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Saturday, May 06, 2006
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ROBERT BRYCE, COUNTERPUNCH - Last week, Lockheed Martin announced that its profits were up a hefty 60 percent in the first quarter. The company earned $591 million in profit on revenues of $9.2 billion. Now, if the company could just figure out how to put a door handle on its new $361 million F-22 fighter, its prospects would really soar.
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On April 10, at Langley Air Force Base, an F-22 pilot, Capt. Brad Spears, was locked inside the cockpit of his aircraft for five hours. No one in the U.S. Air Force or from Lockheed Martin could figure out how to open the aircraft's canopy. At about 1:15 pm, chainsaw-wielding firefighters from the 1st Fighter Wing finally extracted Spears after they cut through the F-22's three-quarter inch-thick polycarbonate canopy.
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Total damage to the airplane, according to sources inside the Pentagon: $1.28 million. Not only did the firefighters ruin the canopy, which cost $286,000, they also scuffed the coating on the airplane's skin which will cost about $1 million to replace.
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The Pentagon currently plans to buy 181 copies of the F-22 from Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest weapons vendor. The total price tag: $65.4 billion. . .
(Via UNDERNEWS.)
4:56:46 PM 
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Congrats to my old pal Mike in his recent engagement to Oanh. What I like about this picture is the big smile on Mike's face in them all. I've only seen Mike a handful of times in the last 3 decades, but these pictures are just the way I remember him. He phoned the other night, and I gave him the sad news about our friend John. Mike and I were friends from kindergarten all the way through high school graduation, through stolen girlfriends, fights, expulsions, and more. He stuck with me better, I think, than I did him. In any case, best wishes to him and his soon-to-be bride.
2:38:59 PM
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It's painful to read the following: The torture convention outlaws all forms of torture and inhumane treatment whatever the circumstances, forbids sending people to countries where they risk torture, and requires prosecution and punishment of all those responsible for torture up the chain of command.
In a report to the committee this week, UK-based Amnesty International said there was evidence of 'widespread torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees'.
It accused Washington of creating a climate in which torture and ill-treatment could flourish, by trying to narrow the definition of torture and failing to hold senior officials responsible.
Jennifer Daskal, US advocacy director of Human Rights Watch in New York, said yesterday that senior US officials were still refusing to classify 'water-boarding' - a near-drowning technique used in the Spanish Inquisition - as torture.
Can some journalist with some balls simply ask Rumsfeld or Rice or Cheney or Bush up-front whether they believe "waterboparding" amounts to "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of detainees? We deserve an answer. 
(Via Daily Dish.)
10:34:25 AM
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As encouraging as the latest polls are, I fear that we could face another 2000 or 2004 -- in other words, a stolen election. Bill Schneider is saying now on CNN that voters may take their anger out on Republicans during the mid-term elections, but that will not matter if the Rethug conspiracy to control voting is allowed to continue. This may be the most important issue confronting us, for if "one man, one vote" no longer holds, democracy is circumvented.
Despite the pollster's claims that the Republicans are in deep trouble in the coming elections, they will win again if attention is not paid to the way they conduct their election business. It is business to them -- power means profits -- and profits buy more power. It will take an aroused and enlightened electorate to make certain that the past is not prelude to the future. As a recent convert to the notion of a conspiracy, I pass on this warning in my best conspiratorial manner. Watch out! And look under every rock. The bad guys are determined to win again, and they will if the people do not understand the danger our democracy faces from them. Psst! Trust me on this.
Tags: black-box voting, stolen election, voting irregularities
(Via No More Apples.)
10:15:55 AM
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Be Here To Love Me documents the life of Townes Van Zandt, legendary Texas songwriter. Despite knowing his hit -- Pancho and Lefty -- very well and a couple of his other songs, Van Zandt has always been something of a cipher to me. His songs, or maybe it's the limitations of his voice that make them that way, have always been sort of opaque to me. At the end of this intense and disturbing movie, Van Zandt himself is still something of a cipher. A glue sniffer in his early years, after going through shock therapy he still became an alcoholic and eventually destroyed his life. His pursuit was the craft of his song; the price he and those around him paid was as high as the price gets. This is a very well-done, disturbing and intense movie.
Though Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of the odd writer is the center of Capote, the rest of the movie is worthy of this performance. All the actors -- Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr, Chris Cooper, etc. -- turn in performances to match Hoffman's, if they are necessarily less flashy and riveting. The entire movie is very smart, from the screenplay to the photography to the costumes. It was always absorbing, by turns horrifying and funny. Like Be Here To Love Me, it's about a man consumed with his art, subjugating all else to its needs. The movie's revelations do not detract from In Cold Blood, but, er, flesh it out and illuminate it.
10:13:19 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Steve Michel.
Last update: 6/1/2006; 8:53:43 AM.
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