Midday Open Thread

• The US Navy announced that due to bad weather,  it will postpone the attempt to shoot down the impaired satellite until tomorrow at the earliest.  Our zillion dollar "star wars" technology is clearly capable of stopping incoming missiles so long as: they come one at a time, are the size of a school bus, travel in orbits that have been calculated for months, don't deploy any decoys, and the weather is clear.
• Despite a resounding party defeat in last week's elections in Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf refuses to step-down and insist he will serve out his term.

  Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party of assassinated ex-Premier Benazir Bhutto, told reporters Tuesday that he would meet soon with Sharif and other opposition leaders “to form a government of national unity.” Zardari also made clear that his coalition would not include politicians who had been allied with Musharraf.

  “We will seek support from democratic forces to form the government, but we are not interested in any of those people who are part and parcel of the previous government,” said Zardari, though he carefully avoided an unequivocal statement about whether Musharraf should remain in power.

• Stanford has decided to eliminate tuition fees for students whose families make less than $100,000 per year.  But, that's not all....if a family makes less than $60,000 per year, Stanford will pick up their room and board as well.  Why the change of heart?

  The university is making the change in the wake of published reports last month that its endowment had grown almost 22 percent last year, to $17.1 billion. That sum had begun to attract attention from lawmakers who want wealthy institutions to do more to reduce tuition costs.

  Let's hope this will be a growing trend. With a $17 billion dollar endowment, one has to wonder why they charge tuition at all.

• Brent Wilkes gets 12 years in the Big House for bribing Randy "Duke" Cunningham. - smintheus
• The long-term unemployment rate is much higher than it was at the start of the last recession. - smintheus
• This is the way it's done folks: Shame on Elaine. h/t Desert Beacon - smintheus
• The struggle among militias for control of southern Iraq is getting a lot more complex. - smintheus