Pass the Popcorn; Murdoch Edition

This could be fun to watch.

The FBI has opened an investigation into allegations that media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. sought to hack into the phones of Sept. 11 victims, a law enforcement official said Thursday.

In the U.K., where the politicians have been running scared of the Murdoch media empire for decades, the knives are out.

For Bastille Day

The rendering of La Marseillaise that is likely most familiar to Americans:



And from "Escape to Victory":

Religious Freedom; FSM Edition

Going for the win.

An Austrian atheist has won the right to be shown on his driving-licence photo wearing a pasta strainer as "religious headgear".

Niko Alm first applied for the licence three years ago after reading that headgear was allowed in official pictures only for confessional reasons.

Mr Alm said the sieve was a requirement of his religion, pastafarianism.

Good for him. One of the things that bugs me about a number of organized religions is that they want the government to recognize that they are a religion and, in many cases, ban everyone else's religion.

I hold that religion is no business of the government. Any government. And yes, I'd be all in favor of removing all special treatment in tax policies for religions. It's not the state's business who you want to worship or where.

(H/T)

Unfit to Fight

The U.S. Navy.

I wish I could say that I'm surprised about any of this, but I'm not. Warships take a lot of TLC to keep in good condition. A decade ago, the Navy went to a concept called "optimal manning", which was a bureaucratic way of saying "not enough sailors to keep the ships up." From what I've read, a Burke class DDG had a complement of 290, yet the Navy sent those ships to see with the the crew size of a Knox class FF (or a Perry class FFG). Those two frigate classes displaced 4,100 tons, but a Burke class DDG displace between 8,300 and 9,500 tons.*

The Burkes are much larger ships. Those who thought that the Navy could send them to sea with the crew size of a smaller ship and not eventually pay a price had to have been drinking the Ft. Fumble Kool-Aid. The practice of not sending enough sailors to ships to properly man the ships was a factor in the grounding of the USS Port Royal.

As the article also noted, the Navy cheaped out on maintenance and now has to make it up (in an era of tightening budgets). You have to wonder what retard genius came up with the idea of "just run it until it breaks" as a way to save on doing preventative maintenance. That defies a couple of centuries worth of experience with mechanical systems. You can't not maintain things, not if you are going to count on them to work when you most need them.

I have to imagine that this is the sort of shit that happens when the black shoes who have real experience with sailing and maintaining ships are either too afraid for their careers to speak the truth or are ordered not to. This smacks of the sort of stupid shit that Rumsfeld would have dreamed up.

The ships don't get maintained, they sail with over-tired and stressed crews. Bad things happen when people are standing watch and they are too exhausted to think. When their tour of duty is up, the good ones, the ones that the Navy wanted to keep, will get out.

Fucking admirals. Not one of them apparently had the integrity to stand up and say "this shit ain't right." And so the men and women on the deckplates have to pay the price.

There are times when maybe it's possible that Stalin did the right thing when he had almost all of the top brass shot.

(H/T via email)
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* Of the 230 or fewer sailors on a Burke-class DDG, that includes those who are away for schooling, on medical leave, those detailed ashore to do security and other shit for the base (gotta support the shore establishment), and those who were sent as "individual augmentees" to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Shorter Mitch McConnell: "Congress Is Not Made Up of Responsible Adults."

MdConnell's plan is to give the President the power to raise the debt ceiling on his own without congressional approval.

So then the Republicans could scream like raped chickens every time the President raises the debt ceiling while, at the same time, avoiding any responsibility for the process.

That's pretty damn cowardly of him. But it's worth remembering that is the GOP mantra, "ideology uber alles". If these current clowns were running the Congress in the fall of 2008, the banking system would have collapsed.

Meanwile, the real masters of the GOP, the business community, are starting to tell them to shut the fuck up, start acting like grown-ups and get to work getting out of this crisis of their own making.

I don't know how the Republicans walk this one back.

There Has Been a Disturbance In the Force

Glock is making a 1911??

The company that pioneered the plastic fantastic pistol and all that is making a steel-frame 1911?

Ack! Medic!!

If You Are an Owner of Haynes Management in Wellesley, MA, Here Is a Wish For You:

May you die soon, painfully and often. May you suffer through indictments and prison terms for fraud before you die.

This is why:

Massachusetts accountant Carl Sorabella had every reason to believe that his employer would grant his request for a more flexible schedule so that he could assist his wife, who had just been diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer and given only months to live. After all, he'd been with Haynes Management in Wellesley, for 13 years, and had just been given a raise in November.

He was wrong in thinking that his employer would be sympathetic. They fired him on the spot.

This is evil conduct of the kind that would have Chainsaw Al saying: "C'mon, you gotta be kidding."

If you do business with Haynes Management, may you come down with a bad case of gout. If you have retained Haynes Management as your accounting firm, may you be plagued with visits from the IRS and the MA Dept. of Revenue.

Update: Check the comments for the official statement by the heartless weasels and for contact information for said weasels.

(H/T)

Captain Obvious To The Rescue!

As Don Brown has pointed out, anyone who claims to be stunned by the job numbers for June hasn't been paying attention. It's a damn good point. Those "stunned" economists need to have Captain Obvious give them a hard dope slap.

There are three chances, however, that the Villagers will wake up and start paying attention: Slim, Fat and None Whatsoever. Because the Democrats are too gutless to do anything and the Republicans are out drinking with the assholes who wrecked the economy.

Robbie is Right: They're All Crooks

John Schwartz of the New York Times wrote in today's paper about two studies that, in essence, allege that Senators and Congressmen who play the stock market are using their inside information to make money in the stock market. That implication arises because the average return on investment by those politicians outpaces the market in general.

Fat chance getting anything done about that bit of fuckery. If the SEC were to look into insider trading by politicians, the Congress would zero out the SEC's budget faster than a congressman returns the phone call of the head of a ten-figure PAC.

Blackwater- Open for Business in Connecticut

The sign on the place reads "U.S. Training Center", but it is a Blackwater operation.* It is in Salem, in the building that was formerly E&B Sporting Goods, which was a gun shop. The range was in the basement, then, and I presume it is there now.

The lights were on and there were a few SUVs in the parking lot. I don't know if it is invitation-only or open to the public, but as I drove by, I can't say that the place looked particularly inviting.
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* Or "Xe Services" or "Princess Sparkle's House of Destruction" or whatever name they're going by these days.