How Will They Pay For It? Probaby A 30-Year Loan -- May 14, 2017

Updates

May 20, 2017: $100-billion deal? LOL. It's $110 billion immediately and $350 billion over 10 years. I did not read the story; just the headline. But one must remember this: the Saudis will need foreign expertise to do all they plan including a new militant monitoring operations center, and one can assume "the Donald" was assured by the Saudis that American companies would get first crack at new ventures. I would assume most military hardware will come from the US. By the way, this is single largest arms deal in the history of the US. And had someone else been president, it's very likely Russia would have gotten the sale. Just saying.

May 17, 2017: John Kemp --  SENIOR Gulf OPEC source wonders how to square billions of dollars of deals to be signed in KSA during Trump visit with austerity programme?

Original Post

From Reuters: among everything else, it looks like Trump will announce a $100-billion-arms-deal for Saudi Arabia on his Mideast tour. From the article: 

The arms package could end up surpassing more than $300 billion over a decade to help Saudi Arabia boost its defensive capabilities while still maintaining U.S. ally Israel's qualitative military edge over its neighbors.

Which means Israel is going to get some kind of huge arms deal also. 

It also begs the question where Saudi Arabia will come up with the money. Perhaps some Wall Street bank. You think?

President Obama first visited Riyadh about the very same time in his first term also (June 3 - 4, 2009) and according to wiki it was mostly discussion, not much substance.  

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The Dinosaur Page 

From The Dallas Morning News, no link; the story is probably everywhere. 

A new dinosaur species has been discovered -- the eggs and baby "chicks" were discovered some years ago, but it took researchers awhile to figure out what they had. What they had was this:

"This specimen represents the youngest individual known and the earliest growth stage of a giant oviratorosaur."

The new dinosaur species is Beibeilong sinensis, meaning Chinese baby dragon, and the name, if pronounced "baby-long" is correct, it should be easy to remember: it took a long time time to name a Chinese baby dinosaur.

The species is not found in the Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Gregory S. Paul, c. 2010.

Meanwhile, speaking of dinosaurs, something completely unrelated but pertaining to "Dakota" and "Lakota," from wiki:

Dakotadon is a genus of iguanodont dinosaur from the Barremian-age Lower Cretaceous Lakota Formation of South Dakota, USA, known from a partial skull.

It was first described in 1989 as Iguanodon lakotaensis, by David B. Weishampel and Philip R. Bjork. Its assignment has been controversial.

Some researchers suggest that I. lakotaensis was more basal than I. bernissartensis, and related to Theiophytalia, but David Norman has suggested that it was a synonym of I. bernissartensis.

Gregory S. Paul, working on a revision of iguanodont species, gave I. lakotaensis its own genus (Dakotadon) in 2008.

Well, that should settle that.

While we're at it, where was the most well-preserved dinosaur fossil every found? In the Canadian oil sands? Yup. By a miner. From National Geographic.

In life this imposing herbivore—called a nodosaur—stretched 18 feet long and weighed nearly 3,000 pounds. Researchers suspect it initially fossilized whole, but when it was found in 2011, only the front half, from the snout to the hips, was intact enough to recover. The specimen is the best fossil of a nodosaur ever found.