Pet food company’s CFO sold stock when company started testing for toxicity

Over the Line Time line:

Feb. 20: Menu foods starts getting reports of toxicity

Feb. 26. Menu Foods CFO sells 22% of his Menu stock

Feb. 27: Menu starts testing program with some fifty animals; Menu CFU sells another 22% of his Menu stock

March 6: Menu cancels gluten contract with Chinese firm.

March 16: recall announced; stock plummets

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The chief financial officer of Menu Foods Income Fund says it’s a “horrible coincidence” that he sold nearly half his units in the troubled pet food maker less than three weeks before a massive recall of tainted pet food.

Insider trading reports show that Mark Wiens sold 14,000 units for $102,900 on Feb. 26 and Feb. 27. Those shares would be worth $62,440 today, based on yesterday’s close of $4.46 a unit.

That represented 45 per cent of Mr. Wiens’s units. After the sale, he still owned 17,193 units and options to purchase 101,812 units, according to insider trading reports.

“It’s a horrible coincidence, yes . . .” Mr. Wiens said yesterday.

…

Mr. Wiens said the first reports of illnesses and deaths related to Menu Foods products came in to the company’s toll-free customer relations line in late February.

But he said he did not hear of any possible problem with the company’s products until early March.

On March 16, the Streetsville, Ont., pet food maker recalled 60 million containers of cat and dog food.

What is plan B for Iraq? not Allawi.

Some Republican congressman suggests that he knows the secret “Plan B,” to be used if the “surge” tactic fails. I have wondered if Plan B isn’t simply a takedown of the government (call it a coup if you wish) and installation of a secular “strongman.” The most obvious candidate seemed to be Iyah Allawi. Well, I’d say that deal is off:

…Iraqi politician Ali Allawi, who gave a speech in Washington yesterday as he released his new book, “The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace.” Allawi was not the most recognizable of figures; the Washington Times and his host, the National Press Club, both identified him as “Ari” Allawi, giving him a rather Jewish-sounding name for an Iraqi leader. But Allawi’s somber presentation may have been the ideal way for a war-weary Washington to remember Baghdad’s fall on April 9, 2003. Allawi brought grim tidings and no obvious solutions.

The book condemns the “monumental ignorance” of American war planners and the “rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance” of the occupation authority. Allawi had previously written that the Middle East is in a “death spiral” and that “another 100 years of crisis are being sown” in Iraq.

A former trade and finance minister in Iraq’s post-Saddam government, Allawi describes himself as a “senior adviser” to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; if so, Maliki probably hasn’t seen Allawi’s latest comments.

“In many ways, from a pure, say, engineering point of view, the running of the Saddamist state is much better than what we have now,” he said yesterday. “The state is more corrupt now. It has more incompetents in more positions of authority than it ever had before. And it’s doing a terrible job of managing the affairs of the country.”

Nor does he have much faith in Bush’s “surge” plan to pacify Baghdad with Maliki’s government. “I think if things continue along the track that we have, I don’t think we could expect things to improve drastically in the near term,” he forecast. “We may get a reasonably stable central state, but which is unable to exercise its authority beyond maybe 60 or 70 percent of the country.”

I don’t know what plan B is, but it will go into effect if the Iraqi parliament fails to pass the oil law by June 30.
Here’s a wild guess: Since we don’t have the troop strength to install and maintain somebody like Chalabi, we will just abandon the government to its own devices. Plan B has to involve bringing home some troops, pulling back the remaining soldiers to US bases, and the US/UK declaring some kind of temporary right to loot Iraq’s oil. The troops will be used to protect the oil industry. I know, it doesn’t seem possible. But given Bush’s priorities, I don’t know what else he can try.

UPDATE: Juan Pierre vs. Alfonso Soriano: who will be the bigger bust?

My pre-season baseball pieces were few; I thought the A’s got a bargain with Shannon Stewart for a mill, plus performance bonuses, but I criticized three acquisitions:

1. Choo Freeman. by the Dodgers. He’s gone already.

2. Alfonso Soriano by the Cubs; 8 years, 136 million bucks.

3. Juan Pierre by the Dodgers; 5 years, 44 million bucks.

AS and JP are dukin it out for worst leadoff man/center fielder in the National League. I dogpiled on AS day before yesterday. So today it’s JP. Here are his stats:

Games 7, AB 30, Runs 3, H 5, 2B 1, 3B 0, HR 0, RBI 1, TB 6, BB 1, SO 4, SB 2 CS 0,

On Base percentage. 188, Slugging Ave. 200, batting average .167.

I mean, the guy is trying to make Soriano look good. Here is a lead-off hitter with an on-base percentage of .188. He’s already made 24 outs in 7 games. Is he just in a slump?
Well, not really. I mean, yes, he will probably raise his batting average a little. But the rest of his production numbers are pretty much what he does. I mean, he does score a fair amount of the time, if he gets on base. But you can’t steal first. He makes an ungodly number of outs. At the end of the year, his run totals will get up in the 80′s, which doesn’t sound too bad, until you look at where he bats and how many outs he makes. He’ll get the crowd yelling with a couple of stolen bases a week, and a triple every couple of weeks.

Juan Pierre and Alfonso Soriano are what Billy Bean might call FoneyBall players. These two ridiculously overpriced players mark the Dodgers and Cubs as having poor management.

(Stewart had a great spring but is not producing much now…almost identical to Soriano. But his contract is tiny, relatively. )

UPDATE: After yet another feeble at bat by Soriano in the 8th (oh for 3 plus a hit by pitch), you could definitely hear some boos at Wrigley.  Those people know their baseball.

The US and Iran: Elliot Abrams’ sandbox; Bolton, Ledeen sound off

Aside from the unhinged Michael Ledeen, John Bolton will generally voice the most extreme warmongering position on Iran. From this interview, I would not expect the US to be making war on Iran anytime soon.

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“The effort to negotiate Iran out of its nuclear weapons program has failed and is failing now and needs to be changed dramatically,” Bolton said. “What we need to do is decisively increase the pressure economically and politically on Iran, ultimately leading to regime change.”

“(Ahmedinajad’s) announcement shows Iran has no intention whatsoever of complying with Security Council resolutions or pronouncements by European or American governments,” Bolton said.

“The fact is we have followed a path of negotiation for three-and-a-half years. That simply has played into Iran’s hands and given them the time to overcome difficulties in the uranium conversion process and now the uranium enrichment process,” he said.

Bolton said he thought the United States should adopt a harder stance against the Iranians, but has been stymied by its more conciliatory European allies, who have tried without success to pressure the Iranians into cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“What will it take for Europe to come to the conclusion that Iran is determined to ignore the Security Council, ignore the IAEA, ignore the buckets of carrots that Europe has offered up and take a strong stand against this threat of an emergent nuclear power in the Middle East?” Bolton said.

What is Michael Ledeen saying? well, I’m not sure the man is well. Read this “I’m gonna hold my breath” threat:

In the Reagan Administration we worked together to stop the Soviet Union.
Now we have a new enemy – the Nazi Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. To stop him will be
far easier than stopping the Soviets. All we have to do is block
Ahmadinejad’s next visa.

Let me explain. Ahmadinejad cannot go Germany without causing riots in the
streets. Besides, he would have to make an obligatory stop at the Holocaust
Museum. Impossible. Germany is out, and if Germany is out, Western Europe
is out.

Russia is no go for Ahmadinejad. Russia is basically at war with Iran, as
shown by Russia’s decision to pull out of the Bushehr nuclear reactor. If
Russia is out, so is China, who voted with Russia to exclude Iran from full
membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Soon, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Arab states will be no go for
Ahmadinejad as the Iraqi Kurds work with Iran to split Iraq and erase Iraq
from the map.

Finally, Ahmadinejad, with his view that Germany and Japan should have won
WW II, cannot make Tokyo. Besides, Tokyo will wait for a US green light
before it admits Ahmadinejad.

To summarize, Western Europe, Russia, China, Japan, and most of the Sunni
states are all no go for Ahmadinejad.

The Sopranos: Here’s how it’s gonna turn out

In the first place, it’s gonna be horrible. Don’t for one minute think that the show is gonna just slip off into Tony retiring into witness protection after buying Junior a fleet of dumptrucks and paying for Meadow’s medical school.

The only person in the immediate family left standing is gonna be Carmella.

Bobby and his family will survive. But he left evidence at the scene of the murder he committed. He will be arrested.

Christopher is gonna get whacked soon. This will spoil the FBI’s RICO case against Tony. They will turn to Bobby for evidence against Tony. Bobby and Janis will decide to turn against Tony, and go into witness protection, in return for immunity on their homicide cases.

The RICO case will confiscate all of Tony’s and Carmella’s assets.

AJ is gonna do some seriously evil deed; likely it will be violence against Blanca’s baby. He ends up in jail.

Meadow is the hard one to figure out. I don’t think the mob will go after her, but I think she is gonna be destroyed in some way; she may not be killed, but her life will be ruined.

What will happen to Tony? He will go to jail. Will he die in some way? I don’t think so. I don’t think the mob will whack him, because Tony is not a stoolie. Will there be some kind of health problem? I think it’s possible that a complication may come up from the time he was shot. In prison, he may not get immediate health care for this problem, and could die.

In the end, Carmella surveys what 30 years of turning a blind eye to Tony has gotten for her. I expect there will be some scene in which the psychiatrist and her husband discuss Tony and the family.

There is  gonna be a surreal sequence; hope it’s short. I hate those.

Sorry if I ruined it for you.

Report: We just ran out of troops for Iraq.

We know that 12,000 National Guard troops just got their notice of a second tour, to maintain the surge levels.

Yesterday CNN reported that the Pentagon is considering extending the tours of 15,000 troops by 120 days (4 months for you non-ma’athists). Four ground combat brigades and one air unit. We don’t know which units would be targeted, and how many rotations they have already made. But this is bound to have further emotional effects, cause further mental illness, family instability/divorce, etc. Desertions are up.

We are already sending troops who are wounded, not fully trained or equipped, more and more of whom have moral waivers.

Some are going back with shortened rest periods between deployments.

Not enough.

15,000 men is about ten percent of our force…half of the surge...That is a huge deficit. And this is the best way to keep up the force level, the surge that was carefully considered by Bush? The whole surge isn’t even over there, and we don’t have any more troops to send?!

The idea is among options being considered in response to a request in the last couple of weeks by Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the idea has not been approved.
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In other words, they knew this was going to happen. Just like they knew the original number of 21,500 was gonna actually be 30,000. Bush and Gates are just trying to hide the fact that this is an escalation.

So we’re just keeping our kids there. That’s it. Just stay there. Maybe our president will announce this from his vacation home.

If this goes through, I would see it as the admission that we have run out of troops for Bush’s fiasco.

I think we can anticipate Jack Murtha going ballistic, but that’s not enough. We need letters to editors, and congressmen, it needs to echo across the country.