Natalie was bleeding from her ear, and my wife had to take her to the urgent care clinic to get her checked out, the nurse would not put her on the bus, and I had to get home for Charlie’s bus.
Luckily, it was just an abrasion, probably from a scratch or a burst zit (Natalie is developing mild acne), so she was sent home with a tube of ear-friendly antibiotic ointment.
The logistics, however, were amazingly awful, as I am an hour commute from home.
The joys of being a parent.
Damn. They are installing 6000 centerfuges in Natanz. This is in addition to the 3,000 already there.
It’s like they are in some dick swinging contest with George W. Bush.
It appears that Hillary is talking about trade, and made a funny, and all the wankers at MSNBC, CNN, and the Washington Post can talk about is the fact that her laugh is kind of annoying.
Disgraceful.
I’d rather watch the 3D CGI Smurf movie than go through 7½ months of this.
Foreclosures since late 2006
Foreclosures in Denver, care of The Big Picture
Here is the number of visitors to the site by day of the week since the start of the year.
I’m not sure why Tuesday and Thursday are my most popular days.
|
Day |
Percent |
|
Sunday |
10.2% |
|
Monday |
15.6% |
|
Tuesday |
17.4% |
|
Wednesday |
16.0% |
|
Thursday |
17.7% |
|
Friday |
14.3% |
|
Saturday |
8.9% |
This is out of the 100-120 readers a day that I average.
The MDC claims that Morgan Tsvangirai won the presidential elextion with an outright majority so a runoff is unnecessary and illegal.
They also have the concern that with only one election on the ballot, Mugabe will pull out all the voter intimidation stops.
Not good times there.
One of the legacies of Jack Abramhoff appears to be on its way out.
Me bad, I’m confusing the Chevron oil tanker, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
There are rumors that McCain may pick her as a Vice Presidential pick.
I find this unlikely for a number of reasons:
I do no know, nor do I care, whether Condoleezza Rice is a lesbian, but it appears that a number of people in Washington do, or at least are very careful not to discuss this issue.
When the Washington Post decided not to kill 6 days of strips from Aaron McGruder’s strip The Boondocks, in which Huey and Riley decided that Rice needed to find a good black man, it published its reasons using remarkably circuitous language:
That was too much for the Post, which announced it would skip “The Boondocks” this week. “We had no way of knowing whether Mr. McGruder’s assertion that Condoleeza Rice had no personal relationship was true or not,” explained a Post spokesperson.
Emphasis mine
These rumors have dogged rice for some time, so absent her getting a beard (Yes, I know that this is the term for a gay man who marries a woman to cover up, but I don’t know the converse), I do not see her being on the ticket.
Of course, if you look at who seems to be McCain’s attack dog right now, which is generally the campaign role of the VP, and so would seem to have the inside track on the position, it’s Lindsay Graham, who has had rumors swirling around him for years.
A survey released Thursday showed just 28 percent approve of the overall job he is doing. His previous record low in the poll was 30 percent last month.
A new record.
28% of the people in this country are completely delusional.
I do know know if she jumped or was pushed, and I’m not sure that I really care.
This article is far better than anything I could write, I learned some things.
BTW, of note is the fact that the CDS problem was addressed by regulation in 1746 by the Marine Insurance Act, so it’s not like we haven’t seen this problem before.
Jobless claims are back below 400,000, down to 357,000. This is a noisy number, and it appears that the Easter holiday may have effected this somehow.
In high finance, we are starting to see some of the sh%$pile being liquidated at steep discounts, with Goldman Sachs selling ½ billion of Chrysler debt at about 63¢ on the dollar, which comes to about a $185 million dollar haircut, and it has been revealed that Lehman liquidated about $1 billion in funds.
You can view this as an orderly unwinding of these highly uncertain financial instruments, or the first steps towards a rush to the exits. I’m not sure which, though the fact that the LIBOR-OIS and the TED spreads are up again.* might indicate that it is a rush to the exits.
Basically, the spread, or difference in interest rates, between what banks demand when they lend to each other is a measure of how skittish people are about debt. The higher the number, the worse fear.
After dropping briefly following the Bear bailout, the spread is heading back up, implying that there are a lot of people who don’t want to buy someone else’s debt.
In international trade, the Dollar hit a record low vs the Euro, $1.5912:€1.0000, and the Yuan strengthened to below 7 to the dollar for the first time ever.
On the brighter side, the trade deficit rose in February, which might indicate that the economy is strengthening somewhat, though it isn’t in the UK apparently, because the Bank of England cuts key British interest rate 25 basis points, to 5 percent.
The continental Europeans appear to be more worried about inflation though, as the European Central Bank left rates unchanged, which will put some more downward pressure on the dollar.
Seriously though, I really can’t make a whole bunch of sense in today’s data, there is too much noise in opposite directions, which is why a fair man is not too hard on economists, who deal with this all the time.
Luckily, I’m not a fair man, so to all you economists, Go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.
*As Paul Krugman puts it, “One is the spread between Libor and Treasuries, the other the spread between Libor and the futures price of the Fed funds rate; I tend to prefer TED spread, because fears of bank defaults should affect Fed funds as well as Libor; but I know that Fed officials prefer OIS. Anyway, both pointing in the same direction.”
From Fence Sitters Will Be Sorry at Piggington.
The newspaper industry is too dependent on real estate ad revenue to report on the housing market well.
The initial reports, that Pelosi’s move to change to House Rules after Bush officially submitted the Columbia Free Trade Agreement, Pelosi will change the house rules, so they won’t be forced to vote in 90 days.
While everyone else was cheering, David Sirota thought that the celebration was premature. He thought that it might not be a way to kill the CFTA, but rather a way to save it.
Well, he has now seen references that the Democrats are actually using the delay to push it out past the elections, so that they can get more votes ( see here and here).
It looks like they are planning for a lame duck session to approve it:
Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) was confident that House leaders would schedule a vote on the trade pact in a post-election session, when wavering members would be more willing to support it. “I think there’ll be a vote in the latter part of November, or early December,” he said, adding it would likely be approved in those circumstances.
Let’s be clear on this. Columbia has been using its government to murder labor organizers, and under Uribe, it continues to do so.
This is not a government that we want to cut this deal with.
Well, it appears that things are getting weirder in the aftermath of the Cyril Wecht trial.
First, the judge has placed a gag order on the jury until after the retrial, which was described by Wecht’s lawyer, and I agree, as extremely unusual.
Among other things, I would assume that the Lawyers would not want to talk to the Jurors to get some insights for the retrial.
In any case, some of the jurors talked, and it’s clear that the majority though that they should acquit.
I will note that from what I’ve read Schwab appears to be a complete political hack, and a disgrace to the bench. Harper’s Scott Horton has more details.
Also, this interview with a dismissed (for health reasons) juror speaks volumes.
First, we have Alaska, where Ted Stevens(R) gets 46%, and Mark Begich(D)gets 45%. It’s still early but this is not good news for Stevens, as undecideds typically break 2:1 for the challenger, giving Begich a very good chance of being the first Democratic Senator from Alaska since Mike Gravel.
In New Mexico, we have Tom Udall in a comfortable lead over his potential opponents, 54% to 40% over Steve Pearce and 56% to 36% over Heather Wilson, who has been seriously hurt by her involvement in the US Attorney firings scandal.
It appears that Prince Bandar, nicknamed “Bandar Bush” for his closeness to the Bush clan, may not have been quite as successful as he though in shutting down the bribery investigation against him.
The basic deal is that Bandar netted billions of dollars (a quick Google shows £1 billion, you do the math) in bogus “consulting fees” in order to “facilitate” the £43bn Al-Yamamah arms deal.
The Serious Fraud Organization was looking into the deal, and was near to getting Swiss bank account information, when Tony Blair shut it down, probably there was a threat that the sales of 72 Eurofighter Typhoons would be canceled if there were further investigations.
The OECD, an international corruption watchdog, condemned the termination of the investigation.
It’s unclear from the story whether this ruling means that the investigation will restart, but Labour is taking no chances, they have a draft law in Parliament that would allow, “an Attorney General to close down such investigations as he or she saw fit on ‘national security’ grounds”.
We are seeing reports that Katie Couric may be leaving CBS before her contract over. The WSJ is suggesting after the elections.
Even by the meager standards of news anchor journamalism, Couric has has been a complete awful.
The average consumer is smarter than Alan Greenspan and the rest of the economic glitterati, because consumer sentiment dropped to a long time low (also here).
In energy, gasoline prices have hit another all time high, and oil prices seemed to have settled comfortably about $110/bbl.
That being said, it’s not just oil imports, inflation in non-energy imports in March surged 1.1%, with a year over year increase of 5.4%.
That 1.1% number is the largest jump ever recorded.
There is a smidgen of bright news, the Fed’s excrement for cash exchange program did not sell out this time, with only $33.95 billion of the $50 billion offered being taken.
In real estate, we have US banks killing the no down payment loan, which is long overdue. Even with a small amount of skin in the game, home borrowers tend to be much better risks.
Housing is tanking overseas too, with UK mortgage rates going up, despite BoE rate cuts, so they are pushing on a string there too.
But’s it’s not just us Anglo-Saxons, because Dutch home sales are tanking too, and let’s not talk about Spain.
Also, GE released earnings, and they sucked, which surprised the experts, but not me.
People are scared and not buying stuff. GE makes stuff. Any questions.
We now have a report out of ABC news that high ranking Bush administration officials discussed specific torture methods.
According the reports, this was discussed at a “Principals Committee” meeting, and that, “At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.”
It’s clear however that they knew that they were breaking the law:
Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.
According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”
Neither will the folks in The Hague.