01 September 2010

Another Reason to Fix IP Law

I thought that I did a good job of following patent law, but I was unaware that it is illegal, or more accurately a civil tort, for a company to claim a patent after it has expired.

So, if I were to get patent number 867-5309, someone could sue me for anticompetitive behavior if I were to continue to claim that my product were still protected.

Well, recent court cases have vastly expanded the law, taking this from a $500.00 award to a $500.00 award per offense, which means that it applies to each product shipped:
Marking a tube of toothpaste or paper cup with a patent that is out of date or doesn't exist has been against the law for years. It is considered anticompetitive. Until late last year, the most a violator had to worry about was paying a $500 penalty for misleading the public.

But in December, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington ruled that defendants could be held responsible for up to $500 per offense.
Document

Lawyers for product manufacturers now fear clients are liable for up to $500 for every tube of mascara or box of garbage bags marked with an expired patent—an error that turns out to be quite common.
Now, I'm sure that the holders of patents will be lobbying Congress to fix this.

Call your Representative, and tell him, that absent meaningful change, which rolling back the expansion of patents (discovered genes, species, software, business plans, tax deductions, etc.) that have perverted the purpose of Patents in the past few decades.

Stricter rules on what is, and is not, "obvious", as well as changes to make it harder for patent trolls would help too.

Google Bomb Time

PAYPAL IS THE WORST COMPANY IN THE WORLD

You know, it would help a lot if maybe, since they actually are a bank, that someone would actually regulate them as such.

Your Moment of Zen

Click for full size
He's running on the Bad Hair Party ticket
Well, Jim Trafficant has been certified as a candidate for Congress.

He got enough signatures.

He is running as an independent.

Beam me up Scotty.*

It should make for an interesting campaign in 17th district this year.

*Please, JFGI.

Because Lying to the American Public is Post Partisan

I didn't follow the commentary after Obama's speech, hell, I didn't follow the speech, I was busy driving back home to help out with a family emergency* but Rachel Maddow nails it:
"And to to have in this speech, as combat operations are ending, to have, as you point out Keith, the president not only not addressing the circumstances in which he we went to war, but these kind words for President Bush, describing his commitment to our security, despite the recklessness with which President Bush discarded that national security in favor of this war of choice, which only diminished our security, and is responsible probably for the Afghanistan war still going on today, for the depths of people who have died in Afghanistan after the time, after which that war would have ended had we not gone to Iraq, not to mention all of the people who died in Iraq," Maddow continued.

"To talk about him having a demonstrated commitment to our security, having started this war on the terms on which he started it, -- I mean, it's beyond restraint from President Obama and anyone in the pro-Iraq war, pro-Bush camp who doesn't feel like they've been given the greatest political present they never deserved was not listening to this speech," she concluded.
I understand that Obama is not big into confronting people on wrongdoing, and I understand that he wants to look forward, not back, but he lied.

He sat in the oval office, and he lied through his teeth, because he is such conflict averse that he has to praise George W. Bush.

It wasn't enough to not say anything, he felt compelled to lie to please people who will always hate him.

It's truly pathological.



*Wife and kids are fine, but there are some health issues amongst the extended family.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!?

Some guy straps suspicious canisters to his chest and takes hostages at the headquarters for the Discovery Channel in Silver Spring, MD, because he does not like their programming?

The police fatally shot him, which is an unsurprising development.

Even less surprising is that his hosting service pulled his web page, (good) and replaced it with an add for their services (tacky).

There is a lot of "te crazy" out there this summer.

31 August 2010

Not Enough Bullets: CEO Pay Disclosure Edition


What Cee Lo Green Said (NSFW)
It looks like the overpaid CEOs have decided that telling shareholders just how overpaid they are is an unreasonable burden:
US companies face a “logistical nightmare” from a new rule forcing them to disclose the ratio between their chief executive’s pay package and that of the typical employee, lawyers have warned.

The mandatory disclosure will provide ammunition for activists seeking to target perceived examples of excessive pay and perks. The law taps into public anger at the increasing disparity between the faltering incomes of middle America and the largely recession-proof multimillion-dollar remuneration of the typical corporate chief.

S&P 500 chief executives last year received median pay packages of $7.5m, according to executive compensation research firm Equilar. By comparison, official statistics show the average private sector employee was paid just over $40,000.
If you cannot determine the number of employees, and your total payroll (total payroll $/number of employees=average pay) in under 10 minutes, then you aren't doing your f^%$ing job.

Yes, I know that the actual number is the median salary, so that should only take 15 minutes.

The real problem is not the ratio, it's that they don't want the shareholders, who, you know, actually own the damn company, to know how much they are getting paid.

It's f%$#s like this that make me say to people, "If you plan on going postal, take out upper management first."

It's Over in Alaska

Murkowski has conceded.

This actually improves the chances of the Democratic candidate, Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams, from "snowballs chance in hell" to long shot candidate.

Your Moment of Geek

How a manual transmission works:



H/t The World of Technology.

Sometimes Someone Just Nails It

Case in point, whoever coined the term "Whitestock" for the Glenn Beck hate-a-thong, and Driftglass for riffing on the Woodstock logo.

Truth be told, not only did I miss the broadcast of Whitestock, but I am trying to avoid all rebroadcasts and Youtubes of same.

Mission Accomplished Lite

I listened to the speech on the road (long story), so I had to pay attention, as opposed to taking notes, and what I discovered was that I really don't like listening to him, while he proclaims that maintenance of tens of thousands of troops, and permanent and extensive bases, somehow mean that the war is over.

Meh.

30 August 2010

Someone Has a Clue

Specifically, Laura Tyson, who is calling for another round of stimulus.

Of course, you can find a lot of people calling for another round of stimulus, but what makes Ms. Tyson different from people like Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman, and Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is the fact that people at the White House actually listen to her, she is a member of the White House's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Of course, that paragraph raises a question for me: Why is the White House studiously freezing out people like Nobel Prize winning economists Krugman and Stiglitz?

It would seem to me that these are the sort of people one should listen to.

The Term is Ethnic Cleansing


2 Words Left Unsaid
Rachel Maddow talks about the housing situation in New Orleans, and makes the point that the elimination of much of the subsidized housing for the poor was intended to reduce the availability of housing for the poor, and generally black, residents of the Crescent City.

John Aravosis references Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine," but there is a far uglier term for this: Ethnic cleansing.

Economics Update

The lede has to be the ADP report showing that private employers cut 10,000 jobs in August.

Obviously, we will get the official numbers from the Feds on Friday.

On the other hand, manufacturing grew more than expected in August.

It's kind of a mixed bag news day, with consumer spending increasing, but real incomes fell for the first time in over 6 months and the Conference Board's consumer confidence beat estimates.

I'm not sure exactly what they are spending money on though, because car sales had the weakest August in 27 years, which would imply an aversion to big ticket purchases.

In real estate, the Case-Shiller home price index rose in June, though that's probably more a result of the now-expired tax credit than anything else, mortgage applications rose slightly, though, unsurprisingly, more so for refinance than it did for home purchases, and construction spending was significantly lower than estimates.

In the "these are real lives that are being f%$#ed with" category, bankruptcy filings fell in August, though they still remain at a near 5 years high.

Finally, Canada's economy slowed significantly in the 2nd quarter.

Domestic Terrorism

Some terrorist torched construction equipment at the sight of the future mosque in Murfreesboro, TN, and when parishioners came by to survey the damage, someone took shots at them.

What should happen right now is that the FBI and ATF should flooding the zone and go full patriot act on anyone they catch.

It's what Clinton should have done on the abortion clinic bombers who later became assassins, because arresting white folks for terrorism is icky, and besides, Barack Obama is afraid that people will think that he is a Muslim if he goes after white terrorists.

Doubling Down on the Stupid

It's one of Barack Obama's Stupid Minions™, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said on the Sunday talk shows that a renewal of the new home buyer tax credit might be coming back.

This is unbelievably stupid on a number of levels. First people who are considering buying homes will hold off, waiting for the tax credit, second, it's really bad policy, that cost taxpayers something like $80K for each additional home sold.

Now there have been tepid denials from HUD, but this sort of crap should not be happening.

Great Googly Moogly.

H/t Atrios.

We Are F%$#ing Doomed


Thanks, Barry!
The latest Gallup poll is out with the generic Congressional ballot, and Republicans have a 10% lead, the highest since Gallup started running this poll in 1942!

You know, continuing with Bush's Kangaroo courts and surveillance state, selling out homeowners to banks, and ranting against your party are working really well, aren't they?

If we don't end up with Boehner as speaker, I would be very surprised.

[on edit]

It's worse than I thought. It's not a daily tracking pool, it's a weekly.

At this rate, we will lose the Senate too.

The Best Critique, and the Best Path Forward, I've Yet Seen on Obama

Ian Welsh has a must read essay.

What he suggests that Obama could have done without having to consult Congress at all:
  • Start negotiations with a maximalist position, as opposed the current mode of giving the store away before anyone sits down.
  • Ending the Don't Ask, Don't Tell discharges
  • Not made the HAMP a fraud perpetrated against desperate home owners.
  • Halting the Kangaroo courts at Gitmo.
  • Not starting the cat food commission after Congress voted it down.
Going forward, he suggests that Obama use the authority granted him under the Federal Reserve act, which allows him to remove governors for cause and recess appoint their replacements, and take the the distressed debt that the FED holds, and sell it.

This would force the banks to mark their own assets to the now established market value, which makes them insolvent, and which would mean that FDIC and related agencies could nationalize them.

I like this last one, but it ain't never gonna happen.

Go read the article though, it's very good.

29 August 2010

Matt Taibbi has a Point

I would have invoked Der Stürmer, and encouraged invocations of Godwin's law, but Matt Taibbi is right, Fox News, and their fellow travellers are much closer to Radio Rwanda than they are to Julius Streicher's oervre:
A lot of Tea Party anger is driven by real local issues -- where I live in central Jersey, for instance, there are a lot of pissed-off white people crowing over a nutty state supreme court case in which a Central American drunk driver got off because cops didn't explain the consequences of refusing a breathalyzer in his native Spanish. But without the constant reinforcement of national 24-hour media, which has taken these isolated cases and presented them as a coast-to-coast massive conspiracy, the rage over stories like this would never reach the levels we're seeing.

In fact if you follow Fox News and the Limbaugh/Hannity afternoon radio crew, this summer’s blowout has almost seemed like an intentional echo of the notorious Radio Rwanda broadcasts “warning” Hutus that they were about to be attacked and killed by conspiring Tutsis, broadcasts that led to massacres of Tutsis by Hutus acting in “self-defense.” A sample of some of the stuff we’ve seen and heard on the air this year:
  • On July 12, Glenn Beck implied that the Obama government was going to aid the New Black Panther Party in starting a race war, with the ultimate aim of killing white babies. "They want a race war. We must be peaceful people. They are going to poke, and poke, and poke, and our government is going to stand by and let them do it." He also said that "we must take the role of Martin Luther King, because I do not believe that Martin Luther King believed in, 'Kill all white babies.'"
  • CNN contributor and Redstate.com writer Erick Erickson, on the Panther mess: "Republican candidates nationwide should seize on this issue. The Democrats are giving a pass to radicals who advocate killing white kids in the name of racial justice and who try to block voters from the polls."
  • On July 6, the Washington Times columnist J. Christian Adams wrote an editorial insisting that "top [Obama] appointees have allowed and even encouraged race-based enforcement as either tacit or open policy," marking one of what would become many assertions by commentators that the Obama administration was no longer interested in protecting the rights of white people. "The Bush Civil Rights Division was willing to protect all Americans from racial discrimination,” Adams wrote. “During the Obama years, the Holder years, only some Americans will be protected."
  • July 12: Rush Limbaugh says Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder “protect and represent” the New Black Panther party.
  • July 28: Rush says Supreme Court decision on 1070 strips Arizonans of their rights to defend themselves against an “invasion”: "I guess the judge is saying it's not in the public interest for Arizona to try to defend itself from an invasion. I don't know how you look at this with any sort of common sense and come to the ruling this woman came to.” That same day, Rush says this: "Muslim terrorists are going to have a field day in Arizona. You cannot ask them where they're from. You cannot even act like we know where they're from. You cannot ask them for their papers. We can ask you for yours. Not them."
  • July 29: The Washington Times asks “Should Arizona Secede?” and says the Supreme Court "is unilaterally disarming the people of Arizona in the face of a dangerous enemy” with the aim of creating a “socialist superstate.” The paper writes: "The choice is becoming starkly apparent: devolution or dissolution."
  • July 29, Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy continues the Radio Rwanda theme, saying, "If the feds won't protect the people and Governor Brewer can't protect her citizens, what are the people of Arizona supposed to do?"
There’s nothing in the world more tired than a progressive blogger like me flipping out over the latest idiocies emanating from the Fox News crowd. But this summer’s media hate-fest is different than anything we’ve seen before. What we’re watching is a calculated campaign to demonize blacks, Mexicans, and gays and convince a plurality of economically-depressed white voters that they are under imminent legal and perhaps even physical attack by a conspiracy of leftist nonwhites. They’re telling these people that their government is illegitimate and criminal and unironically urging secession and revolution.
(emphasis mine)

There are some deeply evil people out there who are looking to leverage bigotry, racism, and fear for their own profit and power.

Taibbi calls for a boycott, saying that he'd, "Like to see at least one firm get blown out of business as a consequence of financially supporting the network that is telling America that its black president wants to kill white babies," but he misses a part of the dynamic with his call to action: It isn't that Fox News, and probably the rest of the media outlets, are driven by cynical economic or political goals, it's that many of them, are bed wetting cowards like Roger Ailes, and they truly live their lives in terror.

As to the politicians stoking this matter, it's pretty clear that they (Newt) are looking at this through the prism of political advantage though.

I won't muse on the mental processes of Sarah Palin, that way lies me huddled on the floor, covered in mayonnaise, and gibbering, "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"

A True American Hero

Colonel Lawrence Sellin, US Army Reserve, who published a blistering critique of the "PowerPoint Ranger" culture within the military in Afghanistan, and was then promptly fired and kicked out of Afghanistan.

This is not surprising. When one publishes an OP/Ed which contains gems such as this:
For headquarters staff, war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information. Even one tiny flaw in a slide can halt a general's thought processes as abruptly as a computer system's blue screen of death.
It ain't good for career prospects.

In fact, the phrase, "Cognitively Challenged Generals," used in a publicly published opinion piece, is pretty much a letter of resignation for any member of the military.

Still, it mirrors my experience with FCS, were the generals seemed tremendously concerned about the consistency of colors between variants of the manned ground vehicle in the presentations.

If I were SedDef, I would be tempted to place an immediate and absolute ban on the software.

28 August 2010

Anachronisms in Defense Promotional Videos

Lockheed has a video pushing its VTOL Advanced Reconnaissance Insertion Organic Unmanned System (VARIOUS) fan in wing UAV.

It's OK defense video pr0n, but what caught my eye were the tanks at about 1:22 in the video.

They are T-34 tanks, and I actually think that they are the T-34/76 variant, which ceased production around 1944, and has been out of service for decades, though could could see T-34/85s in service in Bosnia in the 1990s.




H/t The DEW Line.

The Gang That Can 't Shoot Straight: Semi-Stealthy Fighter Edition

Because of supply chain issues, and because the assembly line is being constantly raided to keep the test fleet flying, Lockheed Martin is having to partially dissemble the wing on the F-35 to install components out of sequence:
Lockheed Martin has pushed back the resolution of a manufacturing problem plaguing F-35 Joint Strike Fighter final assembly schedules, but key suppliers are making progress building components as the programme prepares for the next leap in production orders.

In October 2009 government audit reports showed that Lockheed expected to eliminate the "wing-at-mate overlap" problem for the F-35's four-piece wing with final assembly of BF-13, the thirteenth short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) in production.

The overlap means that key parts are delivered after the wing has entered final assembly, requiring workers to partially disassemble the structure.

The Defense Contracts Management Agency (DCMA) identified the resulting delays and inefficiency in the wing manufacturing process as one of the key drivers for production delays ranging from four to six months during the first two years of low-rate initial production (LRIP).
Your tax dollars at work.

A Clusterf%$# Deferred

The Army's Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) competition has been canceled
The Army has canceled the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) solicitation because the service decided, after an internal and external review, that the current Requests for Proposal (RFP) do not accurately reflect Army requirements and a changing acquisition strategy, sources tell us.

A contract for the new vehicle was very close to being awarded, we’re told. A restart of the GCV competition is expected fairly soon, a new RFP may be out within 60 days, and the Army intends to stay within the original seven year timeline to field a new vehicle.
Unsurprising.

When you have a series of requirements that delivers you a proposal for an unwieldy and ruinously expensive 70 ton behemoth, about the same weight as an M-1 Tank, something is stunningly wrong.

27 August 2010

This is a Great Musical F%$# You

And completely not safe for work.



I guess you would call what Cee Lo Green is doing here R&B, and while I am not an avid follower of the genre, I rather like this.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!!

But no bank failures, after 8 last week.

Not sure what is going on, but here is the full FDIC list and the full NCUA list of closures for the year

So, here is the graph pr0n with trendline (FDIC only):



I would note that are now at the point where the utility of the least squares trendline is diminishing, but I'm keeping it here for historical purposes.

Obama Throws the Environmental Movement Under the Bus

This is a distressingly familiar refrain
I'm sure that there are a lot of "eleventy dimensional chess" folks out there, but when you look at Obama's record, both in terms of his support for coal and for his full throated endorsement of the fiction that is "clean coal," the fact that the administration filed an brief urging the Supreme Court overrule the appellate court decision does not surprise me one bit:
The Obama administration has urged the Supreme Court to toss out an appeals court decision that would allow lawsuits against major emitters for their contributions to global warming, stunning environmentalists who see the case as a powerful prod on climate change.

In the case, AEP v. Connecticut, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a coalition of states, environmental groups and New York City. The decision, handed down last year, said they could proceed with a lawsuit that seeks to force several of the nation's largest coal-fired utilities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

……

In a brief (pdf) filed yesterday on behalf of the Tennessee Valley Authority, acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal agreed with the defendants, saying that U.S. EPA's newly finalized regulations on greenhouse gases have displaced that type of common-law claim.

……

Matt Pawa, an attorney representing plaintiffs in the case, said he and his colleagues expected the White House to stay out of the matter. During a meeting with more than 30 administration lawyers at the solicitor general's office on June 24, it seemed they had "a lot of friends in the room," he said.

"We feel stabbed in the back," Pawa said. "This was really a dastardly move by an administration that said it was a friend of the environment. With friends like this, who needs enemies?"
I would also note that the regulations that the Solicitor General is touting, which he says should preempt this suit, only applies to new power plants, and these new plants are not the subject of the nuisance suit.

I suppose that a lot of folks will blame Rahm, who has a history of sucking up to miscreant industries for campaign cash, but remember, Obama knows who and what Rahm is, and hired him. Remember, the Cossacks work for the Czar.


As gay activist Joe Sudbay noted at Americablog:
Welcome to our world.

Now, what these environmentalists don’t understand — yet — is that Team Obama isn’t really on their side. Not in the way they think, anyway. It’s a tough lesson and hard to swallow. The gays learned it early on, between Rick Warren and the DOMA brief.

(Mr. Pawa and Mr. Bookbinder should be prepared. They’ll see a lot of their colleagues in the environmental movement make excuses and apologize for what the Obama administration did.)
If the Obama were serious about carbon emission regulation, then it should see this suit would be a wonderful lever to get Congress to move on comprehensive legislation.

The only two justifications for this brief are that they aren't serious, or, once again, they are trying to expand the reach of the executive branch.

Economics Update

Well, they just revised the 2nd quarter GDP, and it went from an initial reading of 2.4% to a 1.6%, though it should be noted that a lot of this was driven by a surge in imports.

Still, this is not an economy expanding, first the US is one of the few nations on earth that applies hedonic adjustments to GDP, and the rate does not even cover growth in population.

But the banks can meet their bonus payments, and who cares about ordinary people.

Well maybe the people who sell stuff to, or make stuff for, ordinary people might care, because the ordinary people, as reported by the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's Surveys of Consumers, are not in a spending mood:, as consumer sentiment fell again.

<Facepalm>

Click for full size

A better recruiting tool Osama never had
It appears that there is a company that carts around decommissioned missiles and jet cockpits to hospitals and the like, in order to amuse the children.

They actually have filed for a patent for their business model, "Business Promotion Via Mobile Interactive Aviation Museum," yet another indication that our IP system is badly out of whack.

Of course, that's just one bad patent out of hundreds that are granted every month by the over worked USPTO, which would ordinarily not merit much comment.

What does merit comment is the fact that they are donating dummy missiles for demonstrations that the bigots opposing the 51 Park Islamic center are holding.

Not Everyone On The Daily Show Gets Hammered

Case in point, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Basically, I think that the strategy to succeed here is not to be an evil lying sack of sh%$.

26 August 2010

Deep Thought

If you are a, "whacko, my parents are first cousins, X-Files wannabe, black helicopter, tinfoil hat wearing, stupid, dim-witted, thinks pro wrestling is real," lunatic,* as well as a raving bigot, it's probably not a good idea to allow yourself to be interviewed by a The Daily Show correspondent:



*Sorry, I think that I just channeled the comedian Denis Leary.

What Barack Obama Wants

So, after Alan Simpson has repeatedly shown an implacable hostility to Social Security spanning decades, and referred to every person in the us as freeloaders sucking at the tits of society, the Obama administration has decided to double down on this biased nutjob:
But at the White House, Jennifer Psaki, the deputy communications director, said, “Alan Simpson has apologized and while we regret and do not condone his comments, we accept his apology and he will continue to serve.”
The only reason to appoint him in the first place, and the only reason to keep him on after this incident is because Barack Obama wants, and, based on his behavior, what he wants is to gut Social Security.

Your Blago Update

The Feds have dismissed charges against his brother Robert, but they will retry Rod early next year.

Se we get to see more of the hair. I and I'll have to keep spelling his f%$#ing name.

Economics Update

It's jobless Thursday, and initial claims fell back to what seems to be its sweet-spot, 473,000, with the less volatile 4-week moving average rising by 3250 to 486,750, and continuing claims falling by 62,000 to 4.46 million, though emergency claims, which are not counted as continuing, rose by 268,000 to 5.86 million, so we are still seeing a jobless non-recovery, with initial claims about 100,000 more than what would be required for a recovery in the job market.

In real estate, foreclosures fell, but delinquencies rose in the 2nd quarter, which likely indicates that people are still doing worse, but the various moratoria, as well as what Atrios accurately calls the, "Treasury's predatory lending program," aka HAMP, is pushing the problem down the road.

Oh, and the Dow is below 10K again, which means nothing in the greater scheme of things.

25 August 2010

The Definitive Word on Dr. Laura

Courtesy of The Daily Show:



Funniest screen crawl ever!

SEC Gives (some) Shareholders the Right to Run a Slate of Directors

The 3-2 vote in favor of a rule allowing for shareholder nominations of directors is a good start, but as it exists now, it is very weak tea:
Shareholders won more power on Wednesday to shake up corporate boards in the United States after the financial crisis exposed weaknesses in how companies were managed.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted 3-2 to adopt a rule that gives shareholders an easier way to nominate company directors.

Activist shareholders who want more say on how companies are run have long sought the ability to place their nominees' names on company proxy statements.
In theory this is a good reform, but in practice, it is way too restrictive:
Under the rule, shareholders must hold at least 3 percent of the company's stock for at least three years to nominate directors. Shareholders must hold the stock until the date of the meeting at which director elections are held. Shareholders would be allowed to nominate up to 25 percent of companies' boards. They would not be allowed to nominate a director if their intent were to take over or change control of the company.

Companies with less than $75 million in market capitalization would get a three-year delay in compliance, to give the SEC time to study implementation in larger companies and make adjustments, if necessary.
3% and 3 years is way to high a hurdle.

At 3% you are talking institutional investors, and probably at a ½ dozen of them to reach the threshold, and then all of them would be required to have held the stock for 3 years.

Not gonna happen, but still, the 2 'Phants on the panel are squealing like stuck pigs about this.

Economics Update

Yep, and the news is not any improvement over yesterday.

New home sales came out today for July, and they hit a 40-year low, and the price of a new home fell to a 7 year low.

When juxtaposed with the fact that , you can see how things get ugly.

And the consumer is continuing to deleverage, which is one reason why consumer credit card debt has fallen to an 8 year low, though part of this is the 2005 bankruptcy laws, which is driving people to default on their mortgages in favor of paying down credit card debt:
Changes to the US bankruptcy code, enacted in 2005, are coming back to haunt banks, according to Yra Harris, a veteran trader at Praxis Trading.

Harris told CNBC that banks lobbied hard for changes to the bankruptcy code, but the legislation is now having the effect of encouraging consumers to do all they can to pay down their credit cards, while leaving their mortgage payments on the backburner.
Karma is a bitch.

In many states, mortgages are non-recourse loans, so once they have the house, they cannot go after the consumer, while in every state, credit card companies can attach wages, etc., so, rather unsurprisingly, consumers are running the numbers and making their choices.

Said consumers are not spending.

I'm beginning to think that absent a 20-40% devaluation in the value of the US dollar, we won't be out of this mess for a decade or more.

Some Meta on Comments

I've been having intermittent problems with comments not showing up on my "recent comments" widget, and I thought that it was some sort of problem with the hand off between JS-Kit comment system and blogger.

It turns out that it wasn't.

Blogger introduced an anti-spam system for their comments, basically diverts some comments to the spam folder.

Unfortunately, the filters catch about ½ of the comments, they seem to favor shorter comments.

In any case, I've added a tab to my Firefox start with the spam box, so any comment you make should show up in 24 hours, 48 on weekends.

I'm sure that I'll appreciate the spam filtering once I get enough readers to attract spammers, but right now it's a pain.

Tom Delay to Be Tried for Corruption in Austin

He had asked for a change of venue, on the grounds that Austin was "too liberal,"but the judge decided that he could have a fair trial in Travis County, and ruled against moving the trial.

Honestly, thee did not pass the laugh test, but I understand why the defense tried it, it loses them nothing if they lose.

You move a trial when excessive pre-trial publicity taints the jury pool, not because they voted for the other party, and Delay's corruption got no more coverage in Austin than it did anywhere else.

I'm not sure how this will turn out, but according to the good folks at Talk Left, they are not particularly impressed with Travis County DA (TX law has most corruption prosecutions being conducted by the DA for the Austin area), Donnie Earle, and Delay's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, is very good.

Presumption of innocence be damned, this is a man well deserving of a couple of decades of jail time.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!?

First, I hear news that some guy flipped out and allegedly stabbed, Ahmed Sharif, a cabbie in New York because the drive was Muslim, and now we discover that this guy worked for a multicultural organization promoting peace and tolerance:
As you've seen in our earlier reports, we have what appears to be a straight-up hate crime, in which an NYC cabbie picks up a fare, passenger asks him if he's Muslim and then stabs him in the neck. The NYPD says Michael Enright, 21, is going to be charged with 2nd degree attempted murder and a hate crime. (See the statement from the victim here.)

Only then things get a little weird. Enright is not who you'd expect. He's a film student who'd recently been either volunteering for or employed by Intersection International, a multifaith and multicultural effort which seeks to promote justice and peace. And the group has very publicly come out in favor of the Cordoba House project, what opponents call the "Ground Zero Mosque."

Needless to say, that's a bit difficult to figure.
This is just freaky, and I just don't get it, though reports indicate that a significant amount of alcohol was involved.

But if you are talking about this tomorrow, note that the "New York cabbie" has a name, Ahmed Sharif, and remember his name.

A Bit of History

This is an anti-Fascist film from 1947 or so produced by the War Department.

The echos are chilling.

It's well worth the 17:25 to watch it.

Remember That Alan Simpson Was Always Thus, and Obama Picked Him

So, a few weeks back, Anal Alan Simpson, the co-chair of Barack Obama's so called "Cat Food Commission," ostensibly charged with reducing the deficit, but in reality given a mandate to trim Social Security, hence leaving seniors surviving on cat food,* was referring to recipients of the pension program as "Lesser People," in society.

That was pretty offensive, but Barack Obama knows his way around Washington, and he knows who and what Alan Simpson is, and so I figured that he selected him to co-chair the committee because he wants to cut Social Security.

Today however, I look back at that truly repugnant statement by former Senator Simpson as a high water mark on his civility, because in an email exchange with the president of the Older Woman's League in which he ridiculed her organization and its membership, and described Social Security as a, "Milk Cow with 310 Million Tits."

By this, he means that he thinks that every single American who might be eligible for the program is in his mind a moocher.

Of course, we now see the non-apology apology:
I can see that my remarks have caused you anguish, and that was not my intention. I certainly did not intend to diminish your hard work for the Older Women's League. I know you care deeply about strengthening Social Security, and so do I, just as deeply. I remember your testimony at our public hearing in June about the importance of retirement security for women. Over the last 40 years, I have had my size 15 feet in my mouth a time or two. To quote my old friend and colleague, Senator Lloyd Bentsen, when I make a mistake, "It's a doozy!"
You see, it's not his fault, it's her fault for being offended, and Simpson is just a good old boy who sometimes misspeaks.

You now have a number of advocacy groups calling for his resignation, saying, with a lot of justification, that this shows that Simpson has already pre-decided this matter, while the AARP has indirectly done so as well:
The vast majority of the 310 million Americans he insulted - particularly 156 million women and younger Americans for whom the traditional pension will be a relic of history - don't have access to the type of traditional pension retirement security that Sen. Simpson has from his decades in Congress. Perhaps that's why his comments demonstrate a woeful disconnect from or disinterest in the challenges facing many American families for whom Social Security is literally a lifeline.

"Sen. Simpson's most recent departure from reality would be easy to dismiss if not for his position co-leading a Presidential commission that will likely recommend changes to Social Security. Sen. Simpson's remarks not only cross the line of good judgment, but they undermine the serious work of the commission and give us little confidence the commission can fairly look at important programs such as Social Security."
I am not going to join into any dead pool on Simpson. He's going to stay on the board, because Barack Obama wants him on the board, and given his long history on the social safety net, the only reason that Barack Obama wanted him is because he wants to gut the program.

Expect the deficit commission to propose a few token taxes, no defense cuts, and draconian cuts to programs that help the needy, because that's how the White House rolls.

*In the interest of health, I would suggest that people eat dog food, and not cat food. Cats because they are one of the few true carnivores, do not need the complex carbohydrates and fats that people, and dogs do. As such, dog food is better for you than cat food because it provides carbs and essential fatty acids. A dog can go blind if it is fed on cat food, but a cat lives just fine on dog food. The phenomenon is known as rabbit starvation.