Month: July 2012

Yes, the Pilots Choking is Really Solved This Time

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They say that it’s just an overinflating pressure vest that is part of their G-suit:

The mysterious engineering problem causing F-22 Raptor pilots to choke in their cockpits has been solved, the Pentagon says. And it’s not the nearly $400 million aircraft’s fault after all.

The problem lies with a valve in the pressurized vest pilots wear as they fly the jet at high altitudes, Pentagon spokesman George Little said. The valve inflated the vest, limiting the pilots’ oxygen supply. It does not appear that the vest was affecting quality of the oxygen in the Raptor. The valve will be replaced; the garment’s use will be “suspended,” Little said.

Additionally, the Air Force has decided to remove a filter it placed in the jet to test the oxygen quality. Ironically, the filter ended up limiting the oxygen supply to the pilots. But the charcoal filter resulted in “no oxygen contamination,” Little told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

Accordingly, the Air Force will gradually take its premiere stealth jet off of the probation that the so-called “hypoxia” incidents — a term indicating problems with the oxygen in the cockpit — necessitated. Over an unspecified period of time, the F-22 will no longer be restricted to flying short missions at low altitudes near air bases. The first indication that the jet is off probation will be an imminent flight of an F-22 squadron over the Pacific to Kadena Air Force Base in Japan — which will occur at a “lower altitude,” Little said.

I’ll believe this if we don’t have any more incidents for at least 6 months.

Speaking of Wankers

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The Australian prosecutors, who tried to seize proceeds from David Hicks’ memoir about his captivity and torture at the US facility in Guantanamo Bay:

So the Australian government has shot itself in the foot while aiming at David Hicks. It would be funny if it weren’t so appalling.

The withdrawal of the dubious literary proceeds of crime action against Hicks raises questions the Commonwealth DPP has not fully answered. Why was the case dropped? What new material was presented by Hicks that prosecutors were unaware of when launching proceedings?

The DPP’s statement acknowledges the plea Hicks entered in the US – an ++”Alford plea” whereby a defendant is able to acknowledge the evidence without admitting commission of the offences charged – “is not recognised in Australia”. Furthermore, the DPP was unable to “satisfy the court that the admissions should be relied upon”, and the defendant “served evidential material not previously available to the CDPP & AFP”.

The “evidential material” in question were his allegations of coercion and torture, which were in the book that generated the moneys in question.

Yes, This Both Cowardice and Hypocrisy

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Roger Simon (not the Pajamas Media Guy) notes that both Presidential candidates are full of it in their expressions of sympathy for the victims of the Batman shootings.

The issue here is that both candidates, while expressing sympathy, are refusing to do anything, even the most basic stuff, like keeping records of gun purchases, as they do with explosives (and many types of fertilizer), so when someone purchases 6000 rounds and multiple weapons, someone might flag this as being a matter of concern.
Here is the money quote from the OP/EE:

What was baloney is that he intends to do nothing about preventing it in the future.

His White House press secretary had announced as much to reporters on Air Force One on the flight to Colorado. Jay Carney said Obama “believes we need to take steps that protect Second Amendment rights of the American people but that ensure that we are not allowing weapons into the hands of individuals who should not, by existing law, obtain those weapons.”

That “existing law” was painfully inadequate to protect the 70 people who had been shot in a movie theater was obvious to all. All except for politicians running for reelection, that is.

Mitt Romney is no better. Having opposed “deadly assault weapons” as governor of Massachusetts in 2004, he now does “not support any new legislation of an assault weapon-ban nature.”

But he, too, said he was “deeply saddened” by the Aurora shootings. Just not deeply saddened enough to promise to do anything about future shootings.

I think that every player in American politics is Wayne LaPierre’s bitch.

Wanker of the Decade

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Wisconsin State Senator Tim Cullen, who left the Democratic Caucus over a hissy fit about committee assignments.

While he’s not joined the Republican caucus, which would flip the Senate.

All reports are that he was Republican Governor Scott Walker’s favorite Democrat in the Senate, so I peg this as a case of Joe Lieberman syndrome, where they act like a complete prat if they feel that they have not received the requisite obsequious adulation.

The ILECS Suck

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Yes, those relics of the Bell Telephone System, the incumbent local exchange carrier are a bunch of pig felching scum, and US telecommunications and data costs and performance will continue to lag behind the rest of the world until they are treated as rent seeking parasites, rather than valued participants in the process.

In the case of Verizon, it now appears that they are deliberately sabotaging its own DSL service and forcing its customers with which it colludes, with the hope that these people will be forced to move to (almost completely unregulated) wireless.

It has the additional “benefit” of moving their business from their unionized land line market to their non-unionized wireless division.

We also have AT&T reporting improved profits by deliberately and aggressively making their product worse:

AT&T reported their second quarter results today. According to this analysis, AT&T achieved better profitability by (a) dramatically limiting their broadband service; (b) discouraging consumers from upgrading their devices; and (c) figuring out new charges for consumers to enhance overall profit per customer.

I get that firms are supposed to maximize profit. But when every single incentive to profit maximization relies on providing less service for more money and discouraging people from using your service, something is seriously messed up. This is doubly true when usual trend in information technology is to drive prices down. And, more tellingly, it creates a real concern if we are relying on market incentives to ensure that providers do things like build out networks and provide us with better service and lower prices.

………

I’d be happy to concede the issue on metred pricing, except that there doesn’t seem to be any actual relationship between the price metering and the cost of provisioning. The idea of metering is that I want to provide you with more capacity because that way I make more profit. If this were bananas, I would have a fairly direct incentive to grow more bananas so I can sell more bananas. But AT&T doesn’t want to charge me for more bandwidth, which would arguably give it incentive to build better systems and sell me ever more capacity. It wants to sell me limited capacity and then stop, presumably so it can capture some imaginary and unspecified revenue on the the other side of the platform. That creates a fairly unfriendly incentive to create scarcity and avoid investment in the network.

It’s what economists call rent seeking behavior, where a company manipulates the social or political environment to extract money, as opposed to doing that icky, “out-competing the competition” thing.

It Appears that McClatchy Employes the Only People Who Practice Journalism in Washington, DC

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Because it appears that the rest of the Washington press corps(e) allow administration officials to dictate and re-edit their quotes:

To our staff and to our readers:

As you are aware, reporters from The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg and others are agreeing to give government sources the right to clear and alter quotes as a prerequisite to granting an interview.

To be clear, it is the bureau’s policy that we do not alter accurate quotes from any source. And to the fullest extent possible, we do not make deals that we will clear quotes as a condition of interviews.

With the government trying to do more of the public’s business in secret, the demands that interviews be conducted off the record is growing. While it puts us at a disadvantage, we should argue strenuously for on-the-record interviews with government officials.

When they absolutely refuse, we have only two options. First, halt the interview and attempt to find the information elsewhere. In those cases, our stories should say the official declined comment. Second, we can go ahead with the interview with the straightforward response that whatever ultimately is used will be published without change in tone, emphasis or exact language.

The fact that McClatchy is alone in taking such a position is troubling, to say the least..

H/t Taylor Marsh

Penn State Gets Slap on the Wrist

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Let’s look at the term of the so called punishment:

  • A $60 million fine. (For a program routinely generates revenue, not counting alumni donations in the $50 million dollar range).
  • Vacating all victories since 1998, which means nothing except that Paterno is no longer the winningest coach in college football.
  • A 4 year ban on bowl games.
  • Loss of 20 scholarships for the next 4 years.
  • Allowing players to transfer into other programs.

The biggest deal is the post season ban.  It reduces revenue, and makes recruiting of top level players all but impossible, so everything else is pretty much nothing.

Compare this to SMU, which had the temerity to conspire with boosters to pay its so-called “student athletes”, and had its football program shut down for a year, and their football program has never recovered.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-dufresne-ncaa-penn-state20120723,0,6729566.story

Amity Shlaes is a F%$#ing Moron, Part LVMXXVII

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Here latest brain fart is the suggestion that the federal government place levies on the states, and to allow them to collect the taxes, because the Articles of Confederation were such a good idea.

I’m not being metaphorical here.  She literally extolls the virtues of the articles of confederation:

.There will be objections, of course. The first is that states’ collecting the money isn’t our tradition. It is, actually. Under the Articles of Confederation, the states, not individuals, owed payments to the federal government. The modern income tax, where citizens pay the federal government, came into being only a century ago. 

Which is not the same thing as saying that the federal government hasn’t had taxing authority for the past 223 years, though she is implying that the failed and rejected Articles of Incorporation is part of the American tradition of governance.

The Magna Carta, and the Marine Insurance Act of 1746 have more to do with the heritage and traditions of the United States than does the Articles of Confederation.

Just remember that she spent decade as a “senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations,” as well as being an adjunct (temp) prof at NYU’s Stern School of Business, despite making sh%$ up in her so called histories, and despite the fact that she her degree in is in English.

So if a representative from either of the above institutions claims that the sky is blue, find independent verification.

Any organization that hires her has no credibility.

Round Up the Usual Suspects

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The operative quote here is, “individual traders“:

American prosecutors and European regulators are close to arresting individual traders over the Libor scandal and charging them with colluding to manipulate global benchmark interest rates, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Federal prosecutors in Washington DC have recently contacted lawyers representing some of the individuals under suspicion to notify them that criminal charges and arrests could be imminent, said two sources speaking anonymously.

Defence lawyers representing individuals under suspicion said prosecutors have indicated they will begin making arrests and filing charges in the next few weeks. In long-running financial investigations it is not uncommon for prosecutors to contact defence lawyers for individuals before filing charges to offer them a chance to co-operate or take a plea, the lawyers said.

(emphasis mine)

This is looking a lot like a US military investigation of war crimes.  The goal is to prosecute at absolutely the lowest level possible, and come down on the little fish like a ton of bricks.

We know how this works.  It’s called “looking forward, not back.”

If any one at the VP level is charged, I predict that they will be non-white, south or east Asian.

Today’s Civil Rights Heroes

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No, this is not intentional, just very apropos!

The Muppets. Seriously:

The Jim Henson Company has celebrated and embraced diversity and inclusiveness for over fifty years and we have notified Chick-Fil-A that we do not wish to partner with them on any future endeavors. Lisa Henson, our CEO is personally a strong supporter of gay marriage and has directed us to donate the payment we received from Chick-Fil-A to GLAAD. (http://www.glaad.org/)

You know, it’s a never a good idea to f%$# with the Muppets.  When you f%$# with the (what the hell is Gonzo anyway?) you get the horns.

H/t Think Progress.

Yes, a 60 Year Old Engine is NASA’s Future

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I appreciate the contributions that Wernher von Braun, but the fact that NASA is looking at using the F-1 engine as the core of its future heavy lifter (paid subscription required) makes me wonder what the hell NASA has been doing since the Apollo program:

The powerful rocket engine developed in the 1960s to launch the first men to the Moon could be reprised in the 2020s as the powerplant for strap-on boosters that NASA hopes to use in heavy-lift human missions to Mars. Under a new NASA risk-reduction project, Dynetics Inc., a relative newcomer to space launch, will explore the idea for the U.S. agency in partnership with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.

Rocketdyne built the 1.5-million-lb.-thrust F-1 engine for NASA , which mounted five of the kerosene-fueled behemoths in the Saturn V first stage to propel the massive Saturn/Apollo stack off the launch pad.The F-1—19 ft. tall, with a nozzle 12.5 ft. across—epitomized the scale of the flight hardware and ground infrastructure NASA used to beat the Soviet Union to the Moon. If NASA decides to fly it again, it probably will be tested in the same stands built for the F-1 at the agency’s Marshall and Stennis field centers, stacked in the same 40-story Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center used for Apollo and the space shuttle, and launched from one of the pads built for the Moon program.

Dynetics scored big in a $200 million NASA effort to reduce the risk on advanced boosters for the planned Space Launch System (SLS) that Congress ordered as a government-owned deep-space alternative to the commercial vehicles the agency wants to use for transport to the International Space Station. Last week NASA selected the company to negotiate for three of six 30-month study contracts designed to reduce risk on the twin boosters that will be needed to raise the SLS capability from an initial 70 metric tons to the 130 metric tons the agency believes will be needed for human missions beyond low Earth orbit.

………

If the Dynetics proposal to use the F-1 in the boosters is accepted, all of the engines on the SLS will have heritage in earlier human spaceflight missions, and all will already have been used for decades when deep-space human missions begin. The F-1 ran a full 2.5-min. test at Edwards AFB, Calif., in 1960 (see photo), before the A-1 and A-2 test stands at Stennis were built for it. NASA and Rocketdyne are testing the uprated J-2X variant of the Saturn V J-2 engine to power the SLS upper stage . And the main SLS engine will be a throw-away version of the reusable RS-25D space shuttle main engine, also built by Rocketdyne , once the 15 surplus shuttle engines are used up. Developed in the 1970s, it will be the newest basic engine design for what may one day be NASA ‘s newest human launchers.

This is f%$#ing depressing.

I’m Dubious that an Indian Probe Will Reach Mars This Decade

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Yes, I am aware that the Indians have put satellites in orbit, but their plans for a mars probe seem to be to be over-ambitious🙁pdid subscription required)

Indian space officials expect the country’s first mission to Mars to receive final government approval soon, with a launch planned for November 2013.

“The project has reached the last phase of approval. Many studies relating to the mission have been completed, and an announcement can be expected soon,” Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman K. Radhakrishnan says.

The U.S. government is expected to give its final approval after NASA ‘s Mars Science Laboratory lands there on Aug. 6 (EDT), though India’s orbiter mission will not be on the same scale as that undertaken by NASA ‘s car-sized rover.

India’s Mars orbiter is expected to be launched from Sriharikota in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. The project received a boost in the federal budget for the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, with the government allocating 1.25 billion rupees ($22.6 million).

Not enough money, and not enough time.  I would believe it if they added at least 5 years, and at least 500 million dollars, I’d believe it.

I am Getting Old

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I was watching the video of Michelle Jenneke running the women’s 100m hurdles, it’s gone viral over the past few days, and what I notice is her hurdles form.

Her bouncing around and dancing as she gets ready for the race, but what struck me was the fact that she could have balanced a soup bowl on the top of her head and delivered it at the finish line without spilling a drop.

No wasted motion.

It’s Bank Failure ……… What the F%$#?

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What the hell is going on with this ADHD bank failure sh%$?

There are five failures this week, tied for the most this year.

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

  1. The Royal Palm Bank of Florida, Naples, FL
  2. Georgia Trust Bank, Buford, GA
  3. First Cherokee State Bank, Woodstock, GA
  4. Heartland Bank, Leawood KS
  5. Second Federal Savings and Loan Association of Chicago, Chicago, IL

The FDIC has been wicked busy.

Full FDIC list

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

I Gotta Read This Book

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Neil Barkofsky’s book on his experiences monitoring the TARP, Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, and the Bush administration comes off better than the Obama administration:

The Huffington Post described a scene in a forthcoming book by Neil Barofsky, the former Special Inspector General of TARP, where Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner delivered a string of F-bombs during a discussion about transparency. I’ve read the book, and while that’s an amusing diversion, it’s nowhere near the headline story.

The important moment in the book for me comes conveniently after Barofsky recounts this FDL News item, one of my HAMP horror stories. Barofsky shows how HAMP’s faulty design led to all sorts of problems like this, with trapped borrowers, extended trial payments, no-doc modifications, and eventually unnecessary foreclosures. Barofsky mused that Treasury didn’t care about the suffering of borrowers under HAMP, and the issue came up in a meeting with the Treasury Secretary, which was also attended by Elizabeth Warren, then the head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, another TARP watchdog.

Warren asked Geithner repeatedly about HAMP. After several evasions, Geithner said about the banks, “We estimate that they can handle ten million foreclosures, over time… this program will help foam the runway for them.”

This is a revelatory moment for Barofsky in the book, and should be for everyone reading. Geithner’s concern, first of all, was with how the banks would respond to the program, not how homeowners would respond to it. In fact, homeowners are quite besides the point. Regardless of their situation, they will be one of the 10 million foreclosures, in Geithner’s construction. His goal was merely to space out the foreclosures and give the banks time to earn their way back to health, mostly through the other parts of the bailout, that enabled them to earn profits.

I will note that the Cossacks work for the Czar, and notwithstanding all the turnover on the economic side of his cabinet, Geithner has been a constant.

This is going on because this is what Obama wants.

Racist Diatribes from SB 1070 Sponsor

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In the challenges to Arizona’s immigration law, one of the claims made is that it was motivated by bigotry.

Well, the plaintiffs now have sponsor’s, former state senate majority leader Russell Pearce’s, emails, and we have the smoking gun:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona has released thousands of e-mails that it says proves Arizona’s controversial immigration law was racially motivated.

The e-mails, acquired through a public records request to the state Legislature, are to and from former senator Russell Pearce, who authored Senate Bill 1070.

The ACLU included dozens of those e-mails as part of a legal filing this week, asking U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton to prevent a key part of SB 1070 from going into effect.

The e-mails from Pearce in the court documents include statements like, “Can we maintain our social fabric as a nation with Spanish fighting English for dominance … It’s like importing leper colonies and hope we don’t catch leprosy. It’s like importing thousands of Islamic jihadists and hope they adapt to the American Dream.”

They include statistics such as “9,000 people killed every year by illegal aliens,” and “the illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two-and-a-half times that of non-illegal aliens.”

Some quotes:

“Battles commence as Mexican nationalists struggle to infuse their men into American government and strengthen control over their strongholds. One look at Los Angeles with its Mexican-American mayor shows you Vincente Fox’s general Varigossa commanding an American city.”

“They create enclaves of separate groups that shall balkanize our nation into fractured nightmares of social unrest and poverty.”

I am not surprised at all that this guy is a bigoted ratf%$#, though I am surprised that he was stupid enough to reveal it on email.

Crap

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Benjamin Netanyahu sandbagged his coalition partners on plans to make all Israelis serve in the military, and they have left the coalition, which effectively ends the best chance in Israel’s history to stop coddling the Heredi schnorrers (ultra orthodox moochers):

The broadest unity coalition Israel has seen in many years broke apart Tuesday evening, rent by irreconcilable differences over how to integrate ultra-Orthodox men and Arab citizens into the military and civilian service, a fundamental question for the future of the Jewish democracy.

After stunning the political establishment with a secret, late-night deal in May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz, the leader of the centrist Kadima Party, failed to achieve their top priority and agreed to part ways. While Mr. Netanyahu retains power with his original, narrower majority in Parliament, analysts said the split weakened both leaders and was likely to hasten elections.

The coalition had given Mr. Netanyahu a supermajority of 94 of the Parliament’s 120 members and a new nickname, “King of Israel,” and with that unprecedented authority to take on complex issues like the stalemated peace process with the Palestinians and the national responsibilities of Israel’s growing minorities. Instead, when it came to the draft and expanding settlements in the West Bank, he chose to solidify his alliance with right-wing and religious factions.“I don’t think there are any winners, except maybe the Orthodox parties — they’re off the hook for the foreseeable future,” said Yossi Verter, political correspondent for the newspaper Haaretz. “The losers are, of course, Netanyahu and Mofaz. When the leaders of the two big parties in Israel sit and decide to form a unity government and after 70 days it collapses, they don’t look like serious men. It’s like a joke.”

The surprise partnership between the prime minister and the former leader of the opposition had come a day after Mr. Netanyahu called for early elections because of cracks in his original coalition. The two men vowed to leverage the huge new majority to enact legislation ensuring that all citizens share the burden of military and civilian service, in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling invalidating a law that granted draft exemptions to thousands of yeshiva students.

The issue had broad resonance in a society increasingly torn between secular and religious Jews: some 20,000 people took to the Tel Aviv street this month to demand a broader draft and the ouster of politicians who opposed it.

But talks broke down over the details. Kadima set a goal of enlisting 80 percent of the ultra-Orthodox within four years, with stiff financial penalties for dodgers. Under pressure from religious parties long aligned with his Likud faction, Mr. Netanyahu proffered a more incremental solution, which Mr. Mofaz rejected as a cop-out.

It was a cop-out, and as long as these mendicants are allowed to shirk their duty, it will remain a cancer on Israeli governance.

Republican Family Values

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It appears that a Utah Republican activist, Greg Peterson dabbles in serial date rape as a hobby:

News that a Utah Republican activist is accused of raping four women — two of whom say they were taken to the Heber cabin where the man hosted major political events — caused ripples of unease Thursday throughout the GOP.

Gregory Nathan Peterson has hobnobbed with the likes of Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, Gov. Gary Herbert, U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, and candidates such as 4th District congressional contender Mia Love. [Ed Note: 

But for the past 14 months, the 37-year-old Orem man allegedly has led a double life as a serial date-rapist.

Peterson was charged Wednesday in 3rd District Court in Salt Lake City with 23 felony counts, including rape and kidnapping, and two misdemeanors. A jail log indicates U.S. marshals arrested Peterson in his home in Heber and booked him into the Salt Lake County jail. He remained there Thursday in lieu of $750,000 bail.

Charging documents allege sexual assaults against four women Peterson met in Salt Lake County beginning March 26, 2011. In the first case, the documents allege, he met a woman at a church function and she agreed to go to a movie with him.

But instead of going to a theater, the documents allege, Peterson told the woman he had a gun and took her to his five-bedroom, five-bathroom, 3,000-square-foot cabin in Heber. The documents allege he sexually assaulted the woman and hit her when she did not do as he wished. Peterson drove the woman back to her vehicle the next morning.

Peterson’s Heber cabin is where he has held annual Republican barbecues and gatherings.

The charges allege Peterson met another woman online and she agreed to go to a movie with him July 2, 2011. But this time Peterson threatened to expose the woman’s expired immigration visa and drove her to the Heber cabin, documents allege. Peterson raped and assaulted the woman there, court papers say, then drove her to his mother’s Lewiston residence in Cache County. Peterson and the woman stayed there until July 5. The documents say Peterson took the woman to her home July 8.

On Dec. 11, 2011, Peterson met a West Jordan woman for a lunch date, the documents allege, and at her home he pushed her on a couch and sexually assaulted her.

It’s amazing how fast his former BFFs are falling all over themselves pretending not to know him.