H/t The Big Picture.
cartoon
Month: October 2010
Wasp
Here is the windup
And here is the unforced error
For those of you who don’t know, Wasp is a book by Eric Frank Russell. It’s conceit is that a man is sent to infiltrate and subvert a planet held by the enemy.
Rather than conventional methods of espionage, like sabotage, the goal of the agents is to engender over-reactions from the authorities which would have them weakening themselves, much like a driver distracted by a wasp can kill himself and his passengers by driving into a bridge abutment.
Well, in the Kentucky Senate Race, Democrat Jack Conway ran an ad against Randroid nut job Republican Rand Paul bringing up his involvement in an anti-religious group at Baylor, and his frat hazing style “kidnapping” of a coed who he made to bow down to the “Aqua Buddha.”
I cannot claim to have a deep understanding of the politics, or the religiosity, of Kentucky, so I cannot speak to the direct effects of the advertisement (1st video), but I can speak to the secondary effects of the ad (2nd video) and it ain’t pretty.
Rand Paul is acting like a complete bitch, and his bit at the end where he huffily declares that he won’t shake hands at the end of the debate.
I’m with Theda Skocpol on the nervous Nellies who are wringing their hands over this:
One reason that Dems do not seem to be able to play hardball — in a viciously hardball political world — is that Dems often lack conviction or the will to be eloquently honest (for example, on taxes). But an equal problem is that when someone does play hardball, the rest of the prissy liberal Mugwumps tut-tut them about it.
The professional losing class can go Cheney themselves.
Honestly, I don’t care about Rand Paul’s religion. My guess is that his protestations of religion are a less than honest, since his idol Ayn Rand loathed religion, but politically, the important bit of electoral politics here here is that Rand Paul seriously lost his sh%$ on camera, and that was the real success of this ad.
BTW, if you wanted to use a cinematic reference rather than a literary reference, I would suggest that Jack Conway just Gaslighted Rand Paul.
Is the USAF F%$#ing Nuts?
Click for full size
Lockheed’s Concept
Lockheed’s “Secret Sauce”, an ejector/blown flap lift augmentation system
Boeing’s concept uses the Coanda effect in upper surface blowing like its YC-14
A tailless design for a transport, what the f%$# are they smoking
How stealthy will anything be with debris regularly cutting grooves in the skin?
If they are serious about their proposal for a stealthy transport roughly the size of a C-130, the answer is yes.
It’s entirely possible to design a STOL aircraft of C-130 or A-400M size that can cruise at conventional jet transport speeds, i.e. more than Mach 0.7 and take off or land in less then 200 feet.
In fact, the A400M comes awfully close to meeting those requirements right now cruising at almost Mach 0.7 with a takeoff and landing distance of about 2500 feet.
That being said, the idea that you want to do all of this, and then triple (at least) the lifetime costs of the airframe by making it stealthy is simply deluded.
While reducing the vulnerability of cargo aircraft to shoulder launched MANPADS is a good idea, experience has shown that the threats are primarily that and small arms fire, the idea that you need to create a reduced radar cross section, as appears to be the case with all (the tailless design is a Northrop-Grumman concept) is really bizarre.
If the enemy has air-superiority in the region, you are simply f%$#ed, and if they are in a position to have radar guided SAMs near your bases, you are, again, simply f%$#ed.
I’m with what Bill Sweetman wrote in the comments:
Everyone, but everyone, writing future airlift requirements for the USAF and US Army is secretly working for Airbus Military. Other than the massive abuse of chemicals there is no alternative explanation for this malarkey.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!?
Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Administrative Law Judge George Painter is retiring, and he has filed a formal complaint of bias against his fellow judge, Bruce Levine:
Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Administrative Law Judge George H. Painter made serious allegations regarding fellow CFTC judge Bruce Levine in announcing his retirement.
In a notice sent to complainants and their attorneys, Judge Painter claims that Levine told him that he had promised former CFTC Chair Wendy Gramm “that he would never rule in a complainants favor”. Painter’s notice goes on to say, “A review of his rulings will confirm that he has fulfilled his vow.”
He is invoking 5CFR§930.208, Administrative Law Judge Loan Program–detail to other agencies to request that his remaining cases be assigned to someone, anyone, else, because Levine is the only other administrative law judge at the CFTC.
You can find the PDF of his complaint, along with a copy of an old WSJ article which details a long history of Mr. Levine’s wrong-doing, like ex-parte contact with litigants, here.
It would have been nice if someone had ratted out this rat years ago.
And Sarah Laughed*
The first woman scribed Torah written in modern times has been completed. At the siyum (completion ceremony), my brother sounded the shofar.
Cool.
*Parshas Vayera in Genesis: 9 They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he replied, “There, in the tent.” 10 Then one said, “I will return to you next year, and your wife Sarah shall have a son!” Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent, which was behind him. 11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years; Sarah had stopped having the periods of women. 12 And Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “Now that I am withered, am I to have enjoyment—with my husband so old?” 13 Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I in truth bear a child, old as I am?’ 14 Is anything too wondrous for the Lord? I will return to you at the time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.”
I’ve Never Called Him Stupid, But Now I Will…
Because Barack Obama just met with Condoleeza Rice to discuss foreign policy:
US President Barack Obama met Friday at the White House with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice for a chat on foreign policy and her new memoir, officials said.
What’s next, meeting with Mary Mallon* to discuss food hygiene?
Discussing haute cuisine, or for that matter how to win a World Cup, with the British?
Seriously, the idea that you are going to have a friendly chat about foreign policy with the worst Secretary of State of all time, who served the worst President of all time, because ……… Hell, I cannot fathom a possible reason for doing this.
What is going on here is a demonstration of either mind-boggling idiocy, or a truly nasty bit of psychological pathology that requires one to get approval from everyone.
Bad Ideas Revisited
The Royal Navy has a problem, which is that with a typical weapons load in a tropical environment, the F-35B STOVL variant of the JSF cannot land without jettisoning some of its (very expensive) stores.
Their solution is the Shipboard Rolling Vertical Landing, for which the Royal Navy has just paid Lockheed $18 million for a viability study, in which the F-35 will land on a carrier deck in a combined wing borne and thrust borne mode, at about 60 kts airspeed without benefit of arrester gear.
So, you have an aircraft weighing something north of 35,000 pounds, which is going to hit the deck at 60+ kts, though the relative speed will likely be closer to 30 kts, and it will then be manually braked to a stop.
What a bloody mess.
Yeah, Like This Name is Accidental
European missile conglomerate MDBA has announced a successful test of its, “Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HARDBUT) Next Generation Multiple Warhead System (NGMWS).
It appears to be rather different in concept from the penetrators developed by the US, which use mass, metallurgy (ES-1 Steel), and specialized geometry to achieve a target kill. Hardbut appears to rely on a tandem warhead to achieve its goals:
The firing was carried out using a representative missile airframe on the long rocket sled test track at Biscarrosse. The live Precursor Charge (PC) was detonated just in front of the massive concrete target and the inert Follow-Through Bomb (FTB) penetrated through and exited the rear face of the target, demonstrating a penetration capability significantly in excess of any warhead currently produced by MBDA. The trial was also designed to assess the robustness of the compact Ruggedized Electronic In-line Fuze (REIF) which will incorporate embedded smart fuzing algorithms. The target and trial set-up were designed to be operationally representative.
(emphasis mine)
So it appears to me that there is a (probably shaped) charge, with a penetrator that follows behind.
H/t Danger Room.
Factoid of the Day
I would not have known, but when you think about it, it’s not surprising that over their history, banks have been a money losing enterprise:
He duly notes the key role banks had in the financial collapse and cites “one amazing statistic,” namely that “in the aggregate, banks have never made money over time.” Instead, “like the airlines, banks historically have seemingly made money hand over fist during good times, but they give it all back when the cycle turns.”
But he asks, “How many bankers suffer the same fate when it comes to their own personal financial affairs?” And the answer to that question, Dennis believes, was a major factor in setting the stage for the encompassing financial crisis we’ve recently suffered through.
The problem is that while banks have not made money over their history, bankers have, because, when the going gets tough, they get to keep their enormous paychecks of the go-go years.
If we did something simple, like saying that remuneration to officers and executives in excess of $400,000.00 a year, the President’s salary, would be subject to claims against the company which paid them for 5 years, and then partially subject to claims against a company for the next 10 years, we would find a lot more honesty and probity in the financial industry.
I Hope that He is Wrong, But I Fear that He is Right
John Carney at CNBC says that Congress will make the illegal actions of banks retroactively legal in the lame duck session:
The put-back crisis is not driven by economics. It is driven by legal rights. And there’s simply zero probability that the politicians in Washington are going to let Bank of America or Citigroup or JP Morgan Chase fail because of a legal issue.
So here’s what I expect will happen. The lame duck session of Congress will pass a bill that essentially papers over the misdeeds of the banks that originated mortgage securities. Every member of Congress and every Senator who has been voted out of office will cast a vote for the bill. And the President will sign it.
He is suggesting that you buy stock in Bank of America, because when Congress does this, the stock will rebound.
He’s right, the bankers own our government.
It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!! (late again)
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
- Security Savings Bank, F.S.B., Olathe, KS
- WestBridge Bank and Trust Company, Chesterfield, MO
- Premier Bank, Jefferson City, MO
3 this week, which appears to be more or less on trend, which is a bit over 3, see graph.
My guess is that the final that the final number will be in the 150-160 range, though prognostic record is rather spotty.
So, here is the graph pr0n with trendline (FDIC only):
I would note that are now at the point where the utility of the least squares trendline is diminishing, but I’m keeping it here for historical purposes.
Here is Some Sanity in Defense Procurement
The successor to the over-ambitious Future Combat Systems Manned Ground Vehicle (FCS-MGV)* the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) has now dropped many of the technologies intended for the FCS-MGV, because, even now, 2 years after the cancellation of the program, the programs are still insufficiently mature to be deployed on a combat system:
In an effort to make use of the billions of dollars it invested in the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, the U.S. Army may have required too many immature technologies in its first Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) Request for Proposals, according to the Army’s vice chief.
“We wanted to look and ensure that we made use of the investment in FCS and that we had the ability to use those technologies,” Gen. Peter Chiarelli told reporters at a Sept. 22 lunch in Washington.
However, if you want a vehicle in seven years, “you can’t be reaching deep for technologies right now,” he said.
………
According to Chiarelli, FCS was canceled in a way so that the Army could still make use of the research and development work done under the program.
“We wanted to ensure that those technologies that we worked so hard to develop could be integrated in to a new ground combat vehicle,” he said.
However, “there were a lot of those technologies that aren’t at a technology readiness level today where we could integrate them in seven years.”
(emphasis mine)
It boggles the mind that the technologies, “aren’t at a technology readiness level,” when the original intent was to begin fielding the FCS in 2008.
So the technologies in question won’t be ready 9 years after they were supposed to be fielded.
Our defense procurement system is seriously broken.
*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV† from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).
†Future Combat Systems-Manned Ground Vehicle. These are the ones that are the tanks and APCs. As opposed to the various unnmanned vehicles, networking technologies, etc. that form the full FCS along with the MGVs.‡
‡Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.
Your Friday of Muppets
Popcorn!
The Beer Diet
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? (The Good Kind)
Is an odd data point.
Notwithstanding the poling showing an enthusiasm gap, Democrats are casting their ballot through early voting in greater numbers than Republicans:
But something special is going on in two Ohio Democratic strongholds: Cuyahoga and Franklin counties. I track on this handy web page that other places around the country — including other Ohio counties — are so far reporting low single digit early voting rates. In stark contrast, over 112,000 votes have already been cast in these two Ohio counties. As a comparison, this represents over ten percent of all ballots cast in the 2006 election in these counties, with still some time to go.
…
Something is afoot in Iowa. Not only have nearly 120,000 voters already cast their ballot, registered Democrats are returning their mail ballots at a higher rate than Republicans in nearly every Iowa county. This, in part, explains the approximately 5:3 partisan registration advantage Democrats have over Republicans among mail ballots returned so far in the Hawkeye state.
I still see the glass empty, and I stand by my analysis that, win or lose, the Dems don’t deserve to win, but this is heartening.
QOTD
I think too often many of us have tried to come up with elaborate financial/economic rationalizations for why the banksters have approached all of this the way they have. The simpler explanation is that they’re sociopathic assholes who think that everyone else must suffer for their mistakes.
And yes, my prior post segues very nicely into this.
Not Enough Bullets
From an attitude on Wall Street’s attitude about foreclosure fraud:
“The first thing that needs to happen, I think, is to get these people out of their homes,” a man wearing a bespoke blue-striped shirt, a Hermés tie patterned with elephants and Ferragamo loafers said recently. “Correct! I’ll explain,” the veteran member of a bank restructuring and advisory team said.
H/t Paul Krugman.
My 2012 Endorsement
I have no connection whatsoever to whoever is printing this shirt.
Economics Update
Unemployment Claims 2008-Present
Things aren’t getting better, they are just running out of people to lay off.
H/t The Washington Independent.
It’s jobless Thursday, and initial unemployment claims are back in the 450K-480K “sweet” spot, with initial claims rising 13,000 to 462K, the 4 week moving average rising 2¼K to 459,000, though both continuing and emergency claims fell.
Seeing as how the number really needs to be below 300,000 for any meaningful recovery in jobs, we remain in a bad place.
In non-existent inflation land, we saw producer prices rise 0.4% in September, though that was largely on food, the core rate was 0.1%, and the price of imports fell by 0.3%, even as the trade deficit rose.
I would note here to all the free trade fetishists, we have a deflation problem in our economy right now, and most of it is being imported.
Meanwhile, the us dollar has fallen to a low for the year.
Kochtopus
The Koch brothers, who have been using their Stalin derived fortunes* to back the teabaggers, have steadfastly denied any involvement in the movement.
Well, let’s role tape:
David Koch told New York Magazine earlier this year, “I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.”
But the Guardian reports that footage has emerged showing David Koch at the podium during an AFP gala receiving direct and detailed reports from his astroturf AFP army on their efforts to organize tea parties around the nation.
It appears that, “Never been to a tea-party event,” means getting reports from the people you are bankrolling on stage in right wing speak.
*Really, patriarch Fred Koch made his fortune setting up refining for Josef Stalin.