I just got a robocall from my Daughter’s school, asking parents to be sure to report to the school nurse any cases of flu in their house, whether seasonal, or H1N1.
Juxtaposed with Charlie’s school bus problems, this is getting hinky pretty quickly.
It’s not even November, and it looks like we have a lot of influenza in our region.
Well, it appears that the has fined birther whack job Orly Taitz $20,000.00 for misconduct, and Taitz has stated that she has no intention of paying.
Judge Clay Land who heard Ms. Taitz’s pleadings has written a 43 page explanation of the fines., and I’ve skimmed it and it’s harsh.
I do not think that she will have a license to practice law by this time next year.
Scrollable PDF below the break.
I had to drop my son off at school today, because the buses were running so late.
It appears that there are a sh%$ load of drivers who are out sick, so they are scrambling with substitute drivers, who are not only getting last minute calls to show up, but are unfamiliar with the routes.
They are not saying that it’s Influenza, but I’m thinking that it’s likely.
Specifically, he has gotten someone who lives within 25 miles of where Memorial Stadium, home field for the Baltimore Colts, once stood, to say something nice about someone with the last name of Irsay.*
You see Jim Irsay, son of the infamous (if you have any affection at all for the Baltimore Colts) Bob Irsay, and owner of the (now) Indianapolis Colts, has come out in the strongest terms against Rush Limbaugh being a part owner of the Rams or any other NFL franchise:
“I myself couldn’t even think of voting for him,” said Irsay speaking from the NFL’s fall ownership meetings in Boston.
Asked if he’d spoken to other owners about Limbaugh’s candidacy, Irsay said, “I haven’t and I don’t think I would even go to the point of talking to Tony Dungy, Jim Caldwell, Dwight Freeney, talking to those men and seeing what their positions are. I’m very sensitive to know there are scars out there. I think as a nation we need to stop it. Our words do damage and it’s something that we don’t need. We need to get to a higher level of humanity and we have.
Good for Jim Irsay for taking the high road….I can’t f%$^ing believe that I just said that.
BTW, it looks like Limbaugh’s toxicity has killed any possibility of his taking any ownership role deal, because NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has said that Limbaugh’s statements are “divisive”:
“I’ve said many times before, we’re all held to a high standard here,” Goodell said. Then he continued: “I would not want to see those comments coming from people who are in a responsible position in the NFL –- absolutely not.”
Put a fork in your involvement with the NFL, Rush, you won’t ever be allowed to be a broadcaster or an owner.
My earlier post on this is here.
*Bob Irsay literally moved the Colts out of town in the middle of the night in a bit of infamy called “The Move”, see here.
As I’ve said before, do not with f$#% with Jon Stewart, and when you go after a comedy program and “fact check”, as CNN did with a Saturday Night Live sketch, you are messing with the bull, and they got the horns when Stewart fact checked CNN:
Stewart made the obvious point, before you fact check a comedy show, how about fact checking people who are on your news programs, or even knowing how to check the numbers?
A note to the so-called journalists on cable news:
Do not f$#% with comedians. They are smarter than you are, they are better informed, they are better looking, and they are probably better in bed.
Unfortunately, I’ll have to leave it right there……………..
So, let me get this straight, the latest foreclosure prevention program from the Treasury involves evicting people from their homes:
HAFA already holds the support of Fannie, according to a VP at the agency, Eric Schuppenhauer, who believes the new program allows borrowers in imminent default to “make a graceful exit” from their home. HAFA will keep the stigma associated with foreclosure away from the borrowers, he added, and help keep communities intact.
Maggiano adds that HAFA will offer financial incentives to both servicers and borrowers, and associated secondary investors, in order to facilitate a short sale or deed in lieu of the property.
So, this is sensible policy, while giving bankruptcy judges the power to cram down mortgages, like the do for almost every other sort of debt is evil socialism, or maybe a bad hair day, or something bad.
Huh?
H/t Atrios
Foreclosures hitting high end homes
Hotel Pulse Index
Baltic Dry Index, a Measure of Shipping Demand, Courtesy Barry Ritholtz
You know, there are very few guaranteed money makers, but one is owning baseball club, and the Chicago Cubs have just filed for bankruptcy, which says something about the state of the economy.
I know that this is really an artifact of Sam Zell’s completely idiotic business model, which seemed to be:
Except, of course, Zell was collecting short term loans, rather than underpants.
Of course, it’s not only big debtors like Zell who are getting into trouble. You are seeing foreclosures increasing among more expensive homes, which gives the lie to the constant refrain from many in the right wing that it’s all the fault of those n*gg*rs irresponsible borrowers.
It’s going to get worse, and it’s likely to create another crisis if Wells-Fargo’s numbers on Option ARMs carry across the industry, which are unbelievably grim:
“Several of our investors have questioned the current loss severity in light of negative amortization and home price decline,” researchers wrote in the report. “Our analysis suggests that option ARM loss severity will likely range between 60% and 70% provided home prices have stabilized.”
So 60+% of the option ARM are expected to go bad, even if house prices are not falling any further.
We are also seeing a continued drop in hotel activity, which implies that both consumer and corporate travel remain moribund.
The bottom piece of chart pr0n is the Baltic Dry Index, basically an index of shipping costs, though it is also a very good proxy for shipping demand, and this appears to indicate that the need for shipping, and hence the level of international trade, is still well off.
We are some seeing some interesting activity in US Treasuries now, with bonds rising, and their yields thus falling, on the expectation that the Fed will print more money and that inflation will remain low, but Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) are also showing signs of expanded demand, which implies that at least part of the bond market is betting on increased inflation in the relatively near term.
We have some good news, in that the recession appears to be well and truly over…..In New Zealand, with retail sales jumping there.
This would explain why both the $NZ and the $Aus rose significantly yesterday….Well, that and the fact Australia’s central bank raised rates last week.
The US dollar was otherwise mixed, weaker vs. the Euro, but up vs. the Pound Sterling and Yen.
Oil rose yesterday too, as a result of a combination of cold weather in the US and optimism about the economy.
He might be a murderer, but he has such nice hair. So, we are now seeing evidence that Texas Governor Rick Perry allowed a man to be executed without consideration of his likely innocence.
It’s Texas, which means that a governor blithely signing off about putting a needle in someone’s arm with no more than a cursory examination, typically less than 15 minutes, of the record is the standard for Texas, and it is one that Perry’s two predecessors, George W. Bush and Ann Richards hewed to pretty closely.
What is different is that there is now an investigation of the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, where it is now pretty clear that there was no murder, the accusation was of murder by arson, because the fire was not arson.
This is the strongest case seen in some time for actual innocence of a man who has been executed, and the Texas Forensic Science Commission was looking into the case, when Rick Perry’s staff first pressured the panel chairman not to investigate this issue, and then fired half the commission to prevent public testimony by one of the foremost arson experts in the nation.
Meanwhile, it appears that the governor’s office is now in full stonewall mode, refusing to turn over documents showing what evidence he reviewed before denying clemency, and how long he reviewed it.
Let’s be clear, this is Texas. Rick Perry did not review the material in any serious way, because that is part of the social contract down there: You don’t let innocence get in the way of a good execution.
On a purely political note, Rick Perry is getting a serious primary challenge from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is criticizing him on his firing the panel, and his actions are stupid.
His real challenge is in the Republican primary, and the Texas Republican Party is about the most antediluvian Republican party in the nation.
From a purely political perspective, as immoral as it sounds, he should not be covering this up. He should be proclaiming from the high heavens that when a Texas jury wants a man dead, he will go to the wall to kill that man.
That would immediately make him the “it girl” of the Texas Republican party.
He already has the hair to be an “it girl”.
Here is a vid of Alison Stewart, who subbing on Rachel Maddow’s show, going over the basics.
Change in ReservesTruth be told, I don’t know, but this article from Bloomberg is about the 5th or 6th article that I’ve seen this week, so either a tiptoe toward the exits is beginning, or the press is going all herd mentality on the rest of us:
Central banks flush with record reserves are increasingly snubbing dollars in favor of euros and yen, further pressuring the greenback after its biggest two- quarter rout in almost two decades.
Policy makers boosted foreign currency holdings by $413 billion last quarter, the most since at least 2003, to $7.3 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Nations reporting currency breakdowns put 63 percent of the new cash into euros and yen in April, May and June, the latest Barclays Capital data show. That’s the highest percentage in any quarter with more than an $80 billion increase.
I honestly don’t know which one it is, though I kind of hope for a falling dollar, since many of the inefficiencies in our economy are due to an excessively high dollar, which both creates large trade deficits and harms domestic production, and serves to prop up Wall Street and enable it to seize a greater proportion of our economy.
(On edit, added chart pr0n)
So, the Conference of Catholic Bishops is saying that it would be , since they don’t like them, but somehow or other they don’t say a single word on the millions of dollars spent every year on capital punishment that the Pope also says is immoral, or the bank bailout, when the Pope condemns the excesses of capitalism, or the fact that our current system of healthcare victimizes the weak and helpless and kills them.
How about calming down, and drinking a nice warm glass of shut the F%$# up?
Because I’ve yet to find a good synopsis of what exactly Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, actually do, but what ever it is, it won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Their field of study appears to be how organizations structure themselves, which would seem to me more like anthropology or sociology, but there is always an overlap, particularly given the fact that the idea of the purely rational actor in a market has been challenged by recent events and the relatively new field of behavioral economics.
It appears that one of their discoveries is that competitive markets don’t always deliver the optimal results, and that cooperation frequently beats competition, which sounds to me like it’s straight out of anthropology.
Understand, however, that I have no clue what this actually means.
I spent 2 hours today trying to get a video of my daughter off a DVD that my neighbor, Michelle took of Natalie singing when she was at North Bay camp with her middle school class last year.
I kept getting parity and read errors, I tried a dozen utilities, with no luck….Then it hit me.
How about Cleaning the Fracking DVD?????
After about 30 seconds with a cloth for cleaning eyeglasses, the videos were on my hard drive.
As the saying goes, “ない愚かさはない薬です”.*
*Pronounced in Japanese, “baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai”, which means, “There is no medicine for stupidity.”
This is one big shark that he jumped.
With Frikken Lasers!
Because Rush Limbaugh just literally threw in his lot with Iran and the Taliban:
LIMBAUGH: I think that everybody is laughing. Our president is a worldwide joke. Folks, do you realize something has happened here that we all agree with the Taliban and Iran about and that is he doesn’t deserve the award. Now that’s hilarious, that I’m on the same side of something with the Taliban, and that we all are on the same side as the Taliban.
(emphasis mine) The obvious question is whether or not Limbaugh’s sponsors really want a man who by his own admission, sides with Iran and the Taliban. I think that the award was premature, and likely undeserved, but I can say that without saying that I’m on the Taliban’s side. Why does Rush Limbaugh hate America? *The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). So in jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.
For people who don’t follow history, the idea that the Swiss would ban arms exports seems to have little significance, but this is wrong, both historically today.
Swiss neutrality was a product of the fact that their main export from the 15th century or so was Swiss Mercenaries, the finest pikemen in Christendom, and so one of the motivations for neutrality was the ability to sell their services without regard to any alliances at home.
These days, of course, the Swiss are still in the war business:
Though the last one would likely not be covered by such a ban.
In any case, it goes to Swiss voters on November 30, and is a part of an overall campaign by GSoA (Group for a Switzerland Without an Army) to demilitarize the nation.
Brilliant!
Though it is shooting fish in a barrel.
Remind me never to piss off Stephen Colbert.
Fafnir on Iran, just go read.
It looks like its related to the ROK’s KF-X program, which is supposed to, at some point in the distant indeterminate future, yield a home grown fighter aircraft.
It appears that Saab was looking into partnerships on the program, and may, or may not, have paid off an official for technical data to help with a bid:
Saab acknowledged that its South Korean premises had been “inspected” last month but denied any wrongdoing and said it was co-operating with the investigation. SMI acknowledged their offices had been searched but declined to comment on the investigation.
Saab said the company had paid SKr120,000 to SMI to sponsor a seminar by its chief executive at a Swedish trade fair last March. But Saab had no ongoing relationship with SMI and had never paid the company for information on the KF-X, it added.
Not sure what’s going on, but I think that Saab is pretty desperate to get some revenue out of its investment in the Gripen.
ROC (Taiwan) armed forces recruiting video,
H/t War Is Boring
But it appears that the Raytheon is working on an underwater surface to air missile based on the AIM-9X.
It appears that they are looking at autonomous operation of the missile after launch from a sub, as opposed the the German IDAS system which maintains a fiber optic link to the missile.
There are a number of reasons that I am dubious of such a system, the ability of a submarine to get targeting data regarding an airborne threat and the fact that the AIM-9X has pretty poor kinematics compared to other IR AAMS, because its motor is based on a 50 year old airframe.
On the other hand, this weapon is just about perfect for terrorists: Drop the canister off the end of a boat, and shoot down a passenger plane coming into land at a seaside airport.
Lockheed Martin and P&W’s Rocketdyne division are working on a hybrid propulsion system for hypersonic flight, (paid subscription required) which uses a turbojet to take off and accelerate to Mach 2+, with a dual mode ramjet (DMRJ), it does supersonic combustion at higher speeds, taking over beyond that, with the turbojet being cocooned.
It’s kind of a “Son of Blackswift.”
As it currently stands, wind tunnel tests are proceeding on the DMRJ (phase 1), with a system integrating both the turbojet and ramjet being testing together in phase 2, and eventually testing of the system in flight.