Year: 2010

Our Man in Kandahar

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So, we have been holding high level talks with a high ranking representative of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, and they plied him with many inducements, including no small amount of cash, only he turned out to be a con man scamming American negotiators:

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

American officials confirmed Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership.

We are not just non winning in Afghanistan, we are actively, and aggressively, losing there.

Things like this are a sign of a failed policy being pursued by desperate people.

H/t Atrios.

The Insider Trading Arrests Have Begun

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We now have the first arrest as a result of the Department of Justice’s investigation of insider trading facilitated by “research firms”:

The government made the first arrest in a broad investigation of alleged insider trading on Wall Street, charging an employee of a California research firm used by hedge funds.

Don Ching Trang Chu was arrested at his home in Somerset, N.J., and charged in federal court in New York with two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud. He was released on a $1-million bond.

A complaint filed by prosecutors says Chu helped hedge funds get inside information on publicly traded companies by connecting the funds with employees of the firms. 

One interesting thing to note is that, like Tamil financier Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon, once again they have arrested someone who isn’t a member of the Wall Street white boy’s club.

The real question here is whether this will be pursued up the chain.

My guess is no, because both Obama and Eric “Place” Holder have sold their genitals to the finance industry have decided to look forward, and not backward.

In a related note, a judge has said that the wiretaps in the Galleon case are admissible, which implies that this will increasingly be used as a tool by prosecutors in financial corruption.

Posting From the Road

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In preparation for a long Thanksgiving drive, I decided to set up my new phone, a Samsung Epic 4G, to tether to my laptop.

It turns out that it’s disabled by Sprint, unless you want to pay an additional $30.00/month for the privilege.

Luckily, the phone is an Android™, and not, for example, an iPhone™, so:

  • I turned on USB debugging mode.
  • Downloaded an application to root the phone.
  • Unzipped the file.
  • Ran a batch file.
  • Downloaded Google’s Android-Wifi-Tether to the phone, and installed it.
  • Set up the name and password.
  • Turned off USB debugging mode.

So, now I am posting this to you through my cell phone’s WiFi connection on my laptop while on I-295.*

In any case, this reveals how a more open architecture than the Apple/iPhone can let one take full advantage of the capabilities of the phone that you actually paid for.

Sweet, though I still think that Android’s Calendar is kind of weak.

In any case, I am posting this from my laptop in  moving car, and theoretically, we could have up to 4 devices attached.

My thoughts on the phone:

  • The display is positively stunning.
  • The touch screen, which does not require a stylus, is still not completely comfortable to me.
  • Having actual multi-tasking is useful, though one has to be careful to not allow something in the background that will kill the battery.
  • The keyboard is very nice.
  • The camera is nice.
  • Reception is much better than my Palm.
  • 4G coverage is kind of spotty, but it is still being built out by Sprint.
  • Posting to the blog from the phone is still a pain, which is one of the reasons that I am tethering the laptop to the phone.  The other reason is so that we could watch Youtubes and the Macy’s Parade.
  • Having real GPS on the phone, as opposed to cell tower triangulation, is wonderful.
  • Wifi mode chews the battery something fierce.  If you don’t have it plugged in when using it, you won’t get much time.

*No, I m not driving, my wife is.  I may be crazy, but I am not stupid.

That’s Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!!

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Tom Delay was convicted of one count of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to launder money.

Basically, he used the Republican national committee to funnel illegal corporate money to state races for the the Texas legislature.

While the charges typically carry a sentence of 5 to 99 years in prison, the judge can also sentence him to probation.

First, Delay his lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, is very good, so there promises to be years of appeals, and there is a very real chance that he will find a judge or judges who owe him some sort of favor.

This is Texas, after all.

Call me a cynic, but I would be very surprised if he spends more than 18 months in a minimum security prison.

When one considers the degree to which he made pay to play a part of the Washington, DC political scene, he deserves a lot more than that.

He is a truly contemptible human being, and the most evil contestant on Dancing With the Stars ever, which is saying a lot.

Tom Delay, Felon…You know, I REALLY like the sound of that, and for today, at least, that is the truth.

Of course, he could go the way of Kenneth Lay, and die while the appeal is going on, which would be very convenient for people who are concerned that he might cooperate with authorities.

This is Texas, after all.

About Damn Time

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The FBI has raided at least 3 hedge funds on suspicion of insider trading:

The FBI has begun what is expected to be a far-reaching probe into insider trading with raids on hedge funds linked to some of Wall Street’s most high-profile and wealthiest players.

The sweep – which began with armed agents raiding the Connecticut offices of Level Global Investors and Diamondback Capital Management, both multibillion dollar hedge funds set up by former managers at Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors – is already affecting stocks: a collective $15bn was wiped off the valuations of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase.

According to reports published in the Wall Street Journal, investigators from several law enforcement and regulatory agencies are looking into multiple insider-trading rings that reaped millions in illegal profits. An FBI spokesman confirmed last night that the agency was executing “court-ordered search warrants”, but declined to elaborate.

One focus is whether proprietary information is being passed from companies to hedge funds by network of independent analysts and consultants.

Well, this is refreshing: It appears that someone is beginning to look at “business as usual” on Wall Street, and they have noticed that it’s corrupt.

I also have to note that the coverage on the Marketplace radio program was repulsive.

They had an apologist fow wall street on, and he wrung his hands about how fuzzy the lines were, and how no one was really hurt.

This is bovine scatology. Just because they are robbing millions of.investors a few bucks at a time does not diminish the crime.

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Vaticanology

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So, Pope Benedict XVI has now issued a tepid statement saying that gay male prostitutes might be able to use condoms, under certain special circumstances, because there is no possibility of procreation:

The Vatican today rushed out a “clarification” of the pope’s remarks on the use of condoms, reported in a book to be published this week, insisting he had “not reformed or changed the [Roman Catholic] church’s teaching”.

But the statement made clear that Pope Benedict XVI was prepared to consider the use of condoms in certain, limited circumstances.

And now we are seeing the walk-back from this, so I am uncertain if this is a real initiative, or one of those cases a game of academic what-if-ing is taken as something more.

So, it’s either significant, or it isn’t.

Apparrently, I Am Not the Only One Who Thought This………

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Click for full size

Blah, blah, blah!

I saw this at the Wholefoods Market™, and I saw this.

It’s called the “Buddha’s Hand Citron”, but I immediately dubbed it the “Cthulhu Fruit.”

I did not catch the name, but when I got home, I searched for “Cthulhu” and “Citron” on Google™ images, and this Flicker Stream was, not kidding here, the first image up, which shows that something are universal, at least for aficionados of the work of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

There are a lot of people who call this “Cthulhu Fruit”.

Our Annoying World

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My old Palm OS™ phone is wearing out, the keyboard is no longer working, so I got an upgraded phone, a Samsung Epic.

Now I have to teach myself a completely new OS, android, for my phone, and figure out how to sync it with Outlook.

It’s an impressive phone though.

It happens every time I upgrade my phone.

About Damn Time!

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The Commercial, but the music is better than average

When I was working at BAE Systems on the FCS-RMV, one of the systems that we needed to place on our vehicle was the so-called “Active Protection System” (APS), Raytheon’s “Quick Kill, a hit-to-kill interceptor intended to neutralize RPGs, ATGWs, and long rod KE penetrators.

One of the problems with this system, at least as if fed down to us doing the design, was that it never worked properly, which was surprising, considering that the Israelis had a system, Trophy, which worked, and was far less expensive than the APS.

Of course, because of the need for generals to find lucrative consulting gigs in retirement, Trophy was fought tooth and nail by the army, with their refusing to test the system on Strykers in Iraq.

Well, what goes around comes around, and with Raytheon basically dead, the US army will finally try out the system on a Stryker:

Next month a Stryker combat vehicle will arrive in the US equipped for testing the Israeli’s Trophy active protection system. The Army has pursued active protection for years, most recently abandoning the Future Combat System’s active protection system developed by Raytheon. We understand at least one M-ATV will also get the radar– directed system. The M-ATV integration is more challenging, given the vehicle’s design.

Seriously, it’s been something like 6 years that the Pentagon has refused to test the system, instead holding out for a system that was never near ready because our defense procurement system is that broken.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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

  1. Gulf State Community Bank, Carrabelle, FL
  2. Allegiance Bank of North America, Bala Cynwyd, PA
  3. First Banking Center, Burlington, WI

Full FDIC list

So, we haven’t hit 150 failures yet this year, but it’s pretty clear that we will, even though it seems to be trending down a bit over the past few months.

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.

I Am So Glad That I Do Not Live 15 Miles Further East

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Because if I did, the biggest wanker in Congress would be my Congresscritter:

A conservative Maryland physician elected to Congress on an anti-Obamacare platform surprised fellow freshmen at a Monday orientation session by demanding to know why his government-subsidized health care plan takes a month to kick in.

Republican Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist who defeated freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, reacted incredulously when informed that federal law mandated that his government-subsidized health care policy would take effect on Feb. 1 – 28 days after his Jan. 3rd swearing-in.

“He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,” said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. The benefits session, held behind closed doors, drew about 250 freshman members, staffers and family members to the Capitol Visitors Center auditorium late Monday morning,”.

“Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,” added the aide, who was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine.

Andy Harris campaigned non-stop against government run healthcare, but that’s only for people who aren’t him, I guess.