Both liberals and conservatives tend to have a Euro-centric view of history. That is to say, both camps tend to view the rise of the Europeans as something that was bound to happen. This view enables liberals to avoid confronting the cultural failings of the countries that were conquered by Europeans on the grounds that Click Here to continue reading.
Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “Tommy” is this week’s poem of the week. It is more of a rant then a poem. But it is what came to mind this week.
Game wardens have reputation for overstepping their authority. Here is one such story that is all too typical of what you will here in any rural area. Here is how the story ended. Sad to say, the ending is not all that typical.
Andrew Olmsted wrote an essay to be used in the event that he died. Being an officer on the front lines in Iraq he had reason to think that might die. And as a dedicated blogger, he wanted to have a say on his own death.
Many of you may have already read this essay, give that almost every big name political blog around has linked to it. But for those of our readers who do not regularly read political blogs, we thought that it would be worth highlighting on our own page. Given that so many people want to speak for the dead, it seems reasonable to give them a chance to speak for themselves.
Don’t know what Rock Fish are? Watch the clip below……
Hat Tip Sippican Cottage
Apparently, in some places explosives are used to dispose of dead whales.
If explosive charges will be used, the most common procedure today is to tow the whale out to see and then use whatever charges necessary to sink or disintegrate the whale. But back in November 1970 the Oregon Department of Transportation had a dead [Click here to read the rest]
From Ice Age 2…..
Hat Tip Vanderleun
Governments have a poor record when it comes to providing security. But if there is any area where the free market does a worse job then governments it is in the area of providing security. Any company with a profit motive is going to cut security to the lowest level possible. From The Washington Post….
Kerry Beal was taken aback when he discovered last March that many of his fellow security guards at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania were taking regular naps in what they called “the ready room.”
When he spoke to supervisors at his company, Wackenhut Corp., they told Beal to be a team player. When he alerted the regional office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, regulators let the matter drop after the plant’s owner, Exelon, said it found no evidence of guards asleep on the job.
So Beal videotaped the sleeping guards. The tape, eventually given to WCBS, a CBS television affiliate in New York City, showed the armed workers snoozing against walls, slumped on tabletops or with eyes closed and heads bobbing.
The fallout of the broadcast is still being felt. Last month, Exelon, the country’s largest provider of nuclear power, fired Wackenhut, which had guarded each of its 10 nuclear plants. The NRC is reviewing its own oversight procedures, having failed to heed Beal’s warning. And Wackenhut says that the entire nuclear industry needs to rethink security if it hopes to meet the tougher standards the NRC has tried to impose since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
From Calculated Risk and Business Week…..
Hat tip to Disempowered Paper Pusher (the backbone of our industry!) for this excellent BusinessWeek piece on homes abandoned by both borrower and lender, “Dirty Deeds.”
An anecdote with all the right motifs:
In 1998, Elizabeth M. Manuel obtained a $34,500 mortgage on the property from IMC Mortgage (since acquired by Citibank). By 2002, the loan had been sold into a securitization trust administered by Chase Manhattan (now JPMorgan Chase) as trustee. It also went into default, and Chase began foreclosure proceedings. In a court filing, Manuel (who could not be located for comment) said she left the home while the foreclosure action was pending. More than five years later, though, the title remains in her name. The house, although still standing, has become a fire-gutted wreck.
In May 2007, Nowak issued a default judgment against Chase for $9,000. But these cases can be notoriously difficult to untangle. Thomas A. Kelly, a spokesman for the bank, notes that Chase sold its trustee business to the Bank of New York Mellon (BK) in October, 2006, and couldn’t locate anyone at Chase able to comment. But he reiterates the industry view that Chase can’t be held responsible for maintaining a property it never owned. He acknowledges that if a home didn’t seem worth taking as collateral, the bank may have made a decision to “just walk away.”
Besides amusing myself by trying to figure out just what documents I’d have to give Judge Boyko to prove standing to foreclose in this case, I am of course deeply impressed by the social acceptability of “just walking away.”
Meanwhile, the Navy has recently taken out of service the last of its relatively new Osprey (MHC 51)-class coastal minehunters. These 12 ships-ideal for littoral operations-were commissioned between 1993 and 1999. The Navy began decommissioning them in June 2006. Some have been transferred to Greece and Egypt, with the remainder being kept in storage at Beaumont, Texas, until they can be disposed of.
Lee Hunt, vice president for academic affairs for the Mine Warfare Association, said that the departure of the last coastal minehunters robs the service of the ability to survey domestic harbors for mines. The threat of mines or Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in U.S. harbors is of growing concern of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense.
Still another sign of the confusion and lack of interest with respect to mine countermeasures is the current Navy move to replace the large MH-53E Sea Dragon mine countermeasures helicopters with the smaller MH-60S Sea Hawk. The latter has considerably less endurance and equipment lift capacity than the MH-53E, and also lacks the big bird’s night-flying capability.