It Feel Likes 164 Degrees in Iran

Thanks, Obama!

Water temperatures in the Persian Gulf routinely warm into the 90s each summer, releasing massive amounts of water vapor into the air above. For those unlucky enough to catch a breeze from the Gulf, the humidity can be stifling.

On Thursday, those breezes blew toward the Iranian side of the Gulf. At 3:30 p.m. local time Thursday, the manned observation site at the Mahshahr Airport in southwest Iran reported a temperature of 109 F (43 C) and a dewpoint of 90 F (32 C). Using the American heat index formula, those figures yielded a mind-boggling feels-like temperature of 159 F (70 C).

It was even hotter on Friday at the Mahshahr Airport when temperatures reached 114.8 F at 4:30 pm local time with a dew point of 89.6 F, leading to a heat index value of an incredible 164 F (73 C).

For $1,000 He'll Testify for Police Shooting Civilians

Training Officers to Shoot First, and He Will Answer Questions Later

The prosecutor, Stephen McIntosh, however, told The Columbus Dispatch that Dr. Lewinski’s “radical” views could be used to justify nearly any police shooting.“If that’s the sort of direction we, as a society, are going,” the prosecutor said, “I have a lot of disappointment.”

Iran Deal Opponents Living in Fantasy World

Fareed Zakaria:

The deal’s opponents have conjured up a fantasy scenario in which the world will sign up for more sanctions, Tehran will meekly return to the table with further concessions, or perhaps the Islamic republic will itself implode — and its successors will then denounce and dismantle the nuclear program. To bet on this scenario is the real gamble, a high stakes one with little evidence to support it.

Officer Wilson: Michael Brown Was Powerful like Hulk Hogan, Intensively Aggresive, Gunting, Looked Like a Demon

Wilson: "I felt like a 5 year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan."

"Hulk Hogan. That's just how big he felt and how small I felt just from grasping his arm."

"I drew my gun... He immediately grabs my gun and says 'you are too much of a pussy to shoot me',"

"He...grabs my gun...and then he twists it and digs it down into my hip."

"Those punches in my face could knock me out or worse...the third one could be fatal."

"He looked at me...and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon."

"It looks like a demon, that's how angry he looked."

"I tell him get on the ground, get on the ground."

"He turns, and when he looked at me, he made like a grunting, like aggravated sound..."

"He turns and he's coming back toward me...he kind of does a stutter step to start running."

"The first step, his first stride coming back towards me."

"As he is coming towards me, I tell, keep telling him get on the ground. He doesn't. I shoot a series of shots."

"I know I hit him at least once because I saw his body kind of jerk."

"He's still coming at me, he hadn't slowed down...I start backpedaling again, I tell him get on the ground.. he doesn't"

"I shoot another round of shots. I don't recall if it hit him every time..at least once because he flinched again."

"At this point it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots... like it was making him mad that I'm shooting at him. And the face that he had was looking straight through me... like I wasn't even there, I wasn't even anything in his way."

"Well, he keeps coming after me... gets about 8 to 10 feet away."

"I know if he reaches me, he'll kill me."

"I remember looking at my sites and firing, all I see is his head and that's what I shot" 

"the demeanor on his face went blank, the aggression was gone... the threat was stopped."

"His whole reaction to the whole thing was something I've never seen"

"Whenever [my gun] was visible to him, he then took complete control of it.

"Whenever it was displayed to him, he did take complete control."

"He had complete control of that weapon at that time."

Q: How many minutes from when you saw them walking in the street until Michael Brown was dead?

Wilson: "less than one minute"

Wilson on the community: "It is just not a very well-liked community."

Q: "Were you pretty much on high alert being in that community by yourself?"

A: "Yes"

Wilson: "That's not an area where you can take anything really lightly. Like I said, it is a hostile environment."

Rare Photos from Allied Invasion of Southern France in WWII

Life Magazine publishes little-seen photographs from the Allied invasion of southern France  in 1944. 

Dale Rooks took the pictures of U.S. troops in Marseilles, Toulon and other places in the region.

Bill Keller to Head Up Website on Criminal Justice

Bill Keller is leaving the New York Times to head up a well-funded online news source devoted to issues such as juvenile justice, drug sentencing, the death penalty, privatization of prisons, solitary confinement and mental illness.

David Gregory, Glenn Greewald, and the Question of Journalism

Jay Rosen looks at the exchange between David Gregory, Glenn Greenwald, and the issue of 'who is a journalist?'

While the question may seem irrelevant, the press like to point out that their profession is specifically mentioned as deserving of special protection in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Journalists argue that protections for reporters against, for example requiring them to reveal their sources, benefit society in the same way such confidentiality protections do for lawyers, doctors, and ministers. The President himself recently endorsed a press shield law. Nevertheless, defining 'who is a journalist' is more difficult than many in the official press like to think it is, particularly in an age of online publishing.

If David Gregory thinks Glenn Greenwald should be charged with a crime, he should say so. On the other hand, the term "criminalizing journalism," is a term largely without meaning. Journalism is properly protected by the Constitution, but neither does an action become immune to prosecution merely because it is designated "journalism." Like any other person, a journalist may, or may not commit a crime ni the course of doing their job,' but to prosecute reporters merely for receiving classified information is properly and widely regarded an as dangerous in a functioning representative democracy.

Jay Rosen's analysis is excellent; but I would like to highlight a habit of David Gregory's that his method of interviewing : his use of the passive voice to inject certain opinions into his show.  I have little doubt Gregory himself thinks of this method as both hard-hitting and incisive; he probably cannot see what he is doing, parroting and giving credence to Beltway chatter. He usually does this by vaguely announcing “There’s a question" and repeating what he insists "people are saying," important people, naturally.

Gregory:

"The question of who’s a journalist may be up to a debate with regard to what you’re doing"

“There’s a question about his role in this, The Guardian’s role in all of this. It is actually part of the debate,"

"Some people think that security is more important, or that secrecy should be decided by democratically-elected officials and not by individual whistleblowers"

Colonial Historians Solve a Crime From 1624

Colonial historians may have not only have identified a man found killed from a gunshot wound in 1624, but the person who shot him. Apparently the circumstances of the shooting, a duel, were recorded in documents in Jamestown colony archives.

U.S. Government Targeted and Killed American Citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi

In a letter to Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder states that U.S. government specifically targeted and killed American citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi after a "thorough and careful review" and determining that he posed an imminent threat to Americans on U.S. soil.

He states that the U.S. government found al-Aulaqi posed an imminent threat of a violent attack and that his capture was not feasible. 


For example, Holder writes, al-Aulaqi instructed the so-called "underwear bomber" to blow up a plane when it was over American soil.
Describing the legal basis for these actions, a subject of much recent discussion, he writes that the Constitution does not prohibit government from killing American terrorists who hide in faraway countries and plot against homeland.

The letter states that Lethal force may be used when a person poses a continuing, imminent threat, capture is not feasible, no other reasonable means of addressing the threat exist. 

Holder also tells us that the government also killed three other U.S. citizens, who were not specifically targeted.

He also said that Obama will speak soon on legal and policy justifications for targeted killing.

Here is a link to the letter from Holder

Last Two Speakers of Dying Language Refuse to Talk to Each Other

Daniel Suslak, a linguistic anthropologist, sums up their relationship succinctly: “They don’t have a lot in common.”

Michelle Bachmann and the Truth

 “Here's the truth that the president won't tell you. Of every dollar that you hold in your hands, 70 cents of that dollar that's supposed to go to the poor doesn't. It actually goes to benefit the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. — 70 cents on the dollar. 

- Rep. Michelle Bachmann, (R-MN) March 16, 2013.

 The Washington Post's fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, examines Rep. Michelle Bachmann's accuracy here.

Bachmann's source is a speech from 1990, citing a government report from 1986 (when Ronald Reagan was President.) She also misleadingly relies on a report from a Cato Institute scholar.

According to Kessler, "staff salaries amount to one-third of 1 percent of USDA’s budget for food and nutrition programs."

He concludes:

"Bachmann yet again earns Four Pinocchios. But there really aren’t enough Pinocchios for such misleading use of statistics in a major speech."

Shouldn't we expect more truth from our elected officials?

Truth and the Doctrine of False Equivalence

James Fallows in The Atlantic 

• The Washington Post's analysts, plus anyone who has looked at a budget, point out that the Obama Administration's budget proposals involve less in tax increases, and more in spending cuts, than what previously seemed perfectly "centrist" proposals. That is, what the administration is now proposing is what most centrist-minded people would have endorsed as a "reasonable compromise" two or three years ago;
• Reporters from the Post, and from everywhere else, make clear that much of the GOP leadership and rank-and-file want the sequester to occur and are simply not interested in a last-minute compromise;

 That's the landscape. And what is the Post's editorial conclusion? You guessed it! The president is to blame, for not "leading" the way to a compromise.

The Sun Big. Really Big.

On Skeetgate

Via Twitter:

Jay Rosen:

The news site I want would say: This is too stupid to pay attention to. You may safely ignore it. If anything changes, we will let you know.

Should the President Be Elected by Congressional District?

William Jacobsen, Associate Clinical Professor at Cornell Law School, defends changing the way American elects its President by awarding electoral college votes by Congressional district rather than by state: 

As things stand now, the Electoral College favors Democrats because they are all but guaranteed to win a small number of large winner take all states, such as California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, plus a coalition of hopelessly blue states.

Democrats start off close to victory because of winner-take-all voting in those states, even if they win those states by a small margin in each state.

He notes these proposals come from Republicans (presumably in response to losing 6 out of 8 elections) and claims the "the system currently is 'rigged' to favor Democrats," but also states the change "may favor Republicans, or it may not, depending on the state and the presidential candidate."

More importantly, he writes: "Awarding electoral votes by district may have a positive impact of forcing candidates to campaign outside the large cities and bring a more geographically diverse electorate into the voting booth for them." 

To equate such efforts with cheating, he says, is "constitutionally ignorant." It's not entirely clear if he is endorsing the change, or defending the idea from the charge of cheating, and rigging the system. He also writes,

 "If [Balloon Juice and Maddow Blog ] are against it, it’s almost certainly good for the nation." 

In any case, the power to alter they way votes are counted to benefit your party in the next election is part of democracy.

The push and pull of redistricting as a result of state-level elections is part of the process, and if it impacts the Electoral College, so be it. Elections have consequences.  Including at the state level.

It does seem troubling at first that a party, having trouble winning elections, would resort to changing the elections rules. But this is certainly less so if the current method - and the electoral college is certainly peculiar - is in some unfairly tilted toward one party or disenfranchises, de facto, large numbers of people. The current system currently guarantees that Presidential candidates will barely campaign in certain states, while giving outsize attention to others - the 'swing states' in a winner-take-all election. Likewise, Prof. Jacobsen suggests certain areas with states ("large cities") receive more attention that others. This is presumably because there more people in a smaller geographic area in the cities. If one looks are winners of statewide elections (Governor, Attorney General, U.S. Senator) is this true? Do those candidates disproportionately spend more time campaigning in the cities? If so, is this an unfair situation which needs to be rectified? In addition, even if these rules changes are implemented, it's not clear that candidates will spend much more time in rural areas. After all, it will still be 'easier' to reach more people in shorter period of time, with less travel, in an urban area. However, if electoral college votes were distributed by Congressional district, it might change the policy positions emphasized by candidates - as with ethanol and the key primary state of Iowa (or it might not).

Another option, of course, would be to elect the President by counting national votes, just as members of Congress, Governors, Mayors, and others are elected by gathering the most votes in their respective districts or states . This would likely have the effect of further "nationalizing" elections, rendering them more about larger ideological issues and large national constituencies and less about local concerns.
 

Bank Allegedly Hid $12 Billion in Losses

Dec. 5 (Financial Times) - Deutsche Bank failed to recognise up to $12 billion of paper losses during the financial crisis, helping the bank avoid a government bail-out, three former bank employees have alleged in complaints to US regulators. 

Robert Khuzami, head of enforcement at the SEC, has recused himself from all Deutsche Bank investigations because he was Deutsche's general counsel for the Americas from 2004 to 2009. Dick Walker, Deutsche's general counsel, is a former head of enforcement at the SEC.  

 

Job swap. Sweet.  

Hostess With the Mostest

Hostess Brands Inc. won final court approval to sell its assets and eliminate about 18,000 jobs. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain also approved Hostess’s requests to pay as much as $1.83 million in incentives to 19 senior managers, while overruling objections to the bonuses.

CNN: Math. How Does It Work?

POLL: OBAMA, ROMNEY TIED IN OHIO

Pres' 4-point lead within sampling error

$64,000 in Bow Ties, Paid by the Taxpayer

Incredibly, taxpayers of Ohio bought $64,000 in bow ties for its university President, as well as a $500 shower curtain.

The story serves as a helpful reminder that the NCAA is one of, if the worst, institution in America.

Be Fair, or Look Fair?

Ezra Klein:

We’ve been conditioned to want to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame, and the fact of the matter is, I would like to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame. I’d personally feel better if our coverage didn’t look so lopsided. But first the campaigns have to be relatively equal. So far in this campaign, you can look fair, or you can be fair, but you can’t be both.