Year: 2009

USAF Tanker is Still Moving Target

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It looks like the U.S.A.F. is still open to making changes in the requirements and evaluation of proposals for the tanker program:

Halfway through the comment period for a draft request for proposals (RFP) for the U.S. Air Force’s KC-X aerial refueling tanker competition, the top civilian overseeing the armed service says it is open to making changes where needed.

The draft RFP, released Sept. 24, puts heavy emphasis on cost and includes 373 pass/fail threshold requirements for participants. It further marks a shift from previous attempts to procure the 179 tankers needed to begin replacing Eisenhower-era KC-135s, as the Pentagon is pursuing a fixed-price development contract and production profile.

Isn’t this what got the last contract award thrown out, moving targets that were deemed unfair?

Australia Looking to Bug Out of Afghanistan

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Do the Australian government is looking to complete the mission in “shortest time-frame possible,” according to Defense (Defence?) Minister John Faulkner

It should be noted that the Australians have been in with the Americans on everywhere that the US has fought for the past 100 years, including Vietnam, so this is not a good indication of the direction of military involvement of allied forces.

Basically, there is not a whole bunch of goodwill left for operations in Afghanistan after the Bushie’s fiasco in Iraq, even with a new president.

Dutch Report: F-35 Numbers to be Cut

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A Dutch report is saying that the total number of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to be produced may be half of estimates, largely because of changes in warfare (UAVs) and cost escalation.

This is particularly significant for the Dutch, because one of the selling points for the aircraft to the RNAF is that the cost of their purchases will largely be offset by the revenue that Dutch companies will derive from sales of aircraft to other countries.

If the numbers go down, the price goes up, and the ratio of revenue takes a decided turn for the worse:

Rising costs, changing threats and rival aircraft — manned and unmanned — could cut nearly in half the number of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that ultimately are built, a Dutch defense analyst said in a report to the Dutch parliament. And if fewer planes are built, the price for each, already $100 million or more, will undoubtedly increase, analyst Johan Boeder warned.

A “likely estimate” is that 2,500 F-35s eventually will be built, Boeder wrote in a report delivered to Dutch lawmakers in September. The Netherlands, one of nine countries financing the development of the F-35, was expected to buy 85 planes, but maycut that to 57, Boeder said.

I think the idea that the aircraft will cost less than $100 million at current procurement numbers is delusional, and if the numbers go down, the price goes up.

To procure a meaningful aircraft, you must with start with purchase and life-cycle costs as a primary requirement, and work back from there.

NY-23 is Getting Jiggy

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So, I told you about how the the national wingnuts had driven the Republican candidate, Dierdre “Dede” Scozzafava, who was among the more conservative members of their caucus in the New York State Assembly, out of the special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional district in favor of Conservative Party (it’s a New York thing) candidate, heavy duty wingnut Doug Hoffman..

She suspended her campaign, and now she has officially endorsed Democratic candidate Bill Owens:

I want to thank you for your support and friendship. Over the past 24 hours, I have had encouraging words sent to my family and me. Many of you have asked me whom you should support on Tuesday.

Since announcing the suspension of my campaign, I have thought long and hard about what is best for the people of this District, and how to answer your questions. This is not a decision that I have made lightly.

You know me, and throughout my career, I have been always been an independent voice for the people I represent. I have stood for our honest principles, and a truthful discussion of the issues, even when it cost me personally and politically. Since beginning my campaign, I have told you that this election is not about me; it’s about the people of this District.

It is in this spirit that I am writing to let you know I am supporting Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same.

It’s not in the cards for me to be your representative, but I strongly believe Bill is the only candidate who can build upon John McHugh’s lasting legacy in the U.S. Congress. John and I worked together on the expansion of Fort Drum and I know how important that base is to the economy of this region. I am confident that Bill will be able to provide the leadership and continuity of support to Drum Country just as John did during his tenure in Congress.

In Bill Owens, I see a sense of duty and integrity that will guide him beyond political partisanship. He will be an independent voice devoted to doing what is right for New York. Bill understands this district and its people, and when he represents us in Congress he will put our interests first.

Please join me in voting for Bill Owens on Tuesday. To address the tough challenges ahead, we must rise above partisanship and politics and work together. There’s too much at stake in this election to do otherwise.

Dede

I have no clue how this will effect the race, and I agree with people who say that Owens is, at best, a Liebercrat.

I’m not that concerned about the effect of changing the party what would of the least senior congressman for the next year and a half, but the sound of wing-nut heads exploding is sweet.

(On edit)

Frank Rich wrote about it, and it’s titled, “The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York.”

Heh.

Requiem for a Quack: Hulda Clark

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I am quoting Orac, the pseudonymous blogger at Respectful Insolence, on the death of Hulda Clark, author of The Cure for All Cancers, who, ironically enough, died of cancer.

As Orac notes, she was a quack’s quack:

In that post, I listed a number of Clark’s claims, as documented by Quackwatch:

  • The adult liver fluke — which she misspells as Faciolopsis buskii — “stays stuck to our intestine, (or liver, causing cancer, or uterus, causing endometriosis, or thymus, causing AIDS, or kidney, causing Hodgkin’s disease).” Or the pancreas, causing diabetes; the brain, causing Alzheimer’s disease; the prostate (causing prostatitis; or the skin if you have Kaposi’s sarcoma.
  • As soon as there are adults in the liver. . . . a growth factor, called ortho-phospho-tyrosine appears. Growth factors make cells divide. Now YOUR cells will begin to divide too! Now you have cancer. . . . Having propyl alcohol in your body allows the fluke to develop outside of the intestine.
  • When the fluke and all its stages have been killed, the ortho-phospho-tyrosine is gone! Your cancer is gone.
  • Clearly, you must do 3 things: (1) Kill the parasite and all its stages; (2) stop letting propyl alcohol into your body; and (3) flush out the metals and common toxins from your body so you can get well.
  • It is not unusual for someone to have a dozen (or more) of the parasites I have samples of. You can assume that you, too, have a dozen different parasites.
  • Three herbs, used together, can rid you of over 100 types of parasites: black walnut hulls, wormwood, and common cloves. But the amino acids ornithine and arginine improve this recipe.
  • Use of these five products will kill the cancer-causing fluke in the first five days and the remaining parasites in another two weeks.
  • It takes 5 days to be cured of cancer regardless of the type you have. Surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy can be canceled because, after Clark’s recipe cures the cancer, it cannot come back.
  • All metal (fillings, crowns, bridges, etc.) should be removed from the mouth, and all teeth with root canals should be extracted, because their presence damages the immune system.
  • To prevent recurrence, stay on a maintenance program of killing parasites and give yourself a high-dose program at least twice a year. Also treat all family members and household pets.
  • The method is 100% effective in stopping cancer regardless of the type of cancer or how terminal it may be. It follows that this method must work for you, too, if you are able to carry out the instructions.
  • No matter what kind of cancer you have (or HIV or pains or weakness), a complete program of lifting the burdens on your immune system will miraculously clear it up.

(emphasis mine)

Ms. Clark made a good living shortening the lives of thousands of people.

It’s Called Lipstick on a Pig, and It is Illegal

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McClatchy, just finished an investigation of some of Goldman Sachs’ behavior, and the lede says it all:

In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

You know, being a bit more optimistic in public than being in private is a fuzzy line. This ain’t it.

Later in the article, it is discussed how Goldman, and hedge fund operator John Paulson, bought billions in Credit Default Swaps (CDS) on mortgage backed bonds to profit on the collapse.

Note that Paulson is in a different boat from Goldman, because he didn’t sell those bonds in the first place, but once again it shows how the lessons of the South Sea Bubble, which led to the Marine Insurance Act of 1746 have been forgotton and so it is no longer required that people who buy insurance, including swaps, must have a material interest in the underlying asset.

H/t Atrios.

This Actually Reveals a Deeper Truth

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There is a distinctly Randroid branch of the Republican party, who follows Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum’s (Ayn Rand) philosophy of Objectivism, and as such, see activities like giving candies to trick or treaters as actually being evil, because any sort of activity which benefits the community is evil.

To their mind, the only good is self interest, hence the title of the only Ayn Rand book that I have ever read, The Virtue of Selfishness, which I found juvenile, as well as horribly written,* when I reviewed it as an extra credit assignment in my Philosophy of Literature class in high school.

It must be remembered that a significant portion of Republicans are actually philosophically opposed to the very idea of community.

H/t Cthulhu† for the cartoon.

*Seriously, really badly written. It was worse than reading Immanuel Kant, and that sh%$ was painful to read.
†No, not the unspeakably malevolent super-being, the contributor to the Shortskoolbus BBS.‡
‡OK, I’ve never seen the two of them together, so Cthulhu might actually be the Cthulhu, but the mere fact that he is on a BBS, interacting with humans§ would seem to mitigate against this.
§Yes, I know, this is the internet, where no one knows if you are a dog.

H-1B

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It looks like the H-1B visa cap will not be hit this year, due to low demand for new hires.

I would that now is a good time to contact Congressmen, and tell them that there should be more restrictions, such as increased fees, and possibly a reduced quota, along with stricter enforcement.

Obviously, as an engineer, I am a member of a field where the importation of talent lowers the wages for everyone in the field, so I find the program to be less than salutary overall.

Remember That Pundit Contest that I Lost?

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My initial reaction, upon looking at the bios of the 10 winners, was that they were rather more establishment, and more “WaPo Columnist” (read conservative and mindless difference splitters) than I had hoped.

But I kind of figured that this might be sour grapes on my part, so I would let their biographies, and their submissions, percolate through my brain before I drew a firm conclusion.

Well, Kevin Drum, who already has a job as a pundit, and did not throw his hat into the Washington Post‘s ring, has taken a look at these winners of at this stage, and has a similar impression of them.

This is particularly notable because I am of the opinion that Drum spends too much time being a “mindless difference splitter”, so he is coming from a place that is far closer to the WaPo editorial board than I am.

His take on the winners:

By the way, the ten winners include a Nobel Prize winner, a Bush 43 assistant secretary of commerce (guess which one), a senior correspondent for the American Prospect, an analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, a former researcher at the Kennedy School of Government, an Atlantic Media fellow, and a small-town newspaper editor. Not exactly a crowd of just plain folks. It might have been more fun to read the other 4,790 entries.

Well, that’s a bit harsher than I would have been, but go and read the Drum’s post…It’s a good read.

Here are my announcement of my submission, and my ding letter, by way of context.

My submission is after the break.

My essay (400 words)

Recently, the Federal Reserve has been on a populist bent, expanding its purview to regulate non bank lenders, issuing rulings on bank overdraft fees, demanding information from financial institutions on compensation, and issuing new consumer protections for mortgages, home-equity loans, and credit cards.

Why? Has the Fed realized that its regulatory regime has failed the general public, or is this the result of increasing calls for change from other branches of government?

This is not a conversion on the road to Damascus, but rather the Fed has decided to employ the strategy of Fabius Maximus, who used delay to give Rome victory over Carthage.

With proposals to audit their books, move consumer protection to another agency, and change the selection process for the regional Fed bank presidents, it is clear that some in Congress are looking to clip the Fed’s wings.

Organizations fight fiercely for their authority, and against external oversight. The recent actions on consumer protections are part of a rear guard action to protect their bureaucratic prerogatives.

This is understandable, but it is a disservice to both the public and the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve’s responsibilities are to maintain a stable currency and stable economy, which involves removing the proverbial “punch bowl” when times are good, in order to prevent inflation, and to provide liquidity when times are bad to allow the economy to recover.

Additionally, the Federal Reserve structure and history make it obsessively focused on protecting the banking system, and, the banking industry. That is why it has eschewed consumer protections until recently: it is loath to reduce the profits of the banks it supervises.

No institution can do this without being firmly protected from politics, since political pressure will always favor immediate growth, even at the cost of future catastrophe. Just look at Zimbabwe.

Consumer protection does not need separation from politics though, it needs to be engaged with those consumers, whom it is charged to protect, and with the representatives who have been elected by these people.

This requires a level of transparency and responsiveness to the public that is antithetical to the primary functions of a central bank.

If the members of the Federal Reserve wish to remain independent, which is both best for the country, and for the Federal Reserve, we should move those functions to other agencies which are more directly answerable to the public.

Nothing too earth shattering, but there are a lot of better thinkers, and better writers, out there, and looking back on it, my invocation of Fabius Maximus was probably a mistake. It’s too Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

What Atrios Said

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As Atrios notes, the idea that some “moderate Democrats” are pushing for, a Bipartisan commission to propose spending cuts and tax hikes, is really, really, Really, REALLY stupid.

First, there are no Republicans on the national level who will support any new taxes, and second, look at the “Democrats” who are supporting this.

According to the article, a “group of 10 senators — nine moderate Democrats and an independent,” so and so the article definitively fingers the following people:

  • Senator Evan Bayh
  • Senator Kent Conrad
  • Senator Joe Lieberman (Not explicitly named in the article, but note the quote, it sure as hell ain’t Bernie Sanders.)

MY comment, if you are serious about cutting the deficit, place a Tobin Tax on financial transactions, you raise money, reduce the deficit, reduce speculation for its own sake, and punish the banks.

That’s a win-win-win-win scenario.

Election News

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In California, it looks like it will be Jerry Brown running as the Dem for Governor, because Gavin Newsome has quit the race, because of weak support and poor fund-raising.

Additionally, in the very odd special election for New York’s 23rd Congressional district, Republican Dierdre Scozzafava has suspended her campaign, after coming up short on money and placing 3rd in recent polls.

The numbers were about 35% for Doug Hoffman, the Club for Growth approved Neanderthal, 35% for Bill Owens, the Democratic candidate about whom I know nothing, and about 25% for Scozzafava.

Her name will remain on the ballot, which is, I think a message to Hoffman that he should go Cheney himself, but I’m an engineer, not a psychologist, dammit!*

I think that this puts Hoffman the live dead girl/live boy† favorite in the overwhelmingly Republican district now, though I think that there are a number of people who will vote for Scozzafava anyway, because they do not want to vote for Hoffman, who is a carpetbagger with absolutely no interest in the real issues of the district, but cannot bring themselves to pull the “D” lever.

*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!

†Edwin Edwards, when discovering that he would be facing David Duke in the Louisiana governor’s race, said that the the only way that he would lose were if he were, “caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy”.

A Coda on the Bank Failures

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If you plot annual rate of bank failures vs time of year, it looks like we might hit 150 bank failures this year.

With 7 Fridays to go, they won’t be doing a closing on Christmas, that’s an 5 failures a week until the end of the year.

My guess would be somewhat less, in the 135-145 failures through the end of the year though.

Note that the data at the start of the year is of a smaller grouping, so inherently noisier.

The trend from June on seems to be clear: that bank failures, which were at around 1½ a week, began accelerating, and it now looks to be averaging around 3/week.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!! ( On Saturday)

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And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Bank USA, N.A., Phoenix, AZ
  2. Community Bank of Lemont,Lemont, IL
  3. San Diego National Bank, San Diego, CA
  4. California National Bank, Los Angeles, CA
  5. Pacific National Bank, San Francisco, CA
  6. Park National Bank, Chicago, IL
  7. Citizens National Bank, Teague, TX
  8. Madisonville State Bank, Madisonville, TX
  9. North Houston Bank, Houston, TX

Great googly moogly, 9 banks…..That’s the most so far this year…..Last week’s 7 failures tied with the June 24 tally.

Full FDIC list

Except for that Whole Parachute Failure Thing…..

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So, the delayed launch of the Ares I launcher was deemed a success, except, of course, for the whole recovery parachutes failing and damaging the nominally reusable shuttle solid rocket booster derived first stage.

The first stage suffered some significant damage as a result of the failure, though, for now, at least, the rest of the flight is considered to be “nominal.”

I’ll wait for the full report.

Russia Planning Nuclear Rocket

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Click for full size

Bimodal Nuclear Thermal Rocket

From the report, we are not talking about Orion, or direct thrust from nuclear heating, but rather some sort of electric propulsion system using electricity from a reactor for a proposed mission to Mars.

Something like ion drive, or plasma drive would likely cut transit time by at least ¾ for a manned trip to Mars, and if a ground base were established, a nuclear power supply would handle the reduced solar energy levels there.

I’d take this with a grain of salt, because the cost quoted for this is a bit over US $¾ billion, which sounds like a quote from Never Land.