Saturday, October 17, 2015

SAR #15290


Religion is like a hobbyhorse; I don't mind you having one as long as you don't try to make me get on and ride with you. - Tristram Shandy, more or less.
Hasten, Slowly: The administration is reportedly considering delaying presenting the TPP to congress for ratification until after the 2016 election, when the political costs of selling out the American people during a “lame duck” session would be lower.
Morbidity and mortality: Since the 2008 financial crisis, central banks have printed up over $14 trillion dollars in IOUs on someone's labor or property. This didn't cure the problem, which was too much debt. It added to it, increasing global debt by 40%. Seems that adding more debt doesn't actually address the problem of too much debt. Good thing everybody pretends not to notice this.
Slide Effects: Germany authorities have told VW that their lackadaisical approach to covering up their emissions crimes won't do, and have ordered them to recall some 8.5 million cars and fix them. The government will then test the cars to make sure the repairs are effective. VW says it might be able to start the retrofits in late 2016. This is just Germany. The rest of the EU – where about a third of all VWs will need repair – will follow suit. In the US it remains to be seen if VW has enough money to spread around Washington to avoid this hassle.
Quoted:You can pretty much name any intractable problem in the U.S. and you can trace it back to the money corrupting the political process. ...” Barry Ritholtz
Roster: Just so you remember, the Paul Ryan the crazies want for Speaker is the guy who wants to abolish the FDA, the National Institutes of Health, the Air Traffic Control System, gut Medicare and Medicaid while cutting taxes on the rich and spending on the poor. That Paul Ryan.
The Way We Were: In constant 2013 dollars, the median US household income in 1999 was $57,000. In 2013 it was $52,000 - nearly 10% less. Your results may vary.
Droning On: The drone-based US assassination program kills about seven bystanders for every intended target eliminated, but “It's like swatting flies, we can do it forever easily and you feel nothing... how often do you really think about killing a fly?”
Turtle: Bernie Sanders raised more campaign funds in the third quarter than any of the Republican candidates.
Roses: The CIA pretends that it waterboarded only one detainee. Okay, after a while they admitted that it was maybe three detainees. Maximum. And by torturing the English language, the lawyers may be right. But if you don't actually use a board, is it still water-boarding? According to the spooks, nope. If you include other forms of “simulated drowning”, then they will grudgingly admit there might have been another dozen detainees “water doused”. Sorry, guys. We all know that “informal field interrogations” most likely subjected tens if not hundreds more to this form of torture. But, hey, you want to pretend otherwise, fine by us. What's on TV tonight?
We Didn't Know: The British Treasury says that “hundreds of billions of pounds of international criminal money” is laundered through British banks every year. Almost makes you wonder why they don't do something to stop it. Almost.
Asked & Obvious: If the “Freedom Caucus” is so great, why don’t they just nominate one of their own?

7 comments:

McMike said...

re VW. By "fixing" the cars, as I understand it, means they will make the cars cleaner (i.e. emit less individual-person-killing particulates), but in exchange, the cars will be less fuel efficient (i.e. lead to more human-species-extinguishing global warming)?

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Pretty much, McMike. Question is whether the decrease in emissions per mile will offset the increase in emissions per mile... And that won['t be known until a working version of the repair is tested - independently.

mistah charley, ph.d. said...

[Tristam Shandy author Laurence] Sterne's irascibility and bawdy humor were well known to his congregations and to the English public. His local reputation around York was based, at least in part, on his eccentric dress and habits, his mordant wit, and his fund of indecorous anecdotes. It is said that he preached sermons on brotherly love with unusual rancor and ill temper.


Read more at http://biography.yourdictionary.com/laurence-sterne#5ICpwBhlc0WzBMgS.99

kwark said...

Re "Roster": . . . Because salmonella poisoning is best handled by the "free market", cancer is a boon to the healthcare "industry", a privatized Air Traffic Control system would work so much better, and well, you get it. Why is insanity so popular these days?

Anonymous said...

Hasten, Slowly: One wonders if this is Obama's way of taking the knife in the back and returning it to Hillary. Both are slime, but Barry has lots of Chicago machine advisors to instruct him on how to be a bastard. Even if Bernie forcefully extracts a veto pledge from Hillary, it won't be worth the "tariff free" toilet paper it's written on after the election.

Side Effects: The fuel efficiency will actually improve with the new settings, what will go down the toilet is drivability. To keep the NOX in line, the fuel to air ratios, burn speed, etc; have to be in a tight set of parameters. That the testers never noticed the cars accelerated like a turtle during the "city" part of the test says a lot about intentional blindness. I suspect the only solution to keep the cars both able to get onto a highway from a ramp and meet standards is to add in urea injection, which is what all the "honest(?)" diesel OEMs had to do, and which killed them from making any sales in USA or Europe. This too beggars why they kept mum, i.e. what dirt did VW have on them? The fat lady has yet to sing.

(non-VW) Turtle: Too early in the game. Most of the money is waiting for the madness in the big R to settle, and then they will buy the winner. They have already bought Hillary, and would buy Bernie, but the later is not an option. If Hillary does lose, watch them really throw money at this election, and not just at the campaigns, but in any way to effectively keep Bernie out of office. At this point, assassination, arranging for a plane to fall out of the sky or an 18 wheeler truck to cross a lane looks cost effective.

We didn't know: One would think the US Banks would be envious, until it's understood the UK is providing all the labour, but most of the money and benefits flow on to US Banks. I think they call it off-shoring in high tech industries.

Anonymous said...

The Way We Were: At the same time, guess what has happened to median household debt? (And median household worth.) No wonder the retail industry has trouble growing.

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Thank you, Anony 8.24, for the education on the VW/NOX efficiency and effectiveness dilemma. Obviously if VW can't meet safe acceleration standards legitimately ("honest OEMs) it seems pretty doubtful than any other diesel manufacturer can either.

There's a whole chorus line of Fat ladies waiting in the wings...