The good news ia that he raised more than $150,000,000.00 in September, and so is spending John Sidney McCain III into a well deserved oblivion.

The bad news is Colin Powell endorsing him….His last endorsement was for invading Iraq.

They had a sports program on, with sports talking heads.

Bill Cowher was talking about the Pats-Broncos game @ Foxboro.

He called it for the Patriots, noting Matt Cassel’s performance at home, and the fact that Denver is 33rd in the league against the pass.

Then,he dropped this bon mot, “Joe the Plumber could throw for 200 yards against Denver.”

It appears that Joe the Plumber haa become a synonym for “lame” in just a few short days..

heh

On the death of his mother-in-law.

Well, we now know just how seriously the USAF takes Iraq and Afghanistan, because they just rolled out new dress uniforms.

The uniforms are inspired by those of General “Hap” Arnold.

To be fair, the current leader of the USAF, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz, inherited this matter, his predecessor was the one who pushed the new dress blues, which may explain why he got his ass fired.

Price tag: $125 million. Complete confirmation that the making USAF an independent was a total mistake: Priceless.

This is why money is fleeing into treasuries because stuff that is supposed to be as good as cash is freexing up, and people cannot get their money.

So we had a Bank of New York Mellon Corp institutional money market fund just fell below $1/share, meaning you can’t get all your money out, and the $15 billion Putnam Prime Money Market Fund money market fund just shut down, because of “redemption pressures”, i.e. a run on the bank.

If that weren’t scary enough, The Reserve’s Primary Fund is also below par, and includes retail as well as institutional investors:

Reserve Primary has both institutional and retail accounts. “This appears to be the first case where a retail investor will lose money in a money market fund.” said Peter Crane, president of market research firm Crane Data in Westborough, Mass., though he called the situation “an anomaly.”

My investment advice: Buy stocks in safes, because people won’t be trusting banks much longer.

In this case, the “double digit” refers to the models of missiles SA-10, SA-20, etc,, not the quantities, but the Iranian Foreign Ministry denies this, claiming that they are relying on technologies developed within the nation.

Yeah, right.

Though I do think that Pat Oliphant is cruising for a lightning bolt.

The real issue, though, is far more serious. The Republicans speak in tongues to the press, and the press refuses to notice.

For example, in 2000, when Bush was speaking about “compassionate conservatism”, he was in fact speaking in tongues to the religious right, describing doctrine written about by Marvin Olasky and others, in which true compassion is to let poor people and their families fend for themselves.

Bush’s mention of Dredd Scott in the 2004 debate was the same thing; it was a dog whistle to the right wing about Roe v. Wade.

This is easy to understand, but the press refuses to cover it, so it continues.

He was asked how many houses he ownsin an interview and re replied that he would have a member of his staff get back to him.

He does not know how many homes he, well, really Cindy, owns, but as I’ve mentioned before, they also neglect to pay the property taxes in a timely manner.

The quip of the day, though goes to Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, who suggested that the reason that McCain could not answer the question was because, “He Couldn’t Count High Enough.”

Heh.

BTW, in the, “It didn’t take very long,” department, the McCain campaign is already going the noun, verb, and POW route

He [spokesman Brian Rogers] also added: “This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison,” referring to the prisoner of war camp that McCain was in during the Vietnam War.

It’s amazing how quickly they move to self parody….I just hope that the American public does not buy it.

John Sidney McCain is truly a pathetic old man.

Ares Homepage: “The End of the NRO?
Posted by Bill Sweetman at 8/14/2008 8:15 AM CDT

“Radical change” is an over-used phrase, but the proposals of the Allard Commission on US national security space – previewed by commission member Gen. Ed Anderson at the Space & Missile Defense Conference in Huntsville on Wednesday, are certainly radical.

The commission recommends eliminating the National Reconnaissance Office – the agency that helped win the Cold War, and whose very existence was secret until the early 1990s – as a separate entity and removing executive authority for space systems from the Air Force, transferring both functions into a single new organization.”

The National Security Space Independent Assessment Panel, aka the “Allard Commission,” is proposing that the NRO and the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) be folded into a completely new agency.

Basically, the feel that the existing agencies are doing a piss-poor job, with the NRO recent history being disasterous, and the USAF constantly pulling resources to support its aircraft programs.

My take? Deck chairs, titanic.

Slate has a good analysis of the various serious crimes of Bush and His Evil Minions^™.

Note that this is just those crimes where the action at its core is wrong and official in nature, torture, illegal surveillance, illegal political hirign, and illegal political firings.

They even have an interactive Venn diagram (what’s below is just an image) of the whole sordid mess.

Surprisingly enough Abu Gonzalez is at the center of it all.

Commercial bankruptcies up 47% year over year.

Not surprising, considering the state of the economy.

At least that’s what CNBC columnist Diana Olick gets from her the National Association of Realtors.

¹/₃ of all sales are short sales, REOs, and foreclosures.

We are not even close to the bottom of the market.

They are offering existing customers the option of downsizing to the 4 place one engine 400 from the 6 place two engine 500, whose price has increased over 40%, and about 100 have taken them up on it.

I wonder about the delivery schedule though. Eclipse has found that getting aircraft out the door was far harder than anticipated.

While the parliament has placed conditions, including a meaningful competition with other fighters, with the Gripen N being the primary competitor, I see this as the nail in the coffin for the prospect of buying another fighter…at least until they find that the F-35 is 2.5x more expensive than promised.

They have made a 10% down payment (that likely will be closer to (3-5%) for two JSFs to use in IOT&E, and once that happens, I see the Dutch AF as committed.

Though Eurofighter is claiming that its Captor-M mechanically scanned radar offers superior performance.

I’m a bid dubious of that claim, though mechanically scanned radars are clearly cheaper.

Again, we have the inestimable Barry Ritholtz to thank.

It turns out that April’s sales were the same as the initial March numbers, but March was revised downwards, creating an increase.

Martin Luther King, Jr’s only grand child was just born, Yolanda Denise King, daughter of Martin Luther King III and Arndrea Waters King.

While the 737 is a good plane, there is a reason that Airbus does better with the A320, it entered service a full 20 years later, and so its basic design is more modern.

To its credit, Boeing has been looking at a replacement for the 737, but now it’s back to square 1, as they have disbanded the 737RS (replacement study) group(paid subscription required)

The the project did not show the sufficient performance improvements to justify the capital costs of a new airframe.

They were looking at a roughly 10% reduction in costs, and felt that they needed 20-30% cost reduction, so something like incorporating Pratt’s GTF into existing airframes makes more sense for now.

Just me…Started Feeling at about 3:00pm yesterday.

Spiked at 101°, but now in low grade territory. Just had about a dozen ravioli, the first real meal in about 24 hours, and I’m at about 99.3°.

Not much posting for a while.

Well, we are now seeing the beginning of the collapse of pensions around the nation, it’s just not visible yet.

The pensions are dumping Treasuries in favor of equities, and probably other more volatile investments, in order to get better rates of return, because interest rates are so low.

The reason that this is happening is because they are underfunded, and so need to chase higher rates of return:

Philadelphia’s $4 billion pension deficit is causing the city’s retirement-fund manager to shun Treasuries at a time when the Bush administration needs him most.

Yields on 30-year U.S. bonds that fell to a record low of 4.10 percent this year are forcing pension funds to favor equities, corporate debt and commodities in an attempt to cover unfunded liabilities and meet return objectives of about 8 percent. Even the federal government’s own Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. said on Feb. 19 that it plans to shift $15 billion to stocks from debt.

“The reality is there’s not a lot we can do”, other than buy high-risk securities to close a pension shortfall in a short period, said Chris McDonough, chief investment officer of the Philadelphia Pensions Department. The sixth-largest U.S. city will probably also issue debt, he said.

Fixed-income holdings at 1,100 funds fell to 23 percent in 2006 from 27 percent in 2003, said Dev Clifford, a consultant at financial market research firm Greenwich Associates in Greenwich, Connecticut. Results of a survey covering 2007 will be released this month and likely show that funds own an even smaller percentage of bonds, he said.

…

This is how a lot of pensions went pop as a result of the dotbomb bust.