Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktRon Paul gets the Bad Lip Reading Treatment.
Obama administration says Fort Hood shootings were “workplace violence”. Well, I guess that’s true, but . . .
The background here is that on August 20, 2011, the independent commission that was set up to determine how best to do force protection on base – where almost everyone goes about their business unarmed – made these preliminary findings, among 79 recommendations:
Educating commanders about the symptoms of potential workplace violence and the tools available to them to address it.
Ensuring commanders and supervisors have access to appropriate information in personnel records throughout a service member’s career.
Improving law enforcement and force-protection information sharing with partner agencies and among installations to ensure all relevant personnel are aware of and able to analyze and respond to potential threats.
Expanding installations’ emergency-response capabilities, including enabling enhanced 911 to notify dispatchers of a caller’s location, mass notification and warning systems to guide installation personnel and emergency responders to an emergency, and a common operating picture to ensure emergency responders have access to real-time information in a crisis.
Integrating force-protection policy through the creation of a consultative and policy-making body that will bring together the various entities across the department with force protection responsibilities.
Ensuring the department provides top-quality health care to servicemembers and health care providers by hiring additional health care providers, particularly in the mental health field, and ensuring health care providers receive appropriate post-deployment respite and time at home between deployments.
Gates also has directed the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and America’s security affairs to continue to lead the follow-on review and to provide regular progress reports to him. Killeen Daily Herald, August 24, 2011.
So the criticism of the use of the phrase “workplace violence” when the security team was charged with learning as much as it could to make bases safe (force protection) seems like much ado about nothing. You will recall that other Army shrinks, including other Muslim Army shrinks, warned about Maj. Hasan well before the shootings, but the command structure simply did not take them seriously. The preliminary panel report addresses the training of command staff, so that they will take reports from their health care pros seriously.
Educating commanders about the symptoms of potential workplace violence and the tools available to them to address it.
Ensuring commanders and supervisors have access to appropriate information in personnel records throughout a service member’s career.
Improving law enforcement and force-protection information sharing with partner agencies and among installations to ensure all relevant personnel are aware of and able to analyze and respond to potential threats.
Expanding installations’ emergency-response capabilities, including enabling enhanced 911 to notify dispatchers of a caller’s location, mass notification and warning systems to guide installation personnel and emergency responders to an emergency, and a common operating picture to ensure emergency responders have access to real-time information in a crisis.
Integrating force-protection policy through the creation of a consultative and policy-making body that will bring together the various entities across the department with force protection responsibilities.
Ensuring the department provides top-quality health care to servicemembers and health care providers by hiring additional health care providers, particularly in the mental health field, and ensuring health care providers receive appropriate post-deployment respite and time at home between deployments.
Gates also has directed the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and America’s security affairs to continue to lead the follow-on review and to provide regular progress reports to him. Killeen Daily Herald, August 24, 2011.
So the criticism of the use of the phrase “workplace violence” when the security team was charged with learning as much as it could to make bases safe (force protection) seems like much ado about nothing. You will recall that other Army shrinks, including other Muslim Army shrinks, warned about Maj. Hasan well before the shootings, but the command structure simply did not take them seriously. The preliminary panel report addresses the training of command staff, so that they will take reports from their health care pros seriously.
But everybody gets to gripe about something.
A blogger is not a journalist, meaning they don’t enjoy the same 1st Amendment protections, I guess. Be careful what you say, folks, at least in Oregon.
Filed under: Uncategorized |
All Things in Moderation 
I don't know why a newspaper would get away with calling a lawyer a crook if the lawyer is not a public figure. Apparently Oregon has a protective shield law that I am unfamiliar with.
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The federal judge said this special protection that newspaper type journalists get in OR does not extend to bloggers. The First Amendment has an historical exception for defamation – defamatory speech is not free. I am AOK with this result, but wonder how a newspaper gets away with stuff like this in OR.
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Via the PlumLine:I've long suspected that climate change "denial" is really a proxy for the real argument over who is going to pay for it. In that vein, regardless of whether you agree with them or not, these articles are worth a read."The deniers did not decide that climate change is a left-wing conspiracy by uncovering some covert socialist plot. They arrived at this analysis by taking a hard look at what it would take to lower global emissions as drastically and as rapidly as climate science demands. They have concluded that this can be done only by radically reordering our economic and political systems in ways antithetical to their “free market” belief system. As British blogger and Heartland regular James Delingpole has pointed out, “Modern environmentalism successfully advances many of the causes dear to the left: redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, greater government intervention, regulation.” Heartland’s Bast puts it even more bluntly: For the left, “Climate change is the perfect thing…. It’s the reason why we should do everything [the left] wanted to do anyway.”Here’s my inconvenient truth: they aren’t wrong."Capitalism vs. the Climate See also:Building a Green Economy
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As a person who learned to lip read at a young age (I'd sneak halfway down the stairs after I was supposed to be in bed and watch the movies on TV that my parents were watching with the sound turned down) I love these BLR videos, Kevin!!When will we be getting another TED link?
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For Mark and anyone interested, a link on MF Global and the very low possibility of clawing back money.
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TMW, thanks. In 1964 I passed my registered rep exam and sold over the counter stock at a small NASD house. We could not dream of doing anything like this. I feared it might be this bad this morning when I was trying to get the picture.
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Goose: Soon that's all I'll ever be able to do (I'm not worried about the net nanny ever blocking TED). So . . . soon enough. 😉
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Absolutely amazing story. Thanks, TMW.This one line makes me think of Bialystock and Bloom in The Producers:"With assets being re-hypothecated many times over (known as 'churn')…"
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jnc4p: is really a proxy for the real argument over who is going to pay for it. I think it's actually an argument over if there's any need to pay for anything at all. Of course, there might be a vigorous debate if there was a scientific consensus that the moon was made of green cheese, but I doubt it would be nearly as involved, as it wouldn't involve huge amounts of money. For the left, “Climate change is the perfect thing…. It’s the reason why we should do everything [the left] wanted to do anyway.”Here’s my inconvenient truth: they aren’t wrong.These kinds of arguments provide some insight, but not a lot. The reality is, if climate change was real, and the predictions 100% accurate, there would still be a great deal of opposition to making expensive, society-reordering changes, and a lot of the opposition might take the form of disinformation campaigns, etc. There's a great deal of money involved. However, even if there were no climate change, and the global warming was, indeed, complete hokum, there's a large group of people who would pursue it as an opportunity to accomplish broader societal goals. In both cases, there would be many people–including smart people, scientists, and so on–who would pick their tribal affiliation and mark their territory, sincere in their beliefs but deeply influenced by their tribal affiliation. That is, they don't think they are doing it for money, or due to peer pressure, or that they are playing fast and loose with the data . . . by definition, groupthinkers aren't going to think of themselves and groupthinking. Still, those scenarios exist independently of actual data, what we are actually capable of predicting, and what sorts of policy solution can possible pass, and what sort of impact those policy solutions might have. Whether it's the petroleum lobby or the Union of Communist–I mean, Concerned–Scientists advancing an agenda, there is a reality, somewhere, independent of both sides–and there's the plain truth: only certain types of policies are likely to ever see the light of day and, of them, even fewer are likely to have anything like a positive overall impact, on global climate or anything else.
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"newspaper would get away with calling a lawyer a crook if the lawyer is not a public figure"I was taught in journalism school that you're a private figure until the second you're not. Example — crime victim is no longer a "private" individual. Also that in order for it to be libelous all three of the following has to be met: 1) the charge is false 2) The charge has done harm and 3) it was done with malice. Also — employment status is a poor way to determine who is/is not a journalist. There's no licensing and or credentials required. Although there is a movement to change that.
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McWing:Interesting article. A couple of comments, with the caveat that I am not all that familiar with the operations and accounting in a brokerage house like MF, so I am just making what seems to me to be logical observations, not anything based on inside industry knowledge. First, although the author of the article makes much of this whole process of re-hypothecation with the vague implication that some kind of financial black magic is going on, it seems for the most part to be perfectly reasonable and logical to me (with one exception, more on which below). Remember that collateral that is posted to one entity is posted precisely because that entity is owed money. So there is nothing particularly odd or extraordinary that such an entity could then use the collateral hypothecated to them as collateral for their own borrowing. Consider the following:I extend credit of $100 to you, and you post collateral worth $100 to me. So now, instead of me having my original $100, I have your collateral. But then I need cash for some particular purchase, so I borrow $100 of cash from qb, and pledge the collateral I have from you to him, essentially re-hypothecating it. qb in turn borrows $100 from NoVA, and re-hypothecates the collateral to him.** So it could be said, as the author of the article does, that $300 in loans have been made based on "churning" $100 of collateral. But there is nothing particularly interesting or nefarious about this. It is not as though a "shadow" system has magically created $300 out of $100. It is simply the case that $100 has been loaned from NoVA to you, with qb and I acting as intermediators. So when the author says, with a vaguely sinister tone, that "U.S. banks were receiving $4 trillion worth of funding by re-hypothecation" of as little as $1 trillion, he isn't really saying much other than that a lot of borrowing and lending that is done through the markets is ultimately done through middlemen and credit intermediators. Big deal.The problem I do see – the exception I mentioned above – is that re-hypothecation seems to be allowed (to a small extent in the US and to an unlimited extent in the UK) on "collateral" that is not in fact collateral at all but is instead deposited assets. That is to say, if you have a trading account with me, and you have made, say, $1,000 on your trading activities which you keep on account with me in the form of, say, US treasury bills in addition to having posted $500 in margin, it seems that I am allowed not only to re-hypothecate the $500 posted margin (which I will have to post to the exchange in any event), but I am also allowed to use your $1,000 in profit held on account. Allowing that, it seems to me, makes a complete sham of the rule that customer funds cannot be co-mingled with firm funds. You might as well write a regulation that says customer funds must be segregated…except when they aren't.**I have excluded using any liberals from my example because, as we know, they would never be involved in any these kinds of sinister Wall Street machinations…unless they have the name Corzine. 😉
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In Texas, a private figure plaintiff bringing a defamation lawsuit must prove that the defendant was at least negligent with respect to the truth or falsity of the allegedly defamatory statement. Public officials, all-purpose public figures, and limited-purpose public figures must prove that the defendant acted with actual malice, i.e., knowing that the statement was false or recklessly disregarding its falsity.QB and Ashot – is this the general rule in your jurisdictions?
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Mark — that's my understanding. The idea that i was taught revolved around two things — First, that truth is an absolute defense. And if that fails, make the case that the "private figure" is actually public. As soon as you are in the public spotlight, even if you were an anonymous nobody the day before, you are no longer a private figure and therefore the actual malice standard applies. there's debate on that point. A lot of it was centered on reporting re: sex crimes (when to withhold a name or not)
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**I have excluded using any liberals from my example because I'm having trouble finding any who can add 2 + 2 = 5. :>)
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liberal math is more like 3 + 1 = Unfair. 🙂
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lms:Heh.
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Boehner math: 3 + 1 = a bogey.
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lms:Must have been a par 3.
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What do I know from golf, the only F I ever got in a class, but yeah.
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The only thing more bizarre than being able to take a class in golf is doing so and getting an F.
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Well it was at 7:00 am and I was 18, so I have an excuse. Golf class is quite popular out here in CA btw. Almost all my kids took it.
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Is it golf lessons, or is it an actual class on the rules/procedures of golf?
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Both. And it's not a difficult class obviously, but you are required to show up. 🙂
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Ah. That goes a long way towards explaining.
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I took golf for half a semester. used the football practice field. it was actually a lot of fun. if nothing else, i learned that you have to play a lot to get halfway decent.
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My parents were avid golfers so I grew up with it. They actually lived on the 15th hole of a golf course in Indiana for a number of years. I play, not very well, buy our son and youngest daughter are pretty good at it. My son started at age 6 with his grandpa though so he had a head start.
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I quit golf in disgust. I could drive. But I could not chip or putt to save my life and putting is much harder than it looks. Pool is easier. Flat slate table and all that.I shot 108 once. Hit 13 greens in two. Five in three. Partner thought I was doing well until he saw may take 5-6 putts to get down.Stupid game. Not like hardball, which I played. Not like fishing or shooting skeet.Really a dumbass game.Chasing a goddam little ball around.Shit.[And I quit 30 years ago]
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Mark, what I hate about golf is watching it on tv, the most boring sport in the world. I'd much rather be fishing or swimming laps. And I'm just the opposite, my putting is excellent, but I have to cheat to get to the green. I been know to throw the ball better than I can drive it.
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Mark:So you took 41 shots from tee to green, and then 67 putts?!? You averaged almost 4 putts per hole? Are you serious?I have shot plenty of 100+ rounds in my day, but never like that. BTW, it is a lot easier to learn how to putt than to learn how to drive the ball, unless you have some kind of depth perception issues. If you could strike the ball that well from tee to green, then a few putting lessons and you could have been a fine golfer indeed.
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"shooting skeet"that's a blast. I'm cross dominant and would prefer to put the gun on the left side, but I have to shoot a shotgun right handed, which is weird. handgun i've figured out how to compensate and shoot lefty. but i golf and play hockey right handed. throw/write lefty.
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Scott, more typical for me was 118-120 with 52 fairway shots and 66 putts. Yes, my putting was that bad.Like NoVAH, I am a left handed pitcher and tennis player and a right handed golfer and shot. And either way at pool. I wondered if I should putt lefty, and it did seem easier when I tried it once, with a borrowed left handed putter.But I digress. I hated it, except for the outing on a pretty morning on a pretty course.
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Mark:I hated it, except for the outing on a pretty morning on a pretty course. Classic Mark Twain…a good walk spoiled.My Dad batted left-handed in baseball, but when he started golf, all he had was right-handed clubs, so that's what he used pretty much his whole life. Then one time when I was playing with him we had a lefty in our group, so he borrowed a club and hit a drive left-handed for the first time in his life….right down the middle of the fairway.BTW, if/when we ever get together, it will have to be over a game of pool. Been playing since I was a kid. Love it.
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Haaaahaaaa, I made money shooting pool in college.
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