Portland Nuisance Rally

Once again residents in residential neighborhoods will endure the annual 'Alley Sweeper' rally that sends motorcycles down Portland's public back alleys, mostly in quiet neighborhoods.  While there isn't any law against being a pest, the rally shatters the nerves of those living on streets with alleys behind them.

"I've been listening to this noise all morning long, this is crazy and wrong," said Northeast Portland resident Melinda Williams.
Some neighbors don't appreciate seeing adventure riders, who typically ride in small groups in rural areas, whizzing by their back alley garages and yards.
"There are children, they play in the yards,"said Mark Knutson, who lives next door to Williams.  "Having motorcycles flying through here in mass, is not safe or right."

The jerks who perpetrate this nuisance have the predictable justifications.

 "It's to promote motorcycle awareness and all these alleys are here for public access," said organizer Eric Nordquist. "It's a social event for riders and those who enjoy watching."

Glaxo corruption revealed

Another upstanding Pharmaceutical company with a self-proclaimed "zero tolerance" corruption policy is neck deep in corruption inquiries, including one in Poland,which the company knew about internally but chose not to tell anyone until a UK television program blew the whistle on them.

GSK admitted on Monday that it had brought in private detectives to investigate the Polish claims in 2011 and "found evidence of inappropriate communication in contravention of GSK policy by a single employee. The employee concerned was reprimanded and disciplined in 2011."
The company said it was continuing to investigate the claims and was "co-operating fully with the CBA". However, GSK failed to inform the public or its shareholders of the Polish investigation until Monday despite chief executive Sir Andrew Witty promising to reform the organisation in the wake of the "shameful" and "deeply disappointing" allegations in China.
GSK only revealed details of the allegations following the Panorama investigation, broadcast on BBC1 on Monday. 
In the Panorama programme Jarek Wisniewski, a former GSK sales representative in the Polish region of Lodz, said GSK staff paid doctors to give speeches which did not take place. "We pay agreement for a speech, we pay £100 but we expect more than 100 prescriptions for this drug."
Wisniewski said his regional manager told them to do it, and that he blew the whistle to GSK. He said this resulted in his being sidelined at work and eventually sacked.

GSK is also embroiled in corruption investigations in the Middle East, primarily in  Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan, and in 2012 GSK paid a record $3bn (£1.9bn) in fines to settle claims that it bribed US doctors into prescribing antidepressants for non-approved uses.

Obamacare and the Tax Attack Email

Every once in a while I check in on factcheck.org to see what nonsense is going around, and I noted their debunking of this viral email, according to factcheck.org, it is total gibberish, but of course it is in every wingnut's inbox.

Viral email: THE FIRST THREE MONTHS!
Happy New Year America
Here is what happened on January 1st 2014:

Top Income Tax bracket went from 35% to 39.6%
Top Income Payroll Tax went from 37.4% to 52.2%
Capital Gains Tax went from 15% to 28%
Dividend Tax went from 15% to 39.6%
Estate Tax went from 0% to 55%

Remember this ‘fact;’ if you have any money, the Democrats want it! All these taxes were passed with only Democrat votes. Not one Republican voted to do these taxes. Remember this come election time. And make sure your friends and neighbors know this info too!

 These taxes were all passed under the affordable care act, otherwise known as Obama care.

According to factcheck.org,

We started getting dozens of queries about this one about three weeks before tax filing day. It’s nonsense. Some of these figures aren’t accurate, and none of these increases took effect on Jan. 1, 2014, or had anything to do with the Affordable Care Act. And the claim that “not one Republican voted to do these” is false.

Enough said on that subject, read their analysis for the facts.

Don't Like Torture? CIA Says You're Too Emotional

Senator Ron Wyden blasted former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden when he suggested Dianme Feinstein was "too emotional" about torture undertaken by the CIA during the Bush administration.

General Hayden’s suggestion that Chairman Feinstein was motivated by ‘emotion’ rather than a focus on the facts is simply outrageous.  General Hayden unfortunately has a long history of misleading the American public – he did it on domestic surveillance when he was the head of the NSA, and he did it on torture when he was the CIA Director.
The best way to correct this culture of misinformation is to give the American people a chance to review the facts for themselves, and I’ll be working with my colleagues and the administration to ensure that happens quickly.

NSA - Ain't Nobody Safe

The NSA has confirmed in an article from The Guardian that a loophole in the restrictions against domestic spying was employed to search US citizens communications without any warrant.  This should probably come as no surprise given that NSA will use any opening to do whatever they like to anybody.  Senator Ron Wyden initiated the question, finally responded to by James Clapper in typical elaborate double-talk.

“There have been queries, using US person identifiers, of communications lawfully acquired to obtain foreign intelligence targeting non-US persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States,” Clapper wrote in the letter, which has been obtained by the Guardian.
“These queries were performed pursuant to minimization procedures approved by the Fisa court and consistent with the statute and the fourth amendment.”

 Ron Wyden and Mark Udall responded.

On Tuesday, Wyden and Udall said the NSA’s warrantless searches of Americans’ emails and phone calls “should be concerning to all.”
“This is unacceptable. It raises serious constitutional questions, and poses a real threat to the privacy rights of law-abiding Americans. If a government agency thinks that a particular American is engaged in terrorism or espionage, the fourth amendment requires that the government secure a warrant or emergency authorisation before monitoring his or her communications. This fact should be beyond dispute,” the two senators said in a joint statement.
They continued: “Today’s admission by the Director of National Intelligence is further proof that meaningful surveillance reform must include closing the back-door searches loophole and requiring the intelligence community to show probable cause before deliberately searching through data collected under section 702 to find the communications of individual Americans."