No big surprise there, though this is this is the Iraqi Government* Report.
Turns out that without their mercenaries, the State Department is on lockdown in Iraq. They have suspended all land travel.
It also appears that rules of engagement given by State to Blackwater appear to be rather close to “shoot first and ask questions later.”
*Yes, I know that “Iraqi Government is an oxymoron”.
Or at least it is when you combine it with “self regulation”, because Dole has recalled 5,058 bags of salad mix.
More bad E Coli. Of note, a lot of this is literally bulls^%$, or at least cow waste, and these strains of E Coli are not natural for cows. It’s when we feed them a corn laden diet that their digestive tract was never designed to handle, their waste becomes hyper acidic, and this pathogen loves these conditions.
I came across this in Aviation Week’s “Washington Outlook” news sumary:
During last year’s fighting in Lebanon, the Syria listening post monitored private cell phone conversations from Israeli soldiers that gave Hezbollah enough information to locate and identify ground units even though Israeli military radios remained secure.
They let their soldiers go into battle wearing cell phones???? They let their soldiers use them?
What the hell were they thinking? Even if the phone is “off” you can turn it on remotely (it’s a method of bugging people).
They let their soldiers carry emitters that painted targets on their backs!!
LM is claiming that they can save money by “streamline” testing by using lessons from the F-22.
This is bulls*&%.
What they are really saying is that they are behind schedule and over budget, and that they are going to attempt to field these aircraft without proper testing in order to save money and time.
It is a request for a bailout, with shortcomings being fixed under a later cost plus contract.
Truth be told, I could see these entering civil aviation as weather radars too, and with a bit of software, you could put it on a cruise missile, and you could follow terrain, and jam radars searching for you.
The PicoSar(Shown below) weighs less than 25 pounds and is about the size of a toaster.
It has a range of about 12 miles and can track ground targets, and it appears to run cool enough that it does not need liquid cooling.
With some decent software, you could probably gang a bunch of these together for better resolution, or use it for stealthy radar antenna.
I’m waiting for someone to apply a low performance (cheap) version of this technology to satellite TV receivers. It could adjust to gusts in fractions of a second.
Big surprise this, the office of special counsel which was tasked with investigating Karl Rove’s various corrupt misdeeds, will have to curtail operations because they have no money to operate.
It appears that Special Counsel Scott Bloch turned in his budget before the investigation.
Bloody typical.
It should come as no surprise that the ACLU is supporting Senator Craig’s attempt to withdraw his guilty plea.
Additionally, there is a good point made by the ACLU:
Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director, argued that police sting operations sometimes trap innocent people. He said police must show that sex was to occur in public, not just that someone was soliciting sex.
“If the police really want to stop people from having sex in public bathrooms, they should put up a sign banning sex in the restroom and send in a uniformed officer to patrol periodically,” Romero said.
Let’s be clear if crude come ons were a crime, the cops would be arresting 20% of the people in your average singles hangout bar.
Congressman Rep. Jim Ramstad (MN-03) To Retire is not running for reelection.
Expect to see a lot more of these. There are those who don’t want to lose, and there are those who are unhappy with being in the minority again, and (of course) those under investigation.
This is weird. Thomas Kontogiannis, who has already admitted to bribing disgraced former Republican Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham was out on bail and money laundering, and as such he was not supposed to leave the country.
It turns out that he did leave the country, he went to a vacation resort in Greece, and the judge was ready to revoke bail and to lock him up, when an assistant U.S. Attorney said at a hearing this morning that the man’s recent trip to Greece was at the direction of federal agents.
This is beyond weird.
I’m wondering if someone in the DoJ wanted to send Kontogiannis a message about not fingering too many Republicans, and thought that they could do so more easily in Greece.
Honestly, I think that Reid has spent way too much time being too accommodating to Republicans. He’s given them repeated opportunities to support phony withdrawal bills.
I don’t know why he is now saying that the negociations are off. This is without warning.
One wonders why the abrupt change in position:
Some possibilities:
My guess is the last one.
Cool.
Needless to say, I will be checking out Krugman’s columns, and commenting on them regularly.
For Maureen Dowd and David Brooks? Not so much.
Well Charlie, aka “the human metronome”, just got a belated birthday gift from his friend Jonathan, one of those simple electronic drum kits.*
Unfortunately, it was literally screwed into the cardboard box, and the drum sticks were kept in place with some rather tight wire ties.
I did what I was supposed to, using some shears to clip the wire ties, but in attempting to gain purchase, the shears slipped, and I punctured my left thumb. It bled for about ½ hour, though it was not particularly painful.
Whoever came up with these packaging schemes should be staked to an anthill by their tongue.
*No headphone jack, or MIDI port, or any such, but thankfully, Charlie is good about keeping the volume down.
Note: 100 Basis Points is 1%.
The dollar is now $1.3972:€
Note the spike that happened as soon as the Fed announced at 2:15 (Times are in GMT), so 6:15 GMT is 2:15 EDT).
I think that we got the worst of both worlds today, the currency traders care if the fed slashes rates, but mortgages, commercial paper, and interbank lenders don’t.
Matthew Yglesias makes a very interesting point, that it is in fact in the Democrats best interest NOT to get out of Iraq.
Basically:
As the other Matt puts it:
But given that Republicans aren’t doing what everyone expected them to do and reducing their political exposure on Iraq by winding the war down, Democrats are disinclined to go out on a limb to do it for them.
That being said, we should still get out, and we should do so today.
Republicans may not give a damn about government doing right by its citizens, but Democrats should.
One wonders though, why the Republicans are being so self destructive? Did Karl Rove get pictures of all of them in the Minneapolis airport bathroom or something?
Thankfully, it’s not my lender, but American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. is bouncing property checks in Baltimore City and Baltimore County.
Over 100 Grand so far, and this is the camel’s nose under the tent.
In addition to everything else, there is going to be a lot of unpaid property tax at the local level, and falling assessments, putting cities and counties in a cash crunch.
Thank you Alan Greenspan.
Here is where we get to fish or cut bait time. The Iraqi Government* has told Blackwater to get out, and has suspended their license to operate.
This is not surprising. They are a bunch of trigger happy goons who have immunity from Iraqi law and the military’s UCMJ.
The interesting thing here is that Blackwater, nor (IIRC) any of of the other mercenaries employed by the US, are operating under an Iraqi license.
On the other hand, Blackwater is operating under a State Department contract, and while this may give them a measure of diplomatic immunity, it also allows them to be declared personae non grata, and forced to leave the country.
My guess is that Malaki will be told to pound sand, and thus the government will be revealed to be a puppet of the US formed primarily to allocate oil resources to American oil companies.
*Yes, I know that “Iraqi Government” is currently an oxymoron.
Chocolate with bacon?
Tekeli-Li!!!!!! Tekeli-Li!!!!!!
Applewood smoked bacon + Alder smoked salt + deep milk chocolate
Deep milk chocolate coats your mouth and leads to the crunch of smoked bacon pieces. Surprise your mouth with the smoked salt and sweet milk chocolate combination.
Crisp, buttery, compulsively irresistible bacon and milk chocolate combination has long been a favorite of mine. I started playing with this combination at the tender age of six while eating chocolate chip pancakes drenched in maple syrup. Beside my chocolate-laden cakes laid three strips of fried bacon, just barely touching a sweet pool of maple syrup. Just a bite of the bacon was too salty and yearned for the sweet kiss of chocolate syrup. In retrospect, perhaps this was a turning point, for on that plate something magical happened: the beginnings of a combination so ethereal and delicious that it would haunt my thoughts until I found the medium to express it–chocolate.
–KatrinaShelf Life: 3 months
Gluten free
41% cacao, 3oz.
This is just wrong.
Good news, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England has told the Air Force to Sod off.
The Airforce wanted to manage all UAVs that operated over 3500 feet. That’s right all of them, Army, Navy, Marines, etc.
They wanted to run the contracts, for basically anything larger than a hand launched short range system.
The army, quite logically said that the USAF does a piss-poor job supporting people on the ground. They just don’t give a damn, hence the inanity of the USAF drawing up its own counterinsurgency manual, which basically says, bomb everything that moves*.
While there are some economies gained from merging programs, Congress has pressured the DoD to merge USAF Predator and Army Warrior unmanned aerial system (UAS) programs for this reason, absent real duplication, and positive proof that the USAF if the ONLY service that can efficiently manage the system, any mergers should cut against the fly boys from Colorado Springs.
*Come to think of it, that’s pretty much their answer to everything.
Jack Hanna, flamingo trapped in airport turnstile – CNN.com.
Consider this an open thread.
Well, Rich Toscano does it again, with a series of charts that reflect how bad things are in San Diego.
Yep, you read that chart right, notices of default (NOD) are higher than house sales. Notices of trustee sales (NOT—Foreclosure auctions), and real estate owned (REO, basically no one would buy at the foreclosure auction) are skyrocketing too.
Truth be told, San Diego was one of the 10-20 most over heated markets in the country, but it’s effects are nationwide.
You see accelerated NOD, NOT, and REO levels in places as “un-overheated” as Toledo, and you see people who have used their equity in overheated markets to make investment and vacation home purchases in cheaper areas, which inflate prices everywhere.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in particular, and the mortgage resale market in particular, have made real estate markets more national, and even global.
