Do'h!!!!!!!

Bummer of a birth mark, Федеральное космическое агентство Россиu

It appears that there may be a few issues with the Russian space program:

The Soyuz TMA-16M capsule with international space crew descends beneath a parachute just before landing near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan

Work at Russia's new $ 3 billion spaceport in the Far East has ground to a halt after a critical piece of infrastructure was discovered to have been built to the wrong dimensions, and would not fit the latest version of the country's Soyuz rocket, a news report said.

The Vostochny Cosmodrome, under construction in the Amur region, north of China, is intended to become Russia's primary spaceport, replacing the Soviet-built Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The cutting-edge facility was meant be ready for launches of Soyuz-2 rockets in December, but an unidentified space agency of a of a told the TASS news agency of a of a late Thursday that the rocket would not fit inside the assembly building where its parts are stacked and tested before launch.

The building "has been designed for a different modification of the Soyuz rocket," the source said, according to news website Medusa, which picked up the story from TASS.

………

"Work with the rocket at the integration and testing complex now can not be conducted because the facility is not ready," the spokesperson said in the report. "There are still imperfections in the construction."

The problems with the testing and assembly building are the latest incident in a saga of corruption scandals, embezzlement cases, high-profile arrests, worker strikes, and construction delays at the Vostochny cosmodrome.

If there is an equivalent of The Daily Show in Russia, they are all getting drunk right now, because their script has already been written. 

Good Idea

The Deputy Governor of the People's Bank of China, their central bank, is calling for the the imposition of a financial transactions tax:

China should take measures, such as the so-called Tobin tax, to deter currency speculators, according to central bank Deputy Governor Yi Gang.

The steps could include a punitive levy on foreign-exchange trades and the imposition of “handling” fees to counter short-term capital flows aiming for arbitrage, Yi wrote in an article in China Finance magazine, a People’s Bank of China publication. He is revisiting the Tobin tax idea after mentioning it more than a year ago.

His comments suggest the PBOC take greater control of the currency at a time when China is looking to satisfy the International Monetary Fund’s condition that the yuan be more freely usable before it can be admitted into the agency’s Special Drawing Rights basket. While the nation is opening up the interbank bond and currency markets to foreign central banks, it has introduced measures against bets on yuan declines after a surprise devaluation in August triggered the biggest monthly slide since 1994.

Nobel Laureate economist James Tobin first proposed the levy in 1972 after U.S. President Richard Nixon’s decision to abandon the dollar’s peg with gold pushed up global volatility. The tax has in the past been rejected by economies from Europe to South Korea because of the risk investors will simply take their business elsewhere.

That last bit is false, of course.

The British financial center, the City of London, has been a major financial center even though it has a ½% transaction tax.

This suggestion is largely a statement of self interest:  China is experiencing, or will soon experience, a downturn, and when that happens they would be whipsawed by destructive capital flows.

Setting this up before a panic would be beneficial.

Setting this up now and forever, on all financial transactions to discourage unproductive speculation would be a very good thing.

Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead

Barack Obama's educational privatizer in chief, Arne Duncan, has announced that he is stepping down at the end of the year:

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan plans to step down from his Cabinet position by the end of the year, leaving the Obama administration more than a year before the president’s term will end.

“He’s done more to bring our educational system, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the 21st century than anyone else,” President Obama said as he announced Duncan’s resignation at the White House on Friday afternoon. “America will be better off for what he has done.”

OK, as is made clear by Obama's statements, the Cossacks work for the Czar.

As anti-public education and anti-teacher as he has been, it is clear that he has been executing a pro-Wall Street, anti-Teacher, and anti-Student^* agenda at Obama's behest.

Still, I am sure that he will get a 7 figure jackpot at the end of the rainbow.

^*As I have asked many times, "Is there anything that big finance can't make destructive and evil?"^†
†If the goal is to involve Wall Street in a public service, the effect will harm that service. QED.

My Bad, Frank was Gaslighted

On Wednesday, I suggested that Pope Francis's audience with anti-gay bigot Kim Davis was a natural byproduct of the historical imperatives of the Catholic Church, specifically with regard to their position on gay marriage.

It turns out that Charlie Pierce had this sussed out by Thursday, and ascribed this to this to the natural byproduct of over a millennia of no holds barred political machinations:

………Before we continue, let us stipulate a few things. First of all, let us stipulate that there are more than a few members of the Church's permanent bureaucracy, both within the Clan Of The Red Beanie and without, who are not happy that this gentleman got elected Pope, and who are not happy with what he's done and said since he was. Second, let us stipulate that many members of this group are loyal to both former pope Josef Ratzinger and, through him, to the memory (and to what they perceive as the legacy) of John Paul II who, for good and ill, had a much different idea of how to wield a papacy than Papa Francesco does. Third, let us stipulate that this opposition to the current pope has been active and vocal, to say nothing of paranoid. Finally, let us stipulate that, for over 2000 years, the Vatican has been a hotbed of intrigue, betrayal, and sanctified ratf%$#ing on a very high scale. (It also has been a hotbed of, well, hot beds, but that's neither here nor there at the moment.) So, if you're one of these people, and you're looking to ratf%$# the pope's visit to the United States, and to his agenda in general, you'd be looking to put him in a box. So, how would you do that?

We are now seeing more and more signs that conservative Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who set up these meetings, set up the pope:

Ever since it became public that Pope Francis met in Washington with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples, the questions have been swirling: Why did he meet with her, and was it meant as a political statement?

As it turns out, the Vatican said on Friday, the pope did not mean to endorse Ms. Davis’s views. It also said he gave her no more than a typical brief greeting, despite what her lawyer described.

Instead, the Vatican said that Francis gave only one “real audience”: to someone later identified as one of his former students, Yayo Grassi, a gay man in Washington who says he brought his partner of 19 years to the Vatican’s embassy in Washington for a reunion. They even shot video.

The disclosure, after the Vatican’s unusual attempt to correct the impressions left by Francis’ meeting with Ms. Davis, added to days of speculation about whether Francis intended to send a message on the place of gays in the church, or conscientious objection, and whether his advisers had fully briefed him on Ms. Davis, or had their own agenda.

The Vatican spokesman emphasized that the meeting with Ms. Davis was arranged by the office of the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington, not by anyone in Rome — including the pope.

“The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a statement released Friday morning.

………

The Vatican spokesman emphasized that the meeting with Ms. Davis was arranged by the office of the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington, not by anyone in Rome — including the pope.

“The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a statement released Friday morning.

………

Earlier on Friday, the Vatican said that Archbishop Viganò had arranged the pope’s meetings in Washington, including the one with Ms. Davis.

The news of the meeting with Ms. Davis was disclosed late Tuesday night by Ms. Davis’s lawyer, Mathew D. Staver, at the same time it was reported on the website of Inside the Vatican, a conservative publication edited by an American who has covered the Vatican for years.

………

Mr. Staver, for his part, said he had been briefly introduced to Archbishop Viganò in April, when he spoke at a large rally in Washington against same-sex marriage, before the Supreme Court ruled on the issue.

So, we know that Viganò was present at an anti-gay marriage rally, and the Times has some background on Viganò:

………

The archbishop, who was exiled to the United States in 2011 after losing a high-altitude Vatican power struggle that became public in an infamous leaks scandal, now finds himself at the center of another papal controversy. This time, the Vatican is suggesting that Archbishop Viganò is responsible for giving papal face time to Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk whose refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples has made her a heroine to social conservatives.

………

Mr. Staver said a conservative deacon, Keith Fournier, introduced him to Archbishop Viganò back in April before speaking at a National Organization for Marriage rally on the Washington Mall in opposition to same-sex marriage. As Mr. Staver descended from the stage, Archbishop Viganò made a point to “thank me for my message,” the lawyer said.

Archbishop Viganò, a cultural conservative born into a wealthy family in Varese, received the title of archbishop from John Paul II in 1992. He later joined the church’s diplomatic corps, which is one of the traditional sources of power in the Vatican, and in 2009 was installed by Pope Benedict XVI as secretary of the governorate of Vatican City State, a position not unlike the mayor of Vatican City.

(emphasis mine)

Even if Francis wanted to endorse Kim Davis's repulsive views and actions, it is highly unlikely that he would have done so in private.

The evidence points to a Roger Stone style fat-f%$#ing orchestrated by Staver and Viganò.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!! (On Saturday)

And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

7. Hometown National Bank, Longview, WA
8. The Bank of Georgia, Peachtree City, GA

First Activity in 2½ month.  I'm not sure if it means anything, but when juxtaposed with recent anemic job growth, it's another marker that our already anemic recovery is slowing down.

Full FDIC list

So, here is the graph pr0n with last few years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

From the Department of Unfortunate Names.......

At my shul, the brotherhood is hosting a talk by sports journalist Peter Schmuck. (See picture)

I understand how parents might be reticent regarding changing their surname, even if it is "Schmuck", but to compound this by naming your kid "Peter"?

That's just wrong.

Elementary school must have been hell for this guy.

Posted via mobile.

And Now, the Video Evidence

Last night, night, I declared that Trevor Noah's monologue on Donald Trump was brilliant, and that he is a worthy successor to Jon Stewart.

Tonight, I can show you the video: