Video: 30 story hotel goes up in 15 days

Impressive, though China has had a few issues related to construction in the past. Read the rest of this post...

Syrian deputy oil minister resigns, joins protesters

There's a long way to go before this is over and he's not one of the top ministers, but this is still a big development. BBC News:

Abdo Hussameddin announced his defection in a video posted on YouTube. "I am joining the revolution of the people who reject injustice and the brutal campaign of the regime," he said. He is the highest ranking civilian to abandon the government of President Bashar al-Assad since the uprising erupted a year ago.

Read the rest of this post...

Does Obama deserve blame for high gas prices?

For Republicans, high gas prices are the fault of Obama. For the Democrats and Obama, the problem is external issues such as Iran and traders. While Obama may not be completely at fault, it's fair to give him some of the blame because of his choice to re-nominate Ben Bernanke. The Fed's decision to roll out quantitative easing has consistently weakened the greenback each time it has started to recover. Even the hint of a new round has been enough to drop the value of the dollar. And the chaos of the latest Greek bailout and other assorted economic problems in Europe has done nothing to help improve the dollar.

So is this Obama's fault?

Well, he's the one who made the decision to keep Bernanke, so at this point he owns the problems over at the Fed to some degree. After the Fed completely missed seeing the impending crisis of 2008, Obama had an easy explanation for changing its leadership. Instead, he opted for more of the same, including hiring the NY Fed president to run his economic team.

Obama may not be completely to blame for the high oil prices, but he's not as removed from the problem as he likes to suggest. And there could be consequences to those bad decisions in some of the swing states. Bloomberg:

Voters in some U.S. swing states are feeling the pinch of rising gasoline prices more than those in states that tend to vote Democrat, posing a challenge to President Barack Obama’s re-election, according to a report.

Gasoline in Florida, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania costs more than the national average of $3.76 a gallon, Trevor Houser, a partner at the New York-based policy analysis firm Rhodium Group, said yesterday in a report. Consumers in Iowa, New Mexico and Ohio spend more on gasoline as a percentage of their personal income than the national average.

“If you look at those Midwest battleground states, those that haven’t crossed the line to $4 are pushing the limit,” Houser said in an interview. “Midwest battleground states will cross the threshold before the national average does. All things being equal, it’s bad for the incumbent.”

Read the rest of this post...

TSA responds to anti porno-scanner activist

The response to the video about the worthlessness of $1 billion worth of machines is what you might imagine from the TSA. It lacks any details on how effective the porno scanners really are and asks travelers to trust them. Digital Trends:

We reached out to the TSA regarding the video and TSA spokesperson, Lisa Farbestein, informed Digital Trends that the video was, “a crude attempt to allegedly show how to circumvent TSA screening procedures.” She declined to go into detail about the technology but the confidence in the machines was evident. “TSA conducts extensive testing of all screening technologies in the laboratory and at airports prior to rolling them out the field,” Farbestein said. “Imaging technology has caught many items large and small, and is one of the most effective tools available to detect metallic and non-metallic items, such as the greatest threat to aviation, explosives.”

When they say "has caught many items" what are they talking about? This could and probably does mean anything such as toenail clippers or anything metal left in a pocket. They still don't address the key point made by Jonathan Corbett which is how easy it can be to have something on the side of your body as you go through the machines. Because of the high false positives, the time constraints of airport traffic, plus the dangers of too much radiation, multiple scans is not practical. According to Corbett, low tech changes such as reinforced doors have had a much more significant impact on security. Adding sniffer dogs could be much more productive, but that industry doesn't have the same lobbying power as the one that sells expensive machines. Having former Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff as a lobbyist (and fear monger) probably doesn't hurt the porno-scanning industry. Read the rest of this post...

Limbaugh down to 1 paid advertiser in NYC; 90 percent of ads today were free PSAs

Rush Limbaugh is in trouble.  Two days ago he didn't have a single unpaid public service announcement on his flagship show on WABC in NYC.  Yesterday, 56% of his ads in NYC were unpaid PSAs.  Today, 90% were unpaid PSAs, and the show included three occurrences of 'dead air'.

Here's a breakdown with the help of Media Matters' data:

86 ads aired today on Limbaugh's show on WABC in NYC

• 3 occurrences of dead air
  
  1 Advertiser sticking with Limbaugh
• 2 Small Business Authority ads in association with the Corporate Tax Network
  
  3 Advertisers who have asked ads to be pulled
• 3 Netflix ads (Netflix has never intentionally advertised on his show, the ads are being pulled)
• 1 O'Reilly Auto Parts ad (Already asked to be pulled)
• 3 Constant Contact ads (Already dropped)
  
• 77 Free PSAs
• 7 United Negro College Fund ads (unpaid psa)
• 6 Feeding America ads (unpaid psa)
• 6 Big Brothers Big Sisters ads (unpaid psa)
• 14 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ads (unpaid psa)
• 14 Save the Children ads (unpaid psa)
• 17 American Heart Association ads (unpaid psa)
• 13 NY City Office of Emergency Management (unpaid psa)

Assuming that Netflix and Constant Contact are telling the truth, that is a total shut-out. Rush has lost almost all of his paid advertisers on his flagship WABC show, at least judging by today's line up. His only remaining sponsor is The Small Business Authority which is currently locked into a year-long sponsorship deal with WABC.

The unpaid spots were all obtained from the Ad Council and all a broadcaster needs to run them is to register for an account.The AHA has already asked Limbaugh to drop their ads. A boycott is definitely working when even the unpaid advertisers are heading for the exits.

Right now, Limbaugh is too radioactive even for the scam artists. This is probably a smart move on their part as the last thing a company with a shady history wants is to attract attention. Lifelock came out in Limbaugh's support but seem to have thought better of it after people started to mention that $12 million settlement they just made with the FTC for deceptive advertising.

For all his communications skill, Limbaugh is an entertainer. And as Michael Vick found, advertisers don't want to associate with entertainers who have turned themselves into public figures of hate. Read the rest of this post...

I was at the park with Sasha and Malia today

Sasha, Malia, Eric and Col. Mustard (r to l)

I was at the park with my friend Eric and my dog Sasha today, when we ran into a couple of other dogs. When it came time to do the customary "what's your dog's name?" I realized that we were in the presence of Sasha and Malia, otherwise known as the Obama kids.

Even funnier, my cousin named Sasha with no intent to name her after the first kid, and Malia, I'm told, was named before Obama even ran for president. Apparently, Malia means "Mary" in the Hawaiian language.  Anyway, I thought it was kind of funny.  Sadly, no hunky Secret Service guys were anywhere to be had. Read the rest of this post...

Limbaugh show twice airs dead air time this afternoon in lieu of ads

I noted earlier today that 56% of Rush Limbaugh's ads during his radio show yesterday were unpaid free public service announcements. The day before he didn't run any free PSAs. Today, following the news that the American Heart Association pulled its PSA from Limbaugh's show, the broadcast aired dead air two different times during today's show when there should have been advertisements - one was for a minute, and the second for two minutes and 40 seconds.  From Media Matters:

Rush Limbaugh closed the first hour of his radio show on his flagship station, WABC, with 1:03 of dead air Monday.

While advertisers have fled Limbaugh's show since his misogynistic attacks on Sandra Fluke, the first hour of every show since those attacks aired on March 1 has concluded with at least one ad leading into an ABC News break at the top of the second hour.



Similarly, during the commercial break that led into the show, there was 2:38 of dead air.

Read the rest of this post...

Pat Robertson wants marijuana legalized

Who would have guessed that Robertson is a stoner? Seriously though, how crazy is it that one of the most conservative Republican politicians is ahead of many in the Democratic Party on gay marriage and now an equally conservative Republican is ahead of most Democrats on legalizing marijuana? The war on drugs is an expensive failure that we can no longer afford. Even ignoring the financial issues, why is marijuana illegal in the first place? And again, I say this as a person who doesn't get high and haven't since I was in college a few decades ago. NY Times:

“I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Mr. Robertson said in an interview on Wednesday. “I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.” Mr. Robertson’s remarks echoed statements he made last week on “The 700 Club,” the signature program of his Christian Broadcasting Network, and other comments he made in 2010. While those earlier remarks were largely dismissed by his followers, Mr. Robertson has now apparently fully embraced the idea of legalizing marijuana, arguing that it is a way to bring down soaring rates of incarceration and reduce the social and financial costs. “I believe in working with the hearts of people, and not locking them up,” he said.

Robertson is completely right on this one. The USA is already the most jailed society on the planet. Locking people up is not the answer. Throwing billions to the military industrial complex and lobbyists is not the answer either. Let's face facts and admit that the policies by both parties simply aren't working, no matter how much money is thrown at the problem. Read the rest of this post...

Obama gets a briefing on an iPad

(H/t Oliver Willis)

Read the rest of this post...

An FBI mole (and FBI equipment) facilitated WikiLeaks release of 5 million hacked Stratfor emails

Here's a new wrinkle to the Anonymous–Stratfor "5 million hacked emails" story.

Background — Recall that, as the story first broke, Anonymous was reported to have broken into the email archive of a big global security firm named Stratfor and hijacked about 5 million emails going back at least six years. Here's how the Telegraph characterized some of the emails released, those dealing with Osama Bin Laden and the Pakistani ISI (my emphasis and some reparagraphing everywhere):

Osama bin Laden was in routine contact with several senior figures from Pakistan's military intelligence agency while in hiding in the country, according to a large cache of secret intelligence files.

The disclosure was contained in e-mails from the private US security firm, Stratfor, which were published by WikiLeaks website on Monday after being obtained by the Anonymous hacking group.

And we've been treated to leaks from that email cache since (for example, here).

But how did Anonymous get the emails? Now we know, from a group called LulzSec.

LulzSec is a very small, skilled group of Anonymous-type hackers, but they are not Anonymous per se. LulzSec as a separate entity (if "entity" can be used to describe amorphous groups). LulzSec was responsible for hacking Sony Pictures in 2011, and they were covered by Rachel Maddow for breaking into Arizona law enforcement files.

And now the news

LulzSec has been hacked, in the old fashioned way. The FBI caught one of their leaders, a man going by the handle "Sabu," arrested and charged him, then "convinced" him to work for their side as a mole, a double-agent. He's been the FBI's man ever since.

From BoingBoing (my emphasis and reparagraphing):

The Guardian has more on the big hacking news which Fox News broke yesterday (as noted in a post by Rob). "Sabu," the trash-talking, self-appointed leader of LulzSec, has been working for the FBI for the last six months.

The FBI says he helped the US and various European governments identify and arrest five alleged LulzSec members charged with participating in defacement, DDOSing, and "doxing" against high-profile government and corporate targets. Sabu ... was charged with 12 criminal counts of conspiracy to engage in "computer hacking and other crimes" last year, pled guilty in August, 2011, then "snitched" on his LulzSec friends.

So that's how they got "Sabu" to switch teams. Here's what they got him to do.

Sabu-LulzSec hacked an FBI conference call with Scotland Yard. The Guardian:

In a US court document, the FBI's informant [Sabu] – there described as CW – "acting under the direction of the FBI" helped facilitate the publication of what was thought to be an embarrassing leak of conference call between the FBI and the UK's Serious and Organised Crime Agency in February [where] both sides of the Atlantic were heard discussing the progress of various hacking investigations[.]

For more on that conference call story, see our report here. If the Guardian is right, the FBI set itself up for the intercept. I wonder if they let the other side of the conference call (Scotland Yard) in on the secret.

But the other story that Sabu was involved in, post his arrest and squealage, is the story mentioned at the top, the hacking of that 50-million-email cache from Stratfor Forecasting, the one that WikiLeaks is now releasing. The Guardian again:

A second document shows that Monsegur [Sabu] – styled this time as CW-1 – provided an FBI-owned computer to facilitate the release of 5m emails taken from US security consultancy Stratfor and which are now being published by WikiLeaks.

That suggests the FBI may have had an inside track on discussions between Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, and Anonymous, another hacking group, about the leaking of thousands of confidential emails and documents.

Now we know how WikiLeaks and Anonymous got the emails — from Sabu and LulzSec. Which mean ... from the FBI.

What does this add up to?

This is a lot of interesting data to absorb. For example:

(1) The FBI got its own mole to use LulzSec to hack its own conference call. Just that makes you pause.

(2) The FBI also got its mole to get LulzSec to hack 5 million badly protected emails — covering a six year span — from Stratfor, a global security consulting firm that was described thus by Bloomberg in 2008:

Strategic Forecasting in Austin, Texas ... consults for companies and governments around the world, was described in a 2001 Barron's article as "the shadow CIA."

What? What top global security company advises its clients to keep six years of emails, much less does it themselves? And what is the FBI doing hacking such a company?

(3) Did Stratfor know it was being set up? One of Stratfor's clients could easily be the U.S. government, through any one of its spook-like agencies (DHS comes to mind, for starters).

This is a many-handed game. You could get very John LeCarré as you think about this stuff — but you'd have to imagine very bad villains. After all, here's a "global intelligence company" with Fortune 500 clients, along with who-knows-from-where government agencies — yet they keep years of emails on an Internet-accessible server. These are rank amateurs; circus clowns.

So let's ask a few more questions — or let others do it — to dig a few layers deeper:

■ "tas" (a working "IT professional" writing at the Agonist) offers this thought:

So a FBI computer was used to help the Stratfor leaks. It makes me wonder if the American intelligence community decided to let the private emails of a private intelligence company leak as some sort of warning to them.

■ Marcy Wheeler adds:

One other neat detail about the suggestion, of course, is that the CIA went around claiming to be FBI agents while they tortured people. Was this Sabu preparing to go around hacking for the FBI while hinting he was CIA?

Be sure to click through to the text exchange she references between a Guardian writer and someone the writer takes to be Sabu. It contains some intriguing implications.

■ And finally, Wheeler again, in an allegation I think is dead-on:

Sabu, the head of LulzSec, offered an FBI computer to facilitate the publication of Stratfor (no doubt [to] set up a LulzSec-assisted indictment of Julian Assange in the future)

Of course. Watch your back, Julian — also your front and sides. (And if "Sabu" really is helping to bring down Assange, he better watch is own back; that's a betrayal.)

Very John LeCarré, but with casting by Austin Powers. Our world, in their hands — I feel safer already.

GP

(To follow on Twitter: @Gaius_Publius) Read the rest of this post...

Aetna, TurboTax, American Heart Assoc., NY Lottery all drop Limbaugh

That gets us to around 49 or 50 advertisers now gone.  Interestingly, the American Heart Association ads were Public Service Announcements, meaning they were free.  And AHA still pulled them.  You can find the latest list of advertisers in the right hand column of this site.

To see how badly this scandal is hurting Limbaugh, yesterday over half of the ads on his show were free public service announcements.  The day before he ran no PSAs. Read the rest of this post...

Larry Summers on short list for World Bank top job

Obama has been making some efforts to win back the liberals that he has ignored for the last few years, but this move is really bad. Summers was one of the key architects of the the unregulated Wall Street that led to the 2008 crash. He was also one of the Obama economists who fought against a bigger stimulus plan. As in the stimulus that has carried the US economy the last few years. Even suggesting Summers is a bad idea so let's hope that Obama chooses someone else.

Former White House adviser Lawrence Summers, diplomat Susan Rice and PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi are on a "short list" of possible U.S. candidates to head the World Bank, a person with knowledge of the Obama administration's thinking said on Wednesday. The source and a second person familiar with the administration's thinking said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry was also on the list, although a Kerry spokeswoman said he had not been contacted and was not interested. The World Bank, whose mission is to fight global poverty, launched a search for its next chief after Robert Zoellick said he would step down when his term as president ended in June.

Summers is familiar with creating poverty thanks to his bad policies, but he knows nothing about combating the problem. Strike him from the list now. Read the rest of this post...

Obama AG Holder: Obama can kill you ... any time he wants to

Did you know that U.S. President Barack Obama can now order you killed? Read on.

Barack Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder recently raised himself on his hind legs to explain to the nation what process is used to pick targets of Barack Obama's Presidential Murder Program (my caps; Holder is lowercase-modest).

This on the heels of the fact that President Barack Obama has been doing just that. Holder presumes the power; he just wants to explain the process.

(Did I say "Barack Obama" enough? I hope so.)

To explain, I give you Jonathan Turley, writing in Foreign Policy (my emphasis and much reparagraphing):

On Monday, March 5, Northwestern University School of Law was the location of an extraordinary scene for a free nation. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder presented President Barack Obama's claim that he has the authority to kill any U.S. citizen he considers a threat.

It served as a retroactive justification for the slaying of American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki last September by a drone strike in northeastern Yemen, as well as the targeted killings of at least two other Americans during Obama's term.

What's even more extraordinary is that this claim, which would be viewed by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution as the very definition of authoritarian power, was met not with outcry but muted applause.

Where due process once resided, Holder offered only an assurance that the president would kill citizens with care. While that certainly relieved any concern that Obama, or his successor, would hunt citizens for sport, Holder offered no assurances on how this power would be used in the future beyond the now all-too-familiar "trust us" approach to civil liberties of this administration. ...

Holder's speech does not materially limit that claimed authority, but stressed that "our legal authority is not limited to the battlefields in Afghanistan." He might as well have stopped at "limited" because the administration has refused to accept any limitations on this claimed inherent power. ... [H]e insisted that "a careful and thorough executive branch review of the facts in a case amounts to 'due process.'"

Turley's summary:

What Holder is describing is a model of an imperial presidency that would have made Richard Nixon blush.

If the president can kill a citizen, there are a host of other powers that fall short of killing that the president might claim, including indefinite detention of citizens -- another recent controversy.

Thus, by asserting the right to kill citizens without charge or judicial review, Holder has effectively made all of the Constitution's individual protections of accused persons [into] matters of presidential discretion.

Turley has more, as do others. Please read it through.

Let me reiterate: Obama (through Holder) has turned "all of the Constitution's individual protections" of due process before incarceration or execution (state murder) into "matters of presidential discretion."

In other words, Obama can kill you ... any time he wants to. How is that not a fair description? And don't forget to note the "muted applause" in Turley's description of the speech's reception.

Might this be one of those "lines of conscience" we talked about?

GP

(To follow on Twitter: @Gaius_Publius) Read the rest of this post...

56 percent of Limbaugh’s WABC ads were unpaid PSAs yesterday, versus zero the day before

UPDATE March 8, 2012: I ran the numbers a day after this post was written, and today 90% of the ads were free public service announcements.
________
I decided to run some numbers on Rush Limbaugh's advertising, and it's quite interesting.  At least judging by the difference between yesterday's ads and the day before's, Limbaugh is hurting.  Basic take-away: 56% of Limbaugh's ads yesterday were unpaid public service announcements (PSAs).  Zero percent of his ads the day before were PSAs.

Limbaugh's ads for March 7 on WABC:
69 ads aired on the Rush Limbaugh radio show on WABC (per Media Matters).
- 10 ads (14%) were from paying advertisers who have not asked that their ads be pulled.
- 20 ads (29%) were from advertisers who have already asked that their ads be pulled (it can take a few days to pull them).
- 39 ads (56%) were unpaid PSAs donated to the Ad Council - so only 44% of the day's ads were paid for.  The day before (see below), 100% of the ads were paid for.

His ads for March 6 on WABC:
57 ads aired on the show on WABC.
- 33 ads (58%) were from paying advertisers who have not asked that their ads be pulled.
- 24 ads (42%) were from advertisers who have already asked that their ads be pulled.
- None of the ads were unpaid PSAs, so 100% of the day's ads were paid for, versus only 44% of the ads being paid for the following day.

Here's the breakdown I just calculated for the ads that ran on Limbaugh's show the past two days (note that some ads ran multiple times):

69 Ads Total on WABC 3/7/12

39 ad council PSAs that run for free - that's 56% of the ads that ran

8 ads from companies that have already dropped Limbaugh, but it's taking a few days for the ads to be pulled from their rotation.

8 "real" ads, meaning companies that haven't yet dropped him - the big household names are gone:
Cintas
The Small Business Authority in Assoc with the Corp Tax Network
RightSize Smoothies
Peerless Boilers
Eos Sleep
New York Mint
Medipattern Corp.
Raw-Nation (Hot Rawks)

57 Ads Total on WABC 3/6/12

PSAs
0

14 Companies that have already dropped

18 Real advertisers
Rightsize Smoothies
NY Lottery
NY Mint
Winning our Future
Peerless Boilers
NJ Lottery
Heritage for the Blind
ITT
InventHelp
Merit Financial
Freedom Debt Relief
Small Business Authority
O'Reilly Auto Parts
Akin Mears
A Place for Mom
Wave Home
MediPattern
American Credit Card Solutions

Read the rest of this post...