Romney is cutting back on TV ads. Current thinking is that they are out of money after spending all that money on the Iowa straw poll.
Romney’s strength has always been his fund raising. If his cash on hand is depleted, this will be a major blow when quarterly reports come out.
From the Boston Globe: Carrier relaunches jets after 2 years.
Russia is rearming and developing a more aggressive military posture, and it seems to be primarily in response to the fact that US leaders are batsh%$ insane.
It appears that India’s Tejas fighter is not meeting performance specs. It’s take off thrust and low speed performance with the US F-404 engine is lacking.
This is surprising, since the F-404 is a very known quantity, it’s been flying for 25 years, and one must assume that this is an issue of problems of engine integration/inlet design.
The F-404 was intended as an interim engine, but:
The failure has been attributed to insufficient available thrust from the aircraft’s General Electric F404 engine, and underlines India’s need to replace the US design with the Kaveri powerplant now under development by its Gas Turbine Research Establishment. In common with the wider Tejas programme, the Kaveri project has been dogged by development delays and cost escalations, which have forced New Delhi to order additional F404s to power its initial production batch of lightweight fighters.
It sounds like the Arjun all over again.
What’s more, it now appears that they are having problems with the radar:
New Delhi in mid-August announced a co-operative agreement under which its defence industry will develop the aircraft’s multi-mode radar with Israel Aerospace Industries’ Elta Systems subsidiary.
….
The initiative will replace previous work conducted by the Bangalore-based Electronics and Radar Development Establishment, with technical hitches having prevented a radar design from being integrated with a prototype Tejas.
Antony says the new fire-control radar is needed to support demonstration flights of the fully developed and armed fighter from 2010, and Israeli sources reveal that the sensor will be a further development of Elta’s EL/M-2052 active electronically scanned array.
So, they have just dumped an indigenous system for a largely developed system.
It appearsthat a seven-year-old Muslim boy was flagged as a terrorist, and prevented from visiting the US.
Why?
A 39-year-old Pakistani man of that name was arrested in New York two months after the terror attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001.
He was never charged with any terrorism offences, although he was convicted of fraud for having false papers and deported.
He is seeking compensation from the U.S. government, claiming to have been beaten up by guards during more than a year in detention.
It’s reasonable for a name to be flagged. What’s is unconscionable is that they cannot distinguish between a 7 year old from with a British passport, and a 39 year old Pakistani.
Considering the nature of the 911 terrorists, they were all fairly well to do, one wonders if might have just created a future terrorist.
Well, here’s a quick lowdown on financial news.Foreclosures in the US rise 9% June to July, and 93% YoY. House prices are no longer rising, so people cannot sell to get out from under.
This has put a more general squeeze on credit, so companies are increasingly unable to get credit for expansion or even normal operations. Commercial paper, and the bond markets are moving less than George Bush after eating a pretzel, with results like this:
The money quote here is, “The market for investment-grade bonds — or money lent to companies with great credit — has virtually stopped for the past few weeks“.
Normally, I find the distinguished Mr. Willis to be right on the money, but he just blogged about Norv Turner being hired by the Chargers as head coach at San Diego, and he said, “I am wishing nothing but total and absolute failure to the worst coach in Redskins history, Norv Turner“. (Wapo Story)
All I can figure is that Mr. Willis has not been following the Redskins for as long as I have (I moved to Charlottesville, VA in 1969, and we have been a Washington family ever since).
I can conclusively say that any coach who had Christian Adolph “Sonny” Jurgensen III at QB, and did not get a ring is far worse than Norv turner, and I am including the moron George Allen, Sr. who left the Redskins with no first round draft picks for something like seven years.
Lombardi, of course, gets a pass, because he died before he could get them to the big show.
Or, more accurately, he wants it more than his he wants to disappoint his campaign contributors in the US insurance industry, because he’s doing his level best to make sure that children don’t get medical care.
First, he threatens to veto improvements to SCHIP, and now he’s crippling the existing program.
This article praises him for reaching across the aisle to right wingers.
I understand that he can’t be Paul Wellstone, but we need no more Liebermans.
Cases in point:
So he’s a lying sack of excrement DINO Dem, but I repeat myself.
Note that his re-election is a priority of the DCCC, so I would suggest that you give either directly to the candidates, or someone like Act Blue.
FWIW, any DCCC money going to him is largely wasted anyway. Last time, he ran against a guy who was being sued for choking his mistress. Won’t happen again.
The DCCC should not throw good money after bad.
See also Down With Tyranny on this if you want get a better written take on the situation.
If a member of the DCCC wants to dispute this, I’ll publish it, unedited.
NOT!!!!
We already know that Bush and His Evil Minions™ did not want the general testifying publicly before congress, and that the so called “Petraeus Report” is really being written by white house hacks, but now we are supposed to believe that his testimony being scheduled on 911 is just a coincidence.
I want to stop living in “The Onion” world.
It appears that Paramount and Dreamworks are going HD DVD.
This is a switch for Paramount, which had supported both.
There are really two reasons for this, HD-DVD is a lot cheaper, $299 vs $499, and there are more HD-DVD players in the US (not counting the Blu-Ray drives on the Sony PS3, but who wants to play a DVD on a game system that doesn’t even have a remote>).
I have to say, this is a damn find lede.
Blowing up the Lab on Wall Street
By Richard BookstaberLooks like Wall Street’s mad scientists have blown up the lab again. The subprime mess that is cutting so wide a swath through financial markets can be traced to the alchemy of creating collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) compounded by the enormous amount of leverage applied by big hedge funds. CDOs are derivatives — synthetic financial instruments derived from another asset.
His point is that Wall Street has created instruments so leveraged, and so removed from reality that people are literally spending billions on nothing at all.
The cause for this, to me anyway, Mr. Bookstaber* does not make this point, is that the systematic dismantling of the FDR era banking and securities regulations have allowed this to happen.
It’s human nature to go for a quick buck, and to believe that the good times never end, and the deregulation of banking and securities has had this predictable result.
*Isn’t that name almost Dickensian in character?
Finally, the American Psychological Association come out against torture.
The American Psychological Association has ruled that psychologists can no longer be associated with several interrogation techniques that have been used against terrorism prisoners in US custody. The methods are immoral, psychologically damaging and counterproductive in eliciting useful information, they say.
Psychologists who witness interrogators using mock executions, simulated drowning, sexual and religious humiliation, stress positions or sleep deprivation are required to intervene to stop such abuse. They must report the activities to superiors and report the involvement of any other psychologists to the association. It may strip those professionals of their memberships.
I’m not sure whether to be heartened that they have taken action, or to be depressed that it’s taken 5 years for them to reach the obvious conclusion that waterboarding, chaining people in excruciating positions, subjecting them to heat and cold, etc. is a bad thing psychologically.
This actually may have significance, because in a number of US states, membership in the APA is required to hold a license.
CNN has a story on how the Subprime* meltdown is Subprime hitting high-end homes.
I think that the story is fairly “cry me a river”, for rich people, but there is an interesting graphic.
The idea here is that Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac cannot fund home loans over $417K, so these so-called “Jumbo” loans carry a larger interest rate.
While Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac are the largest mortgage resellers, it’s not their size, or their ability to negotiate a good deal that gets the lower rate (at least not most of it).
It’s that both of them are GSE (Government Sponsored Entities), chartered by the federal government.
What this means is that while they are private corporations, and owned by shareholders, and both have publicly traded shares, there is the implication, and only the implication, that in the event that they were to become insolvent, then the government would bail them out.
Most of the difference in rates between conforming and jumbo loans is simply this fact, and all of the change relative to one another in the past few months is due to this implicit government guarantee of payment.
This gap has gone from about 0.2% to about 0.7% because people have little confidence in private financial markets, and this appears to be continuing and accellerating.
*As I’ve said before, it’s not just Subprime
Elvira Arellano, who has been claiming sanctuary in a church for about a year has been arrested.
I understand that a number of people on either side of the issue will either see her as a victim of a system that would separate her from her son, or as a law breaker hiding behind that same son. (Truth be told, I’m on the harsher side of this)
The bigger picture has nothing to do with immigration or children. It has to do with the fact that federal, state, and local authorities allowed a church to grant her sanctuary.
The idea of Church as sanctuary from law enforcement is a throwback to established religions in Europe, and something that the founding fathers specifically wanted to eliminate.
I would argue that when a church wants to claim “sanctuary” society, and law enforcement in particular, is under a specific obligation to seize that person with all deliberate speed.
Ben Bernanke has now said that his concern is market stability, and not inflation.
It happens that it looks like the inflation numbers that he works with are completely bogus:
One of the “secrets” to Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan’s success as Fed chairman, was that he successfully pushed for adjustments to the consumer price index (CPI) to lower the reported inflation rate.
Right now, we are generally reporting an inflation rate of less than 3%.
There has been an agreement between the Fed and the government to understate inflation for some time. The justification is that it makes everyone look good, and allows for stealth cuts for entitlements.
The Christian Science Monitor has an article on the US Air Force looking at developing a mach 6+ hypersonic missile.
Though they bury the lede, they do get to the point:
“The [Air Force] today is looking for ways to become more relevant in the global war on terrorism beyond the smart bombs and the unmanned aerial vehicles it’s already providing mainly in support of ground (counterinsurgency) operations,” writes Guy Ben-Ari, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, in an e-mail.
In the fight against terrorism, the US’s most-wanted, such as Mr. bin Laden, are essentially moving targets. If bin Laden wants to have a meeting with his top lieutenants, for example, it will be called at the last minute and be short, intelligence officials say. That leaves the US military a small window in which to strike, posing a challenge to commanders and intelligence officials at the Air Force, which often oversees such operations. One option is to have missile assets in the area of the target already, perhaps by basing a bomber squadron in that region. Last year, when the Air Force zeroed in on a building where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was meeting, it was able to get two F-16C Fighting Falcon jets near the target in time to get Mr. Zarqawi, considered the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
This is about the USAF creating a weapon intended for assassination in order to gain more relevance in what looks to be the dominant mode of conflict in the next few decades.
Well, it looks like the someone gets what the RIAA is, and they’ve filed a class action suit claiming:
I would argue that all of these accusations are to be accurate, and that there is a significant benefit to society if the RIAA, and it’s equally evil twin, the MPAA, are properly labeled as the racketeers that they truly are.
They are protection operations that prey on those too weak to defend themselves, doing things like trying to browbeat a 10 year old (see article), etc.
A monetary judgment would be nice, but I want to see jail time.
The Fortune magazine editor at large asks the question that we should all be asking, “Why does Wall Street always get bailed out?“
His answer is I think in some ways inadequate. It’s more than protecting the financial system. After all, if it were just about that, some of the people behind this debacle would be kicked off Wall Street for life.
It’s about the fact that central bankers feel a need to protect “people like us”.
The subprime-mortgage-market meltdown is a classic example of the way small fry get devoured, but the whales of Wall Street get rescued. Here’s the deal: People with crummy credit who took out mortgages are being allowed to fail in record numbers. The mortgage companies that made those loans are being allowed to fail.
…
But the world’s central banks aren’t letting the big guys fail. Think of it as the Escape of the Enablers. The reason this is happening, of course, is the same reason that the Fed orchestrated a bailout of the infamous Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund a decade ago-and about 20 years ago didn’t close some of the nation’s biggest banks, even though they were effectively insolvent because unrealized losses had wiped out their capital.
It’s the “too big to fail” syndrome. In a world in which big players make incredibly large and complex deals with one another – that’s what derivatives are – regulators don’t dare let a big or important institution fail for fear that the collapse of one would lead to “cascading failures,” and other institutions wouldn’t be able to collect what the collapsed institution owed them.
….
Sure, we know that Ben and the boys will always bail out the biggies. And none of us – I think, anyway – wants the world’s financial system to implode. But I’d feel a lot better if the Street had to pay a serious price to its rescuers–say, having to fork over a big equity stake and pay a loan-shark interest rate. That way taxpayers, who are picking up the tab for the rescue, would get paid bigtime for taking on bigtime risk.
Dean Baker correctly criticizes the New York Times for mischaracterizing the nature of immigration in this article.
The Times claims that poor immigrants find far more in the way of barriers than do the rich, and rightly notes that while poor immigrants may run across the borders, “The United States much more severely restricts the flows of highly educated immigrants than less-educated immigrants, it just uses different mechanisms. In the case of highly educated immigrants, the government at least partially enforces laws that prohibit employers from hiring immigrants at wages that are lower than what citizens would be willing to work for. There are no newspapers, hospitals, universities, or law firms that bring in large numbers of undocumented professionals and pay them half of the prevailing wage in their occupation. Such an institution would almost certainly be shut down, with the employers facing prosecution.“
This is not entirely accurate either. While the poor may be smuggled across borders in the back of 18 wheelers, and the more well to do will fly in, which makes the trek for the former easier, the divide is not between rich and poor, but between workers, and “professionals”.
Programmers, engineers, and nurses (which kind of eliminates your hospital example) are routinely replaced by lower paid H1b/L1 workers, and these visas are also used to lower wages in the fields.
The divide is that people who draw up this policy (Lawyers, Economists, and other Academicians), those who belong to professions that they might want their children to go into (Doctors), and those who are needed to cheer lead these policies (Journalists), are protected.
It’s about protecting, “People like us”, more than it is about rich and poor.
Stephen Biddle, who appears (quick Google) to be one of the more reality oriented members of the foreign policy establishment, though he worked on the current “surge” policy with Petraeus, is suggesting that a British from Iraq will be ugly and violent, with Shiite forces attacking them on the way out in order to create bragging rights that they “pushed the British out”?
If what he says is true, and I am not convinced, these people already largely control Basra, and there are very real advantages to facilitating the UK exit, it’s irrelevant, because it will be a factor whenever the troops pull out.
We cannot fix what was broken in Iraq.