Douglas Feith is not the “Stupidest F%$#ing guy on the face of the Earth,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is.
Category: Stupid
VH-71 Presidential Helicopter Contract Officially Terminated
This is not surprising, it’s just that it’s now official.
In a way, it’s a microcosm of problems in military contracting. Had the specifications remained as they were at the start of the program, the helos would now be in service for less than was spent not buying them.
Unfortunately, Bush and His Evil Minions™ decided to gold plate it, adding plush carpeting, a bathroom, a kitchen (!), videoconferencing gear, for a helo that would take the president on short (less than one hour) hops to a secure location or Air Force 1.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Republican Rap.
I couldn’t watch the whole thing….Great Googly Moogly!
May cause pain, dizziness, and bleeding from the ears, nose, eyes, mouth, and rectum.
Stupid Conservative Tricks
The crew at The Daily Show catch Craig T. Nelson demonstrating that the character that he played in the sitcom Coach wasn’t really acting, and use it as their moment of Zen.
He really is that clueless.
Doubling Down on a Failed Strategy
Option ARMS, NegAm, and other forms or risky, exotic loans are making a comeback as 30 year fixed loan rates.
It’s amazing how quickly some lessons are unlearned.
Heck of a Terrorist Plot You’ve Got There
You know, those highly trained terrorists who were planting bombs.
You know, the ringleader, David Cromitie, who admitted to being stoned while planting what he thought were bombs.
And you have the full rundown of the “Newburgh 4”, which includes a cocaine addict, a schizophrenic who is borderline retarded, and the government informant, was facing deportation for what amounts to forging immigration documents, who ran a similar sting a few years back, allegedly attempted to pay another member of his mosque to join his merry band, and was described by independent observers as “the boss.”
I have no doubt that they will be convicted, that’s what happened to the folks down in Florida, but this does nothing for anyone, except perhaps the police and prosecutors who use unreliable informants for career climbing.
Morons Trying to Drum Up Billable HOurs
So, two lawyers specializing in IP litigation have proposed changes in copyright and anti-trust law to bolster newspapers.
Unsurprisingly, their proposals would create an explosion of litigation, which would mean that they could buy that yacht that they have their eye on.
What they propose:
- Ummm….Making search engines indexing web sites a copyright violation?
- The idea here is that creating an index is a copyright violation, which means that things like the old index of periodicals in the library, an essential research tool, would be illegal.
- And allow newspapers to price fix, so that they can all start charging for online content.
- Let’s note that newspapers are not in the business of selling the content called “news”, they are in the business of selling advertising. The cost of purchasing a paper only covers the cost of the ink, paper, and printing. That’s why, when the chains started buying up newspapers, and cutting newsrooms about 2 decades ago, they could generate those 20%+ margins on a much crappier product.
- The threat to newspapers is not people reading their news online, it’s Craig’s List. It’s the loss of classified ad revenue that has put these institutions behind the financial 8-ball
- Oh, yes, there’s also the issue of accumulating insane levels of debt to build these chains in the first place.
- Federalizing the “hot news” doctrine.
- This one is just plain stupid. It’s a 1918 decision which says that a news service cannot take a story from another, rewrite it, and pass it off as it’s own, which is a good idea, but they want to make the reporting that a news source broke a story, like, “The Wall Street Journal reported today that sources in the Treasury have determined
But consider this. Just a few years ago, the average profit margin for newspapers was 20 percent — with some raking in twice as much or more.
“Did they use these astronomical profits to invest in the quality of their products or to innovate for the future?” asked Free Press’ Craig Aaron on Thursday. “No. They just bought up more newspapers and TV stations.” (On May 12 Free Press released a National Journalism Strategy that outlines forward-thinking policies to save journalism, and not merely prop up the creaking old guard.)
(emphasis mine)
I am not concerned about the future of news papers, I am concerned about the future of journalism……Scratch that…I am concerned about the present of journalism, because the professionals out there, whether covering George W. Bush, the housing bubble, or just publishing this bit of crap, seems to be in a state of incompetent free fall.
Professional journalism today in the United States is a captive of those that they cover, and so people like me go to foreign and not-for-profit sources to find our news.
Wanker of the Day
Senator Wyden who is leading the charge to strip the public option out of health care, because he has set his heart on, “Finding a legislative solution that can win at least 70 votes in the Senate.”
Dude, if you come up with a solution that works, it condemns the Republicans to at least 40 years in the wilderness, so the only thing that they will support will be something that doesn’t work.
Both ideologically and tactically, it is against their interests to pass comprehensive health care reform.
The stimulus package passed with 3 Republican votes in the entire congress, Social Security passed without a single Republican vote, and you think that somehow getting 12 Republicans to vote you way is going to happen with any proposal with real merit.
You sir, are an idiot.
Am I The Only Person Left Not Applying for TARP Money?
Because it’s beginning to feel like my geek days in high school*, when I though that I was the only virgin among the 1200+ students at Woodrow Wilson High School, because we have yet more people scrambling for TARP money.
First, we have major insurance companies getting major commitments of money:
The Treasury yesterday granted preliminary approval for some of the nation’s largest insurance companies to receive capital infusions under the government’s Troubled Assets Relief Program, Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said.
Recipients are Hartford, Prudential, Allstate, Ameriprise, Lincoln National and Principal Financial Group, he said. The insurers notified yesterday are among hundreds of financial institutions in the pipeline “that are being reviewed and funded as appropriate on a rolling basis,” Williams said.
In addition we have YRC Worldwide, one of the largest trucking firms in the world, applying for bailout money to shore up its underfunded pension plan.
They are a big player, over 20%, in the “less-than-truckload” market, where loads amongst multiple customers are consolidated onto one truck.
How do I get my hands on some free money? I gotta start me a bank……I’ll pay myself just $500,000 a year, along with a $½ million bonus.
*I was more than just a geek. I wasn’t just a wargamer who played Dungeons and Dragons, but I founded the wargaming club at the school. I was the king of the geeks.
Your Liberal Media
You may have heard a minor media sh%$storm about an OMB report that says that global warming is a farce, and that it will wreck the economy.
Only the report is not a report, it’s just a collection of various opinions from other agencies that the OMB passes on without comment, and it’s just one comment.
And the comment, it came from the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, an office whose only job is to lobby for small businesses, and which has no professional staff, only political appointees.
In this case, the political appointee in question was Joseph Johnson, a former member of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which is another right wing funded front. See also here if you can stomach a Glen Beck video.
Needless to say, this did not prevent the New York Times from mindlessly echoing all the spin (also here), along with the rest of usual suspects.
Of course, it took a bunch of couple DFH* bloggers at The Atlantic and Media Matters about a half day to get to the bottom of this, but our main stream media?
Not so much.
*Dirty F%$#ing Hippy.
Idiocracy Was a Documentary
About iPhone users, or so it seems.
The Housing Market is Doomed
I know this as a certainty.
How do I know this?
Because Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan has declared that, “we are finally beginning to see the seeds of a bottoming” in the housing industry.
Since he is wrong on everything, I would suggest shorting home builders.
Latest Blogosphere Sh$# Storm
So, the liberal part of the Blogosphere is all in a tizzy over the article written by CBS sports analyst, and former pro golfer, David Feherty on Bush moving back to Dallas, which contained this bon mot
From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.
Really, really classy, but I’m not outraged. Instead I’m perplexed.
This is what qualifies for humor in the conservative mind?
Seriously, for all the conservative complaints that humorists are biased against them, and the repeated abortive attempts by Fox News to come up with some sort of conservative political news-humor show, it all comes down to the fact that this sh%$ simply isn’t funny.
As Pablo Neruda said, “Laughter is the language of the soul,”* and conservatives are apparrently speaking pig-latin.
*Unlike Bart Simpson, I am not familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda, I just got the quote from the best Simpsons episode ever, Bart Sells His Soul.
Groundhog Day
Yawn, another day, another claim by the “healthier” of the big banks that they are going to repay the TARP money “any day now”.
Of course they are…..Really….Just as soon as they pay back the FDIC loans.
OK, This is Mind-Bogglingly Stupid
If you’ve been following the saga of the delays of the EADS A400M military transport program, it’s clear that the main thing holding up the testing of the aircraft is problems with its massive (10,000+ hp) turboprop engines.
It has now been revealed that this holdup is primarily the result of a bookkeeping error:
Although the A400M program has generally been running late, the pacing item since last year has been the engine – and the principal problem was a failure by Europrop International (EPI), the consortium behind the TP400-D6 engine, to recognize, until little more than a year ago, that the software in the full authority digital engine control (Fadec) did not meet European civil aviation standards.
EPI was basically working to military standards, in which Fadec software is considered to be validated by testing. Civil authorities additionally require a tightly disciplined software development process, in which every change, from the first line of the first version, is documented and traceable. Once the problem surfaced, there was nothing to be done but to go back and start again.
While I generally find system engineering, where you have some anal-retentive bloke going over the specs with a microscope, to be a pain in the ass, I acknowledge that they are needed now and again, but there don’t appear to have been any on this project.
25-to-1 Leverage is Not a Healthy Bank
But that is the standard used by the US Department of the Treasury in the stress tests to define properly capitalized.
Great googly moogly.
Mustard?
Great googly moogly!
Ummmm….It’s a Fracking Joke!
In an interview in New York Times Magazine, Arlen Specter is quoted as saying that he supports Coleman in the Minnesota Senate race.
Here is the full context:
Q: With your departure from the Republican Party, there are no more Jewish Republicans in the Senate. Do you care about that?
A: I sure do. There’s still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner.
Q: Which seems about as likely at this point as Jerry Seinfeld’s joining the Senate.
A: Well, it was about as likely as my becoming a Democrat.
It’s a joke….It’s not a good one, but it’s a joke.
As a comedian, well, he’s no Al Franken…..Come to think of it, as a Senator, well, he’s no Al Franken….
NASA Head is So Far Up It’s Ass it Resembles a Klein bottle
Remember that permanent moonbase that NASA has been pushing for the past few years????
OOPS!! just kidding!
After four years of bold talk about focusing its return-to-the-Moon programme on a permanent international outpost at the Moon’s southern polar Shackleton crater, NASA now suggests its plans may stop at less ambitions Apollo-style sorties.
Seriously, it appears that NASA looks at its long term goals with the same seriousness as your average LOLKat on a catnip binge.
As I’ve said before, these are people who let Star Trek inform their decisions way too much.
It Could Be Worse, I Could Live in Minnesota
And be represented by Michele Bachmann, though she is worth a spit take.
Latest case in point: Suggesting that the Swine Flu outbreak is some sort of Democratic Party plot:
‘I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.’
Except, of course, it happened under Gerald Ford, and the media frenzy over the flu was electioneering largely driven by Ford’s SecDef, Don Rumsfeld, like a bad apple, he keeps turning up.
The stupid, it burns, it burns.