Well, it appears that the folks at the Veteran’s Administration are lying about wait times for services for disabled vets.
6 times as many vets had to wait more than a month than they had claimed.
Author: Matthew G. Saroff
More on the Freddie Thompson Clown Show
Yes, his given legal name is Freddie Dalton Thompson, and not it has been revealed that the Fredster did legal and lobbying work for the Libyan bombers of the Pan Am 103, Jean Bertrand Aristide, and the abortion counseling group.
The Republicans have no bloody bench this year, do they.
Pentagon Computer Boffins Want Budget Increase
Well, the PowerPoint ® in the Pentagonclaiming that Chinese hackers can shut down the US Navy.
It’s just the standard budget time practice of the US military painting potential adversaries as 12 feet high with death ray eye beams. It’s how they get the big contracts now, so that they can get the lucrative consulting gigs after they retire.
RFID chip implants linked to cancer in animals
Here.
Think twice before implanting the chips in your kids. For that matter, absent a life threatening situation that needs round the clock tracking, like severe drug abuse, it’s just plain wrong even if there is not a cancer risk.
Kids sometimes have to be left to their own devices.
Are Air Force Upgrade Programs Reducing US Capabilities
The answer from the Center for Defense Information ia yes.
They claim, and I tend to agree that the newer systems are increasingly expensive by every measure, including direct operating costs, and as such, maintaining a fleet at readiness becomes increasingly difficult.
Gee…The Republicans have their panties in a Bunch
They are planning to introduce legislation to condemn Moveon.org’s New York Times ad.
Yes, Moveon is calling him a liar. It would be completely unfair if he weren’t lying.
Schadenfreude, More Vitter
a New Orleans prostitute will provide details of her 4 month relationship with senator David Vitter.
Once again, Larry Flynt is going to be holding the presser.
Wonder if the diaper rumors are true.
German, French Call for “More Transparency in Financial Markets”
This is really about dissatisfaction with the US regulatory regime. They see it as inadequate, and they are trying to use the power of the EU go force tighter regulation.
The further and further that US goes down the road to debtor nation, the more of this we will see, and the greater its impact on internal US markets.
Improved Gripen to Fly Next Year
It will have a higher gross weight, more fuel, and an upgraded engine (an F-414 replacing the F-404), and the demonstrator flying in late 2008.
It should be an impressive aircraft.
Bear Stearns On the Path to Sale or Dissolution
Joseph Lewis has acquired a 7 percent stake in Bear Stearns.
You will see more of this, and I stand by prediction that by August 2, 2008, Bear Stearns will no longer exist as an independent entity.
Kevin Everett’s Condition Takes a Surprise Turn for the Better
He is able to move is arms and legs to some degree, which at this early stage is very promising.
The medical treatment was interesting:
Green said the key was the quick action taken by Cappuccino to run an ice-cold saline solution through Everett’s system that put the player in a hypothermic state. Doctors at the Miami Project have demonstrated in their laboratories that such action significantly decreases the damage to the spinal cord due to swelling and movement.
It is apparently a fairly new treatment.
This is Called Listening to Your Generals, I guess
The UK delayed their withdrawal from Basra because of American political pressure.
“In April we could have come out and done the transition completely and that would have been the right thing to do but politics prevented that,” Bashall, 44, told the paper.
“The Americans asked us to stay for longer,” he said, adding the decision to stay in the city was a result of “political strategy being played out at highest level.”
What Cheney wants, Cheney gets.
Today’s Typographical Screwup
Nortrhop Grummen gets Head Start on US Navy BAMS contest
Not to be confused with Norbert Grunion, the famed Boomerang fish thrower.
Swedish navy’s stealth corvette HMS Nykoping (K 34)
The Swedish Visby class corvette showed up at the DSEi defense systems and equipment international London. It looks cool:
That being said, I’m rather dubious of the merits of full on stealth for surface combatants.
Given the harsh environment (spray, etc.) and the fact that some inexpensive radars can find the wake of ships, I’m not sure that it means a whole lot.
Of course, the real stealth ships, submarines, have been around for nearly 100 years now.
Funny
Clickable Image.
Self Hating Gay Republican Update
This is from Counterpunch.org, which is a highly controversial source. That being said, Mike Rogers of Blog Active and Down with Tyranny also confirm this, so there is backup.
It looks like two more conservative ‘family values’ Republican senators may be ‘outed’ soon. Mike Rogers, the same blogger who originally fingered Craig, claims that South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham is gay.
This has got to be the worst kept secret in Washington, D.C., it’s common knowledge in the Baltimore area too.
Howie Klein meanwhile claims that, ‘Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s quick expulsion from the Army—for fondling a private’s privates—is finally being discussed in Kentucky.’ He notes that McConnell, discharged after just 10 days in the Army in 1967, ‘has consistently prevented anyone from seeing his military discharge papers’ but a Freedom of Information suit may bring them to light.
To be fair, even if the reason for discharge is true, McConnell might not be gay.
If I were a draftee in 1967, and I were given the choice to go to Viet Nam, or pretending to be gay, I might very well go that route to stay out of Nam.
I make no claims to personal bravery. Had I not been exempt from the draft by reason of being 5 years old, I probably would have kissed my CO full on the lips to stay out of South East Asia.
Of course, I’m not sure that an admission of cowardice would help good the distinguished gentlemen from Kentucky.
FWIW, taking down McConnell needs to be a priority, as payback for going after Daschle*, which was unprecedented.
*Truth be told, I’m glad that Harry Reid is now in control of the Senate. On his worst day, he’s better than Daschle on his best day.
Cops Who Merit the Title “Pig”
You have to love this, a police officer arrested and charged a woman with serving him an excessively salty burger.
This man is a pig, period, full stop.
Petraeus US surge has ‘not worked out’, Just Not to Congress
Well, here is no surprise, Bush’s hand picked stalking hours on Iraq, David Petraeus is saying that the surge has not worked out in a letter to troops in his command.
General David Petraeus, the commander of United States forces in Iraq, admitted on Friday that sending 30 000 more troops into the war zone in January had failed to yield the desired results. “It has not worked out as we had hoped,” the general said.
The acknowledgement by Petraeus that the situation in Iraq is “exceedingly complex” and that progress had been “uneven” came on the eve of his testimony to Congress on the state of the war. He offered the assessment in a letter to US forces serving in Iraq that was obtained by the Washington Post.
Not quite what he said before congress, huh.
Too True
“
This applies particularly to the Bush Dog Democrats.
A Good View of the Coming Downturn
Nouriel Roubini has a very bleak picture of where the US economy is going. He is predicting a 15% drop in house prices in the nest two years (I predict at least that much), and there is downward pressure on auto sales and other consumer spending.
And then there is this:
Unfortunately, financial globalization together with securitization and mushrooming of complex credit instruments has lead to greater opacity and less transparency in the financial system. And this lack of transparency breeds unmeasurable uncertainty rather than priceable risk. Risk can be priced as you have a distribution of probabilities on various events. But unmeasurable uncertainty causes higher risk aversion under conditions of market distress. This generalized uncertainty is now coming from two sources: first, we do not know the size of the overall losses in credit markets: sub-prime alone could lead to losses of $100 billion or much higher depending on how much home prices will fall. And other losses from other illiquid financial instruments remain unmeasured in a world where institutions were marking to model rather than marking to market and where credit rating agencies were mis-rating complex credit instruments. Second, as securitization implies that financial risks have been spread out of banks and to the corners of the global financial system we do not know which firms are holding the toxic waste and thus which firms will go belly up next. It is like walking blind in a minefield where you have no idea of where the mines are. This uncertainty breeds large fear – after the massive greed of the previous credit and asset bubble has now burst – and lack of trust of financial counterparties, even otherwise respected ones: everyone want to hoard liquidity and hold the safest assets as even large financial institutions do not trust each other and are unwilling to lend to each other. This greater opacity of financial globalization and securitization implies that the re-pricing of risk that we have observed in the last few weeks is a permanent rather than a transitory phenomenon. And the sharp spike in the cost of credit will further weaken an already weakened economy. This is thus the first real crisis of the new world of financial globalization and securitization.
Translated into ordinary English, he’s saying that the global finance system has become so opaque and so byzantine that risks cannot be evaluated and assets cannot be valued. The world financial system is no better than a game of 3 card Monte.