From the Loony Bin…

Posted on December 19, 2014 by Canada Bill Jones

Our enemies thank you for your Cuban order.

Lunatic with brain-surgery haircut 1, US First Amendment 0

A Few Days’ Worth of Daily Drivel

New York Governor Cuomo: Your sex change operation should be compliments of the taxpayer.
Latest Pew Research Center poll: Were CIA’s interrogation methods justified? Yes, 51% to 29%.
McDonald’s (ticker MCD) might be next stock Bill Ackman will cry about.
Twitter CEO’s family trusts dump rest of stock.
That was quick: Insider trading case might get tossed after last week’s appellate court’s decision.
Avenue Capital is anything but distressed about shaky energy credits.
Jeez, sorry: Johns Hopkins accidentally sends acceptance letters to 294 early decision rejects.
Turning a blind eye pays well: The man who ruined baseball gets annual pension of $6 million.

Michelle Obama to Star in Remake of Memento

Posted on December 18, 2014 by Canada Bill Jones

Michelle Obama in Target: Does she remember what really happened?

The Sony hack may have spoiled the surprise of the First Lady’s budding movie career. Bud Fox News has learned that among the studio’s leaked documents are emails from a top movie producer discussing Michelle Obama’s star turn in an upcoming role-reversal remake of Memento, a thriller released in 2000 about a man with no short-term memory who is searching for his wife’s killer. And if the First Couple’s recent interview with People magazine (to be published this Friday) is any indication, Mrs. Obama must be a method actress already in character because her memory seems to be playing tricks on her. In the interview, according to ABC News, Mrs.Obama asserted that living in the White House has not completely shielded her from racial slights: Continue reading →

Stephen Glass, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, and Jessica Pressler to Launch “Fact or Fiction?” Video Game

Posted on December 17, 2014 by Canada Bill Jones

“Journalists” Glass, Erdely and Pressler will dare you to find the truth in their new video game Fact or Fiction?

Stephen Glass, who literally wrote the book on how to lie as a journalist (it’s called The Fabulist); Sabrina Rubin Erdely, whose retracted gang rape article in this month’s Rolling Stone suggests a cult member’s lack of objectivity, and Jessica Pressler, who has so little journalistic street smarts that she believed a high schooler who claimed to have amassed $72 million by trading stocks are teaming up to launch a video game called Fact or Fiction? Readers will compete for cash prizes by finding the truthful passages hidden throughout news articles, which otherwise will be be nothing but a pack of lies designed to generate page views and advance political agendas. Continue reading →

From the Loony Bin…

Posted on December 15, 2014 by Canada Bill Jones

Senator Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren shows her crazy-person hand signal for “I Will Beat Hillary.”

Bud’s Round-up of Daily Drivel…

Revealed: The Real Reason for New Fence at NYC Mayor’s Mansion

Posted on December 15, 2014 by Canada Bill Jones

The reason for this eyesore of a fence at the mayor’s house? (Photo: http://www.nydailynews.com)

So you can’t see that Al Sharpton has taken over the place! (Photo: http://www.nypost.com)

New York City Mayor Bill “Sandinista!” de Blasio just completed a baffling bit of home improvement to the mayor’s official residence. According to the New York Post:

Mayor Bill de Blasio, a self-declared progressive “man of the people,” has erected a massive new “privacy fence” to keep his constituents from looking in on Gracie Mansion.

There are at least two competing theories for why the mayor put up the fence. According to the same Post article, there’s speculation that de Blasio “…demanded the extension because he was sick of nosy people in Carl Schurz Park peeping in while he hung out in the yard.” The New York Daily News, however, suggests that the mayor’s security chief lobbied for the new addition “in the wake of White House fence jumpers.” That the Daily News was actually willing to print such an explanation suggests that the newspaper is actually the marketing arm of the de Blasio administration. Continue reading →

Federal Appeals Court: Insider Trading Is A-OK

Posted on December 13, 2014 by Canada Bill Jones

From Steven Cohen’s art collection: This shark is in a tank…

…and this one is now legit!

If fear of prison was the only thing stopping you from trying to get rich on insider trading, then a federal appeals court just gave you the green light. On Wednesday, a three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan gave a thumbs-up to market manipulation by unanimously throwing out the insider trading convictions of former hedge fund analysts Todd Newman and Anthony Chiasson. The duo were convicted of trading on tips disseminated by a network of analysts. At the original trial, judge Richard Sullivan told the jury that it could convict Newman and Chiasson if prosecutors proved that the accused knew the tips weren’t public and that the leak violated a fiduciary duty.

In great news to ethically-challenged stock traders everywhere, the appeals court deemed those jury instructions incorrect. Although the appeal took about a day longer than anticipated because the judges granted a recess during market hours to allow the litigants to trade their personal accounts, the result never really appeared in doubt. As reported by the New York Post yesterday, the newest best friends of financial scammers ruled that: Continue reading →

Pusillanimous Harvard Prof. Picks Fight with Immigrant Mom and Pop Business

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Sir Jams Fishpaste

Edelman: Professor of the Internet batting down pop-ups between tirades on Small Biz

Yesterday, Boston.com broke an important story in the ongoing saga of American class warfare, found here. In a disheartening show of douche -baggery, Harvard Professor Ben “I’m a Twit” Edelman decided he should use all his “high learning” to deliver a course in “Ben-Ed”; that is, teach a simple bar manager, Ran Duan (whose immigrant parents founded Sichuan Garden Chinese Restaurant in Boston) a big lesson in false advertising.

The short story is this: Edelman ordered what he thought was about 53 bucks of food but to his utter shock, found he paid something like $57 upon examining the receipt. The culprit: out-of-date menu prices on the website. The pedantic and punctilious Edelman (some kind of Professor of the Internet, according to his bio) then engaged in a testy back and forth via e-mail with Messr. Duan wherein he demanded 3x damages ($12) for the inconvenience. Continue reading →

Columbia University Law School Students Can Delay Finals If Traumatized by Recent Grand Jury Verdicts?!

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Canada Bill Jones

At Columbia, lefty lawyers-in-training are really learning their craft.

According to the Powerlineblog.com website, Robert Scott, the interim dean of Columbia University’s Law School, sent a message to students informing them that those sufficiently traumatized by the grand jury verdicts in the Michael Brown (aka Ferguson) and Eric Garner (Staten Island “chokehold”) cases could petition the law school to postpone their final exams. Here’s the key passage of Scott’s supposed message:

The law school has a policy and set of procedures for students who experience trauma during exam period. In accordance with these procedures and policy, students who feel that their performance on examinations will be sufficiently impaired due to the effects of these recent events may petition Dean Alice Rigas to have an examination rescheduled.

Oh, c’mon, let’s not discriminate against students who might be traumatized by other recent events; such an oversight would be unfair. Take, for example, law school students who are fans of Charles Manson. If they didn’t get an invitation to his upcoming wedding, they must be emotionally devastated. Can they apply for an exam delay? Heck, during the Christmas season, sorry- I meant holiday season, what with dysfunctional family dinners and the like, most Columbia law students are probably distraught about something. The most mature course of action is for the administration to cancel exams and give students randomly assigned grades using some sort of “disparate impact” racial quota system blessed by a special-interest-group-obsessed psychologist. Continue reading →

“EBITDA”: Financial Expression of the Day

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Sir Jams Fishpaste

EBITDA: Acronym, Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization.

Pronunciation Guide: The first rule in using this financial shibboleth is knowing how to say it correctly; it is pronounced strictly as two words with three syllables: /ē-bit dah/. Pronouncing as one word followed by two letters is also acceptable: /ē-bit D-A/. It is not advisable to pronounce the term in any other way. Some southerners, and some corporate CFO’s who came up the ranks with an accounting background (rather than the more astute Wall Street pedigree) have been heard to say /ēbiduh/ or /ehbiduh/. This betrays an amateurish knowledge of high finance and will engender snickers and silent chuckles from the white shoe financier. For example, George “Dubya” Bush might say to Dick Cheney: “Boy Dicky, I misunderestimated how much ēbiduh Haliburton would produce with all yer kickbacks!” Continue reading →