Pretty run of the mill stuff. The Canadian Auto Workers are trying to get assurances about imports, because they worry about GM firing them all and building cars in China.
Additionally, GM and Chrysler both are making big cuts in their dealer networks, though Chrysler dealers have filed in bankruptcy court to stop this.
The entire thing is interesting. Here is the blog that outed her, here is the Op-Ed in question, along with the correction:
Correction: May 18, 2009
Maureen Dowd’s column on Sunday, about torture, failed to attribute a paragraph about the timeline for prisoner abuse to Josh Marshall’s blog at Talking Points Memo.
Here is
Josh Marshall’s original post, and the pertinent excerpt:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
And her version in the original:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Difference are bolded.
Her claim is that she heard it from a friend, and she really liked it, so she dropped it in, but that story stinks. The charitable explanation is that she got an email, liked the line, copied it in for a draft, went to get a cup of coffee, and forgot to cite.
The obvious question, is really where does she get her ideas from in the first place, and is this a single transgression, or a part of a pattern?
Since I don’t like her stuff, I’m not going to comb through it to check….It’s too painful.
Yes, they are….Only, there’s no mention of repaying the FDIC insured loans, and they are trying to weasel out from their obligations in the stock warrants that they issued to the US Government at the time they got the money, which could cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
I expect the Treasury to act in a way that benefits the banks at the expense of the taxpayers, since that’s what Geithner has been doing his whole career.
In any case, it appears that the Fed has set a timetable of around June 8 for a response, and there are restrictions on paying back the money, including another “stress test” and getting off the FDIC gravy train, because, of course, senior executives think that their own inflated paychecks are more important than the health and well being of their banks.
Well, there were no bank failures on last Friday, but we have the continuing saga of BankUnited, which regulators have called “critically undercapitalized”:
WL Ross & Co. and private-equity firms including Carlyle Group made a bid to buy BankUnited Financial Corp. assets provided they are put into receivership by the U.S. government, a person familiar with the matter said.
So it seems to me that it is time to put a fork in BankUnited, it’s done.
Senator Wyden who is leading the charge to strip the public option out of health care, because he has set his heart on, “Finding a legislative solution that can win at least 70 votes in the Senate.”
Dude, if you come up with a solution that works, it condemns the Republicans to at least 40 years in the wilderness, so the only thing that they will support will be something that doesn’t work.
Both ideologically and tactically, it is against their interests to pass comprehensive health care reform.
The stimulus package passed with 3 Republican votes in the entire congress, Social Security passed without a single Republican vote, and you think that somehow getting 12 Republicans to vote you way is going to happen with any proposal with real merit.
You sir, are an idiot.
It was an overwhelming vote, 90-5 in favor, which indicates that a lot of ‘Phant Senators got calls from outraged constituents.
It’s a bit weaker than the House version, and contains that dumb ass “guns in national parks” provision.
We’ll see what comes out of conference committee.
Still, this is not something that I expected to see in my lifetime.
Well, out in the real world, housing starts and housing permits both fell unexpectedly, and industrial production fell ½%, which looks bad, while the Baltic Dry Index, an index of ship activity, hit a 7 month high, mostly on Chinese demand for iron ore.
Note that the fall in housing starts and building premits was almost entirely related to a drop in construction of condominiums and apartments.
In the long run, this may be good news, as it means that the supply of new housing units is finally being outstripped by demand, as anemic as it is, which is a first step to recovery.
Note also, however, that housing starts is a leading indicator, and as such this does not speak well for “green shoots” in the economy.
My guess would be that that condos are driving this, as they used to be a step up to a stand alone house, but now people realize that a condo is as hard to get rid of as a case of herpes.
In the delusional world of bankers the news is fairly good, with the LIBOR hitting a to a 4 month low, the Volatility Index (VIX) below 30 for the first time since Lehman imploded, and >Barry Ritholtz’s semi regular credit crisis watch is showing signs of thawing in a number of metrics.
So at this point, the problem may be more the real economy than it is the banks, and the fact that Norway, the outlier in so many good ways, like its lack of corruption in a petro state, has finally joined the rest of Europe in a recession.
Meanwhile, it looks like Allstate and Ameriprise will not be among insurance companies taking TARP money.
I’m not sure if it’s the potential for pay limits, or the stigma, or the fact that they think that Geithner is a turd.
Meanwhile, in currency, the good news in the credit market pushed the dollar down on reduced demand for a safe haven.
Oil broke the $60/bbl barrier in interday trading, before settling at $59.65/bbl, largely on yet another refinery fire….Is it me, or is this beginning to sound awfully convenient?
I’m wondering if they timed it so that deferred maintenance would kick in just before the start of the Summer driving season.
But it appears that the EU is getting ready to give people the same basic rights with software as they have with other consumer products:
Software companies could be held responsible for the security and efficacy of their products, if a new European Commission consumer protection proposal becomes law.
Commissioners Viviane Reding and Meglena Kuneva have proposed that EU consumer protections for physical products be extended to software. The suggested change in the law is part of an EU action agenda put forward by the commissioners after identifying gaps in EU consumer protection rules.
This would invalidate the bullsh$# license provisions which say, “What, you expected this sh#$ to work? Your problem!”
It would, of course, put Microflaccid out of business.
The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration has requested no funds for the reliable replacement warhead program, which means that Barack Obama has largely eschewed a reeplenishment and update of the US nuclear arsenal.
They are seeking $143 to develop advanced validation methods of existing warheads, but one of the promises inherent in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was that the nuclear powers would gradually denuclearize themselves, and it appears that this is a big step towards this.
OK, that’s three words, but the study by the National Association of Homebuilders and Wells Fargo Bank saying that houses are the most affordable in since the housing opportunity index started is 6 pounds of fertilizer in a 5 pounds bag.
Houses are still above historical trends, as are the rent/own ratio.
Don’t trust any numbers from homebuilders or realtors organizations.
I remember reading about the “Barefoot Doctors“, paramedics sent out by Mao Zedong to address the lack of healthcare in the the rural regions, and now, with the Chinese Communist Party’s aggressive focus on economic development in urban areas, their rural healthcare system has been systematically dismantled:
Tan Zhengrui serves some 700 people in China’s rural Miyun county, making doctor’s rounds on his motorcycle with a stethoscope, thermometer and blood-pressure gauge — the sum total of his medical equipment.
Just 80 kilometers (50 miles) from central Beijing, Tan’s clinic in Peng He Yan village consists of a bed, a bench and a couple of desks. He doesn’t even have a scale to weigh patients.
The focus of the article is on the worries that if Swine Flu “goes viral”* in the rural areas, there will be nothing to arrest its spread.
Note that Tan Zhengrui, who started his career as one of Mao’s “Barefoot Doctors,” is due to retire, and there is no replacement in sight, and he suggests a return to the old ways, “We need a policy like Mao’s, to order people out to the countryside.”
Certainly, requiring a year of internship in the rural areas as a part of a doctor’s education would not be a bad thing.
*Sorry for the pun.†
†OK, I’m not really sorry for the pun, I’m an invertebrate punster, so slug me.‡
†Not sorry for that one either.
Remember my post a few hours ago regarding a photograph of a mystery aircraft photographed over Afghanistan?
I’m almost ready to call it a hoax.
To refresh your memory, here is the photo (top), and here is a photo of the LongEZ modified by the AFRL to test pulse detonation propulsion
mystery aircraft, and below it are three photographs the first one from Wiki, and the next two from Mojave Skies (I’ve mirrored and cropped them to more closely match match the orientation of the mystery pic).
The similarities, cranked wing, large boxy structure under the fuselage, location of the canopy, are all rather striking.
What is missing are the canards, wingtip rudders, and the pulse detonation tubes sticking out the back, but with photoshop/GIMP and some reduction in resolution, I think that the conclusion that it is a faked photograph may be higher on the list.
The aircraft only flew at the Mojave airport, and now sits at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside of Dayton, Ohio, and it clearly never shared even the same hemisphere as Afghanistan.
(click pics for full size images)
The Times of London has a very good account of what took down AIG, and it predates Joseph Cassano, the head of its Financial Products Unit, and it makes it clear that the insurance giant was on shaky ground, with the active participation of its founder Hank Greenberg, for at least a decade previous.
It also notes how Brooksley Born, who was purged by Fed Chairman Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert “Why am I not Under Indictment for Insider Trading” Rubin, knew about the problem, and that it was systemic, and tried to do something about it.
It’s a good read, and highly recommended.
Actually, as lot of people’s “my bad”, because that picture I posted as a “mystery UAV”, was the wrong picture, as Stephen Trimble observes.
The previous photo was apparently the wrong one, and I posted it in error.
If this one is accurate, and it is almost as bad as the other one, It looks like a slightly cranked wing, and maybe a radome underneath, and a canopy, or maybe air intake above.
In any case, I’m confused, and have no clue as to what is in the air over Afghanistan.
Well, we have another expert on the economy saying that the so-called green shoots are not real, the Postmaster General of the United States, John Potter, is saying that mail volume continues to fall, and in these days of email, increasingly mail volume is driven by, and so is a a very good indicator of, the state of the mail order business.
On the other hand, the banks have continued loosening short term credit, with
the LIBOR dropping sharply again, indicating that bank to bank lending is getting healther, and the National Association of Homebuilder confidence index rose to 16 from 14, though with neutral being 50, this is a change from “end of the world bad” to “beins strapped in a chair and forced to watch the Ben Affleck Jennifer Lopez movie Gigli” bad.
It doesn’t help that the situation for the GSEs, Fannie and Freddie, is looking increasingly dire, with further losses into the tens, if not hundreds of billions forecast, and one wonders if at some point, a decision is made to wind them down, which would eliminate much of the available financing available for mortgages in the US.
I would also note that, with the big banks concentrating on buying up other banks, the fact that the smaller US look to need an additional $24 billion in capital does not bode well for the finance needs for much of our economy.
While we’re at it, let’s note that the real estate crash is now firmly hitting the higher end of the market, as people purchase those homes as “trade ups,” and they have run out of rubes people with sufficient equity in the old homes to do so.
And in the old standbys, energy and currency, rose by the most in a month, on concerns about Nigerian unrest, a fire at a refinery in Pennsylvania, and concerns about the start of the Summer driving season, while dollar rose on comments by the Japanese Finance Ministry that they needed to work to keep the Yen from appreciating too much.
OK, so we now have a picture to go along with the reports of a stealthy UAV operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
So, you have the grainy picture, and the artist’s conception.
The thing is, it doesn’t make any sense to use stealth in Afghanistan.
The Taliban does not have any air defense radars operating, so why work on a specialized stealth shape?
I can see aural stealth (noise), and IR stealth, and visual stealth, but using a radar avoiding platform where there is no radar just makes no sense.
[on edit]
I just came across the BAE Corax (Raven in Greek) as a possible answer.
It’s a British system, and it matches the general configuration, including the long wing, though the photo seems to show a lot more wing sweep.
While DARPA’s Blackswift hypersonic , the dual mode turbojet/scramjet Falcon combined-cycle engine technology (FACET)soldiers on, (paid subscription required) and has actually successfully completed tests up to Mach 4 in a wind tunnel.
The technology used a turbojet to get to high supersonic speeds, at which point the scramjet kicks in, and the turbojet is cocooned, and it is supposed to take a vehicle to around Mach 6.
Additionally, the X-51A scramjet test vehicle has been moved to the Boeing plant at Huntington Beach, CA for structural tests.
It’s not as sophisticated as the FACET, it’s a pure scramjet, and boosted to speed by a rocket booster after being dropped by a B-52, and it’s rather crude, using existing equipment wherever possible, using a rocket booster from ATACMS, an existing fuel control system, and geriatric igniters from the TF-33 engine, along with using a rather heavy tungsten nose cone and ablative coatings elsewhere to deal with the heat.
That’s the latest pitch for the F-35, as noted by Stephen Trimble.
They even have a video showing how their new whiz bank sensor fusion means that you can see everywhere all the time, so maneuverability does not matter, because they have the Electro-Optical Distributed Aperture System (EO-DAS).
You have to love this quote at around the 3½ minute mark, “maneuverability is irrelevant. Instead of mutual kills, the F-35 simply exits the fight, and lets its missiles do the turning.”
Shades of the no gun versions of the F-4 Phantom II, and how well those worked.
Watch the video, and I’ll note how this is disingenuous afterwords.
First, note that with distinctly limited space in the weapons bays, the F-35 is pretty much limited to the AIM-120 AMRAAM and the AIM-9Z, the latest Sidewinder, both of which are smaller, and so have inferior kinematics (range and end game maneuverability) to their Russian and Chinese counterparts, particularly when they start off with an 180° turn with an over the shoulder shot, so shooting the aircraft behind you is not all that likely, since by the time that they are in your missile envelope, they have already fired.
This is particularly true of the Sidewinder, which was never designed with thrust vectoring, and is smaller (5″ diameter as vs 6″ diameter), and is using an older motor not designed for thrust vectoring. The Over the shoulder AMRAAM actually has a new larger motor using the space available from a reduction in the size of its guidance electronics.
Of course, at the ranges where the AMRAAM outperforms the Sidewinder, you probably want to turn and put the nose on target to improve the envelope anyway.
Improved situational awareness is a good thing. Most pilots get shot down by a threat that they never see, but once the guy is in your 6 o’clock, you are hosed.
Of course, I know that the laws are completely different in the two universes.
