Month: January 2008

Taking Tips in Africa

No Comments

Well, after many years, two studies have shown that circumcision reduces AIDS transmission by about 60%. There has been anecdotal data for years.

This answers a question I’ve always had, why is the US AIDS rate relatively low when the US public health infrastructure sucks, and you have Talibaptists everywhere campaigning against condoms?

The answer is dumb luck. Through historical accident, the US probably has the highest circumcision rate this side of Israel (Moslems do it too).

Unfortunately, studying wasn’t enough. It wasn’t until last March, when the National Institutes of Health stopped the African circumcision trials—it was no longer ethical to continue them, because circumcision was clearly beneficial—that the World Health Organization and other agencies did an about-face.

The Most Banal Moment of Election 2008

No Comments

Yes, the good Reverend Gastric Bypass (Huckabee), is criticizing Captain Goodhair (Romney) because he took the skin off his chicken at a KFC before eating it.

While I agree that the skin is the best part, this is silly.

  1. You are arguing over how someone eats fried chicken.
  2. It’s not real fried chicken, its KFC.
  3. Huckabee does not eat fried chicken himself to keep his weight down.
  4. You are arguing over how someone eats fried chicken.
  5. It’s not real fried chicken, its KFC.

Dumbasses.

Bankrupt Your Company, Get a Better Paying Job Somewhere Else

No Comments

The Times has a story that has got me thinking that all of Wall Street is one giant criminal conspiracy.

People keep falling up.

High (low) points cut and pasted from the article:

  • UNDER the stewardship of Dow Kim and Thomas G. Maheras, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup built positions in subprime-related securities that led to $34 billion in write-downs last year. The debacle cost chief executives their jobs and brought two of the world’s premier financial institutions to their knees.
  • Mr. Maheras, who left his job as co-president of Citigroup’s investment bank … has had serious discussions with several investment banks, including Bear Stearns, about taking on a top management position, people who have been briefed on the situation said. And he has also been approached by investment firms willing to back him to the tune of $1 billion or more if he decides to start his own hedge fund, these people said.
  • Mr. Kim, who until this spring was a co-president at Merrill Lynch with oversight of the firm’s trading and market operations, has been crisscrossing the globe in recent months raising money for his new hedge fund, Diamond Lake Capital.
  • Zoe Cruz, the Morgan Stanley co-president who was forced to leave her job after $10.8 billion in subprime losses, has been approached by investment banks, hedge funds and private equity funds about a senior management role.
  • John Meriwether. Ousted from Salomon Brothers in 1991 for his role in a bond trading scandal, he became a co-founder of Long Term Capital Management, the hedge fund that nearly collapsed in 1998, rattling markets worldwide. He has since founded a second fund, JWM Partners, with assets of around $3 billion.
    • So he was fired for corruption, and then he went on to found LTCM, which the Federal Reserve had to structure a bail out for, and he’s got another hedged fund?
  • More recently, Brian Hunter, the energy trader at Amaranth Advisors whose disastrous bets led to the disintegration of that $9 billion hedge fund, is now advising a private equity fund called Peak Ridge on starting a hedge fund. Howard A. Rubin, a trader at Merrill Lynch, who lost $377 million in 1987, quickly landed a job at Bear Stearns, where he had a successful career.

I used to think that somehow or other, GW Bush’s history of failing upwards was the exception. It’s not. It’s the rule. Our financial markets are irredeemably corrupt.

Fallout of US Attorney Firing Scandal

No Comments

We have more politically motivated prosecutions, this time of pathologist Cyril Wecht, and that of attorney Geoff Fieger. (I’ve noted to the prosecutions in Mississippi ( here and here) and Don Siegelman before.)

In the case of Wecht:

Prosecutors plan to prove that Wecht used county resources in his private business, defrauded private clients with bogus travel invoices, and submitted falsified mileage receipts to surrounding counties. His attorneys say the charges are either false or amount to minor infractions, such as the improper use of fax machines.

The initial indictment charged 84 counts, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Stallings recently dropped more than half of them to “streamline” the case for the jury. Wecht’s attorneys called the gutted indictment signs of a rush to judgment and shoddy investigating.

In the two years since the indictment, Wecht’s attorneys have attacked prosecutors for alleged political biases, although the judge won’t allow them to argue political motives to the jury.

They have even accused the judge of bias. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied their request for a new judge while chiding Schwab for admitting 300,000 pages of documents into evidence over the objections of the defense.

So we have an intensely sloppy prosecution, over an amounts that are miniscule, they are including misuse of the office fax machine.

And the US Attorney is involved.

With Feiger, best known as Kevorkiann’s lawyer, but also a major Democratic party contributor (shades of Mississippi), you have a number of irregularities:

  • The U.S. Attorney two aids , were recused , and the Judge has had to compel the office to give the reasons to Feiger’s lawyers.
  • The size of the raid by the FBI is such that the Judge has directed the FBI to give examples of similarly sized raids.
  • Prosecutors violated rules in not getting DoJ authorization of the investigation.
  • Typically, the FEC handles such probes.

There will be decades of fallout of the corruption and politicization of the DoJ by Bush and His Evil Minions™.

France and India Define Special Nuclear Relationship

No Comments

Not much of a surprise.

Considering the American record on nuclear power, the terms over budget and behind schedule come to mind, the negotiations between France and India on nuclear power should come as no surprise.

They will get the job done right, and given the direct involvement of the French government, if the contractors screw up, they won’t go running to the government to get their money, as a number of US plants built in India have (IIRC one tied to Enron).

So, Bush’s agreement with India probably won’t generate a whole bunch of business for US companies, and it makes us less safe too…lovely.

Economics Update

No Comments

New home sales plummet. New home sales were down 26% from 2006, the biggest drop ever, surpassing the 23% decline posted of 1980.

Regulators opposes oppose increasing the GSE’s lending limit, with the director of OFHEO, James Lockhart saying, “We are very disappointed in the proposal to increase the conforming loan limit as we believe it is a mistake to do so in the absence of comprehensive GSE regulatory reform.”

I agree, the solution to too many people hanging themselves is not more rope.

Adblock


CBS News reporter Steve Croft has an interesting report on the mess on 60 minutes (click to view, but there is a 30 second ad at the beginning). Too narrow in scope, the big sh$%pile is about more than subprime.

European hedge funds are suspending redemptions.

Why India (and China) Won’t Catch Up With The West Soon

No Comments

While this article on issues with India’s procurement of a military helicopter purchase, it acutally shows a deep problem throughout Indian society that can be extrapolated to most of the emerging Asian economies. (Paid subscription required)

The illegal use of middlemen, impending 2009 elections and regional geopolitical issues are all likely to slow India’s weapons acquisition process just as the world’s industry is gaining unprecedented access to what is expected to be a $40-billion market.

India’s army is the most recent casualty. The government halted the acquisition of 197 Eurocopter AS550 C3 Fennec helicopters as replacements for 1970s-vintage Chetak and Cheetahs when allegations surfaced that middlemen had been used to seal the deal. Indian law prohibits their involvement in military procurements.

As corrupt and self-serving as the Western and Russian defense industries are, you don’t find this as the rule. It’s the exception.

In the West, they shave the rules, in much of the developing world, the rules are observed, at best, in the breach.

I think that this will present a barrier to further development at some point.

Some Interesting Insights on How Obama Gets It Wrong

No Comments

Read all 4 articles. Even if you are a big Obama supporter, they ware well worth reading.

First, as always is Paul Krugman, who teaches an important lesson, don’t pick a useless fight with someone who buys ink by the truckload. He looks at Bill Clinton’s election of 1992, and he finds the message of Barack Obama to be a classic example of people who neither know, or understand, their history.

He makes the point, an accurate one, that Clinton ran as an agent of change and an outsider from Washington, and notes that the partisanship of that era was the result of, an “all out assault from conservatives determined to use any means at hand to discredit a Democratic president”.

He makes the point that the deliberate vagueness of Clinton in his 1992 campaign was a mistake, which, “left the business of producing an actual plan until after the election”.

His warning is that, “Otherwise, even if a Democrat wins the general election, it will be 1992 all over again.”

He’s right.

Then, on Open Left, we have a number of very good critiques of Obama and his (mis)understanding of history.

First up, Paul Rosenberg explaining why the history is wrong.

In the wake of the disasterous Bush presidency there are two possible responses. One is that, just like the last time conservatives controlled the country–1920-1932–they are destroying the country. The second is that both sides are to blame. They’re both fighting, instead of solving the problems we face. Obama represents the second response, and he is, quite simply, utterly, totally and dangerously wrong. Whatever his intentions may be, action based on this worldview cannot fundamentally reverse the damage that movement conservatism has done to our country. Because of the fierceness of movement conservative opposition, his worldview demands that we change things only modestly in the grand scheme of things.

Then we have Rosenberg (again, it’s a 2-fer) explaining why it’s wrong through rhetorical analysis. He takes a typical Obama quote, “….The believer condemns the non-believer as immoral, and the non-believer chides the believer as intolerant”, and explains a very simple point: what if someone is actually intolerant? What if one side is simply wrong, and the other is right?

Some are lying. And some are telling the truth.

And when Obama condemns both equally, as equally destructive?

That’s a lie, too. However rhetorically neat it may be.

He’s arguing, effectively to my mind, that in embracing the idea that the problem is not the problem, but that the dispute is the problem, he is enabling those who would be the least moral and least tolerant and least honest amongst us.

Chris Bowers looks at Obama too, and it’s not pretty:

Second, Obama puts forth one of his central arguments that change has not happened because we are bitterly divided:

[about 5:10 in] We are looking to fundamentally change the status quo in Washington. It’s a status quo that extends beyond any particular party. And right now, that status quo is fighting back with everything it’s got, with the same old tactics that divide and district us from solving the problems that people face, whether those problems are health care that folks cannot afford or mortgage they can not pay.(…)

[about 6:40 in] We are up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents instead of coming together to make college affordable or energy cleaner.

The lack of affordable health care, the ongoing mortgage crisis, the lack of renewable energy, and the cost of college were caused by bitter partisanship? That just doesn’t make any sense to me. The failure to pass progressive solutions on all of those areas of policy might be due to partisanship, but it is due to Republicans in the Senate and the White House staunchly opposing solutions to all of these problems. Unless one believes that Republicans oppose solutions on these issues simply out of spite and resentment from the vicious attacks we Democrats have sent their way, I have a difficult time seeing how partisanship that goes beyond one party is responsible for the lack of positive legislation on these issues.

Senate FISA Vote Update

No Comments

Well, according to FDL, read the live blogging there, I cannot do justice to it, nothing is going to come out of the Senate. The ‘Phants are still blocking it.

Of interest, however, is that both Arlen Specter (R-PA) and
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) will be voting with the Democrats.

Specter, of course, makes noises, and toes the line, and Rockefeller has been the champion of retroactive telco immunity.

It’s odd.

I do not know what is going on, but this is very, very odd.

FWIW, Sens. Mark Pryor (D-AR), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) voted with the Republicans to end debate and amendments on the bill.

FWIW, Landrieu is up next year in LA, but she will lose, as the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans has ensured that.

No money to the DSCC. Give directly to races, because otherwise, it will go to folks like Pryor, Lincoln, Nelson, and Landrieu.

It’s wasted money.