Get a Brain, Morans

Some inbred white bigots who don't know how to use a spell checker have decided that enough is enough, so they took to flying pro confederate banners over various monuments:

Community activists and historic preservationists got help from an unusual source to draw attention to their protest Saturday of statues of Confederate leaders on Monument Avenue during the first day of training for the UCI Road World Championships.

A small plane carrying a banner with a Confederate battle flag and the phrase “Confederate heros matter” circled above Monument Avenue, where the protest had gathered at the statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.

The Virginia Flaggers, who took credit for the banner on their Facebook page, said the misspelling of “heroes” was “Pilot error. We sent the right spelling. We think the point was still made.”

“This is the first time he’s ever messed up,” Grayson Jennings, a spokesman for the Virginia Flaggers, said of the pilot in an interview. “I don’t think half the people even knew he messed up.”

(emphasis mine)

Trust me, people know.

This is going to end up a major meme, kind of like this pic:

The stupid, it burns us.

This Is a Clear Case of Immoral Parasitism, and It's Pharma, so Not the Surprise

You know the story, hedge fund puke buys a pharmaceutical firm, takes an out of patent drug that costs a few bucks, changes the distribution method to make analysis by potential competitors more difficult, and then raise the price by 5555%: (No, this is not a decimal place error)

Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.

The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“What is it that they are doing differently that has led to this dramatic increase?” said Dr. Judith Aberg, the chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She said the price increase could force hospitals to use “alternative therapies that may not have the same efficacy.”

………

The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association sent a joint letter to Turing earlier this month calling the price increase for Daraprim “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.” An organization representing the directors of state AIDS programs has also been looking into the price increase, according to doctors and patient advocates.

Daraprim, known generically as pyrimethamine, is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasite infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems for babies born to women who become infected during pregnancy, and also for people with compromised immune systems, like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients.

………

This is not the first time the 32-year-old Mr. Shkreli, who has a reputation for both brilliance and brashness, has been the center of controversy. He started MSMB Capital, a hedge fund company, in his 20s and drew attention for urging the Food and Drug Administration not to approve certain drugs made by companies whose stock he was shorting.

In 2011, Mr. Shkreli started Retrophin, which also acquired old neglected drugs and sharply raised their prices. Retrophin’s board fired Mr. Shkreli a year ago. Last month, it filed a complaint in Federal District Court in Manhattan, accusing him of using Retrophin as a personal piggy bank to pay back angry investors in his hedge fund.

………

With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim’s distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.

The switch from drugstores to controlled distribution was made in June by Impax, not by Turing. Still, controlled distribution was a strategy Mr. Shkreli talked about at his previous company as a way to thwart generics.

………

Dr. Aberg of Mount Sinai said some hospitals will now find Daraprim too expensive to keep in stock, possibly resulting in treatment delays. She said that Mount Sinai was continuing to use the drug, but each use now required a special review.

“This seems to be all profit-driven for somebody,” Dr. Aberg said, “and I just think it’s a very dangerous process.”

You can read the details of his looting the last firm he ran here.

I would note that Mr Shkreli is not alone in this behavior: When Glaxo Smith Kline sold the marketing rights to the drug to CorePharma, the price of the drug was $1 a pill,

Is there anything that big finance can't make destructive and evil?

Remember Last Night, When I Used the Phrase, "Bush Crime Family?"

Well today, we learn of the orgy of political payback and cronyism in the next generation of the Bush family, we have George P. Bush turning the office of Texas Land Commissioner into an opportunity for his buddies to profit while ignoring state law that requires public notice of open positions:

Less than a year after being elected to lead the oldest state agency in Texas, Land Commissioner George P. Bush has dramatically remade the General Land Office by ousting most of its longtime leaders and replacing many with people with ties to his campaign and family.

Eleven of the top 18 officials on the agency’s organizational chart a year ago have been fired or forced out or have quit, and more could leave soon in an overhaul that Bush has described as a “reboot.”

In their place, Bush, a former Fort Worth resident, has given top jobs to two of his law school classmates, two relatives of members of two Bush presidential administrations and at least three others with ties to the family or other political leaders.

In all, Bush has hired at least 29 people who worked on his campaign or have political connections, according to a review of thousands of pages of personnel records. The agency did not advertise any of the openings publicly.

………

State law requires all agencies considering external candidates for a job to post the opening with the Texas Workforce Commission. Newly elected statewide officials often ignore the requirement for some core positions. Attorney General Ken Paxton and Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller have been publicly criticized for doing it a few times this year.

But Bush’s hiring differs because it is so far-reaching, with hires ranging from a temporary transition director to five campaign veterans hired permanently for the new position of “regional outreach coordinator.”

Bush made many so-called appointment hires before even taking office but has continued them well into this year.

The General Land Office, established in 1837, oversees all state public lands and also leases mineral rights to oil and gas companies, generating billions of dollars for schools. Bush, the grandson and nephew of presidents and the son of current presidential candidate Jeb Bush, was elected in November.

………

“Any agency, board, bureau, commission, committee, council, court, department, institution, or office in the executive or judicial branch of state government that has an employment opening for which persons from outside the agency will be considered shall list the opening with the Texas Workforce Commission,” the law says.

Commission spokeswoman Lisa Givens said she did not know who was responsible for enforcing that law. The commission does not check to ensure that jobs are posted, she said.

The attorney general’s office referred questions about the law to the workforce agency.

Personnel records show that Bush directed at least 40 external hires from November to July but listed only four of those with the Workforce Commission.

The average salary for those four was about $65,000. The average salary for the 36 unposted jobs was $90,000.

Ten jobs went to campaign aides, including temporary transition director Trey Newton, who made $17,500 per month, and the five regional outreach coordinators, who are making $55,000 a year. Newton, the campaign engineer Bush once called “our Karl Rove,” left in January. He did not return a call seeking comment.

Another campaign strategist, Ash Wright, and his wife, Patty Wright, both got unposted jobs in December with annual salaries of $120,000 and $48,000, respectively. Both have left, with Ash Wright returning to Bush’s campaign.

The campaign’s spokesman, J.R. Hernandez, got a more permanent job as Bush’s chief of staff, with an annual salary of $110,000. Hernandez, the son of George W. Bush adviser Juan Hernandez and a 2008 college graduate, started the job exactly a week after the election. The application in his personnel file is not signed or dated, and there is no offer letter, making it hard to determine a timeline of employment.

The Bush family has been engaging in this sort of entitled privilege since my dad was in elementary school.

H/t Atrios.

Elections is Weird

Somehow, after completely failing to deliver on its promises, and folding like a bunch of overcooked broccoli, Syriza still managed to emerge from the latest Greek elections the conclusive winner:

Alexis Tsipras will be sworn in as Greece’s prime minister later on Monday and his new government formally announced on Tuesday, Greek media said, after the leftist Syriza leader romped to an unexpectedly convincing election victory.

The result on Sunday was a personal triumph for the 41-year-old, who gambled on the snap poll last month to see off a revolt by party radicals over his U-turn on accepting more tough austerity measures in exchange for Greece’s third international bailout.

The premier-elect will now make renegotiating the terms of Greece’s debt mountain a top priority. He will attempt to build a broad consensus among the parties he defeated so as to strengthen his hand in talks with the country’s eurozone creditors, a senior Syriza source told Reuters.

………

Following a campaign that for weeks looked too close to call, Syriza won 35.5% of the vote – a fraction less than its previous total – against 28.1% for the centre-right opposition, New Democracy, giving the leftist party 145 seats in the 300-seat parliament.

………

Tsipras said he would renew his coalition with the small nationalist Independent Greeks party to give him the 151-seat majority he needs in parliament. The new government’s programme will be dictated by the punishing terms of Greece’s latest €86bn rescue package, which demands a radical overhaul of the country’s ailing economy and far-reaching changes to tax, welfare and pension systems. The cash-for-reforms deal is subject to quarterly reviews, with the first due next month.

I am thoroughly flummoxed by these results.

My guess as to the meaning of all this is that, "The whippings will continue until morale improves."

This is Significant………

It turns out that the aircraft that Russia is sending to Syria are not Su-27s or MiG-31s. They are top of the line Su-30SM multi-role fighters:

The Institute for the Study of War had spotted four Russian fighter jets at Al Assad International Airport in Damascus. The Kremlin may have sent air-to-air missiles to Syria along with the aircraft, the D.C.-based think tank added.

But Washington area consultant and War Is Boring contributor Chris Biggers pointed out on the blog Offiziere that ISW had misidentified the jets. As it turns out, Russia sent its maneuverable and deadly Su-30SM multi-role jets.

Recent satellite imagery acquired by Airbus of al-Assad International airport in Syria shows four Su-30SM aircraft, not four SU-27 Flanker as originally reported by the Institute for [the] Study of War. The aircraft are easily mistaken for the SU-27 due to the modern variant’s use of the same airframe. The only predominant identifier on satellite imagery separating these aircraft from the earlier model is the canards positioned forward on the fuselage which assist with the aircraft’s thrust vectoring capability.

Located on the north side of the runway at Latakia, the Su-30SM multi-role fighters are one of Russia’s more advanced 4+ generation aircraft, often compared to the U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle. This variant is equipped with a passive electronically scanned array (PESA) BARS radar, fly-by-wire flight controls, modern ECM as well as thrust vectoring, making this a highly maneuverable and capable fighter.

In March 2012, Russia hired the Irkut Corporation to build a total of 60 Su-30SM fighters. While the new model was the first for the Kremlin’s air arms to feature the small canard positioned behind the cockpit, Irkut had already sold similar MKI and MKM versions to India and Malaysia, respectively.

The reason that this is important is because of the whole "Multi Role" thing.

The Su-30SM is not as well suited for the interception role as the MiG-31, top speed and ceiling are lower, but it can carry a much wider range of munitions, including the KH-58 anti-radiation missile, which has the capability to attack surface to air missile installations at ranges greater than 200 km, which could suppress NATO SAMs in Turkey that have largely prevented the Syrian Air Force from operating in the north of the country.

Syria is a complete clusterf%$#, (When the Assad regime is the best alternative, you know that you have completely screwed the pooch) , and now we are seeing increased Russian involvement in the conflict.

It's a mess, and it's getting scary.

Hunter S. Thompson was a Prophet

In The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time, Hunter S. Thompson relates the following tale:

This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas. The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows.

“Christ, we can’t get a way calling him a pig-f%$#er,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”

Well, right now, the UK is transfixed by the tale of PM David Cameron and Piggate:

Late last night, the Daily Mail published an astounding excerpt of an unauthorized biography of UK Prime Minister David Cameron, alleging that he placed a “private part” of his body into the mouth of a dead pig’s head while at Oxford University.
He put his nob in a pig’s mouth. Popped his todger into the poor swine’s gob.
It’s crucial when dealing with such an important and weighty story to have all the facts, so please let this Brit guide you through the revolting tale of prime ministerial pig porkery.

It is claimed that there are pictures, but this could be a, "Make the sonofabitch deny it," moment.

In either case, this is a profoundly weird moment in politics.

Useful Idiot of the Day

Frank Rich, who seems not to understand that Donald Trump won't take the money out of politics simply because he's a rich guy who says so.

Whatever Mr. Rich is smoking, I want none of it.