hypocrisy

Police Chief as Judge, Jury, and Executioner

"In reacting to the murder of Jason Ellis, Bardstown Police Chief Rick McCubbin spoke of revenge, rather than justice: 'I can assure you we won’t give up on this person or persons until we either have them in custody or in the front sight of one of our weapons. I certainly hope the latter is the case.' Dominic Aguilar of Roseville, California, whose friend Ernesto Duenez, Jr. was gunned down in his front yard by a police officer named John Moody, was arrested and charged with a felony for a Facebook post expressing the hope that Moody would meet a violent end. Why was one considered a crime, but not the other?" Continue reading →

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Members Of LAPD SWAT Team Caught Selling Department Guns

"The FBI is investigating whether members of the Los Angeles Police Department’s elite SWAT and Special Investigations Section units violated the law by purchasing large numbers of custom-made handguns and reselling them for profit, according to interviews. The move comes after an earlier LAPD investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of officers. But on Friday, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck acknowledged that that probe was 'clearly lacking' and said the department has opened a second investigation of the weapons transactions that is still ongoing." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingMembers Of LAPD SWAT Team Caught Selling Department Guns

IRS Official Lois Lerner Refuses To Resign – Gets Paid Leave Of $3,557.69 A Week

"First she refused to testify. Now Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the tax agency scandal, is refusing to resign, according to a top Republican senator. Sources confirmed to Fox News earlier Thursday that Lerner, the head of the IRS division that oversaw the unit targeting conservative groups, had been placed on administrative leave, with pay. But Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, claimed she was only put in that status after refusing to step down." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingIRS Official Lois Lerner Refuses To Resign – Gets Paid Leave Of $3,557.69 A Week

Glenn Greenwald: Andrew Sullivan, terrorism, and the art of distortion

"I used to wonder how people who continuously justify any manner of violence and militarism by their own side could possibly spend so much time pointing to others and depicting them - those people over there - as the embodiment of violence and savage aggression. But at some point I realized that it's precisely because they continuously justify so much violence and aggression from their side that they have such a boundless compulsion to depict others as the Uniquely Primitive and Violent Evil. That's how they absolve themselves. It's how they distract themselves from the reality of what they support and what their governments do in the world." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingGlenn Greenwald: Andrew Sullivan, terrorism, and the art of distortion

Nigel Farage Bashes Tax-Advantaged Hypocritical European Politicians

"If we look at the EU officials who work for the European Commission and the European Parliament, the highest category [the most common grade is AD12] are people that earn a net take home pay of just over 100 thousand pounds a year. And yet under EU rules they pay tax of 12 per cent. It is tax fraud on an absolutely massive scale. And Mr Barroso I would say to you, how can that be deemed to be fair? How can people out there struggling - the 16 million people unemployed in the eurozone - how can they look at these institutions, not only paying people vast sums of money but allowing them tax and pension benefits on a scale not seen anywhere else in the world?" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNigel Farage Bashes Tax-Advantaged Hypocritical European Politicians

Suddenly, Banks Are Victims In Justice Department’s S&P Lawsuit

"Justice is not suing Warren Buffett's Moody's ratings service, even though Moody's rated many of these same deals, often with identical ratings. Are we supposed to believe that Moody's never suggested to anyone that it was independent and objective? Whether Team Obama would ever dare to sue a company in which St. Warren is invested, you don't have to be a cynic to wonder if the feds will first wait and see whether Moody's downgrades U.S. Treasury debt the way S&P did in 2011. The truth is that the damage occurred because the same government that's now suing S&P required financial institutions to use the ratings issued by S&P and the other raters." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingSuddenly, Banks Are Victims In Justice Department’s S&P Lawsuit

Forget Too Big to Fail Banks — It’s Time to Break Up the Fed

"St. Louis Fed President Jim Bullard recently laid out four criteria that a bank needs to be split up — namely, if its assets are too voluminous, if it's too leveraged, if it has too much short-term funding of longer term assets and if it creates too much systemic risk. Alex Pollock said of the Fed: It's too big, with over $3.3 trillion in assets, it's too leveraged at 60 to 1, it's extremely short-funded and it's 'a frequent contributor through its interest rate and money-printing action of gigantic systemic risk.' 'Therefore, it follows pretty clearly from the same logic that we should break up the Fed,' said Pollock, a former bank CEO." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingForget Too Big to Fail Banks — It’s Time to Break Up the Fed

Obama Meets Privately with Energy Industry CEOs

"President Barack Obama met behind closed doors with energy executives Wednesday in a session the White House said was arranged to discuss the industry's response to Hurricane Sandy last year and preparations for this year's hurricane season, reports Poltico's Josh Gerstein. The White House did not respond to queries from POLITICO about why the public and press were excluded from the discussion, which took place at the Energy Department. Gerstein reports that during Obama's first bid for the White House, the freshman senator complained about then-Vice President Dick Cheney's private meetings with energy industry representatives." Continue reading →

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Reuters: U.S. cyberwar strategy stokes fear of blowback

"Even as the U.S. government confronts rival powers over widespread Internet espionage, it has become the biggest buyer in a burgeoning gray market where hackers and security firms sell tools for breaking into computers. The strategy is spurring concern in the technology industry and intelligence community that Washington is in effect encouraging hacking and failing to disclose to software companies and customers the vulnerabilities exploited by the purchased hacks. That's because U.S. intelligence and military agencies are using the tools to infiltrate computer networks overseas, leaving behind spy programs and cyber-weapons." Continue reading →

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U.S. Blames China’s Military Directly for Cyberattacks

"The Obama administration on Monday explicitly accused China’s military of mounting attacks on American government computer systems and defense contractors, saying one motive could be to map 'military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis.' The accusations relayed in the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on Chinese military capabilities were remarkable in their directness. Missing from the Pentagon report was any acknowledgment of the similar abilities being developed in the United States, where billions of dollars are spent each year on cyberdefense and constructing increasingly sophisticated cyberweapons." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingU.S. Blames China’s Military Directly for Cyberattacks