A food coma inducing meal that will keep you satisfied all day.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Today in History
Highlights of this day in history: Dr. Sam Sheppard acquitted of murder in new trial; U.S. and U.S.S.R. form diplomatic ties; Second anthrax letter found sent to Capitol Hill; Actor William Holden dies; ‘Sound of Music’ hits Broadway. (Nov. 16)
Breakfast Tune: Hendrix played on a banjo
Breakfast News & Blogs Below
News
Bill Gross reportedly earns $290m bonus even as investors withdrew billions from Pimco funds
by Heidi Moore, The Guardian
Friday 14 November 2014 12.26 EST
…Wall Street compensation consultant Alan Johnson, of Johnson Associates, called the estimate of Gross’s bonus package, if true, “a very generous arrangement”.
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He was known for his confrontational, brash style, once reportedly challenging his co-CEO by asking, “I have a 41-year track record of investing excellence. What do you have?” and declaring “I’m tired of cleaning up your shit.”
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However, Gross has struggled to turn in decent returns to his investors for the past few years, creating a significant rift between his pay and his performance. In 2011, his Pimco Total Return Fund lagged behind a major bond index by nearly 4% – a giant rift. The past two years of returns, similarly, were characterized by significant outflows as investors withdrew their money.
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“We very rarely in business have a numerical measure of how important you are,” Johnson said. “[Gross] went to Janus and none of the [investor] money followed. So at some point he stopped being as important as he thought he was.”
Chuck Hagel orders radical shakeup of US nuclear forces
by Associated Press
Friday 14 November 2014 15.19 EST
The defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, ordered top-to-bottom changes in the management of the US nuclear arsenal on Friday, saying a lack of sustained attention and investment in the force caused it to “slowly back downhill”.
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Hagel ordered two reviews in February – one by Pentagon officials and a second by outside experts – as a result of a series of Associated Press stories that revealed lapses in leadership, morale, safety and security at the nation’s three nuclear air force bases.The good news, Hagel said, “is there has been no nuclear exchange in the world”.
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Out of the woods, here he comes: the lumbersexual
by Holly Baxter, The Guardian
Friday 14 November 2014 10.04 EST
Just when we all thought we’d reached peak beard, a surprising development has happened in the fascinating world of male grooming. Yes, you guessed it (you probably didn’t guess it) – the lumbersexual is here, with his beard, plaid shirt, backpack and artfully scruffy hair barely contained by his sensible woollen hat.
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Men are given a harder time than women when they play with gender through style, since fashion still isn’t seen as their rightful domain. The metrosexual threw caution to the wind and started carrying his moisturiser round in his manbag; the lumbersexual now serves us up a hypermasculine aesthetic with an unashamedly ironic grin.
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Did the lumbersexual, as accused, steal his look from the gay world of “bears” and “cubs”? It seems likely. As Tim Teeman at the Daily Beast says, “First, straights came for the smooth, pretty gay look … and now you have come for our hairier brethren.” Those who questioned straight culture in the first place were always better at laughing at gender, after all. Now that we can all share in the joy of metros, lumbersexuals and the “metrojacks”(who fall in the middle – yes, really), I am all too happy to laugh along.
Germany warns Uefa may quit Fifa if World Cup report not published
by Owen Gibson, The Guardian
Saturday 15 November 2014 08.10 EST
The president of the German Football League has warned that Uefa’s 54 member nations could take the ultimate step of quitting Fifa if Michael Garcia’s report into World Cup bidding is not published in full.
Dr Reinhard Rauball laid bare the tensions within Fifa over the split between the ethics committee judge, Hans-Joachim Eckert, and Garcia, the US attorney who heads the investigatory arm and spent 18 months probing the race for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Garcia has disowned Eckert’s summary of his 430-page report, which effectively cleared Russia and Qatar.
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“The only people that come out well in that summary report by Eckert is Fifa. [It says] they got their decisions right in respect to Qatar and Russia, and there’s even a sentence and a reference in there that Sepp Blatter ran a wonderful process. It’s almost like high comedy.”
In Federal crackdown, ex-cop indicted for coaching to beat polygraphs
By Marisa Taylor, McClatchy
November 14, 2014
A former Oklahoma City police officer has been indicted on charges of training people to lie about crimes during polygraph tests as part of the Obama administration’s unprecedented crackdown on security violators and leakers.
Douglas Williams, 69, is accused of committing mail fraud and obstructing justice in a five-count indictment handed down Thursday in the Western District of Oklahoma. The indictment alleges that Williams, who runs the website Polygraph.com, trained two undercover agents to lie or conceal crimes during government lie-detector tests.
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John Schwartz, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official, said in a speech that the effort to criminalize the teaching was part of the Obama administration’s Insider Threat Program, which is intended to deter what the government condemns as betrayals by “trusted insiders” such as Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who revealed the agency’s secret communications data-collection programs.
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Schwartz acknowledged that teaching the techniques, known in polygraph circles as “countermeasures,” isn’t always illegal and might be protected under the First Amendment in some situations.
Is the U.S. really against torture? It can be hard to tell
By Elisa Massimino, Reuters
November 14, 2014
…At issue is Washington’s interpretation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Seeking to exempt American abuse of detainees overseas, President George W. Bush had broken with his predecessors and claimed that the treaty didn’t apply outside the United States. This strained reading flew in the face of American values, the rule of law and the text of the 1987 treaty.
Despite Obama’s early executive orders in 2009, the administration had never officially repudiated that position. But Wednesday, as a U.S. delegation prepared to appear before the U.N. committee that monitors treaty compliance, the White House announced it would reaffirm that the agreement applies beyond U.S. borders.
The devil, however, is in the details. The administration’s statement says the treaty applies to “places outside the United States that the U.S. government controls as a governmental authority.” That sounds reasonable – unless it means that torture at CIA black sites, or at prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, would be exempt because the United States wasn’t the “government authority” in those places.
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U.S. weighs expanded CIA training, arming of Syrian allies struggling against Assad
By Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post
November 14 at 7:45 PM
Even so, there is little indication that U.S.-trained and armed moderates have had any substantial impact on the direction of the conflict in Syria.
The latest setbacks came this month, when CIA-backed factions were routed by Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s primary affiliate in Syria. Fighters with militias including Harakat Hazm – one of the biggest recipients of U.S. arms – fled positions in towns across northern Syria, with many leaving their weapons to be scooped up by al-Nusra.
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Scenes of “the moderate opposition either melting away, running away or joining league with al-Nusra is a good indication of the difficulty that we’re going to have,” Schiff said. He would not discuss classified programs but said he has been troubled by other recent developments including the outrage voiced by supposed moderate factions over U.S. airstrikes that hit al-Nusra positions, suggesting that U.S.-backed militias see the al-Qaeda affiliate as an ally against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and not as an adversary.
Grossest midterms winner not GOP! Why K Street is readying an “orgy of lobbying”
David Dayen, Salon
Tuesday, Nov 11, 2014 08:30 AM EST
…Some have speculated that lobbying has just gone underground into less-regulated spheres, funneled through nonprofits and “astroturf” organizations. But if that were the case, K Street firms, mired in a three-year slump, wouldn’t be so enthralled by the imminent transfer of Senate power to the GOP. “We’re very excited,” said one Republican lobbyist. “There’s going to be more activity … Corporations and trade associations affected by Washington power will be looking to invest in those policy decisions.”
Lobby shops understand that pretty much all the major legislation emerging from any partnership between President Obama and the GOP will address the concerns of big business. Look at any to-do list and you’ll notice the pattern: trade deals, tax reform, construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, government appropriations (in particular, increasing funding for defense), etc. It’s party time on K Street again.
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President Obama is reportedly relieved for a possible avenue to make deals with Republicans, bypass gridlock and “get things done.” But nobody’s more relieved by the election outcome than K Street. They’re probably already counting the money that’s about to roll in.
Blogs
- The Story of The Shirt With Leather-Corseted Women, by Echidne of the Snakes
- CEO Compensation: “Cheaters Prosper”, by William K. Black, New Economic Perspectives
- The Choice of the Century, by Robert Reich
- Psychologists Are Rethinking Their Cozy Relationship with Bush Torture Program, By Cora Currier, The Intercept
- Secret Cash Pays for U.S. Drone Mistakes, By Cora Currier, The Intercept
- Why Fox News Loves Loretta Lynch, Obama’s ‘Next Eric Holder’ By Gaius Publius, Crooks & Liars
- Bill Clinton’s Out of Touch Economically — and That’s a Big Deal, By RJ Eskow, Alternet
- Signs of resistance against the neoliberal catastrophe in Europe, by system failure, The Unbalanced Evolution of Homo Sapiens
- Guess How Much Money Bill Gross Made Last Year?, By Barry Ritholtz, Bloomberg News
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
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and I’m still full.