July 2011 archive

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

Had a chance to chat with Armando last night which I’ve always found very enjoyable despite others having a different experience.  Nobody is obligated to treat you any particular way on the Internet and if you’re going to expose yourself you just have to get used to that.

His analysis echos the consensus view expressed here which if I might be allowed to summarize is that Contador has missed his best opportunity for a victory and barring a miraculous comeback in the Alps is no longer a contender.

He’s a little more skeptical of the Schleck brothers’ prospects than I am, perhaps because of their reputation as poor time trialers, and likes Cadel Evan’s chances.  Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oy, Oy, Oy.

I personally think that anyone in the top 8 (well, except for Contador) is close enough to strike and 2 minutes being what it is we could even see a Frenchman (gasp), albeit one with an Alsatian name, cruising down the Champs Elysees in yellow in a little less than a week.

The standings as of the second (and last) Rest Day-

What type of race do we have remaining?  Mountains.  Medium tomorrow and Alps for the next 3 days.  Then the Individual Time Trial that is supposed to be the Schleck’s Achilles’ Heel.  Finally the big parade to the Champs which is customarily contended only by the sprinters while the GC also rans accept their fate with dignity.

So there’s not much race left.

I’m hoping the Vs. coverage at 8 am has a little more recap and a little less yesterday than the first Rest Day did.  Limoux to Montpellier was instructive in the points competition but not so much for the overall.  If you miss it there are plenty of repeats at 11:30 am, 3 pm, 8 pm, and midnight.

• Jada Yuan Previews the Hell Out of the Tour de France in the New Yorker, 7/1/11 at 2:00 PM
• Le Tour 2011 official site
• Your The Stars Hollow Gazette Le Tour coverage tags-
• Le Tour
• Le Tour 2010
• Le Tour 2011

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge

July 18 is the 199th day of the year (200th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 166 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America’s 32nd president, is nominated for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt, a Democrat, would eventually be elected to a record four terms in office, the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms.

Roosevelt was born January 30, 1882, in Hyde Park, New York, and went on to serve as a New York state senator from 1911 to 1913, assistant secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920 and governor of New York from 1929 to 1932. In 1932, he defeated incumbent Herbert Hoover to be elected president for the first time. During his first term, Roosevelt enacted his New Deal social programs, which were aimed at lifting America out of the Great Depression. In 1936, he won his second term in office by defeating Kansas governor Alf Landon in a landslide.

Election of 1940

The two-term tradition had been an unwritten rule (until the 22nd Amendment after his presidency) since George Washington declined to run for a third term in 1796, and both Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt were attacked for trying to obtain a third non-consecutive term. FDR systematically undercut prominent Democrats who were angling for the nomination, including two cabinet members, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and James Farley, Roosevelt’s campaign manager in 1932 and 1936, Postmaster General and Democratic Party chairman. Roosevelt moved the convention to Chicago where he had strong support from the city machine (which controlled the auditorium sound system). At the convention the opposition was poorly organized but Farley had packed the galleries. Roosevelt sent a message saying that he would not run, unless he was drafted, and that the delegates were free to vote for anyone. The delegates were stunned; then the loudspeaker screamed “We want Roosevelt… The world wants Roosevelt!” The delegates went wild and he was nominated by 946 to 147 on the first ballot. The tactic employed by Roosevelt was not entirely successful, as his goal had been to be drafted by acclamation. The new vice presidential nominee was Henry A. Wallace, a liberal intellectual who was Secretary of Agriculture.

In his campaign against Republican Wendell Willkie, Roosevelt stressed both his proven leadership experience and his intention to do everything possible to keep the United States out of war. In one of his speeches he declared to potential recruits that “you boys are not going to be sent into any foreign war.” He won the 1940 election with 55% of the popular vote and 38 of the 48 states. A shift to the left within the Administration was shown by the naming of Henry A. Wallace as Vice President in place of the conservative Texan John Nance Garner, who had become a bitter enemy of Roosevelt after 1937.

In electronics, a loudspeaker is what most people just call a speaker, the device that converts electrical signals to sound.  They can range from very simple to very complex designs, with variations in cost from just a few cents to thousands of dollars.

All practical loudspeakers are electromechanical devices, using an analogue electrical signal to make the loudspeaker components to move in such a manner as to in turn move air (usually, although other media can be used for purposes other than human perception) and thus make a sound.  For human hearing, air is almost always the medium used.

Loudspeakers are one of the few modern electronic devices that are analogue only.  In other words, a truly digital loudspeaker does not exist except in a few research laboratories and they are not very good.  It is interesting to me that the final stage of reproducing sound is firmly rooted in the 19th century insofar as basic technology in concerned.  This discussion is limited to electromechanical loudspeakers.  Purely mechanical ones are much older than electromechanical ones.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Freedom

Two stories over the last week underlined the determination of the radical right wing that dominates the Republican Party to sabotage America’s future and betray our national security and the interests of our children and grandchildren:

• The Transportation Budget proposed by House Republican Transport Committee Chairman John Mica of Florida would cost 140,000 jobs
• And Republicans proposed to fund emergency disaster relief by rescinding $1.6b already appropriated and awarded to High Speed Rail projects

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Scotland Yard chief quits, Brooks arrested over hacking

By Danny Kemp, AFP

3 hrs ago

To promote fracking, Talisman Energy releases Talisman Terry the Frackosaurus, the funnest energy extraction-based character since Mountaintop Mining Manny.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge

July 17 is the 198th day of the year (199th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 167 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1998, a diplomatic conference adopts the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing a permanent international court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crime against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (often referred to as the International Criminal Court Statute or the Rome Statute) is the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). It was adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rome on 17 July 1998 and it entered into force on 1 July 2002. As of March 2011, 114 states are party to the statute. Grenada will become the 115th state party on 1 August 2011. A further 34 states have signed but not ratified the treaty. Among other things, the statute establishes the court’s functions, jurisdiction and structure.

Under the Rome Statue, the ICC can only investigate and prosecute in situations where states are unable or unwilling to do so themselves. Thus, the majority of international crimes continue to go unpunished unless and until domestic systems can properly deal with them. Therefore, permanent solutions to impunity must be found at the domestic level.

History

Following years of negotiations aimed at establishing a permanent international tribunal to prosecute individuals accused of genocide and other serious international crimes, such as crimes against humanity, war crimes and the recently defined crimes of aggression, the United Nations General Assembly convened a five-week diplomatic conference in Rome in June 1998 “to finalize and adopt a convention on the establishment of an international criminal court”. On 17 July 1998, the Rome Statute was adopted by a vote of 120 to 7, with 21 countries abstaining.[5] The seven countries that voted against the treaty were Iraq, Israel, Libya, the People’s Republic of China, Qatar, the United States, and Yemen.

On 11 April 2002, ten countries ratified the statute at the same time at a special ceremony held at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, bringing the total number of signatories to sixty, which was the minimum number required to bring the statue into force, as defined in Article 126. The treaty entered into force on 1 July 2002; the ICC can only prosecute crimes committed on or after that date. The statute was modified in 2010 after the Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda, but the amendments to the statute that were adopted at that time are not effective yet.

The Rome Statute is the result of multiple attempts for the creation of a supranational and international tribunal. At the end of 19th century, the international community took the first steps towards the institution of permanent courts with supranational jurisdiction. With the Hague International Peace Conferences, representatives of the most powerful nations made an attempt to harmonize laws of war and to limit the use of technologically advanced weapons. After World War I and even more after the heinous crimes committed during World War II, it became a priority to prosecute individuals responsible for crimes so serious that needed to be called “against humanity”. In order to re-affirm basic principles of democratic civilisation, the alleged criminals were not executed in public squares or sent to torture camps, but instead treated as criminals: with a regular trial, the right to defense and the presumption of innocence. The Nuremberg trials marked a crucial moment in legal history, and after that, some treaties that led to the drafting of the Rome Statute were signed.

UN General Assembly Resolution n. 260 9 December 1948, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, was the first step towards the establishment of an international permanent criminal tribunal with jurisdiction on crimes yet to be defined in international treaties. In the resolution there was a hope for an effort from the Legal UN commission in that direction. The General Assembly, after the considerations expressed from the commission, established a committee to draft a statute and study the related legal issues. In 1951 a first draft was presented; a second followed in 195] but there were a number of delays, officially due to the difficulties in the definition of the crime of aggression, that were only solved with diplomatic assemblies in the years following the statute’s coming into force. The geopolitical tensions of the Cold War also contributed to the delays.

Trinidad and Tobago asked the General Assembly in December 1989 to re-open the talks for the establishment of an international criminal court and in 1994 presented a draft Statute. The General Assembly created an ad hoc committee for the International Criminal Court and, after hearing the conclusions, a Preparatory Committee that worked for two years (1996-1998) on the draft. Meanwhile, the United Nations created the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and for Rwanda (ICTR) using statutes-and amendments due to issues raised during pre-trial or trial stages of the proceedings-that are quite similar to the Rome Statute.

During its 52nd session the UN General Assembly decided to convene a diplomatic conference for the establishment of the International Criminal Court, held in Rome 15 June-17 July 1998 to define the treaty, entered into force on 1 July 2002.

Can Obama Pull a Clinton on the GOP?

Robert Reich

Friday, July 15, 2011

Some in the White House and on Wall Street assume the anemic recovery will turn stronger in the second half of the year, emerging full strength in 2012. They blame the anemia on disruptions in Japanese supply chains, bad weather, high oil prices, European debt crises, and whatever else they can come up with. These factors have contributed, but they’re not the big story.

When the Great Recession wiped out $7.8 trillion of home values, it crushed the nest eggs and eliminated the collateral of America’s middle class. As a result, consumer spending has been decimated. Households have been forced to reduce their debt to 115% of disposable personal income from 130% in 2007, and there’s more to come. Household debt averaged 75% of personal income between 1975 and 2000.

We’re in a vicious cycle in which job and wage losses further reduce Americans’ willingness to spend, which further slows the economy. Job growth has effectively stopped. The fraction of the population now working (58.2%) is near a 25-year low-lower than it was when recession officially ended in June 2009.

Wage growth has stopped as well. Average real hourly earnings for all employees declined by 1.1% between June 2009, when the recovery began, and May 2011. For the first time since World War II, there has been a decline in aggregate wages and salaries over seven quarters of post-recession recovery.

This is not Bill Clinton’s economy. So many jobs have been lost since Mr. Obama was elected that, even if job growth were to match the extraordinary pace of the late 1990s-averaging 300,000 to 350,000 per month-the unemployment rate wouldn’t fall below 6% until 2016. That pace of job growth is unlikely, to say the least. If Republicans manage to cut federal spending significantly between now and Election Day, while state outlays continue to shrink, the certain result is continued high unemployment and anemic growth.

Electoral Victory my ass.

The British are not looking kindly on Rupert Murdoch’s wiretap scandal that erupted over two weeks ago. Murdoch, who is the chairman and CEO of News Corporation, shut down the tabloid, News of the World, when it was revealed that they had hacked the cell phone and erased messages of a missing girl who was later found dead. Rather than just fire the executive, Rebekah Brooks who allowed the phone hacking, he fired over 130 people in an attempt to protect his “protégé”. Ms Brooks who resigned Friday from Murdoch’s operations, was arrested “by appointment” in London on Sunday.

Brooks was due to give evidence before MPs on the culture select committee on Tuesday.

An arrest by appointment on a Sunday by police is unusual.

In a statement the Met said: “The MPS [Metropolitan police service] has this afternoon, Sunday 17 July, arrested a female in connection with allegations of corruption and phone hacking.

“At approximately 12.00 a 43-year-old woman was arrested by appointment at a London police station by officers from Operation Weeting [phone hacking investigation] together with officers from Operation Elveden [bribing of police officers investigation]. She is currently in custody.

“She was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to Section1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977 and on suspicion of corruption allegations contrary to Section 1 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906.

The scandal has also embroiled the UK police who have been accused of being too close to News Corps, not scrutinizing the complaints and bribe taking.

The scandal has embroiled Britain’s police, who are accused of being too close to News Corp, of accepting cash from the now defunct News of the World tabloid that was at the heart of the scandal, and from other newspapers, and of not doing enough to investigate phone-hacking allegations that surfaced as far as back as 2005.

Britain’s senior police chief Paul Stephenson came under renewed pressure late on Saturday after it emerged he had stayed at a luxury spa at which Neil Wallis, a former News of the World deputy editor, was a public relations adviser.

A police statement said Stephenson did not know of Wallis’s connection with the spa, and his stay was paid for by the spa’s managing director, a family friend with no links to his professional life.

Stephenson already had come under fire after his force said Wallis, who has been arrested over the phone-hacking scandal and is free on bail, had been hired as a consultant by the police.

The investigation has spread to the US. The FBI is now investigating possible phone hacking of 9/11 survivors cell phone.

It also precipitated the resignation of Les Hinton, head of News Corp’s Dow Jones & Co, who was chief executive of News International and Ms Brooke’s boss at the time of the hacking and brought even further scrutiny of the tight knit board of directors.

And how is Fox News handling this? heh

More predictably, support has also come from News Corp’s right-leaning cable channel Fox News, where there has been a reluctance to devote as much time to the story as other outlets, especially the left-leaning MSNBC network. A recent episode of the show Fox and Friends featured a media consultant, Robert Dilenschneider, who said that the scandal was being overplayed and Murdoch had “done all the right things”.