Miscellany:

1. Ann Coulter is fun to look at. (It's important for a woman of her years to know how to really wear a sweater.) That's right, I *said* it. Also, she called the probability for Trump's campaign success before anyone else, taking no mind of the ensuing ridicule, while never forgetting to hold his feet to the fire on his promises in the best sarcasm she can manage. She didn't do anything in pursuit of an office in Foggy Bottom or the Fed. They may not be your principles, but she lives by hers.

2. Loughlin & Huffman are seriously, not-fucking-around being taken into custody. I think they're being made into examples, Martha Stewart-style (if perhaps more appropriately), and we can be hopeful about perpwalk video within the next sixteen hours.

3. Saif Ammous is a fine representative for Bitcoin enthusiasm, with just the right mix of prim academe and political eccentricity. He's not a get-rich-quick guy, and he never gets in the way of BTC's technical partisans as they bicker and trade. He's humble.

More later, and thanks for asking.

Gee-Oh-Ess-Ess-Eye-Pee. Gossip! Here's some gossip, right here—

Court papers said a cooperating witness met with Huffman and her husband, actor William H. Macy, at their Los Angeles home and explained to them that he ‘‘controlled’’ a testing center and could have somebody secretly change her daughter’s answers. The person told investigators the couple agreed to the plan.

Macy was not charged; authorities did not say why.

Typing his name into Twitter brings up a Whole Bunch of Stuff.

With newspapers dying we're always going to be sorting all the factoids into Truish and Falsish for ourselves.

Early morning Google News headline:

"Huffman cuffed by FBI agents with guns drawn in early morning raid: report"

American policy towards education sucks, and what these people are accused of doing is meaningfully bad behavior.

But there is no decent resolution to these matters that will be achieved with twilight sidearms.

I just read the L.A. Times article... I got no sympathy for Huffman at this point, but America's law enforcement has grown entirely too fond of the midnight knock at the door.

Agreed

Those guys don't know how courage really works.

A few years ago, Helio Castroneves was appearing in court for tax evasion and he was made to wear shackles.

The “legal system” Is about the expression and uses of power, especially when it can be used against someone with a job and a family.

Making a movie is, like, war and stuff, like soldiers who catch the PTSD and stuff but for actors.

Especially trying to do stuff, like, reintegrate with society afterwards and stuff.

The thing about the American legal system is that the jury makes the most important decisions - to convict or not - and sometimes the sentencing decisions.

The people who have to live with the results, both foreseen and unforeseen, are the ones making the decisions - not some distant magistrate in a wig and a robe who lives in a gated house with security guards.

Californians voted to bring back the death penalty. They voted to live with the results if the system made a mistake.
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And Conan, your theoretical is already real. ~ Cousin Dave at March 13, 2019 6:53 AM

What do we say to the next victim when the "jailed for life" prisoner is released on parole? "Sorry, we felt that a life sentence was immoral and discriminatory."
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When people start to think that the police can’t protect them, they also start to lose faith in the courts. When that reaches critical mass, self defense usually devolves into vigilantism. ~ Isab at March 13, 2019 7:25 AM

Mob justice is the reaction of a people who've lost faith in their government to protect them from criminals and to adequately punish the guilty. There's no appeal for a sentence of being lynched or stoned by a mob, just the howling mob.
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If the": report" is true, then this is yet another instance of dimbulb LE officers trying to prove their manhood for high school chicks who wouldn't date them years and decades ago.

But there is no decent resolution to these matters that will be achieved with twilight sidearms.

~ Crid at March 13, 2019 4:10 AM

Twilight, maybe - when you realize that, with the amount of money she and her husband have, fleeing to another jurisdiction was entirely possible for them. Let's not forget that Roman Polanski lived out his life in luxury in Europe while still working and hobnobbing with Hollywood's elite - this despite numerous extradition treaties - and for crimes far worse than Huffman's.

Firearms, maybe not. I can't say what drove the agents to draw their firearms in the arrest process and won't speculate that it's some high school era resentment, nor that the agents in question are dim bulbs. It does, however, seem overkill to have guns drawn on a 52-year-old actress being arrested for a college application fraud.
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...America's law enforcement has grown entirely too fond of the midnight knock at the door. ~ Cousin Dave at March 13, 2019 7:06 AM

Perhaps, so. On the other hand, America's criminal class has grown entirely too fond of shooting at police officers.
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The “legal system” Is about the expression and uses of power.... ~ Radwaste at March 13, 2019 8:15 AM

Supposedly, the penal system is about the three Rs: restoration, revenge, and rehabilitation. Too often, the focus is on revenge.

And the shackles may have backfired as Castroneves was acquitted.

He apparently held no hard feelings, saying after his release, "I'm a foreign person and I've been judged in a foreign country. I'm very thankful to have received a fair trial. I do love this country."

Macy was not charged; authorities did not say why.

I wanna know why not.

~ Crid at March 13, 2019 1:42 AM

Apparently Macy avoided arrest because all the evidence of fraud is from his wife's email account.

Martin Lomasney, an old political boss from Boston, is best remembered for his advice to politicians everywhere — "Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink."

Earl Long later made famous his version, "Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink."

Eliot Spitzer, the scandal-plagued former governor of New York, later updated the advice with "Never talk when you can nod and never nod when you can wink and never write an e-mail, because it's death. You're giving prosecutors all the evidence we need."

Okay, some of that earlier 8:51 post was meant for the other thread. I'll repost the relevant points there.

Sorry.

"Perhaps, so. On the other hand, America's criminal class has grown entirely too fond of shooting at police officers."

I was going to say that those two things are mutually exclusive. However, I'm thinking that maybe they are not: as in the case with security theater, the more law enforcement theater you have, the less effective law enforcement actually becomes.

We'll see, Art, we'll see. Will you charge your officer with murder? will you also charge him with the injuries sustained by his fellow officers? I guess this is too big to brush under the rug.

"We know that there's already a crime that's been committed," Acevedo said. "It's a serious crime when we prepare a document to go into somebody's home, into the sanctity that is somebody's home. It has to be truthful, it has to be honest, it has to be factual. We know already there's a crime that's been committed. There's high probability there will be a criminal charge."

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Houston-police-shooting-affidavit-confidential-13620120.php

I don't think he was talking about transmissions.

Media Matters President Angelo Carusone is currently leading a boycott campaign against Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a co-founder of The Daily Caller News Foundation, in an attempt to get him fired.

...

But Carusone has his own track record of inflammatory statements. Carusone’s now-defunct blog included degrading references to “trannies,” “jewry” and Bangladeshis.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/12/angelo-carusone-rules-dont-apply/

Black start, or, why Venezuela can't get its power turned back on. I've got relatives in the electric utility business, plus my dad is a old-school electrical engineer, so over the years I've had to learn a few things. In addition to what is mentioned in the article, I'm guessing that the Venezuela grid never had a proper "coordination study" done for load management. So at the Gira hydro station, I'm guessing one of two things happened: (1) generators were left running with no or minimal load; they oversped and damaged their bearings. Or, (2) the grid lost frequency synchronization due to drastic load changes from uncoordinated circuit breakers; generator quarrels occurred. A generator quarrel can cause the rotor to fly apart, or twist the frame of a generator.

If you like to throw up a little while you laugh, consider:

Everyday Feminism

tl/dr:

Stop gentrifying, you racist transphobics!

> fleeing to another jurisdiction
> was entirely possible

Dafuq? So you're going to risk deployment of deadly force in an hour of diminished perception because a post-menopausal actress (recognizable, we might presume, anywhere in the country) would, you imply, attempt to escape justice?

She's that dangerous to others?

No. This is cops pretending they're in 'Nam, where a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

> never nod if you can wink."

> Conan the Grammarian at
> March 13, 2019 9:04 AM

Ever read Schlesinger on the Cuban Missile Crisis? Probably self-serving hokum on his part, but still interesting. ("Cuban Missile Crisis" is a bogus name for it, too. It's "Homeland Security"-level bogus.)

Yep, this is really good.

The comments in this article are pretty much just wanting to see the world burn.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/mar/12/i-met-my-girlfriends-parents-and-realised-i-had-once-slept-with-her-father

And of course those are the ones faved by the moderators from The Guardian.

I'm a total sucker for Hollywood cheese even when it isn't from Hollywood.

@Crid,

Must be the tempo and the tambourine but I was humming the lyrics of this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d73tiBBzvFM

Which is why Beyoncé's music works with Kirby's Dreamland music theme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8ZF_ISU2Xg

> Black start

Great link, thanks

But the CIA will be blamed anyway. And they deserve to be, even though they're not responsible.

Those guys don't know how courage really works.

I agree. Like I said on the death penalty thread, sometimes executing a presumably heinous criminal is like putting down a rabid dog. And Nazi Germany was lousy with rabid dogs.

Anyhooo . . .

Weaponized Self-Pity, Part I: Divorce

On this forum, we might as well call this one . . .

Paging Captain Obvious!

Running motivation for the day:

Dynamic Duo Wonder Woman and Super Pup Become Superheroes on the Trail

""Cuban Missile Crisis" is a bogus name for it, too. It's "Homeland Security"-level bogus."

Hmm. I can introduce you to the skipper of a US submarine on blockade duty back then, who had orders to shoot the next freighter identified as supplying Russian missile installations. Very nice guy. Not many years left for him, though, he's 90-something.

Sincerely thank him for his service to our nation in a difficult hour. But I'll always believe it was a series of Executive bungles that brought us to that desperate hour no less and possibly much more than it was Presidential brilliance that defused it.

> Anyhooo . . .

Good link. It's not that I'm into bad marriage, I'm just annoyed by people who are glib about the costs of divorce (or weak mate selection) borne by those least able to speak on their own behalf.

Dafuq? So you're going to risk deployment of deadly force in an hour of diminished perception because a post-menopausal actress (recognizable, we might presume, anywhere in the country) would, you imply, attempt to escape justice? ~ Crid at March 13, 2019 2:54 PM

My comment was on the deployment of legal authority at dawn - the deployment of force (i.e., drawn weapons) was left ambiguous. However, they were probably overkill when going after college admissions cheats. I don't know what kinds of weapons, if any, are registered to people in the Macy household.

Presumably, with the wealth the couple has, the "post-menopausal actress" would have fled to another country and not to a part of the country in which she would be "recognizable." Remember, Roman Polanski was able to live life in comfort in France - as well as work and hobnob with Hollywood royalty - after fleeing the US after being accused of crimes much worse than Huffman's. Law enforcement types do not take being played for fools lightly.

Nor will I speculate on the lingering high school resentments of the agents in question.

But I'll always believe it was a series of Executive bungles that brought us to that desperate hour no less and possibly much more than it was Presidential brilliance that defused it. ` Crid at March 14, 2019 5:05 AM

Having read a few things on the subjects of both the missile crisis and Kennedy's foreign policy bungling, not Schessinger however, I'll join you in that sentiment.

> Nor will I speculate on the
> lingering high school resentments
> of the agents in question.

Gotcha covered. They don't make it difficult.