Kudos to mistermix for sorting the domain registration issue!
The recent hearings in PFC Bradley Manning’s court-martial concluded on Wednesday. I was waiting for some clarification from a lawyer I know before posting but he’s as snowed under as ever so I’m going to run with what I have. Any errors are mine, and not his. Two sources of information, both coming through the Washington Post, here. One appears to be a staff writer, and another is from the Associated Press. I’ll leave it to you to figure out why two different stories on the same event run in two different parts of the paper and why they couldn’t just link their own writer’s work in the other section. And they can’t figure out why they aren’t making money.
The Military Judge, COL Denise Lind, has ruled that PFC Manning may introduce evidence of his motive and evidence regarding the government’s determination of damage, but only in the sentencing phase of the trial, if that occurs. Military Courts-Martial are conducted in two phases, a “findings phase” where the Court determines whether or not the government can prove that all of the elements of the offenses charged were committed by the accused, and in the event of a guilty verdict in that phase, a “sentencing phase” where the Court determines the sentence. Essentially, Judge Lind decided that Manning would not be allowed to enter evidence into the record about his motive in the findings phase because under military law, motive is not an element of the crime. Motive is, however, a matter of extenuation or mitigation to be taken at sentencing. Judge Lind also ruled that Trial Counsel (the prosecution) must prove that PFC Manning knew that the information he was giving to Wikileaks would end up in the hands of the enemy. It would not be enough to show that he was merely reckless.
She also set the next hearing for February 26th, to rule on a Defense motion for dismissal of charges under Article 10, UCMJ. Mr. Coombs, PFC Manning’s counsel, has argued that the 930+ days of confinement violate Article 10 and the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a speedy trial. The Trial Counsel argued that there have been various events that have caused the trial clock (which has 120 days maximum) to “stop tolling” which I assume to mean pause or hold.
Comrade Jake
It would seem to me that this would be a pretty difficult thing to prove, no?
notgonnahappen
If Wrong Way Cole expresses an opinion that Manning will be convicted you can bet he will be set free shortly.
Comrade Luke
Did you see the headline at the NY TImes?
“Backing down, House GOP offers 3-month debt extension”
I love this. This, to the Times, is being reasonable.
Amir Khalid
Obviously, there’s no reason to run a wire story as well as a perfectly good one written in-house. Happens at every newspaper from time to time, I suspect. When it happened at my old newspaper, it was usually a simple cock-up by the editors: one person put together one page, someone else put together another page, and one or both forgot to check which stories were being used elsewhere.
Soonergrunt
@Comrade Jake: I’m not sure exactly how that would work. I assume (but that’s worth exactly what you are paying for it) that one aspect of that would be showing that he completed training and annual re-certification on handling classified material, which includes various things about how the enemy can access information from various sources just like we can. But I don’t know if that is sufficient to convict. I don’t think so.
Here’s the text of the relevant article:
904. ART. 104. AIDING THE ENEMY
Any person who–
(1) aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things; or
(2) without proper authority, knowingly harbors or [protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly;
shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct.
Comrade Jake
@Soonergrunt: I think there’s a difference between being told all the ways that the “enemy” might get a hold of classified information if you’re careless with it, which is what the training emphasizes, and knowing for sure that the enemy will get their hands on it.
Perhaps all that is required here is for the government to show that Manning had an understanding that Wikileaks would make all of the info publicly available, I’m not sure.
General Stuck
@Comrade Jake:
The Taliban may be playing the modern day role of 12th century tribal war lording, but they are not illiterate nor averse to learning modern technology. They are quite well organized and no doubt have a computer/internet savvy team, probably aided by other highly educated true believers throughout the Muslim world. Such as AQ personnel from the Arabian peninsula.
As for motive, this will be interesting. Especially if he sees fit to mention his likely admiration for wikileaks and its founder, as well as international gadfly GG. That may well have given meaning to Bradley’s dreary life. Now that he is famous, at least for a little while.
Soonergrunt
@Comrade Jake: “I think there’s a difference between being told all the ways that the “enemy” might get a hold of classified information if you’re careless with it, which is what the training emphasizes, and knowing for sure that the enemy will get their hands on it.”
I should think that would be the case. And to my mind, it’s not enough to simply say “we trained him and told him that this might happen so that fulfills that element of the crime.” But I have been wrong before.
Face
@Comrade Luke: Chuck Toddler heard that and creamed his jeans.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
Hoocoodanode? Republican-driven deregulation claimed to promote “competition” in the marketplace has caused prices to soar.
Amir Khalid
Manning gave information to a third party, i.e. Wikileaks. Wikileaks didn’t hand over the information to any particular party; they published it, as Manning presumably anticipated they would. Would that amount to providing the information to America’s enemies?
Soonergrunt
@Amir Khalid: I just was kind of surprised by that. You’d think the editors talk to each other every so often, especially about a (relatively) high profile case like this.
General Stuck
@Comrade Luke:
The republicans are so out of touch with reality, they seem to not know the meaning of not negotiating. While maintaining the idiotic premise that though they at once announce they will never let the country default, they are going to use the debt ceiling as a bargaining tool to force the Kenyan bad guy into meeting their demands. The Doofus, it lives with empty threats from empty minds.
Amir Khalid
@Soonergrunt:
They do talk to each other, of course, and nowadays they can also check with the electronic publishing system. But every once in a while something manages to slip through the cracks.
Soonergrunt
@Amir Khalid: As I said, I don’t know how the law works. Your proposition, that Manning knew they would publish the secrets he gave them (because that’s what they do) and that common sense would dictate that the enemy would download it seems to make sense, but it also seems to me that there is or should be an element of intent that the enemy would actually get the information.
Loneoak
Just curious: is there is a lesser crime of “mishandling” classified information that has a lower burden of proof?
quannlace
What part of ‘stop lurching from crisis to crisis’ don’t they understand?
General Stuck
The new different plan fresh of the presses in Toontown.
I love it. At least they are going to release the nation as hostage, and now take each other as hostages. Clowns.
General Stuck
Soonergrunt, could you please release my comment from mod. thanks.
Soonergrunt
@quannlace: You’re assuming that they WANT to stop lurching from crisis to crisis. I think one crisis after another is exactly what they want because they think it will keep anything from getting done. Historically, the period immediately after a President is re-elected to the congressional mid-term elections is the period in which most of a President’s lasting agenda gets enacted.
@General Stuck: DONE.
Soonergrunt
@General Stuck: No, they won’t take each other as hostage. Each chamber will “pass a budget” and by so doing meet the terms of this BS–to which the Senate hasn’t agreed, btw–but the budgets each chamber passes will be completely incompatible.
Roger Moore
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
It worked so well when we deregulated electricity…
Suffern ACE
@General Stuck: I’m going to say that I don’t mind this plan much. They have until April 15 to pass their spending resolutions and then will need to pass the debt ceiling limit to meet the annual spending. While I would rather get rid of the debt ceiling vote, I wouldn’t mind having the debt limit increase right after the spending resolutions are passed. It takes away that play that congressmen do where they pass their spending resolutions(yay! pork) and then eight months later pretend that they’re all concerned about the national finances. It makes the budget peacocks own their spending.
Maude
@Roger Moore:
And the airlines. #22
trollhattan
In which Chait hands Bobo his ass in a paper bag.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/david-brooks-now-totally-pathological.html
General Stuck
@Soonergrunt:
If they leave it at that, then it is a fitting Monty Python solution, as Operation CYA for all the grief they have caused with the markets and the country’s mental health over all.
I don’t know if Reid will go along with being dictated to by the likes of John Boehner and the GOP like this, but Obama has said NO NO NO to any and all negotiations, which this sounds like one. Maybe he’ll let the wingnuts extricate themselves from the corner they painted themselves into. But I doubt it, lest they do something permanent about the debt ceiling needing raising every few months, to put an end to this shit once and for all. we shall see.
Roger Moore
@General Stuck:
The big question is what happens when both houses pass budgets, but they’re sufficiently different that they can’t paper over the differences in conference. Because you know that’s what’s going to happen in practice.
burnspbesq
It seems pretty clear, just from reading the statute, that knowledge is an element of the offense of aiding the enemy.
As a general proposition, proving actual knowledge can be a bit dicey. If the defendant says “no, I didn’t know,” as a prosecutor you have your work cut out for you. What the judge’s order doesn’t seem to specify is whether the prosecution has to prove actual knowledge, or whether that peculiar legal construct known as “constructive knowledge” will suffice.
At the end of the day, however, there are plenty of other charges and specifications. If he doesn’t go down for aiding the enemy, he will almost certainly go down on one or more other charges.
General Stuck
@Roger Moore:
Budgets presented, especially in these hyperpartisan days, are nothing but political documents the other side can glean talking points from for the next election. That is the main reason one hasn’t been submitted from dems, and I kind of doubt they will now. I don’t think it will fly, and Pelosi already has come out slamming it as gimmick. My read from dems and especially Obama, that they are non plussed by this entire gambit the wingers using the debt ceiling and default as a means to extort concessions with, and are now quite angry about it.
And I will be surprised if Obama accepts it, or Reid. Unless, there is a taking the debt ceiling off the grid for politics. But I am just guessing, of course.
Roger Moore
@Maude:
The airlines have worked a hell of a lot better than California’s electrical system. Yes, airline service has gone downhill and the seats are uncomfortable, but at least the promised lower prices and increased flexibility have shown up, and safety is better than ever. When California deregulated the electrical system, Enron (and others) gamed the system to reduce supply, so we got much higher prices* and regular brownouts.
*The higher prices wound up hurting the delivery utilities more than consumers, since Enron crashed the system before the utilities were allowed to start passing their cost increases along to consumers.
dmsilev
@General Stuck: That’s cute, except for the minor minor issue that it’s completely unconstitutional. The 27th Amendment, in its entirety, reads
I wonder how the brave self-declared defenders of the Constitution will thread that particular needle?
General Stuck
@dmsilev:
Thanks, If you think about it, that kind of internecine warfare in congress would be a certain recipe for gridlock disaster, canings, and all sorts of mayhem betwixt congresscritters. And it looks like somebody figured that out a while ago. good catch.
Hill Dweller
@General Stuck: The wingnuts no budget, no pay gambit is unconstitutional.
Soonergrunt
@burnspbesq: I’m not a fan of Manning’s, and I believe that he’s guilty of quite a bit of it, which belief is buttressed in my mind by his two offers to plead guilty by exception and substitution to lesser included offenses for up to 20 years incarceration, but the Aiding the Enemy spec always seemed like overcharging to me.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
As long as they promise back pay the moment a budget is passed, they can claim that they aren’t varying the pay, they’re just withholding it until the Congresscritters do their job.
ETA: Besides, when have they actually cared about that kind of thing. This is pure grandstanding, and everyone with the mental capacity of a grapefruit knows it.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
I have somehow managed to only live in cities in California that refused to deregulate and continued to have their own municipal utilities.
My friends who live in Laguna Niguel got pretty screwed, though.
HumboldtBlue
Don’t mind the camo and the vest and don’t mind the shotgun either, I’m here to protect the children.
J. Michael Neal
I’m in Mankato to watch the Gopher women’s hockey team try to extend their season record to 23-0 tonight. The Buffalo Wild Wings here is but a pale imitation of its sibling is Roseville. The seats are uncomfortable; there’s a terrible shortage of electrical outlets; and they lack the Most Awesome Soda Machine in the World.
I’m pretty sure I’ll survive until game time, though, so don’t weep for me. Save your pity for the natives.
And I have a new short story: Life, or Something Like It. What happens to an asteroid belt surveyor when his ship starts talking to him?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21498817/Finished%20Stories/Life%2C%20or%20Something%20Like%20It.docx
Maude
@Roger Moore:
In NJ, we have been okay with the electric companies.
Flying used to be fun and comfortable. Now it isn’t. The airliners would have gotten safer as tech progressed.
I don’t think it was good to deregulate them at all.
I feel for Boeing and the 787. The battery problem didn’t show up in the test flights.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
Of course there is always the pardoning power….
A pardon for Swartz, however qualified, would undercut the case for severe punishment (including, possibly, the death penalty) of Bradley Manning and others. It would amount to an acceptance that Swartz’ motivation in seeking the free distribution of information was a noble one, and that his offences should have been judged in that light. Perhaps some people would see it as exonerating the state, but I think more would see it as a signal of a new direction, and a precedent to be followed.
A refusal or evasion would serve the same function as the Czar’s orders to his Cossacks in 1905. Those who still believe Obama’s pledge to run the most transparent administration in history would see the reality, and might be moved to protest a bit more.
http://crookedtimber.org/2013/01/15/obama-should-pardon-aaron-swartz/
Soonergrunt
@Maude: And the battery problem may just be bad batteries and nothing to do with the design.
J. Michael Neal
@Maude:
Sure, but you’d likely be paying $800 dollars for the cheapest flight without deregulation. The reason comfort has suffered so badly is because the people who want to fly have made it resoundingly clear that, if they have to choose between price and amenities, they will pick price every single time. You get what you pay for.
Maybe they shouldn’t have outsourced all of their engineering to different suppliers. Then maybe all of the different parts would work together.
J. Michael Neal
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin): I’m having trouble seeing what the Swartz and Manning cases have to do with each other. One involves classified material; the other didn’t. One involves a government employee who was under an obligation to comply with his employer’s rules; the other didn’t.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
Clearing the Decks starting with a foundation like Aaron Swartz, might be a good avenue for recouping progressive creds.
An olive branch would be better than a fig-leaf.
http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@J. Michael Neal:
Did you read Quiggen?
Maude
@J. Michael Neal:
Boeing is airframe. The parts are from contractors to customer specification. They don’t make ion lithium batteries at Boeing.
Competition for airlines would have helped with airlines. If you haven’t flown in the good old days, it’s hard to understand how awful flying has become.
The deregulation was political like deregulating the banks.
People with a lot of money fly private.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
?@Amir Khalid:
Because our enemies would never look on the intertubes for information, of course.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@J. Michael Neal:
Here’s the counter-point Quiggen referred to.
http://coreyrobin.com/2013/01/15/the-state-should-not-pardon-aaron-swartz/
Elie
Late to the thread but thank you to Mistermix for getting our B-J home back on-line… sniff, sniff — I missed youze guys!
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
The only place in California I’ve lived is Pasadena, which has a municipal utility that wasn’t affected by the power crisis. Unfortunately, I work in Duarte, which doesn’t, and I was part of our disaster response team that had to deal with power outages when they happened.
Even worse, my employer decided that as a hospital with enough backup generators to provide power for the whole operation if the utility was off-line it would be smart to go on the interruptible power plan. That meant Edison could shut off our power with 30 minutes notice and would do so any time there was a threat of a brownout. Unfortunately, the medical people are used to the idea that all critical equipment in the hospital is plugged into orange plugs that are on UPS power, so they hadn’t bothered to get switches that would let us go onto generator power without a couple of minutes of interruption, or to get UPS power for all the critical equipment in the research departments, which are always the red-haired stepchild around here.
The result was that we were pretty much paralyzed any time there was a threat of a power outage. All of my equipment needs to be kept under constant vacuum, which means it need anywhere from half an hour to a couple of days to recover from any power outage of more than a minute. Once we got notice that a power outage was possible, we didn’t want to start anything that couldn’t be wrapped up in less than half an hour for fear that the whole project would be spoiled by losing power part way through. Since that was just about everything we did, it meant we were sitting on our hands any time there was the possibility of an outage, which was just about every day for long stretches during the peak of the crisis. I will never forgive Pete Wilson and the fucking deregulatory machine, and I will never forget.
Elie
@Maude:
Amen, sister. Flying now is like traveling on an old bus down dusty roads with a load of chicken coops in the back…
Deregulation also helped the “race to the bottom” for airline employees salaries. Yes, we got cheaper flights but many of them lost decent salaries and benefits. They show us how they love their jobs now and appreciate the respect that they were shown – NOT! Nope — its the “Law of the Jungle” when you fly these days and you had better dress and set yourself up accordingly.. comfortable clothes that allow you to endure and as little luggage as possible.
Mnemosyne
@J. Michael Neal:
There has been some speculation online (and I don’t know how reliable it is) that Swartz and Manning were in contact with each other and/or were both involved with Wikileaks and that’s why the feds were leaning on Swartz so hard — they were hoping he would give up information that would help in Manning’s prosecution.
Again, I have no idea how reliable these reports are, but some people seem to be taking them as gospel.
Amir Khalid
@J. Michael Neal:
These days, I doubt you could point to a vehicle maker — planes, trains or automobiles, or for that matter ships — that doesn’t outsource some of its parts/subsystems development. Boeing isn’t in the lithium-ion battery business; or the jet engine business, either. (They buy those in, too.) On what’s been reported so far, I don’t think one could say that there was a failure to do proper testing.
Roger Moore
@Maude:
Yes, and back when flying was fun and comfortable it was much, much more expensive, so that it was largely the province of business travelers and the wealthy. Now it’s within the reach of just about everyone. If you want flying to be fun and comfortable again, you can pay extra for business class seats, which will cost about as much as coach seats did before deregulation.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
Serves them right for living in that wingnut shithole. ;-)
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@Mnemosyne:
They weren’t TMK, in contact. Aaron gave an interview expressing some sympathy for Wikileaks
http://inagist.com/all/290630762703753216/
Elie
@Roger Moore:
Good point — thanks. That said, you didn’t address the impact on airline employee salary and benefits. I know, I know, not critical to most of us, but nevertheless important to the “quality” of the flight experience..
Hey — don’t y’all remember about a year ago when that commuter flight crashed when the pilots lost their way and taxied onto the wrong runway? That PILOT made $16K a year! 16K!
I dunno about you but it makes me less than pleased to think that a person that literally has my life in their hands at 35,000 feet makes less than the barrista at Starbucks! That story died but we should have talked about it a lot more…
General Stuck
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin):
From Mr Robin
Corey Robin has a right to his opinion, and I would agree that the government and its prosecutor may well have been over zealous with the charges in this case. But the above statement is not liberal, it is not progressive, at least in any mainstream way outside a fringe minority. It comes from hard left ideology that already has a conclusion for what our government is, and only installs the latest acts of authority as illegitimate when applied to their latest sacrificial lambs.
And thereby, fuzzes up the lines between necessary authority in a civilized democracy, and the outright authoritarian. Mr. Swartz was offered a light sentence, or maybe probation for pleading, and turned it down, out of some rarified notion he was just too beautiful to be a felon. Civil disobedience is for grown ups that know they are likely to pay some for their disobedience , and it always seems like the most vulnerable ones get caught up in the rebellious notions of anti state, as preached by people such as Mr. Robin, amongst others . Too bad. Maybe Robin should have volunteered to do the time, and let someone else pen poutraged blog posts about it.
burnspbesq
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin):
The charges against Swartz were dismissed as soon as his death became known.
So Quiggin is, as usual, talking out of his ass.
Mnemosyne
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin):
Like I said, I’ve seen internet rumors claiming that as the reason the prosecutors were pushing Swartz so hard, but I haven’t seen anything reliable to show it. It seems pretty doubtful to me. Federal prosecutors don’t really need a reason to be ginormous assholes.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@General Stuck:
. Mr. Swartz was offered a light sentence, or maybe probation for pleading, and turned it down,
Incorrect. Defense proffered a lighter sentence, and was rebuffed.
MikeJ
@Maude:
No, they design systems the components fit into. Had the specs valued “must not burst into flames” higher than “must weigh as little as possible” they might not have this problem.
It’s actually illegal to transport the batteries they use as cargo on a passenger flight because of fire risk. Boeing had to build extra fireproofing around the battery compartments to get a waiver to use them. Not having a plan b (possibly in the form of a plug replaceable lead acid battery pack) standing by ready to go seems silly.
General Stuck
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin):
So the prosecution did not offer a year in prison? How light should it have been?
NotMax
So let’s get this straight.
The party that has been bleating for years now that the business community is hobbled by vague economic “uncertainty” now proposes ensconcing undeniable uncertainty as standard operating procedure via an endless series of short-term tantrums.
Norman, coordinate.
Omnes Omnibus
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin): Sorry, I see very little connection between the Manning and Swartz cases. Manning’s big legal problem is that he was working with classified information and release shit loads of it into the wild. He had to have known this was illegal. If he had only leaked things related to war crimes, I would say he not only deserved whistleblower protection, but that he had an obligation to take action to see that war crimes were not covered up. That, however, is not what he seems to have done. Swartz merely downloaded a shitload of data from a private source.
General Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
It may have well been under a general big push by this DOJ to combat intellectual property theft that has been fierce and wide spread. I don’t think they would have offered a plea deal if they were trying to squeeze Swartz for info on others.
kay
@HumboldtBlue:
They’re going to give me a heart attack parading around with these guns. Jesus Christ.
How fucking stupid and reckless are these people? Do they not get it yet?
STAY AWAY FROM SCHOOLS WITH YOUR GUN. STOP HELPING US. WE DON’T WANT YOUR HELP.
burnspbesq
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin):
Corey Robin:
Ceding to the state “the power to declare who is righteous and who is wrong” is what every citizen does when they choose to live in a state. That’s an essential part of the social compact.
If Robin doesn’t want to do that, well, there’s the door, big guy.
General Stuck
@General Stuck:
Check that
seems less than a year
Roger Moore
@Elie:
That’s because they’re largely separate issues. The regulation that was removed was only about prices, routes, and schedules rather than employee relations, so you can’t plausibly blame it for eroding employee rights. That’s especially true because employees in other industries that had never been regulated the same way saw exactly the same kinds of erosion of their rights at the same time. If we bothered to protect employee rights in general, airline employees would have their rights protected despite airline deregulation.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@General Stuck:
Six months, probation……
Assistant United States Attorney Stephen Heymann had reportedly been insisting on jail time for Swartz and was refusing to negotiate a plea deal on the 30 years in jail he faced for stealing academic papers.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2262831/Revealed-Aaron-Swartz-prosecutor-drove-hacker-suicide-2008-named-cyber-crime-case.html#ixzz2IMiDgRoj
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Maude
@MikeJ:
We don’t know what the problem is yet.
Could be the batteries and could be connections etc.
The Boeing 787 is a composite airframe.
They make airframes. They have that in their written materials. I know what an airframe includes.
ETA, one of the batteries in Japan swelled.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@General Stuck:
Well, hush my mouth. I’d seen, in the last couple of days, Ortiz saying that 6 mo had been offered, but Elliot Peters was disputing.
General Stuck
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin):
What is it with British tabloids being used for evidence on this blog?
General Stuck
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin):
Speak english. You were wrong and should have known better than to link to a Brit tabloid. Hush your mouth is wise advice for you.
mattoqp
“Judge Lind also ruled that Trial Counsel (the prosecution) must prove that PFC Manning knew that the information he was giving to Wikileaks would end up in the hands of the enemy.”
But first, won’t the Judge need to figure out exactly who is “the enemy” in our amorphous, endless “war on terror”? Is it Al-qaeda? Is it the Taliban? Is it Iran? Is it the people on President Obama’s “kill list”? Or, is “the enemy” anyone in/near the middle east who criticizes America?
J. Michael Neal
@Maude:
Boeing is an aircraft manufacturer. They’re the one’s responsible for the finished product. In the case of the 787, they not only outsourced the manufacturing, they outsourced a lot of the basic engineering. They have had endless problems with it because the subsystems produced didn’t fit together. They didn’t even have detailed blueprints of the entire plane.
Maybe, as Amir Khalid says, this is the way everyone does it, though I don’t think so. Boeing seems to have gone an extra step in terms of decentralizing. However, if he’s right, expect this to be an ongoing problem in all sorts of places. You have to have substantial centralized engineering if you want a complex system to function properly.
Frankly, you just demonstrated that you don’t have the slightest idea what airline deregulation consisted of. Competition was what was specifically prohibited under the regulated system. Airlines were not allowed to charge less than a set price on any given route. The reason you had a more comfortable flight (and I do actually remember those days, though only barely) was because that was the only competition allowed.
Again: as soon as customers were allowed to make a trade-off between price and comfort, they stampeded to pay as little as possible. You might wish that they had made a different choice. I’ve seen a plausible, though not entirely convincing argument, that they should never have been allowed to make that choice. However, make it they did. Your argument rests upon an implicit assumption that we should be paying 2-3 times what we pay now for airline tickets.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@General Stuck:
You were wrong and should have known better than to link to a Brit tabloid
That same info was found throughout the source bund. Yeah I was wrong on that point but fucking right on the gist of this subject you execrable tabloid of perverse rhetoric.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@burnspbesq:
I linked to him because he was the counterpoint to Quiggin. That is all.
Ted & Hellen
@General Stuck:
Fuck you, you authoritarian enabling sack of shit.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
Now that the scatatology is full bore, and the gnat shit embedded in a giant federal turd has been examined……..
How about that promise of transparency?
Roger Moore
@J. Michael Neal:
And, as I said above, the option of paying more for more comfort and better seats is still available on most airlines in the form of business and first class tickets.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@Ted & Hellen:
It’s always a mistake to respond to Stuck….Pearls before swine
His medulla has to be unscrewed, from time-to-time.
burnspbesq
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin):
I didn’t mean to infer that you were on board with what Robin was saying, so if you took it that way, mea culpa.
Ted & Hellen
I think the liberal/progressive values and general government care for transparency and openness in President Obama’s administration is on plentiful display in both the Manning and Swartz cases.
Nothing to see here…
How many years was George Bush threatened with by the Obama folks before he agreed to serve 65 years in jail with no chance of parole as an alternative?
Oh, wait…
MikeJ
@Maude:
No, they do not. Airframes are one of the things they manufacture. They design aircraft and specify all the components that go in it.
Boeing sells complete aircraft. When you lay down your $150M for a 787 you pick it up ready to fly and carry passengers, complete with FAA airworthiness certificate.
Yes, there is one group within Boeing that builds airframes. It is silly to say that is all Boeing does.
Omnes Omnibus
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin): What are you looking for in terms of transparency? If you are suggesting that too much information is classified, I will agree with you. If you want to suggest that a PFC gets to decide unilaterally that documents should be public, I disagree with you.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@burnspbesq:
absolvo
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Too much is classified and sectored. If it weren’t , Manning would be plying his trade in the Army, or elsewhere.
General Stuck
@Ted & Hellen:
LOL
Fuck you, you irrelevant sack of nothing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin): Your second statement does not automatically follow from your first. You seem to be implying that none of the information Manning released was legitimately classified (doubtful) or that Manning would never have done what he did if classification standards were different (both speculative and too empowering of a junior enlisted man).
General Stuck
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin):
punking your stupid ass is wasting time on a Friday afternoon.
General Stuck
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin):
No, you have been wrong factually on everything you have written on this thread, per usual. Then you link to fanatics but tell us you were just interested in another side. But the reason I am being such an asshole here, is a weariness from idiots like you constantly setting the parameters for who is liberal, or not, conservative, progressive, authoritarian, etc…./ It just needs to be said now and then that you and your misanthropic friends are wrong about that and are completely full of shit
eemom
Y’all need to watch some old Lost In Space episodes to brush up on your epithet hurling.
Soonergrunt
@eemom: That’s one unexpected but decent side effect of a Manning thread. I light the fuze and see what fireworks happen.
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@Soonergrunt:
It’s fire control from your vantage point. Lighting the fuse is certain to have mixed results when you piss on the Manning subject with an Open thread tag. Or, were you concerned about the light traffic from previous posts?
Yutsano
@Soonergrunt: You bastage. At least it was an entertaining diversion from the work project I’m in right now. Oi. Why did I volunteer to become a certified instructor again?
Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)
@General Stuck:
No, you have been wrong factually on everything you have written on this thread,
Holy Shite. You’ve never agreed with me, AFAIR, and take that as a point of pride.
Some people hide their warts, others decorate them.
You are a good soldier, Generalissimo. No one needs BJ kneepads more than you.
General Stuck
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin):
Brings on the homophobia like a good little tea partier of the left. That’s how true progressives do it.
Soonergrunt
@Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin): Most of my threads are open threads. Not everybody wants to talk about the things I want to talk about. And while there might be other places for them to go, I like most of the people here and like it when I can converse with them.