But I have something to add:
I agree with the sentiment, but watching it makes me sad, because the one who should be doing an impression of Reagan is Phil Hartman, and he is no longer with us.
Year: 2010
Another Earthquake?
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Opening up like a broken zipper
Taiwan, 6.4 on the Richter scale.
We got a whole lot of unzipping along fault lines.
FWIW, I still don’t think that the Mayans were right.
I Guess That He Picked Up His Understated Taste in America’s Heartland
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Jeebus, it couldn’t be any tackier if you added velvet Elvises
Because, Rush Limbaugh’s former New York City apartment is truly a study of prudence and thrift.
And such a steal, at only $13.95 million dollars.
Worst of All Possible Worlds
Charlie Rangel taking a temporary leave from his position as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.
While it’s unlikely that he will be back, and he does have ethical issues, the Democrats have split the baby again.
They could have faced down the Republicans, and maybe dug up a few of the skeletons in their closets, or they could have stripped him of his committee chairmanship, but by allowing the fig leaf of a temporary leave, they both knuckle under and leave the issue on the table for Republicans to talk about.
Worst of all possible worlds.
True Dat
Click the pics for full size.
Brilliant!
Atheists sponsor a pr0n for for religious groups.
They are arguing that religious texts are in their own way violent pornography.
Speaking as someone who is religious, I understand that holy scriptures say different things to different generations, and that the moral and social development of people a few millennia ago rather closely resembles what we would call today “psychopathic sadists.”
As such, my opinion of people who find look at these works, and take them literally as “inerrant” and “perfect” is not particularly charitable.
Better to be Lucky than Good
Harry Reid (D-NV) is polling almost as badly as Blanche Lincoln, but it appears that hi might win because a Tea-Bagger candidate will split the anti-Harry vote:
The race is expected to include at least one Tea Party candidate, Las Vegas business leader Scott Ashjian. And there’s evidence in the Mason-Dixon poll that Reid would benefit, should Ashjian become a serious third candidate in the race (which is a big if). The pollster pitted Reid against a nameless Republican and a nameless Tea Party candidate in a hypothetical matchup. Asked how they’d vote, Nevadans gave Reid a slight edge in three-way race. Reid got 36% of the vote, the GOP candidate 32% and the Tea Party candidate 18%.
I figure that Reid will pick up a few percent on the way to November, and that the Tea-Bagger will fall in the polls, so it gets interesting.
It Sucks to be Blanche Lincoln Right Now
The polls say, “Bummer of a birthmark, Blanche.”
Her poll numbers are in the toilet, and she looks unelectable in the general election, and now Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter has announced that he is running against her in the Democratic Primary, and the AFL-CIO has decided to come out against the Senator from Wal-Mart and the Insurance Companies Arkansas to the tune of a $3 million independent expenditure.
And, yes, I’ve added Mr. Halter to my Act Blue Page as well.
This is one of the cases where it’s a win-win.
We have a pseudo-Democrat who will lose anyway, and by taking her out in the primary, we have a chance a real Democrat taking the seat.
When Your Sellout to the Banks Offends Chuck Schumer………
So Chris Dodd has come up with a “bipartisan” proposal for protecting consumers from predatory financial institutions, he wants to make it the Federal Reserve’s job:
The chairman of the Senate banking committee is seeking Democratic support for a Republican proposal to house a new consumer-protection regulator inside the Federal Reserve, a compromise that could clear the way for bipartisan legislation on financial reform, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.
Embracing the proposal marks a turnaround for Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who has lambasted the Fed repeatedly over the past year for not protecting borrowers from lender abuse. It is unclear whether other Fed critics, both Democrats and Republicans, will follow suit. The Fed already is responsible for writing consumer-protection rules, but it did not prohibit some of the most abusive mortgage and credit card lending practices during the housing boom.
The proposal by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) would place a presidential appointee inside the Fed with an independent budget and a mandate to write rules protecting consumers. Those rules, however, would be enforced by existing banking regulators.
Of course, the Fed is already the consumer protection agency, and they failed, and they don’t provide information to Congress, or to anyone else.
Even Chuck Schumer (D-NY) thinks that this is a bad idea, and Schumer’s career is largely based on raising campaign money from Wall Street fatcats:
Chairman Dodd is to be commended for working so diligently to come up with a bipartisan compromise on financial services reform, which demands urgent attention. But in my 20 years of trying to get the Federal Reserve to properly protect consumers, it has been an uphill, and very often unsuccessful, battle. I am very leery of any consumer regulator being placed inside the Fed.
You know, if you’ve lost Chuck Schumer on this idea, it’s time to tell the Republicans to go Cheney themselves, and jam them up and make them vote against financial reform, over, and over, and over again.
The regional Federal Reserve banks are literally owned by the banks, and the presidents of these regional banks hold a lot of sway, and 5 of these bankers sit on the FOMC, and we are to expect an organization that has already shown itself to be both hostile to consumer protection and unresponsive to consumer complaints to somehow protect consumers?
I know that Mr. Dodd wants to make sure that he has a source of income when he leaves office in 2011, but he has a pension coming to him of something in excess of $120,000/year, so he should be fine.
Stop sucking up to the banks, sir.
Deep Thought:
It appears that the Republicans have successfully prevailed upon Jim Bunning (R-KY) to end his filibuster, so the emergency unemployment extension will proceed.
Additionally, the Republicans are suggesting that the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky is suffering from overwork, so they are suggesting:
- That he take a vacation.
- And go to Sea World in Orlando.
- And let his hair down.
- And go swimming.
- And meet Tillicum up close and personal as a part of a whale watching junket.
That is all.
Karl Rove and Jeff Gannon in DC Gay Marriage Love Tryst?
Ummm, no, he probably didn’t, but if Karl Rove were to be tagged with this rumor, it would very much be just desserts, since he started false whispering campaigns like:
- Alleging that John McCain fathered a black daughter.
- That former Texas Governor Ann Richards was a lesbian.
- That a judge was a pedophile.
So, by the standards of Karl Rove, this is a fair question.
It’s not true, as Jon Ponder notes in his post, “Did Karl Rove Leave His Wife For Jeff Gannon?“
Still, the story does contain “truthiness,” as Stephen Colbert would say.
Heh
Back from Work
Damn, that sounds good.
Quote of the Day
I think we’re long past the time when most print newspapers could’ve been saved by simply providing a better product, but I also think there was a window to save, if not the print versions, the institutions which published them. Obviously the WaPo can survive as long as Kaplan Test Prep [The Washington Post] makes enough to keep them afloat, but I do wish more journalists bemoaning the losses in their industry would recognize that at least to some degree ceasing to be relevant and authoritative publications is a part of the problem. Why should people read them when they have to spend a lot of time figuring out when they’re being bullsh%$#ed?
I’ve said it before, many times: One of the problems with newspapers is that their management does not believe that newspapers can survive, so their business plan is to suck the marrow out of these institutions, not to provide good product.
You saw this phenomenon with the American rail industry in the 1970s.
From that Communist Rag The Financial Times
Wolfgang Münchau proposes an outright ban on naked credit default swaps: (CDS)
I generally do not like to propose bans. But I cannot understand why we are still allowing the trade in credit default swaps without ownership of the underlying securities. Especially in the eurozone, currently subject to a series of speculative attacks, a generalised ban on so-called naked CDSs should be a no-brainer.
Naked CDSs are the instrument of choice for those who take large bets against European governments, most recently in Greece. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said last week that the Fed was investigating “a number of questions relating to Goldman Sachs and other companies in their derivatives arrangements with Greece”. Using CDSs to destabilise a government was “counter-productive”, he said. Unfortunately, it is legal.
As I have noted for some time, the Credit Default Swap is insurance, and there is a very good reason that the British Parliament passed the Marine Insurance Act of 1746, which required, “anyone seeking to collect on an insurance contract to have an interest in the continued existence of the insured property,” as well as, “precluding a buyer from insuring property for more than it’s worth.”
This should not be SEC slap on the wrist stuff. This should be illegal unenforceable contracts, and you go to jail stuff.
Harold Ford is Not Running for NY Senate
I guess he finally realized that it was moving from long-shot to fiasco:
Harold E. Ford Jr., the former Tennessee congressman who has sought to parlay his star power and Wall Street connections into a political career in New York, has decided not to challenge Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand in the Democratic primary this September, according to friends and advisers.
After traveling the state on a closely watched tour, he told friends that he could prevail but feared that an ugly campaign would leave the winner drained of cash and vulnerable to a Republican challenger at a time when the Democratic Party controls the United States Senate by a slender majority.
“I’ve examined this race in every possible way, and I keep returning to the same fundamental conclusion: If I run, the likely result would be a brutal and highly negative Democratic primary — a primary where the winner emerges weakened and the Republican strengthened,” Mr. Ford wrote in an opinion article to be published in The New York Times on Tuesday.
Don’t let the door hit you on your butt.
Not Much Posting Tonite Period
I was trying to backup my February posts, and it kept breaking the archive page into little bits.
It looks like this is a feature because a few bloggers had huge front pages, with lots of blogger images, and they decided to have an algorithm break up the pages into digestible chunks.
They are all “It’s going to make everything so much faster.”
The problem is that for some blogs, it made them single posts on the first page.
Luckily that did not happen to me, because I use Imageshack®, which significantly reduces the load that “the Google” sees, and because compared to some of the photographers who blog there, it’s pretty much text based.
On the other hand, means that the monthly archives that I save to a MS Word® file are now broken up into 5-10 separate pages, and it means that it breaks Google’s searches that access archive pages, because it will serve a page that now has only a 15% or so chance of having the post in question.
So, yes, the good folks at Blogger, which is owned by Google, broke Google search, and yes, many of the folks who use blogger are pretty incensed, and the response of the PTB at blogger is that the users are blogging wrong somehow.
Apparently their motto, “Don’t be evil,” is orthogonal to, “Don’t be incompetent and arrogant assholes.”
[on edit] I am looking at moving to WordPress, but I will give it a month or so and fiddle.
On Jim Bunning and His Filibuster
Since I’m starting a new job, I dodge Bunning’s filibuster of extended unemployment benefits.
Jim bunning, go Cheney yourself.
Also, I am thinking about a campaign to remove him from the baseball hall of fame.
Russian S-400 Triumf SAM Enters Service
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It’s about 3 years behind schedule, which when compared to the Patriot Missile, which was entered design in 1969, but did not enter service until 1984, but the S-400 Triumf (NATO designation SA-21 Growler) has officially entered Russian army service.
It is arguably the most capable SAM in service, with a 400 km range, and a significant ATBM capability, as well as an active radar seeker, which was not present in the S-300 (SA-20 Gargoyle).
It claims to have a significant anti-stealth capability, and based on some numbers I ran a few years back, it would appear that the system could detect an F-22 at a range of at least 15 miles, perhaps more, if some of the advances in signal processing and computers work as advertised.
H/t ELP Defens(c)e Blog.
JSF Update
Well, US deputy secretary of defense William Lynn has publicly stated that there will be a 13 month delay in the completion of initial operational test and evaluation (IOTE).
Note that this is a 12 month slip from schedule announced in 2008, not from the 2005 schedule, which the 2008 schedule was a slip. It’s not 2 full years behind the 2005 schedule, so IOTE is supposed to be completed in 2015, as opposed to 2013.
Note also, that independent evaluations are showing even more slippage, not surprising given that they are cannibalizing airframes on the assembly lines to keep the test aircraft flying.
Additionally, it’s over budget, and will likely suffer a Nunn-McCurdy breach, meaning that the price has escalated to more than 150% of the contract, and it will have to be recertified.
On the brighter side, the F-35B has performed its first first short landing: