Saturday, January 31, 2009
EPIC FAIL, Utter Inevitability Edition
Pajamas Media. If I understand correclty, they're going to go from being a $7 million wingnut RSS feeder/wingnut BlogAds to a wingnut BloggingHeads. I'm sure that will be equally successful...
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Friday, January 30, 2009
NCO
The Russian Army will begin professionalizing its non-commissioned officer corps. Via WiB.
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World headed for ‘water bankruptcy’?
That’s the stark warning coming from this year’s assemblage of the World Economics Forum in Davos.
That said, this being Davos, even though a specific solution or set of solutions to the problem wasn’t mentioned, I’m sure something “market-based” was probably on the minds of many.
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Carl Hiaasen knows ‘Scat’
He’s better; that’s the title of his third children’s book, daring enough to talk about the Iraq War to children.
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Thursday, January 29, 2009
More Please
Pelosi gets it:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she didn’t come to Washington to be “bipartisan”, one day after shuttling through an $819 economic stimulus bill without a single Republican vote.
“I didn’t come here to be partisan, I didn’t come here to be bipartisan,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference. “I came here, as did my colleagues, to be nonpartisan, to work for the American people, to do what is in their interest.”
Pelosi expressed no regrets over passing the stimulus measure without any GOP support. Republicans followed their leaders in objecting to the bill on the grounds that it was put together without GOP input, and that it would not do enough to stimulate the economy.
Repeating the term “nonpartisan” on more than one occasion in describing the bill, the Speaker said her goal was to put President Obama’s vision on paper for the good of the country regardless of the type of support it garnered.
Testify, Big John:
Sen. John Kerry says Democrats should ignore Republicans’ demands about the stimulus plan if they’re going to vote against it anyway.
Reacting to Wednesday night’s vote in the House — where not a single GOP member supported the stimulus package — Kerry told Politico that “if Republicans aren’t prepared to vote for it, I don’t think we should be giving up things, where I think the money can be spent more effectively.”
“If they’re not going to vote for it, let’s go with a plan that we think is going to work.”
The Massachusetts Democrat and 2004 presidential candidate suggested tossing some of the tax provisions in the stimulus that the GOP requested. “Those aren’t job creators immediately, and even in the longer term they’re not necessarily. We’ve seen that policy for the last eight years,” he said.
Hopefully this is sinking in more widely. No votes, your votes aren't needed for passage, no leverage. This is pretty easy. And it looks as if the obvious is finally being recognized.
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The United States Ministry of Wages
... may become a reality, the way Obama talks:
President Barack Obama lashed out on Thursday at “shameful” Wall Street executives for claiming billions of dollars in bonuses while their stricken institutions asked taxpayers for support.
Mr Obama was responding to a report showing that financial sector employees received $18.4bn (£12.9bn) in bonuses last year, amid dire financial crisis. The figure was down 44 per cent from 2007 but was still the sixth largest payout in history.
Who is this guy kidding? He rounded up the donations from Wall St. like a mad man.
Personally, however, I don't feel as if executives are unreasonably paid. It's not because I have some delusion that I will get so rich as to have a golden parachute. It has more to do with the fact that government has no business setting pay-offs. Where do they get the authority?
The board room is responsible for doling out executive pay. If shareholders don't demand accountability, then it's their problem. Furthermore, if Americans are too stupid to get out of their high-fee mutual funds when the sky is falling, the last of their worries is executive pay.
Obama is already on the path to destroying America. I don't understand why he's endorsing the Ledbetter fair-pay non-sense either. From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:
The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was written in response to a 2007 Supreme Court decision. Lilly Ledbetter of Gadsden, Alabama, discovered after 20 years of service to Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company that she was paid a fraction of what her male coworkers were paid for the same job. In an opinion that diverged from several appellate court decisions, the Justices ruled that although it was clear Mrs. Ledbetter suffered from discrimination, workers alleging wage discrimination must file their suit within six months of the first instance of discrimination. Lilly Ledbetter was denied any redress. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Law restores the traditional interpretation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and considers each new paycheck a new act of discrimination. This would allow individuals claiming pay discrimination to file suit upon discovering the inequity, regardless of the first pay period.
Way to make it so minorities and women will never get hired ever again voluntarily, Obama. Minorities and women can now stand in the unemployment line with the handicapped people who haven't been able to get jobs as a result of the ADA.
The unintended consequences of Obama's senseless push for "equality" will change the jobs landscape so dramatically that we are absolutely doomed to become another France. Thank God I don't have any college debt to pay off.
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Iranians used poison gas
Of course, they were normally known as Persians then.
Whey? More than 1,700 years ago, when the Sassanid Empire used suffocating gas to attack the Romans.
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So Hard to Say Goodbye...
*Sniff* We hardly knew ye, Blago.
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Wingnuts Who Fail To Understand the Concept of "Consent."
Painfully -- indeed, almost Mallard Fillmore-levels -- of unfunny cartoon about abortion edition.
I'm not really sure why so many wingers find these issues so complex, but...
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Simon Titley: Against jargon
My Liberator colleague Simon Titley has an article on Lib Dem Voice anathematising jargon, buzzwords and cliches of all kinds.
One of those he identifies is:
• Young people’s jargon – Like, whatever.There is a certain irritating sort of journalist - perhaps unfairly, Zoe Williams of the Guardian is the first name that springs to mind - who affects an adolescent offhandedness in his of her writing. They do not just use "like" and "whatever": words like "stuff" and "squillions" feature prominently too.
Having been to a conference on social media for work earlier this week, I am now in possession of the perfect phrase to describe these embarrassing attempts to get down with the kids.
It is "Dad at the disco" or "Dad on the dance floor".
I intend to use it frequently - until it becomes a piece of jargon, of course.
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Governor Rod Blagojevich Removed From Office
In an unanimous vote, the Illinois Senate has voted to remove Rod Blagojevich from office.
There was another vote to deny him from ever holding office in Illinois again- Unanimous again.
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Krugman tears Obama a new one
Riffing on an old joke about communism, Paul Krugman says that on TARP bailout issues for self-inflicted wounds of greedy banks, Obama is just like Bush, only different.
FINALLY! A major pundit, and one with the chops to stand by saying it, says Obama, Summers and Geithner have no clothes.
As for "the free market," Adam Smith's "enlightened hand" came out of his Enlightenment Deist beliefs, beliefs long since shattered by the Napoleonic Wars, WW I and WW II, atomic weapons and more.
Talking about "the market" like this is nothing but clownishness
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The lies of John Yoo, part 133
Torture advocate and would-be philosophical defender John Yoo claims to be writing about Obama’s executive order requiring the CIA to follow the Army Field Manual on interrogations, but is actually in some alternative universe.
His ludicrous claims include the idea that this would eliminate good-cop, bad-cop routines. Funny… American police departments still do that all the time, Mr. Yoo.
Second, the right to a lawyer doesn’t mean that alleged terrorists won’t still talk to interrorgatos, or can’t still be convicted if evidence is available.
Nor does all evidence have to be produced in open court. In criminal cases ranging from severe child abuse to Mafia racketeering, our court system as now established allows for a variety of private testimony.
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‘Buy American’ in stimulus package good idea, bad idea
The House included a Buy American provision in its economic stimulus program that sounds great on paper. But is it?
The rider would require that only American iron and steel be used in infrastructure projects funded by the stimulus.
Promote American steel-making sounds great, right?
But, I can’t see how this passes World Trade Organization scrutiny. (That’s not to say I’m a fan of the WTO, just reporting the issues.)
Compound that with the fact that sovereign wealth funds from China and the Arab world, among other places, are getting antsy about the possibility of being asked to take a haircut on their investments in U.S. investment banks as part of a “bad bank” idea, and the “Buy American” provision looks like an even tougher international sell.
The European Union has already threatened countermeasures, in shades of the Great Depression after the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff.
A better set of ideas would be to go after Chinese steel dumping while giving bidding bonus points to using U.S. steel without requiring it.
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Turkish PM walks out on Davos over Gaza
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, frustrated that he didn’t have enough time at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to tell Israeli President Shimon Peres what he really thought about Israel’s invasion of Gaza and Peres’ commens, walked off the stage and said he didn’t expect to return.
The two have been invited to a joint press conference; Erdogan left Davos attendees stunned.
Since Turkey has long been a top ally of Israel in the Muslim world, the “stun” factor is understandable.
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Pick Me! Pick Me!
Stephen Walt follows up his request for an IR Hall of Fame by asking who are the most underrated IR scholars. The metric?
To be clear: by "underrated" I don't necessarily mean people who remained completely obscure despite having done great work.
I think it's fair to say that I have not remained completely obscure despite having done great work. As such, I submit myself for candidacy as the most underrated IR scholar.
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Holocaust questioning just a ‘technical aspect’
The northeast Itialy head of the Society of St. Pius X probably needs to put the shovel down and stop diggingin trying to put some spin on anti-Holocaust comments by an American member of the order.
Rev. Floriano Abrahamowicz said the comments by Bishop Richard Williamson, just “rehabilitated” by Pope Benedict XVI, doubting Jews were gassed, was only questioning the “technical aspect” of gas chambers.
However, that was just the entrée for the main course of foot in mouth. Abrahamowicz then said Jews were:
“The people of God who then became the God-killing people.”
Especially with a converso surname like that, the blatant bigotry is shocking.
So, too, is the Vatican’s claim that it “had to” co ahead with Williamson’s rehabilitation. Read why.
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Hoover Revisionism
Josh Marshall is right about Herbert Hoover, and he's right about Jonah Goldberg, the latter of whom is, of course, a buffoon.
There's no use reiterating all the ways that Hoover was or was not substantively responsive to the depression. Notwithstanding Goldberg's insistence that Hoover was "not this stand-pat, do-nothing guy," Hoover simply failed for the near-duration of his presidency to comprehend the enormity what was happening. It's not the case, obviously, that he did nothing -- but his public demeanor was weirdly disconnected from the crisis. In his first press conference after the stock market crash, Hoover talked about Iceland. Two weeks later, he insisted that "any lack of confidence in the economic future and the basic strength of business in the United States is simply foolish," a point he reiterated in his State of the Union message the following month:
I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence. Wages should remain stable. A very large degree of industrial unemployment and suffering which would otherwise have occurred has been prevented. Agricultural prices have reflected the returning confidence. The measures taken must be vigorously pursued until normal conditions are restored.Throughout 1930, Hoover continued to insist that the nation's economic fundamentals, so to speak, were strong and that deficit spending would prove disastrous. In February, he warned against a "general expansion of public expenditure," insisting that Congressional priorities should focus on maintaining a balanced budget. March, he claimed that "All the evidences indicate that the worst effects of the crash upon employment will have been passed during the next 60 days." In October, he rejected calls for a special Congressional session to address unemployment, insisting that the nation's "sense of voluntary organization" was sufficient to see it through. The worse conditions became, the more Hoover repeated his philosophy of volunteerism and insisted that local relief efforts were adequate. As the winter of 1931-32 approached, he publicized a series of letters from state governors who claimed (incorrectly) that public and private cooperation would enable them to "undertake their own problem" without any broader federal effort.
And so it continued for the rest of his term. At every point, Hoover congratulated the government for its modest spending increases on public works while expressing even greater enthusiasm for holding the line on budgets and not allowing public debt to increase. He spoke warmly of veterans while swatting away any efforts to broaden pension eligibility or provide early benefits to veterans of the Great War. (Indeed, Hoover's arguably most aggressive "intervention" during his presidency was to evict the Bonus Expeditionary Force from their tents on the Anacostia flats.) When an emergency relief and public works bill appeared in the House in May 1932, Hoover freaked out, describing it as "the most gigantic pork barrel ever proposed" and an "unexampled raid on the Public Treasury." When it eventually passed in July, he crowed about the removal of $100 million in "charity" and the reduction of public works spending by more than 75 percent from the original bill. Meantime, he urged people to "make a real contribution to employment" by purchasing cars.
There's nothing profoundly "interventionist" about this, Goldberg's claims to the contrary. Anyone who examines Hoover's work in response to the Belgian food crisis as well as his post-war relief efforts in Germany and Russia knows that his chief asset was a skill for coordinating the activities of private agencies who were actually capable of meeting the needs of the moment. (And anyone who looks at Hoover's response as Commerce Secretary to the 1927 Mississippi Flood will know as well that he also anticipated George W. Bush's skill at allowing black people to writhe in squalor.) But the fact that Hoover rejected the advice of liquidationists like Andrew Mellon doesn't make him a Keynesian. Though Hoover recognized that there were structural causes of the depression, he did not envision structural solutions. Rather, he preferred to view it as a natural disaster -- a flood or a drought -- that could be weathered through mere cooperation, voluntarism, positive thinking and elbow grease. He brought his impressive -- but limited -- talents to bear on a problem that was beyond his comprehension. And so by 1932, there were very good reasons for Americans to pelt their president with debris on the campaign trail and to deride his languid -- and not very progressive -- response to it all.
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Feds have more steroids goods on Bonds
Supposedly, the government has bad Bonds urine tests among information to offer in his perjury trial.
Although ESPN isn’t clear, it appears the “other steroids” alleged to be in Barry B’s urine are, unlike the “clear” and the “cream,” stuff that was known to be steroids at the time Bonds ingested.
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Today in the West Bank...
... Israeli settlements expanded. This make today like just about every other day since July 1967.
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More proof Geithner in the tank for Wall Street
First, Tim Geithner’s Treasury Department has yet to respond to a Bloomberg request for information on what securities at Citigroup and Bank of America the Treasury recently propped up. Treasury did a document dump on its website Jan. 28, but had none of the information Bloomberg wanted.
Bloomberg is most interested in tanking, or tanked, CDOs the two banks wrote that the government is now having to underwrite.
Be prepared to wait a while. Geither, in Senate Finance Committee comments to Sen. Charles Grassley, indicated he’s learned too well from former boss Ben Bernanke the idea of stiffing both the media and Congress.
Second, it is clear Geithner (with Larry Summers ultimately behind him), on the issue of bank nationalization, is NOT just worried about the PR of the word “nationalization” but that he actively opposed the whole concept.
Why? He wants his friends at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc., to continue to rake in federal money with a shovel without facing the consequences.
Hey, Obamiacs! Love your “common man” president so far?
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Cry a river for Detroit and Coal Congressmen
The Formerly Big Three says likely new California carbon-dioxide standards will be too tough for them to meet.
Meanwhile, coal-state Democratic Congressmen and Senators are feeling that, from his environmental ideas to his environmental and energy advisors and Cabinet members, Obama is giving them a bit of a cold shoulder.
“There’s a bias in our Congress and government against manufacturing, or at least indifference to us, especially on the coasts,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio. “It’s up to those of us in the Midwest to show how important manufacturing is. If we pass a climate bill the wrong way, it will hurt American jobs and the American economy, as more and more production jobs go to places like China, where it’s cheaper.”
I’ve got some word for you folks.
Detroit, you’ve wasted 30 years. Time’s up, not just for you, but for how much longer we can wait to take action on global warming.
Sherrod Brown? There’s no bias against manufacturing, just the source of your electricity.
Coal states? Like James Hansen says, we need to stop burning coal. Maybe we can use it for coal gasification, or for carbon nanotubes, but not for electric power.
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Dept. of People Who Really Should Never Call Other People Dumb
Shorter Jules Crittenden: Jessica Alba was really dumb for calling Sweden neutral. Even though Sweden is neutral. But in my judgment, Sweden shouldn't have been neutral, which means that Alba was really stupid to say that they were. See? This is the kind of analysis which makes me much smarter than Jessica Alba.
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Zero
Another shocker; hopefully this will be a long overdue hint for Obama, the Senate and the conference committee to ignore the House Republicans altogether. On whether this lack of "bipartisanship" should be considered a problem, see my co-blogger.
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Require new Congressmen to undergo science training
Or, in the case of antiscientific nutbars like Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, let's not limit the training to newbies!
Seriously, though, Susanne Haga of Duke University notes that in Great Britain, such training is suggested of new Members of Parliament
The Conservative Party in Great Britain recently announced that it will include classes on scientific methodology and basic concepts in the orientation activities for all new Conservative members of Parliament after the next elections, specifically to address politicians' lack of scientific expertise.
Shadow Science Minister Adam Afriyie, the architect behind these new courses, says, "By building a base of scientific knowledge among politicians and officials, we aim to strengthen the role of science in policy making."
She then wonders why we possibly can’t or won’t install a similar requirement here.
Well, the obvious answer to the can’t or won’t is because Congress makes its own rules.
More seriously, though, we require initial and remedial training for county judges here in Texas; on the judicial side, other states require that for magistrate judges, JPs, etc., so requiring elected officials to undergo training isn’t even close to preposterous.
And, it would definitely boost President Obama's efforts to have science-based government policies.
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Nick Clegg speaking in Northampton tonight
Should you find yourself at a loose end in Northampton this evening - and, let's face it, there is little else to do there - why not hear Nick Clegg speak?
He is on at the Guildhall, St Giles Square, starting at 6.45 p.m.
Full details at Flock Together
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More On Jim Quinn
As always, Chris Potter gets it right. And not because he reads this blog and has some nice things to say about it. He begins:
The good folks at 2 political junkies reminded me of this gem of a story in the Post-Gazette this weekend. The piece is about Media Matters for America, the liberal media watchdog group which has labeled local talk-show host Jim Quinn as a "radioactive" media personality.And here's the nice:
Quinn invokes fear of the return of the "Fairness Doctrine," a long-discarded government policy of requiring equal time for diverse political viewpoints. The Junkies do a good job of showing how baseless the fear is, so I won't dwell on the fact that hardly anyone in Washington has shown interest in reviving the doctrine.(Note to Chris: I love Maria, other political junkie, to bits but only one of us wrote the piece you link to. Many thanks for the shout-out, though!).
This is where Potter shows he's done his homework:
But Quinn's hysteria on the subject is a perfect example of how right-wingers love to play the victim card. They have little patience when, say, blacks complain of racism ... but when they get back from the commercial break, they'll indulge in their own delusions of persecution, fantasies that would embarrass Minister Farakkhan.I think Quinn will just continue to blame everything on liberals and the creeping Alinsky-ism taking over this once great country.Apparently, Quinn also fears Media Matters because it has a base of "wealthy liberal donors." Quinn is OK with bloggers having speech rights, it seems, provided they have no money or power whatsoever. But if they get even a bit of leverage, Quinn cries "oppression!"
On some level, I understand the response. I mean, wouldn't pay Quinn any mind at all if he were just some old coot in the park, spouting his nonsense into a couple of tin cans joined with a piece of string. Instead, though, he's an old coot spouting his nonsense into a microphone paid for by Clear Channel, one of the country's largest media conglomerates. (And before that, his mic was paid for by the same folks who own City Paper.) So naturally I take him more seriously -- his ideas are silly, but the money behind them is serious.
But even so ... who knew that a conservative would distrust the speech rights of rich people? What next? Will Quinn espouse the dismantling of Fox News? Start arguing for a more progressive income tax, to relieve the wealthy of some of the money they use to control our discourse?
America where are you now?Or whatever.
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster
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Protecting The Public At The Super Bowl
This Post-Gazette article informs us that Pittsburgh Mayor Luke
The article duly notes that the public will not be paying for any of his trip expenses -- the same being true for Allegheny County Exec Dan Onorato who will also be going.
However, it seems that Lil Mayor Luke will taking along his bodyguards while Onorato will be sans protection.
Which makes me ask the question: Why does Lukey need bodyguards?
Which leads me to remember that the bodyguards will be there more to protect the public from "Cuffs"
.
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Questions for Parliament 2009
Finally with all the festivities since the end of last year coming to an end, I'll probably be able to jolt myself from inertia, restart my engine again to start blogging more frequently ;-)
In particular, parliament will reconvene early this year on 16th February (it usually starts in March, but our outgoing prime minister wants to put in a few more laws to be passed before he hands over, hence it was brought forward). I've submitted my list of questions to the parliament before the Chinese New Year. I'll list them down below. Apologies for not having gathered some feedback before submitting, but with all the things which were happening, I didn't get around to giving sufficient notice. ;-)
List of questions for oral reply (subjected to maximum of 40 words each):
- Tony Pua meminta Menteri Koperasi dan Pembangunan Usahawan menyatakan sebab Syarikat Airport Limosin Malaysia menyewakan teksi KLIA dengan harga mahal sebanyak RM166 setiap hari. Manakala, sewa teksi bandar adalah hanya RM60 setiap hari untuk kenderaan yang sama. Apakah tindakan yang akan diambil supaya nasib pemandu teksi KLIA dapat dipeliharakan?
- Tony Pua meminta Menteri Kerjaraya menyatakan apakah bayaran yang dikenakan jikalau kerajaan mengambil-alih Lebuhraya Damansara-Puchong (LDP) mengikut terma ekspropriasi dalam perjanjian konsesi. Adakah ianya lebih wajar untuk mengekspropriasi LDP, ataupun membayar wang gantirugi RM75 juta setiap tahun kepada pihak konsesi diteruskan sehingga konsesi tamat.
- Tony Pua meminta Menteri Dalam Negeri menyatakan adakah keadaan keselamatan di Malaysia adalah amat serius kerana kes rompakan setiap 100,000 penduduk adalah 90.49 di Malaysia, manakala di Hong Kong dan Jepun hanya 17.56 dan 4.78. Kes rogol pula, index Malaysia 11.47, manakala Hong Kong dan Jepun hanya 1.54 dan 1.62.
- Tony Pua meminta Menteri Kewangan menyatakan pencapaian pelaburan dari luar negeri di Iskandar Malaysia dari segi jumlah yang telahpun dijanji berbanding dengan jumlah yang telah dilabur. Apakah impek kemerosotan ekonomi kepada Iskandar pada tahun-tahun yang akan datang?
- Tony Pua meminta Perdana Menteri menyatakan kedudukan penubuhan Suruhanjaya Pengangkutan Awam dan dana pengangkutan awam sebanyak RM35 billion yang telah diumumkan sejak June tahun lalu. Senaraikan jumlah perbelanjaan daripada dana ini yang akan dibelanjakan mengikut projek pembangunan perkhidmatan pengangkutan awam pada tahun 2009 dan 2010.
- Tony Pua meminta Menteri Tenaga, Air dan Komunikasi menyatakan samada kementerian akan mengubah status kesulitan perjanjian konsesi penjana tenaga bebas (IPP) seperti apa yang telah dilakukan oleh Kementerian Kerjaraya. Adakah perjanjian-perjanjian tersebut mempunyai peruntukan yang membolehkan kerajaan mengekspropriasi konsesi dan apakah terma pampasan yang perlu dibayar mengikut perjanjian?
- Tony Pua meminta Menteri Kerjaraya menyatakan hasil kajian pakar perunding mengenai konsesi Lebuhraya Damansara Puchong. Adakah pihak syarikat konsesi telah mematuhi kesemua syarat rekacipta dan pembinaan lebuhraya di dalam perjanjian, termasuklah syarat “divided dual three-lane carriageway with design speed of 80kph”?
- Tony Pua meminta Menteri Kewangan menyatakan adakah ianya lebih wajar untuk Khazanah Nasional yang memiliki 63.9% syarikat PLUS, untuk membuat tawaran am untuk membeli ekuiti daripada pemilik minoriti supaya perjanjian PLUS dapat dirombak untuk mencapai persetujuan harga tol yang lebih munasabah dengan kos pembinaan dan penyenggaraan.
- Tony Pua meminta Perdana Menteri menyatakan langkah-langkah yang akan diambil oleh pihak kerajaan untuk membetulkan segala “bottleneck” dari segi kelemahan rekabentuk CIQ Johor Bahru yang baru kerana pembukaan CIQ ini telahpun menyulitkan pengguna-pengguna tambak Johor biarpun pemandu kereta, penumpang bas ataupun pejalan kaki.
- Tony Pua meminta Menteri Dalam Negeri menyatakan hasil laporan daripada pakar jenayah daripada sebuah universiti tempat untuk menyelidik kadar jenayah di Malaysia untuk memberi keyakinan kepada rakyat bahawa Malaysia adalah lebih selamat daripada negara seperti Jepun dan Hong Kong, seperti yang diumumkan oleh Menteri pada 4hb Disember.
List of Questions for Written Reply:
- Tony Pua meminta Menteri Kerjaraya menyatakan wang pampasan yang perlu dibayar kepada setiap syarikat konsesi sekiranya kerajaan mengambil keputusan untuk mengekspropriasi konsesi mengikut syarat kontrak. Apakah wang pampasan yang dibayar kepada setiap konsesi setiap tahun untuk menampung kadar tol yang lebih rendah daripada apa yang dipersetujui.
- Tony Pua meminta Menteri Dalam Negeri menyatakan:
i.Kadar jenayah di Selangor dari tahun 2000 sehingga 2008 mengikut tahun, jenis jenayah dan kawasan daerah.
ii.Kadar jenayah di Malaysia dari tahun 2000 sehingga 2008 mengikut tahun, jenis jenayah dan negeri. - Tony Pua miminta Menteri Dalam Negeri menyatakan
i.jumlah anggota polis di Petaling Jaya dari tahun 2000 sehingga 2008 mengikut tahun dan jawatan
ii.jumlah anggota polis yang akan ditambah ke Petaling Jaya dari tahun 2009 sehingga 2012 berbanding dengan jumlah yang akan bersara mengikut tahun dan jawatan. - Tony Pua meminta Menteri Kewangan menyatakan
i.saham-saham yang dimiliki oleh syarikat ValueCap mengikut tarikh pelaburan, jumlah syer, harga yang diperolehi dan harga semasa pada akhir tahun 2008.
ii.kunci kira-kira terperinci syarikat ValueCap pada akhir tahun 2008 - Tony Pua meminta Menteri Kewangan menyatakan keduduk pelaburan EPF memerolehi Bank RHB pada tahun 2007 dan memberikan:
i.Jumlah perbelanjaan mengikut jenis aset dan ekuiti
ii.Jumlah nilai mengikut jenis aset dan ekuiti, termasuk wang daripada syer yang telah jual kepada pihak lain
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Paul Tyler: Lords reforms were recommended 10 years ago
Jim Packard writes on the Financial Times Westminster blog:
Lord Tyler, the excellent Lib Dem peer, tells me that he sat on a committee in 1999 (including various law Lords and others) which decided that there was an urgent need forstronger rules to suspend misbehaving Lords. Somewhere along the line it was kicked into the long grass.
“The committee sat for eighteen months,” he says with a sigh.
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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
For those of you who are fans of Sealand and the Freedom Ship...
this Wired article should be right up your alley.
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Obama writes a letter to Iran? Pure propaganda.
If the US doesn't aggressively bomb Pakistan (i.e., more than drone strikes) or Iran before 2010, I will buy pizza for everyone at the CUL meeting.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/28/barack-obama-letter-to-iran
I've never seen such extreme propaganda before in my life. It's getting so extreme in this country that I'm thinking I better leave before I get rounded up and put into a concentration camp where there's an oven with my name on it. You'd have to be a complete boob to think this "letter from Obama" is genuine when we've got Clinton assuring Israel we're their puppet and Rahm Emmanuel running around trying to push conscription agendas where our first-born belong to the state.
Just look at the filth in the above link:
One draft proposal suggests that Iran should compare its relatively low standard of living with that of some of its more prosperous neighbours, and contemplate the benefits of losing its pariah status in the west. Although the tone is conciliatory, it also calls on Iran to end what the US calls state sponsorship of terrorism.
Iran only has Pariah status with the west because Kermit Roosevelt went into Iran back around '53 to destabilize its government. The history is all there on Wikipedia. The Iranians were pro-west years and years ago, and now the media tells us they can lose their pariah status with us.
The US government put in an oppressive dictator to rule Iran in '53 and today runs around claiming it's all about bringing democracy to oppressed peoples. Furthermore, the US bankrolled Saddam when he was running his war with Iran in the 80s. Yet, we never hear about this in our media. This should be evidence to everyone that our media is clearly controlled and has no interest in providing us with an accurate account of why things are the way they are in this world.
Iran is not a threat to the west. I feel the US media beating the war drums again; however, this time they are using Obama's political popularity to plant the idea that we're the good guys and that Iran deserves a good pounding if they don't "change their ways."
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CIA Station Chief in Algeria Accused of Rapes
How NOT to conduct relations with a Muslim-majority country:
The CIA's station chief at its sensitive post in Algeria is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly raping at least two Muslim women who claim he laced their drinks with a knock-out drug, U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News.
Our government can't be trusted with anything, let alone hiring competent personnel who can go overseas and respect other people, their culture, and their sovereignty.
One could dismiss this as another crime by just one random guy in our government. The real problem, however, is that this is probably just one of the few crimes that sees the light of media exposure. The real story is probably far worse, with muslims being subject to the abuses of not only US government employees, but also contractors who work with the US government.
Government would work if it were run by angels. Reality, however, often suggests that government must be restricted and policed aggressively.
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Ignatieff and Canadian Liberals flunk first cojones test
Canadian Liberal Party Leader Michael Ignatieff said today his party will not challenge Prime Minister Stephen Harper's new budget, but will put the Conservatives on probation for money from Harper's economic stimulus program to actually be dispersed as budgeted.
Yeah, Harper is quaking in his boots.
The stimulus package has the government pledging income tax cuts and $9.8 billion for infrastructure. There is money for bridges and highways, high-speed Internet networks and a 12-month tax rebate for home renovations. The government also lengthened the amount of time unemployed people will be able to collect insurance if they are laid off to 50 weeks from 45 weeks.
(Both the New Democratic Party and Bloc Quebecois have said they will continue to oppose the budget.)
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Britain the next Iceland?
At Foreign Policy, David Kenner says it's quite possible the UK economy will implode as badly as Iceland's. A holding of foreign debt twice that of the total British annual economic output, combined with the EU expecting the British economy to contract nearly 3 percent this year, puts it atop a five-country sick list.
Latvia, Greece, Nicaragua and Ukraine round out the list. Read why.
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Boycotts and rights.
There can be no question, in my mind, that any individual has the right to boycott any business or any other individual for any reason they wish. These reasons can be rational or irrational, motivated by hatred or motivated by a more nobler feeling.
The right to boycott is the right of free exchange. Individuals ought to be free to make exchanges with others. But “to be free” means the individuals involved make the decision. All participants to an exchange must be willingly involved. I have the right to decide how I will spend my money and with whom.
Every day I neglect spending my money on millions of products and neglect purchasing from billions of people. It is a basic principle of freedom that one may exchange with others freely or neglect to do so.
When the morons and the Mormons pushed through the bigoted Proposition 8 in California some people angrily responded by boycotting contributors to the campaign. Conservatives, always willing to stab their own principles in the back, denounced such boycotts. Some went so far as to claim that a boycott violates the rights of people -- as if some people have the right to force other people to exchange with them unwillingly.
People are free to boycott if they wish. So no one’s rights are violated by a boycott. Some on the Right wept crocodile tears from a woman who managed a family owned restaurant. She is a Mormon and gave money to take away marriage rights from gay couples because the church told her to do it. Many of the customers of the restaurant stopped buying there because they were insulted by this woman’s actions. She was not some lowly employee, as some right-wing pundits pretended. Her mother is the primary owner and she was the manager running it for her mother.
Enough customers decided to boycott the restaurant that business was hurt. The woman resigned her position at the restaurant in the hope of attracting back the business she had driven away with her donation.
That conservatives attacked the customers was rather astounding. Freedom of association includes the freedom to not associate. And conservatives have pretended to defend that right. They don’t want anti-discrimination laws because they say people ought to be free to associate or not as they choose. Now are they doing this on principle or not? If on principle then the right of gay customers to boycott a restaurant is not in dispute.
The customers had a simple position. The woman in question, as the manager, received a fairly decent salary from the restaurant. As a Mormon she gave 10% of her earnings, pre-tax, to the sect in question. Mormonism is a very bigoted religion and the customers felt they didn’t want to support it indirectly. Now you might fault the reasoning if you want, but you can’t fault the right to boycott. As I said, since people can boycott for any reason the reason need not be one you consider rational. It can come from entirely irrational motives.
Of course because it was gay people and their friends who were engaging in the boycott conservatives, ever the paid whores of the American Taliban, lined up to condemn the boycott. Now, we see yet another of the hundreds of boycotts which the fanatics in the fundamentalist Right regularly launch taking place and not one conservative seems to have a problem with it.
Rev. Don Wildmon (who really does look like Donald Duck) and his American Family Association has organized a boycott of Pepsi. They are protesting a television commercial that Pepsi used in the UK. Its not even available in the US market except through the wonders of the internet. (I have the commercial above if you wish to view it.)
I’m sure Pepsi thinks the commercial funny. It’s not really that clever and barely amusing. But because it implies that one of the people in the commercial is gay Rev. Wildmon is having fits. Wildmon says it “promotes the gay lifestyle.” (Hint: anyone who uses the term “the gay lifestyle” is clearly brain dead and conversation with idiots is counterproductive.)
I support Wildmon’s right to boycott products for any reason he wants. But what interests me is that none of the conservatives who argued the Prop 8 related boycotts were wrong have come out in condemnation of Wildmon’s proposal. The only thing I find annoying about Wildmon’s boycott is that his stupidity makes me feel obligated to drink Pepsi and I’m not that fond of Pepsi.
The problem with modern conservatism, or perhaps I should say one problem with modern conservatism, is that it has double-standards. Conservatives are hypocrites. They support freedom sometimes but for only some people. The freedom which they demand for themselves they are unwilling to grant to others, especially to those they consider sinful.
They would argue that students in public schools have the right to form Bible Clubs. Then they would turn around and prevent students from forming a Gay/Straight club. When an entertainment company has a product they consider sinful, then they defend the right to boycott. When gays are the ones boycotting then they attack the right to boycott. When a Republican conservative senator, who was married, had illegal sex with a prostitute they defended him. When a single (at the time), gay man admitted to a legal relationship with another man, they demanded his resignation.
Conservatives want to market themselves as defenders of liberty. Yet they regularly work to restrict liberty. What it comes down to is that they are not advocates of individual liberty at all but collective liberty. If you are a member of a group which they approve then you have liberty. If you are a member of a group which they dislike they you don’t have liberty.
While they despair over the concept of “group rights” when it comes to issues like affirmative action they promote group rights in other areas. Their entire campaign to “defend marriage” is built on the idea that certain rights are only given to certain groups. In this case the right to marry is restricted to opposite sex couples only. Even more bizarrely they will call the granting of equal marriage rights to same-sex couples “special rights”.
One reason that conservatives are having trouble attracting support is that people see them as moralistic hypocrites. It is simply difficult to inspire people with slogans like “freedom for some”. As long as conservatives are willing to compromise freedom because of their religious fantasies then conservatism will NEVER be the friend of liberty.
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California law enforcement plans crackdown on ORVs
No warnings anymore for off-road vehicle drivers trespassing on private land in the Tehachapi Mountains; it will be trespassing citations instead.
Good, and more than time. For every one ORVer claiming to be law abiding, there’s a dozen who aren’t.
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Trivial Fact of the Day features Heartbeat
There has been much discussion of Heartbeat today.
It has led me to discover the pleasing fact that its former star Bill Maynard was married for a while to the widow of the land and water speed record holder Donald Campbell.
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Soros - 'good bank' as well as "bad bank' needed
Gazillionaire financier/international monetary raider George Soros appears to have a very sound idea, especially if put in the larger context of a seemingly necessary bank nationalization.
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Marines want to hog Route 66
The U.S. Marine Corps wants to expand its Twentynine Palms, Calif., air-ground combat training area, to the east (the city is northwest of Joshua Tree National Park). But cities in the Mojave Desert worry that the expansion would clog up a major section of old Route 66.
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Trivial Fact of the Day
There has been much discussion of Heartbeat today.
It has led me to discover the pleasing fact that its former star Bill Maynard was married for a while to the widow of the land and water speed record holder Donald Campbell.
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More bad news about bisphenol
People may be ingesting it from non-food sources, and/or it may remain in the body longer than once thought and can’t easily be unclogged.
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England's NHS starved man to death.
Earlier this month the nationalized health service of England took another blow in the media as it was revealed that they had let a man starve to death while under their care.
Martin Ryan was a 43-year-old man with Downs Syndrome who had difficulty communicating. When he had a stroke he was unable to swallow food. No one bothered to fit him with a feeding tube while in hospital. After 26 days without eating the hospital discovered that this error had been made but it was too late to save Ryan who literally starved to death. The NHS trust that operates the hospital has apologized to the family
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Too little economic stimulus – or too much?
The case for the idea that President Obama is not pushing for enough of a an economic stimulus package is made here. by some Congressional Democrats, challenging the administration’s claim (i.e., Larry Summers’ claim) that mass transit and other projects aren’t “shovel ready.”
A variegated collection of libertarians, non-supply side conservatives and economic scolds transcending political labels argues that there’s already too much economic stimulus effort on the table.
My take?
First, I’m disappointed that reregulation of investment banking, etc., has been decoupled from economic relief. Given the Goldman Sachs-heavy makeup of Obama’s economic advisors, I’m afraid we will NEVER get serous re-regulation.
Second, the “too much stimulus” group is right to be skeptical about some parts of the package. While I favor something like allowing mortgages to be sent to bankruptcy court for “cram-down” adjustment, I do also agree that the housing bubble has yet to be fully burst in many places. AND, so far, no mortgage-bankruptcy proposals differentiate between people who got burned and/or suckered, vs. “flippers,” second/third/fourth home buyers, and others making investment buys, who deserve NO help.
Third, the do-nothing crowd is right to the degree that the stimulus package probably needs more focusing. Wall Street Journalop-ed hackery aside, I don’t think the Obama team has yet to answer the question of whether 20th-century Keynesianism (or other 20th-century economic theories) are suitable to a 21st-cenutry recession.
That said, yet more money for mass transit, for green research both by the government and private industry, etc. SHOULD be in a stimulus bill. Indeed, those aspects could be relabeled as an “energy and climate security package.”
But, we won’t actually get this. Instead, we’ll get a Wall Street-friendly package that is NOT what America needs.
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The Trib Editorial Board Does It Again
I'll say this. The good folks on RickyCougarMellonScaife's editorial board have raised spreading innuendo and half-truths to an art. And sometimes they even just make stuff up!
Case in point. I read this this morning:
Lost in all the hoopla of the presidential inauguration last week was the fact that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald subpoenaed three top Obama administration officials -- Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod -- in the investigation of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, accused of attempting to sell the president's old Senate seat. Oooh, this could get juicy.That was something I hadn't heard. So I went to the google and tried to look it up. That's when things got confusing. When I googled "fitzgerald subpoena rahm" I found this from late December:
The Illinois House committee probing a possible impeachment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich won't subpoena two incoming White House advisers, the committee chairwoman said Saturday, according to The Associated Press.But that's the Illinois House committee. The Trib said that Fitzgerald subpoenaed Emmanuel et al. Then I found this:U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald asked the committee in a letter Friday not to subpoena President-elect Barack Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Blagojevich's attorney had asked the committee earlier in the week to issue the subpoenas. Mr. Fitzgerald said any such subpoenas would interfere with the ongoing criminal investigation into Blagojevich's activities.
As Barack Obama attempts to define himself as a new kind of president, the White House newcomer is finding it increasingly difficult to emerge from the scandalous shadow being cast by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.The Bulletin is another right of center news source, by the way. But that doesn't automatically mean they're wrong. They say that Fitzgerald released a list.
Over the weekend, the U.S. Attorney’s Office released the list of subpoenas served in the current case being prosecuted against the Illinois governor.
The names of a number of key Obama White House players have found their way onto that list, a fact that could affect perceptions of the new administration.
David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, two key Obama advisers, were among those subpoenaed in the case where it is alleged Mr. Blagojevich attempted to sell Mr. Obama’s vacant U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder. Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, was also served a subpoena.
But then I found this:
It appears that Barack Obama won’t escape the Rod Blagojevich scandal as easily as first thought. Two senior aides to Obama have been served with federal subpoenas, calling into question how closely the Obama transition team may have been tied to Blagojevich’s attempts to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seatHotair.com is a reliably conservative news blog, by the way (again, no reason to automatically think they're wrong). However, all good intentions aside, it looks like this is where the Trib stumbled. Take a look at the sentence above. It says that "(t)wo senior aides to Obama" have been subpoenaed. But look at the link Hotair uses to support that. Here's how the article starts:
Sweeping federal subpoenas of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration include requests for records involving David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, senior advisers to President Barack Obama.So who just who was subpoenaed again?
Among 43 subpoenas released by the Blagojevich administration Friday, one from Dec. 8 seeks notes, calendars, correspondence and any other data that relate to Axelrod, Jarrett and 32 other people and organizations. [emphasis added.]
To read the Trib, Emmanuel, Jarrett and Axelrod were subpoenaed. To read the AP (the initial source for the story), the Blagojevich administration was subpoenaed about its contacts with Emmanuel, Jarrett and Axelrod.
So I asked the the USAttorney's office for Northern Illinois (Fitzgerald's office) for a clarification. Just to be clear, I wrote that the Trib's editorial board said the three were subpoenaed but that others had posted on the net that the USAttorney's office had posted a list of those subpoenaed and that still others wrote that the material was released this weekend by Blagojevich's office. And they responded with:
These reports you cite were based on information released by the governor’s office and not by the US Attorney’s Office – we do not comment on or confirm or deny any information about grand jury subpoenas– thanks.It's looking like the Trib's editorial board simply got it wrong and didn't bother checking to get it right.
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Diplomacy Isn't So Hard...
It appears that the Bush administration's effort to diplomatically "lock in" a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic has failed:
Russia has dropped plans to install missiles near Poland after the Obama administration signalled a change in US attitude to the region, a Moscow military official has reportedly said. The official suggested that Mr Obama's White House had made clear it would not prioritise executing the Bush administration's plan to install a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
An unnamed official in the Russian military's general staff said: "The implementation of these plans has been halted in connection with the fact that the new US administration is not rushing through plans to deploy" elements of its missile defence shield in eastern Europe, according to the Interfax news agency.
Congratulations to Obama and Medvedev; Russia will save money, the United States will save money, and Poland won't have Russian missiles parked on its border. It's a win for everyone who's not a missile defense zealot.
Cross-posted to TAPPED.
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The hackery of Tim Geithner now complete
The new Treasury Secretary has hired a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist as his chief of staff. And, even if this passes the letter of President Obama’s anti-lobbying ethics reform executive order, it sure doesn’t pass the spirit of it, or the smell test.
And, I’m not sure if it even passes the letter of the lobbying rules.
If this isn’t proof that the second round of TARP disbursements, and much else within Obama’s economic stimulus package, will be targeted at Wall Street, not Main Street, I don’t know what is.
For the non-diehard Obamiacs, please tell me you’re not surprised.
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Who Knew?
Apparently, Caitlan Flanagan's anecdotes and urban legends turn out to be not terribly reliable. I, for one, am shocked. I also agree with Jessica that the panic about teen sex really over a panic over girls (or young women, really) having sex.
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The bathtub effect – why global warming isn’t readily reversed
The bathtub effect says that, in essence, some of our “drains” for removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere have already started clogging and can’t easily be unclogged.
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Meritocracy
America's worst op-ed columnist was only unemployed for about eight hours yesterday, as Bill Kristol was hired by the Washington Post Writers Group immediately after the NYT announced he wouldn't be wasting its precious newsprint any more.
It's no wonder newspapers aren't going to exist ten years from now.
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$335,000,000 for STD Prevention in Economic Stimulus Bill
The title of this post is not a joke. Our government has gone mad. This is why I can never vote for democrats. It's all about social programs with them.
Why is the federal government involved in trying to prevent the spread of STDs? This is clearly a local problem that should be handled by local officials in areas where it is clearly a local problem. New York City has various clinics for STDs and a free condom program, but I think it's unreasonable to ask a guy living in Alaska in the wilderness to pay for New York's STD problems.
I tend to believe churches and local community organizations can do a better job of managing these kinds of things than the federal government. I couldn't imagine having a burning sensation on my wang or warts on my balls and then having to go to the federal government to ask them to check it out. It also doesn't make sense for them to dole out the STD cash to local communities to create a "stimulus."
Nancy Pelosi is a complete retard.
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Andy Stern extends SEIU heavyhandedness
I didn’t really even have to click on the headline link to know what union it was that Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern had placed into trusteeship.
Unable to control, intimidate or beat down United Healthcare Workers-West, he got former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall to be his toady to force the trusteeship issue.
Big corporation suckup Stern is going to wind up destroying the labor reform movement that he spearheaded a decade ago; he moves further down that road all the tiem.
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Paul Tyler: Power, patronage and money
Writing on Lords of the Blog, a group blog for wearers of ermine, the Lib Dem peer Paul Tyler discusses the current scandal involving the upper house.
He concludes:
So roll on reform say I – yesterday I asked whatever happened to Gordon Brown’s “Constitutional Renewal” programme ….. and the Minister told me to be patient. The Times concludes “the Upper House is exactly the place that anyone should target if they wish to circumvent democracy with money.” None of us should have any patience with that.
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I have bought some land at Heathrow
Having seen the graphic on Sara Bedford's blog last night and admired it, I have added the Greenpeace "I'm a plot owner" logo (and a link to their Heathrow campaign site) to Liberal England.
So far I have just sent Greenpeace an e-mail, but I suspect there will be money involved sooner or later.
As long as I am not next to Emma Thompson...
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Juan Williams Insults First Lady Michelle Obama
Fox's Juan Williams attacked First Lady Michelle Obama on Bill O'Reilley.
Hat tip: JJP
Juan Williams on Michelle Obama:
"[S]he's got this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going. If she starts talking . . . her instinct is to start with this blame America, you know, I'm the victim. If that stuff starts to coming out, people will go bananas and she'll go from being the new Jackie O. to being something of an albatross."
I mean Juan, you know that New Yorker cover was meant to be a joke right?
Here's the video:
********************************************
dnA from JJP breaks it down further:
And, after thinking about it some more, dnA explains why Williams truly is foul.
MICHELLE OBAMA.
I've been rolling Juan Williams' statement about Michelle Obama around like a wad of gum, trying to figure out why it bothers me so much. The first thing is that Juan is a genuinely nice guy, with whom I've had the pleasure of talking a few times. But the second, and the much bigger thing, is that I realized that I've never heard --and I don't think I ever will hear -- a rapper call Michelle Obama a bitch. But you don't have to call a woman a bitch to treat her like one.
I've tried for a long time to reconcile my love of Hip-hop music with its unapologetic misogyny, or even the fact that so many friends I've known since knee-high flick around the word like spent cigarettes no matter how many times we argue about it. The bitches/sisters explanation is patently unsatisfying, it's basically a reinvention of the old madonna/whore dichotomy. I can't really come up with an explanation, other than that there are ugly sides to most of the things we love. But Williams is one of the most vocal critics of Hip-hop; of what right-leaning black pundits refer to as "street-culture." I see little that's different in what Williams is saying about Michelle from what you might hear from Young Jeezy. This isn't an isolated statement about something someone said last year, it fits into an established narrative of who black women are. Rather than being the hyper-sexualized Jezebel popular in rap music, she's portrayed as the masculine ball-buster, the kind of women ignorant men write "why I don't date black women" essays about, trying to convince themselves that there's something rational about hating the kind of woman who gave birth to you. Williams' statement makes me angry not because it's about Michelle, but because it's so manifestly not about her, but about black women in general. And maybe with some kind of messed up, terrible rationalization I can divorce myself from what happens in Hip-hop because I know Jeezy isn't talking about my mama. But when people talk about Michelle like this, they're talking about this universe of brilliant, accomplished black women who never seem to get their due. They're talking about the women I know; my mother, my aunts, my cousins. And it makes me furious.
My own personal opinion is that Williams needs a beatdown. A good, old fashioned, Junebug and Ray Ray visiting him, beatdown. How he feels he can so freely disrespect and LIE about Michelle Obama, comparing her to a MAN, no less, trying to strip away her humanity.
No thank you.
She's the First Lady, and Juan's '300 pieces of silver' behind better signify.
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Name that economist!
Who said this?
"Organized public works, at home and abroad, may be the right cure for a chronic tendency to a deficiency of effective demand. But they are not capable of sufficiently rapid organisation (and above all cannot be reversed or undone at a later date), to be the most serviceable instrument for the prevention of the trade cycle."Find out the answer at Greg Mankiw's Blog.
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The Media: Is it mocking us, or is it even dumber than I thought?
We often make the incorrect assumption in our weekly meetings that the people who make up our government and society are functioning at roughly around the same level we are, or possibly even better. One need not look further than the local news to find out that a whole, vast universe of just-plain-dumb is the foundation upon which the American constitutional republic is supposed to be constructed.
Clearly, we need to invite Lashundra Clanton to our meetings to tell us all when God will put us out of our misery under the current oppressive regime of Obama.
From the article:
PELAHATCHIE, Miss. -- Students at a Mississippi high school said a fellow student spoke in tongues and made grave predictions for her classmates for three days.
Some of those predictions included when students would die.
Pelahatchie High School students called reporters from TV station WAPT, convinced that an evil spirit had taken over Lashundra Clanton.
But alas, once more, the government can save us from Satan:
Her mother said the school didn't punish her daughter, though officials warned her that if she disrupts class, they will send her home.
It's good to know that disruptions from Satan (or God?) can be simply addressed by sending his minions/angels home.
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