So What If He Never Said It?

Manufactured Crime Wastes Law Enforcement Resources

They did it again. In the Liberty City 7 case, an FBI freelance troublemaker tried to convince a group of poor black men in Miami to blow up the Willis Tower in Chicago. The building was never at risk. The FBI and the troublemaker provided money, logistics and fake bombs.

In another useless sting, Ikaika Kange, a U.S. Army soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was charged with assisting Da’esh, the Islamic State. Why provide PTSD counseling to troubled servicemen when you can accuse them of crime?

In a more outrageous case, seventeen year old Adel Daoud wrote a term paper about Osama bin Laden. His online research set off the NSA’s secret surveillance alarms. The FBI unleashed an informant on Daoud on a “no arrest, no pay” basis. Realizing that there would be no paycheck without a crime, the informant convinced Daoud to join ISIS (this was all pretend) and to bomb a saloon near Wrigley Field (more pretend). The informant provided Daoud with fake bombs as a courtesy since Daoud was unable to carry out the contrived plot himself.

During the informant’s performance, assisted by the stooge Daoud, the FBI swooped in, declared victory and arrested the teenager. Court appointed psychiatrists found Daoud to be susceptible to suggestion, borderline retarded and unfit to stand trial. A federal district judge found Daoud incompetent to stand trial, in part because of his belief in “lizard people.” It is not clear whether Daoud believes that ISIS and the lizard people are one and the same, or whether he was free to ignore the commands of the lizard people’s emissary. No matter: with Daoud’s arrest the informant got his payday. The informant in the Liberty City case had an $80,000 payday; the amount of cash wasted on Daoud has not yet been made public.

Unleashing informants to evangelize for ISIS is dangerous. Daoud was easy prey. An evangelizing informant may be successful in winning someone over to ISIS only to find that the new convert doesn’t want to perform in a scripted play. You see, he’s found this thing called the Internet, and he’s contacted the real bad guys who tell him, “no, we don’t know this evangelist, stay away from him. Conduct martyrdom operations yourself.” And then while time is wasted chasing the retarded, those who pose a real threat are ignored, freed to engage. A teenager who writes a term paper on Osama bin Laden should not be targeted by the government. Daoud was unstable and needed counseling. What happened to him is unforgivable.

Are the people of Chicago more safe because of these shenanigans? Here’s a thought: why not divert some of this law enforcement attention away from manufactured crime and towards real counter-terrorist activities, instead of make believe ones?

References: nbcnews com/news/us-news/chicago-bomb-plot-suspect-ruled-incompetent-belief-lizard-people-n638066 theintercept com/2017/04/20/more-than-400-people-convicted-of-terrorism-in-the-u-s-have-been-released-since-911/

The NSA claims they only track foreigners. U.S. citizens are unmolested, protected by a Constitution that bans searches into their papers and records without a warrant. The Daoud case proves that the term “foreigner” includes Chicago-area high school teenagers and the Constitutional ban illusory.

A Den of Thieves

Pennsylvania’s senator Fetterman just spent nine days in the hospital.

“Sheriff” Herschel Walker is out chasing criminals.

Anna Luna (née Meyerhof) is an ethnic impostor.

And then there’s George Santos.

Race/Ethnicity Imposters

• Anna Paulina Luna
• George Santos
• Rachel Dolezal
• Sherry Stanley Jimenez
• William Montgomery McGovern
• Nelson Scott Simpson
• Vijay Chokal Ingam
• Chico Colon Meridan
• George Herriman
• Gregory Markopoulos
• John Roland Redd
• Archibald Belaney
• Sacheen Littlefeather
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren
• Jessica Krug
• Jeannine Cummins

Race/Ethnicity Imposters

• Anna Paulina Luna
• George Santos
• Rachel Dolezal
• Sherry Stanley Jimenez
• William Montgomery McGovern
• Nelson Scott Simpson
• Vijay Chokal Ingam
• Chico Colon Meridan
• George Herriman
• Gregory Markopoulos
• John Roland Redd
• Archibald Belaney
• Sacheen Littlefeather
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren
• Jessica Krug
• Jeannine Cummins

Plastic Money

After four days of using polypropylene currency:

I don’t like it. It doesn’t fold. It only bends. It’s slippery like a register receipt. It slides out of your pocket onto the floor.

I don’t want to be a Luddite. I thought I would like the new money. It doesn’t tear, and if you forget and leave bills in a pocket while doing the wash, they will be cleaned but not destroyed. Nor will they disintegrate, contaminating everything else in that wash cycle.

Many countries are slowly strolling out plastic money. The plastic bills don’t mix well with their paper cousins, still the predominant form. Paper folds. So you end up with a wad, some bills folded, others not.

The Cashless Future

Wuddabout the cashless future? I stood for one half hour behind two Malaysian ladies trying to install an app, change passwords, link to their banking, restore points, and God knows what else. Finally it was my turn to order coffee.

After insisting that I was sure I did not want to install their app, I paid with a card. Fortunately:

• the Internet was working
• the card terminal was working
• my bank’s end was working

Otherwise, the plastic cash in my pocket would have been useless.

Horizontal Space in Ulysses

If you need blank horizontal space in Ulysses, try using a UTF-8 space character.

Ulysses does not strip blank space where that blank space is a UTF-8 character, like U+2004 (three em space). While this symbol cannot be generated in Ulysses–like s̵t̵r̵i̵k̵e̵t̵h̵r̵o̵u̵g̵h̵ for example–if generated in an external program and copied to Ulysses, it will both be displayed in Ulysses and upon export.

New Treasurer for George Santos

Santos’ best bet now is to appoint a Portuguese-speaking treasurer living in a small town in Brazil. FEC inquiries would have to be translated; int’l mail would be lost or not delivered, and there is no requirement that a campaign treasurer speak English or live in the US.

Killer Cops

If the Memphis killer cops had been white, the country would be in flames.

A Perfect Day for an Exorcism

In order to expel evil from her home after the attempt on her husband’s life, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hosted an exorcism.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nancy-pelosi-priest-exorcism-husband/

The Nature of the Law

Monterey Park Motive

A bitter, lonely old man with access to an assault weapon decided to share the pain of loneliness and rejection with the regulars at the dance studio where he had gone for companionship.

The $750,000 Santos Mystery Solved

Drumroll please:

the mystery of the Santos $750,000 campaign contribution solved.

The $750,000 Santos Mystery Solved

Drumroll please:

the mystery of the Santos $750,000 campaign contribution solved.

santos #campaignfinance #santos

Lawyers: How to Differentiate

Lawyers fail to monetize their networks. This often has value. Instead, lawyers pretend that it doesn’t exist or is inaccessible, even as the Internet has proven over and over that networks have value. The network itself is proof of that value, but if you pretend it doesn’t exist, then there is no value. Look at your network and capitalize on it.

Collateral Damage

“Vaccines saved lives and flattened the curve. Sure, there was collateral damage like Hamlin and Presley, but there was collateral damage in Baghdad too and no one said ‘boo.’”

Lawyers: How to Differentiate

Lawyers fail to monetize their networks. This often has value. Instead, lawyers pretend that it doesn’t exist or is inaccessible, even as the Internet has proven over and over that networks have value. The network is proof of that value, but if you pretend it doesn’t exist, then there is a failure of value. Look at your network and capitalize on it.

Give Santos a Break

OK, he lied. He’s not Jewish, his grandparents had nothing to do with the Holocaust, he didn’t work at Goldman Sachs or even graduate from college.

So what? Let’s judge him on his performance rather than on whom he once claimed to be. Obviously, this man has skills: he ran a successful, federal congressional campaign and won as someone who had never held any kind of political office.

The fact is that no one is safe while the Congress is in session. Santos cannot possibly do worse than others who have held the office. If anything, his “embellishments” will keep him humble, a character quality otherwise sorely lacking amongst his new peers.

Riyals, Rubles or Renminbi

No one–except the US–is happy with the fact that the dollar is the world’s reserve currency. Remove its status and Europe will be happy to buy riyals, rubles or renminbi to purchase oil.

George Santos: American

Really, what is more American than the grift?

George Santos “embellished” his resumé, not worrying about the fact that identity politics trumps even outright lies. Santos claims to be Jewish, biracial, and finding one box unchecked, gay. He is Latino enough and there are Holocaust survivors in his family tree.

A claimed 9/11 death in the family makes up for a lack of military service, and when the New York Times finally looked into his background and uncovered his failure to graduate from college the fact that Santos is a high-school dropout was lost in the noise.

Shilling for sympathy, Santos had his mother die twice. He started a charity for animals and pocketed the cash, knowing that dogs and cats don’t complain. He is a liar and shameless, as any good grifter must be. None of this prevented his election to the 117th Congress.

If anything, he is the perfect candidate.

Give Santos a Break

OK, he lied. He’s not Jewish, his grandparents had nothing to do with the Holocaust, he didn’t work at Goldman Sachs or even graduate from college.

So what? Let’s judge him on his performance rather than on whom he once claimed to be. Obviously, this man has skills: he ran a successful, federal congressional campaign and won as someone who had never held any kind of political office.

The fact is that no one is safe while the Congress is in session. Santos cannot possibly do worse than others who have held the office. If anything, his “embellishments” will keep him humble, a character quality otherwise sorely lacking amongst his new peers.

Cali’s New Evidentiary Rule

No longer can rap lyrics be held against their author in a criminal trial, a new California law tells us.

Many would assert that rap glorifies the thug lifestyle, though arguments will ensue as to whether that lifestyle is merely a fashion statement akin to the “heroin chic” that glamour magazines pushed in the 90’s.

Still, violence by and against rap stars seems to be part of that world. Some of these killings, like the assassinations of Tupac and Biggie. The former CEO of Death Row Records, Suge Knight, is himself in prison, serving a lengthy term for murder.

Some would question whether rap lyrics’ discussion of violence is nothing more than an elaborate pose. After all, didn’t white rapper Vanilla Ice sing of prowling the streets of Miami with a 9mm handgun?

A prosecutor would be eager to use such lyrics in a criminal prosecution. After all, Google searches for “how to dispose of a body” can and are introduced as evidence of premeditation.

Hollywood knows not a little about make-believe and saw this as a dangerous trend. Hence, the new protective evidentiary rule.

But there’s nothing new about the use of literature in criminal cases. Kawashima Yoshiko was a member of the Chinese imperial family who, not entirely unsurprisingly, cast her lot with the Japanese occupiers of the puppet state of Manchuoko, as they had restored her family to a much-reduced, Japanese-controlled throne.

She spoke fluent Japanese, was raised in Japan for a time and commanded an army.

And she was trans, deciding that she would no longer be a woman. “Yoshiko” is her dead name, she adopted the name “Ryosuke” as her male name.

Accused of treason after the fall of Japan and the second fall of the Qing Imperial House, she was tried in a Chinese court, where a novel about her life was entered into evidence. Not a record or a report: a novel. A novel not written by Ryosuke and fictionalized. No matter: she was convicted and shot.

I doubt that the California legislators considered the facts of her case when considering the new legislation. The new evidentiary rule is largely symbolic since a judge may waive it and allow song lyrics to be considered by the jury.

And presumably, novels as well.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshiko_Kawashima

Horizontal Space in Ulysses

If you need blank horizontal space in Ulysses, try using a UTF-8 space character.

Ulysses does not strip blank space where that blank space is a UTF-8 character, like U+2004 (three em space). While this symbol cannot be generated in Ulysses–like s̵t̵r̵i̵k̵e̵t̵h̵r̵o̵u̵g̵h̵ for example–if generated in an external program and copied to Ulysses, it will both be displayed in Ulysses and upon export.

Dobbs Leak Investigation Update

Militarized Police

If anyone doubts how militarized US law enforcement has become, look at these badged, armed idiots showing the results of their posse’s patrol.

Dark Forces

Apparently, this is still needed since the conspiracy theorists have suggested that dark forces have secretly united to co-sign Samuel Bankman-Fried’s symbolic bond.

There was no requirement that the personal surety bond–remember, not corporate surety–be signed by those whose net worth were sufficient to match the inflated bond amount. Because it’s a personal surety bond, the amount is theater. Not a cent was required to be paid. Not one thin dime. If it were a corporate surety bond, he’d still be in the can.

Schooling for Seniors

While previously I focused on Southern Illinois University’s “Returning Scholar Program” and its $70/semester cost, the trend of seniors returning to school is picking up.

Here’s an orientation session for senior “scholars” in Galway:

https://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/133339/university-of-galway-to-hold-information-event-for-mature-students