Well, if you’re the right sort, that is. Pony up!
From Dan Collins:
What is the matter with these people?
The U.S. government has accepted 10 percent of the profits of the upcoming “Passion of the Christ” prequel in a plea deal with a Mexican drug smuggler, despite apparently knowing the royalties had been obtained illegally.According to AP reports, Jorge Vázquez Sánchez, 34, pleaded guilty to money laundering and extortion last week but managed to get his prison sentence decreased from 40 years to seven after he gave the government his cut of the profits related to the screenplay “Mary, Mother of Christ”, a prequel to Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie about the crucification of Jesus Christ.
That’s odd given that the government certainly knew that Vázquez obtained the screenplay by kidnapping the owner Arturo Madrigal’s brother in Mexico and forcing the man to sign over the rights, the San Antonio Express-News reports — Vazquez had actually admitted it.
Thug Boi and Henchman Holder don’t give a rat’s ass about justice, as long as they get their cut.
So, can that be right? Can you really negotiate a cut in your prison sentence by agreeing to pay a (potentially) tidy sum to the government?
Didn’t the Church once try this — the practice of paying to have your sins exculpated? And isn’t this just the government taking the place of an overthrown Church model — or rather, declaring government itself a secular religion with the power to determine grace on a person by person basis — and in so doing explicitly and unapologetically showing itself willing to adopt the kind of antifoundationalism progressives have long pushed as the necessary precondition to their tyrannical designs (which, of course, they wouldn’t frame as such; to them, their tyranny is compassionate and moral, and to achieve it, the ends justify the means)?
The government flexes its muscles in exchange for a payoff. A stable and just rule of law be damned. Private property rights be damned.
And this is being peddled as a kind of justice?
Good bye, America.
— Or, if you aren’t quite so cynical, hey, at least there aren’t any gun sales involved this time!
(thanks to geoffB)
could America be more third fucking world?
Brothers get a deep discount.
Didn’t the Church once try this — the practice of paying to have your sins exculpated?
Sorta, but not really: indulgences (which are still a live teaching in Catholicism, but now pared back to spiritual things like prayer, pilgrimages, and the like) are a remission of the “shrapnel” from sin. Only Christ can take away sin, but the restitutionary aspects of sin, and the attachment to it, are addressed in Purgatory. Indulgences can avoid that. You used to be able to build churches and the like (the long shadow of Tetzel), but now it is limited to prayer, penitential acts, and the like. Clear as mud, from a certain perspective, but there really is a difference.
And isn’t this just the government taking the place of an overthrown Church model — or rather, declaring government itself a secular religion with the power to determine grace on a person by person basis — and in so doing explicitly and unapologetically showing itself willing to adopt the kind of antifoundationalism progressives have long pushed as the necessary precondition to their tyrannical designs (which, of course, they wouldn’t frame as such; to them, their tyranny is compassionate and moral, and to achieve it, the ends justify the means)?
Which brings me to the point that what the government here is doing is far, far worse than even the worst abuses of indulgences in the medieval church–it really is salvation for sale.
There is a line from the last section of “A Canticle For Leibowitz” where the abbot sternly reminds a secular type that “Caesar is only God’s policeman. He is not God’s heir, much less God Himself.”
Prescient, given the American Caesar’s proclivities, and the left using politics as a substitute religion.
On the whole, importing Mexican style justice seems like a bad idea on its face, no less for the likes of Obama and Holder than for everyone else in the society.
You can’t even make this shit up anymore. Fiction as entertainment is dead.
Rod Serling, in his prime, with the aid of the finest hallucinogens, couldn’t touch this. No answers on fast and furious, but they have time for this?
Welcome to Bizzaro World.
Didn’t the Church once try this — the practice of paying to have your sins exculpated?
Wasn’t objection to indulgences one of the 95 theses from Martin Luther, which sparked the Protestant Reformation, leading to centuries of war and turmoil throughout Europe?
yay us
The precedent being re-affirmed (see GM bond holders) here is that contracts signed under duress are fine if the government benefits.
Kidnapping as a legitimate contract negotiation tool.
Attn. JD.
Wasn’t objection to indulgences one of the 95 theses from Martin Luther, which sparked the Protestant Reformation, leading to centuries of war and turmoil throughout Europe?
Again, sorta kinda. Here are the Theses:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/95_Theses
Luther’s main complaint was with the sale of indulgences, though he did question the underpinnings of indulgences themselves. He affirms the authority of the Pope in a few spots, but also questions the validity of the sacrament of confession, which was a bigger shot across the bow. It must be admitted that Luther’s hatred of confession was understandable. He suffered from an overly-scrupulous nature, and would spend up to six hours confessing, afraid to miss anything that might damn him. Which is a most unhealthy way to approach the confessional, I’ll readily admit. His confessor, Johann von Staupitz, encouraged him to find comfort from studying the scriptures.
I’ve always felt a bit of sympathy for Luther: the Church desperately needed reform, and his personal torment was a tremendous cross.
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Kidnapping as a legitimate contract negotiation tool.
Yes, well, we’ve already established that intimidation and character assassination are legitimate forms of political discourse. We’ve established that bombings and beheadings are a legitimate means of demanding respect. We’ve established that undiluted propaganda is legitimate news. And not least, we’ve established that KITT is Herbie the Love Bug.
Why so surprised?
ot fauxchohontas update
link
I thought that any contract entered into illegally was null and void. Therefore, the rights don’t belong to Vazquez and hence he can’t give anybody a cut of what’s not really his.
DarthLevin;
Kind of like not being able to profit off of a crime, such as profits from writing a book about your crimes?
That’s what I thought.
I’m wondering if you couldn’t add bacon to the crab salad
The Cherokee did, so why not?
Oklahoma has a number of lakes, but is largely land-locked. Where were the Cherokee getting all this crab from?
I don’t know, ask Marc Rich.
OT for the weekend, but I’d advise picking up some beer from Flying Dog Brewery after getting Marion Berry all riled up.
The Cherokee preferred using Miracle Whip in their crab salad. That has been true for hundreds of years.
They actually didn’t use bacon, however. They used bacon bits.
I called bullshit on these recipes as soon as I read them. No Miracle Whip, no saltines, no white gravy and no pecans. Also no suggestions to wash the meals down with Dr. Pepper.
All tells, every one.
i wonder if she has the sense to be embarrassed she’s starting to remind me of this freakshow
We all know Fauxcahontas would have long since been hounded into obscurity if she had an R next to her name.
I guess at this point it’s tiresome to point that out. Still, it grates on me. I want a media that’s hostile to all politicians; all of them should get beaten up on a daily basis. It’s the only way to keep them even minimally honest.
more bad news for the cherokee nation:
In 2006, Elizabeth Warren and her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, published a book, All Your Worth: The Ultimate Money Lifetime Plan. That book includes a passage that appears to include parts of two paragraphs directly lifted from a book published in 2005, Getting on the Money Track by Rob Black.
link
The digitizing of books and other text has sure made it easier to check on plagiarism. Bad news for the left it seems.
Completely OT but it’s a pet peeve of mine so I gotta discuss it.
People are badmouthing the Facebook IPO because it settled near the offering price. You know what that should be perceived as? A great fucking job by the underwriters, that’s what.
When you see an IPO run north the company doesn’t get that money. The people who bought big private chunks of those shares realize those gains. And they’re not the ones who paid the underwriters their fees.
When a company trades near offering that’s good. We’re just so used to underwriters underpricing them and offering off blocks to their friends and large clients that we think it’s normal and must benefit the actual company somehow.
ot the facebook thing: i’m a complete idiot on this so: what is the value of owning facebook? advertising, data mining?
The ability to narrowcast advertisements based on a huge amount of personalized data that the users willingly offer, nr.
When you look at the various demos of other advertising platforms you’re wasting money on most views because everyone sees the same ad in the paper or on tv. If I just bought a car, every ad I see for the next few years is wasted on me. If I’m male every tampon ad is wasted on me.
Facebook can place ads only to 22 yr old interpretive dancing majors who mentioned their blender just broke. They can place ads only to people who just moved to Phoenix and are looking for a house.
Score one for Katrino Trinko and our betters at NRO.
NationalReview has had to publish a retraction of its earlier claim that Warren had plagiarized from someone else’s book. Turns out it was the other way around. Maybe they could take some of the money they used to give Derbyshire and hire an editor or fact-checker or something.
Sadly for them (and their legal department), Drudge is still featuring their original accusation.
good news for cherokee nation – whiteman speaks with forked tongue
I took down my earlier post on Elizabeth Warren plagiarizing from the book Getting On the Money Track. On Amazon.com, the Warren book All Your Worth is listed as having been published January 9, 2006. As it turns out, that is the paperback publication date; the hardback book was published in March 2005. As such, it appears that Getting on the Money Track (published in October 2005) plagiarized from All Your Worth, not the other way around.
So, Facebook boils down to a matchmaking yenta.
Odds are both books are repeating information from a third source.
the difference between facebook and flesh-eating bacteria is that facebook doesn’t eat your penis
here’s what was repeated in both books(no link )
….In fact, more than 80 million Americans now owe money on a credit card. And not just a little bit of money: The average family that carries a balance now owes more than two months’ income on their credit cards.
….A generation or two ago, almost no one carried any debt except for a home mortgage and maybe a car loan. There were no giant credit card balances, no payday loans, and no home equity loans. In fact, just 35 years ago, the total amount of debt outstanding among all American households was about 1/600th of what it is today. That means that for every dollar your generation owes today, your parents’ generation owed less than half a penny!
the difference between facebook and flesh-eating bacteria is that facebook doesn’t eat your penis.
If that news had been known earlier, maybe their IPO would have done better.
A generation or two ago, almost no one carried any debt except for a home mortgage
because you needed 20% down. i’m sure wampum lady was all for lowering credit standards.
no payday loans,
alex: what is a loan shark for 20 pelts
The average family
yo chief sitting bull i want the median.
Better for whom?
Very good, Ernst.
I think the Facebook IPO was fine. I think they people who bought it are likely to lose a lot of money.
Then again, I’ve been wrong on just about every prediction on tech that I’ve made. Therefore, you should all try to get in on the Facebook action.
that facebook doesn’t eat your penis.
facebook monitors your penis
Since both Rob Black (CNET radio) and co-author Pam Krueger (PBS) have shows where they talk about these financial matters I wonder if one of them did a program where they spoke the sentences that are in question and did so before either book was published.
Also publication date is not synonymous with when something was written. Especially with publication dates this close.
Wish Justin Verlander was for sale at a reasonable price.
zimmerman – “free country” head shot
link
newrouter at 8:33 pm;
Kind of ironic, eh?
I am pretty sure Jeff can come up with a list of 95 complaints to nail to a door someplace.
Property rights? Not for those that oppose O! … like the continued harassment of Gibson guitar
I did a post on it.
I just got the weirdest page of goobledy-gook when I went to http://www.nationalreview.com
could someone else try?
Same here, D.
The page keep warning me about a table. I guess maybe the furniture is revolting.
Is that a joke? I’m not sure. I certainly HOPED it would become a joke at some point.
It says that a watchdog named Drupal crashed. They shouldn’t let dogs drive. That’s dangerous. What was National Review thinking?
yeah, pala, dogs don’t belong behind the wheel, but on the roof.
In-house memory hole operation or retaliation for smearing a noble native american with a baseless accusation of plagiarism?
I’m guessing that one of the offsite ads didn’t play nice with the sever.
bh: facebook opened at 38, closed at 38.23. A correctly priced IPO? Or Facebook falls back to IPO price
Or epic fail. That’s Michael Hiltzik at the LA Times ; it wou’d be hard to lose money disagreeing with him.
WAKE UP AND ANSWER ME!
Did ya ever leave a message on someone’s phone and wish you could erase it?
Yeah, it’s crazy, mv. One of the better first day valuations we’re likely to see and it just so happens that it’s a one of its kind whale.
If I knew one of those guys I’d buy them a nice bottle of Scotch.
AND THEN YOU CALL BACK ANYWAY!
No me neither.
Oh hello.
Ha!
Zuckerberg inherited Jobs’ reality distortion field.
I reckon* the growth projections will outpace actual earnings fairly quickly, mv. Jobs gave us crazy earnings for a mature company. That was his dark magic. Z won’t keep pace as an implicit growth play. And the reality distortion field will shrink each quarter until the curve flattens and then it disappears entirely.
*I’ve been paid nothing for this advice. Equivalent to reading something on a bathroom wall.
speaking of justice for sale
if this motherfucker got anymore cheesy he might actually grow to have an affinity for crackers
oh that’s good
Just because
just because here is some Jevetta Steele from Bagdad Cafe – the version what I can find on youtube but not on Amazon mp3 downloads
I broke up with itunes until I upgrade to Windows 8 or whatever
I can’t remember why
oh yeah that genius thing gets on my nerves so I just said screw it
“I reckon* the growth projections will outpace actual earnings fairly quickly, mv. Jobs gave us crazy earnings for a mature company. That was his dark magic. Z”
Well Apple lost the PC battle until they were selling software on the common hardware. Even firewire tanked. Then somehow just when people were no longer amazed by non-beige PC’s Apple became to MP3’s what Sony was to the Walkman era. Then they parleyed that into their tack on multi-touch smartphones. Not much new tech, just good presentation and a way to keep customers from going to other people (iTunes, the app store). But smart phones and tablets are already pretty ubiquitous and the app hunting serendipity rush gets old after about six months of it. Unfortunately at the same time they trashed Final Cut (the video editing software they bought and made exclusive) which pretty much put Avid and Premier back into the drivers seat.
I could see them hold on for a while but I think they are running out of tricks. MS is tired too. Windows 8 is touch screeny, the xbox is trying to become a gesture controlled cable box or something, their phone OS tanked, and their real pc in a tablet with a stylus thing never panned out. Apple pretty much stole their goofily overpriced “Surface” stuff to make a cheapo version of it that eventually became a generic multi-touch that is all kinds of devices now. Gaming, movies, and TV are all trying to push 3d on a resentful audience that doesn’t like it much. Nintendo is about bring a half ass touch screen to consoles…after tablets did pretty much the same thing.
Tech is kind of in a rut. Google seems to be the most forward thinking of all of them but that’s not really saying much. I predict more expensive info services and worse quality that drives people away from the digital haze they are in because the whole thing will start to seem like a nickel and dime pain in the ass like Cable TV and long distance phone calls.
Facebook is boring and getting more annoying too. Timeline sucks. The love/hate/shun drama sucks. Being spammed by your friends trying to get a gift certificate for a free Dr pepper sucks. HR wanting to look at your facebook page sucks. Scammers using your Facebook info to break into other secure things sucks. I ignored Facebook for years and got into it last summer and now I’m ready to get right back out. I’m not everybody and my tastes are often clearly not mainstream, but I can’t see it going on like it has. Like Reddit and Digg and Slashdot, and Wired and such it will fade back to a more core audience and a lot of the hoi polloi crowd will lose interest.
“Also no suggestions to wash the meals down with Dr. Pepper.”
Ain’t no period in Dr Pepper. Why I don’t know, but it is so.
facebook is an insidious plot Mr. palaeo
so over it
OT…”Here’s What You Need To Eat To Reduce The Risk Of Dementia“
In Soviet Russia, Facebook own you!
I have no idea what that means.
Mcgehee, how’s vacation going?
I don’t do Facebook or Twitter, although I do have an account under a fake name. That way I can check up on friends, and look at people’s pictures without feeling pressured to leave such inane comments as “awwww, how cute!”, or ” so what happened with your trip to the doc about that growth on your penis thing?”
A lot of people block showing pictures or anything , except to the ‘only shares information with certain people’.
Who are probably people they see all the time, anyway.
I hope Gibson stands its ground. Because if the government does this, that’ll be the social turning point, I predict — and leftism will be shown the door.
Don’t wake the sleeping dullards.
The guitars will be torn from the hands of their owners, who may or may not be capable of reasoning to a sound conclusion as to the circumstances in which they find themselves (since, presumably, they are musicians, after all).
Some of them may think with us that the government has no business taking a guitar only on account of an (arbitrary) “claim” that the guitar contains some tiny component gotten “illegally” from a “rain forest” somewhere, and rise in revolt as a consequence of the absurdity.
On the other hand, some of these musicians may treat the manufacturer, on the word of the blessed government, as though they’d been told that the Gibson had used glue boiled out from the skin and bones of human babies in the making of the guitar, so coming to the conclusion they should pour further high praise on the holy government for saving themselves and their musical souls from committing an abomination upon mommy earth. We’re deep into the realm of religious taboo here.
Makes for a jolly war, though.
Winding down. I added three states to my life list, and visited a whole lot more of a fourth than I’d previously done. We’ll be getting home in a few days and the lawn I mowed just before we left is probably #Occupying the place again by now.
That would probably be okay, as long as they were like aborted fetus.
Or white Hispanics…
Aaron Worthing is outed and worse.
Heh, motionview, that’s some tasty serendipity right there. Brett Kimberlin, activist-musician! Or, “speedway bomber”, “convicted terrorist”, “Wizard of Odd”, looney-tunes, whathaveyou.
Something should have been done about this Kimberlin fellow long ago, it seems to me.
I linked to the bit about “Worthing” on Twitter.
I know a bit about harassment from the crazy; and also about being accused in public by legal professionals of committing crimes that never took place, the only “evidence” for which was unnamed victims, reluctant (and unnamed) counsel for said victims, un-reproduced missives, and mystery letters that were somehow lost in the mail.
But Aaron got the worst of it.
Death Threat!
Who is Kimberlin? Can I get an executive summary?
I wouldn’t go so far as to compare your past antagonists with Kimberlin, Jeff. He might take offense.
/pragmatic “conservative”
Googling “Speedway Bomber” leads to this link, among others.
Thanks, McGehee. I’ll go read.
Well. This guy is a real piece of work. How did he manage not to get shanked in prison, I wonder?
At heart, apparently he’s a conman. The murder-for-hire and the bombings were an attempt to diversify.
Sure. Collateral damage can happen to anyone.
“The guitars will be torn from the hands of their owners, who may or may not be capable of reasoning to a sound conclusion as to the circumstances in which they find themselves (since, presumably, they are musicians, after all). ”
Since one of the tearees may be Ted Nugent, this could be even more interesting than usual…..