Once, squared, cubed

Chart mapping from mortgages to 'CDO-cubed.'

Chain of fools at The Deal.com

Alexi, Ed, Zhai...

EVAs (i.e. spacewalks):

Alexi Leonov - March 18th, 1965 (Voskhod 2)
Edward H. White - June 3rd, 1965 (Gemini 4)
Zhai Zhigang - September 27th, 2008 (Shenzhou 7)

Chinese astronaut completes nation's first space walk
Of great significance

Great (?) quotes...

"You see where the insufficiency of forces is? I don’t understand why [the Americans] don’t just kill the militants on their side of the border. They show us videos as proof of militants crossing into Pakistan. Why don’t they just sort them out there, in Afghanistan, instead of making videos?" - unidentified Pakistani military official, opining on U.S. complaints that Taliban militants based in Pakistan conduct cross-border raids into Afghanistan before slipping across the border to shelter in Pakistan...

The 'insufficiency' he referred to was the fact that Pakistan has deployed some 120 thousand troops along the Pakistan-Afghan border, as compared to approximately 30 thousand U.S. troops deployed on the Afghan side... (article numbers).

To 'it or not to eat...

The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, was interviewed by Haaretz re Iran and it' (putative) efforts to develop a nuclear device.... Discussing what might happen, Haaretz quoted Kouchner as saying, "... "I honestly don't believe that it will give any immunity to Iran. First, because you will eat them before. And this is the danger. Because Israel has always said that it will not wait for the bomb to be ready. I think that they know. Everybody knows...," injecting a bit of levity into a very serious subject.

Later, after Haaretz reported, Kouchner's Paris office issued a red-faced correction, apologizing for "un confusion phonétique" Apparently Kouchner was speaking in English, said "hit," and Haaretz reported it as "eat." Haaretz's web site has been updated... Ah, zee french silent h, eet causes so many problems...

Mortgage mess

Making sense of the mortgage meltdown
(via The Great Loan Blog)

Note: the folks most hurt by the fall in prices were, naturally, those at the end of the "Ponzi-ish" increase in home prices in some markets... Most of those who purchased homes 5+ years ago still are 'ahead' (some well ahead, some barely...)

Repeat posts...

Repeat from September 15th:




Repeat from August 29th, 'Joe, meet Joe'

Apparently although Joe Biden has been picked/nominated as the Democratic VP candidate, he will still run for relection to his Senate seat (D-DE). Shades of another Joe - Lieberman that is, in 2000...

Maverick McCain?

"At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.

McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.

There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."

"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.

"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.

"Why? Where are you going to, John?"

"Oh, I'm going to Rio."

"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

"I got a better chance of getting laid."

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."

Read the rest here: 'Make-Believe Maverick'