There is not a single instance of political discourse in the history of this nation in which the participants did not want to simply kick their opponent in the balls.
Year: 2008
More Iraq
Busy past few days.
Basically, even though undoubtedly better equipped, and possibly better trained, the Iraqi Army and Police are getting their asses handed to them, because they are completely unmotivated. Unlike the Hakeem family, the army and police really don’t like fighting for the idea of greater Iranian hegemony in Iraq, which is clearly the goal of the current government.
Sadr is the only major Shia player who isn’t in the Iranian’s pockets, but he’s the one we are targeting air strikes at.
In any case, after some It appears thatfits and starts, negotiations finally got underway, with an Iranian general brokering the cease fire which is not in effect, if only barely (see here, here, and
here)
If you are wondering who won this, just reflect on Sadr’s terms for a truce, release of all Sadrists not convicted of crimes, and amnesty for members of the Mahdi militia.
This is a victory for him, and for Iran.
California Eschews Bond Insurers
It’s interesting how often financial reporters miss the forest for the trees.
Case in point, we have California Treasurer Lockyer telling Warren Buffet’s new bond insurance business to go pound sand.
The core of the dispute is that bond ratings agencies have low rated municipal debt as compared to commercial debt for years.
This has meant that entities like the state of California have had to buy bond insurance to get AAA rates, despite the fact that the risk of default is negligible:
“We’re selling water in a desert; we should be rated to reflect that,” said Cary Casey, who oversees bonds at the Southern Nevada Water Authority in Las Vegas that have a AA+ rating from Standard & Poor’s. Casey said he’s not interested in Buffett’s insurance. “He’s no savior.”
The first municipal bond insurance policy was sold in 1971 by Ambac. The near bankruptcy of New York City in 1975 bolstered demand for the industry, said Richard Larkin, research director at brokerage Herbert J. Sims & Co. in Iselin, New Jersey, and a former chief municipal rating officer at S&P.
New York City creditors were paid in full. When Orange County, California, filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in 1994, only one issue defaulted and no principal or interest payments were missed, according to Moody’s.
“The legalized extortion has been going on since before I became mayor of Somerville in 1990,” said U.S. Representative Michael Capuano, a Massachusetts Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. Capuano said he was forced to buy bond insurance, even though his town of 80,000 had never defaulted and the state provided backup guarantees.
Emphasis mine.
Bond insurance to municipalities have been a protection racket for years, and not it turns out that the insurers, not the municipalities, are the ones with the problem.
I think that as we tease out the credit collapse, we will find many more examples of systemic corruption and extortion by Wall Street firms.
The FSM may be wrong, these guys are pirates, and global warming proceeds unabated.
Zimbabwe Elections
The opposition is claiming victory, but results are coming out very slowly, so my guess is that there will be significant vote fraud.
787 Partners Reorganizaton
One of the central “innovations” of Boeing’s 787 plan was the idea of bringing in suppliers in as fully involved partners, where they would bear much of the risk, and be responsible for much of the design and engineering.
Recent developments appear to indicate that Boeing is walking away from this policy.
Boeing has just bought out Vought Aircraft’s ownership stake in Global Aeronautica, which means that Boeing and Alenia now each own half of the enterprise.
Vought will still be a supplier for the 787, particularly the aft fuselage, but their more senior role in design and engineering has been taken over by Boeing.
I expect to see more in the way of recentralization by Boeing on the 787 to come, with yet more on their next project, a replacement for the venerable 737.
Full disclosure, the CEO of Vought Aircraft, Elmer Doty, was head of my division* when I worked at United Defense/BAE Systems.
*Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.
Good Politics, Good Policy on Iraq
42 Democrats are promising to submit legislation for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq if elected.
At least one of the 42, Donna Edwards, is pretty much already in, as she defeated the incumbent in the primary, and it’s one of the safest Dem seats in the country.
What needs to be done is to lean on the Bush Blue Dog Democrats.
If we see a few more “Mini-Tets” in Iraq, which I think is likely, then more people will sign on to something like this.
Clinton Promises to Stay in Race
I honestly think that she really believes, and this is what is leaking out from her advisers, that Barack Obama is dead meat on the table in November.
I disagree, it does explain what she said in this interview.
Torture Tapes Destruction May Prevent Fair Trials
While I’m sure that Bush and His Evil Minions™ think that fair trials, much like military service, are for losers, it comes as no surprise that the torture and subsequent destruction of the torture tapes is making holding something resembling a fair trial difficult.
We can’t have kangaroo courts if we expect anything but a further souring of our already toxic relations with the rest of the world, but after an orgy of law breaking and ass covering by people working in our name, it looks like kangaroo courts is all we got.
Morons.
The Unsinkable BUFF
It appears that the USAF is looking to change its draw down on B-52s, with 76, as opposed to 56.
Their justification is that they want some of the B-52s dedicated to nuclear strike, as opposed to swapping squadrons in and out of the service, on the theory that they won’t do stupid stuff like sending detonators to Taiwan, or flying live missiles by mistake.
Once again, the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat F&^%er) is being tasked to pull the Air Force brass’s ass out of a fire.
Kenyan Dispute Still Not Resolved
President Mwai Kibaki and PM Raila Odingaappear to be having significant problems resolving the composition of the cabinet.
I haven’t followed this closely, quite honestly Africa is pretty much off of my radar, but to the degree that I have, it’s painfully clear that Kibaki stole the election, and that he is being given a bit of a pass by outside powers, because he is seen as being “good for business.”
The impetus here should be for an arrangement that respects the will of the people as it was actually expressed at the ballot box, and to the degree that Kibaki is backing away from these agreements, it should be made clear that this is not acceptable.
U.S. F*^%ing It Up In Pakistan
First, we enthusiastically back and fund a not-particularly-competent military leader, who spends most of the money we send him on a potential war with India, and now we send “Mr. Death Squad” to lean on a not yet formed opposition government to be more proactive, all while continuing unilateral air strikes in populated areas.
Some selected quotes from the article below:
…
The meeting with Nawaz Sharif, …. have failed entirely. Sharif said that Pakistan would no longer be a “killing field” where other countries pursue their own interests.
…
[with tribal elders] “We told them that whatever differences we have (with the extremists), they can all be solved through the jirga system,” said Malik Darya Khan, one of the tribal chiefs who participated, referring to the traditional meetings of elders to solve disputes.
There also appeared to be an open dispute between Sharif and U.S. officials on how to deal with Musharraf. Sharif said afterward: “We don’t recognize him as the legitimate president.”
Dawn newspaper, in an editorial on Thursday, described the arrival of the two U.S. envoys as “indecent haste.” It added: “It is time Washington gave the new government time to settle down.”
“Bad timing gives the wrong signals, as if they are trying to pressurize the new government when it is in the stages of being formed,” said Shireen Mazari, the director general of Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad.
“The war on terror has be to revisited. The most dangerous thing is that the Americans have succeeded in shifting the center of gravity of the war to Pakistan. We have to shift it back to Afghanistan,” Mazari said.
Pakistani concerns about U.S. activity have been ignited over the last month by a series of apparent American missile attacks on targets in Pakistan. The news that the former commander of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention camp, where hundreds of Muslim prisoners, many of them Pakistanis, have been held without charge, has been appointed the chief U.S. defense representative in Pakistan isn’t likely to help relations.
Seriously, they could not screw this up more if they tried.
Hillary Says, “Don’t Vote for McCain”
I’ve always said that no one in their right mind would vote for the sick old man, but “no one in their right mind” constitutes only something like 30% of the electorate.
Waiting for a similar statement from Obama, who was the first one to say that his supporters would not vote for Hillary in the general.
Economics Update
In honor of March Madness:
Click image for source
You may recall that Monoliner insurer FGIC having problems. Now it is saying that was saying that it would not honor its insurance contract withCredit Agricole SA and IKB Deutsche Industriebank, because they deceived the insurers about their financial health.
Seeing as how IKB seems to be facing villagers with torches, this may very well be true.
It’s in court.
And of course, because it’s a day of the week ending with “y”, the Federal Reserve is giving away another $100 billion to the banks.
No wonder noted bear, and Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney is predicting that Citi will be cutting its dividend again soon.
In economic matters for the rest of us, personal income did better than expected, but personal spending remained weak, and the head of Freddie Mac is saying that he does not expect recovery in house prices until 2010.
I say that he is an optimist. The regional crashes we have seen, which have been much less severe, have all lasted at least 5 years, which puts the date at 2012, though I would take 2015 in the over/under in non-inflation adjusted dollar terms.
I don’t think that we will be back to the 2006 highs adjusted for inflation in my lifetime.
And in the world of collapsing economic institutions, we have former sub-prime lender Fremont General ordered to find a buyer by the FDIC, in addition to restricting interest it can pay to depositors, payments to senior executives, and transfers to its parent company.
This does make the fact that the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight has told Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that they are free to raise another $20 billion a bit nonsensical.
The taxpayers will end up on the hook for all of this.
No!!!!
It appears that Barack Obama has just said that if Reverend Wright had not retired, he would have left the church.
Stupid move. Barack Obama just bitch slapped himself in an effort to separate himself from the man who married him and baptized his daughters.
This is wrong, we can disagree with people we love, and it’s stupid, because it plays right into Josh Marshall’s Bitch Slap Theory of Politics, where by not defending themselves, and in this case people who are near family, they make voters wonder if they will stand up for them.
This is stupid. It makes him look weak, and folks that he is reaching out to will never vote for a black man.
Wanker of the Day: Michael Kinsley
He seems to be a wanker every time he writes.
In this case, he generates a 822 words on musing on how long Hillary Clinton spends putting on clothes and makeup each day.
By Yog Sothoth’s Yellow Yogurt, this is unbelievably wankeriffic.
We Have Reached the Tipping Point on the Dollar
Small local money changers in Holland are refusing to exchange the dollar, since they don’t typically exchange money back to Euros at the close of business each day, they think that the risk of a significant loss is too great.
And the South Korean pension fund that I mentioned yesterday are part of a trend which will likely see the end of the US dollar as the major reserve currency sooner than most people expect.
Mess-O-Potamia (Iraq Update)
Yes, I stole the hed from TDS.
First, it appears that the Iraqi security forces are giving Fatah a run for their money as the worst military in the world, see here, here, and here.
Much of this is about the fact that many in the security forces are deserting and joining the Mahdi army. Truth be told, many were already members of the Mahdi army.
As a result, Maliki is extending his so-called ultimatum to disarm, because everyone is laughing so hard at him.
As a result, the US military is being sucked into the fighting.
UK forces are not deploying to Basra, and have made it clear that they will not be doing so.
I guess it’s a bonus for getting rid of the Poodle.
More tanker
Both the USAF and Northrop Grumman are requesting that the Boeing Challenge be rejected, see here, here, and here.
Of more import is the fact that the UK just signed a contract for $13 billion for A330 tankers. Note that the contract is different, as it is to replace the RAF’s Lockheed TriStar and Vickers VC10s, and the former are large, as opposed to medium tankers, but it points to a trend.
I think that Boeing is out of the tanker business for the next 10 years, until the money is found to replace the KC-10 tankers.
Fun in Canada
Well, it appears that the investigation of the Harper government’s leak of conversations between Austan Goolsbee and the Canadian Ambassador will be made public.
It probably won’t be pretty for Harper and his cronies.
Could a Canuck out there explain why the opposition is not trying for a no-confidence vote?
Incompetents Abroad
Pakistan’s new coalition government is saying that it objects to what it considers the reckless and excessive air strikes of the US in Pakistan.
It’s clear that Musharraf is on the way out, and that this is the policy of the government, so what is the response of the US Military? They accelerate their bombing, because we need to get those last few licks in before the end of Musharraf actually become official.
Does anyone in the White House or Pentagon have a clue as to how damaging this behavior is?
More importantly, does anyone in the White House or Pentagon have any clue about anything period.