The EU has set up a rescue fund to avoid situations like Greece in the future, to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars, and the ECB has agreed to purchase sovereign debt, basically printing money, in order to provide stability in the markets.
I’m beginning to think that everyone in the EU is beginning to realize that the way to do things is to hear what the Germans want, and then do something else.
Transocean, the firm operating BP’s oil rig that exploded and created a blowout that is threatening most of the US Gulf coast, will make $270m from the loss of the rig because it was insured for more than it was worth.
I thought that this has been illegal since the Marine Insurance Act of 1746.
Moody’s just disclosed that it received a Wells notice from the SEC in March.
This means that they are in the SEC’s cross-hairs, and that a potential “enforcement action,” is likely.
You have to figure that once the SEC starts turning over rocks, they will find more, and for a company whose only capital is their credibility, it could be in trouble very quickly.
Seeing as how we already have evidence that all the major credit rating agencies are corrupt, there could be a domino effect.
This is going to make the collapse of the monoliner bond insurers look like a picnic.
The army will be deploying the XM-25 Individual Airburst Weapon to Afghanistan, and many good things are expected of it.
I am not at all surprised that they have decided that a personal grenade launcher would be necessary for the conflict.
The Soviets came to the same conclusion when they were in Afghanistan, which is why the AGS-17 Plamya (Russian: Пламя) is a Soviet-designed automatic grenade launcher used in Afghanistan to such a degree that the unmounted infantry squad was largely built around the weapon in the same way that a squad is built around the LMG in US service.
The degree to which our experience in Afghanistan is a rerun of the failed Soviet script is striking.
“I was also going to give a graduation speech in Arizona this weekend,” he said. “But with my accent, I was afraid they would try to deport me.”
–Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) in his commencement speech at Emory University
Not surprising.
Basically, they are choosing her because of her ability to get ahead in legal academe without saying, or publishing much.
She was tenured at the University of Chicago, and later Harvard, where she became Dean of Harvard Law, but her record of publications is remarkably sparse, though I think that Paul Campos’ comparison of her to Harriet Miers is a big much:
Yesterday, I read everything Elena Kagan has ever published. It didn’t take long: in the nearly 20 years since Kagan became a law professor, she’s published very little academic scholarship—three law review articles, along with a couple of shorter essays and two brief book reviews. Somehow, Kagan got tenure at Chicago in 1995 on the basis of a single article in The Supreme Court Review—a scholarly journal edited by Chicago’s own faculty—and a short essay in the school’s law review. She then worked in the Clinton administration for several years before joining Harvard as a visiting professor of law in 1999. While there she published two articles, but since receiving tenure from Harvard in 2001 (and becoming dean of the law school in 2003) she has published nothing. (While it’s true law school deans often do little scholarly writing during their terms, Kagan is remarkable both for how little she did in the dozen years prior to becoming Harvard’s dean, and for never having written anything intended for a more general audience, either before or after taking that position.)
On the other hand, the fact that she has not been a Federal judge, or worked as a US Attorney, and she made the prima-donnas at Harvard Law play nice.
Still, I think that it is her lack of a record that has put her in this position, which I think is a bad idea.
It will just push Obama’s opponents to look harder, and they will find something eventually.
Appointing a real liberal would be day 1 news, but instead, we will have a drip, drip, drip, about her.
I also think that this is a real attempt to avoid a fight, and once again, because the Republicans understand that unreasonable opposition is their best political tactic, it will fail.
Color me unimpressed.
So says the latest tracking poll, which has Joe Sestak leading Arlen Specter by 46% to 42%. (PDF)
If you assume that the numbers go the wrong way for Sestak on the margin of error (±5%), and figure in the 2:1 undecideds going for the challenger, then Specter wins a 51%-49% victory, but this is really grim for Specter, and the numbers also now appear to imply that Sestak is stronger in the general election against Neanderthal Pat Toomey.*
Basically, Sestak has started hitting Specter as being a political opportunist, and it works because it’s true.
Here’s hoping that Blanche Lincoln suffers the same fate.
*My apologies to Neanderthals for the comparison.
Obama would only replace him with someone even more hostile to the idea of the rule of law in the pursuit of terrorism cases.*
Money quote:
GREGORY: So, let me– let me unpack that a little bit. What you’d like to see happen is that Congress would pass a law that would say to judges, “Hey, look, in this environment, if we extract information that could be valuable intelligence about another terror plot, about who they’re involved in. Whether they’re connected to the Pakistani Taliban. We want to get all that without them lawyering up and still be able to use that against them in a court of law.” And you need more flexibility to do that, you think?
HOLDER: Yeah, we certainly need more flexibility. And we want the public safety exception to be consistent with– the public safety concerns that we now have in the 21st Century, as opposed to the public safety concerns that we had back in the 1980s.
GREGORY: So, that’s news. I mean, that’s an important development. Would you work with Congress to try to get that new law passed?
HOLDER: Yeah, we want to work with Congress to come up with a way in which we make our public safety exception more flexible. And again, more consistent with the threat– that we face. And yes, this is in fact the big news. This is a proposal that– we’re gonna be making and that we want to work– with Congress about.
GREGORY: So, a new priority for the administration.
HOLDER: It is a new priority.
It’s clear that Barack Obama has made a purely political decision to ape the worst aspects of the Bush administration, because he thinks that it will defuse criticism from the right, which it clearly hasn’t anyway.
This is venal, craven, and just plain un-American, as well as being stupid, because it does not work from a political perspective.
Would that we had some Democrats who were not a bunch of cowards.
H/t Crooks and Liars
*But remember, the Cossacks work for the Czar.
Landing an aircraft with an engine gone is one thing, but with a wing gone?
That’s what IAF pilot Tsvi Nedivi did, and he managed to land it safely.
Note that the live footage seems to be studio tricks, but the pilot’s account is compelling.
Or more precisely, it shows an order to prepare to fire, which explains why the guardsmen wheeled in unison to turn on the demonstrators before opening fire:
“That’s clear as a bell,” Owen said at one point as he and Allen replayed the phrase “Prepare to fire” on two large wall-mounted loudspeakers.
The two audio engineers didn’t add anything to the recording or fundamentally alter its contents. Instead, they boosted what was present to make it easier to hear. “It’s like putting on eyeglasses,” Owen said.
The order to prepare to fire is, according to the experts who analyzed the tape, “As clear as a bell,” and there is an an “F” sound heard immediately before firing started, which might be the order to fire.
Of interest is the fact that he first 3 gunshots are probably from 45 caliber pistols, and the remainder from M1s, which would be consistent with whoever was in charge giving the order to fire, and firing himself, as sidearms would not have been carried by the grunts.
The enhanced audio is below, and I can hear, with ordinary hearing, “Guard,” and “Prepare to fire,” quite clearly.
James Iry is a very funny man, here is a sample:
1964 – John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an unstructured programming language for non-computer scientists.
1965 – Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964.
I am not a computer programmer, and I get the humor and find it funny.
The US 170th Infantry Brigade rehearsing for its march at the Victory Day parade in Red Square
Active duty units of the US, British, French and Polish military will be marching in Red Square tomorrow in the Victory Day parade:
Never before in history have active-duty American troops been invited to march in the Victory Day parade, according to the United States military. The occasion is the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, a date that carries an almost sacred meaning in Russia. Russian leaders have taken pains to explain that the Americans — along with contingents from Britain, France and Poland — were invited as representatives of the “anti-Hitler coalition.”
It would have been inconceivable that the Russians would have invited American troops, and it would have been inconceivable that the Pentagon would have accepted, just a few years ago.
Rumsfeld and Cheney were trying to recreate the threatening “Russian Bear” for political advantage, and the entire foreign policy of the Bush administration was about unilateralism and boneheaded hostility.
The 4 most knowledgeable journalists at Guantanamo Bay have been banned for “revealing” the identity of one of the witnesses, “Interrogator #1”.
The reason that I put “revealing” in quotes is because the individual in question’s name has been public knowledge for years:
Now the military has taken another great step toward enhancing the credibility of the proceedings by booting four reporters for violating a judge’s secrecy order. Their violation? Publishing the name of a former military interrogator who was a witness at the hearing. The Pentagon has now barred Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg, Toronto Star reporter Michelle Shephard, Globe and Mail reporter Paul Koring and CanWest news service reporter Steven Edwards from covering future military commissions at Gitmo.
And here’s the kicker: The identity of the interrogator had been widely reported before the trial. The name of the individual — known as “Interrogator No. 1″ in the courtroom at Gitmo — had been published during a 2005 court-martial in which he pleaded guilty to prisoner abuse in Afghanistan. And he had also allowed the use of his name in an interview with Shepard (!) in 2008.
BTW, it should be recalled that in the case in question the military is trying a child soldier.
Omar Khadr was 15 when the events in question took place.
Seriously, we have the gang that can’t shoot straight, or more accurately, the gang that is so concerned about managing the message that it’s making the “military tribunals” about as meaningful as Stalin’s show trials.
Welcome to our Gulag in the Caribbean.
I really really hope the ECB staff are huddling right now, nerving themselves up to do some serious quantitative easing. Otherwise Anno Domini 2010 is shaping up to be Anno Domino instead.
—Paul Krugman on the fate of the Euro with the bond vigilantes going after Portugal now
I’m nos sure taht I approve of the use of the term “Anno Domini” by a nice Jewish boy, but it is damn funny.
Bob Bennett, one of the most conservative members of the Senate, has lost the party caucus in Utah, which means that he will not be in the primary ballot.
He could mount a write-in campaign, but this is highly unlikely.
Seeing as how Utah is not only thoroughly Republican, but foaming at the mouth red-conservative, it’s unlikely that this would give us a Democratic Senator, as happened in that New York Congressional race.
This is better than when I used Karaoke, and the song, “You’re having my baby,” to announce that Sharon was preggers with Natalie.
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
And here are the credit union closings:
Which was closed last Saturday. (Saturday?)
So, the numbers seem a bit more “normal”, at least compared to the 8, 7, & 7 over the prior 3 weeks.
So, here is the graph pr0n with trendline (FDIC only):
Unemployment Population Ratio: Still Not Back
The lede here has to be the non-farm payroll (NFP) numbers for April, which were very, very, good.
There was in increase in payrolls of 290,000 , which was the largest increase since March of 2006, and manufacturing added 44,000 jobs, the largest increase in 12 years.
Additionally, as Paul Krugman observes, “My favorite indicator from the household survey isn’t the unemployment rate, it’s the employment-population ratio — and that’s up, from 58.6 to 58.8.”
It’s been rising since December.
Unfortunately, unemployment worsened, though part of this was discouraged workers returning to work:
But. Keep an eye on those unemployment rates. The headline figure is back up at 9.9%, the highest it’s been this year. The U-6 underemployment rate is a gruesome 17.1%. And U-4, which is total unemployed plus discouraged workers, has hit a new high of 10.6%.”
Even at nearly 300,000 new jobs a month, it will take years for these people to find work again.
Additionally, we have the short-term good/long-term bad news that consumers are using credit once again. Consumer borrowing rose by $2 billion in March.
In energy and currency, it appears that Greece, and the recent UK elections have created uncertainty, which has driven oil prices lower, and the dollar was mixed, up slightly versus the Pound, and down slightly versus the Euro.
Ode to Joy