Year: 2008

And in a Race to the Right

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Both Tzipi Livni and Benjamin Netanyahu are promising to take down the Hamas government in Gaza.

It’s an attempt by Livni to position herself to the right of Natanyahu for the election it is stupid, since it serves to reinforce support for Hamas.

In terms of government entities in the disputed territories, Israel faces Morton’s Fork, with Hamas actually able and willing to perform the role of governance while being unwilling to acknowledge Israel as a country, and the PA (and Fatah in particular) being unable to do any of that, because their focus continues to be corruption and self dealing while paying lip service (when not speaking in Arabic) to Israel’s existence.

I don’t know of a solution here.

How the Heck Do They Screw This Up So Badly

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Let’s be clear about this: while it is clear that Ted Stevens is guilty of accepting bribes, he was only convicted of the easier-to-prove failure to report gifts.

In the process of prosecuting this case, the prosecution mad basic, and what appear to me (IANAL) to be very elementary errors in things like discovery and errors in the indictment, and now we have a whistle blower claiming irregularities in terms of witness contacts:

  • A member of the prosecution accepted “multiple things of value” from a “cooperating source” (most likely former Veco CEO Bill Allen, his name shows up in the redacted complaint)
  • An “inappropriate scheme” was created to relocate a witness.

I’m wondering if someone on the prosecution team was trying to throw the case. Bush, and Bush before him, and Reagan before him, have done their level best to politicize the DoJ, and this could be the fruit.

I find simple incompetence to be an inadequate discussion explanation.

Why Barack Obama Needs to Fire a General or Two

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So, the status of forces agreement is signed, and General Ray Ordierno immediately starts making public statements about how it a binding timeline in the agreement does not really mean a binding timeline.

Now we have unnamed sources deep in the Pentagon saying that the pullout of troops from Iraqi cities will be a pullout in name only:

Even though the agreement with the Iraqi government calls for all American combat troops to be out of the cities by the end of June, military planners are now quietly acknowledging that many will stay behind as renamed “trainers” and “advisers” in what are effectively combat roles. In other words, they will still be engaged in combat, just called something else.

Let’s be clear, this is a case of the Pentagon leaking from near the top: the leaks have been approved by Gates, Petraeus, or Ordierno.

On January 21, they need to be told that they will stop all comments, and that the entire chain of command needs to know that the status of forces agreement is now the position of the government of the United States of America, and that anyone who suggests otherwise is engaging in insubordination, and will be subject to severe disciplinary actions.

And then, the next relatively senior officer (Lt. Col. and above) who shoots off his yap gets fired.

Because this really is insubordination, and while it may serve the desires of Bush and His Evil Minions™ to subvert the timetables in the SOF, it does not suit the desires or needs of the nation.

If anything else is done, Barack Obama will be rolled for the rest of his time as President by the Pentagon.

More on the Latest Diabolical Plan From the RIAA

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It appears that there has now been some response from the lower tier ISPs about the RIAA’s proposal attempting to dragoon them into doing their copyright enforcement work for them.

At least one relatively small ISP is saying pay to play:

Jerry Scroggin, owner-operator of Bayou Internet and Communications, wants the music and film industries to know that he’s not a cop and he doesn’t work for free.

Scroggin, who sells Internet access to between 10,000 and 12,000 customers in Louisiana, heard the news on Friday that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has opted out of suing individuals for pirating music. Instead, the group representing the four largest music labels is forging partnerships with Internet service providers and asking them to crack down on suspected file sharers.

According to Scroggin, if RIAA representatives ask the help of his ISP, they had better bring their checkbook–and leave the legal threats at home. (CNET News obtained a copy of the RIAA’s new notice to ISPs here). Scroggin said that he receives several notices each month with requests that he remove suspected file sharers from his network. Each time, he gets such a notice from an entertainment company, he sends the same reply.

“I ask for their billing address,” Scroggin said. “Usually, I never hear back.”

This makes sense.

Not only is it an expensive process, it is one that is fraught with liability issues from disgruntled customers.

If I were operating an ISP, I’d tell them to pound sand, but I’m not a businessman who has to deal with these compromises. For me, it’s a moral decision: Without a court order, I do not spy on customers.

Were I willing to make a compromise, at a minimum, my price for cooperation would be as follows:

  • The orginization would have to pay the techs at the retail billing rate.
  • The organization would agree to cover any and all legal fees incurred as a result of cooperation.
  • The organization would agree to totally indemnify my company against all claims as a result of this.

The last two are the most important, because when the RIAA goes after a grandmother for downloading the rap song I Want to F*^% You In the A@#, and they already have done so, I would not want to be left holding the bag.

And Then There are the Involuntary Part Timers

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One of the ways that unemployment is understated is that in bad times, you see an explosion in the number of people who work part time.

This is one of the numbers that you rarely, if ever, see reported in the press, and it is not a pretty picture.

Graph pr0n courtesy of Calculated Risk, who to his credit notes that this is not population adjusted, it goes back to 1960, which was a recession year itself, but does note that the near vertical rise in the involuntary part-time is as bad as has been seen over those 48 years.

It’s about a 75% increase over the past 12 months.

Economics Update

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Well, most of the credit crunch indicators seem to be better today, or at least not as bad as expected.

First, we have the TED spread, the difference between the rates on interbank overnight loans and short term T-bills falling below 150 basis points (1½%) to 148 basis points, for the first time since Lehman collapsed.

Of course historically, the TED spread has been about 38 basis points.

Additionally, U.S. 2-Year T-Notes were auctioned off at a higher interest rate than predicted, 0.922%, which was better than the predictions of 0.912%, though the former is still near a record low, and still reflects a flight to safety at the expense of anything resembling returns.

You get the same picture from Calculated Risk’s Credit Crisis Indicators where things appear to be really bad, but better than they have been.

In terms of the real economy, things are still tough though with temp agency Manpower, Inc. withdrawing its forecast on weak demand, and temp employment is a bellwether, and we also are seeing the first decline in online holiday sales ever, according to a report from ComScore.

Considering the fact that online sales are still growing as a proportion of overall sales, the rest of retail is doing worse.

In energy, oil is down again, largely on reports of diminished Chinese demands.

In currency, the Dollar is up on the expectation that central banks will act to support it.

Because You Should Never Pass Up an Opportunity to Show Talking Heads Videos

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So, I come across this story describing how Bush’s push for home ownership, aka the “Ownership Society,” was responsible in part for the housing crash.

I tend to agree with the Shrill One, when he says that Bush’s support of home ownership had the same role in the housing bubble as his support for marital fidelity did in the overall rate of adultery in the USA, and that his most significant contribution was in stripping away regulation that protected people from predatory lendors.

That being said, I cannot allow this quote go unanswered:

Then his Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson Jr., told him that to stave off disaster, he would have to sign off on the biggest government bailout in history. Bush, according to several people in the room, paused for a single, stunned moment to take it all in.

“How,” he wondered aloud, “did we get here?”

You just cannot read that and then not show a clip of the seminal music video from Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime.

Picture Pr0n: X-47B Demonstrator Rolls Out

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Well, Northrop-Grumman has rolled out its first X-47B unmanned combat air system (UCAS) demonstrator in a rather splashy debut.

Not bad for a project that was on the death watch list just 6 months ago.


It’s actually rather large, with a, ” 62.1 ft, compared to 44.7 ft. for an F/A-18″ (the E/F models), and so looks to be close to the size of the canceled A-12 attack aircraft.


Here we can see the standard robust naval landing gear.


Here is a closeup of the inlet, which the N-G folks were fine with letting people take, which surprises me, because it’s kind of the “secret sauce”.

There is still a part of me that is surprised that the US Navy is considering a tailless anything after the debacle that was the F7U Cutlass (aka “Gutless” and “Ensign Eliminator”).

NG press release here.

Boeing Aircraft’s Pre-Christmas Sale

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Well, it certainly sounds like one of those pre-Christmas sales.

Boeing is offering to sell F/A-18 E/Fs to the US Navy and Marines for less than $50 million each, in order to help with the “fighter gap”, that the Navy is facing as its older aircraft face the end of life, and the F-35 is further delayed.

This is with the AESA radar, so it is a very good deal by today’s standards.

I never in my life thought that I’d be saying “F/A-18”, and “low cost” in the same breath.

And the Sub Lease Deal Soap Opera Continues

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Well, it looks like the on again off again deal between Russia and India to lease nuclear attack submarines is on again.

The Nerpa, which was originally the subject of the deal until an accidental discharge of the fire fighting system killed 20 people, is no longer believed to be a part of the deal, though a sister ship (Project 971 “Akula” class boats), or perhaps more than one sister ship, might be a part of the deal.

Another Illustration of How Broken the Weapons Development System Is

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So, we have a fairly run of the mill article Aviation Week article about delays on integrating new weapons into the Eurofighter Typhoon. (paid subscription required)

It appears that there will now be a 2 year delay in qualifying the Meteor rocket-ramjet long range AAM for the platform:

Fielding of the rocket/ramjet-powered Meteor air-to-air missile on the Eurofighter Typhoon is being pushed back two years. The move is part of a wider rescoping of weapon-integration plans.

…

… It had intended to introduce the missile in 2013, although this date was in itself a shift from the previous in-service date (ISD) of 2012. The delay came to light following this cryptic comment from the Defense Ministry: “When the missile is integrated on Typhoon is being deferred until a time in keeping more with when the threat may materialize.”

The Meteor is a key element of the Typhoon’s air-to-air capability, providing the aircraft with a weapon with an engagement envelope, and no escape zone, substantially greater than the Raytheon AIM-120 Amraam family of weapons. The revised ISD is also understood to reflect a threshold for some of the Typhoon partners beyond which their present Amraam inventory would require refurbishment. France and Sweden are also Meteor partners; the weapon is intended for the Rafale and Gripen, respectively.

The translation into English here is that while the Typhoon is already flying, and that the Meteor is largely on schedule, at least its current schedule, it’s outrageously expensive to qualify the Meteor for as a weapon on the Typhoon, and since the most likely competitor, a rocket/ram jet upgrade of the Vympel R-77 (AA-12 Adder) is on the back burner, it’s simply unaffordable to take a system ready for deployment, and make sure that it can be used by a system in deployment.

This is nuts. It’slike saying that the cost of getting a new sound system for your car is $50,000.00.

Russia to Offers to Cancel Some Strategic Weapons Systems Over Euro Star Wars

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The commander of Russia’s Strategic Missile forces, Colonel-General Nikolai Solovtsov is saying that many of the systems currently in development would not be necessary if the US backs off its missile defense installation in Poland:

“If Americans give up plans to deploy the third positioning region and other elements of the strategic missile defense system then certainly we will adequately respond to it,” Colonel-General Nikolai Solovtsov said.

“We will simply not need a number of expensive programs,” he added echoing earlier Kremlin overtures to the new U.S. administration.

This has generally been the knock on various BMD efforts since Reagan’s “Star Wars,” and the installations in Europe, which appeared to be located to challenge Russia more than Iran, just further complicate the matter.

Japanese Company Developing Regional Jet Engine

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Japanese aero engine manufactuer IHI is working on a a low fuel consumption turbofan (paid subscription required) to compete with US and European engines on future regional jets.

One of the interesting features of the engine, IHI calls it the Eco turbofan, mockup shown is how the fan wraps around its hub, so as to cover more of the frontal area of the engine, which is intended to improve efficiency.

In its initial form, it should put out around 9,000 lbs of thrust with a 7:1 bypass ratio.

IDF Develops New Counter-Battery Radar

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The IDF has started deploying a new radar geared toward counter-battery fire.

The Elta’s EL/M-2084 Multi-Mission Radar (MMR) phased array radar can pick up artillery and rocket rounds at launch, and determing both the launch point and impact point.

It will be integrated with Israeli rocket interception systems, though I wonder if it might also be incorporated into counter-battery fire control too, as it appears that this would allow the IDF Artillery Corps to have rounds on a target firing at them in less than something less than 2 minutes.