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, GOP Gov. Chris Christie is convinced that Bridgegate is over and that it will have no effect on his future political career, "zero", because "I didn't do anything".  That was Wednesday.  Today he's dealing with his former campaign manager confirming Christie knew about the lane closings well in advance.

Gov. Chris Christie’s former campaign manager says he told the governor about plans to close lanes on the George Washington Bridge in December, contradicting Christie’s claims he had no prior knowledge.

Bill Stepien, who lost his job in the scandal, contends he told Christie about the GWB traffic plans on Dec. 12, a day before the governor told reporters his staff didn’t know about them. Christie issued a public apology on Jan. 9, claiming he was lied to by members of his staff on the controversy. Stepien’s lawyer, Kevin Marino, blasted an internal investigation the governor ordered that concluded Stepien had misled Christie about the politically motivated September closures.

 Oops.

So he lied to reporters, lied to his staff, lied to New Jersey, and lied to America.  Any wonder that Christie's 2016 prospects are fading fast?   He's in fifth place now, behind Mike Huckabee of all people.

That bridge is collapsing.  Fast.

The Spy Who Came In For The Cash

Seems Double G and Team Dudebro Defector made quite a nice deal for selling the rights to his new book to Sony Pictures.  Only one problem, as The AV Club points out:  He trashed Sony Pictures 18 months ago for the "propaganda film" Zero Dark Thirty.

Like a columnist jumping all over a movie he hasn’t seen, Sony Pictures has pounced on the movie rights to Glenn Greenwald’s new book, No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA, And The U.S. Surveillance State.

“I’m very happy to be working with Amy Pascal, Doug Belgrad and the team at Sony Pictures Entertainment, who have a successful track record of making thoughtful and nuanced true-life stories that audiences want to see,” said Greenwald of the same executives he had previously accused of producing “the ultimate hagiography of the most secretive arm of America’s National Security State” when they made Zero Dark Thirty, but now heartily endorses, because they’re giving him lots of money.

“We are extremely proud that […] Glenn chose Sony to bring this riveting story to the big screen,” added Belgrad, president of Columbia Pictures, the Sony subsidiary Greenwald likened to the Nazi propaganda machine a year and a half ago, but which now owns the rights to Greenwald’s book.

Odd.  Double G thought these same executives were pretty much human scum back in December 2012, effectively working for the CIA.

Indeed, from start to finish, this is the CIA's film: its perspective, its morality, its side of the story, The Agency as the supreme heroes. (That there is ample evidence to suspect that the film's CIA heroine is, at least in composite part, based on the same female CIA agent responsible for the kidnapping, drugging and torture of Khalid El-Masri in 2003, an innocent man just awarded compensation this week by the European Court of Human Rights, just symbolizes the odious aspects of uncritically venerating the CIA in this manner).

It is a true sign of the times that Liberal Hollywood has produced the ultimate hagiography of the most secretive arm of America's National Security State, while liberal film critics lead the parade of praise and line up to bestow it with every imaginable accolade. Like the bin Laden killing itself, this is a film that tells Americans to feel good about themselves, to feel gratitude for the violence done in their name, to perceive the War-on-Terror-era CIA not as lawless criminals but as honorable heroes.

AV Club leaves with this stinger:

The exact specifics of Greenwald’s deal remain unknown, but it is expected to be even more profitable than the time he changed his mind about the War on Terror.

Douchebag.  Forever and always. And like any intelligence agent trying to recruit human assets on the ground, money will make people do pretty much anything.

Nobama Country, Even Over Our Dead Bodies

Eastern Kentucky in the Appalachian mountains contains some of the poorest counties in America.  They are overwhelmingly poverty-stricken, overwhelmingly on government assistance programs, and overwhelmingly white.  But they hate Barack Obama with a passion here, and it has everything to do with the fact that America's first black president wants to help them and backs the programs to do just that, but people like Jim Feltner will never give him credit in places like in Wolfe County.

A victim of two heart attacks, he lives off disability checks, and $105 a month in government food stamps.

Feltner voted for a previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, but now says: “I will vote for anybody against Obama.

“I don’t care who runs against him, I’ll vote for him. I don’t care if it’s a Democrat, a Republican, an Indian, a Pakistani — even a Frenchman!”

The first reason is coal. He accuses Obama of dooming this mining region of the Appalachian mountains with environmental regulations.

Since 2011, 30 percent of the mining jobs — around 4,000 — in the region have vanished. Competition from natural gas is another factor in the decline.

“Here’s what he said about the coal business: ‘Go ahead, build your coal-fired energy plants, we will shut them down,’” Feltner alleged.

“Is that something for a president to say?,” he added. “He’s got a problem with the poor people.”

Got news for you Jim, coal in Kentucky is on the way out anyway.  Natural gas is king now, and it doesn't matter that coal companies ravaged the area, destroyed the environment, and cut corners to that coal miners died, trapped underground.  It's all the black guy's fault because he clearly hates poor people.

The same aversion to Obama is heard in Jackson, 13 miles down the road.

Eric Miller, 28, with bad teeth and an accent as thick as his tattooed arms, says he does not care about politics. He voted once, but can’t remember for whom. But one thing is clear: He does not like Obama.

“I guess Democrats just worry about money in their pocket, what they and their friends are doing. They’re not worried about us small people,” Miller said.

“The Republicans, they are the ones that know … raised up like we have, you know. Know what it’s like, what we need, what shouldn’t been taken away,” Miller added.

“If there weren’t government programs, it would be a ghost town,” Miller said. He gets $380 on the sixth of every month, and with that he has to support himself and his girlfriend.

The money is loaded onto credit cards that are accepted at certain stores, just for food, although there is a black market in which goods thus bought can be exchanged for cigarettes and painkillers.

The bitter racist contempt for the President here is heart-rending, but nobody should be surprised.  The same Republicans that Eric Miller praises would cut those programs in a heartbeat if they had their way, but they've convinced Miller and thousands like him that the Democrats are the bad guys  Surely Miller qualifies for Medicaid and help under the Affordable Care Act, but don't you dare tell this asshole that, he won't believe a word you say and will vote for Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul to take the same programs he counts on away from him.

So why is Barack Obama, who supports food stamps and whose Democratic allies in Congress tried and failed to stop a Republican-backed cut in the program, so deeply unpopular?

Racism is a taboo subject that simmers just under the surface of many a conversation here.

Jackson is 98 percent white, and the region has checkered past. In late 2011 a church further to the east triggered an uproar by barring mixed race couples.

But Bryant says voters’ main motivation when they go to the polls are coal and social issues: abortion, guns, and same-sex marriage, which he labels “the three biggies.” This is conservative Christian country.

But convincing the poor to vote against their self-interest has been the GOP specialty for 35 years now.  Nothing's more demonstrative of the modern GOP than a 98% white county with a crippled economy and half the people on food stamps complaining that Democrats hate poor people.

Welcome to Nobama Country.

StupidiNews!

• LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling reportedly will refuse to pay his $2.5 million fine and reject the lifetime courtside ban for racist statements made on tape and will sue the NBA instead.
• Operation American Spring will begin a "sustained, Occupy-style" movement in DC today with the eventual goal of overthrowing leaders of both political parties.
• India opposition candidate Narendra Modi's party won the largest election victory in 30 years, with the BJP landslide expected to mean Modi will be the country's new Prime Minister.
• Credit Suisse is close to a deal with the US Justice Department over a guilty plea to tax evasion and a $2.5 billion fine.
• Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the massive, bigger than planet Earth-sized storm constantly swirling on its surface for centuries, may be shrinking according to the latest observations.

Last Call For Unauthorization

Senate majority leader Harry Reid is finally, finally backing efforts to revisit the Eternal War that Bush started...and maybe finally putting an end to it.

Although Reid did not take a specific stand on how the law should be changed, in an interview with BuzzFeed he argued the time has come to revisit the Authorization of Use of Military Force.

“It’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but 9/11 was a very difficult time in the history of this country,” said Reid, who voted for the law in 2001.

“[But] I definitely think its something we should definitely take a look at. I think 9/11 is a long time ago, and it’s something that needs to be looked at again. I have no problem with that,” Reid added.

The AUMF gave military and intelligence agencies wide leeway to pursue individuals and organizations with suspected ties to al Qaeda. The law provided the legal groundwork for the administration’s aggressive counterterrorism strategy, from armed drone strikes to “kill/capture” missions, raids similar to the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

Although anti-war elements in Congress have long complained about the broad scope of the scant 60-word law, over the last several years members on both sides of aisle have increasingly raised concerns with the law, worried that it can be used for attacks across the globe against people or groups that were never intended by Congress.

“We are still operating in a war declared on Sept. 14, 2001,” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine said Wednesday during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And both the Bush and Obama administrations have determined that that war can be carried out against members of al Qaeda, against anyone who associates with affiliates or associates of al Qaeda, no matter when those associates pop up … so long as the al Qaeda or affiliated organizations have violent intentions against the U.S. or coalition partners. That’s sort of a vague phrase.”

“I don’t think Congress passing that AUMF Sept. 14, 2001, that 13 years later we’d be still engaged in war,” Kaine added.

The Warren Terrah will be 13 years old in September.  That's how long we've been at "war" with Al Qaeda and terrorism, a third of my entire life.  It's ridiculous and it needs to end.  I'm glad we're finally taking the first steps to see this come to a close.  It's cost us millions of lives and trillions of dollars over the last 13 years.

It has to end.  Now's the time.  I'm all for this.

The Gender Gap Suddenly Exists

Despite all the talk that the gender gap is a myth from the right, they're suddenly crowing about...the gender gap in the NY Times firing of Editor-in-Chief Jill Abramson.  In fact, even CBS News assured us that the pay gap between men and women simply doesn't exist, even in the same industry and job.

According to all the media headlines about a new White House report, there's still a big pay gap between men and women in America. The report found that women earn 75 cents for every dollar men make. Sounds pretty conclusive, doesn't it? Well, it's not. It's misleading.

According to highly acclaimed career expert and best-selling author, Marty Nemko, "The data is clear that for the same work men and women are paid roughly the same. The media need to look beyond the claims of feminist organizations."

On a radio talk show, Nemko clearly and forcefully debunked that ultimate myth - that women make less than men - by explaining why, when you compare apples to apples, it simply isn't true. Even the White House report: Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being explains why. Simply put, men choose higher-paying jobs.

Except that's not what happened in Abramson's case.

Fellow-journalists and others scrambled to find out what had happened. Sulzberger had fired Abramson, and he did not try to hide that. In a speech to the newsroom on Wednesday afternoon, he said, “I chose to appoint a new leader of our newsroom because I believe that new leadership will improve some aspects …” Abramson chose not to attend the announcement, and not to pretend that she had volunteered to step down.

As with any such upheaval, there’s a history behind it. Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs. “She confronted the top brass,” one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was “pushy,” a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect. Sulzberger is known to believe that the Times, as a financially beleaguered newspaper, needed to retreat on some of its generous pay and pension benefits; Abramson had also been at the Times for far fewer years than Keller, having spent much of her career at the Wall Street Journal, accounting for some of the pension disparity. Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Times, said that Jill Abramson’s total compensation as executive editor “was directly comparable to Bill Keller’s”—though it was not actually the same. I was also told by another friend of Abramson’s that the pay gap with Keller was only closed after she complained. But, to women at an institution that was once sued by its female employees for discriminatory practices, the question brings up ugly memories. Whether Abramson was right or wrong, both sides were left unhappy. A third associate told me, “She found out that a former deputy managing editor”—a man—“made more money than she did” while she was managing editor. “She had a lawyer make polite inquiries about the pay and pension disparities, which set them off.”

So you can't have it both ways, guys.  Either the gender gap is a complete myth, or it exists, we need to do something about it, because even the NY Times is guilty of it.

Pick one, conservatives.

Bogged Down By Democrats

The Michael Boggs judicial nomination by President Obama has run into the Honey Badger buzzsaw, and the entire process has turned into a complete mess, as Ed Kilgore points out.

As you may have heard, Senate Democrats—now including Majority Leader Harry Reid—are bailing on the president’s nominee for a district court position in Georgia, Michael Boggs, a state judge who was once a Blue Doggy Democratic state legislator representing a district in southeast Georgia. Mostly at issue are Boggs’ votes in the Georgia legislature for maintaining Confederate symbols on the state flag, placing restrictions on abortion providers, and enacting a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage (this last position came with some inflammatory conservative rhetoric about “judicial activism” as well. At his confirmation hearings yesterday, Boggs took the standard approach of not talking about his specific positions on specific issues, though he did indicate his support of the abortion restriction bill was the product of ignorance, and admitted his Flagger vote was a nod to his constituents’ convictions.

What I hope angry progressives do understand is that Boggs’ appointment was the product not of the Obama administration’s wishes, but of the system—imposed against significant precedents by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT)—of requiring positive “blue slips” (basically statements of approval) from both senators in the state where any judicial nominee would serve.

The Blue Slip process allows senators to cut deals, and in this case, the deal was to allow Boggs nomination to go through in order to get Georgia's two GOP senators to sign on to Jill Pryor's nomination to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which they have been blocking since 2012.  The deal has clearly crumbled and the permanent holds will continue on Obama nominees.

Yet another example of President Obama willing to negotiate, and then getting his throat cut by his own party.  And people wonder why Republicans control the House and the vast majority of states right now.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama is warning that the Highway Trust Fund, used to pay for road and bridge repairs across the nation, will be out of money by the end of the summer unless Congress acts.
• The National September 11 Memorial Museum finally opens this week to families of the victims, and next week to the general public, at the site of the World Trade Center buildings.
• Wildfires continue to rage in Carlsbad, California near San Diego as hundreds in the path of the blaze have been evacuated.
• Pressure on Japan to legalize casino gambling in time for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics is growing as the time window for building the grand resorts before then is closing.
• Federal officials say a former Subway franchisee scammed the company out of nearly $40,000 in gift cards by putting in back doors to point of sale terminals his company sold.

Last Call For Spies Like Us

This Jack Devine piece in Politico sums up every problem I have with Team Dudebro Defector:

In his new book, No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald tells how Edward Snowden once confided to him, “with a hint of embarrassment,” how much he had learned from playing video games. In the black-and-white world of video games, “the protagonist is often an ordinary person, who finds himself faced with grave injustices from powerful forces and has the choice to flee in fear or to fight for his beliefs,” Greenwald writes.

But Edward Snowden’s video-game world is not the real world. I see Snowden in a very different light. My colleagues and I spent our careers in the CIA looking for people like him—on the other side, that is. We worked hard to locate the kind of person who could be persuaded to give up his country’s secrets: narcissistic, often delusional under-achievers whom we could hope to turn into loose-lipped sources in our enemies’ camps and other hostile locations. We understood just how valuable it was to every aspect of our foreign policy to know the plans and intentions of our enemies; the best way to do this was to look for a source and exploit people like Snowden, the National Security Agency leaker, ­ to target for this purpose.

The Russians weren’t slouches either in searching for sources of classified information. They were looking for their Snowdens too. You don’t have to go back too far to see their success in recruiting American spies with unique access – John Anthony Walker, Aldreich Ames, and Robert Hanssen – who did immense damage to our national security. Moreover, Ames and Hanssen’s compromises led to the death of many of our top Russian sources. Walker’s compromise, by contrast, allowed the Soviets to know the locations of U.S. submarines around the world. One shudders to think what more could have been done against us if they had had Snowden’s access to sensitive communications and his technical know-how on how to extract it from the system. Some people think of Snowden as a latter-day Daniel Ellsberg, a noble whistle-blower. Clearly I do not.

Once again, if your goal was to do as much damage as possible to the intelligence capability of the US, Edward Snowden could not have done a more crushingly thorough job.  The debate over the NSA's role and oversight is something that needs to happen and continues to be ongoing.  But the debate over whether or not the actions taken by Snowden, Greenwald and others caused lasting harm to the country is over, and we lost.

Terrorist group al Qaeda and its offshoots have created new encryption software in the wake of the June 2013 leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, according to a new report from Big Data firm Recorded Future.

While U.S. government officials have contended that its adversaries would respond to revelations on NSA surveillance techniques with counter-measures of their own, there has been little public evidence that’s been the case. This is some of the first tangible evidence that al Qaeda and others may have responded by creating new encryption software.

Since 2007, the main encryption software for al Qaeda was called Asrar al-Mujahideen which means Mujahideen Secrets. Four to six months after the Snowden leaks, three Middle Eastern groups released three significant new tool sets for encryption, against a baseline of basically no new products for seven years, said Christopher Ahlberg, CEO of Recorded Future, which uses large quantities of publicly available online data to predict the timing and targets of future cyberattacks.

“Of course, this could be random, but it seems unlikely,” said Mr. Ahlberg, in an email. “Snowden provided the motivation and his leaks highlighted the means.”

So the debate now shifts to cost analysis:  how much damage is the NSA doing with its techniques, versus how much damage has been done by exposing them.  That's the debate we should be having at this point.  Yes, the NSA has violated the public trust, but so did Edward Snowden.  It remains to be seen which will have more long-lasting detrimental effects to our country.

You Say You Want A Revolution

This weekend is apparently FREEDOMPALOOZA Get The Black Guy Operation American Spring, where millions of "patriots" will magically appear in Washington DC in order to drive President Obama (and the GOP leadership!) out of office at gunpoint with their patriotic guns that shoot patriotism, or something.

“We are calling for the removal of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, and Eric Holder as a start toward constitutional restoration,” said retired Army Col. Harry Riley, leader of the Operation American Spring protest group. “They have all abandoned the US Constitution, are unworthy to be retained in a position that calls for servant status.”

Operation American Spring aims to pressure those lawmakers who remain – or are replaced by officials of their own choosing – “to sponsor and pass very Constitutionally crafted State legislation to dissolve the size, powers, scope and spending of the U.S. Government by 2/3rds.”

The activists say they expect 10 million to 30 million like-minded Americans to join them Friday in the nation’s capital for a rally patterned after Occupy Wall Street and “Arab Spring” protests.

They also plan a sister event the same day in Bunkerville, Nevada, where militia groups have gathered to support scofflaw rancher Cliven Bundy in his dispute with the federal government.

Organizers also anticipate “incremental nullification” by state legislatures of “all withholding taxes, employment taxes, employer taxes, and income taxes.”

“This will effectively DOUBLE the size of ALL American Middle Class family weekly paychecks and cause our local city and town economies to boom,” the group promises on its Facebook page.

Oh wow, ten to thirty million "patriots" armed to the teeth and ready to cause a second American Revolution!   I'm sure the President will immediately surrender at the sight of 47 guys with AK-47s and the DC police totally won't round up these idiots and chuck them in the drunk tank for a weekend.

Here's the best part:

Or, as a blogger speculated at Before It’s News, the whole operation could be a false flag planted by the Obama administration to launch a civil war.

Keep on truckin', clowns.

Dear America

"The Selfie Administration?  That seems about right.  Obama's teenage clowns aren't ready to run anything, they certainly weren't able to solve the disasters Bush left for them both foreign and domestically and everybody basically hates the uppity bastard.  He certainly doesn't have the gravitas of George W. Bush and his top political adviser, Karl 'Turd Blossom' Rove."

--Bruce McQuain, Hot Air

Bonus Verbatim Stupidity:

It is a pretty fair and devastating summary of an immature, selfie-taking, hashtag loving administration. Intentions speak louder than action in their world. They don’t take criticism well. And they are about as petty as it comes when talking about their opposition. They demand respect for the man in office, but the man in office shows no respect to those whose views differ from him.

He is also given very little if any respect in the world because he’s really done nothing to earn it (and quite a bit to unearn any he had when he took office).

Right, because the party that insisted President Obama was The Kenyan Usurper and regularly portrayed him as an African savage, regularly attacked him as a Communist dictator and traitor to America for doing things other Presidents were happily allowed to do (recess appointments, executive orders, judicial appointments), that tried to repeal Obamacare 50+ times, and when that didn't work, launched yet another pointless Benghazi investigation certainly cannot be classified as petty, thin-skinned, or disrespectful towards the views of those who disagree with them.

Instead, he's just the Affirmative Action president.  The only thing he did to deserve the office was, you know, win an election and then win re-election, but screw him, right?  That's not how we really select presidents or anything.

If Barack Obama really was as awful a person as they project on to him daily, some people would have been shot by now.  That's all I'm saying.

StupidiNews!

• In a new book, a Louisiana man claims his biological father was really the infamous Zodiac Killer, who killed five people in California in 1968 and 1969.
• An explosion at a coal mine in western Turkey has killed at least 151 workers and trapped more than 700 underground, with the death toll expected to rise.
• Chinese police are claiming that the head of drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline's China division ordered his subordinates to commit bribery, bringing in billions of additional revenue for the company.
• Former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner must provide documents in Standard & Poor's lawsuit against the Justice Department over fraudulent mortgage securities ratings.
• Russia is warning that continued US sanctions over Ukraine may "force" it to abandon support of the International Space Station project.

Last Call For You Can't Handle The Truth

There are some really screwed-up, awful human being on this earth, but few are as perniciously evil as Sandy Hook Truthers, the assholes who somehow believe that the massacre in Newtown Connecticut 18 months ago never actually happened, and that everyone is somehow involved in a huge Obama conspiracy theory to use imaginary dead kids to justify taking people's guns.  And yes, these people are pretty much human pond scum.

A playground in Mystic, Connecticut, dedicated to a girl shot during the Newtown massacre, is allegedly being vandalized by "truthers" who claim the shooting never took place.

A vinyl sign weighing 50 pounds was stolen last Tuesday from the Grace McDonnell Playground.

The sign featured a peace symbol that was based on the 7-year-old girl's drawing. She is one of the 20 children shot by Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14, 2012.

Grace's mother, Lynn McDonnell, found out about the theft when a man claiming to have stolen the sign called her.

During a brief conversation, the sign-stealer allegedly told McDonnell that he took the sign because he believes the school shooting was a hoax, CBS2.com reports.

He also taunted her that her daughter never existed, a comment that suggested he thought McDonnell was part of the alleged conspiracy.

What an awesome thing to say to a grieving mother, right?  "I vandalized the playground named after your dead kid because the NRA hobgoblins living inside my head told me your kid never existed and that you're in on a plan to take my guns!"

There's 26 more playgrounds being built, by the non-profit group that made this possible, the Where Angels Play Foundation.  If you live in the area near any of these playgrounds, or want to help, drop by the website and click on the "Support Us" button.  They could use funds and volunteers.