Year: 2008

Once Again, USAF Shows That It Wants Toys More Than It Wants to Protect Nation

No Comments

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England wants to use GWOT money to to keep the F-22 line open.

With no meaningful difference in stealth, and the F-35 being smaller, supposedly cheaper, more flexible (adapting it to electronic attack is easier) and capable of carrying a better bomb load, the only thing you get for the F-22 is that it flys higher and supercruises, neither of which have any meaning in the strategic context of any potential opponent we can see.

Read the article. It’s fairly clear that this is the result of mindless USAF lobbying over the past dozen years or so, and this is a case where the adults in the DoD, by which I mean the JCS and the civilian leadership, have been far too passive in reigning the flyboys in.

Moron Arrested After Driving Truck Into House

No Comments

When you read, “Moron Arrested After Driving Truck Into House“, normally, you would think that the editor who chose the hed is a pretty awful guy to ridicule someone that way.

But he didn’t….His parents did.

A 20-year-old Burleson man was arrested Friday night after police say he drove a pickup truck into a home while intoxicated.

Bryan Scott Moron was taken into custody after he lost control of a white Chevrolet truck and struck a mailbox on Parkridge Blvd., then continued ahead and drove into a home.

Ummm…Name change dude…

What The NV and SC Contests Mean, My Take

No Comments

First and foremost, Mitt Romney, who already had over half the total delegates selected, has further extended his delegate lead, by winning more convincingly in a larger state.

Second, I agree with Atrios:

I think McCain is easy to beat as a candidate, but I don’t think my mental health will survive the press fluffing of him for all these months.

I would also add that I will be missing the Freddie Thompson clown show. That stuff wrote itself.

On the Democratic side, I think that this was a significant victory for Clinton in a number of ways:

  • First and foremost, Hillary won the contest, regardless of the total delegate count. This does not bode well for California.
  • She completely blew Obama among Hispanics, notwithstanding his bragging about getting that vote in the senate race against Alan Keys. The only segment of the electorate to go for Keyes is the batsh#$ insane one.
  • She won 4 out of 6 of the special caucus locations on the strip.
  • I think that Edwards is done. He did not break double digits, and the data is fairly clear, though quite surprising to me, that Edwards voters will go Clinton as a second choice.

Obviously, we have South Carolina, where Obama is favored, but I think that these, and the generally superior organization of Clinton, will mean that she seals the deal on February 5.

Of cours, my predictive powers only marginally exceed Alan Keyes sanity, so don’t put any money down on my predictions.

I Agree, the Major Political Reporters Covering the Primaries are Useless

No Comments

Would that this would happen.

Some reporters should drop out of the campaign

By Martin Schram –
Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, January 13, 2008

The verdicts of Iowa and New Hampshire prompted a handful of the 2008 political players to depart from the presidential campaign trail.

But far too many remain for our own good.

Along with the handful of presidential candidates who dropped out so far, voters might be better served if a hundred or so of my political-reporter and pundit colleagues dropped out as well – and were replaced by journalists whose beats are about national security, economics, environment and health care.

For our coverage has not been serving the public interest by providing the sort of information voters really need to know – especially in the last weeks when many voters make their decisions.

I would add something more significant. That among top tier political reporters, not only is there a lack of understanding about the political issues of the day, there is actually an active disdain for knowing these issues.

It’s all about the game, not what it means to win or lose.

The coverage is cynical and juvenile.

Blair Unfit to Hold EU Position

No Comments

Honestly, I would not trust him as my pastry chef, but the statements by former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and the former prime minister Edouard Balladur thatTony Blair is unfit to be the next EU president is rather refreshing.

One of their arguments is technical, they feel that the First EU president (the treaty is going the rounds) should go to a country that is a part of the Euro zone, but the other is that, “Both men [d’Estang and Balladur] say Europe’s first president must come from a country which is fully committed to all EU policies, including the euro. Mr Balladur – breaking publicly with President Sarkozy – also says Mr Blair is too close to the United States to be chosen as a “fitting spokesman for Europe”. Their views are echoed, off the record, by senior officials in Belgium and Italy.”

In other words, for this high profile, if largely ceremonial position, he’s simply Bush’s Poodle, and nothing can fix that.

Sympathy for The Devil Willard “Mitt” Romney

No Comments

Adblock

Let’s be clear. This was not tough questioning. It was heckling.

Of course, wankers like Ana Marie Cox approve of this behavior and see it as laudable.

Mitt Romney has volunteers who are lobbiests, but they are not paid staff, like a number of other candidates, including McCain.

In fact, McCain got stenography when he said that tathat tax cuts always raise revenues (not true since Kennedy lowered the max marginal rate from over 90% to 70%), but The New Republic, that bastion of fabulists from Glass to Shalit to Siegel, has to call out the New York Times on its stenography.

It will be very interesting to see what will happen if Hillary and Mitt win, how on earth will the kule kidz make up their minds when they hate both candidates?

Maybe they’ll all become cheerleaders for Mr. Bloomberg.

Nevada Caucus News

No Comments

Romney was won on the Republican side, getting an absolute majority of the Republican votes. It looks like Ron Paul may get second, though it’s close.

On the Democratic side Clinton has beaten Obama:

  • Hillary 50%
  • Obama 45%
  • Edwards 4%

(numbers reflect delegates to state convention, not total votes)
It’s pretty much, “put a fork in Edwards, he’s done”, which if you look at the polls, benefits Clinton (Edwards voters, as strange as it sounds go to Hillary with him out of the race).

A Question on Blog Layout

No Comments

Here’s a question: I make about 10-15 posts a day, how far back should I go on the front page of the blog?

Right now, I’m at 4 days, or about 60 posts.

I could set it at a number of posts, or a number of days, but at what point does it get unwieldy for you guys.

Please, when giving your comments, give your bandwidth at least. (Browser, OS, and Machine speed, memory, etc, would be useful too)

I’m off till Saturday evening, consider this an open thread.

Don’t think about the white bear.

Keith Olbermann is a Mensch

No Comments

Last night Olbermann brought on Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss issues with regard to Nevada, and the Obama’s whole “I loveReagan” crap.

What he was unaware of was the fact that Lawrence O’Donnell wrote a truly stupid article on HuffPo a few days earlier titled “John Edwards is a Loser.

His thesis was that John Edwards should get out of the race, because he was in Obama’s way, and because Obama was black, it was borderline racist for him to run against him and strengthen Hillary.

The article was stupid for the following reasons:

Well, a number of folks (not me) took the time to drop a line (hopefully a polite one) on Olbermann, and he responded on Daily Kos about 18 hours later.

He did the unthinkable, he apologized, and he says that he will be addressing it tonight.

Lawrence O’Donnell Hotlist
by Keith Olbermann [Subscribe]
Fri Jan 18, 2008 at 02:00:01 PM EST

Forgive the fairly minor focus here but I spot at least three diaries on his appearance on Countdown last night to discuss Obama, Reagan, and Edwards.

Those of you complaining about it are right.

His HuffPo piece was news to me.

Shouldn’t have been, obviously, but it was.

I don’t read every blog, nor everything written by my guests. I often don’t know until an hour beforehand who will be a guest on a given show (if it matters to you, these scheduling nightmares tend to come in waves for some reason, and last night was a Nor’easter). Also, to announce, on-air, each guest’s preferences, prejudices, shillings and shiv jobs, would reduce the rest of the show to “Good Evening. Call Me Ishmael. My Boat Sank. The End. Good Night.” And Lawrence O’Donnell’s insight is almost always perceptive, relevant, and enlightened.

But even with these caveats, the point about this appearance, especially in the wake of such a freshly-written piece, is well-taken and I’m very sorry.

It will be addressed tonight on the show.

Thanks.

Economics Update

No Comments

We’ve just had £2 billion ($4 b) fund in the UK suspend trading because of a panic, but “Aegon UK added that it believes the “underlying fundamentals of the asset class remain healthy”.

Nope, there is an increasing understanding that the last one leaving the room won’t only be without clothes, but that the price of exit will involve selling an organ.

Standard and Poors is now assessing the risk of bond insurer giants MBIA and Ambac in excess of 70% over the next 5 years. If they unwind, a lot more unwinds too.

Sprint is laying off 4000, and closing 125 stores.

Bond insurer ACA is asking for more time to unwind its contracts, basically because it’s out of case. If they go under, “Banks and brokers could suffer billions of dollars of losses from credit protection they bought from ACA.”

Volcker Blames Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan Fed for Bubble

No Comments

This is a big surprise. One of Greenspan’s first acts when he joined the fed was to vote against Volker and to relax, eventually to the point of near meaninglessness, the Glass-Steagall to the point of near meaninglessness.

Now he is saying that the Fed (by which he means Alan “bubbles” Greenspan) is responsible for the bubbles.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker thinks the U.S. central bank is to blame for allowing bubbles to inflate asset markets, and says that current Fed chief Ben Bernanke is in a tough spot.

“I think Bernanke is in a very difficult situation,” Volcker told the New York Times Magazine for a story it will run on Sunday. The Times made the text available to the media in advance of publication.

“Too many bubbles have been going on for too long … The Fed is not really in control of the situation,” the Times quoted Volcker as saying, in clear criticism of both Bernanke and his predecessor Alan Greenspan.

No, it really means just bubbles.

Alan Greenspan never found an MBA written scam that he would not allow, or a bad stupid investment that he would not bail out.