That being said, what did happen once they were seated was surprising, Lovemore Moyo, of the MDC Tsvangerai won the election for speaker in a secret ballot, 110 to 98, which means that MDC Mutambara voted against Mugabe, as did at least one ZANU-PF member, though ZANU-PF won the Senate presidency, though since most of those members are appointed by Mugabe, or by provincial governors appointed by Mugabe, this came as no surprise.
The fact that there are now closings of marginal mines and the like would also indicate that the commodity plunge of the past 6 weeks or so is going to bottom out soon.
Though, truth be told, I’m not sure that it will make much of a difference, as the the fact that spread between LIBOR and the Fed Funds rate is 78 basis points, near an all time high, and an indicator that the Fed has largely lost control over interest rates in the rest of the economy, as well as indicating that the credit system is still frozen up.
Why is this National Association of Realtors (NAR) Bulls$#@?????
Because, Seasonally adjusted it’s ignoring seasonal adjustments July and August are always big months, particularly for parents who do not want their children to change schools mid year. It’s actually the worst seasonally adjusted numbers since 2000.
It’s not surprising. The one thing that Sharif demanded from the start was the restoration of all judges, and the refusal of PPP party head Asif Ali Zardari to reinstate all the judges, particularly Iftikar Muhammad Chaudhry.
They also agreed to reduce the power of the Presidency, and to have a non-partisan candidate for the office.
What this is really about in my mind is that Zardari is remarkably corrupt, even by the standards of Pakistani governance (as if that concept is not a mind f&%$), his nick name is “Mr. 10%”, and he is afraid that Chaudhry, who by all accounts is honest and non-partisan, will invalidate the grant of immunity for his corruption.
To be fair, it wasn’t just him who was corrupt. His late wife, Benazir Bhutto, was hip deep in all of this too, but since she went to Harvard, and spoke excellent English, she was labeled a democratic hope for Pakistan.
A representative of the Karzai administration nails it:
“This puts us in a very difficult position,” said a government official, who asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the matter. “It provides propaganda to the Taliban, and if they don’t take responsibility, it actually helps the Taliban.”
They are looking for $25 billion in federal loans…..at 4.25%……about 1/3 of what they are paying now….with the government having an option to defer any payments 5 years.
In 1980, Ronald Wilson Reagan rode into the white house on the story of a welfare mother who drove a Cadillac.
Now it appears that the welfare recipient is Cadillac, with John Dingell and the rest of the whores in Michigan backing it.
If they want a bailout, then shareholders and senior management need to lose, and lose big.
Certainly there are issues of provocations on both sides, but the idea that somehow Georgia was forced to invade South Ossetia and launch an artillery barrage on its capital has no relationship to reality.
Of course, it doesn’t help that the Georgian parliament has extended martial law, which I think at this point will be used against political opponents, and not either the Russian military or Ossetian or Abkhazian militias.
It would have been hard not to be charmed by Mikheil Saakashvili. Young, dynamic, Western-educated and -oriented, he was among the most intriguing characters to move onto the global stage after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
….
….Soon after, I met the president again at his newly built residence in Tbilisi. He had dark rings around his eyes and he alternated between enormous, if not misplaced confidence that his Western allies would help him, and rather childish despair about Russia’s view of him personally. He said he had heard that Russian officials play billiards with the word MISHA written on the black ball, and asked the reporters assembled at his home, “What is going on in Russia? Am I hated there?” That evening he seemed traumatized by this. With his head in his hands, and pear juice and brandy running down his chin, he pleaded: “Does anybody know what Russia is up to?”
This is Western Tribalism at it’s finest: He spoke good English. He went to an elite technical school, Columbia University, so despite the fact that he unleashed riot police on protesters, and seized opposition media outlets, he has to be a good guy.
We see the same thing in Iraq: The representatives of ISCI, a proxy for Iran, speak fluent English, and affect American manners, so they must be the representatives of western style democracy.
The West in general, and America in particular, must get over this little bit of chauvanism.
Perhaps the most extreme example of just how far this short-sightedness takes us is this piece of doggerel from Richard Holbrooke, who claims that somehow the Russians have lost because Saakashvili is still nominally in power, when it is clear that he is a dead man walking.
He is an indicator of just how morally and intellectually bankrupt the foreign policy establishment is in Washington, DC.
Is that if it’s a joint program with the Europeans, then the Department of Defense will screw around with it, and try to kill it. (paid subscription required)
Case in point is MEADS, which packages an improved Patriot PAC-3 missile with extensive European involvement, and now the Pentagon wants to reorganize the program. (paid subscription required)
I kind of knew the program was doomed when I worked a (very little) bit on in in 1998. Jointness is the kiss of death for the Pentagon.
Let’s see….Robin Leach, former host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, is defending John McCain for not being able to remember how many homes he owns….Seriously, ou cannot make this sh&% up…really.
This is beyond even the Nostradamus-Like genius of The Onion.
It was the first flight of the ALV-X1 rocket, and the Hypersonic Boundary Layer Transition (HYBOLT) and the Sub-Orbital Aerodynamic Re-entry Experiment (SOAREX) were lost when the rocket lost 27 seconds into flight.
Huh….I guess some times rocket science is rocket science.
Well in a turn that could have come out of The Onion, it appears that if the radar is installed, it Israeli personnel will not be allowed on the premises, which would mean that foreign troops would be based in Israel, a reversal of long held policy.
Boeing has proposed a whole series of upgrades to create a C-17B, in a desperate attempt to keep the line open, and they are going to offer them on an individual basis.
The upgrades are:
Upgraded engines.
Doubled slotted flaps.
Additional tires on the main landing gear.
A central tire inflation system.
Improved avionics.
An electronic warefare system.
They are offering them individually for two reasons, some of them could also be sold as simple upgrades to the existing fleet, and because all together, they might be considered a new development program, which means that the groundlings at the Pentagon would have to spend a few years writing up specifications.
At its core, of course, this effort is really about keeping the line open as quietly as possible.
One of the concerns about the A380 is that it is a large plane, and wingtip vortices grow as an aircraft does, so separation standard was established to prevent trailing aircraft from being destabilized by the these phenomena.
Airbus thought the standard was was excessive, and following tests, the standards have been relaxed, from, “6nm separation for a heavy aircraft such as the 747, 8nm for medium or small aircraft in the A320 category and 10 nm for light category aircraft,” to 4nm, 5nm, and 6nm, the same as a Boeing 747.
It appears that licenses granted by the Soviets, and later the Russians on things like AK’s and RPG’s were for domestic production only, and did not include the right to sell internationally, so the US is breaking the law by selling the weapons to the security apparatus of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Somehow, I imaging that the US trade rep will not address this as strongly as they would bootleg albums from She Who Must Not Be Named being sold by Chinese street vendors.
The testing is actually a big more than a marketing gimmick, because the original test aircraft, a Boeing 747 SP used old noisy engines, and as such acoustic data for the Geared Turbo Fan was hard to get, though I’m sure that working with Airbus on this will help in future sales.
They are claiming a “near double-digit” improvement in fuel economy.
Basically, the F-35B STOVL appears to be a bit light in bring back weight, so the Royal Navy is looking at landing at slow speed,shipboard rolling vertical landing (SRVL).
The aircraft would land at an air speed of somewhere around 60 kt airspeed (the ship would be doing 25 kts, so the deck speed would be 35 kts) to allow for an additional ton or so of fuel or ordinance brought back at landing.