I’m pleasantly surprised. Bush is screwed. He wanted this guy, he threw a tantrum over it, and now he has him, and it appears that he will actually do his job with this.
Hopefully he fries the lizards, including the pukes at AT&T, who did this, but I’m fearing that this is just an attempt to forestall a congressional investigation by creating an ongoing DoJ one.
Here is hoping that the pleasant surprise continues.
Well, the State department deadline for volunteers to go to Iraq has been extended.
My guess is that they discovered how many folks would just quit if they were forced to go there.
There recently has been an F-15 crash following what appears to be a structural failure in an F-15. The USAF has responded with a service wide, and extensively publicised grounding of the aircraft across all deployments, including Afghanistan and Iraq.
While a grounding following this sort of crash is not uncommon, the breadth, and deliberate and massive press offensive associated with it is clearly part of the service’s strategy to get the F-22 production line extended.
When juxtaposed with the Air Force’s decision to cut 40,000 personnel, over 10% of active duty personnel, to free up money for continued F-22 production, it’s clear that the the priorities of of an independent air force as a service are likely to run counter to the defense needs of the nation.
The USAF is creating artificial crises and sacrificing its human capital for some not particularly useful bling in the form of the Raptor. It does not benefit the national defense, the country, or, in the long run, the United States Air Force.
The Raison d’etre of the independent USAF was strategic bombing with nuclear weapons, which has been obsolete since the late 1960s, and folding the service back into the US army would be of benefit to everyone, particularly the taxpayer, which does not need another 20 F-22s at $220 million each, literally worth its (empty) weight in gold.
I’ve related some, and only some of the misdeeds of Rachael Paulose, a completely unqualified political hack appointed as US Attorney in Minnesota.
It appears that her litany of self-aggrandizement, racial epithets, mishandling of classified documents, and retaliation has come to the attention of the New York Times.
You can read the editorial, but basically, it can be reduced to three word advice to Attorney General Mukasey, “Ditch the Bitch”.
He was about 2-½ years younger than me.
I’ve “known” him, in a completely non meatspace way, since Netslaves in the late 1990s, and I miss him.
Hat tip to the Group News Blog for notifying us of this.
This is about his ego. He is claiming that it is $10 billion more than he wants to see, but he is requesting $196 billion for his pet wars.
The bills did have bipartisan support, but not enough to override a veto, though that may change.
They are now dispatching helicopter strikes inside Iraq.
Honestly, I think that it will be gradual, but I see a Turkish invasion of Kurdistan in the next 6-12 months, through a process of gradual escalation.
About a year ago, Tony Blair canceled a serious fraud investigation of a very large arms deal between BAE Systems* and the House of Saud under threat of cancellation of the order, and now two NGOs have been given permission to investigate an investigation of this decision under the OECD’s Anti-Bribery Convention.
It’s pretty clear that bribery was involved, I believe that Prince Bandar got over a billion dollars in “consulting fees”, for example, and the House of Saud was quite clear that any investigation of kickbacks would result in the cancellation of the contract for multi-billion dollar purchase of Eurofighter Typhoons.
*Full disclosure, I worked at a BAE Systems facility as a contractor from June 2005 (about, depends on when the sale went through) through Decmeber 2006 as a contractor. I had no involvement with this deal however.
As I’ve said before, Musharraf is not a reliable partner on terrorism, choosing instead to spend US aid on Military Bling, and now Benazir Bhutto is calling on him to resign.
I see real echoes of the fall of the Shah of Iran, only this time, there is a nuclear arsenal involved.
Heckuva job Bushie.
The bill ould ban reverse payments, where a brand name company pays a generic manufacturer not to manufacture a generic version.
Needless to say, the pig felching lobbyiests at PhRMA are going hammer and tongs against it, and it’s stalled in committee in both houses of Congress.
Yes, the stock market is up, but that is peripatetic. Here are some more links to follow:
Countrywide’s mortgage loan origination falls 48%
Existing home sales expected to hit 5-year low in 2007, a 12/7% decline, with 2008 looking even worse.
China’s inflation rate hits 11-year high, they are claiming 6.5%, but how you can have that when food is going up at 17.6%, and pork by 54.9%, I gotta figure that they, like the US tweak their cost of living figures. If forced to raise interest rates, it will put further downward pressure on the dollar.
On November 15, FASB 157 comes into effect, which will require that level 3 assets (a brief primer on level 3 assets here) be “marked to market” (priced by market value), or written down as losses.
Previously, they had been priced using complex, and likely inaccurate, models developed by the holders of these instruments.
So now, they have to price these assets according the price that they might fetch in a market which does not exist.
The author of this article, Harry Koza puts it more colloquially:
Right, like the assumption that house prices can only ever go up. Anyway, FASB says that starting Nov. 15, fair value at any given moment is the price you can sell the thing for, period. So now all the banks and dealers have to disclose how much of what’s on their books is crap that there’s no bid for, and write down the value to what it’s really worth, which, in some cases, may be bupkes. Needless to say, the previous valuations of those investments, using management’s presumptuous assumptions, were much closer to par than the new ones will be.
It’s 1929 on crack.
My guess is that we will shortly see US v. Miller overturned, which defined the 2nd amendment as a states right, which will be a bad thing.
FWIW, my reading of the debates at the constitutional convention, and my understanding of the language of the times, I’ve always read it as, “A militia is necessary for the protection of individual freedom, so in the context of a militia, people must be allowed to keep and bear arms.”
That was also the essence of the Miller decision in 1939, which I expect to be overturned.
Mike Says:
The Democrats should run on the platform of Our gays are better than their gays.
Ours are the out, fun, happy, Will and Grace gays.
Theirs are the angry, closeted, creepy, preying, priest/gym teacher gays.
Which do you prefer, America?
Word up!!!
This comes as no surprise. Many of the features that are viewed as revolutionary in the US are considered fairly ordinary in Europe, where regulations, particularly those that apply to hardware openness, have created a more dynamic and innovative marketplace.
Calculated Risk: Fitch Downgrades $37.2 Billion of CDOs
Fitch Ratings downgraded Monday the credit ratings of $37.2 billion of global collateralized debt obligations, with more than $14 billion worth of transactions falling from the highest-rated AAA perch to speculative-grade, or junk, status.
…
The rating agency said more than 60 CDO transactions are still on watch for potential downgrade, with a resolution due on or before Nov. 21.On Monday, nearly $20 billion worth of transactions was cut from investment-grade to junk, said Kevin Kendra, managing director at Derivative Fitch.
The problem is that there are many assets that simply have no buyers, at least not at a non-bankruptcy inducing price. As such, they are illiquid, and valuless.
I’m not sure whether this is a legitimate assessment that he is seriously behind Huckabee and Romney in Iowa and Romney in New Hampshire, or if this is just an attempt to lower expectations.
Considering that Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York have primaries on February 5, and that he should do well there (remember the people who know and hate him live in New York city, and are not Republithugs), it could be a bit of both.
I think that, unless Guiliani plays his “keeping the n***ers down” card very hard in South Carolina, he won’t be competitive there, and it may all be over before February.
According to reports he draft stateall immunities … shall be canceled.
I would not be at all surprised if this is the first law that the Iraqi parliament passes. I would be surprised if there are 5 Iraqis in the world who would oppose this law.
If the White House obeys this order, and that’s a big if, we can expect to see the email records from this point forward preserved.
It’s good news for historians, and any future war crimes tribunal.
A Lehman Brothers analyst downgraded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He cut their respective target prices from the mid $60s/share to mid $40s a share as a result of the turmoil in the mortgage markets.
The private equity firm Blackstone reported a net loss of $113.2 million, as compared to a profit of $372.5 million a year ago. Its stock is about $24, as opposed to the $38 when it went public a few months back.
This includes $802.6 million of non-cash compensation charges tied to Blackstone’s initial public offering in June, so my quick read is that the partners in the firm pulled a ¾ billion dollar scam on people who bought into the IPO, but I’m an not wise in the ways of IPOs, so your analysis may vary.