July 2010

For those that have never heard of Sam and Charles Wyly, well here’s all you really need to know. They are huge donors to conservative candidates and causes and were some of the major funding for the Swiftboat Vets. Well and this – now they are accused of over $550 million in insider trading by the SEC:

Sam and Charles Wyly, Dallas billionaire investors known for their support of conservative candidates and causes, made $550 million in undisclosed profits through 13 years of insider trading, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit filed Thursday.

In a 78-page complaint filed in a Manhattan federal court in New York, the SEC said the Wylys held and traded tens of millions of shares in companies on whose boards they served and "defrauded the investing public" by misrepresenting their ownership and trading of those stocks.

"The apparatus of the fraud was an elaborate sham system of trusts and subsidiary companies located in the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands ... created by and at the direction of the Wylys," the SEC complaint stated.

This isn’t the first run-in the Wyly’s have had with the SEC. Their troubles date all the way back to 1979.

Last month John Boehner demanded that Paul McCartney apologize for saying "After the last eight years, it's great to have a president who knows what a library is." That quote came at the end of an awards ceremony giving McCartney the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.

Now in an interview, McCartney has responded to the critique from the right in a way only a Beatle can:

"What didn't get reported was the amazing support I got: 'Yeah, man, way to go, rock 'n' roll!' " McCartney says. "I got a lot of that. ... Come on, where's your sense of humor?

"And I know George Bush knows what a library is: It's a place to keep DVDs."

Zing! Way to go Sir Paul. I just wonder if the right will try to Dixie Chick McCartney now? Yeah – that would go over great.

Another hit from the asshat Fox News Network:

(h/t Cesca)

Douchey is going from the report that said 47% of Americans didn’t pay any income tax last year. Of course they didn’t pay income tax because they didn’t make enough money, but they still paid sales tax, home taxes, state and local taxes, etc.

But I wonder if Doocy and Fox would also argue that the super-rich, who avoid taxes through loopholes and offshore accounts, should also not be given the right to vote. How about big corporations, who didn’t pay taxes last year? Perhaps those companies shouldn’t be allowed to contribute money to political campaigns.

Or perhaps Doocy shouldn’t be allowed to vote, since he has no apparent understanding of democracy. Now I can wait for wingnuts to say I am trying to take away his rights.

As a photographer stories like this really get my blood boiling:

A few weeks ago, on his way to work, Matt Urick stopped to snap a few pictures of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's headquarters. He thought the building was ugly but might make for an interesting photo. The uniformed officer who ran up to him didn't agree. He told Urick he was not allowed to photograph federal buildings.

Urick wanted to tell the guard that there are pictures of the building on HUD's Web site, that every angle of the building is visible in street views on Google Maps and that he was merely an amateur photographer, not a threat. But Urick kept all this to himself.

"A lot of these guys have guns and are enforcing laws they obviously don't understand, and they are not to be reasoned with," he said. After detaining Urick for a few minutes and conferring with a colleague on a radio, the officer let him go.

The Washington Post story has a lot more accounts of similar incidents.

What really gets me about this is that these officers are still stopping and detaining photographers, despite the courts saying it is perfectly legal:

Courts have long ruled that the First Amendment protects the right of citizens to take photographs in public places. Even after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement agencies have reiterated that right in official policies.

So why do so many police and security guards believe they are in the right? Well it boils down to that post-9/11 mentality: