You are getting short rations tonight, not on Links but on original content, because my equipment is behaving badly.
A pilot diverted an international flight to save a dog traveling in cargo Mashable
Arctic Warming Produces Mosquito Swarms Large Enough to Kill Baby Caribou Reader Supported News (furzy mouse) :-(
FIREFIGHTERS RESCUE BURNED BLACK CAT FROM VALLEY FIRE News7 (EM)
Canadian entrepreneur finds international success selling firewood for $1000 per bundle CBC Radio
Tracking the Curse of Global Drought Bloomberg (resilc)
Deadly Heartland Virus Is Much More Common Than Scientists Thought NPR (David L)
‘Youngest’ toddler with type 2 diabetes raises concern BBC
Antidepressant Paxil Is Unsafe for Teenagers, New Analysis Says New York Times
China?
Guy Debelle: Bond market liquidity, long-term rates and China Bank of International Settlements. MS: “Australian central bank official just said Chinese reserves have dropped by half a trillion.”
China scraps overseas debt quotas as capital outflows worsen South China Morning Post
Blankfein slams China market management Business Insider (resilc)
China’s new GDP just as dodgy MacroBusiness
EU immigration to the US: where is it coming from, and is brain drain real? Bruegel
Refugee Crisis
Hungarian police clash with migrants at Serbian border, dozens injured Toronto Star (furzy mouse)
Syrian refugees seek new passports as a ticket to Europe Associated Press (furzy mouse)
Corbyn Panic
Jeremy Corbyn’s QE for the people is exactly what the world may soon need Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
Jeremy Corbyn’s victory has already transformed politics Guardian
Grexit?
ECB lowers ELA cap for Greek banks as liquidity conditions improve Reuters
Disillusionment Plays Big Role in Greek Election Wall Street Journal
Scenarios for the next day of the snap elections in Greece failed evolution
Syraqistan
Australia Has Launched Its First Airstrike on Syria VICE (resilc)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
West Lebanon library to keep backing Tor Concord Monitor. Chuck L: “Brave library.”
Counterintelligence Agency Shrugs Off Responsibility for OPM Breach Intercept
Imperial Collapse Watch
Are Neocons an Existential Threat? Consortiumnews
U.S. Air Force warns F-35 order review could damage program Reuters. EM: “Military brass working hard to polish that turd!”
Boeing KC-46A tanker to make first flight on Sept. 25: U.S. Air Force Reuters. EM: “At least Boeing is footing its own cost overruns on this one, but one wonders what kind of corner-cutting they may be doing in order to palliate the hit to their bottom line.”
Obama-Bush Years Saw Employers Reduce Health Insurance Coverage PEU Report
2016
Republican rivals take the fight to Trump Edward Luce, Financial Times
Top 10 Zingers of the Second GOP Debate Rolling Stone
What’s at Stake in the Second Republican Debate: Full Panic in the GOP New Republic
Yale professor on Carly Fiorina’s business record: She ‘destroyed half the wealth of her investors yet still earned almost $100 million’ Business Insider (David L)
Republicans’ New Favorite Candidate Is Biden New York Magazine
Bernie Sanders Barnstorms the South, Speaking to Swelling Crowds Alternet
Jade Helm Is Over, and Texas Still Exists New York Magazine
Outcry After Muslim Teen Is Detained Over Homemade Clock ABC (furzy mouse)
Handcuffed for Making Clock, Ahmed Mohamed, 14, Wins Time With Obama New York Times
Valley Fire: Evacuees cling to sense of community, shared grief after devastating blaze San Jose Mercury News (EM)
Seattle police officer fired over arrest of elderly black man with golf club Reuters
Fed
Cutting Through the Rate-Hike Hype Mohamed El-Erian, Bloomberg
US rate rise harder to justify nine years on Financial Times
Final Thoughts On September Tim Duy
The Most Important Thing to Remember as the Federal Reserve Counts Down Toward Liftoff… Brad DeLong
DOJ Must Prove Commitment to Ending ‘Too Big to Jail’American Banker
Key House Democrat presses SEC chief to explain waivers for bank offenders Francine McKenna, MarketWatch (Jim Haygood)
NYC pension gives 75% pay raise to PE chief PEHub (Rosemary)
The global productivity slump: Common and country-specific factors VoxEU
Class Warfare
The Verizon Standoff and the Future of Labor, Communication and Privacy Counterpunch (George E)
Kill the old, Piketty and demographics edition FT Alphaville
Antidote du jour (martha r). A Golden Akhal Teke horse.
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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McDonald’s missteps are well-known. At a time when specialization is increasingly important in the food business, the brand has opted for breadth, offering everything under the moon: hamburgers, salads, yogurt parfaits, and fancy chicken wraps. And it hasn’t worked. In fact, that’s putting it mildly.
Month after month, the burger behemoth has had to share that it has, once again, seen same-store sales drop in the United States. The routine became so consistently depressing that McDonald’s decided to quit sharing monthly performance data altogether this past March.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/08/13/mcdonalds-is-shrinking/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_1_na
s’not just the food, Skip, it’s the whole offering, so last century.
The coming clincher for me is the invitation to ‘make it your way’. Those bright colored terminals, which seem so hip and inviting.
So, instead of you having a conversation with a person with a job… You get the rest.
These companies need their licenses to trade, to operate in civil society. Why we continue to let them operate this way, I dunno
You do know the article about the Canadian entrepreneur selling $1000 firewood is satire, right?
I only recently discovered This is That, thanks to my pops’ satellite radio. Hilarious stuff. Gotta love that Canuk sense of humor, eh?
I recommend Charley Farquharson. Jogfree of Canda is one of his books, sure to confuse you about what you think you know.
When my husband first heard the program, This is That, he insisted that it was a true story. I had great fun getting him to listen to some of the other programs and he finally saw the light. He still insists that he knew it was satire all along. Yeh, sure!!
I used to work at a vineyard pruning during the off-season for landscaping. The Willamette Valley grows Burgundy varieties, unto global heating intervenes. Someone on the crew noticed at the grocery store little boxes of Burgundy vine prunings offered for barbecuing, $5 a pop. We all looked around at the debris we were leaving behind (which in that vineyard were tilled in); the arithmetic was staggering.
Similar story, same place: this was when St. Johns’ wort was cast catching on as an anti-depressant. It’s an extremely common weed here; grew thickly under the vines. The hot market was for seed because the industry was expanding, so some co-workers were gathering seed to sell. When they told the manager how much it was worth, you could see him figuring out that the weed was worth more than the crop.
Strange places, vineyards. When you’re done pruning, all you can see is metal – the wires that trellis the vines as they grow.
Maybe those vine prunings were more valuable for regenerating the soil, than their financial value had they been burned in someone’s barbecue.
We have an IT consultant who hovers by the coffee grinds filter waiting to snatch the detritus for his worm farm. Says they go mad for it. I’m not surprised.
http://www.mintpressnews.com/obama-confident-in-getting-tpp-deal-completed-in-2015/209609/
Akhal-Teke: the golden horse of the desert
http://horsetalk.co.nz/2013/08/06/akhal-teke-golden-horse-desert/#axzz3lziaWJCA
surviving 3000 yrs of Human Warring…
“We just did an awesome job of not dying.” John Green
those images are outstanding
Yes, stunning.
Outstanding indeed, with a none too subtle subtext of horse fantasy porn.
http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1125&context=mzwp
I mean really, you are going to pull out that old shibboleth about girls having penis envy? Really! Come on. That is just as ridiculous as saying that men envy a woman’s vagina. We each have our own and ne’er the twain shall meet (except in copulation).
“In general we find girls less inclined than boys to invest mechanical objects with sexual significance. Since their bodies provide no model of dramatic erection and
detumescence, girls are not so readily fascinated by objects that can be made to start and stop at their owners will. Large animals that can be induced to lend their strength to the people astride their backs seem on the other hand to be particularly suited to express the little girls’ fantasy of possessing a penis, or of gaining possession of a whole man’s powers and so partaking of his masculinity. (p. 75)” from the link
Today’s antidote just begs to be Photoshopped into this [jpg image]:
http://tinyurl.com/nougm6g
Where’s your sense of romance? ;-)
Probably not penis envy, but perhaps there is some erotic stimulation riding a horse?
No, I don’t think that’s what they said. I think it has more to do with the posture adopted when riding – I’m trying to be discreet here, this being a “family blog” and all.
More to the point, horses are symbols of power and, traditionally, masculinity (knights, cowboys, etc.) Hence, substitution going on. They can also be just plain gorgeous, as the photos show.
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a horse that color; where is it from?
OK, now I see they did invoke it; silly, and irrelevant compared tot he other factors.
Was in reference to the “penis-envy” issue way up above; apparently this is what happens when you reply to yourself. Or something.
This male does envy the vagina. (And I have the tooth marks to prove it!)
Having worked with horses on my late father-in-laws mini farm, I can attest to the sheer power of the creatures. They do have individual personalities, and will let you know their needs. Uncut males can be very dangerous. Mastering one of them is a real accomplishment. I can see where a symbiosis between horse and rider creates positive self images. (I never lost my fear of them after a very mean quarter horse decided to show me who was boss. Being bitten and kicked by a quarter ton of malignancy will put the Fear of G– into one.)
That is just silly. My favorite toy when I was a toddler was a crash car. OMG was it fun making it fly into pieces!
Generally speaking, girls have dolls shoved at them and boys have male toys shoved at them. They get the cultural cue and few buck them.
I was fortunate to have a horse when I was 14/15 years old, wonderful experience, loved all the activities related to caring for and riding my horse. It’s the kind of love and passion and focus that keeps a kid out of trouble. Nothing sexual about it, not one thing, HORSE PUCKY!!!
Gorgeous. But I thought gentlemen preferred blondes..tee hee…. :)
From the Leni Riefenstahl school of horse photography.
It’s Mr. Ed’s grand daughter. A few years back they posted her pics here. She had long hair then, but it might have been a wig.
Evidentlly she went to Hollywood and got into the party scene. That rarely ends well & it didn’t thhis time either.
Then she went to rehab and cleaned up, got into yoga and got a personal trainer and nutritionist. Now she’s back with the photo shoot.
Let’s hope she stays clean. It’s not every day a talking horse has acting skills. Some people would call that show business but others would call it art.
They sweat blood, those Nisean horses.
Tien Ma, the Han Chinese sent expeditions into Central Asia to obtain them, and one general, Ban Chao, almost came into contact with their Roman counterparts.
Ken Ogata in his film ‘Journey Along the Silk Road,’ came across some of their descendants, the Akhal-Teke.
“Blankfein slams China market management ”
How dare they not staff-up with Goldman alums?
“Obama-Bush Years Saw Employers Reduce Health Insurance Coverage”
So, according to Gruber’s Theorem, wages went up, amirite?
Of course wages went up when employers started dropping health insurance: Econ theory says that MUST be the case! Which makes this all the more puzzling:
Median Real Incomes Stagnant for Last Two Decades
Somebody must have done the math wrong, is all I can think of…maybe if we put Reinhart and Rogoff on the case they’ll be able to figure it out….
re: Heartland Virus (Not)
“The underlying message of this story is there are new pathogens out there,” he says. “Our society is changing so quickly — and even the climate — that it allows for new things to develop. And we have to be on the lookout for those new things so we can protect the public health.”
Scientists thought the lone star tick was the primary way Heartland spreads. But that tick isn’t found up in northern New England. So there’s likely a second type of tick that can also carry Heartland.
*************
how states are (or not) addressing more climate disease outbreaks
http://www.nrdc.org/health/climate/disease.asp
Our society is changing so quickly.
Each new generation becomes obsolete faster.
If one doesn’t agree with a new development, and refuses to go along with – maybe you don’t like the new global food supply distribution system or you don’t like today’s self-tracking smartphones or music, or the idea of replacing clothes/cars/etc every year or even more frequently – you can age quite quickly, if you are not lucky enough but are surrounded by people accepting it.
And hey, that’s ‘progress’ and it must dictate and impose itself upon us totally.
re Ian’s linked obama-confident-in-getting-tpp-deal-completed-in-2015 article
Yves/commenters, what is your prediction on the TPP?
Is 0bama just bluffing “happy talk” to his owners, er campaign funders/corp lobbyists?
-or-
Can 0bama actually pass the TPP by Jan 2016?
Not qualified to answer, all I can say is I certainly hope not. Makes me think that something is happening though as this is the first of 2 articles I saw today that are about Obama with correlations to TPP and trade agreements.
Predicting what the Congress will do is an exercise in futility. What we can do is keep the heat on them. If you haven’t already let your Representative and Senators know that you oppose the TPP, please do so now. The likely weakening of food safety standards and the private tribunals of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) are good talking points.
If you have already contacted your legislators about the TPP, then another way to keep their feet to the flames is to contact them about other related issues. If they know that people are paying attention to arcane topics such as the carried interest tax loophole, or the intricacies of the rules governing the “revolving door” between private finance and government, they may be a little more hesitant to support the similarly arcane TPP.
Demanding the resignation of do-nothing SEC chair Mary Jo White is another useful way to keep their feet to the fire.
fw: economist Dr. Dean Baker refutes the Murdoch WSJ’s scaremongering of “Sanders 18T plan” http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/bernie-sanders-and-the-wall-street-journal-s-18-trillion
1. 15 of the 18T, over 10 years is for the Medicare For All, which is likely to save taxpayer money relative to the status quo. I’d personally add that only a WSJ extreme right-wing ideologue cares about if they are paying a private oligopolist health insurer vs Federal taxes, we actual USians care about the service & cost. Only the right wingnuts would rather pay more (the most in the OECD) for a crappier or at best equivalent service, for the “priviledge” of paying 1 of the “small” private (3?) remaining Aetnas vs the scary BigGuvmint
2. The remaining 3T is 1.3% GDP, which is less than the War on Terra TM skyrocketing of military costs, or Jeb!’s proposed further tax cuts.
The economist cited by WSJ says single payer would save $5 trillion in the same 10 years
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/16/1421895/-Hey-WSJ-Bernie-s-Plan-SAVES-the-US-5-081-Trillion-on-Health-Care
The WSJ was a lie by omission
1, it failed to discuss that the taxes are basically a transfer of the cost already being paid in the private sector. Therefore there is no new net cost once the plan is fully implemented
2. It ignores the net savings. The cost in the private sector would be 20 trillion. undet single payer 15. The lie by omission ignores value. It’s like saying one is definitely going to buy a 20000 car but finding one can get a better car for 15. No one would buy the 20k car bc they believe the 15 k car is expensive. It would be considered irrational. Bc in fact our health care system is irrational,conservatives must lie by omission to rationalize their position
Ditto, thx for your comment.
I hope Sanders & his campaign repeats ad nauseum your point that Medicare For All is a net SAVINGS of $5T. Furthermore, I hope Sanders notes that this $5T more than offsets the remaining $3T for tuition-free public college, etc.
And he has already said that the public college policy would be paid for with a trading tax on Wall Street, which would tend to create a surplus as well as stabilize the markets wrt algorhithmic computer transactions.
He is going to be awesome in debates with Republicans.
If colleges train athletes for professional teams, the latter should pay for the cost.
If colleges train software programmers for profit seeking corporations, again, the latter should pay for it.
If colleges teach wisdom to all the students, it benefits the society and we, the society, should pay for it.
And not only Gerald Friedman agrees with Mr. Sanders. Check out what the CIA says . . .
Enter into Google “Healthcare spending by country” or click https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2225rank.html then pull out the developed country stats. Approx 12% of GDP for other developed countries and 17.9 % GDP for the US.
I’m waiting for someone to be shocked, shocked, that health care is costing the economy that much – single payer, Medicare For All, or privately insured.
I think we can also save a lot (and remove all those shenanigans) with a Single Pension Plan for all.
The other leg of the stool is US costs for procedures, medicine, etc — Way out of line with the rest of the civilized world. Healthcare at the highest price the market will bear is immoral. But of course the crooks running congress will never step up to doing Thing One about it.
From the Counterpunch article linked above: “the bottom line is simply busting the union.” I think my brothers and sisters in the I.B.E.W. & CWA are playing this right– it made sense to strike back in 2011, today it makes sense to force the company to eat food and motel bills for the scabs they imported as the contract neared expiration. The point about the appalling quality of non-union customer service is a very good one.
If the unions can survive this it will be a great thing!! I know that in Rhode Island and around NYC the will to resist is strong, but the company is pulling out every trick in the book. We as customers can help with letters to the editor, complaints about lack of copper-line service, etc.
that “jeremy corbyn’s dangerous fantasies” article is written by none other than anne applebaum, spouse of former polish impostor finance minister radoslaw sikorski.
it’s nice to see people like that squirm.
My favorite quote from the “dangerous fantasies” article:
“this kind of “principled” politics may indeed have some electoral appeal, for the same reason that ideological purity has always had appeal. Indeed, ideological purity has at times had mass appeal—even when dangerous, irrational, and doomed to failure. Invariably it’s more “fun,” as my acquaintance put it, than dull number-crunching, or arguments about what the state can afford to spend, or planning to protect one’s country from terrorist attacks.”
Can someone remind me why Slate still exists? Other than to provide the MySpace version of Vox?
As I was reading that article I just kept thinking, “…because the ‘serious’ politicians have been doing such a bang-up job!” What planet does this woman live on? Is she aware of how things have been going for the non-1%ers? I actually think this woman buys her own BS and actually believes that Blair and Cameron et al have been doing a great job. Truly astounding. Corbyn must really be onto something if he’s bringing this out in his opponents.
Applebaum is a neoconservative. Evidence and logic don’t stand in the way of the heehaw empire. I would recommend you read up on her, but please do it in a place where no one will be upset if you become violently ill.
indeed. she is a member of the neocon and neolib legatum institute.
The “ideological purity” of neoliberal austerity, regardless of how many people suffer is certainly enjoying its moment right about now, huh? I suppose Applebaum’s own ideological purity couldn’t stomach somebody challenging it.
Back in the old days, before Firedoglake and Naked Capitalism caught my attention, Slate had a very busy set of blogs attached to it’s various departments.
I used to frequent their ‘Moneybox’ department and take part in the discussion there.
There was a well seasoned mix of posters who pushed back quite effectively on the non-sense being sold by Slate’s ‘reporters’ .
It got to the point where Slate’s articles were nearly 100% BS and the comments sections were full of very good refutations.
This led to a wholesale re-design of Slate which put an end to it’s usefulness as a source of alternate info on politics and the economy by wiping out all of its’ archived content, (despite repeated promises to preserve them) and replacing/redesigning the blogs to be less user-friendly, almost worthless actually.
Slate was at one time, an excellent public forum where the important issues of the day could be discussed openly and thoroughly. This could not be tolerated by the PTB, so it was destroyed and replaced by the current propaganda platform.
I believe Firedoglake was hit with repeated DDOS attacks, and band-width throttling over the last few years as it became a really effective thorn in the side of the MICC, Wall $treet and Big Oil among others, which also resulted in ‘changes’.
It’ because of these experiences that I have had suspicions about the tech problems plaguing NC in the last year or so as it has become ever more important as a clearing house for truth as concerns economics in general, and the Wall $t./neo-con war on We the People in particular.
So, to answer your question, Slate now exists to obfuscate the truth, just like the rest of the ‘MSM’.
I think the explanation is, everyone forgot to stop going to Slate.
Ironically his plans could work because he seems to actually understand that modern money is, in fact, nothing but ‘dull number-crunching’. Has he or members of his party yet attempted to explain precisely why the Bank of England can just ‘print money’? They could start by referencing the BoEs own papers…
Slate: where middlebrows go to die.
It is hard to determine who is the worst: Applebaum or Nuland.
For a refreshing antidote, read the Guardian article, which notes general MSM hostility to Corbyn. Applebaum’s derisive hysteria actually betrays a palpable fear that the status quo gravy train is already derailing.
Plucky defender of charter schools braves a business soiree at a Lake George resort to bash teachers:
Campbell Brown must be getting some pretty serious funding, somewhere, to push the charter school agenda. It is pretty impossible to find anyone with serious professional credibility in education who can defend the destruction of public schools, so why not Campbell Brown? You’re not going to ask an actual teaching professional, nor Diane Ravitch. In the USA, actually knowing what you’re talking about is a liablility anyway, so why bother. Just find the next Donald Trump of ed reform, who will just say … whatever…and move on with it.
The evidence is out: charters perform less well than public schools, even though charters often hand-pick their student body. Charters do, however, hurt the public schools by crowding their space, attracting the most able students (because their parents don’t want their kids with the unwashed masses who could need extra help in special education/English language services). They also divide communities, in particular poorer communities where suddenly there is a fight to keep the neighbourhood school intact versus ambitious parents who know their kids could get in to a fancier charter. Finally, it’s awful for the teaching profession, since charters are often not unionized and try to hire young scabs who will accept terrible work conditions.
In Australia we have a Campbell Brown too! The man knows how to throw a punch.
Campbell Brown is married to Bush admin. war criminal Dan Senor. I guess she wants to do to American schools what Senor did to Iraq.
— Senor was known for the zealous spin that put a good face on the disaster unfolding in Baghdad (the Iraq War did not end until December 2011). Some statements he made to the press did not reflect the actual situation in the city.
Senor formally re-located to Baghdad on April 20, 2003. He traveled with General Garner’s team in the first American post-war civilian protection unit, becoming one of the first American civilians to enter Baghdad after the fall of the regime. In Iraq, Senor served as Chief Spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), as Senior Advisor to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, and as adviser to the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. In the U.S., he was “a regular television fixture in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion”, thus becoming “the face of the Bush Administration’s efforts in Iraq”—
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Senor
Indeed…the Americans used to sneer at the Iraqi government’s spokesperson as “Baghdad Bob”, ridiculed for his “upbeat” reports on how the Saddam Hussein regime was “repelling” the US invasion. Well, Dan Senor outdid any and all propagandists employed by the then Iraqi government…he worked hand in glove with Paul “Paulie Walnuts” Bremer, the proconsul successor to the shambolic Gen. Garner, selling the US public and media on how “brilliantly successful” the Cheney/Bush “democracy agenda” is playing out. Senor currently does FoxNews gigs, and last election was a “campaign advisor” to Mittens…that worked out well…no book deals, sorry. Read Chandrasekaranl Rajiv’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City to get a flavour of Senor’s craftmanship at work.
What was so shambolic about Garner? Garner planned to keep the Iraqi Army intact, employed, and getting paid. He would have left the ongoing structures of Baathist Iraqi governance as undisturbed as feasible . . . leaving technical experts with Baath party membership in charge of their departments, etc. Or am I wrong?
Bremer was brought in almost immediately to disband the Iraqi Army, behead all the functioning governance bureaucracies, etc. Or am I wrong?
So again, what was so shambolic about Garner?
There is A LOT OF MONEY behind charter schools and school privatization in general. Along with highways and health care, it is one of the few serious profit opportunities left to our degraded capitalist class.
Let corporations pay for training their future employees, their future tech wizards, their future accountants, their future lawyers, their future managers, etc.
The public will pay for the cost of enlightening our children, like what is a health diet, how to preserve democracy, living harmoniously with the rest of Nature, etc.
Medical knowledge, especially about diet and how to take care of one’s body, should be liberated from the supply-restricting medical schools, and given to children as young as they are suitable, thereby reducing demand for the Medical Industrial Complex’s products and services.
What knowledge about diet and self-care do medical schools even have?
http://www.disclose.tv/news/the_6_grand_illusions_that_keeps_you_and_all_of_humanity_enslaved/122339?utm_content=buffer1cb78&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
U.S. Air Force warns F-35 order review could damage program Reuters.
File under: kill the messenger.
Should read: Contractor nonperformance could (already!) damage(ed) F-35 program.
True, but let’s not overlook the culpability of the Pentagon in this fiasco. The idea of having one platform for three branches, each with their own unique requirements, was theirs. So they now own an expensive Swiss Army knife, capable of doing many things and none of them particularly well. I wonder whether the PX will begin stocking a Sta-Brite version of the F-35, to save the tarnished brass from all that polishing.
Russian jet fighters 2015.
But you gotta admit, VTOL is cool.
Except that it barely works. The Harrier is very accident prone.
Yes, particularly since it has been melting the landing decks of the MC carriers. Future news item: “F-35 Claims Its First Confirmed Kill, Sinks USS Iwo Jima”.
LOL. You win the internets for today.
I’ll take it :) as long as we are clear that my sarc wasn’t aimed at craazyboy.
http://www.amazon.com/Not-Much-Engineer-Stanley-Hooker/dp/1853102857
the man behind the Pegasus engine.
Stanley Hooker joined the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1949 and tugged a rather reluctant company into the jet age, determined to give real competition to Rolls-Royce. So successful was he that in 1966 Rolls-Royce decided the best thing to do was to spend 63.6 million pounds and buy its rival. By this time there was scarcely a single modern British aero-engine for which Hooker had not been responsible
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Pegasus
fantastic bit of kit
I did a little web surfing starting with your Wikipedia link, and ended up at this image. What struck me is the amount of time, money, metal, and ingenuity that it depicts. Some serious hardware. It is a shame that these resources are used for such destructive purposes. The opportunity cost to more life affirming pursuits is huge. I know it is naive to say, and I accept that we may be past the point of no return, but after all that humankind has been through, can’t we all just get along? Sad, sad days.
Didn’t Robert McNamara do the same thing with the F-111? IIRC, the Navy ultimately passed on the F-111.
You’d think they’d have learned something.
Nice catch! I thought of the same thing. After throwing billions at the F-111 it turned out to be a solid strike aircraft and good Wild Weasel platform, but that took two decades. The F-35 doesn’t seem to have the payload capacity for that, or the aerodynamic performance to be a fighter, or the range to be a carrier plane. At least the F-111 had some attributes that they could exploit given enough time and money. The F-35 looks like a disaster and is going to destroy the Royal Navy (which was forced to buy it by You Know Who) because if they follow through on the contract, then they’ll have enough money to operate the single carrier without an attendant fleet!
Pilot and co-pilot sitting side by side was a bad design choice for the F-111.
I wonder if we can 3D print fighter jets.
And don’t even bother to ask that silly “goes back to WW II” question, “Is this trip necessary?” http://www.fortmissoulamuseum.org/WWII/the-need-to-sacrifice_is-your-trip-necessary.php
Hello
This link in Slate refers to another cold-war burp from Anne Applebaum, does anyone take anything she says serious?
John Helmer has certainly had a lot fun dismantling her on his site:-)
David Swanson’s final question: “What is Bernie afraid of?”
I strongly suspect that he is afraid that his anti-war base voters would run for the exits were he to fully espouse his views on American exceptionalism and its’ reliance upon military conflicts abroad. I get the impression that he has consistently voted against those things that looked like the worst financial swamps, those which would inordinately drain the treasury for such things as domestic spending, and voted along to get along with the rest. That he is apparently unaware of the centrality of both Israel and Saudi Arabia to the toxic mess of our foreign adventurism, as Dayen notes with surprise, only shows that it was never really within his bailiwick.
But that is the real issue that a lot of us are awaiting confirmation on. He is right to be worried.
I’m, sorry, this was meant to be in answer to Diptherio’s link, below.
Re: Sanders in the South. We had wanted to go to that, but the venue was in downtown Atlanta; lots of pretty terrifying traffic, confusing one way streets and no (or ferociously expensive) parking. Public transportation is not as useful as it could be, either. I suspect that the comparatively low turnout had a lot to do with that.
No one likes to drive into downtown Atlanta anymore unless your will has been updated.
Is it strictly limited to downtown (traffic that terrifies)? Last visit (October 2014), I-285 was still plenty packed – on a Saturday mid-day. Maybe he draws well enough to take it to the Georgia Dome.
All traffic in Atlanta is now terrifying. :-) You can just about bet that the people who showed were MARTA savvy in-town dwelling professionals and college students, which lets out the vast majority of the metro area, suburbs and exurbs.
The old Davisons’ building is only a few blocks from the Georgia Dome, maybe a mile, but the Dome is just off of I20, so that would have made it a better venue for access and parking even if there was no possibility of him filling it for marketing appeal. The real problem is that it was set for six o’clock, smack in the middle of rush hour. There is just no place where one can get there from here, so to speak; a solid wall of carbon monoxide fumes that lasts hours. If he had held it on a weekend, maybe, but not rush hour on a weekday downtown!
You would just about have to take the day off, drive in the evening before and get a hotel close by.
Sanders is doing an hour ‘meeting’ here in Hattiesburg on Saturday. When I clicked on over to RSVP this afternoon, I found out that I was number twenty to sign up. The meet up is at the semi new Public Library, a nice building that should allow some picturesque photo ops. I have seen no reporting about this event yet in the local media. A quick Google shows the only mentions of the event are on the Sanders campaign blog. This is a college town and a bastion of Rump Democrats. Perhaps that’s why his campaign chose it for an appearance. This entire Southern tour might be a trial balloon. Can he resurrect the old Dixiecrat Labour alliance? More later.
What Sanders said about war. Carly Fiorina sounds like she’s just itching to bomb Moscow. She sounded more unhinged than Ted Cruz, and that’s some feat.
Maybe mild-mannered Ben Carson could pick up the scalpel for a few minutes and try to find poor Scott Walker’s brain. Damm, that’s a dull one.
My first impression of Walker: the sheep who would be king.
I stand by it.
The sheep that would be the top dog?
There’s a wolf hiding beneath that sheep skin.
An antidote to all the Sanders excitement:
Apparently Bernie is also all for sanctioning Russia. There’s certainly nothing out of the ordinary in his foreign policy views.
I understand we don’t let perfection be the enemy of good.
The question is, is healthcare for all (the exceptional citizens here), while not acting like one among the many (nations), or much further off, good?
It’s similar to the question, is creating massive amount of global reserve money, even if it’s for all (the exceptional citizens here) – and not just the banks – while that tsunami drowns all the weak, defenseless (open your financial markets) nations, and we see no inflation here at home because the global money status means we extract resources globally, good?
The Iraq vote was a major turning point and focus of major opposition and support campaigns. We can make judgments on Iraq.Russia is barely in the news beyond “Putin: Super Hitler or mere Pol Pot.” Sanders is still a U.S. Senator, a member of an establishment which should have been abolished in 1865. I believe Oliver Wendell Holmes remarked there would be a 100 way (I forget the number of states at the time) if the Senate alone selected the President. They all have their eye on the White House, and since trouble started in Kiev, there hasn’t bee a word of truth out of the MIC. What is the other position because in the case of Russian relations the GOP and Obama create the narrative of two sides? It doesn’t help Sanders to oppose the President too much. The Obots and would be anti-Hillary supporters from the Obots would lose their minds.
There would be a huge difference between the approach of a man of Sanders’ temperament than Obama. The “What will make Republicans love me” and “bombs away” attitude of Obama aren’t part of the Sanders make up. Here is the key issue, Putin responded to the U.S. sponsored coup in Kiev which Obama has claimed as his own on CNN. Would Sanders sponsor a coup for fun? The simple answer is no. Kissinger seems to think Obama is a lunatic, poking the Russian bear for laughs. With a President more like Sanders this wouldn’t be an Issue.
If Sanders can block Hillary then he can be President all he wants as far as I’m concerned. I’m just saying that his leftie authenticity is a bit suspect. Hedges is right on this imo.
Chinese capital outflows worsen.
Aren’t they enforcing the $50,000 limit for each individual?
And didn’t they make 20,000 officials in one city (don’t know which one, and why only that one) turn over their passports to deter comrades from fleeing China with cash?
I note in this morning’s SCMP that Chinese state firms are to build high speed rail between LA and Las Vegas.
Is that a safe thing to do?
The Chinese actually have some high-speed train lines in operation; does the USA have any at all?
“China has the world’s longest High Speed Railroad network with over 16,000 km (9,900 mi) of track in service as of December 2014[1] which is more than the rest of the world’s high speed rail tracks combined.”
From:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China
Seems to me that those with the experience can do the best (and safest) job, n’est-pas?
Perhaps they have improved since covering up that high speed rail accident not too long ago.
What the US needs is pretty fast, reliable and economical rail, not reward China for cobbling together stolen HSR technology.
I agree w/ the author that In the end, high speed rail is probably the wrong solution path to head down in the US anyway.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/12/high-speed-trains-are-killing-the-european-railway-network.html
Well then, that would be the French and Japanese. Certainly NOT the Chinese.
Going to Vegas is always a gamble.
There are many ways people can smuggle money out of China, trust me. It’s been going on for years, how do you think Chinese expats can afford all that expensive real estate they are snapping up?
I hope they smuggle out genuine antiques and sell them cheaply here to buy their mansions.
Corbyn’s QE for the people.
My suggest for People’s QE:
1. government issues to each taxpayer or citizen a $10,000 refund and borrows it back immediately from each citizen, at 0%.
2. The Fed then buys that government IOU from each citizen, injecting $10,000, per citizen, into the economy, for each to spend.
Here, we achieve ‘money for the people,’ and we also make sure the government (that includes the Pentagon) gets nothing.
Top 10 Zingers of the Second GOP Debate Rolling Stone
Well, its not a zinger, but it is incredible (NOT in a good way)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeb-bush-george-bush_55fa25f2e4b0fde8b0ccf678
Bush then defended his brother by invoking his response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a day during President George W. Bush’s administration on which more than 2,700 people lost their lives.
“As it relates to my brother, there’s one thing I know for sure: He kept us safe,” Bush said. “I don’t know if you remember, Donald — you remember the rubble? You remember the firefighter with his arms around him? He sent a clear signal that the United States would be strong and fight Islamic terrorism, and he did keep us safe.”
Bush’s line is something his brother has also repeated. In his 2009 farewell address, the president said, “There is legitimate debate about many of these decisions, but there can be little debate about the results. America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil.”
===========================================
Well, after being in charge when the biggest terrorist attack ever occurred, I find it astounding that Jebbie can say his brother “kept us safe” – its more accurate to say he failed to keep us safe. Bush’s job was to prevent terrorist attacks to begin with (now, a nuanced view would be it was near the start of the administration, and the NSA, CIA, DoD, FBI, et al all failed, despite the billions upon billions to actually have any thinking in the “intelligence” community, and assess threats….from a man (Osama bin Laden) who had declared war on the US, and the previous attack on the world trade center – but as the republicans refuse to ever do any critical, nuanced thinking, they deserve to take the rap for failure to see the threat, and prevent the attack)
My view is that Jebbie’s “My bother kept us safe” will become his “mission accomplished”
And again, one point about Trump: the fact is, ALL other people (alright – maybe Kasich is an exception) on the stage are WORSE, despite the pundits acting as if these people are more “serious” or knowledgeable – you are talking about people more divorced from reality than Trump.
e.g. Fiorina:
I wouldn’t speak to Vladimir Putin. I would act instead, and do four things immediately,” she said. “Rebuilding the Sixth Fleet, rebuilding the missile defense program, I would begin conducting very aggressive military exercises in the Baltic states and I would arm the Ukrainians.”
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/carly-fiorina-russia-vladimir-putin-energy/2015/06/25/id/652307/
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If that isn’t more dangerous, absurd, and ignorant than ANYTHING Trump has said, I don’t know what is. And what is amazing is that the punditocracy acts as if this woman is smart…
It isn’t ONLY incredibly ignorant, its incredibly dangerous – and talk about pandering…
ITA on Fiorina. WTF? Is she channeling Cheney?
And re: W. He kept Americans ‘safe’ by destabilizing the entire ME and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people over there. Yeah, he deserves a Nobel for that.
‘I would arm the Ukrainians … [and nominate Victoria Nuland as Secretary of State.]’ — Fiorina
This is your Sheldon Adelson Republican Party(TM) speaking.
How many billions in taxpayer dollars would that giveaway entail, Ms. Fiorina? Because Ukraine is dead broke. And how are you going to keep the Ukrainian military (as corrupt an organization as one can find) from turning around and selling the stuff on the open market?
Just how stupid are the people who so desperately want to lord over us? Because I don’t think this is just nonsense for public consumption–I think it’s what these dildos really believe (think would be too strong a work for their mental processes).
Maybe this explains it. Wikipedia:
She sounds just like the spear-rattling Arizona flake.
It used to be that there were 2 layers of opposition to something one is against
1. You are wasting my taxpayer money
2 You are doing something I believe to be wrong.
Now, it is just
1. You are doing something I am against.
Still good, but without the extra margin of safety; though what you are against ma seem good to others.
Does she see Russia from her house? Perhaps she got tired of waking up to shirtless Vlad rassling bears and big cats.
Even more horrifying than the crap that came out of their mouths is the thought (realization?) that there are millions of voting age ‘murkins that believe that crap.
I despair for my country.
“He kept us safe”. That’s amazing. I posted a few days ago that that was the exact quote I got from a nuclear physicist I met who voted for GWB twice when I asked him, Why? I was illustrating how smart people can sometimes be very dumb and was alluding to Carson.
knives are out for Corbyn.
Labour donor threatens to bankroll moderate break-away party and warns Comrade Corbyn will lose three elections
http://tinyurl.com/ozwo26v
Threat of defections for Corbyn as Labour MPs approach Lib Dems
http://tinyurl.com/pqd9bvm
and quote “Shadow cabinet member told Gary Gibbon on #c4news bust-up “will have to be brutal, putting the left in a box for 30 yrs or out of party”
http://tinyurl.com/nkv9o7n
so the new labour hacks saying last mouth that Corbyn was an 80s tribute act was just projection. Its new labour who are doing an SDP 80s tribute act.
The MSM coverage is like a live experiment of the Herman/Chomsky propaganda model
Good. The childish antics of the “New Left” will help put to rest that they are responsible in any form. With the importance of Internet organizing and news service, money’s importance is reduced. Labour needs votes not money, and people haven’t voted for Labour in recent years largely because of money.
Outcry After Muslim Teen Is Detained Over Homemade Clock ABC (furzy mouse)
There was also talk about all this occurring because it was a “hoax” bomb – there are two points that are very important that don’t get addressed:
1. Police, like all bureaucrats, will behave abysmally instead of saying “I’m sorry – I made a mistake” and unlike an error you or I make, people really suffer.
2. The police are so incompetent that they cannot tell a bomb from something that is not a bomb.
http://boingboing.net/2015/09/16/arab-looking-man-of-syrian-des.html
Steve Jobs working with wires, and circuit boards – maybe his first attempt at bomb making, but found it too difficult and decided to make personnel computers instead…
I was reading a right wing site (yeah, I do that) one commentator defended the police by saying that all those wires and stuff sure looked like a bomb to him. The other commentators tore him limb from limb.
Seattle police officer fired over arrest of elderly black man with golf club Reuters
Wow, sometimes good sense prevails….
Well, just because I don’t want to be too polyanna:
Seattle police officer fired over arrest of elderly black man with golf club Reuters
Wow, sometimes good sense prevails….
But:
“Whitlatch said Wingate had swung the club at her before she took him into custody. Nowhere in the roughly seven-minute clip can he be seen swinging the club.”
Really, the police officer should have been prosecuted for making a false report. Again, makes me wonder what percentage of police reports contain significant lies…
Do you think they will put all cops under surveillance?
“Monitor the monitors and guard the guards.”
American Airlines flights grounded
Another IT `glitch’. But not to worry.
The only flights affected are to Dallas, Chicago and Miami, so no big deal.
Mercury retrograde begins today.
“because my equipment is behaving badly.” – You, too? Are you and Lambert being hacked? Or is it just that you both run your electronic slaves into the ground?
Well, when I took my keyboard to the repair shop, they remarked on the transparent patch on the spacebar that my thumb, striking it, had worn it away. And then I called them for a status report, and they asked me how sand had gotten on the inside… Not sure how that happened, unless it’s dust from the street from months working outside. “We’ve never seen anything like it,” they said.
So the short answer for me is “Yes” and I would bet for Yves the same.
Mine just has crumbs in it. They do keep the keys from working right.
We have friendly little ants who have volunteered to clean all the crumbs out for us. They also like the power packs of the portable devices around the house.
My problem is different. An ethernet port on a key piece of equipment crapped out. Weirdly, plugging the ethernet cable directly into the computer did not work initially either (and yes, I tried different ethernet cables), but then it did, making me nervous about my laptop. I have a backup VOIP router but getting my VOIP service to switch over is at least a half-hour nuisance, so I decided to work around it. Miraculously, the seemingly dead port revived, proof of the fact that once in a while, avoidance is the better course of action.
This is enough to make one believe in Mercury retrograde.
Fiorina was well paid to exit her role as CEO. The voting public would do well to pick up on that. Corporate leadership that oversees a giant merger (indeed creating a monolith of a PC company) which would have resulted in job loss without the IT recession.
She got paid, and someone ought to care just how much she did get paid. Never had to work again, either (far as I know she legitimately did not need to work).
Perhaps we first incorporate our nation as a corporation.
Then we can hire the best qualified ex-CEO to run it.
All State Governments are necessarily corporations ( literally, a taking of a “body”, or form, a “corpus” – under the Law, by definition) – while it ought to be obvious that not all corporations are State Governments. At the same time, all corporations, of whatever type they may be, necessarily have “Governments” of their own, as defined by the Laws which bring them into existence.
By the way, what is a “nation “? Is it anything like a “State”? For the latter is familiar to us as a creature of and under the Law, while the former
seems but mere poetry.
That is to say, corporations of any kind whatsoever are simple legal creatures, with nothing mystical about them: while “Nations” are but a set of mutually-exclusive romantic fantasies, the very concept of which has led to great division, strife, and suffering amongst people.
So, we are a simultaneous nation-state-corporation, then.
A nation can be defined as a sufficiently large group of people who share customs, culture and/or ancestry. There may be quite a bit of set theory wrapped up in that, but no poetry.
I should blame the states more than the nations for the division, suffering and strife which they have used strategically against their own and other people, as an apparently necessary expression of the state’s health. Nations are fine when they keep to themselves and don’t lord it over others.