The flight crew for a flight from Miami to LaGuardia showed up an hour and a quarter late, and they were roundly booed by the passengers.
Deciding that this constituted a “safety threat” because the environment was “hostile”, the flight crew refused to board the aircraft.
As a postscript, when the passengers were sent to LGA the next day, their luggage was “accidentally” sent to JFK airport.
At some point, we will have passengers dismantling an airliner with their bare hands.
He was there to break the filibuster on the Medicare bill.
It turned out it was not necessary. The Republicans caved after a few days of tha AMA running ads saying that they were favoring HMOs over patients.
The US and Czech Republic have signed a deal over the ABM radar, and the Russians are suggesting that they, “will be forced to react not in a diplomatic fashion but with military-technical means.”
This is a polite way of saying that nuclear weapons will be targeted at the Czech Republic, likely in a launch on warning stature.
The Czech people overwhelmingly oppose this, so one wonders if this will last past the Bush regime, particularly if the Russians bring natural gas shipments into the mix.
In a related note, Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski talked with both McCain and Obama, and the sick old man is gave assurances that the program would progress under him, but Obama refused to say anything.
The fact is that the Russians are right. This missile base is being located in a place spectacularly ill suited to defend against Iran.
The only way that the sites could be located any further from Iran is if they were in the Baltic states.
Were the missile sights located in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, or Turkey, it would provide better protection from an Iranian strike.
What this is about is the desire by Bush and His Evil Minions™ to recreate the evil Russian empire for electoral benefit, and, for Condi Rice specifically, to recreate relevance in her area of expertise.
The only question is whether Boeing will rebid with their clearly inferior proposal, or go with something like a shortened 777.
It turns out that some soon-to-be-unemployed Bush staffer handed out a press info pack on Silvio Berlusconi, and used accurate information from the Encyclopedia of World Biography.
Among other things, it described him as, “one of the most controversial leaders” of a country “known for governmental corruption and vice,” and “regarded by many as a political dilettante (amateur) who gained his high office only through use of his considerable influence on the national media.”
Excuse me, I have to clean off my screen now.
This is not surprising if you were running a country whose economy, because of European colonialism, was a basket case, and remittances from illegal aliens in Europe were keep said economy afloat, you would condemn stricter immigration rules too.
The basic facts are these: A nation has a right to control the flow of immigration into that country, and the goal of immigration should be no illegal immigration.
If these goals were focused on, as opposed having the discussion devolving into a fight between open borders “jobs we won’t do” types and racist nativists, then policy and enforcement would be both more effective and more humane, because it would focus on the employers of illegals, as opposed to use of state security forces to harass illegal aliens.
The efforts of Blue America Political Action Committee et. al is getting local coverage in the Savannah Morning News.
Blue America PAC is dropping $40K-$50K on ads saying the Barrow is Bush’s, “rubber stamp”, and may also include radio and TV ads.
Give to Regina Thomas, a real Democrat. As of the last campaign finance report, Thomas had about $11K in the bank as compared to Barrow’s more than $1M, but the dynamics of the district, the primary voters are over 70% AA, make winning the primary a real possibility.
In a stunning grasp of the obvious, the Fedederal Reserve is now saying that the economic downturn might continue into next year….Well duh!!!
In another example of supposed experts who are late to the glaringly obvious, the hedge fund whiz kids have discovered that they can lose money too. It’s still better than the market as a whole, but I expect that to change as their complex high yield instruments start behaving like the crap that they are.
In energy and currency, the news is neutral with oil and retail gasoline flat, though the dollar is down a bit.
Weekly mortgage application volume is up 7.5%, but I would go with monthly numbers which have less noise in them.
My guess is that this is just a ploy for attention, but we know how my accurate my predictions are.
Polling indicates that he will take a roughly equal amount from both Coleman and Franken.
While it looks like the Indian PM Manmohan Singh may find the votes to approve the deal with the US on civilian nuclear power, it appears that it’s unlikely to make it through Congress this year.
The legislation that enabled the negotiations, the 2006 Hyde act, requires that Congress, “be in 30 days of continuous session to consider it”, and there are only 40 days to the August recess, when we are in election season.
While it is possible that this could be finished in a post election lame duck session, that is unlikely, a lame duck session that long would run into the holiday season, and none of the Democrats are even remotely interested in giving Bush time to try last minute hail Mary legislative initiatives.
In the next session, approval may be even more unlikely. In the US, this process has primarily been about political payback to the US nuclear industry, which has supported Republicans.
Here’s hoping, particularly since it appears that India will continue to build nuclear weapons.
It was launched today, and it appears that its Vista Compatibility Center is ALREADY BROKEN.
At least it was when I checked the link.
According to FDL it was 69:28.
Of my senators, Cardin voted nay, Mikulski voted aye.
Barbara Mikulski will never get my money or my vote again.
As to the Democrats, to paraphrase a book I read decades ago from memory:
In the old days, there was an operation performed on young boys.
They would either die, keep a lovely singing voice into adulthood, or become a Democrat in Congress.
I know nothing of the accuracy of the source, but if Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has made this statement publicly, we need to pack our bags and be out in the next few months.
I will note that Juan Cole has reported that Sistani has made similar statements in private to Iraqi leaders in private, so there is some confirmation on his position.
Well, we have found another American hero, Army Spc. Jeremy Hall, Atheist, who has experienced a systematic program of harassment and threats since choosing this path.
He has now filed suit, without any claim to financial damages, to stop this:
His sudden lack of faith, he said, cost him his military career and put his life at risk. Hall said his life was threatened by other troops and the military assigned a full-time bodyguard to protect him out of fear for his safety.
In March, Hall filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, among others. In the suit, Hall claims his rights to religious freedom under the First Amendment were violated and suggests that the United States military has become a Christian organization.
“I think it’s utterly and totally wrong. Unconstitutional,” Hall said.
Hall said there is a pattern of discrimination against non-Christians in the military.
Lets make this clear, the bigotry against him is contrary to the good discipline and order of the military, and should have consequences, but it won’t, because over the past 30 years, a number of organizations, such as the Christian Embassy and the Officers’ Christian Fellowship, have successfully infiltrated the military with the goal of creating an “Army of God” (Arabic translation: Hezbollah).
Honestly, I believe that many of the people doing this are laying the groundwork for an Evangelical Christian coup, and should removed from the military immediately.
It appears that Judge Ronald Leighton was unamused at a 465 page filing in a racketeering lawsuit, including an 8 page title (!), and invoked a rarely used rule requiring short and plain statement of allegations sent it back to be redrafted with the following instructions in limerick form:
Plaintiff has a great deal to say,
But it seems he skipped Rule 8(a).
His Complaint is too long,
Which renders it wrong,
Please rewrite and refile today.
This is why I am not a judge. My limerick would have been far more blunt:
An eight page long title will fail,
regardless of the complexity of the tale,
I hope you don’t mind,
you’re in contempt I do find,
get your toothbrush because you’re going to jail.
Remember the toxic Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO) that no one wants to buy anymore?
Well, investment banks are repackaging them and selling them as Re-Remics (REsecuritizations of Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits):
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and at least six other firms are repackaging unwanted mortgage bonds as sales of CDOs composed of asset-backed securities fall to less than $1 billion this year from $227 billion in 2007 because of the global credit crunch. Re-Remics contain parts that are structured to guard against higher losses on underlying loans than most CDOs, allowing holders to sell or retain other sections at lower prices that can translate to potential yields of more than 20 percent.
So this stuff is so toxic that sales have dropped by more than 99.6% year over year, and the solution is a new name and a new obscure mathematical model.
Of course, the banks will claim that Re-Remics are different, because they don’t have subprime loans, just Alt-A.
Of course, as I’ve noted repeatedly, those are swirling around the bowl on their way down too.
It should be noted that there is a discount, but it still sounds like another CDO shell game:
While CDOs are backed by more than a hundred bonds, Re- Remics typically combine fewer than a dozen, allowing holders to more easily analyze the debt.
…
A bond trading at 40 cents on the dollar could be split into a piece worth 80 cents and another piece that could then be sold cheaply enough to offer returns as high as 20 percent, Dachille said. Banks advised by First Principles bought lower-yielding senior pieces and some are also considering buying the bonds for their pension funds, he said. The firm is also starting a fund for pension clients that would invest in the debt, Dachille said.
If you are willing to take the investment houses’ word on this, you are too stupid to be trusted with any device more complex than a bowling ball.
Of course, the likely idiot customers would be pension funds, municipalities, and, of course, investment bankers.
It seems that it happens every month, and when I say, “That’s it there is no way it could get any worse,” and each time I am wrong.
Now, they are using the Cuba embargo and anti-Terror regulations to prevent the Guantánamo Bay defense attorneys from being paid or reimbursed for expenses.
Note that these guys are billing at $250/hour when their normal rate would be north of $500 an hour, but they aren’t even getting that:
When U.S. law groups announced in April that they were hiring the nation’s top criminal defense lawyers to defend alleged al Qaeda terrorists at the war court here, one executive called the lawyers “The A Team.”
Now, they’re the No-Pay Team.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has pledged to cover costs of civilian lawyers defending alleged arch-terrorists, is in a struggle with the U.S. Treasury Department over a permit to pay $250-an-hour fees and other expenses to attorneys who have been shuttling to this remote U.S. Navy base from as far as Boise, Idaho.
….
I can do nothing but look at the screen with an expression on my face resembling that of a cow that just stepped on its own udder.
They are saying that S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch do not manage conflicts of interest well, fail to follow internal procedure, business pressures to right highly, and so the ratings are generally a mess.
Of at least as much concern is the finding that the complex securities outstripped the agencies abilities to rate these instruments.
We literally have an economic system where no one, even the most tuned in and experienced operators, know what they are actually handling. It has gotten so far removed from real equities, and cut and diced and resold so many times, that only mathematical models which are unverifiable present any sort of model for value.
We aren’t even half way down the credit crunch slope. This is 1929 on crack.
So, John Sidney McCain favored immigration reform and amnesty for illegals, but then opposed it when he saw that it was killing him in the primary contest, and now he’s back to amnesty when talking in front of the League of United Latin American Citizens. (LULAC)
In any case, that’s what I think that Samuel L. Jackson would say about this new energy technology.
Basically, a team in the UK has developed a floating rubber tube that is squeezed by the waves as they travel along. It resembles a seawater filled sausage.
When the squeeze reaches one end of the tube, a turbine converts the energy into electricity.
They are testing scale models now, but a full size version would be 7 meters in diameter, and 200m long and produce 1 MW, somewhat better, and much less expensive, than rigid wave catching systems and buoys.
A film of it in action is below.
H/t Gismodo.