Month: March 2008

Al Wynn to Resign

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Wynn is retiring, effective June.

Nominally, the reason given is that he wants to give Edwards a leg up on the general, that she does not need, but I don’t buy that.

My guess is that either he wants to get a running start on his lucrative lobbying gig, or he is doing this as a way to shaft either Donna Edwards or his constituents.

My suggestion would for O’Malley to call a special election on the same day as the general. That way Edwards has a seniority edge on the rest of the 2009 Freshman class.

Siegelman Released by Appellate Court, Will Appear Before Congress

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The Appeals court has ordered former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman released from prison pending his appeal. They overturned the ruling of his judge at trial, Mark E. Fuller, who is also a political foe of the former governor.

He’s been in custody for some time, one of the reasons that Judge Fuller has dragged his feet on releasing the transcript, without which you can’t even start filing an appeal.

Also, the House Judiciary Committee is requesting his testimony.

Guns for What?????????

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India is now giving firearms permits to men who get vasectomies.

A scheme that trades one male status symbol for another has achieved a large rise in the number of men undergoing vasectomies in a bandit-ridden region of central India.

Shivpuri district in the state of Madhya Pradesh, an overpopulated area renowned for its machismo culture, has started to offer fast-tracked gun licences for those who agree to be sterilised.

There has to be a crude joke here, but I’m not seeing it.

Remember, Stocks are Always the Best Long Term Investment

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Except, of course when they are not, as has been the case in what the Wall Street Journal so evocatively calls the Lost Decade, where stocks have provided no return over the past decade.

This is not surprising, seeing as how we are coming off a bubble, tech stocks segueing into real estate, and this is when stocks don’t do well.

Dean Baker asks the question the WSJ won’t, “What if your social security was invested in this?

The answer is that we, and our parents and grand parents, would be completely screwed.

Neat Tech: Satellite Swarms

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Basically, as opposed to launching one big satellite, like the one that the navy had to shoot down, you launch fractionated satellites, basically a cluster that orbit close to one another, and together provide the capabilities of a single larger satellite.

It means that a launch or satellite failure won’t remove the capability, though it may reduce performance somewhat.

The program is from DARPA, and it’s called “System F6” (future, flexible, fast, fractionated, free-flying spacecraft united by information exchange).

McCain Clueless on Financial Crisis

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He’s saying that, “leavint the door open“, but that really means that he doesn’t know what to do.

Not surprising, since his number one and two economic buddies are Alan Greenspan, whom McCain once famously said that if he died, he put sun glasses on him and do the Weekend and Bernie’s thing, and Phil Gramm, who spent his career making wall street safe for scam artists.

They are numbers one and two on the “who f%&$ed Wall Street up” hit parade.

Scare Quotes of the Day

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Courtesy of that communist rag, the Financial times of London, where they ask Why we should fear a McCain presidency?

It may seem incredible to say this, given past experience, but a few years from now Europe and the world could be looking back at the Bush administration with nostalgia. This possibility will arise if the US elects Senator John McCain as president in November.

Emphasis mine.

Of course, this quote is no where near as disturbing as Harold Meyerson’s in the Washington Post:

It is 3 a.m., and the stillness of the White House night is shattered by the ringing of the red phone. President John McCain, rousing himself from a deep sleep, turns on the light and picks up the receiver. A U.S. embassy in a Middle Eastern country, he is told, has been blown up, and al-Qaeda is taking credit.

McCain takes a deep breath. “Character counts, my friend,” he says. “Bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb Iran.”

There is a rustling of blankets, and, brushing aside Cindy McCain, a concerned Joe Lieberman rises from the bed. “Not Iran, Mr. President,” he says. “They hate al-Qaeda.”

“That’s right,” the president says. “I remember now.” He sighs with relief. “Good thing you’re here every night, Joe.”

But suppose, dear reader, that John McCain becomes president and Joe Lieberman doesn’t bunk with the McCains on a nightly basis. How easily should the rest of us sleep? It’s anything but an academic question after McCain’s bizarre performance in Jordan last week.

As disturbing as the last image is, it’s clear that McCain’s solution to anything short of unstopping a toilet is to launch a military strike.

Military strikes against the DPRK and Iran would be almost certain, and I’d offer even money for shooting between Russia or China and the US.

More Toxic Exports

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We are not talking Chinese toys, or Mexican lettuce, we are talking about “Anglo-Saxon” financial products.

Increasingly the rest of the world is looking at the US and UK system of regulation, more accurately a system of no regulation, and seeing the downside, and becomind disenchanted with the US-UK model.

Henry Farrel cites articles by Wolfgang Münchau, and Steve Clemons about the change in attitude.

They both make the point that this is an ongoing, and IMHO accelerating, loss of power for the US, though Münchau is rather more stark, first because he has been an unabashed fan of what I call US style klepto-capitalism, but also because of his the points that me makes:

  • The Euro would replace the dollar as the world’s largest reserve currency within the next 10 or 15 years. (I rather believe that it will be in 5-10 years, but I’m not an economist)
  • If yours is a global reserve currency today, it is likely to be one tomorrow too. But this works only up to a point – a tipping point.
  • But the Euro is a real alternative. [to the dollar as a reserve currency]
  • This has been a crisis of Anglo-Saxon transaction-based capitalism.
  • Losing the dollar as the world’s leading international currency not only leads to a loss of political power. It constitutes loss of power.

What happens when your bank starts demanding Euro denominated mortgages?

ISO Looks to Reject OOXML Again

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Mouthful, huh?

The short version is that the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) are having a vote as to whether to adopt Microsoft’s Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) format for its office suite as a formal standard, and Cuba and India just voted no.

Microsoft had this voted down before, largely because there already is an ISO standard format out there, Open Dcument Format (ODF).

Microsoft, of course, uses OOXML, which is a proprietary format, notwithstanding its name, but with increasing numbers of users, particularly in government, demanding open formats to prevent vendor lock in, they want to be adopted as a “standard”.

Microsoft’s whole business model, of course, is vendor lock in.

Furthermore, as is made clear here, OOXML was written around the specific internals of Microsoft products:

Here is the Microflaccid office way of making text red:
Word: <w:color w:val=”FF0000″/>
Excel: <color rgb=”FFFF0000″/>
Powerpoint: <a:srgbClr val=”FF0000″/>

Here is a standards compliant way.
ODF text: <style:text-properties fo:color=”#FF0000″/>
ODF sheet: <style:text-properties fo:color=”#FF0000″/>
ODF presentation: <style:text-properties fo:color=”#FF0000″/>

Why Yes, I did Work on This!

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I came across this article on the USMC putting prognostics on its vehicles, and it turns oout that it’s yet another field of study that I’ve applied my engineering skills to.

Specifically the Marines are installing the Embedded Platform Logistics System (EPLS), which works by determining the actual condition of the equipment, as opposed to implementing a fixed maintenance/replacement schedule by using sensors on the equipment and computer algorithms to determine when components are wearing out.

When I was working on the Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAAV), now called the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), it was primarily on a prognostics demonstration for the landing craft.

It was a nice job, with a nice boss (Hi Dave), but it was the commute from hell (75 miles through the heart of DC), and the scope of the program was being increasingly reduced, and I figured that it was not too long before I would be de-scoped, so I found something with what was then United Defense.

Parents Putting Children, and the Community at Risk

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The facts are quite clear, there is no tie between vaccines and Autism*, and this has been conclusively proven.

The doctor who came up with this cockamamie theory had his ticket yanked. The removal of Thimerisol (which was an independent good regardless of the non link to Autism) made no difference in the trajectory of the disease.

Vaccines represent the greatest success in public health in the history of…well..history.

When we see reports like this one the Neanderthal† anti-vaccination movement, the basic points which need to be made are as follows:

  • There is no evidence that vaccines are listed are linked to any disease.
  • The idea that there is a link to Autism is false and has been completely disproven.
  • This puts the entire community at risk, because unvaccinated children spread the disease.
  • It puts holes in herd immunity.

These basic points were not made in this article, though it was hinted at when the writer quoted Sybil “I’m a Moron” Carlson saying that vaccines caused “immunology”.

Let’s be clear. Vaccines do have risks, I know someone who is in a wheelchair because of a vaccine induced case of polio, and my mother had an allergic reaction to the horse serum used in the tetanus vaccine, but they are less than that of not being vaccinated, and they are acute, not chronic.

The anti-vaccine movement is based on two things, stupidity and ignorance involving the science, and a blithe disregard for for the effects of society.

That’s why we are getting outbreaks of measles, mumps, whooping cough. Because these people are creating reservoirs of disease out of their children, and it affects the vaccinated too, because no vaccine is 100%, and some vaccinated children are put at risk.

*Full disclosure, my son is on the spectrum, diagnosed with Aspergers.
†In deference to the GEICO cavemen, I wish to apoliogize for any offense to true Neanderthals.

Tet in Iraq Update

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Well, when we look at the straight news stories, we have the New York Times saying that the, “Iraqi Crackdown on Shiite Forces Sets Off Fighting“, and CNN Reporting that Maliki is offering an “Ultimatum” (AFP says the same.)

There are two possibilities here:

  1. Maliki wants to take out a more political opponent before the provincial elections.
  2. The US Military demanded this, because they want to show “Iraqi military progress” for the upcoming congressional hearings.

My money is on the second. Even a hack like Petraeus knows that the Iraqi military is not ready for this.

Additionally, the reports that Maliki is “personally supervising” the operations in Basra, seems to indicate a ploy by Maliki, not by the members of the Bush military-political complex/

Spencer Ackerman makes a very good point when he says that the US role in all of this is that of a hostage:

As long as Maliki is in the prime minister’s chair, and as long as we proclaim the Iraqi government he leads to be legitimate, Maliki effectively holds us hostage.

Eric Martin asks if Bush and His Evil Minions™ are backing the wrong horse.

I agree with his concerns. While Sadr is looking for a stricter theocracy, he is the most outspoken Shiite Iraqi nationalist in the game, while the other two main Shiite factions, (ISCI/SCIRI and Dawa) are firmly committed to Iran, possibly near-puppets of Iran.

The reason that the US does not make nice with Sadr is because he opposed to the US’s Iraq forever plan, which Bush is irrevocably committed to.

Finally, Matthew Yglesias makes a very good point about the nature of imperialism:

The would-be imperial power has to back the ‘less popular local elements.’ The key thing is to find groups that are strong enough to hold on to power with external support, but too weak to come to be in a position to kick the ladder of external support away.

Any politician in Iraq who could become popular enough to have a meaningful and independent power base is a threat to the US presence there, and thus will be opposed by the US.

Economics Update

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The first two bits are easy to understand, New home sales are the lowest since 1995, which matches with the horrid existing home sales data that I posted yeaterday, and Factory orders fell off a cliff in February.

First, things are simply getting even weirder in the never-dull world of monoliner insurers, with the Federal Home Loan Banking looking at offering bond insurance for municipal infrastructure project bonds.

It’s a dull, but very profitable racket, because there has been some sort of freaky deal between the monoliners and the rating agencies for years that has them offering artificially low ratings to muni bonds, which pretty much forces said governmental agencies to buy bond insurance.

If it works, it kills the monoliners, because this business is the only thing keeping them afloat on a sea of collateralized debt obligations (CDO).

Additionally, we have monoliner insurer FGIC notifying regulators that due to some “dodgy” dept that it is ensuring, that it is insolvent under New York State law, “FGIC in notes to its consolidated financial statements said it plans to submit a plan to the New York superintendent to reduce its risk. FGIC also said it has voluntarily ceased writing new business to preserve capital.”

This means that, theoretically at least, regulators could seize the FGIC, though they are in litigation with the borrower of the aforementioned debt, and they are filing a recovery plan.

Tonya Harding Option? I Call Bull$#@&!

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So we have Jake Tapper of ABC News reporting that a “Democratic Party official, who asked for anonymity”, which could be anyone from Howard Dean to the guy who gets the coffee, saying, “Her securing the nomination is certainly possible – but it will require exercising the ‘Tonya Harding option.'” and then adding “Is that really what we Democrats want?”

While I appreciate Tapper’s skills in parlaying a couple of dates with Monica Lewinski into a heavy duty “reporting” gig, first with Salon, and then with better paying media, he’s a still a wanker.

He spent all of 2000 hating on Al Gore, because he missed a flight because they did not hold the press plane for him.

First, if this were someone senior, say someone of my generation (I’m 45) or older, they would not use this term.

Second, he didn’t use the term “senior”, which he would have used if it were defensible.

Furthermore, notwithstanding the use of the quote by some of the hyperventilating elements of the blogosphere, what we have here is someone, and someone not particularly senior saying what has been the standard line for places like MSNBC for some time: that Hillary Clinton is “destroying the party”.

A lot of people are hyperventilating about a story with no “there” there, which I’m sure tickles Mr. Tapper no end.