Month: November 2011

It Sucks to be Dassault Right Now

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It looks like United Arab Emirates has reopened its fighter competition, meaning that the “done deal” to be the first export customer for the Rafale is now in doubt:

France’s long-running campaign to sell up to 60 Dassault Rafales to the United Arab Emirates faces a shock last-minute challenge, with the Eurofighter consortium having been asked to submit a proposal based on its Typhoon combat aircraft.

News of the development broke on the eve of the Dubai air show, where both types are scheduled to take part in the daily flying display.

Sources have confirmed that the UK provided a formal briefing about the Typhoon to UAE officials on 17 October, after being asked to explore how it might meet future fast jet requirements.

The same thing happened with Morocco, when what appeared to be a done deal fell through.

The Wiki says that the F/A-18 is still in the mix, but I think that it would be a long shot, since the primary driver for going with the Rafale in the first place was to have part of their inventory be non-US built.

Stephen Trimble seems to think that this might be an effort to make Dassault more flexible on price:

Riad Kahwaji, chief executive officer of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis (INEGMA), told The DEW Line that latest manoeuvres are a clear signal: the UAE air force thinks France’s price for the Rafale is too high. Major fighter deals are never immune from politics, but this deal is purely political. The UAE is buying the Rafale to balance its reliance on US-made weapons, including its fleet of 80 Lockheed F-16 Block 60s. Perhaps thinking the UAE has no other options, Dassault may have submitted a monopolistic price, Kahwaji said.

Even after negotiating exclusively with France for more than three years, the UAE has just re-opened the competition. The DEW Line’s colleague, Craig Hoyle, broke the story on Flightglobal yesterday that the UAE issued a request for proposals to the Typhoon, setting up a second competition between the same pair of fighters vying for India’s medium multi-role aircraft (MMRCA).

I’d love to have the antacid concession to Dassault’s corporate offices right now.

I’m Beginning to Wonder if This is all Anti-Mormon bigotry

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It seems that the Republican base is determined to find an alternative to Mitt Romney, and they seem to cycle through a series of brain dead clowns who are destined to fail. So, after cycling through Bachmann, Perry, and Cain, it looks like the ‘Phants are truly scraping the bottom of the barrel, with Newt Gingrich rising in the polls:

It’s come to this.

In the wake of Herman Cain’s multiple sexual harassment accusations, the media narrative of Romney-the-Inevitable has continued to grow. But it seems the anti-Mitt crowd is continuing to grasp for other choices. The latest alternative?

Newt Gingrich.

Months ago, many declared Gingrich’s campaign dead barely after it had begun, when he criticized Paul Ryan’s medicare-killing house budget, and lost his top campaign staffers in a major shakeup. But polls released Friday suggest growing momentum.

Let’s review the mounting evidence, shall we?

A national CBS News poll shows Gingrich as the choice of 15% of GOP voters, tied with Mitt Romney and three points behind Herman Cain, who is slipping.

A national McClatchy/Marist poll shows Gingrich in second place with 19% of the vote — four points behind Romney. Also notable is that 43% of Gingrich’s supporters say they are firmly committed to his candidacy — compared to 30% for Romney, and 31% for Cain. In total, only 30% of voters supporting a candidate say they are firmly committed. Gingrich’s higher-than-average floor of support could prove significant moving forward.

This is a guy who served his 1st wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital being treated for cancer, and dumped his 2nd on Mother’s Day when he knew that she had MS, and conducted a years long affair with his current wife while pursuing the impeachment of Bill Clinton for a blow job.

That and the fact that he’s a smarmy bastard.

The base is thrashing around for a non-Mormon and non-Catholic alternative to Romney, so the hapless Huntsman and the batsh%$ insane Santorum* are not viable alternatives.

I’m wondering who the Republicans next “Great White Hope” will be.

*The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

Who Says Irony Is Dead?

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Do you remember the theatrical release of the Atlas Shrugged Movie, imaginatively named Atlas Shrugged Part I? It was first movie of a 3 part series based on Ayn Rand’s magnum opus.

Yeah, I didn’t think so. It left theaters so fast that I don’t think that they had time to finishing the lettering on the sign.

Well, in their attempt to further
rip-off
monetize their gullible objectivist fanboi base, they made a fairly substantial DVD release that they are now having to recall:

100,000 “Atlas Shrugged” DVDs have been recalled for an important danger they posed to unwary consumers: the title sheet suggested that viewers help someone out besides themselves.

Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand that tells the story of an alternate reality version of America where all the millionaires get sick of the government taking over their inventions so they go on strike. The original title sheet for the movie said that in it, “AYN RAND’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life…” This grave error posed a risk of fire. As in, it would make Ayn Rand fan’s heads spontaneously immolate upon reading it. So the producers recalled the 100,000 DVDs to replace the sheet.

The new sheet will read, “AYN RAND’s timeless novel of rational self-interest comes to life…” (Emphasis added.)

Needless to say, the idea that the overpaid* self-styled supermen succeeded in refuting Ayn Rand’s core message and now feel ethically compelled to correct this, at significant personal cost, is just chock full of Irony.

*If they are paid at all they are overpaid.

The Reality is That Obama is Preparing for a Post Election F%$# You to Environmentalists

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Obama is in election mode.

He’s criticizing Republicans and trying for a new jobs program.

And now the State Department as delayed a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the election.

They want a study on another route, one that might be a bit less likely to contaminate the Ogallala aquifer.

This is not a policy change.  This is an cynical exercise in electioneering, and once Obama doesn’t need the environmentalists, he will once again go out of his way to sh%$ all over them once again.

Taibbi Explains it All

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While I have been generally supportive of Occupy Wall Street, I’ve also had a problem wrapping my head about the specifics of what they want.

Well, Matt Taibb had the same problem, but he grocks it now:

People want out of this fiendish system, rigged to inexorably circumvent every hope we have for a more balanced world. They want major changes. I think I understand now that this is what the Occupy movement is all about. It’s about dropping out, if only for a moment, and trying something new, the same way that the civil rights movement of the 1960s strived to create a “beloved community” free of racial segregation. Eventually the Occupy movement will need to be specific about how it wants to change the world. But for right now, it just needs to grow. And if it wants to sleep on the streets for a while and not structure itself into a traditional campaign of grassroots organizing, it should. It doesn’t need to tell the world what it wants. It is succeeding, for now, just by being something different.

Just go read the rest.

Media Wonks Mourn

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Jim Romenesko has resigned from the Poynter Institute. 

His blog there was the go-to place for media happenings like M&A, layoffs, and scandals.

He was already weeks away from a long planned retirement from the site, when he would go part time, and start his own blog.  (Now updated on my blogroll, but the RSS feed is not yet active.)

The cause was lack of quote marks around some of the quotes.

Romenensko has been meticulously linking and attributing while summarizing for years, and has never gotten a complaint, and the fact that it is a quote is clear from context.

There is some sort of dumb ass pissing contest going on at Poynter.

Where Am I Going to Go for Dipping Dots and Bubble Tea?

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This is a busy day at the mall!

It looks like the Owings Mall is going to be torn down.

Not surprising.  The mall has been in slow decline for some time, with at least one wing on the top floor shut down for the past two years.

Some of the anchor stores, as well as the theater, will remain, but it’s not going to be a classic mall anymore.

I’m not sure exactly why it failed, it’s located at the terminus of the Metro, and there is a rather large mixed used development in the area reaching completion.

Of note is that the operator of the mall, GGP, is in Bankruptcy, and is is owned by the Bucksbaum family, and Ann Bucksbaum Friedman is the wife of New York Times columnist (Who I would never call a schmuck because a schmuck has a head) Thomas Friedman.

I can’t avoid negative effects of this guy even if I never read his incoherent crap.

It Just Gets Better

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So, Joe Paterno has been fired, and is alleged to have hired a criminal defense attorney, and a Pittsburgh radio host is alleging that some of the young boys were pimped out to rich donors.

You know, this is what happens when you have an organization like the NCAA which creates a multi-billion dollar money machine on the backs of what are little more than slaves.

Division I sports is a mass of corruption, hypocrisy, and immorality which has as much to do with education as a prostate exam does with haute cuisine.

Well What Do You Know? The Penn State Football is a Bunch of ‘Phants!

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Or, more accurately Jerry Sandusky and Joe Paterno are both registered Republicans, which is not as odd as it sounds, as coaching staffs tend to lean that way (with the notable exception of Bill Belichick).

Let is cede the fact that Republican does not equal pedophile, nor does it imply that Republicans support Pedophilia, though the abuse of power and self-entitlement bit, where Paterno and the Penn State sports program let it slide because Sandusky was one of them, does seem to be symptomatic of Republican party registration.

The point that the author makes in the article, and the one that I agree with, is that if either Sandusky or Paterno were Democrats, you would hear Rush Limbaugh making animal noises and Deliverance references while implying that Democrats support pedophilia.

FWIW, I agree with Olbermann, Paterno should be filed.

Desperately Seeking Anger Management Counseling

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I give you deadbeat dad teabagger Congressman Joe Walsh:

I’ve seen politicians at confrontational meet and greets, and heard of one where the politician walked out (The well justified action of MD State Senator Bobby Zirkin when dealing with the [literally] insane CB screaming at him).

Sometimes a politician replies with mockery and scorn, see Barney Franks’ epic take-down of teabagger hecklers.

As you can see above, Joe “Not the Guitar God” Walsh is not even attempting an epic take-down, he’s just throwing an epic hissy fit.

I was half expecting him to throw a stroke.

No wonder his wife dumped his sorry ass.