It will have a higher gross weight, more fuel, and an upgraded engine (an F-414 replacing the F-404), and the demonstrator flying in late 2008.
It should be an impressive aircraft.
Month: September 2007
Bear Stearns On the Path to Sale or Dissolution
Joseph Lewis has acquired a 7 percent stake in Bear Stearns.
You will see more of this, and I stand by prediction that by August 2, 2008, Bear Stearns will no longer exist as an independent entity.
Kevin Everett’s Condition Takes a Surprise Turn for the Better
He is able to move is arms and legs to some degree, which at this early stage is very promising.
The medical treatment was interesting:
Green said the key was the quick action taken by Cappuccino to run an ice-cold saline solution through Everett’s system that put the player in a hypothermic state. Doctors at the Miami Project have demonstrated in their laboratories that such action significantly decreases the damage to the spinal cord due to swelling and movement.
It is apparently a fairly new treatment.
This is Called Listening to Your Generals, I guess
The UK delayed their withdrawal from Basra because of American political pressure.
“In April we could have come out and done the transition completely and that would have been the right thing to do but politics prevented that,” Bashall, 44, told the paper.
“The Americans asked us to stay for longer,” he said, adding the decision to stay in the city was a result of “political strategy being played out at highest level.”
What Cheney wants, Cheney gets.
Today’s Typographical Screwup
Nortrhop Grummen gets Head Start on US Navy BAMS contest
Not to be confused with Norbert Grunion, the famed Boomerang fish thrower.
Swedish navy’s stealth corvette HMS Nykoping (K 34)
The Swedish Visby class corvette showed up at the DSEi defense systems and equipment international London. It looks cool:
That being said, I’m rather dubious of the merits of full on stealth for surface combatants.
Given the harsh environment (spray, etc.) and the fact that some inexpensive radars can find the wake of ships, I’m not sure that it means a whole lot.
Of course, the real stealth ships, submarines, have been around for nearly 100 years now.
Funny
Clickable Image.
Self Hating Gay Republican Update
This is from Counterpunch.org, which is a highly controversial source. That being said, Mike Rogers of Blog Active and Down with Tyranny also confirm this, so there is backup.
It looks like two more conservative ‘family values’ Republican senators may be ‘outed’ soon. Mike Rogers, the same blogger who originally fingered Craig, claims that South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham is gay.
This has got to be the worst kept secret in Washington, D.C., it’s common knowledge in the Baltimore area too.
Howie Klein meanwhile claims that, ‘Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s quick expulsion from the Army—for fondling a private’s privates—is finally being discussed in Kentucky.’ He notes that McConnell, discharged after just 10 days in the Army in 1967, ‘has consistently prevented anyone from seeing his military discharge papers’ but a Freedom of Information suit may bring them to light.
To be fair, even if the reason for discharge is true, McConnell might not be gay.
If I were a draftee in 1967, and I were given the choice to go to Viet Nam, or pretending to be gay, I might very well go that route to stay out of Nam.
I make no claims to personal bravery. Had I not been exempt from the draft by reason of being 5 years old, I probably would have kissed my CO full on the lips to stay out of South East Asia.
Of course, I’m not sure that an admission of cowardice would help good the distinguished gentlemen from Kentucky.
FWIW, taking down McConnell needs to be a priority, as payback for going after Daschle*, which was unprecedented.
*Truth be told, I’m glad that Harry Reid is now in control of the Senate. On his worst day, he’s better than Daschle on his best day.
Cops Who Merit the Title “Pig”
You have to love this, a police officer arrested and charged a woman with serving him an excessively salty burger.
This man is a pig, period, full stop.
Petraeus US surge has ‘not worked out’, Just Not to Congress
Well, here is no surprise, Bush’s hand picked stalking hours on Iraq, David Petraeus is saying that the surge has not worked out in a letter to troops in his command.
General David Petraeus, the commander of United States forces in Iraq, admitted on Friday that sending 30 000 more troops into the war zone in January had failed to yield the desired results. “It has not worked out as we had hoped,” the general said.
The acknowledgement by Petraeus that the situation in Iraq is “exceedingly complex” and that progress had been “uneven” came on the eve of his testimony to Congress on the state of the war. He offered the assessment in a letter to US forces serving in Iraq that was obtained by the Washington Post.
Not quite what he said before congress, huh.
Too True
“
This applies particularly to the Bush Dog Democrats.
A Good View of the Coming Downturn
Nouriel Roubini has a very bleak picture of where the US economy is going. He is predicting a 15% drop in house prices in the nest two years (I predict at least that much), and there is downward pressure on auto sales and other consumer spending.
And then there is this:
Unfortunately, financial globalization together with securitization and mushrooming of complex credit instruments has lead to greater opacity and less transparency in the financial system. And this lack of transparency breeds unmeasurable uncertainty rather than priceable risk. Risk can be priced as you have a distribution of probabilities on various events. But unmeasurable uncertainty causes higher risk aversion under conditions of market distress. This generalized uncertainty is now coming from two sources: first, we do not know the size of the overall losses in credit markets: sub-prime alone could lead to losses of $100 billion or much higher depending on how much home prices will fall. And other losses from other illiquid financial instruments remain unmeasured in a world where institutions were marking to model rather than marking to market and where credit rating agencies were mis-rating complex credit instruments. Second, as securitization implies that financial risks have been spread out of banks and to the corners of the global financial system we do not know which firms are holding the toxic waste and thus which firms will go belly up next. It is like walking blind in a minefield where you have no idea of where the mines are. This uncertainty breeds large fear – after the massive greed of the previous credit and asset bubble has now burst – and lack of trust of financial counterparties, even otherwise respected ones: everyone want to hoard liquidity and hold the safest assets as even large financial institutions do not trust each other and are unwilling to lend to each other. This greater opacity of financial globalization and securitization implies that the re-pricing of risk that we have observed in the last few weeks is a permanent rather than a transitory phenomenon. And the sharp spike in the cost of credit will further weaken an already weakened economy. This is thus the first real crisis of the new world of financial globalization and securitization.
Translated into ordinary English, he’s saying that the global finance system has become so opaque and so byzantine that risks cannot be evaluated and assets cannot be valued. The world financial system is no better than a game of 3 card Monte.
It Should Surprise No one that We Have a Claim of Torture Here
Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged “20th Hijacker” claims that his admissions were coerced.
He has recanted his confession, and claimed beatings and other torture.
You know the normal stuff for people detained by US forces:
….included being beaten, restrained for long periods in uncomfortable positions, threatened with dogs, exposed to loud music and freezing temperatures and stripped nude in front of female personnel…..
When did the US become a nation of sadistic torturers anyway?
BTW, this treatment is largely confirmed:
The investigation led by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt confirmed, among other things, that al-Qahtani was forced to wear women’s underwear, was threatened with dogs, and kept in solitary confinement for 160 days. At one point, he was interrogated for 18-20 hours per day on 48 of 54 days.
Schmidt concluded, however, that while the treatment was abusive it was within policy and not torture because he was not denied food, water or medical care, and interrogators did not inflict physical pain on him.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt should spend the next 5-10 years under the confinement of the UN court in the Hague. Those who actually authorized this should be placed in a hole so deep that they never Ever see sunlight again.
“We don’t torture”, my ass. Osama bin Laden has defeated us, and these pukes running Guantanamo and other US Gulags don’t even know that they are his most effective operatives.
In Which I get Completely Owned
Remember my frothing at the mouth post about Religious nutjobs trying to marry off their teen daughters and collect a bride price?
It turns out that I’ve been subjected to complete Pwn463*. Yep, I have been completely Pwn3d.
It was a hoax site, and I got taken in.
On the internet, no one knows if you are a dog.
Arf Arf.
*Ownage.
I Have Become Incapable of Perceiving Sarcasm
Michael Lewis, the author of , has an essay, A Wall Street Trader Draws Some Subprime Lessons.
His treatise? This is what happens when you lend money to poor people.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out if he’s joking or not.
I read it, and I was incensed, and then I thought, “What wonderful snark”, and then I thought, “I hear Republican talking points like this all the time.”
Either he’s got one of the blackest hearts on wall street*, or a marvelous sense of snark, in which case I am completely pwn3d†.
I just can’t tell which.
For the sake of the world I hope that it’s pwnage.
*Which is saying something.
†Owned
Remember What I Said About Currency?
I said that an downturn would force the Fed to push interest rates down, and that this would hose the dollar, leading to a falling dollar, and from there import driven inflation, as the cheap crap we buy from Chins becomes more expensive. Well, Richard X. Bove, a respected analast for Punk Ziegel & Co.has just written the same thing.
He’s saying that cutting interest rates to help salvage mortgage lenders will not save them because, “Lower interest rates will send the dollar into a tailspin and wreak havoc in the job market.”
Nice catch 22, but it gets worse, Chinese inflation is surging, it just hit 6.5%, the highest rate in 11 years.
This means that their central bank is going to have to boost interest rates, which will strengthen the Yuan.
Of note, food was a primary component, 18.2% year over year (Pork 49, cooking oil 34.6 %, eggs 23.6 %, fresh vegetables 22.5 %), and this will lead to civil unrest, probably to coincide with the Olympics, unless they reign this in aggressively.
This is going to get ugly.
And The Winner for Whiskey Foxtrot Tango is….
Clickable image.
Ted Olson???? Ted F*&^ing OLson????
Remember when I said that the next Attorney General nominee would be a big f&%$ you to congress?
Well, it does not get any more childish and petulent than Theodore Olson, who is now the front runner to get the nod.
Olson has lied under oath, repeatedly, he has no concept of the rule of law.
Barbie Electric Chair School Science Fair Project
The young lady who performed this bit of educational enrichment deserves major props.
Lying Right Wing Journamalist Finally Admits It
Well, Judith Miller, aka “The Queen of Iraq”, has joined the Manhattan institute, a bunch or right wing, lying, racist scumbags.
She should feel right at home.