Month: August 2008

Just When You Thought that Zimbabwe Could Not Get Any More Screwed Up….

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There are now reports that Arthur Mutambara, whose party, the MDC-Mutambara, has 7 seats, and thus the margin of majority in the Zimbabwean parliament, may have cut a deal with Mubame, though his representatives are denying this, or claiming that there is a deal, but that it would not take effect unless Morgan Tsvangerai, or at least the MDC-Tsvangerai, was also a part of the agreement.

If this is a sellout by MDC-M of MDC-T, which I see as likely, then we know why Mugabe agreed to talks, because he needed time to stack the deck.

UAL Pilot Union Demanding Removal of CEO

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They are saying that CEO Glenn Tilton has steered the airline, “down a path to poor customer service, employee morale and financial performance.”

I’m not sure if this is a negotiating tactic, or a legitimate concern for the company.

My guess is a bit of both. He’s an oil man, and the requisite skills in that industry are not really producing anything or providing a service, but rather schmoozing people so that you can put holes in their ground.

That skill set does not translate well into any other field of endeavor, see Bush, GW, and Cheney, R.

Was the Fix in on Bear Stearns?

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This is weird. A week before Bear imploded, someone bought $1.7 million worth of put options, 5.7 million at $30 and 165,000 shares at $25, expiring in a week.

The thing was, when he placed the put options, Bear was trading at $62.97.

Which meant that the only way that he could win was if the stock fell by more than 50% in a week:

“Even if I were the most bearish man on Earth, I can’t imagine buying puts 50 percent below the price with just over a week to expiration,” said Thomas Haugh, general partner of Chicago-based options trading firm PTI Securities & Futures LP. “It’s not even on the page of rational behavior, unless you know something.”

…

John Olagues, who started trading options 30 years ago, said he has never experienced anything like it. Olagues, who runs a New Orleans consulting company called Truth in Options, also manages more than $1 million for a client who had a stake in Bear Stearns, which plummeted 94 percent in value on March 17. The drop prompted Olagues to start poring over options trading records and call officials at the CBOE.

“In just one tick, the company’s share price lost nearly all its value, a steeper drop than Enron’s right before its de- listing in 2001,” said 63-year-old Olagues, referring to the bankruptcy of Houston-based energy trading company Enron Corp. “I’ve never seen a stock perform like that in my life.”

Olagues, who was an options market maker at the Pacific Exchange and then the CBOE from 1976 to 1984, said he knows all about so-called time decay, implied volatility, arbitrage and the complexities of options trading. The former all-conference pitcher at Tulane University, who started Truth in Options in 2003, said he has found options transactions that convince him Bear Stearns was the victim of insider trading.

“I would stake my reputation on that,” he said.

But will anyone go to jail? Of course not. Jails are for little people.

Mark Penn Should Never Work for Another Democrat

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And Democrats should never donate to a candidate that employs Mark Penn.

Once again, Politico misses the point, and covers the trees, internecine sniping in the Clinton campaign, and misses the forest, that Mark Penn espoused a blatantly racist campaign strategy:

Mark Penn, the top campaign strategist for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign, advised her to portray Barack Obama as having a “limited” connection “to basic American values and culture,” according to a forthcoming article in The Atlantic.

Barack Obama was my last choice for the nomination, but I find these suggestions that a racist and xenophobic an indicator of Penn’s immorality and incompetence.

Seriously, I am NOT Making this Sh*# Up!

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Normally, when some women wants to clone her pit bull, and pays something in excess of 50 grand to a Korean cloning lab to do so I kind of shrug my shoulders, and figure, “another idiot with more money than brains”.

This is further reinforced by the fact that the dog’s name is “Booger”.

However, the case of Bernann McKinney, the coverage of her dog cloning brought her, and her photograph to the attention of a number of people who say that she bears a disturbing similarity to one former Miss Wyoming, Joyce McKinney (see also here and here), who achieved some noteriety in the 1970s in the UK:

For those whose knowledge of news stretches back no further than the launch of Eudora, Joyce McKinney was the former Miss Wyoming who was accused in 1977 of stalking Kirk Anderson, young Mormon Missionary, all the way from Utah to Ewell in Surrey, before kidnapping him and spiriting him away to a cottage in Dorset. There, she allegedly chained him to a bed and forced herself upon him – three times – while wearing a see-through negligee. (Her, not him. He was apparently wearing a Mormon chastity garment, and presumably a pained expression.)

The object of Joyce McKinney’s affections eventually escaped her mink-lined handcuffs. She and an accomplice were charged with kidnapping, but she insisted it was consensual. Joyce escaped the UK using a false passport and disguised as a member of a mime troupe, but not before declaring in court that her love for the mink-restrained Mormon was such that: “I’d ski naked down Mount Everest with a carnation up my nose if he asked me.”

(emphasis mine)

BTW, she has now admitted that the is, in fact, that Joyce McKinney.

Seriously, if someone wrote this in a novel, the editor would send it back with a not saying that it was simply too weird to be believable.

Getting Georgia’s War On

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First, read Getting Georgia’s War On in The Nation, if just for the revelation that that Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze made an “investment call” to bank managers and analysts.

The original offensive had been planned for some time.

Additionally, it appears that Russia was the first to call a Security Council meeting, but their proposal, which called for both sides to , “renounce the use of force”, was rejected by Georgia, the US, and the UK.

I think that the best historical analogy out there is care of Attaturk:

1836 to 1848
Georgia = Mexico
Russia = The United States
South Ossetia = Texas

It really is clear that the Ossetians hate the Georgians, and that the desire for independence is very real, though the ability is only because of Russian support.

Meanwhile, Russia is rolling east from South Ossetia, and west from Abkhazia, and they are demanding the disarming of troops along both borders.

Again, this is calling on the the Kosovo precedent, and I think is a sign that one of the goals of the Russians is the elimination of the Georgian army as a meaningful force.

Certainly their capture Georgia’s Senaki City and enterry into Zugdidi Town, roughly 40km in Georgia from the Abkhazian border seems to confirm this.

On the bright side, Dmitry Medvedev has stated that the military operation in South Ossetia is nearly over, which should indicate a reduction of optempo shortly.

You can read a summary of official Russian losses, and they seem very light, though the loss of the Tu-22, by which I assume they mean Tu-22M Backfire, not the earlier Blinder, has to to hurt.

Jed Lewison notes that top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, is a paid lobbyist for a foreign government, the Republic of Georgia, he claims not to lobby for them any more, but his firm still gets fees from them, and that much of his lobbying were his highly successful efforts to turn McCain into an unthinking Georgia evangelist, though given McCain’s Russo-phobia, it probably took less than a golf game to do that.

Wanker of the Day: Bob Kerrey

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And not just because he spoke for Attribution on a Politico dot com concern troll piece:

“The idea that Obama was going to win in a blowout was always preposterous,” says former Nebraska senator and onetime presidential hopeful Bob Kerrey, an Obama backer. “A big piece of this, of course, is whether white people are going to support a black guy. … If [Obama] is a tall, skinny white guy named Paul Jones, it’s a different story.

…

“John McCain is a known quantity,” says Bob Kerrey, who thinks Obama will ultimately prevail. “You don’t look at John and say, ‘Who the heck is he?’. He’s a veteran, he’s a guy who got pretty banged up in Vietnam. He can deal with crisis. There’s some uncertainty about Senator Obama.”

…

“Fairly or not, folks think he’s pretty liberal and nobody wants a pair of Pelosis running things,” says a New York-based Democratic consultant.

Adds Bob Kerrey: “The country’s still pretty divided … people may want a divided government. They want change, but I’m not sure that the Democratic agenda has the support of a majority of Americans.”

Can we trade this “mother SHUT YOUR MOUTH!“* to the Repubicans?

Seriously, he’s almost as bad as Lieberman.

*In memoriam of Isaac Hayes.

Economics Update

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Well, we are now seeing reports that the FDIC is going to have to raise premiums to cover losses from bank failures.

They should have started last year.

Meanwhile, the Chinese economy is showing signs of significant inflation, with China’s wholesale prices rising 10% year over year in July.

The problem here is that the obvious solution, the central bank raising interest rates, will server to further weaken the dollar, which will drive their exports down….Catch 22.

Meanwhile, it appears that Morgan Stanley has problems, because Moody’s just cuts its credit rating to A1 from Aa3 because of losses in the mortgage market.

Interestingly enough, even though Georgia and Russia are in something very close to a war, and the Georgian pipeline is a crucial link for Europe, oil is down, largely on the Iranians agreeing to a new round of negotiations on their Uranium enrichment program.

Gasoline is down again, for the 25th day in a row.

The dollar rose today, probably as a result of concerns about the conflict between Georgia and Russia, which tends to send money fleeing to the relative safety of the US dollar.

And in the, “Funnier if it weren’t so true” department:

Anthrax Case: ChristoFascist Connection

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Well, it appears that the timeline given by the FBI for the Anthrax mailings is more an alibi than it is evidence of guilt, at least according to Glenn Greenwald:

The fastest one can drive from Frederick, Maryland to Princeton, New Jersey is 3 hours, which would mean that Ivins would have had to have dropped the anthrax letters in the New Jersey mailbox on September 17 by 1 p.m. or — at the latest — 2 p.m. in order to be able to attend a 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. meeting back at Ft. Detrick. But had he dropped the letters in the mailbox before 5:00 p.m. on September 17, the letters would have borne a September 17 postmark, rather than the September 18 postmark they bore (letters picked up from that Princeton mailbox before 5 p.m. bear the postmark from that day; letters picked up after 5 p.m. bear the postmark of the next day). That’s why the Search Warrant Affidavit (.pdf) released by the FBI on Friday said this (page 8):

If the Post’s reporting about Ivins’ September 17 activities is accurate — that he “return[ed to Fort Detrick] for an appointment in the early evening, about 4 or 5 p.m.” — then that would constitute an alibi, not, as the Post breathlessly described it, “a key clue into how he could have pulled off an elaborate crime,” since any letter he mailed that way would have a September 17 — not a September 18 — postmark. Just compare the FBI’s own definition of “window of opportunity” to its September 17 timeline for Ivins to see how glaring that contradiction is.

(emphasis author’s)

Honestly, if the FBI thought that it could have convicted, it would have arrested him instead of harassing him in shopping malls.

A Baltimore Sun columnist expresses similar doubts, but throws in an interesting bit of information:

Another stretch comes with the attempt to explain the return address on the anthrax mailings, ‘4th GRADE, GREENDALE SCHOOL.’ Apparently, agents discovered that Ivins and his wife donated money in 1993 to the American Family Association one month after an article ran in the group’s journal about a lawsuit AFA had filed related to an incident involving a fourth-grade student at Greendale Baptist Academy.

Interesting, I suppose, but no more so than the link that investigators had made between ‘Greendale’ and their previous anthrax suspect, Hatfill: there is a neighborhood in Harare, Zimbabwe, near where Hatfill once lived, that is known as – you guessed it – Greendale.

(emphasis mine)

Obviously, the fact that Ivins and his wife were supporters of the extremist Christofascist organization makes me more receptive to the idea that he might be involved, but the FBI has still not shown means. The anthrax was weaponized in a very sophisticated way, and they have still not shown how he could take the pathogen past the instant coffee level, which would not aerosolize properly to infect lungs.

The FBI is under a lot of pressure to close the case, but I do not yet see the case closed.

Bolivian Elections Resolve Nothing

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To no one’s surprise, Evo Morales won the referendum that he called.

It’s not really going to settle anything.

Fundamentally, it the level of venom by entrenched interests in former Spanish possessions is even now a surprise to me a bit, but there are historical reasons for this.

For most of the existence of the Spanish monarchy, the king was the absolute ruler of the nation, and the nobility were absolute rulers of their domains, and it was believed that this was God’s will.

Hence, as any student of English history knows, when the English crown ignored their responsibilities under the Magna Carta, the refrain was always that England, “Wasn’t Spain.”

The belief by the Spanish crown and the nobility that their positions by virtue of God’s will transferred down to the landed gentry in Spain’s former colonies, particularly in Latin America, where there is a real divide between those of Spanish ancestry and those of Amerindian ancestry.

So, even minor efforts toward land reform, which would not be viewed positively by any land holding class, is also literally viewed as an affront to God.

As a result, I would expect to see political instability for some time to come.

Why I Won’t Be Watching the Republican Conventon

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Cheney will be speaking on the first night of the convention.

It’s the same reason that I don’t watch slasher flicks, I don’t like being creeped out.*

*Though, interestingly enough, my second favorite film of all time, after Kurasawa’s Seven Samurai, is John Carpenter’s The Thing, which, unlike the 1951 film, hews much closer to the John Campbell’s novella Who Goes There.

I would argue that the tension in the story is very different, and far more engaging, than the standard slasher flick.

Georgia on my Mind

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It appears that Georgia has “pulled out” of South Ossetia, though I think that any realistic assessment would say that the Georgian army was expelled from the breakaway province by the Russians.

In the Security council, it’s clear, for now at least, that Russia will not allow any resolution through that calls for a cease fire.

I would also note that Putin has described the Georgian assault on the capitol of South Ossetia as, “Genocide”, and it’s clear that he has his eyes on the precedent set in Kosovo, where crimes against humanity were used to justify the creation of Kosovo as an independent state.

Things are also heating up in the other break away region of Abkhazia, with Russian troops being sent there to reinforce the positions there, moving elements of its Black Sea fleet to the Abkhazian port Ochamchire, and there appears to be an assault on the Kodori Gorge, which was reconquered by Georgia in 2006.

Ukraine is saying that it may bar Russian ships that have participated in this operation from their ports for the duration of hostilities.

There are reports of a Russian Blockade of Georgia, which has been denied by the Russians…sort of:

Russian warships are not planning to block shipments of oil from Georgia’s Black Sea port of Poti, but reserve the right to search ships coming to and from it, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said on Sunday.

Also, it appears that the Russian navy sank a Georgian missile boat.

Honestly, the only sympathy I have for the Georgians is the very real possibility that Mikheil Saakashvili was led on by the US, much in the manner that Saddam Hussein was before the first Gulf War, because it is clear to me, and Thomas de Waal writing in the Guardian agrees, that this was largely the direct result of actions by Saakashvili

Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili seems to care less about these people than about asserting that they live in Georgian territory. Otherwise he would not on the night of 7-8 August have launched a massive artillery assault on the town of Tskhinvali, which has no purely military targets and whose residents, the Georgians say, lest we forget, are their own citizens. This is a blatant breach of international humanitarian law.

Moscow cares as little about the Ossetians as it does the Georgians it is bombing, regarding South Ossetia as a pawn in its bid to bring Georgia and its neighbours back into a Russian sphere of influence. Ordinary South Ossetians have also been cursed by a criminalised leadership which would long ago have lost power had they not been the rallying point for defence against Georgia.

I think that it’s clear that Georgian calls for a cease fire will fall on deaf ears in Russia for a while, and we have a report that Russia is demanding the removal of Saakashvili, the article, in classic WaPo form describes him as having been democratically elected, but ignores the election fraud in the last election, along with brutality against the opposition and the destruction of an opposition TV station.

It also appears that the Russians are advancing past the borders of Ossetia. They appear to be advancing on the Georgian city of Gori.