Krugman nails it. Promising to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the US means more than the president follow the laws.
It means that he should aggressively prosecute those who conspire to violate the Constitution.
There were very real crimes committed, and not little ones, and they were knowingly entered into.
Coleman was proposing something like 5 mini trials extending over something like 8 weeks, and the Minnesota Election Court has gone with something more expedited.
The trial will start Jan 26, assuming that Franken’s motion to dismiss is not accepted on the 21st.
Length is indeterminate. A strict 15 day limit on the trial, which Franken wanted, was about the only time that they went with Coleman, so there is no hard deadline.
Bank of Clark County, Vancouver, WA and National Bank of Commerce, Berkeley, IL
They always do it Friday evenings, when I go off line.
The cease fire is to be effective at 2:00am Sunday morning local time, or about 4½ hours ago.
Note that Hamas has not signed on, and that soldiers will apparently maintain their positions.
As near as I can tell, at least at this point, the only definitive winner in this cease fire is Benyamin Netanyahu.
Unsurprisingly, it’s a mess.
One of the problem with the hypersonic scram jet is that it does not work well at speeds lower than about Mach 4 or so, and a turbojet pretty much runs out of steam at about Mach 3, and even then it gets big and heavy and complex, as evidenced by the size and weight of the bypass turbofans in the SR-71 (bottom pic), and it looks like DARPA is has put the pulse detonation engines (PDE) at the head of a list to bridge this gap in its Vulcan program. (paid subscription required) (top picture)
Similar in concept, though much different in execution to the pulse jet that powered the V-1 “Buzzbomb”, it is increasingly being looked at as a way to bridge the gap between turbojet and scramjet.
Additionally, it is being examined as a possible replacement for both combustors in turbine engines, and for afterburners behind turbine engines.
One thing that I’m not clear on here though is why you need the turbine engine in the first place with a PDE, as they do operate at 0 airspeed, as evidenced by the (very noisy) flight of a Long-EZ powered by a such an engine about 11 months ago.
It looks like EADS is asking for a further 2 year delay in service entry for the A400M military transport.
At the same time, a report says that the A400m is over weight and under-performing:
The FTD cited sources which said the current version of the A400M can carry only 29-30 tons of material, instead of an expected 32 tons, and that it is itself 12 tons overweight.
Nice to know that bloated under-performers in defense acquisition is not a special American monopoly.
Then maybe you have a problem like lack of air superiority over your airfields, which pretty much means “game over”.
This makes me wonder why the USAF is soliciting proposals from Boeing and Northrop-Grumman for stealthy STOL airlifters.
My guess is that this is a way to get additional money for a successor to the B-2 bomber through a back door, because there ain’t any money in the front door.
Obviously, this is technically challenging, if just because tailless designs do not lend themselves to short take-off and landing and the slow speeds that this entails.
The basic requirement, the ability to operate from a a 1,500-2,000ft landing strip and cruise at Mach 0.80 is doable, and has been done, even at the size that they are looking at, a 35T payload, roughly equivalent to an EADS A400M, which comes close to these goals…Or it will when it finally flies.
Clearly, the two proposals differ, with Boeing going with a tail, and they will rely heavily on things like blown flaps, and perhaps some application of the Coandă effect.
Northrop-Grumman Concept
STOL Technologies from Northrop-Grumman
Honestly, I am pleasantly surprised by the news that Thielert Aircraft Engines’ insolvency administrator has announced a (probably small) profit, and is looking for a buyer.
You can find a rundown of my previous stuff here, but here is the nickel tour:
What has happened over the past few months apparently is that the insolvency administrator, Bruno Kübler, has come to understand the market, reduced spares prices, and started to supply a limited amount of support under its old guarantees.
Additionally, they are looking to sell the engine in the future without the extensive guarantee, so as to avoid this problem in the future….It’s a change in business model, with the majority of future profits being in engine support, rather than the initial sale.
It’s still a promising technology, though I am still dubious of Thielert’s continued existence.
System of a Down’s Chop Suey as done by Richard Cheese and his band Lounge Against the Machine.
He sees sees the Chinese economy hitting a brick will too, with a sharp slowdown in their economy, and an explosion in the deficit.
The question in China is what level of social unrest will follow.
As always, I highly recommend anything Roubini writes.
H/T 傻冒儿 Stupid Hat aka ShaMao’er for the link.
Jeffrey Goldberg says that Israel can’t make Peace with Hamas.
That their philosophy and theology will simply never allow them to make a real peace.
He relates his discussions with Nizar Rayyan, in which the now dead Hamas leader says that the first priority is to “deal with” Arabs looking for peace deals (i.e. Fatah), calls Jews the descendants of apes and pigs, denies the Holocaust, and says that God is opposed to a religious state in that part of the world.
Let’s be clear there can be no deal with Mr. Rayyan. With him, the point was mooted when he was killed.
On the larger point, the question is, “Can you negotiate a peace with people who believe as he does?”
The answer is clearly no.
Neither can you bomb them until they give up. They are, to quote Elwood Blues, “On a mission from God.”
You can’t kill them all, and any attempt to do so is likely to create more radicals.
What you can do, however, is destroy them as a viable political force. I’m not sure how, but you can reduce people like this to the soap box ranters you see now and again in places like the Boston Common, and that should be the strategy.
That being said, I have no idea how to do that, particularly because today the soap box ranters are a rather potent political force in the territories.
We are getting conflicting reports on how much longer the fighting will go on, with reports of 2 more weeks, that it may end tonight, and that Hamas has rejected the cease fire terms.
We’ll know its over when its over, I guess.
Part of the reason for this is that
there appears to be a rift between Hamas in Gaza and their nominal leaders in Syria, with the latter taking a much harder line….Which is easier for them, because they, and their neighbors are not in the cross fire.
On a tactical level, we now have reports of ubiquitous recording of events on video by the IDF, on the theory that this will be an effective defense against accusations of war crimes.
This means, at the very least, that there are elements in the IDF who believe that they are following טוהר נשק, because people who believe that they are committing war crimes don’t video tape it these days.
Additionally, we have reports of extremely close coordination between UAV’s and ground forces.
This is because they are under the direct control Army, and not AF units, which is something that the US Army should note, because the USAF wants direct control of anything larger than a seagull.
I would also note that IDF armor is doing very well, unlike in Lebanon in 2006.
I think that this is because there is no longer an Air Force man as chief of staff, and so they have moved away from the US “long range PGM” model, and back to maneuver warfare.
It doesn’t hurt that their APCs are the heaviest in the world (contra the direction of the US Army with its light weight FCS manned vehicles), and that the Merkava has a number of systems, remote machine guns and a 60mm mortar, that are very effective in urban combat too.
Finally, we have a video of a trip to a missile factory.
I will note that you can hear children in background at one point, and whether this is evidence of human shield use, or simply an artifact of living with 1.5 million people in a space the size of Washington, DC, is left to the reader.
H/T Danger Room for the vid.
Also, I will post on Jeffrey Goldberg’s NY Times OP/ED later.
You know that old saying about releasing bad news on a Friday, because everyone is looking toward the weekend?
It’s one of those Fridays.
Let’s start with Ireland, where the Anglo Irish Bank, the 3rd largest in that country has been declared insolvent and nationalized. I’m beginning to think that the “Celtic Tiger” is on its way back to poetic poverty, particularly now that places like Poland and Slovakia are cheaper labor markets.
In the world of recession/deflation, we have the CPI falling 0.7% and industrial production falling 2% in December.
I’m beginning to think that the US will start to resemble Ireland…Without the Poetry bit.
We also have a couple of updates courtesy of Calculated Risk, with Los Angeles Area Port Traffic falling sharply and office vacancy rate rising in Q4.
Note that there are predictions of a 30% drop in office rents, and that exports are dropping more than imports, so this is not a turn around on the deficit.
In retail, we have Toyota North America announcing cuts in production, and Circuit City is going to liquidate, as in, no more Circuit City, no kidding.
In currency, more bailouts to banks means more concerns about the dollar, so it fell today.
In energy, oil was up slightly today, but down most of the day, after the IEA predicted that demand would continue to fall, and retail gasoline was up again, which means that it’s gone up around $0.20/gal since New Years day.
**Sigh**
I can’t stand to watch him, and all that is left for him is pathetic alibis.
Seriously, it’s nice that the judge ordered the release of Mohammed El Gharani, who is now 21, because there was no credible evidence to hold him, but among their accusations was this gem.
The government also accused Gharani of belonging to a London-based al-Qaeda cell in 1998, an accusation that Leon questioned. Gharani was 11 at the time, living with immigrant parents in Saudi Arabia, his attorneys said.
(emphasis mine)
So they discovered that they had no evidence, and so they accused him of being a terrorist at age 11???
He was picked up in Pakistan in 2002, when he was apparently 14.
So, he has been at Gitmo for something like 6 years, and doubtlessly tortured “subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques”…For a 14 year old boy, who was accused of being an 11 year old terrorist.
I can’t see this as anything but monstrous, and everyone involved in this process needs to go to jail for a very long time.
I don’t see how you describe anyone involved in the process without invoking Eichmann and the banality of evil.
The PPI was down 1.9% for the month of December, and was down 0.9% for the year.
While some of the year over year drop was a collapse in energy prices, much of the decline is simple deflation from a shrinking economy.
I missed this earlier, normally it would go in my economic update.
Just 3 months after we threw $350 billion at the banking system, which was more like $9 trillion when you count what the Fed is doing, we have exploding bank losses threatening bank solvency, with one of the main contributors being, “the unexpectedly high costs of shotgun mergers arranged by federal officials last year.”
Thank you Henry Paulson, now we have Bank of America getting in line for a Citi style bailout, because the black hole that is Merrill Lynch is deeper than anticipated, among other clusterf%$#s.
As Atrios says, “Just nationalize the lot of them and end this.”
Well, NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo just caught most of the insurance industry using bogus numbers to determine usual and customary health care charges.
Screwing their customers.
Seriously, we need to go with a British style National Health Services system now. Anything that keeps health insurers in the loop will be an epic fail.
