Did Iran's Nuke Plans change Russia's mind?

Iran tested advanced nuclear warhead design – secret report
Exclusive: Watchdog fears Tehran has key component to put bombs in missiles

The UN's nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian has learned.

The very existence of the technology, known as a "two-point implosion" device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as "breathtaking" and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.

The sophisticated technology, once mastered, allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads than older models. It reduces the diameter of a warhead and makes it easier to put a nuclear warhead on a missile.

Documentation referring to experiments testing a two-point detonation design are part of the evidence of nuclear weaponisation gathered by the IAEA and presented to Iran for its response. [...]

Such warheads could be used on missiles they already have, and would greatly increase their ability to devastate with EMP attacks, without a single bomb hitting the ground.

Perhaps it's no coincidence that Russia is suddenly more supportive of sanctions:

Russia changes tune, may back sanctions on Iran

Russia has spoken out more strongly than ever against Iran, warning that it may consider tougher sanctions against the country should it fail to accept a Western-backed nuclear proposal.

In an interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel on Saturday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that, much to his reluctance, he would be forced to sign off on US-led sanctions on Iran.

"I do not want that all this ends up with the adopting of international sanctions because sanctions, as a rule, lead in a complex and dangerous direction," AFP quoted Medvedev as saying. [...]

They are within striking distance. But when you include missiles launched from ships, and EMP attacks as the goal, then most of the worlds populations are within striking distance.
     

FireFox: more vulnerable, or just a bigger target?

Firefox Tops Vulnerability List
New study places Firefox at the top of vulnerability list for for the first half of 2009.

Application security vendor Cenzic today released its security trends report for the first half of 2009 application. In it, Cenzic claims that the Mozilla's Firefox browser led the field of Web browsers in terms of total vulnerabilities.

According to Cenzic, Firefox accounted for 44 percent of all browser vulnerabilities reported in the first half of 2009. In contrast, Apple's Safari had 35 percent of all reported browser vulnerability, Microsoft's Internet Explorer was third at 15 percent and Opera had just six percent share.

The 2009 figures stand in contrast to Cenzic's Q3/Q4 2008 report, where IE accounted for 43 percent of all reported Web browser vulnerabilities and Firefox followed closely at 39 percent.

As to why Firefox's numbers were so high, Cenzic has a few ideas.

"It's a combination of different things," Lars Ewe, CTO of Cenzic, told InternetNews.com. "They've gotten more traction as a browser, which is good for them and the more you get used the more exposure you have. As well a fair amount of the vulnerabilities have come by way of plug-ins."

[...]

Though Firefox had the highest number of vulnerabilities, that doesn't necessarily mean that Firefox users were more vulnerable. [...]

It goes on to explain how the study was done, what they found and what it actually means. Higher usage means more vulnerabilities found more quickly. But how quickly the vulnerabilities are patched also counts toward the browsers overall security. I'm not worried about Firefox, I just find the report interesting.
     

PelosiCare and the Amercian Constitution

What Constitution?

[...] The linked editorial touches on the legal argument with respect to the mandated purchase of insurance. I can’t fully comprehend the the gory details (I’m not a lawyer), but you see the unprecedented nature of the intrusion. Under what other circumstances do you become a criminal just for existing and failing to purchase a mandated item? By way of example, you’re compelled (by your state) to buy car insurance… but you made the choice to buy a car. Obviously you’re compelled to pay taxes…but then, this isn’t a tax; Obama promised not to tax you, so it can’t be a tax.

[...]

My main objection to health control is fear of the life-and-death power that government will ultimately hold over individual citizens, as well as looming national bankruptcy. Our Constitution was designed to protect us from such government overreach and centralization of power.

Precisely. PelosiCare is unconstitutional, AND unsustainable. What is the point, unless you want to ruin out current system of government and economics, and replace them with... something else?

SO ... SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT PELOSICARE

[...] Pelosi's bill contains $250 billion dollars in deficit spending ... oh, but wait. They're voting on that separately so that you can't say the deficit spending is part of Pelosi's bill. Are you following this?

You do know that you'll start paying the taxes immediately --- but that you won't start reaping the benefits for another four years or so, don't you? Quite the con there. They say that PelosiCare will only cost $850+ trillion dollars over the first ten years ... but don't tell you will only receive benefits for six out of those ten years. Wait till the next 10 years hits you in the can.

Thus far nobody has explained where in our Constitution it gives the Imperial Federal Government the power to jail someone for a period of five years for failing to purchase a health insurance policy. But what the hell does Nancy Pelosi care about our Constitution, anyway? [...]

Is there hope, as this bill moves to the Senate? I think so. Consider:

Mutiny in Scrutiny?

[...] Greater scrutiny will not help the Democrats' efforts. In truth, their hopes for passage largely hinge on successfully hiding two plain facts from the voters: One, the House Republicans and the Congressional Budget Office have now shown that a bill costing $61 billion can lower Americans' insurance premiums, while bills costing $1.7 trillion cannot (and instead would raise them substantially). Two, the Democrats' plans would be paid for only if they follow through on plans to siphon hundreds of billions of dollars out of already-barely-solvent Medicare, and to do so just in time for the baby boomers' retirement.

Given the magnitude of the challenge of continuing to hide these plain facts from an increasingly attentive citizenry, the Democratic health-care train has a very bumpy ride ahead — as it rolls into the chamber that the American Founders thought from the beginning would ultimately decide our fate: the Senate.

61 billion and lower premiums, versus 1.7 TRILLION and higher premiums? Which one do you think the majority of Americans would prefer?

I live in hope. And intend to do what I can to insure that saner minds in the Senate prevail.

     

How much longer will our Republic last?

How committed is the Obama Administration to supporting Free Speech and upholding the American Constitution? It's awful to even have to ask that, but actions indicate we must:

Caesar Obama

The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, provoked ridicule when he said last week that "Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar." He didn't mean that Barack Obama is a literary titan who doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus while petty men like Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves. But what he did mean, while no less fatuous, is also disquieting in its implications: for the first time, the United States of America has a president whose supporters talk about him in the same effusive and worshipful tones usually reserved for the likes of Stalin, Mao, and Kim Jong Il.

[...]

At a time when the Obama Administration is relentlessly demonizing dissenting voices and manifesting a shaky (at best) commitment to the freedom of speech, this is hardly a reassuring message to send. It demonstrates once again this Administration’s utter tone deafness and apparent indifference to genuine concerns about its commitment to core principles of the U.S. Constitution – witness Nancy Pelosi’s incredulous response of “are you serious?” to a questioner who asked her about the Constitutionality of nationalizing health care. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has declared her opposition to attempts at the United Nations to criminalize “defamation of religions” – that is, to make it illegal to speak about the motives and goals of Islamic jihad terrorists. Yet the Obama Administration is sending decidedly mixed signals about its commitment to free speech. Several weeks ago the Obama Administration actually co-sponsored an anti-free speech resolution at the United Nations. Approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council on October 2, the resolution, cosponsored by the U.S. and Egypt, calls on states to condemn and criminalize “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”

Yet “incitement” and “hatred” are in the eye of the beholder — or more precisely, in the eye of those who make such determinations. The powerful can decide to silence the powerless by classifying their views as “hate speech.” And now the President of the United States has given his imprimatur to this tyranny. [...]

As our government continues to assume more and more powers and controls that it has been previously denied, and it's members fail to uphold the Constitution they have sworn to honor and defend, we must ask, where is this going, and where will this power-grab stop? WILL it stop?

The Cold War Never Ended

It is now almost twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. But did it really end, and did we win it? Look at the situation in Europe today, where many of the former Communist countries in the eastern half of Europe are freer and safer than many of those in the western half of Europe. Instead of an Iron Curtain we now have an Iron Veil of Multiculturalism, and Western Europe is on the wrong side of it this time around. Did we trade the USSR for the EUSSR? If we really "beat" Marxism, how come Marxists and Leftists of all stripes virtually control Western media and academia a generation later, and why does the USA have a Marxist-inspired President Obama? [...]

Marxist ideology never left us. It just goes under different names and uses different methods now. Including "Hope and Change", and an increasingly Imperial US Congress.


Also see:

Dems "Not concerned" about the Constitution?
     

Czech President caves, signs Lisbon Treaty

He was the last hold out, but the Czech President caved in to the pressure being put upon him:

Leviathan Is Born: The Annexation of Europe by Brussels

On November 3rd 2009, at 3 pm local time, the Czech Republic ceased to exist as a sovereign state when Vaclav Klaus, its president, put his signature under the Treaty of Lisbon. The Czech Republic was the last of the 27 member states of the European Union to ratify the treaty which turns the EU into a genuine state to which it members states are subservient.

Klaus had delayed signing the document for as long as he could.

[...]

Now, with Mr. Klaus’s signature, the game has drawn to its close and a treaty, so despised by the people that it was never put to them, has turned 500 million Europeans into citizens of a genuine supranational European State which is empowered to act as a State vis-à-vis other States and its own citizens. The EU will have its own President, Foreign Minister, diplomatic corps and Public Prosecutor. Henceforward, the only remaining sovereign power of any significance in Europe is Russia. Apart from Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, the EU leviathan has a grip on every other nation, whose national parliaments are, in accordance with the Lisbon Treaty, obliged to “contribute actively to the good functioning of the Union,” i.e. further primarily the interests of the new Union, rather than those of their own people.

The new European superstate, however, is not a democracy. It has an elected parliament, but the European Parliament has no legislative powers, nor does it control the EU’s executive bodies. The latter, who also have legislative power overriding national legislation, are made up of “commissioners.” These are appointed by the governments of the member states (although no longer with one commissioner per member state, as was the case so far, but with a total number capped at two-thirds of the number of member states). The EU is basically a cartel, consisting of the 27 governments of the member states, who have concluded that it is easier to pass laws in the secret EU meetings with their colleagues than through their own national parliaments in the glare of public criticism.

[...]

The formal decision about who will become President and High Commissioner will be taken in late November. As the wheeling and dealing – all of it behind closed doors so that the people will not know – continues, it is not certain yet that Herman Van Rompuy will emerge as Europe’s first president. It is, however, not a coincidence that a Belgian seems the most likely candidate. Belgium is a supranational state, constructed by the European powers in 1830 and made up of two different nations, Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia. As such, Belgium, whose capital Brussels also happens to be the EU’s capital, serves as a model for the EU in its attempt to build a supranational state out of the continent’s different nations.

Like EU politics, Belgian politics is characterized by a lack of transparency, unaccountability, corporatism and a willingness to bend the democratic rules and legal procedures so as to allow the political establishment to proceed with their own project and secure the survival of a state which is unloved by its citizens but provides the livelihood of the ruling elites. What Vaclav Klaus calls “Europeism” is the application of Belgicism, the doctrine underpinning the Belgian state, on the European level. [...]

Read the whole thing, to see what the Czech President had to say about the end of Czech sovereignty, and what to expect from all of this.


Also see:

Without Opposition: the European Union
     

When Financial Chickens come home to roost

Takuan Seiyo has a long rant.

[...] The Nobel-laureate in economics Gary Becker linked the financial travails of Argentina in the mid-1990s to government spending at more than 30% of GDP. The Swiss economist Peter Bernholz has linked hyperinflation triggers to government deficits exceeding 40% of expenditures. But government spending in Obamerica is 45% of GDP, and its deficit stands at 43.3%. Peronism has acquired a permanent perch in Washington, DC.

But there is more. In a long chain of catastrophic errors and intentional malpractice since the days of Lyndon Johnson, America’s ruling elite of both parties has run up an unpayable debt to its own retirees, to its bondholders, its foreign creditors. Having designed to turn the country into a banana republic demographically, the Club of Crooks and Loons has turned it into a banana republic fiscally too.

[...]

A freefalling dollar cannot help by increasing exports, when you have off-shored your manufacturing, and your main industries are predatory lawsuits, selling shoddy American housing to Salvadorians with faked mortgages, and marketing financial weapons of mass destruction worldwide. And a falling dollar is not a good inducement for the world to keep buying dollar-denominated U.S. debt. The cessation of that buying has such dire consequences to the United States that Chinese strategists have named them “the nuclear option.”

The American people can’t do anything about it either, except mailing tea bags to the crooks and loons who govern them. Their only electoral choice is between the party of demented progressives, and the party of progressive dementia.

[...]

We are ruled by lying clowns, forever trying to postpone the moment of truth. To the next election cycle, next government, next century. They have been destroying the West year by year for 55 years now by mismanaging government finances in order to bribe voters or to buy feel-good, do-good euphoria for their Body Snatcher vanguard. As the deficits grow, productive citizens are taxed up to double the 1/3 ratio of medieval serfs, more money printing and government borrowing is necessary, the value of money erodes and moral hazard gnaws at the foundation.

The government then cooks up “solutions” to the problems it created in the first place through its overspending, incompetence or corruption. The “solutions” camouflage the damage for a while longer and prolong the comforting illusion, just like the frantic “stimulus” to stave off a corrective deflationary depression now -- at a cost of devaluation or hyperinflation later. The “solutions” are often written up in 2000-page bills that nobody reads until their rot crawls out in litigation and 15-figure costs overruns years later.

All such “solutions” just multiply the damage and roll it forward so that the “crack-up boom” (4) boom now but crack up in the future, on somebody else’s watch.

But the future has arrived. It’s piled up all around us in heaps of diversity-enriching primitives from failed cultures bearing European and American passports, or silos full of mad mullahs and NorKor nightmare leprechauns thumbing their noses at the white castrati. It’s in the 24/7 stream of rotten mass culture that the harlots of Nineveh might envy, and in mountains of unnecessary junk purchased with nonexistent money. It’s in the giant vaults full of flimsy dollars worth 2% of their value in 1913, bloated deficits of generations of venal politicians raining borrowed currency onto client voters, and enormous industrial landscapes in China pumping out products that the now-crazed West once made at home and better.

The future is here. It can no longer be rolled over but maybe for a year with respect to Iran, three years with respect to hyperinflation, fifteen years with respect to the reconquest of the West by Muhammad and Montezuma. A delay just long enough for the misruling clowns to cash in their Goldman Sachs stock options, pass veto-proof immunity laws, declare national emergencies, and build for themselves impenetrable bunkers with landing strips in Andorra or Aruba.

[...]

The collapse is by no means over. The Bank for International Settlements estimates the banksters’ total derivative losses at $4.1 trillion. But this is, as such things always are, just a calming nostrum for frayed nerves. In case of a Black Swan event, which such estimates never take under consideration, the $4.1 trillion figure is probably too optimistic by a good-sized fraction of a quadrillion. But what’s a quadrillion or two between friends.

People forget that Adam Smith was not an economist but a moral philosopher. Before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, he had written The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The free market is no place for cutthroats and purse snatchers. [...]

There is a lot more, more financial stuff with links and footnotes... but it's long and rambling, and interspersed with rants about other things.


Related Links:

Has US Currency already "collapsed"?

The euro and the yen have surpassed the dollar as the favored currency by central banks

The Argentina example: are we heading there?

Utopian Socialism and the damage it inflicts

     

Democrats who promised transparency are breaking their own promise to publish the final bill publicly 72 hours before the vote

Pelosi is determined to hammer her bill through before we can even read it:


Democrats and the death of deliberative democracy

The House vote on Speaker Pelosi’s government health care bill is set for Saturday morning. She is scrambling to buy off recalcitrant Democrats on two of very issues that Rep. Joe Wilson and other House Republicans called out the White House for: abortion and illegal immigrant coverage. The wheeling and dealing is taking place behind closed doors. Once again, the Democrats who promised transparency are breaking their own promise to publish the final bill publicly 72 hours before the vote. [...]

The Democrats lied, and transparency died. When the Democrat leaders make promises, you can be sure they will just do whatever they want anyway, once they have power. They believe the rules don't apply to them, which is why they also disregard the Constitution, even though they have sworn to uphold it. It all means nothing to them; the ends justifies the means.

Today they plan to force a flawed and unsustainable healthcare system on us that they have exempted themselves from. Who the Hell do they think they are?

You can see live blogging of today's events here:

Liveblogging: The new Imperial Congress votes on Pelosicare; Update: Female Democrats turn House resolution process into circus; GOP responds; Obama rallies weakened Dems
     

Thousands attend Tea Party Protest in DC

Battling Pelosicare; Update: Thousands descend on D.C., “You work for us!”



Also see:

Is Tea Party conservatism a help or a hazard for Republicans?

     

Dems "Not concerned" about the Constitution?

From their actions, I would say that's easy to believe. From Neal Boortz:

THE CONSTITUTION AND HEALTHCARE

When it comes to achieving the Democrats dreams and schemes, there is nothing that will stand in their way. Not even that pesky little thing called the Constitution. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch put it all in perspective recently. He does not believe that the Democrat plans for healthcare are justifiable. He says that if the federal government can force Americans to buy health insurance "then there is literally nothing the federal government can't force us to do."

Ain't that the truth?

First it is healthcare. Then what? What comes next for the Democrats to achieve their goal of making you more and more dependent on government? Orrin Hatch's point is that right now, the Constitution still remains a "barrier" for the Democrats. But if they get their way with healthcare, the levies will be broken. There will be nothing stopping them from trampling over what is left of our Constitution.

And the White House doesn't seem to have a problem with that. Robert Gibbs was asked just yesterday whether White House lawyers had reviewed the Constitutionality of Obamacare. Robert Gibbs' response was that the White House is not seriously concerned about this.

Not seriously concerned? What is there to be MORE concerned about than upholding the foundation of this country? Then upholding the Constitution. Didn't The Community Organizer take an oath to protect and defend our Constitution? And now he's "Not concerned"? And if you will remember, Nancy Pelosi had a similar response last week. When asked about the Constitutionality of her healthcare plan, she actually thought the reporter was joking. She chuckled, "Are you serious? Is that a serious question?" Yes, Nancy. Yes, Robert. Yes, Obama. We are serious. And it is about time you get serious too before you completely destroy what is left of this great country.

I'm sick of the blatant disregard for the constitution that these creeps have supposedly sworn to uphold. But then liars can swear to anything, because they don't mean it. And speaking of lies, I'm getting really tired of the often repeated lie that the Republicans have no health care plans to offer:

HARRY REID --- LIAR

Harry Reid has some gonads. He is accusing the Republicans of not having any healthcare plans, when he himself technically does not have a completed healthcare bill to show the world. Last week, he sent off pieces of healthcare legislation for a CBO cost analysis. So the Republicans said they wanted to see the bill that he sent to the CBO. Well the truth of the matter is that this bill hasn't even been written yet. He is waiting for the CBO analysis to come back in order to decide which direction he wants to take. Then he took a shot at the Republicans for daring to request to see this elusive bill he submitted to the CBO. Reid said that the GOP health care plan "remains a secret, unless perhaps it does not exist." He goes on to say, "I fully understand if your plan is still under development, and would not presume to suggest that you publicly share draft legislative text for even an individual element of your plan, let alone an entire bill, before it is finalized."

Unfortunately for Harry Reid, the Republicans do have healthcare bills. Three of them. And they have been on the table since May and June of this year. CNSNews has the list:

In May, Republicans in the House and the Senate formed a bicameral coalition to produce the 130-page "Patients Choice Act of 2009."

In June, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) introduced the "Health Care Freedom Plan," a 41-page proposal.

And in July, the Republican Study Committee, under the leadership of Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), unveiled the "Empowering Patients First Act," a 130-page plan.

Harry Reid is desperate. So are his Democrat friends. They know that they are losing this battle to get their healthcare plans passed. So now they are complaining that the other side doesn't even have a plan. Shouldn't we be thanking these Democrats! Oh we should be so thankful ... at least THEY have come up with plans to take over 18% of our economy!

And they are readable sizes too, so they can actually be read completely before being voted on. Yet I have not heard about even one of these plans mentioned in the MSM. But I have heard the media often repeat the Democrats lies that these Republican proposals don't even exist.
     

The GOP is presently a large minority. Will it stay that way, or can it grow into a coalition?

GOP's choice: Purity vs. power?

[...] The message is clear: Republicans need to work hard on a reform platform that attracts both conservative and moderate voters.

Armey and his friends have a reason to feel comfortable sticking to their conservative line. Gallup just announced a survey that showed that conservatives make up the largest voting bloc in the country, 40 percent.

But, and I hate to break this to my conservative friends, in America, 40 percent of the country is not enough to gain a working majority in Congress. Without the help of moderate and independent voters, conservatives will stay in the minority, keeping the reins of power in the hands of liberals like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Conservatives seem to be mystified that these liberals hold the reins of power even though they make up a small minority of the country. Most polls show that only about 20 percent of the American people consider themselves to be liberal.

But it shouldn't be any mystery. It is all about building a majority coalition, and the Democrats for the last two elections have been better at it than Republicans.

In order to build a governing coalition, the Republican Party must exhibit one over-riding philosophical trait: flexibility. What makes sense in New York and New England may not make as much sense in South Carolina and Texas. I know this is blasphemy to hard-right activists. But it shouldn't be. Building coalitions is an essential party of any democracy.

Having political flexibility doesn't mean becoming a sell-out or a squish. It does, however, mean having an understanding of our unique political system, where sometimes it is better to vote with the head and the heart rather than just the heart. [...]

That 40 percent of people who call themselves conservative, includes a lot of libertarian minded people who are fiscally conservative, but more moderate, not rigid, on social issues. But as the article points out, even 40 percent is not enough to win.

The Dems made a coalition. Where is ours? Where is it?


Also see:

The return of the angry independent

     

Will Republicans make gains by default? Or...

Obama's vanishing majority
The 2008 election didn't exile Republicans to the political wilderness. Today, the party has already started its comeback

[...] But the American people did not love the Democrats. They merely loathed the Republicans, who had given them (if I may quote myself): "War, Wall Street jitters, wage stagnation and, above all, W". If the Democrats did not understand this basic fact, I predicted, they would soon have problems of their own.

Two years ago, the Republican base was dispirited, the Democratic base was vacillating between energetic and enraged and the GOP couldn't buy independent votes with a bridge to nowhere. It's early, but things are starting to trend in the opposite direction. Angry conservatives are mobilised, liberals are starting to wonder where their Hope and Change went and swing voters are inching ever so slightly to the right.

According to a recent Gallup poll, self-described conservatives once again outnumber moderates after being at parity with them from 2005-2008. The increase is entirely based on a six-point increase in the number of independents adopting the conservative label, which they disdained under Bush. On a number of issues, independents are moving closer to agreement with a majority of Republicans rather than a majority of Democrats. As I write, it looks like the Republicans will win at least one of the 2009 gubernatorial races in independent-heavy states that had recently been favouring Democrats, and they may well win both.

Independents are a pragmatic lot. Just as they disliked the Bush Republicans' incompetence, bellicosity and inability to say anything coherent about the country's most pressing problems, they now dislike the Obama Democrats' stimulus plans that don't stimulate, massive expenditures of money the federal government doesn't have and general fondness for the sound of the president's voice. [...]

But it goes on to say the Republicans still lack a unified message on healthcare and consistancy in fiscal policy.

Those things are fixable. We'd best get to work on fixing them. We have to be more than just the party that says "no" to whatever the Democrats are doing.


2010's opening acts

The first key votes of the Obama era take place this week, not on the floor of the House or Senate, where health-care legislation still languishes, but in Virginia, New Jersey and northern New York state, where President Obama's endorsements of threatened Democratic candidates will test his political clout a year after his own election. [...]

But Tuesday's voting is merely the curtain-raiser to a full year of headlined Senate and statehouse races that will go a long way toward defining the landscape of Obama's political future. The gubernatorial battles especially will be worth watching.

It is there that Republicans have their best opportunity to find the missing leadership that now allows Democrats to characterize them as "the party of no," and the GOP has recruited potentially powerful challengers in such states as Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Colorado and Tennessee. [...]

Read the whole thing for the details about tomorrows elections.
     

Ford: The way to run an Automobile Company

Ford Reports Nearly $1 Billion Profit
The latest and strongest sign of the automaker's comeback comes as it pays down debt and adds to U.S. market share

It's now fair to declare Ford Motor (F) an unqualified turnaround story.

The company reported a $997 million third-quarter profit on Nov. 2, adding profits to gains in market share and improvements in quality since CEO Alan Mulally took over in September 2006. The nearly $1 billion profit is a $1.2 billion turnaround from the third quarter of last year. The company also generated $1 billion in cash and paid down $2 billion in debt.

"Ford is making tremendous progress," Mulally said on a conference call. "Our transformation is working."

Strong earnings are a big victory for Ford and Mulally. The company has been far stronger than rivals General Motors and Chrysler (FIA.MI), gaining market share this year. But looking healthier than GM and Chrysler, both of which were in bankruptcy earlier this year, was hardly a great feat.

Ford still has a big debt load, something that GM and Chrysler were able to greatly reduce in bankruptcy. The company dropped long-term debt to $23 billion. But adding short-term debt and obligations to the UAW's retiree health-care trust, Ford's debt is estimated at $38 billion. It's a disadvantage, but Barclays Capital analyst Brian Johnson says Ford should have enough cash to meet its needs. [...]

Ford is succeeding, but it has to compete with failed companies who are unfairly being subsidized with taxpayer's dollars. Why is the government using our tax dollars to reward failure, and to compete against successful privately owned companies?
     

Pelosi's Bill: "The worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced"

The Worst Bill Ever
Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.

In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.

Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal coverage." The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country's fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity. [...]

The rest of the article explains the how and why of it. It would be the end of health care as we've known it, and would necessarily create rationing and becomes unsustainable. Let's not go there.
     

Jobs created by the Stimulus? What jobs?

Featherbedding stimulus job numbers

[...] Featherbedding occurs when paychecks are issued for nonexistent employees and the money goes directly into union coffers. Thousands of the jobs Obama officials say were saved or created by the stimulus program are no more real than those invisible positions invented by unions to bulk up their treasuries. We know this to be the case because as Obama’s chief economist, Christina Romer, admitted several weeks ago, “It’s very hard to say exactly because you don’t know what the baseline is, right, because you don’t know what the economy would have done without [the economic stimulus program].”

Even if we take at face value the White House claim that it created or saved all these jobs with approximately $150 billion of the economic stimulus money, a little simple math shows the taxpayers aren’t getting any bargains here: $150 billion divided by 650,000 jobs equals $230,000 per job saved or created. Instead of taking all that time required to write the 1,588-page stimulus bill, Congress could have passed a one-pager saying the first 650,000 jobless persons to report for work at the White House will receive a voucher worth $230,000 redeemable at the university, community college or trade school of their choice. That would have been enough for a degree plus a hefty down payment on a mortgage.

Actually, taxpayers would be better off with such a deal, too, compared with the reality of the Obama stimulus program. [...]

Read the whole thing, it gets worse. Is this even America anymore?

     

Hope and Change, illustrated

Via Rasmussen Reports

This shouldn't make Republicans gloat too much, though. Many of the people who are disapproving of Obama are Democrats who feel their man isn't Left wing or radical enough. That's scary.

H.T. to: Missourah.com

     

Ubuntu 9.10 is Here. It's Free. Take the Tour!

Ubuntu 9.10 Tour



See further details here:

Ubuntu 9.10 Officially Released

     

Jimmy Carter's term, repeated. With a Vengence.

Are we really about to go through that? Victor Davis Hanson makes a good case for it:

All Falling Down . . .

[...] Why the pessimism? I think there are a few truths that transcend politics and remain eternal. In life as a general rule, debt has to be paid back, and with greater pain and anger than it was to borrow it. Bullies do not respect magnanimity, but tragically interpret it as weakness to be exploited rather than to be admired.

Hoping that something good comes true —like being self-reliant through solar and wind—does not make it true; neglecting the riches at hand to dream about greater riches that do not exist is adolescent. Radical Islam hates the West, not because of what we do or say, but because of who we are: a dynamic, mercurial culture that challenges all the protocols of a traditional, tribal and religiously fundamentalist society.

Diplomacy is a tool to lessen, but not eliminate, tensions—a way to conduct foreign policy, not a foreign policy in and of itself. [...]

He reviews point by point, on every front, the similarities with the Carter years, and why this is likely to be worse. He ends it by saying that he hopes he's wrong. I hope he's wrong too, but... I remember the Carter years. And what I see now, well... read the whole article. And prepare, as best you can.
     

Letting Banks Fail "Gracefully"

The Myth of Too Big to Fail
When it comes to banking, size isn't the only thing that matters.

[...] When the news of Wachovia's failure first reached Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chair Sheila Bair, she wanted to liquidate the bank and cut into the pocketbooks of its investors -- as she had done with Washington Mutual, the largest U.S. bank failure ever, a few days prior. But Tim Geithner, then president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, argued strenuously for Bair to invoke her agency's "too big to fail" exception and spend more money to cover the costs of the bank's sale. He worried another collapsing bank would only intensify the financial panic at a time when the government's hands were tied. (While the FDIC can liquidate a commercial bank like Wachovia, the Fed doesn't have the tools to shut down financial institutions, only the ability to prop them up with loans.)

Geithner, now the Treasury secretary, made the right decision at the time, but it was a terrible precedent to set. Sending the message that the government won't let large banks fail in a crisis gives them an unfair advantage over their smaller competitors. Worse, if bankers are rewarded for success and insulated from failure, there is little incentive for prudence and smart management -- the problem of moral hazard.

Of all the Orwellian phrases to arise from our financial crisis -- "troubled assets," "stress tests," "capital infusion" -- "too big to fail" is perhaps the most hated and least understood. Many populists and progressive economists have called on the Obama administration to bust up the banks and make them smaller. "Just break them up," economist Dean Baker argues. "We don't have to turn Citigroup and Bank of America into hundreds of small community banks, just large regional banks that can be safely put through a bankruptcy."

The administration hasn't pursued that course of action, in part because of the political power of the banks and in part because breaking them up isn't as easy as it sounds -- it is hard to know what the right size for a bank is, especially in an increasingly global financial market. Further, the importance placed on the issue of size is deceptive: The problems that caused the 2008 crash also had to do with leverage, liquidity, and the complex connections between banks. The banks tied themselves into knots neither they nor their regulators could untie.

"The problem we have had isn't that institutions were too big -- it was that there was no uniform way to let them fail without causing an absolute market meltdown," Arthur Levitt, the widely respected former Securities and Exchange Commission chair, told the House Financial Services Committee in September.

If we want to clean up the financial mess, we have to realize that the size of institutions is a secondary problem. We must also accept that some facets of our current system are here to stay. Shrinking the financial sector will be slow going, so we're best off watching it more closely, forcing institutions to put stronger safety nets in place, and, most important, helping them fail gracefully when they make mistakes.

[...]

Perhaps the kind of restrictions that progressives wanted to put on the initial bailout loans -- strict compensation limits, firing existing management, and even more stringent rules -- should be codified so they will be clear if and when bailouts are needed again. The goal would be to penalize executives, not institutions, so the people at banks have the incentive to perform.

Regulatory reform is not just about providing new structures and tools. Reform is also about putting in place politicians and regulators who are willing to take the banks to task. The administration's proposed approach to the problem of systemically risky institutions would require the secretary of the Treasury to green-light any response to their failure, whether that response is bankruptcy, government-assisted liquidation, or even another bailout. That means direct political accountability to the president instead of the "Republic of the Central Banker" that we saw in 2008 as the Fed single-handedly undertook massive efforts to protect the financial system without any checks on its power -- or its spending.

Looking back on last fall's argument between Geithner and Bair over what to do about Wachovia, it's clear that Bair was right in principle -- using federal money to keep bad banks alive isn't a good idea. Geithner was right in practice -- letting another bank fail would have only intensified the financial panic at a time when the Fed didn't have the right tools to solve the problems further bank failures would cause. What we need is a rulebook that doesn't force regulators to choose between those two approaches. We need a system designed by someone like Tim Geithner -- and run by someone like Sheila Bair.

This was an interesting article. It's about creating a system that allows banks to fail gracefully when they screw up, to suffer the consequences for their bad decisions, but without dragging down large sectors of the economy with them. This article was about finding solutions to achieve that, not partisan bickering. I appreciated that.

     

New Ubuntu 9.10 available Thursday

Here are a few links that could come in handy for it:

Preparing for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

Is there anyone around who doesn't know that the next release of Ubuntu Linux, 9.10 (Karmic Koala) is due out tomorrow? I doubt it, and even if there were they wouldn't be reading this, so I'll just forge ahead.

I don't intend to add my voice to the chorus singing the praises of the new release. What I would like to do is take a quick look at a few simple things that can go a long way in making the upgrade easier. [...]

10 easy steps to secure your Linux machine

Whether you use a single desktop or manage a lab full of servers, with the various threats we all face from hackers these days you simply have to make sure you're running a secure ship.

Running Linux gives you some inherent protection from attack, but you still need to take adequate steps to thwart any attempts that people might make to compromise your system.

Here are 10 of the best courses of action that you can take. [...]

I'm hoping to download Ubuntu Friday when I'm in the office.
     

How long until "Microsoft Linux"?

Is it inevitable?:

Microsoft Linux: Why one free software advocate wants it

Is it likely, or even desirable?