Year: 2009

You Can Take the Clue Train

No Comments

Someone else can filk the rest of the song, but it appears that even the Blue dogs are starting to get a clue:

At this moment, all Democratic politicians, even the most conservative, are realizing that their voters will blame them, not the insurance companies, if the policies the voters are required to buy are so expensive that premiums consume over 20 percent of those voters’ annual incomes. Suddenly, more generous tax subsidies to cover middle-class premiums seem like a good idea. And if the public option can bring down the cost of premiums those subsidies have to pay for, then the overall size of the reform price tag can be kept under control – a long time demand of moderate Democrats.

(emphasis mine)

Yeah. It took a while, but the Blue Dogs now realize that most people hate their insurance companies.

Hoocoodanode?

Quote of the Day

No Comments

Will Bunch notes that a number of so called liberal pundits have gone after Barack Obama:

Kind of reminds me of all those conservative columnists who gave Bush a honeymoon in those early months of 2001 but eventually went after him when it became clear that he’d invaded another country for bogus reasons, was assaulting the civil liberties of Americans and bankrupting the national treasury with unnecessary tax cuts at a time of proflagate spending.

Remember those columnists?

Me neither.

(emphasis mine)

Too true.

Economics Update

No Comments
Click for full size


Commercial Real Estate Prices


Home Builder Confidence Graph Pron Courtesy Calculated Risk

Ummm…If you think that the real estate implosion is done, then you haven’t been following commercial real estate (CRE), where prices fell 3% in August, about a 42% annual rate,* though the year over year decline was “just” 32%, and it’s down 41% from its peak in 2007.

Remember, commercial mortgages typically come due after 5 years, so we are going to see a lot of folks defaulting on CRE mortgages as their time comes up, because they will be under water.

It’s no wonder that the National Association of Home Builders’ Confidence Index has fallen, particularly when juxtaposed with the expiration of the let’s reinflate the bubble first time home buyer’s tax credit at the end of November.

Note that to qualify for the credit, you must close before November 30, which means that if you buy now, you are starting to cut it close.

Still investors seem to be sanguine about economic prospects, as they are pulling out of US Treasuries and the dollar while crude oil hit a 1-year high.

*The joys of compound interest. 3% a month over 12 months is not 36%, it’s 1.0312=1.42=42%.

You Call This a Good Start

No Comments
A Rich Guy Being Frog Marched in Handcuffs
It makes me feel good

It appears that US Attorney for New York has come up with a new way to enforce the laws against stock fraud, by going after them as if they were members of organized crime, with things like court ordered wiretaps, which were used to bring an indictment against Raj Rajaratnam, the head of the Galleon Group hedge fund.

The thing is, it is organized crime, it requires an enormous amount of…well…organization to pull off insider trading schemes:

Mintz said the alleged $20 million scheme is the most elaborate insider-trading ring discovered since the 1980s when the government began using criminal laws to prosecute such allegations.

“This was an extensive web of insider trading built upon years of contacts and strategically placed people,” the former prosecutor said. “Typically, insider trading cases are much more narrowly focused on some significant deal that’s leaked from one or two sources. The more people who have knowledge, the more potential that the scheme will be uncovered.”

There are dozens of people involved who have to know what is going on, and who must either actively aid, or actively ignore the activity for it to go forward when it is much more than an individual who has foreknowledge of a single event and then buys or sells based on this, as was the case, for example, with Martha Stewart.

One thing to be noted here is that this is about what would be considered pennies, it amounts to about $20 million for a man worth well over a billion dollars, and so, on a deep level, it makes little sense: Why risk decades in jail for something that might net less than 2% of your total net worth.

Here is what going on, I think. Rajaratnam, and Galleon made their money through insider trading, and simply, he continued to do so once he was a made man.

One hopes that as prosecutors dig into this, they get more people to roll over, and they expand their investigation.

RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, as well as an aggressive use of aggressive asset forfeiture laws would spread the net further and wider.

The days of a Michael Millikan doing his 22 months and leaving prison fabulously wealthy should be a thing of the past.

Righteous

No Comments

Let’s add Dylan Ratigan to the list of people who belong in in the Legion of People You Really Do Not Want To F%$# With (LOPYRDNWTFW), which so far includes Rachael Maddow, Roger Ebert, Stephen Colbert, the folks at 4Chan, Alan Grayson, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, and (of course) Jon Stewart.

Here he completely owns US Chamber of Commerce head, and right wing hack, Tom Donohue.

More Ass Covering by the Fed

No Comments

As I have noted before, now that Congress is looking at having an agency dedicated to protecting consumers from the worst excesses of the banking industry, and the Federal Reserve Feels believes that this role belongs to it.

Of course, the history of the Fed over the past 40+ years is that they believe in dismantling consumer protections, so their record is less than stellar.

In response to numerous proposals which would make consumer protection more formal in financial markets, which they see as a reduction in their bailiwick, they have continued to make “a day lat and a dollar short” regulations in an an attempt to convince Congress that they do not need to assign this task to some other agency.

Case in point, is how, after decades of skyrocketing fees and increasingly punitive “overdraft protection” schemes, Bernanke and his merry band have decided to clamp down on overdraft fees:

The Federal Reserve is likely to soon pass new rules making it harder for banks to hit customers with fees for overdrawing their accounts, a top official told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday.

Note that it appears that these rules will require that banks have customers positively affirm their desire to opt in to overdraft protection.

It’s amazing what the prospect of some regulatory competition will do to a bureaucracy.

Earlier posts on the subject here.

Quote of the Day, Republican Values Edition

No Comments

Courtesy of Talking Points Memo:

I’m going to go way out on a limb here: Professional wrestling and necrophilia have never come up together in a political campaign before today.

Josh Marshall discussing the storied past of current Republican Senatorial candidate, and former WWE CEO Linda McMahon.

During her tenure as head of WWE, there were sketches featuring, “wrestlers engaged in a simulated rape, a public sex scene, and one depicting a wrestler having sex with a corpse.”

The only possible defense to the accusation that Ms. McMahon is a purveyor of smut and perversion would be that she has no control over the content because pro wrestling is real.

Good luck selling that.

You Mean They Were Still Playing

No Comments

So, it appears that the band A-Ha is splitting up after 25 years.

I was never much on their big hit as a song, Take Me On, but the video was great:

I listened to the album Hunting High and Low, which is where the song came from when I was borrowing a car. The rest of the songs seemed a lot better, and had more substance

Go figure.

One other note, the actress in this is the quintessential big hair 1980s chick.

Barack and Rahm Need to Get Over Themselves

No Comments

So, as a result of putting Republicans (Olympia Snow) and insurance whore DINOs in the driver’s seat in the Senate, the White House is getting flack from Gerry McEntee, the president of AFSME, and the Obama and His Stupid Minions™ are describing this behavior as, “gratuitous slaps.”

Tough noogies, kids. The Obama administration has been running the process on healthcare reform, and pretty much everything else as a war on the “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party”, and somehow they are surprised when a Union President, would oppose what is literally a tax on his members just because Obama is desperate to put his name on something … anything … that he can call health care reform.

We need more of what Mr. McEntee is doing, not less.

H/t AMERICAblog.

More Pigs Flying on Financial Regulation

No Comments

So, the politically connected academic who has made millions selling access to Wall Street banks, Larry Summers, has decided that real systemic regulation is necessary in the American financial system:

“Financial institutions that have benefited from government support can, should and must use this moment to think about what they can do for their country — by accepting the necessary regulation to protect the American people,” Summers said in remarks prepared for delivery at the Economist’s Buttonwood Gathering in New York. “There is no financial institution that exists today that is not the direct or indirect beneficiary of trillions of dollars of taxpayer support for the financial system.”

What’s more, his comments appear to be a part of deliberate push-back from the White House against the financial sector, where unnamed officials are describing themselves as “frustrated“.

Given who is working this issue *cough* Geithner and Summers *cough*, I have to conclude that this is being driven by political considerations, Obama has finally realized the depth and breadth of the anger against the banks and their lavish pay packages, and understands that there is a real political cost, one that will be born by the Democratic Party generally, and Barack Obama in particular, if the Wall Street banks continue to be what they are.

So, We Just Learned Something About the Abortion Nut Who Got Shot

No Comments

I posted about it when James L. Pouillon got killed, and it now appears that his family speaks, at least his son, James L. Pouillon, and it ain’t pretty:

It will be impossible for some to believe, but my dad really didn’t care about aborton.

He did this to stalk, harass, terrorize, scream at, threaten, frighten, and verbally abuse women. He had a pathologic hatred of women: his mom, my mom, everyone.

After my mom finally left him and he lost his favorite punching bag the violence and abuse that was always contained within our 4 walls was unleased on the people of Owosso.

My dad used the pro-life movement and 1st Amendments foundations to defend him, support him, and enable him. He fooled them all.

He was at the high shool because my niece was there, and female family members were always his favorite targets.

Again, my dad didn’t care about abortion. He wanted to hurt people, upset people. He enjoyed making people suffer.

His goal was to be shot on a sidewalk. His goal was to make someone so angry, to make them feel so terrorized, to make them feel the only way they could make him stop was to kill him.

His pro-life stance was the most perfect crime I personally know of. He hid behind the 1st Amendment and was allowed to stalk, terrorise, harass, be obsene, ect. These things are crimes. Offending people isn’t a crime, and having different political views isn’t a crime, but he committed several crimes over the last 20 years and got away with it.

Yes I really am his oldest son. Owosso is now rid of a mad man.

One wonders if he is the exception rather than the rule for right wing extremists.

I’m Agreeing with Richard Shelby?

No Comments

It’s true. As a part of updating financial regulations, Senator Shelby is trying to change the way in which the presidents of the Federal Reserve district banks are selected, by removing the ability of the lending institutions subject to that Fed bank to nominate their new president, he correctly notes that, “Any institution that is going to be involved in any way picking their regulator is not good policy.”

As to the current governance structure:

Each of the 12 Fed district banks has a nine-member board that includes three bankers, three non-bankers chosen by banks and three non-banker directors picked by the Fed’s Senate- confirmed governors in Washington. The directors nominate a president who is approved by the Board of Governors. The presidents vote on interest-rate decisions on a rotating basis, with New York having a permanent vote.

The idea that banks can hand pick one of their primary regulators has always been a bad idea, so I would go further, and remove banks from selecting the directors of the regional banks too.

While we are at it, how about shortening the terms of members. It’s currently 14 years, and it’s too long, and makes the board far to unresponsive and insular.

Additionally, one of the controls on the behavior of the Fed is meaningful criticism of its actions in academic economic publications, but the central bank has control over most of the academic economic publications, because so many of the editors out there are also on the Federal Reserve payroll, so a legal injunction prohibiting anyone working for the fed from acting as an editor of an economics journal would be a good thing.

Damn.

No Comments

So, the House of Representatives by a vote of 307-114 has passed an amendment to the Freedom of Information Act which exempts torture, because, I guess, everyone in Washington wants them covered up, because with knowledge is the possibility of accountability, and accountability is an anathema to the Beltway Boyz.

What is most repulsive is that this is designed just to cover up Bushie malfeasance:

To follow up on my earlier post about Rep. Louis Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and her speech on her colleagues’ move to amend the Freedom of Information Act to prevent the release of photographs depicting abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, it’s worth looking at the conference report on the bill. The bill is called the “Protected National Security Documents Act of 2009,” but refers not to any “documents” per se, but only to any “photograph” taken between Sept. 11, 2001 and Jan. 22, 2009, that “relates to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States.”

(emphasis mine)

Big surprise, the guy supporting this the strongest is Joe Lieberman.

M4/M16 Problems

2 Comments

One of the things that I did not cover in my discussion of the firefight at Camp Keating was the performance of the weapons there.

Specifically, it appears that the M4s carbines and M249 “Minimi” SAWs started to fail over the course of the fight.

There are a number of links, but this release a draft report from the Combat Studies Institute seems to be the most definitive. (you can see other accounts , here, here, here, and here.

The big issue here is that there are reports of both the M4 and M249 failing as the engagement went forward.

Since both weapons were failing, with one (M4) having a short stroke gas-tube operation, and the other (M249) having a long stroke piston, it’s pretty clear that the method of operation of these weapons are directly responsible for these failures.

Here is what I think is the pertinent quote:

Stafford crawled back up to the protection of the southern post of the OP, where he watched Specialist Bogar put up a heroic defense, nearly single-handedly, with his SAW. Bogar placed it on top of the sandbags, notwithstanding as Stafford noted, “I’m just watching that boulder pop with rounds coming in.” Stafford was badly wounded and drifting in and out of consciousness, but he distinctly remembered, “Bogar had just set his SAW on top of the sandbags and he was just kind of spraying, going through SAW rounds pretty quick. I remember him, loading and spraying, loading and spraying.” At the Crow’s Nest, Specialist Ayers was also going cyclic with the M-240. Stafford also remembered being impressed at the volume of fire that Ayers was pouring out, “I could also hear the 240 going off above me in the Crow’s Nest, because Ayers was just ripping them apart. I could hear Rainey screaming at Ayers not to melt the barrel on the 240 and to control his fires.”

Specialist Bogar fired approximately six hundred rounds at a cyclic rate of fire from his SAW when that weapon became overheated, and eventually jammed the bolt forward. Specialist Stafford noted, “Bogar was still in our hole firing quite a bit. Then Bogar’s SAW jammed. Basically it just got way overheated, because he opened the feed tray cover and I remember him trying to get it open and it just looked like the bolt had welded itself inside the chamber. His barrel was just white hot.”

(emphasis mine)

While I think that “White Hot” is probably an exaggeration, I would think that weapons would fail with the barrel still “cherry” hot, but it appears that there was a lot of shooting going on and the weapons were getting very hot as a result, at which point things like cook-off of rounds, expansion of parts, etc. begin to be a factor.

I will note that the M249 is a weapon that fires from an open bolt, which means that you have to be pumping a lot of rounds down range to get it that hot, so fire discipline, as alluded to in exchange above regarding the M240, a 7.62mm belt machine gun that is essentially the M249’s big brother.

This may have been a situation where the weapons were simply fired beyond their design capabilities.

Part of the reason for this is that the weapons used by both had similar effective ranges.

The AK-47, because of its relative lack of accuracy, is really not effective beyond 200m, particularly in the hands of a typical insurgent, and the M4, with its short (14½”) barrel and relatively light round, lacks lethality beyond that range.

The M16, by contrast, with its longer barrel, would be able to place effective fire on the enemy at more than 300m.

Had the soldiers been using the M16, they would have been able to engage the enemy before the enemy could engage them, and it is not entirely clear to me (please, someone educate me) why the troops were issued a carbine in a non-urban area where engagement distances would likely be longer.

Additionally, it appears that the position was located primarily due to non-combat considerations, which made it less defensible than it should have been.

All of these contributed to a very intense firefight, and it appears that the intensity of the combat was a significant cause as to the failures of these weapons.

Simply put, a personal weapon, or a squad automatic weapon, are not designed to throw that many rounds down range in that short a time.

One question that is not addressed in this report, at least not in this early draft of the report, is whether fire discipline was maintained, or if the troops were reverting to “spray and pray”.

My guess is that fire discipline was maintained, at least to the degree that discipline is possible when you are being attacked by a heavily armed force that outnumbers you, but I have no direct military or combat experience to evaluate this.

That being said, I think that the M4 should be replaced. Most of the other modern western armies, the Germans excepted, have switched to a Bullpup design, and as such, they have longer barrels, and shorter overall lengths than the M4.

See the table below for a comparison:

Weapon Barrel Length Overall Length
M4 14.5 in 29.8 in (stock retracted)
Tavor T.A.R-21 18.1 in 28.5 in

Additionally, while there are advantages to gas tube operation, generally lighter weight and better accuracy because there are fewer moving parts, one consistent complaint about the AR-15 and its children is that the weapons require meticulous, almost obsessive cleaning.

I admire the breakthroughs that Eugene Stoner made when he created the weapon, and many of those innovations, the use of plastics and high-strength lightweight alloys, continue today, but I think that the use of the gas tube has been shown to be problematic.

That being said, I would favor moving to a new weapon, as opposed to something like the gas piston retrofit, as the existing weapon has problems that are inherent in the design (i.e. barrel length and overall length).

In my perfect world, the Army and Marines would purchase one of the Bullpups already in service, as opposed to developing a new weapon itself, but given the nature of defense procurement in the US, particularly the Army Ordinance’s rather parochial view towards foreign weapons, I think that this unlikely.

Note: I have never served, and I’ve never shot anything more substantial than a .22 short rifle for in a riflery class in summer camp, so if I am wrong, please tell me in the comments.

All I ask is some detail. Don’t tell me I’m an idiot, show me that I’m an idiot.

Russia’s Adopts Nuclear First Strike Policy

No Comments

While worrisome, it represents a reversal of the Soviet/Russian “no first strike” policy adopted in the 1980s, but it should be noted that this new policy will not will be effectively identical to that of the US, which has repudiated calls for it to take a “no first strike” policies since the 1980s.

It’s nothing to tear one’s hair out about, unless you are Georgian President Saakashvili, where it might be seen as a shot across the bow towards NATO involvement in the region….But then again, he doesn’t tear out his hair, he chews on his tie.

“In situations critical for national security, a preventive nuclear strike against the aggressor is not ruled out,” he said.

The section of Russia’s military doctrine about the opportunity to use nuclear weapons was formulated to preserve the status of a nuclear power for the Russian Federation. The document states that Russia can apply nuclear deterrence against potential enemies to prevent aggression against Russia and its allies.

I think that the video below puts everything in decent perspective:

GE Promises 56,000 Lb Thrust F136

No Comments

Bradley Perrett at Ares notes that GE/Rolls Royce has had this this thrust number floating around since at least 2002, and would compare quite favorably to the 43,000 lbs of thrust available in the F135.

It’s clear that the F136 has a larger core than the F135, but at this point GE/Rolls is arguing that this can allow for greater reliability, and perhaps a few hundred pounds more thrust in STOVL mode for the F-35 JSF

The latter looks significant, as the Royal Navy is looking at a “shipborne rolling vertical landing,” basically a relatively low speed (under 150 km/h) non-arrested (!) landing on a carrier to increase bring-back weapons load and to reduce wear and tear on the engines, for vertical landings.

My guess, as is Mr. Perrett’s, is that the 56,000 lbs is the number that they are designing to for the purpose of creating a margin which would allow for reduced maintenance and capacity for upgrades.

In order to go from 43,000 lbs of thrust to 56,000 pounds of thrust in the JSF, I think that there would have to be some major airframe modifications, because there has to be more air flowing through that engine to get that performance, so I would expect significantly altered air inlets, no small change in a stealth aircraft, to realize that thrust level.

One interesting aside in the article, is the “cost” of the lift fan system that was chosen as the winner in this competition: both the GE/Rolls and P&W engines for the original fly-off for between Lockheed-Martin’s X-35 and Boeing’s X-32 delivered a lot more thrust in wingborne mode using when configured Boeing’s direct lift concept.