SEC Probes Other Soured Deals by Carrick Mollenkamp, Serena Ng, Gregory Zuckerman and Scott Patterson [The Wall Street Journal]
Sikorsky + Lockheed Martin = Presidential Helo? by Bettina Chavanne [Aviation Week]
Millions stolen from Iraq rebuilding by Joe Gould [Military Times]
Source: CV-22 crash not caused by mechanical failure by Stephen Trimble [Flightglobal]
Pentagon to rebid Afghan police training contract by Robert Brodsky [Government Executive]
Top Bribery Prosecutor Exits, Predicting No Slowdown in Cases by Mike Scarcella [The Blog of the Legal Times]
Goldman Sachs SEC Case May Hinge on Meaning of Word 'Selected' by Jody Shenn and Joshua Gallu [Bloomberg]
W.Va. mine disaster calls attention to revolving door between industry, government by Kimberly Kindy and Dan Eggen [The Washington Post]
Congressional hearing details cozy relationship between Office of Thrift Supervision and Washington Mutual by Ryan Holeywell [BailoutSleuth]
SEC's Inspector General: Fort Worth Enforcement Knew of Stanford's Ponzi Scheme Since 1997 [Securities Law Prof Blog]
Blanche Lincoln's Derivatives Bill: Amateur Hour (But Probably Fixable) [Economics of Contempt]
DHS may insource 15,000 guards by Tim Kauffman [Federal Times]
Defense contractors with delinquent taxes target of bill by Tony Capaccio [Bloomberg News]
Contractors in the Crosshairs, in Washington and Afghanistan by Nathan Hodge [Danger Room]
Hearing: Federal oversight of billions in services contracts [Commission on Wartime Contracting]
The walls of a wadi, a dry river or stream bed, can be very steep and could cause exactly the sort of effect I describe here: http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2010/04/air-force-investigating-class-a-osprey-mishap-from-march.html#comment-6a00d8341c68bf53ef01347fe68381970c
This effect is not acknowledged by the DoD or any of the amature websites on V-22 problems. They do not even generally acknowledge the fact that V-22's are not allowed to land with the tail toward a wall or any other surface discontinuity that would divert the aft flowing stream of air exiting the rotor wash area up, creating a vertical version of a vortex ring state that is instantly catastrophic. Once that aft wash of air is free of the coriolis effect holding it to the ground, it can very quickly be sucked into the low pressure area above either rotor causing a complete loss of lift on that side.
They might blame that V-22 crash on the pilot, but this is not the pilot's fault. The fact of the matter is, this is the fault of the 85% of the US armed forces that polish seats with thier asses, not that of the 15% that actually fight wars. In military terminology, however, to the winner go the spoils, and obviously the 85% have a lot more political clout than the 15%. Thus it is we are asked to believe that the bureaucratic 85% are our gift from God even though they can't get a single program on-budget or on-schedule, and the 15% who actually fight our wars are bumbling idiots somewhat akin to the keystone cops who cannot follow the elaborate procedures required to keep their crappy weapons from failing them.
Posted by: Dfens | Apr 19, 2010 at 02:53 PM