Category: Stupid

More Circular Firing Squad

No Comments

Randy Scheunemann, a senior foreign policy adviser to McCain for years, got fired a week before election day.

It appears that he was leaking stuff to the press that dissed his fellow campaign members to the apparrent benefit of Palin:

One of the aides tells CNN that campaign manager Rick Davis fired Scheunemann after determining that he had been in direct contact with journalists spreading “disinformation” about campaign aides, including Nicolle Wallace and other officials.

“He was positioning himself with Palin at the expense of John McCain’s campaign message,” said one of the aides.

And I thought that Hillary’s campaign team was dysfunctional.

I’d rather have Mark Penn on my side than any of these guys….I can’t fracking believe that I just said that.

Russian Missiles to Kalaningrad

No Comments

The Russians legitimately see the BMD system in Poland as a threat, and they are taking what they see as appropriate action. (See also here)

This was foreseeable. It’s natural for the Russians to see the system as a direct challenge, particularly since the location of the interceptors and radar are better more suited to protecting Europe from Russia than from Iran, which is the putative reason for the installation in the first place.

It’s also a challenge to Obama, which complicates things, because it makes it harder for him to do the smart thing, which is to relocate the installation further south or cancel it completely.

A Critique of the No on Prop 8 Effort

No Comments

Quoting John Aravosis:

I’d like someone to explain to me why the leaders of our side of the campaign shouldn’t be metaphorically beaten to within an inch of their lives. We should have hired political professionals, even – eeks! – straight ones, to do this. But we relied on the usual gay names and faces because, cumbaya my lord, a PC group hug is far more important than actually winning. I’m disgusted. And I want to see some heads rolling.

I would note that this problem is not unique to the Gay community…In fact it appears to be endemic to the Democratic party. (Brazile, Shrum, Penn, etc.)

More IP Insanity

No Comments

Berlin public transportation company BVG and Netherlands Dutch Rail have banned iPhone applications that give users schedule data (see also here).

By “banned” we mean pulled off of iTunes, because they claim that the programs violate their copyright on their transit schedules:

The application – which locates users via their mobile telephone network, tells them which BVG metro stops they can find nearby and helps plan timely routes – is popular with users, but not BVG. The company contacted Witt three weeks ago, telling him the program violated their copyright and demanding he remove it from iTunes. The decision has raised user hackles on internet forums, the paper reported.

I can think of no better example of how IP laws have become insane.

The idea that transit companies would assert property rights over their schedules is completely delusional.

The Law is a Fool

No Comments

Well, it appears that police arrested 12 people, and cited them for indecent exposure, at the annual naked pumpkin run, in which the participants, “wearing nothing but pumpkins on their heads”, run through a mall.

While I think that stupidity should be a punishable offense, it now appears that if convicted, the defendants will be required to register as sex offenders.

This is nuts, and the police are nuts for charging them as such, particularly since they could have cited them for public indecency, which does not require registration.

While they are at it, perhaps they should fix the law in Colorado, because streaking is a class I misdemeanor, and public indecency is a class I petty offense, which does not require registration, so having sex in public is better in the eyes of the law than simply being naked.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

No Comments

The Federal Reserve has hired Michael Alix with the responsibility of assessing the risk and soundness of institutions.

He was, “The chief risk officer of Bear Stearns from 2006 until 2008.”

I have made comments now and again….OK, nearly continuously….That one of the problems with Wall Street is that there is no accountability for the big players.

This like making Typhoid Mary chief cook on the Titanic.

There is an entire generation of mostly Ivy League trained investment banking types who should be banned from the securities business for life plus 800 years.

$206 Billion Cost Growth: 5 Weapons Systems

No Comments

Yep, just five weapons gave us $206 billion in cost overruns:

  • Lockheed Martin Corp.: F-35 Lightning II, $66.8 billion
  • Boeing: Future Combat Systems, $69.7 billion
  • Lockheed and Boeing’s: Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, $18.5 billion
  • General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman: Virginia-class SSN, $27.3
  • Various: Chemical Demilitarization program, $23.4 billion

The last one covers a number of contractors, and is for destroying US Chemical warfare stockpiles.

How the hell do you go that far over budget incinerating nerve gas? Just how much of this stuff is lying around in arsenals?

Seriously DoD procurement is completely out of control, and it’s going to take us down the way it took down the USSR.

For the record: Strippers don’t really like you either.

No Comments

It’s he last line of the Nitpicker’s commentary on the Maeve Reston disgraceful article, which sounded like musings on the end of a marriage about the relationship between the press and John Sidney McCain III.

It was headlined, “McCain was frank, garrulous and accessible — and then he wasn’t,” and I’m not sure who should be fired for it, Ms. Reston, or her editor.

Here is a snippet:

But I had come to respect McCain’s frankness and his willingness to admit he didn’t always have an answer. Watching the question morph into an embarrassing “gotcha moment” for cable television, my stomach churned and my cheeks grew hot.

It reads like a an effort by a 13 year old girl to write in the vein of the really bad romance novels that she reads.

Nitpicker wrote a great essay on this, but the last line should have been the headline, so I’m doing it here. This bit at the end says it all:

It’s high time for reporters to realize candidates aren’t supposed to be their friends and, I would argue, being buddies with the people you cover would seem to me at least unprofessional, if not explicitly unethical. Obama seems to know this and I’d be willing to bet McCain knows it, too. I’m certain he’s not sitting around moaning about his lost friends in the press corps. I would even guess that it’s likely John McCain only tolerated having them so close and kissing their asses because it garnered him “swooning” coverage for a decade.

For the record: Strippers don’t really like you either.

(emphasis mine)

Everyone on the internet seems to be a better writer than I am.

They also seem much less bald.

Blame the NGOs for the Dead

No Comments

Well, right now, there is something very close to a full blown war in the Congo going on, and the proximate cause is the presence of Hutu militias, largely led by the same men who directed the Rwandan Genocide, which is the Causus Belli for Gen. Laurent Nkunda, and his militia.

This problem has two sources, the original Rwandan Genocide, and the actions of NGOs like Oxfam, the World Food Program, CARE, the International Rescue Committee, Caritas Internalis, etc.

They NGOs provided food and support to camps on an indefinite basis, even when it was clear that they were run internally as military bases, so long as no one wore a uniform or carried a gun when in line for food.

While it was understandable in the context of the immediate crisis, it is less so on a continuing basis, particularly when it was clear that the militias in the camp were preventing refugees from returning home.

In so doing they took the tragedy of the Rwandan Genocide, and multiplied it by many times, creating death and warfare across Zaire, later the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As callous as it sounds, if they had had a firm end date in the 6 month range after the refugee flow, everyone but the perpetrators of the Genocide would have benefited, but that’s not the organizational imperative of the NGOs.

It was short sighted, and destructive, just as was their signing off on supporting Serbian concentration camps in Kosovo before the NATO invasion, but without refugees, these organizations have no purpose.

Think about that the next time you are contacted for a donation.

Seriously, Do Chriso-Fascists even Read the Bible?

No Comments

The grand high priestess of snark, Wonkette, notes that a Christian group has called for prayer to repair the broken financial system.

While the obvious rejoinder would be something about chasing money lenders out of the temple, that’s not my holy book, but Christo-Fascist (she says it’s because of gay marriage) nutcase Cindy Jacobs has done me the favor of allowing me to go seriously Old Testament* on these folks:

For these and other reasons Cindy is calling for a Day of Prayer for the World’s Economies on Wednesday, October 29, 2008. They are calling for prayer for the stock markets, banks, and financial institutions of the world on the date the stock market crashed in 1929. They are meeting at the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve Bank, and its 12 principal branches around the US that day.

“We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the ‘Lion’s Market,’ or God’s control over the economic systems,” she said. “While we do not have the full revelation of all this will entail, we do know that without intercession, economies will crumble.”

(emphasis mine)

Umm…Folks, bull, as in adult male cow, as in it was once a CALF, and Bronze is a GOLD colored alloy…..Gold….Calf….does that ring a bell?

On a more amusing note, that photograph really does look like the one from The Ten Commandments

*Normally, I do not use the term, “Old Testament”, I use the term Tanakh, because “Old Testament” implies that there is a “New Testament” out there, which is somehow divinely connected, and I do not accept the divinity of the Christian bible. In this case, however, the phrase, “Going seriously Tanach on these folks,” loses something in the translation.

Not Enough Bullets: A Continuing Series

No Comments

Well, now that Merrill Lynch was forced to sell itself to Bank of America, some of it’s employees are feeling insulted by the retention packages offered:

The problem isn’t with high-flying producers bringing in at least $1.75 million in annual revenues. Those employees will most likely get 100 percent of their annual revenue as a retention bonus, spread out over seven years. The bad feelings are among those making less. A financial advisor producing $700,000 in revenues is being offered $175,000 in cash over seven years and a 25% growth bonus over three years. Manis says that same producer could get a lot more defecting to a competitor—”around $850,000 in cash on about a 9 year deal plus another $700,000 or so back end bonuses (after one to two years).”

Yeah, because so many investment banks are hiring so many people right now…..You have options.

Seriously, the unbridled sense of entitlement of these folks just buggers the mind.

These people are overpaid used car salesmen, and as has been shown over the past few months, their advice is less reliable than my cats, who at least don’t try to conceal their self interest.

In the mean time, RJ & Mckay, a financial services body shop has a video out to try and generate some recruiting fees:

Syria Blowback in Iraq

No Comments

Well, we now have a “senior American official” saying that the raid on the Syrian villiage was a warning to Syria.

Some warning, the Iraqi cabinet was already feeling their oats enough to make further changes to the deal, despite US threats to shut down all US operations in Iraq, military and otherwise.

No one believes them, becauseleaving is too politically crushing to Bush and His Evil Minions™.

But as a result of the raid, which was condemned by the government of Iraq, and is looking at further changes in the status of forces agreement to prevent this in the future.

Heck of a job, Condi.

We’re Lending Them Money for This????

No Comments

Well, it looks like the US Department of the Treasury is looking at laoning General Motors, so that they can afford to They will use the money to buy Chrysler.

I don’t know why they need the loan, according to Daimler Benz, who still owns an equity stake, Chrysler is worth nothing. They have depreciated their stake in the troubled automaker to $0.00.

They had the stock on their books at $268 million at the end of june.

I gotta think that the only motive behind this is that Bush Henry Paulson and His Evil Minions™ they are trying to make companies out there so big that they can block any regulations Congress might want to achieve in the future, because they will be throwing around so much lobbying cash.

How to Know When a Burocracy is Out of Control

No Comments

When its budget is growing so fast that auditors cannot keep up..

Case in point, the Pentagon:

Government reports are not known for plain language, much less candor. But in a report issued in March, Pentagon Inspector General Claude M. Kicklighter summed up what had been growing increasingly evident for years: Defense spending has been growing so rapidly that auditors can no longer keep track.

“We currently are not able to provide sufficient audit coverage of [Department of Defense] acquisition programs given the dollars expended by the department,” Mr. Kicklighter wrote. “The rapid growth of the DOD budget since FY 2000 leaves the Department increasingly more vulnerable to the fraud, waste and abuse that undermines the department’s mission.”

And they want to browbeat the next president into increasing their budget even more.

OK, Time to Call an Obama Adviser Stupid

No Comments

Specifically Paul Kaminiski, who is talking up a dual buy strategy for the USAF tanker competition.

There are a number of problems, not the least of which is the fact that this is the worst of all possible solutions, doubling inventory and supply issues.

You also pay the cost of the tooling and engineering twice

A bad deal for the tax payer and the military.

There is also the problem that the 767s being made for Italy do not work. (Paid subscription required)

Boeing has assigned a “tiger team” to deal with the wing flutter issues caused by the refuelling pods.

When Ideology Makes You Stupid

No Comments

The FDIC is trying to create a program to guarantee home mortgages to encourage modifications to contracts. This is stupid, particularly because in many of the cases, you can’t find anyone to modify the contract, because the instrument is held in a portfolio of bonds with hundreds, if not thousands, of stake-holders, all of whom have a legal right to veto any change,

The solution is simple, and does not cost the taxpayer anything: Modify bankruptcy to allow judges to modify mortgages. When you can’t find the owner of the loan, an judge handles it, and when you can, it to force lenders to the table.

We Are Living in Bizarro World

No Comments

and John Sidney McCain III is the Bizarro candidate.

Case in point, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission, the highest paid person in the McCain campaign in the first week of October was her makeup artist:
That annualizes to $592,800.00 a year.

Ms. Strozzi, who was nominated for an Emmy award for her makeup work on the television show “So You Think You Can Dance?”, was paid $22,800 for the first two weeks of October alone, according to the records. The campaign categorized Ms. Strozzi’s payment as “Personnel Svc/Equipment.”

That annualizes to $592,800.00 a year.

In addition, Angela Lew, who is Ms. Palin’s traveling hair stylist, got $10,000
for “Communications Consulting” in the first half of October. Ms. Lew’s address
listed in F.E.C. records traces to an Angela M. Lew in Thousands Oaks, Calif.,
which matches with a license issued by the California Board of Barbering and
Cosmetology. The board said Ms. Lew works at a salon called Hair Grove in
Westlake Village, Calif.

$260,000.00/year.

I’m in the wrong bloody line of work.

Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan Is Shocked At Meltdownan

No Comments

So now Greenspan is shocked that a completely unregulated market leads to irrational speculation and abuse.

At the core of the theory capitalism is the idea that selfish people thinking only of themselves are what make the system work.*

If you had ever gotten your head far enough out of Ayn Rand’s long dead festering ass, you would have noticed that there were dozens, if not hundreds, of people you worked with who told you that this was going to happen.

You sir, are not a tool, because a tool has a use.

*Yes, I am paraphrasing Keynes.

Making a Bad Situation Even Worse

No Comments

It looks like Hank Paulson and his bully boys at the US Treasury will be actively encouraging banks to merge with government money.

So, because some banks have to be bailed out, at taxpayer expense, because they are too big to fail, we should have even more really big banks, because it benefits the guys that Secretary Paulson plays golf with.

Well, it appears that some Senators have not viewed this development positively, and they just sent Paulson a “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” letter regarding this.