JUNE 2014 BONEHEAD ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH



1.   This tidbit comes from Texas Governor, Rick Perry, in a speech to the Comstock Club in San Francisco:

"I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have to desire not to do that-- and I look at the homosexual issue the same way."


2.  In a television appearance on the CBS This Morning show, Secretary of State John Kerry said that if Edward Snowden were a “patriot”, he would return to the United States from Russia to face criminal charges.
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“This is a man who has betrayed his country,” Kerry told CBS News. “He should man up and come back to the US.”

Man up?  Return to face charges?  The 1917 Espionage Act, doesn't distinguish between sharing information with the press in the public interest of selling secrets to a foreign enemy.  Thus it would be impossible for Snowden to argue that the information should never have been withheld from the American public in the first place.  The fact that the disclosures led to historic reforms in the US and around the world, even motivating Republicans and Democrats to politically cooperate, and earned Snowden journalism awards would be irrelevant to his prosecution under the Espionage Act. He thus could not prove the disclosures served the public good.  Moreover, he could face unlimited charges, including being charged for each of the documents published.  It would take not a man, but a fool to return to face criminal charges.

3.   You can always count of Ann coulter to live up to her bonehead tradition. 
This is what she recently wrote in the Clarion Ledger:

"If more “Americans” are watching soccer today, it’s only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time."

THE MOST INTERESTING GOLFER IN THE WORLD

By Ronald T. Fox
6/18/2014

(Due to some kind of glitch, this article was re-posted.  My apologies.  Two-years later, however, he remains, the "Most Interesting Golfer in the World.")

   Miguel Angel Jimenez became the oldest man to ever win on the European Tour when he captured his country’s national championship, the Spanish Open, in a playoff.

I must admit, I’m a big Miguel Angel Jimenez fan. I don’t know if it’s because of his old hippie look, ever-present cigar, quirky stretching routine, the excellence of his game at the age of 50, the frankness and authenticity he conveys in interviews, or all of the above. I think what most impresses me is how he blends great golf skills with a passionate love of life, which he is not reluctant to put on display, on and off the course. It is this combination that makes him unique among modern professional golfers.

CREDIT SUISSE PLEADS GUILTY TO A FELONY, BUT GETS OFF EASY

By Ronald Fox

 

In four previous postings about wrongdoing by JP Morgan Chase, for which it received substantial fines but did not have to plead guilty to any criminal offenses, I expressed skepticism that big banks would ever pay a criminal price for their numerous misdeeds. My skepticism was based on recognition of the political and economic clout of large Wall Street banks, which makes federal regulators and prosecutors, not to mention the Congress, extremely hesitant to criminally prosecute a big bank, regardless of its transgressions.

 

Prosecutors in Manhattan and Washington worry that a guilty verdict, or even a plea to a lesser criminal offense, could prompt revocation of a bank’s charter—the equivalent of the death penalty. The cautiousness of their approach to prosecute big banks attests to their reluctance to take actions that might jeopardize a company’s license to conduct business in the U.S. They have thus relied on stiff fines and “deferred prosecution agreements,” which suspend charges in exchange for specified concessions, as the punishment of choice. Such actions, as I argued, amount to little more than face-saving gestures that will have little effect on deterring corporate crime.

 

To the surprise of many, last week Credit Suisse, which has a giant investment bank in New York and an American chief executive, pleaded guilty to the crime of conspiring to help several of its American account holders evade taxes, a felony under American law. This represents the first time in over 20 years a bank as large as Credit Suisse has pleaded guilty to a criminal wrongdoing. The bank were also required to pay $2.6 billion in penalties and employ an independent prosecutor for up to two years. The agreement further mandated that eight bank employees indicted in the tax evasion scheme had to be terminated.  I find both good and bad news in the plea agreement.

 

THE SANDUSKY AFFAIR: HOW PENN STATE TURNED A CRISIS INTO A DISASTER

By Charles Snow  

On November 5, 2011, Penn State University was rocked by the news that Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant on the staff of legendary football coach Joe Paterno, was being charged with 48 counts of child sexual abuse. Two days later, Penn State’s Athletic Director, Tim Curley, and Vice President of Business Operations, Gary Schultz, were charged with various crimes related to the Sandusky case. Almost a year after those charges were leveled, Penn State’s President, Graham Spanier, was indicted on various charges involving the Sandusky case (additional charges were filed against Curley and Schultz at the same time). Sandusky was convicted on 45 of the 48 charges against him and is now serving a long prison term. The three Penn State officials are still awaiting trial.

WINNING AT ALL COSTS: PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING DRUGS IN PROFESSIONAL SPORTS

By Ronald Fox

 

Although many people believe the recently revised PED policy established for major league baseball, which includes stiffer penalties and more frequent testing, have effectively terminated the PED problem in baseball (the NFL,NBA, and NHL policies are much weaker, significantly not including blood testing, which is necessary to detect human growth hormones), I think this is wishful thinking. The use of PEDs must be understood as a product of a cheating culture that has crept into professional sports. The incidence of PED use may have slowed in baseball, but I suspect this may be only a temporary lull. Until the value system that sustains cheating in professional sports is changed, the problem will not go away.

 

MAY BONEHEAD ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH (2014)



With the recent release of the 2014 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was easy to predict that bonehead deniers would see a need to reaffirm their denial credentials.  Sure enough, they emerged from under their rocks.  This month's bonehead absurdity candidates put their gross ignorance on display in offering the following comments about climate change.


1.  This whopper comes from conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer:

“What we're ultimately talking about here is human sin, through the production of carbon. It's the oldest superstition around. It was in the Old Testament. It's in the rain dance of the Native Americans. If you sin, the skies will not cooperate. This is quite superstitious and I'm waiting for science that doesn't declare itself definitive but is otherwise convincing."

2.  Despite the IPCC Report, which concluded that there is increased certainty that human behavior is causing ice caps to melt, sea ice to collapse, water supplies to be stressed, heat waves and heavy rains to intensify, and coral reefs to die,  and its follow-up report, the National Climate Assessment, which concluded that climate change has already widely affected the U.S. and the worst is yet to come, Republican Party office holders and most of their conservative constituents remain in denial about the reality and growing peril of global warming.

Phronesis has decided to select the GOP as an organization candidate for the May Bonehead Absurdity award.   The following quotes are representative of absurd Republican ignorance, many of them coming from politicians with presidential ambitions:

• Ted Cruz (R-Tx):  "The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming."
• Bobby Jindal (R-La):  Global warming is a "left-wing environmental theory."
• Rick Santorum (R-Pa):  Calls climate change "a beautifully concocted scheme."
• Ran Paul (R-Ky):  Says "The earth's 4-5 billion years old . . . and you're going to say we had four hurricanes and so that proves a theory?"
• Mario Rubio (R-Fl):  "I do not believe human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. . . and I do not believe that the laws they propose we pass will do anything about it, except destroy our economy."
• Dana Rohrabacker (R-Ca):  "Global warming is a total fraud."

And, perhaps, the topper:

• Joe Barton (R-Tx):  Noah's . . . great flood is an example of climate change, and that certainly wasn't because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy."

3.  Here's another climate change idiocy, this one from Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak, who on May 19 said:

“I now believe global warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists knowingly misleading for their own ends."

And the winner is . . . . .

JIM DUBBS RESPONSE TO WONDERING WHAT’S GOING ON IN UKRAINE

I think this insightful response from Jim Dubbs to my essay on Wondering What's Going On In Ukraine deserves to be circulated to subscribers.


It seems to me the seeds of the crisis involving Ukraine were planted by the policy of Bush I and Clinton to voraciously expand NATO membership to countries formerly in the Warsaw Pact.  Since these countries along Russia's borders formed what was historically a "cordon sanitaire" (Iron Curtain to Churchill fans), or sphere of interest at a minimum, for the Soviet state, this US policy could hardly be seen a nothing less than a provocation to Putin  -- a push for US hegemony.  (Bad enough, especially in a geopolitical sense, that Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Albania and the Baltic countries joined NATO -- after all they had at one time or another be independent states -- but Ukraine, lordy, it was where ancient Rus began.)  

This provocation had to be tolerated by a weakened Russia in what was gleefully but fleetingly called the unipolar world.  That description of the world doesn't quite work anymore for the US, given the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iran, upheaval in the Middle East, the rapid rise of China.  Sort of like DeGaulle for France after WWII, Putin has rekindled a Russian nationalism that must be satisfied.  And he knows that NATO doesn't have the capacity to resist, at least militarily.  And as for economic sanctions, what can he fear if the head of Exxon-Mobile still comes a'courtin?

Come to think of it, while Lenin may have indulged in a bit of hyperbole when he said that the capitalist will sell us the ropes to hang them, he was on to something.

J.Dubbs