The Drone Zone
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on July 7th, 2012 11:08 pm by HL
The Drone Zone
Mark Mazzetti, New York Times Magazine
Holloman Air Force Base, at the eastern edge of New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, 200 miles south of Albuquerque, was once famous for the daredevil maneuvers of those who trained there. In 1954, Col. John Paul Stapp rode a rocket-propelled sled across the desert, reaching 632 miles per hour, in an attempt to figure out the maximum speed at which jet pilots could safely eject. He slammed on the brakes and was thrust forward with such force that he had to be hauled away on a stretcher, his eyes bleeding from burst capillaries. Six years later, Capt. Joseph Kittinger Jr., testing…
Obama Bus Tour Hits Unemployment Pothole
Alexis Simendinger, RCP
PITTSBURGH — Mitt Romney may be President Obama's political challenger, but the president's real nemesis is time.His chances of winning a second term teeter on economic progress, and June's 8.2 percent unemployment rate, reported Friday, offered no glimmer of surging growth before November. Romney called the news a “kick in the gut,” but Obama declared the addition of 80,000 jobs last month "a step in the right direction."Unemployment that doesn't go up in the next four months, in other words, will be cast by the president and his team as…
Libor’s Dirty Laundry
Joe Nocera, New York Times
Here in the early stages of the Libor scandal — and, yes, this thing is far from over — there are two big surprises.The first is that the bankers, traders, executives and others involved would so openly and, in some cases, gleefully collude to manipulate this key interest rate for their own benefit. With all the seedy bank behavior that has been exposed since the financial crisis, it’s stunning that there’s still dirty laundry left to be aired. We’ve had predatory subprime lending, fraudulent ratings, excessive risk-taking…
American Conservatism’s Apogee
Sean Trende, Law & Liberty
Happy HypocriteLanded a Plum role.A continuing storyDistilling Social ScienceKafkaesque200 years later. Still MysteriousTroubled geniusSays forget you.
