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A poll of GOP insiders suggests that ex-AK Gov. Sarah Palin (R) has little support among the party's professional class
It's taken for granted that America enjoys a huge advantage from the fact that the dollar is the world's global reserve currency, representing more than 60 percent of the money held in central banks. The euro, a distant second, represents only 26 percent of reserves. But a new and contrarian report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) calls that old wisdom into question.
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The Evidence: According to MGI, in 2007 and 2008 the net benefit to the U.S. of the dollar as a reserve currency was a mere $40 billion to $70 billion a year--just 0.3 to 0.5 percent of GDP. What's more, in the worst-case scenario run by McKinsey, the dollar effect actually became negative in 2009, costing America about $5 billion a year. -McKinsey believes up to 1 million U.S. jobs have been lost due to an overvalued currency, a trend that's been exacerbated this year as jittery investors fled to the dollar as a safe haven. Indeed, the report suggests that export-oriented U.S. firms might gain ground on European competitors and be in a position to help offset high unemployment if the dollar was allowed to depreciate by about 10 percent. Exchange rates can make or break companies; McKinsey notes that the profits of Korean powerhouse Samsung are twice that of the top nine Japanese competitors combined, in part because the -Korean currency is so much cheaper than the Japanese.
My own view is moving toward supporting a direct American military imposition of a two-state solution, with NATO troops on the borders of the new states of Palestine and Israel. I'm sick of having a great power like the US being dictated to in the conduct of its own foreign policy by an ally that provides almost no real benefit to the US, and more and more costs.
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Aside from the sheer lunacy of imposing borders on a sovereign democracy, which also happens to be a close ally, what in Sullivan's increasingly deranged mind makes him think the prospect of US soldiers fighting to keep Hamas, Hezbollah and the rest from attacking Israel is going to work? Does he really think these groups are just going to turn over their weapons to us or let us confiscate them without a fight?
Two U.S. officials confirm to ABC News that the number of released detainees suspected of or confirmed to have returned to terrorist activities has risen to 20 percent. They would not provide the raw numbers on which the percentages are based. A U.S. official tells ABC News that the most recent report was completed in late December…
... this could result in a destabilizing bout of global deflation as the glut of cheap Chinese goods drives down prices. Combined with another banking crisis--some experts expect 30 percent of new loans to go bad next year--the result could be both a slowdown in China and a global trade war.
The magazine was a lushly airbrushed, sans-serif, and silver-paged vision dreamed up by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione and his wife, Kathy Keeton. It split the difference between the consumerist Popular Science—which always seemed to cover hypersonic travel and AMC carburetors in the same page—and the lofty Scientific American, whose rigor was alluring but still impenetrable to me. But with equal parts sci-fi, feature reporting, and meaty interviews with Freeman Dyson and Edward O. Wilson, Omni's arrival every month was a sort of peak nerd experience.
"Omni was different," the erstwhile Penthouse publisher mused in his first editorial for the magazine. "It was a creation of pure joy."
"The Consumerist deconstructs the appalling "optimization service" that Best Buy has been pushing on consumers in recent weeks. The retailer charges 40 bucks to give you a slower PC, and make bizarre claims that it makes it go 200% faster. 'We ran the 3DMark 2003 graphics benchmark on each laptop, comparing optimized and non-optimized settings. For two of our samples, the Gateway and Toshiba, performance changes were negligible. On the Asus laptop, however, optimized tests actually scored about 32% worse than the non-optimized setup. We have been unable to isolate the source of this performance change. On none of the three tested laptops did the optimized settings give a performance boost in our test.'"
A private intelligence service warned last September that a novel bombing technique used by Al Qaeda in Yemen to try to assassinate Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism chief represented an important "tactical innovation" that could "have a catastrophic result if employed on an aircraft."
The report by the Stratfor intelligence service, which was widely distributed and published on the service's Web site could raise questions about comments Sunday by John Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, that there were "no indications" that Al Qaeda might try to use the same underwear bombing technique it had attempted against the Saudi official on a civilian aircraft.
Two intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security circulated a paper within the government last fall which examined in some detail the threats which bombs secreted in clothing -- or inside someone's body cavities -- might pose to aviation security, Newsweek has learned from US national security officials who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information.
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The officials added that the paper also discussed the problems such bomb designs might pose for existing airport security procedures. The officials said that experts believed that while enhanced security measures and devices such as pat-down searches and body scanners -- which were not in widespread use last fall but have been rushed into effect since the underpants bombing attempt -- in many or most cases could successfully spot bombs secreted under clothing. However, such equipment or procedures might be considerably less effective in spotting bombs hidden inside body cavities.
God, is it Jan. 4 already?
Heavy schedule again this quarter so I am going to shift most blogging to the afternoons.
In the meantime the NY Times has a 9 page article called “Inside Obama’s War on Terrorism”. I have only had a chance to read the first couple pages but it appears designed to make Obama appear strong and forceful in dealing with the terrorist threat. Pretty good timing considering the consensus seems to be the last week has made him appear confused and week. (and by consensus I mean myself and the voices in my head).
So says The Independent anyway.
The explosive device smuggled in the clothing of the Detroit bomb suspect would not have been detected by body-scanners set to be introduced in British airports, an expert on the technology warned last night.
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Since the attack was foiled, body-scanners, using "millimetre-wave" technology and revealing a naked image of a passenger, have been touted as a solution to the problem of detecting explosive devices that are not picked up by traditional metal detectors – such as those containing liquids, chemicals or plastic explosive.
But Ben Wallace, the Conservative MP, who was formerly involved in a project by a leading British defence research firm to develop the scanners for airport use, said trials had shown that such low-density materials went undetected.
Tests by scientists in the team at Qinetiq, which Mr Wallace advised before he became an MP in 2005, showed the millimetre-wave scanners picked up shrapnel and heavy wax and metal, but plastic, chemicals and liquids were missed.
If a material is low density, such as powder, liquid or thin plastic – as well as the passenger's clothing – the millimetre waves pass through and the object is not shown on screen. High- density material such as metal knives, guns and dense plastic such as C4 explosive reflect the millimetre waves and leave an image of the object.
I would say that this just points out the need for a comprehensive security screening system that focuses on the mental state of the person as well as the physical characteristics.
In what has been seen as a possible failure to stop the bomber from boarding a U.S.-bound plane, the alert prompted counterterrorism officials to put Abdulmutallab's name into a database of more than half a million others that the U.S. suspects of ties to terrorism, but they did not put him on the country's no-fly list. The information also was not shared with Yemeni intelligence officials, the Yemen government has said.
The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration's response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension.
Doubleplusundead has won the coveted “Longshoreman Award for Funniest Use of Cursewords”. I contribute to DPUD so I would like to claim credit, but the only real cursing that I am involved in is when the other contributors are cursing at me :-)
Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who drew the Mohammed cartoons that caused such a stir a couple years ago, was attacked by an outraged Irish Catholic Somali Muslim.
Catherine Zeta Jones side boob: Sean M must be going for some Rule 5 action. Speaking of which, it appears The Other McCain has moved. I guess I am not the only one who thinks wordpress has a little more potential.
Man tracked down and arrested via World of Warcraft: Note to self, If I ever commit a murder stop playing WoW.
The Dakar Rally starts today. It’s actually being staged in South America because of security concerns so should it really count as a Dakar Rally?
This sounds interesting:
Love him or hate him, Antonin Scalia has had a greater influence on the way Americans debate the law today than any other modern Supreme Court justice. Conservatives hail Scalia as the founding prophet of their true faith — the Jurisprudence of Original Understanding — and the leader of the opposition to moral relativism and judicial imperialism in the age of Obama. Liberals scorn Scalia as a show-off and intellectual bully who is quick to betray his constitutional principles when they clash with his fervent beliefs as a crusader in the culture wars. It’s hard to write a fair-minded biography of such a polarizing figure, but that’s what Joan Biskupic has done with “American Original.”
Yahoo News – President Obama blames al-Qaeda affliate for airliner attack
HONOLULU, Hawaii (AFP) – US President Barack Obama Saturday for the first time accused an Al-Qaeda affiliate of arming and training a young Nigerian man for a thwarted suicide mission to blow up a US airliner…Previously, US officials have not said publicly that the Northwest attack was the work of Al-Qaeda, though had noted there was a "linkage" with the terror group.
It’s a new year and it’s time to get back to blogging.
I’m trying out the new Windows Live Writer. At the moment it sucks. The old version was just like typing in word. This one isn’t as simple. In addition to the blogpsot blog I will be mirror posts over to wordpress. I have the feeling that I will be able to generate more traffic there. They have a much better linkback / trackback system.
