Author: Matthew G. Saroff

The Dan Quayle Theory of Presidential Protection

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You know, the one that goes, “If you make Dan Quayle your VP, then no one in their right mind will try to remove you from office for your role selling arms to Iran and diverting the proceeds to the Contras.”

Come to think of it, Ronald Reagan had a very similar policy…Thanks a lot, little Mikey Dukkakis.

In any case, I heard a leak that I hope is being motivated by the same dynamic.

I don’t know that it is, but I do know that when I heard this, I got that look on my face that my older brother says, “Looks like a cow that just stepped on its own udder.”

The leak is that the Obama administration is looking for a potential replacement for Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner have already begun.

Since the criticism of him is that he’s too close to the big banks and Wall Street, and too lenient on them as a result, the word on the street is that his replacement will be……

Wait for it………

Wait for it………

Wait for it………

Wait for it………

Wait for it………

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon:

As support for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wanes on Capitol Hill amid frustration with the Obama administration’s handling of the economy, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is emerging as a potential replacement.

Sources tell The Post that a number of policy makers have begun mentioning Dimon as a successor to Geithner, whose standing in Washington has suffered because of the country’s high unemployment rate, the weakness of the dollar, the slow pace of the recovery and the government’s mounting deficit.

Great googly moogly.

Out of the Mouth of Babes

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Richard is a friend of my son, and he was playing with Charlie today, and they wanted to play on the computer.

I was in the middle of doing my Sarah Palin book ad on my blog post, and they were asking why I was doing a screen shot of the image, and I explained how the ads paid me a few bucks, but they did weird stuff like this all the time.

Well, Charlie has been thoroughly indoctrinated by me and Uncle Keith (Olbermann), so he started ragging on Palin and the book, and Richard, who has similarly proper parenting joined in, and then he let fly the best review ever on Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue

The book will probably fall apart, just like the Captain Underpants ones do.

–Richard S. Age 9

While I have no knowledge of the quality of the printing and binding, this is almost certainly accurate about the book so many levels.

I think that I hurt myself laughing.

The kid has a future in stand-up comedy.

Time to Call In the IRS

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The Bishop of Providence Rhode Island has banned Patrick Kennedy from taking communion in his diocese. Suzie Madrak has the scoop at Crooks and Liars (also, you can find it at CNN):

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin has banned Rep. Patrick Kennedy from receiving Communion, the central sacrament of the church, in Rhode Island because of the congressman’s support for abortion rights, Kennedy said in a newspaper interview published Sunday.

The decision by the outspoken prelate, reported on The Providence Journal’s Web site, significantly escalates a bitter dispute between Tobin, an ultra orthodox bishop, and Kennedy, a son of the nation’s most famous Roman Catholic family.

“The bishop instructed me not to take Communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me Communion,” Kennedy told the paper in an interview conducted Friday.

Kennedy said the bishop had explained the penalty by telling him “that I am not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that I’ve taken as a public official,” particularly on abortion.

(emphasis original)

Seriously, if the Church wants to be this captured by the Republican party, perhaps the IRS should look at improper electioneering.

I would also note that the Republican party has been captured by nativist bigots, people who hate Hispanics, who are now over 2/3 of the Catholic Church, then perhaps Catholics of good conscience should find those few Bishops and Cardinals of good faith who spend their time on serving their flock, and leave those who spend their time on than lobbying on abortion and covering up for pedophile priests to their own devices.

Apologies for the poor audio quality of the vid, it’s from the Christo-Fascist CNSNews.

Why Sarah Palin’s Book is a “Best Seller”, or More Stupid Google™ Adsense™ Tricks

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Yes, once again, the good folks at Google™ Adsense™ are serving up an advertisement for Sarah Palin in response to something that I posted (just the image, no link, not ever).

My disclaimers are below, but in this case, I clicked through, something that Google™ Adsense™ frowns upon if you do it routinely, to see what exactly this offer was.

Well, here is a screen-shot of the page from Newsmax:

(click for full size)

There, is, of course, a pattern here. You have people who are rich because of dumb luck in the genetic lottery, people with names like Scaife Olin, Bradley, Coors, and Koch, who are spending huge amounts of money that they inherited from daddy, or grand daddy, or great-grand daddy on the right wing machine.

They subsidize the publisher that prints the Palin book. They subsidize the propaganda sheet that offers the book free with a 1 year subscription, or for $4.95 (plus $5.95 shipping and handling, which means that they must use a unicorn to get the book to you) with a 4 months of Newsmax free.

What does this get?

  • Inflates Newsmax circulation numbers artificially.
  • Increases Newsmax ad revenue.
  • Inflates the sales of Going Rouge artificially.
  • Generates buzz for Going Rouge because its sales numbers looks high.

All of which adds credibility to both the book, and to the magazine, because, much like the late, unlamented New York Sun, their claim to credibility is based on circulation, and their circulation is based on paying people to take their parakeet cage liner.

In any case, back to the ads.

Please note, once again: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers who purchase those ads through Google™ Adsense™.

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™, even though it would make me money, and cost them (Palin’s Publishers and Newsmax) money.

Goldman Sachs Shareholders: Show Me the Money*

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Here’s a surprise: After a year of record profits for Goldman Sachs, the shareholders are demanding an increased slice of the profits:

Some of Goldman Sachs Group’s largest shareholders have asked the company to cut the size of its bonus pool and pass along more of its profits to investors, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

Although the shareholders are not pushing for a huge cut, they feel that Goldman should better reward shareholders for this year’s rebound, the paper said.

One of the oddities of Wall Street is that 30 years ago, the investment banks were not publicly held companies, they were limited liability partnerships, where all the profits, at least those not reinvested in the firm (and seriously, how much capital investment does a f$#@ing investment bank need) accrued to the partners.

So in the 1980s and 1990s, they all went public, generated huge cash outs for the partners, and enormous amounts of other people’s money with which to wager, but they continued to operate as if they were still partnerships, and that all the money accrued back to them.

Well now, the shareholders are thinking that maybe they should start acting like they own the firm, which, of course, they do.

Hopefully, this is a trend, though I doubt it.

*Full disclosure: I never saw the movie, Jerry McGuire.

This Has Epic Fail Written All Over It

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It looks like Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp are working together to attempt to create a walled garden around his so-called news:

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company’s being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.

However, the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.

There are a number of assumptions here, on both sides, which I think will kill the deal:

  • That NewsCorp®, and its shareholders will tolerate the implosion, at least in the short term, of online ad revenues, particularly given the current moribund revenues for print advertisement.
  • That even if Microsoft® is successful, its unlikely to bring in much in the way of other search business their way.
  • That if Microsoft® succeeds in dethroning Google® that they won’t be an aggressive monopolist and short change those content providers.
  • That Craigslist® won’t continue to eat their lunches in the lucrative local classified markets.
  • That the New York Times will team with the publisher of the Wall Street Journal and New York Post on this.
  • That any of the foreign media will go in on this.
  • That the EU antitrust authorities won’t be on their ass like white on rice.

This is one of those things that will get a lot of ink, because, of course, the newspapers want it to work, but it won’t get much beyond that.

The 800 pound gorilla in the room is, and continues to be, that the major news outlets are driven by the demands from Wall Street to hit their numbers, which, when juxtaposed with stupid debt deals on shiny new headquarters, they have consistently made their products less attractive.

The problem is that when you cut journalism out of newspapers, all you have left is advertisements, and like I said, Craigslist® is better as a pure advertising play.

H/t Atrios.

Portrait of a Pandering or Courage?

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Nice that he changed his position, but it smacks of opportunism.

I’m calling pandering.

Michael Bennet faces a very strong challenge from the Andrew Romanoff, who is coming at him from the left, so Bennet’s statement that he would vote for healthcare reform even if it meant him losing the election is an easy one to make. (see vid)

The reality is that he was saying he might not vote for HCR for a long time, and now that he has a strong primary challenger, and he would be dead in the primary if he voted against it, suddenly he’s willing to bet his career on it.

Another Challenger to the Lycoming/Continental GA Engines

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Click top 2 for Large Pics

In this case, it’s the liquid cooled 120° V-6 Adept aviation engine Adept 320T avgas/mogas engine.

I’m dubious on market success, given that it has to use gasoline, though it is automotive fuel (mogas) compatible.

The cost, and relative unavailability of the fuel is what is driving people toward small turbine and diesel engines.

I came across their web site in a strange way, they were mentioned in an ad for Autodesk® CAD products on the back cover of the ASME magazine, Mechanical Engineering, and looked at their technology.

The basic features of the engine are:

  • 320 hp out of 3.2 liter. I’m not sure of the RPM.
  • Higher speed than legacy horizontally opposed twins, with a reduction gearbox.
  • The engine, “has a fairly over-square bore/stroke ratio (98mm x 70mm),” which they claim keeps piston speed below that of the current engines.
  • Liquid cooling.
  • Operates on 94 Octane fuel, obviating the need for the increasingly scarce 100LL
  • 2000 Hour TBO.
  • They are not looking into helicopter applications, but they might at a later time.

There is a relatively uneventful video of an engine run at the bottom of this post.

Chicken Sh$#

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Said piece of poultry excrement is William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States of America, who has backed out of making an appearance at free medical clinic in Arkansas, because Keith Olbermann supported and raised funds for them:

Bill Clinton told FDL’s Eve Gittelson that it would be problematic for him to attend a free medical clinic being held in Little Rock, Arkansas [held Saturday] because MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann had “politicized” the event.” He indicated that some were turning the event into a primary kickoff against Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln.

Eve ran into Clinton Thursday in the gift shop of the Clinton Library. She’s in Arkansas covering the Keith Olbermann’s free clinic event, organized by the National Association of Free Clinics. The former President is in town for the 5th anniversary of the Clinton Library.

Seriously, this is some major level of chicken sh#@, and it is typical of his time as a politician on the national scene.

Unfortunately, as indicated by retreats on torture prosecutions, the rule of law on terrorism cases, healthcare reform, financial reform, etc. it appears that Barack Obama has brought the Chicken sh$# brigade from Clinton’s terms, and put them in charge of policy.

Not Getting the Issue

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Click for full size

Sub Quietness

Both the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), and Robert Farley at Information Dissemination make a very big deal about about the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) report that notes that current Chinese SSBNs are noisier than their Soviet equivalents from 30 years ago.

The ONI report notes that the submarines are easily detected, the sortie rate for patrol missions is low, and that the range of the missiles is low, and so the FAS concludes:

The ONI report concludes that the Jin SSBN with the JL-2 SLBM gives the PLA Navy its first credible second-strike nuclear capability. The authors must mean in principle, because in a war such noisy submarines would presumably be highly vulnerable to U.S. or Japanese anti-submarine warfare forces. (The noise level of China’s most modern diesel-electric submarines is another matter; ONI says some are comparable to Russian diesel-electric submarines).

That does raise an interesting question about the Chinese SSBN program: if Chinese leaders are so concerned about the vulnerability of their nuclear deterrent, why base a significant portion of it on a few noisy platforms and send them out to sea where they can be sunk by U.S. attack submarines in a war? And if Chinese planners know that the sea-based deterrent is much more vulnerable than its land-based deterrent, why do they waste money on the SSBN program?

The answer is probably a combination of national prestige and scenarios involving India or Russia that have less capable anti-submarine forces.

And Mr. Farley concurs.

I disagree. The purpose of building a credible SSBN force is to deter the United States.

Submarines, SSNs specifically, dominate the conflict at seas, as shown by the General Belgrano’s sinking by the HMS Conqueror, but they do not create prestige as such.

Unlike surface combatants like carriers, LPDs, or other vessels carrying naval artillery, they cannot control control coastal regions effectively. Even a relatively small gunboat can interdict a coastal road for an extended period of time.

What a Submarine can do is sink all those surface combatants with relative impunity, maintain a difficult to detect 2nd strike with nuclear weapons, or launch a surprise surgical strike (“cruise missile diplomacy”).

I think that the Chinese have always taken the longer view on these sorts of issues, going back to well before the creation of the PRC, and realize that in order to a more effective submarine force, they need to advance incrementally, and learn how to build, maintain, and crew better boats over time.

They are familiar with Soviet weapons, and they know the disasters that resulted from pushing the envelope.

Additionally, their horrific history regarding Mao’s Great Leap Forward is a relatively history, and so they are taking measured steps.

Simply put, the Chinese do not feel the level of paranoia that the Soviets did regarding an attack by western forces, and as such, they are taking their time, rather than rushing new systems into service when doing so would entail a large amount of risk.

Toto, I Don’t Think that We’re In Kansas Any More

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Alan Grayson on Dylan Ratigan (2:24)

Crooks and Liars has a very illuminating clip on just what Alan Grayson expects to find in an audit of the Fed.

While I love Grayson’s line that, “Well we are in Emerald City right now. We’ve arrived in Emerald City. Toto has just run underneath the curtain…,” the important quote, and the important question is the more significant quote, “Well what I think is favoritism towards selected big banks that have failed and led us to the brink of national bankruptcy.”

What is clear is that for a long time, at least since Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan became Fed Chairman, was that the “Greenspan Put”, which Wiki calls:

The Fed’s pattern of providing ample liquidity resulted in the investor perception of put protection on asset prices. Investors increasingly believed that when things go bad, the Fed would step in and inject liquidity until the problem got better. Invariably, the Fed did so each time, and the perception became firmly embedded in asset pricing in the form of higher valuation, narrower credit spreads, and excess risk taking. It has been criticized as a form of privatizing profits and socializing losses, and as inflating a speculative bubble in the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis.

(emphasis mine)

Has been a factor of life.

Basically, if you were big enough, and f$#@ed up badly enough, the United States Fedral Reserve System would bail you out.

I think that there are a number of reasons, the first being that in doing so, you can make yourself look good, and I also believe that in the Ayn Rand addled mind of Greenspan, speculators are Rand’s noble capitalists, and as such need to be coddled and protected.

The best example of this is probably the collapse of Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), where Greenspan set up a bailout that competed with a much more severe haircut for the investors, to see this, but it happened over, and over, and over, and over again.

The only reason that Greenspan could get away with this, and be called a genius for getting away with this, was because he concealed, and in some cases flat out lied, about what he was doing.

That needs to end.

It is corrosive to democracy, it is corrosive to society, and it is corrosive to finance.

Calls for Timmy to be Fired.

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Click for full size

Congressman Peter DeFasio Calls for “Timmy” Geithner to be fired.


Also coming from right wing ‘Phant Kevin Brady

Representative Peter DeFasio (D-OR-4) has now explicitly called for Barack Obama to fire Timothy Geithner, though you will note in the video (top) that he calls him “Timmy” (at about 1:35), which I think is a very deliberate slight.

And, according to The Hill, that removing him, as well as Larry Summers, is now the consensus position for the Congressional Populist Caucus (CPC).

We are also seeing similar calls from the right wingers in the Republican Party too, note the calls made to Geithner’s face by Texas whack-doodle Kevin Brady (R-TX-8).

Of note, it appears that Brady’s accusation actually got under Geither’s skin (bottom video).

When Brady brought up his performance as President of the New York Bank of the Federal Reserve, and suggested that his performance there was sub-par, it’s clear that Geithner was irate at this suggestion.