Request made. Answered.

"God damn America"



So he did.

America is really stuffed for at least a decade after only a couple of months of President Obama's magnificence.

Best wishes to all of my Seppo mates.

(Nothing Follows)

Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is a cry baby

Apparently, Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is wetting his bed over the thought that his fellow Australians might think somewhat less of him for so enthusiastically promoting the idea of an Internet filter.

Is Conroy a youngest child?

You know the type - the ones that used to go crying to their mother because their older siblings did what older siblings have done for time immemorial - held him down and farted on his head.

Senator Conroy reflects on the extra methane he breathed in as a kid

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Federal Government will begin trawling blog sites as part of a new media monitoring strategy, with official documents singling out a website critical of the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy.

Tender documents issued by the Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy reveal it is looking for a "monitoring service for print and electronic media". The department later attached a clarification confirming this included "blogs such as Whirlpool".

Whirlpool has strongly criticised Senator Conroy's plan to filter internet content and his handling of the Government's $15 billion national broadband network. It is a community-run forum devoted to discussing broadband internet access.

Senator Conroy's spokesman said: "Whirlpool … covers a wide range of topics across the telecommunications sector. It and other web sites provide valuable insight into the industries in which we work."

Opposition communications spokesman Nick Minchin claimed it was "extreme" to expand media monitoring activities to blogs.

"Blogs such as Whirlpool provide an open forum … and do play an important role in our democracy. Moves to monitor this space seem an unacceptable use of taxpayers' money," he said.

Not only are we going to suffer slower Internet speed due to the government's filter that is supposed to block child pornography, bomb making sites and the like but we now get a huge does of Big Brotherism as the government targets its politic opponents.

Folks, this is Australia.

We're meant to have a free society.

Why is it always the left that uses the power of the state to impinge upon free speech?

(Nothing Follows)

Sunday night rock 'n' roll covers

“Proud Mary” is a song written by American singer and guitarist John Fogerty. It was first recorded by rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival (in which Fogerty played lead guitar and sang lead vocals) on the 1969 album Bayou Country. Released as a single in January 1969, it became the band’s first top ten hit on the U.S. Pop chart, peaking at number two, or number one according to some charts. It was the first of five singles that the band released that would reach that peak on the chart, though the group never had a single reach number one, giving them the record for most No.2 singles for a group without a No.1.

The song was written on a steamboat called the “Mary Elizabeth” owned by the Grafton family.

Stylistically, the song merges elements of several genres, including rock and roll, blues, gospel, and soul. Nevertheless, it contains many of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s most characteristic elements, including a repeated guitar riff, “down-home” lyrics, and a guitar solo Fogerty said was influenced by Steve Cropper of Booker T. & the MGs.

The second line of the second verse has generated considerable confusion, and can be considered a type of mondegreen. Listeners have variously interpreted it as “pumped a lot of pain” and “pumped a lot of ’pane”, referring to propane, which is commonly used as a fuel. The controversy was further fueled by Ike & Tina Turner’s cover, in which Tina sings “pumped a lot of ’tane,” referring to octane, the grading scale and chemical in gasoline. The author, Fogerty, finally laid the confusion to rest, saying, “Sometimes I write words to songs because they sound cool to sing. Sometimes the listener doesn’t understand what I’m singing because I’m dedicated to singing the vowel, having fun with the word sounds coming out of my mouth. ‘Cleaned a lot of plates in Memphis, pumped a lot of pain down in New Orleans,’ is a good example. I think Tina Turner sang '`tane' instead of 'pain,' as in a contracted form of 'octane'. But I knew what she meant.”

The Original - Creedence Clearwater Revival



The Famous Cover - Ike & Tina Turner



(Nothing Follows)

Climate models continue to predict higher temperatures than reality

Why anyone can continue to support the IPCC's models' projections when they have proven themselves to have no predictive ability at all is beyond me.

Then again, dogma trumps data for the Climate Faithful and it's important for them to stick together and not admit any faults. The policy is consistent with the lengths they go to in order to protect their data and methods from external scrutiny, which is problematic given it's public money that's funding the research.

There's a reason why I refer to the science of modelling climate as Climate Astrology. It's equally fair to refer to models in the financial markets sector as astrology.

When the models are created almost exclusively by a method of backfitting, as climate models are, it comes as no surprise that they don't work.

The fact is that they can't work.

After only a short period of time temperatures are not only well under the lowest predictions of the IPCC's models but are now expected to fall further at a time when CO2 continues to rise, driving yet another nail into the coffin of CO2-as-primary-driver-of-temperature theory.



Dr Syun Akasofu from the International Arctic Research Center provides an update:

The global average temperature stopped increasing after 2000 against the IPCC’s prediction of continued rapid increase. It is a plain fact and does not require any pretext. Their failure stems from the fact that the IPCC emphasized the greenhouse effect of CO2 by slighting the natural causes of temperature changes.

The changes of the global average temperature during the last century and the first decade of the present century can mostly be explained by two natural causes, a linear increase which began in about 1800 and the multi-decadal oscillation superposed on the linear increase. There is not much need for introducing the CO2 effect in the temperature changes. The linear increase is the recovery (warming) from the Little Ice Age (LIA), which the earth experienced from about 1400 to 1800.

The halting of the temperature rise during the first decade of the present century can naturally be explained by the fact that the linear increase has been overwhelmed by the superposed multi-decadal oscillation which peaked in about 2000.*

This situation is very similar to the multi-decadal temperature decrease from 1940 to 1975 after the rise from 1910 to 1940 (in spite of the fact that CO2 increased rapidly after 1946); it was predicted at that time that a new Big Ice Age was on its way.

The IPCC seems to imply that the halting is a temporary one. However, they cannot give the reason. Several recent trends, including the phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the halting of sea level increase, and the cooling of the Arctic Ocean, indicate that the halting is likely to be due to the multi-decadal change.

The high temperatures predicted by the IPCC in 2100 (+2~6°C) are simply an extension of the observed increase from 1975 to 2000, which was caused mainly by the multi-decadal oscillation. The Global Climate Models (GCMs) are programmed to reproduce the observed increase from 1975 to 2000 in terms of the CO2 effect and to extend the reproduced curve to 2100.

It is advised that the IPCC recognize at least the failure of their prediction even during the first decade of the present century; a prediction is supposed to become less accurate for the longer future.

Dr Akasofu is no scientific slouch, either, as his Wikipedia entry shows.

Naturally, the Climate Taliban will play the man rather than the science and accuse him of being funded by Big Oil, driving a gas guzzling V8 or not driving a Prius.

(Nothing Follows)

A bunch of climate change graphs

Here are a bunch of graphs I've cherry-picked from icecap that not only show a clear downward trend in temperature but also demonstrate why it is happening, as well as predicting cooler times ahead.

Solar activity + ocean data suggest cooling

Be10 record proves solar influence

Guest post by David Archibald

A couple of years ago on Climate Audit, I undertook to do battle with Dr Svalgaard’s invariate Sun using Dye 3 Be10 data. And so it has come to pass. Plotted up and annotated, the Dye 3 data shows the strong relationship between solar activity and climate. Instead of wading through hundreds of papers for evidence of the Sun’s influence on terrestrial climate, all you have to do is look at this graph.

All the major climate minima are evident in the Be10 record, and the cold period at the end of the 19th century. This graph alone demonstrates that the warming of the 20th century was solar-driven.

The end of the Little Ice Age corresponded with a dramatic decrease in the rate of production of Be10, due to fewer galactic cosmic rays getting into the inner planets of the solar system. Fewer galactic cosmic rays got into the inner planets because the solar wind got stronger. The solar wind got stronger because the Sun’s magnetic field got stronger, as measured by the aa Index from 1868.

Thus the recent fall of aa Index and Ap Index to lows never seen before in living memory is of considerable interest.

Sun v CO2

Ruh-roh...

How are those hurricanes looking?

More CO2 = fewer hurricanes?

That's a bit unexpected for the Climate Faithful, isn't it?

These data show how inured to reality the climate movement has become.

(Nothing Follows)

Climate Jihadist Hansen exposes the contempt environmentalists have for democracy

James Hansen - a man who started out as a Climate Fraud, moved into the Climate Lunatic category and now become a senior leader of the Climate Jihad - has now decided that what is holding the world back from taking action on the 'urgent' problem of climate change is democracy.

Really?

If that was the case then wouldn't we see action already being taken in non-democratic countries?

China? No action.

Hmmmm...

Cuba? Hello?

Venezuela? Nothing.

North Korea? Someone already turned the lights out.

Hansen's claim that democracy is the problem should come as no surprise to anyone following the politics of climate science given that the ultimate goal of the Climate Jihadists is to bring down democracy as we know it in favour of socialism.

From that leading source of balanced reporting on climate change (not), The Guardian:

Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist has said.

James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. "The democratic process doesn't quite seem to be working," he said.

Speaking on the eve of joining a protest against the headquarters of power firm E.ON in Coventry, Hansen said: "The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.

"The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I'm not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we're running out of time."

Hansen said he was taking part in the Coventry demonstration tomorrow because he wants a worldwide moratorium on new coal power stations. E.ON wants to build such a station at Kingsnorth in Kent, an application that energy and the climate change minister Ed Miliband recently delayed. "I think that peaceful actions that attempt to draw society's attention to the issue are not inappropriate," Hansen said.

He added that a scientific meeting in Copenhagen last week had made clear the "urgency of the science and the inaction taken by governments".

Officials will gather in Bonn later this month to continue talks on a new global climate treaty, which campaigners have called to be signed at a UN meeting in Copenhagen in December. Hansen warned that the new treaty is "guaranteed to fail" to bring down emissions.

Hansen said: "What's being talked about for Copenhagen is a strenghening of Kyoto [protocol] approach, a cap and trade with offsets and escape hatches which will be gauranteed to fail in terms of getting the required rapid reduction in emissions. They talk about goals which sound impressive, but when you see the actions are such that it will be impossible to reach those goals, then I can understand the informed public getting frustrated."

He said he was growing "concerned" over the stance taken by the new US adminstration on global warming. "It's not clear what their intentions are yet, but if they are going to support cap and trade then unfortunately i think that will be another case of greenwash. It's going to take stronger action than that."

Isn't lobbying of any form part of the democratic process? Is environmental lobbying somehow more legitimate than corporate lobbying or lobbying by religious groups or the unions or racial groups or the left handed?

Hansen exposes the contempt that the modern day, Big E Environmentalist movement has for democracy. We should be thankful for that and it might help explain why an increasing number of people, when polled, do not believe the Climate Agitprop fed to them via the mainstream media.

This man and his climate models have a zero percent successful prediction rate. His previously touted Scenario B model, which used wrong inputs to be correct for a few years, has now failed miserably given recent cooling, as have all models. That should come as no surprise to anyone who understands how models are created and what their pitfalls are.

As I've said before, Hansen is the modern day Trofim Lysenko. History will not be kind to him.

(Nothing Follows)

Peter Schiff - Why the meltdown should have surprised no one

Peter Schiff presents at the Mises Institute's 2009 Austrian Scholars Conference on the topic "Why the meltdown should have surprised no one".

It's about an hour and time well spent.

What's key for me in the whole do we do something or do we do nothing debate is that the thing that needs to be done - structural reform - has not even made it onto anyone's agenda yet, which is why I think we're in for many a long year of relative hardship ahead.



(Nothing Follows)

The unintended consequences of environmental policies

Is there an environmental policy implemented in the last 20 years in the Western world that has not had negative unintended consequences?

In Australia the Big E environmental movement has ensured that no new dams have been built leading to water shortages in all of the country's major cities. They've ensured that forests in fire zones are not cleared of fuel, the fuel that led to the massive destruction and death recently, not to mention the millions of animals that perished, in the Victorian bushfire tragedy. The list is almost endless. Of course, they take no responsibility on the grounds that they simply don't care about the impact on people.

Here's a classic example from Essex County in England:

The contortionist’s skill required to squeeze a car into a tiny modern garage and climb out of a barely opened door will become redundant under plans to allow more generous parking provision on new housing estates.

A decade after the Government ordered developers to discourage car ownership by making it difficult to park, a local authority has produced new guidance that acknowledges that the policy has failed.

Far from reducing car usage, the policy has turned modern housing developments into obstacle courses for pedestrians and cyclists, who routinely find pavements and cycle paths occupied by cars with nowhere else to park.

A study by Essex County Council found that 78 per cent of garages were not being used to store vehicles, largely because a trend towards larger cars and 4x4s meant that many did not fit comfortably inside the space.

Essex has become the first authority to challenge the Government’s anti-car planning guidelines. It has issued draft guidelines that require larger garages and driveways, more parking spaces per dwelling, bigger on-street bays and at least 25 extra spaces for visitors for every 100 homes. The council has discussed its approach with several other authorities interested in relaxing limits on parking.

The new parking standards will be treated as a minimum rather than, as at present, a maximum. Developers will be free, for the first time in a decade, to offer as many spaces as they believe their customers will want.

Garages will have to be at least 7 metres by 3 metres (23ft by 10ft), as opposed to the existing guidance of 5 metres by 2.5 metres. Any garage smaller than the new dimensions will be treated as a storeroom and not counted towards the minimum number of parking spaces. Any home with two or more bedrooms will require at least two spaces.

The council found that planning guidance issued between 1998 and 2001 had created a severe shortage of spaces in many developments. Families had responded not by giving up their second car but by parking on narrow residential roads, blocking access for emergency services and refuse collection lorries.

There are more than 1.5 cars per home in 35 per cent of council wards in Essex. Nationally, there are more homes with two or more cars than there are homes without a car.

The proportion of car-less households fell from 45 per cent in 1976 to 24 per cent in 2006. Over the same period, the proportion of homes with two or more cars rose from 11 per cent to 32 per cent.

Norman Hume, the Conservative-controlled council’s Cabinet member for transport, said: “This new parking guidance is a radical break from the past failed approach which has seen local communities blighted by parked cars. We are effectively asking people whether we should continue living in neighbourhoods that often have the appearance of disorganised car parks or if instead we should look much more closely at how we accommodate the car to allow a better quality of life for our residents.”

The Campaign for Better Transport, which promotes alternatives to cars, said that Essex was undermining a decade of work to help people to become less car-dependent. Stephen Joseph, the campaign’s director, said: “Essex will create a new generation of car-dominated estates, causing congestion and pollution. In the guise of offering freedom, people will be locked into car dependency. Homes will be too spread out to make good public transport feasible.”

Mr Joseph said that Essex should have adopted the approach in Cambridge and Kent Thameside, where clusters of new homes are being built close to dedicated bus lanes offering fast, regular services.

John Jowers, Cabinet member for planning in Essex, said: “Whether you like it or not, you have to live with the car. Rationing parking spaces doesn’t stop people owning cars, it just means they park where it is most inconvenient for everyone else.”

He said that Essex was considering reducing the number of people commuting by car by imposing a charge on workplace parking spaces.

These people would have known up front that this would be the effect of their policy, as the Council would typically allow public comment before legislation is introduced.

How long will it take before environmentalism is considered in the same negative category as fascism?

(Nothing Follows)

Best safety poster ever

Nothing to add, really...

....c'mon...who wouldn't swap lives with Hugh Hefner...?

(Nothing Follows)

Sunday night rock 'n' roll covers

"Hey Joe" is an American popular song from the 1960s that has become a rock standard, and as such has been performed in a multitude of musical styles. Diverse credits and claims have led to confusion as to its authorship and genesis. It tells the story of a man on the run after shooting his wife. The earliest known commercial recording, and the first hit version, is the late 1965 recording by the Los Angeles garage band, The Leaves, although currently the best-known version is the The Jimi Hendrix Experience's 1966 recording, their debut single. The song title is sometimes given as "Hey Joe, Where You Gonna Go?" or similar variations.

While claimed by some to be a traditional song, or often erroneously attributed to the pen of American musician Dino Valente (who also went by the names Chester or Chet Powers, and Jesse Farrow), "Hey Joe" was registered for copyright in the US in 1962 by Billy Roberts.[2]. Roberts is the author, and the song may have been written by him earlier. Scottish folk singer Len Partridge has claimed that he helped write the song with Roberts when they both performed in clubs in Edinburgh in 1956.[3] Another source (singer Pat Craig), claims[2] that Roberts assigned the rights to the song to his friend Valente while Valente was in jail, in order to give him some income upon release.

The Original - The Leaves



The Master - Jimi Hendrix



(Nothing Follows)

John Stossel's 20-20 Bailouts and Bull

Stossel does an excellent job, yet again, at exposing the truth.

One hopes the Obama camp was watching.

Part 1



Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

(Nothing Follows)

Video animation of Flight 1549

This video really does show how quickly Flight 1549 got into trouble, how little time the crew had to make decisions and how lucky they all were to have Chesley Sullenberger at the controls.

I do wonder, though, had they made an initial right turn instead of left turn what the outcome would have been given it would have put the Hudson out of reach...



(Nothing Follows)

1 + 1 + 1 = 5.2% unemployment

What do you get if you add:

A collapse in manufacturing...



plus a collapse in construction...



plus a collapse in services?



Answer?

A large rise in the unemployment rate.

Nearly 54,000 Australians lost their full-time jobs last month, according to official labour force figures released today, prompting economists to predict a large interest rate cut next month.

The grim data was worse-than-expected, revealing that the unemployment rate climbed to 5.2 percent in February.

Economists are now predicting that the jobless rate could reach 9 percent by the end of 2010.

“The consensus is moving towards a higher unemployment rate,” said Besa Deda, chief economist at St George Bank.

She added that the surprise jump in the number of unemployed people could force the Reserve Bank of Australia to slash interest rates again when it meets next month.

“Today’s unemployment figures, combined with the recent slowing in economic growth, are increasing the pressure on the Reserve Bank to cut rates in April,” she told ninemsn.

Slashing the cash rate by 50 basis points from 3.25 percent to 2.75 percentwould drag interest rates to a new low - under the record low of 2.89 percent in January 1960.

Looking at those market contraction figures why would anyone think that pissing tens of billions of dollars up against the wall on ridiculous so-called stimulus projects that create no sustainable jobs at all is going to either fix the mess we're in or take the blunt edges off it, as I heard one commentator say?

The fan is taking out insurance at being hit by a lot of sh*t in the very near future.

I understand that the premium is extremely high.

(Nothing Follows)

10 years of poor economic times?

How does the world avoid 10 years of recession and depression?

By spending the next generation's money on things that stimulate nothing?

How?

By unionising the workforce?

By throwing more down the education black hole?

By continuing to offer cheap credit to fix a problem caused by cheap credit?

By propping up incompetent businesspeople, companies and home owners?

By introducing price controls?

Ladies and gentlemen.

The world really is in the poop.

Obama, Rudd, Brown.

Are these populist, economically incompetent egoists really going to save us?

Or is business going to do what it always does and do all of the heavy lifting in spite of the extra burden placed on it by governments all around the world?

Of course it is.

Which is why giving tax relief to business is so important.

But what do the leaders of the English speaking world do?

Increase taxes and charges.

Depression, here we come.

(Nothing Follows)

Thoughts and observations over the last week

I haven't posted for a week in a JF Beck inspired burst of apathy or equally reasonable reason...so sue me...

Here are some observations I have made in the last week, as well as some other factoids that will make your head do the Linda Blair thing in The Exorcist, if it has any ability to flip out any further.

The financial meltdown - why didn't we see it coming?

Remember Nick Leeson?

He's the guy who managed to kill Her Majesty the Queen's personal bankers, Barings Bank (founded 1762, unfounded 1995), in a series of unauthorised derivatives transactions totalling $1.4 billion.

That was 13 years ago. You'd assume that financial institutions around the world took notice and changed their oversight policies?

And you'd be wrong.

In 2004, the National Australia Bank uncovered unauthorised transactions amounting to $360 million, claiming the scalps of the Chairman and CEO along the way.

That was in Australia; a country with rules supposedly much stronger than most of the rest of the world.

Remember Jerome Kerviel?

He was the garlic eating, rarely washing, typical Frenchman trader with Societe Generale that managed to make Nick Leeson look like a piker by running up losses of $7 billion.

People whispered about Madoff and his too good to be true returns but nobody bothered to undertake a proper audit. Too many high profile customers, no doubt, dulled the authorities' collective will.

These people all acted illegally but their actions were a pointer to a future collapse of financial markets, as they signaled that oversight took a very, very back seat to profits in a market awash with money pumped in by irresponsible central banks.

Is the Obama administration already the most incompetent in living memory?

It's a fair question to ask.

When Obama supporters in the mainstream media like Jim Cramer and a host of others along with such luminaries as Warren Buffett are already jumping off the bus after only six weeks in office then you know that something has gone seriously wrong.

When Obama said he was going to change things he apparently meant it.

Why this comes as a shock to middle of the road liberals has got me beat.

The stock market has taken a pummeling off the back of Obama's insane, economy destroying non-stimulus package.

His staff is also concerned that he's very tired due to all the work he's had to do to deal with the financial crisis. In light of the performance of the markets every time he opens his mouth perhaps he should take a break from matters economic for a while.

That he's charging forward with socialised health care while the means for paying for it go down the gurgler seems to be lost on him.

And what the hell was the 25 DVD of classic American movies given as a gift to British PM Gordon Brown all about?

In the same week he announces a $900 million gift to Hamas he can't come up with anything better than a $49.95 'gift' from the White House tourist shop for America's closest ally???

Or is there something Obama has not told Brown about the status of their relationship?

Europe seems really stuffed

The total commitment of Gordon Brown's bailout currently stands at 1.3 trillion pounds.

"How much is that?", I hear you ask.

The UK's GDP is 1.4 trillion pounds.

That would be like the US stimulus package reaching $12 trillion - which it may well do - or Australia's rising from its current $42 billion to $800 billion.

How many generations of Britons will be required to pay that back?

Here's another great fact from Europe...

...Austrian banks are heavily exposed to flimsy loans to Eastern European countries who now show no inclination to pay it back on the not unreasonable grounds that they can't.

How much did Austrian banks loan?

70% of Austria's GDP.

So they're pretty stuffed.

Clearly, Austria is not run by actual Austrian School economists.

The big question is will the EU hold together through the first major crisis it's had to deal with?

The irony is that countries who have promoted the benefits of the EU the hardest - Germany and France - now find themselves in the position of potentially having to bail out their European partners. I'm not too sure that taxpayers in those two countries will be too thrilled about that...

I reckon the thing will hold together by a thread. I hope so. Maybe it'll knock some sense into them.

The Climate

A pretty unremarkable week overall.

A protest by some of the Climate Taliban held in Washington DC endured near blizzard conditions.

The world failed to come to an agreement that would bind all nations to reducing CO2 emissions.

No animal species went extinct.

No islands sunk.

No coastal cities were inundated with water.

The Artic ice cover was pretty much normal.

As was the Antarctic.

And the Climate Taliban continued their society wrecking advocy.

As I said, a pretty normal week.

(Nothing Follows)

What would Hillary have done?

Republicans were always going to be pushing poo up hill to win the last US election and, in retrospect, the GOP's choice of John McCain turned out to be a real stinker. Without Sarah Palin as his running mate he might have lost by a wider margin.

President Obama has unveiled his fiscal plan and it is the biggest stinker in the history of stinkery.

The US is clearly heading for a depression, with a D, and not recession under the Obama plan.

When Jim "Under Obama we'll have a recession, under McCain we'll have a depression" Cramer comes out and states that he's never seen such wealth destruction by a US government ever, "Their agenda is destroying the life savings of millions of Americans..." and "...the market is totally falling apart and his agenda has a big hand in that happening" then you know that things have gone badly awry.

I have made the statement before that I don't believe that John McCain, had he won the presidency, would have been much more effective than Barack Obama. He might not have spent as much and he would have been a bit more strident on staying in Iraq but I don't see him as a business tax cutter given how often he's chosen the popular position and poked his own party in the eye.

The interesting question is what would Hillary have done if she had won the Democrat primary and the subsequent election?

If there has ever been a family more concerned with maintaining their popularity than the Clintons then I'm yet to see one strut the world's political stage.

Would Hillary have had the wit to understand that her legacy depended on the action she took as soon as she was sworn in?

There's no doubt that she would have.

Would she have allowed the two lunatics who lead congress and the senate to have come up with the greatest threat to America's economic future since its inception in the form of the stimulus bill?

The Devil would be skating to work before that happened...

Would she have showered her friends with manna from heaven at the expense of US taxpayers?

No doubt about it but as I've always said - give me a competent crook over an incompetent ideologue every time.

Only give weeks into his presidency and it's clear that Obama is in the latter category.

One day we might look back and wish that she had won, which is an amazing thing to admit.

(Nothing Follows)

Today's Times of India headlines

It's a different world over in India, as exhibited by some of the stories currently running on the Times of India website. The old saying goes 'only in America' but I reckon that we'll increasingly see the weird and bizarre from the sub-continent.

Part of the fun in these articles is the wonderfully flowery use of the English language. Another is what they come up with as headlines.

Constable accidentally pulls off firearm trigger, kills self

NAGPUR: A constable of the Railway Protection Force (RPF) died on Monday here after he accidentally pulled the trigger of his nine mm carbine, killing himself, GRP police said.

Dhananjay Singh, posted at the Nagpur railway station on platform number one, fell to his bullets, shot below his chin, in the wee hours, they said.

A case of accidental death has been registered by the police.

However, police sources say the deceased may have committed suicide since the bullet was found to have ripped through his jaws, as the gun was positioned at his neck below the chin.

Ya think?

Hundreds of prisoners in Bihar jail pledge to donate eyes

PATNA: Hundreds of prisoners in a Bihar jail, including Maoists, gangsters and even a jailed politician, have pledged to donate their eyes after death, an official said on Monday.

"More than 400 of nearly 3,000 prisoners in the Beur Central Jail in Patna have voluntarily pledged to donate their eyes," said Kanti Mohan, the medical officer of the jail.

Official sources said Maoists like Ajay Kanu, the brain behind the infamous Jehanabad jail break in November 2005, along with dozen other cadres, gangsters Bindu Singh, Shiv Gope, Sultan Miyan and former legislator Rajan Tiwari have given their written consent to donate eyes.

"Prisoners are also human-beings, with heart and emotions. They were motivated to make a difference to others by donating their eyes," Mohan told IANS over phone.

It took Mohan many days to convince and encourage prisoners to make the pledge.

"It was not an easy task. I worked hard for it and now the prisoners have responded," he said.

Jail Superintendent Omprakash Gupta said the prisoners would set a positive example and it would change their bad image in the society.

"It will inspire inmates of other jails in the state to donate their eyes or other organs," Gupta said.

I guess it's better than what happens in China where prisoners are executed for the most trivial of crimes and have their organs sold into a lucrative market. Who came up with the idea in the first place and how did they convince the prisoners so quickly?

Two get bail in case of grabbing flats

The Pune Cantonment court on Friday granted bail to two members of the Feroz Rahim Bangali gang of Kondhwa in a case of grabbing two flats. Judicial magistrate first class A M Patankar ordered release of the suspects Mubarak Shaikh and Moiz Shaikh both from Kondhwa on bail of 20,000 with sureties of the like amount.

The suspects were ordered not to tamper with evidence, not to threaten witnesses and to give daily attendance at the Kondhwa police station. The alleged incident of grabbing of two flats at Grenade palace at Kondhwa had taken place in 2006 and the case was filed by Sayed Sarhan Sabir of Ghorpadi.

What the hell is that about??

Hero Honda to repay amount for defective bike

HYDERABAD: The Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum III has ordered Hero Honda Motors Limited to repay Rs 43,000, the cost of a Hero Honda Passion Plus, for delivering a defective motorcycle to a consumer.

B Srikanth, a student, bought the motorcycle from Laxmi Motors in Malakpet on June 14, 2008. While driving home after the purchase, it developed a technical snag within 15 minutes. Incidentally, he was driving in the second gear. Srikanth brought the issue to the notice of the showroom three days later.

The showroom staff assured him that they would address the issue during the first service. However, Srikanth encountered the problem again and brought it to the notice of the showroom. After repeated representations to the showroom and the company when his grievance was not redressed, he filed a petition before the Consumer Forum III.

In his petition, he said though authorities attended to the problem, they could not completely rectify it. He demanded that the showroom replace the bike with a new one, but they flatly rejected it. His grievance was not even heard by the Hero Honda's regional office in Himayatnagar.

Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum III president L Kedarachary, after hearing both the parties on February 27, ordered Hero Honda Motors Limited to either replace the vehicle or repay the cost with compensation.

Incidentally, he was driving in second gear.

Magical Melange Of '70s

The mid-60s and arrival of director N Lakshminarayan gave birth to a new idiom. His Naandi and Uyyale were two path-breakers followed by K S L Swamy's Gandhinagara. The '70s unspooled the Golden Age where Kannada films won laurels, both at home and abroad. Pattabhirama Reddy's Samskara with Girish Karnad in the lead role set a blazing trail. Then came gems like Kaadu, Chomana Dudi, Tabbaliyu Neenade Magane, Vamsavruksha, Ghatashraddha, Kanneswara Rama, Hamsageethe and Ondanondu Kaladalli.

The new style, new attitudes and new explorations set out by greats like Girish Karnad, Girish Kasaravalli, G V Iyer, M S Sathyu and B V Karanth made the country take notice of Kannada cinema. The new cinema created structural and thematic variations, its framework of norms and commitments. It aimed at a broader vision of life, deeper penetration into realities, scientific exploration of themes and more relevant socio-economic perspectives. Its purpose was not to sell romatic dreams but to show reality engagingly.

These directors were relentless in their search for relevant cinema which had a hard line of conceptualisation executed in an idiomatic manner.

In the '70s, money-spinners Dari Tappida Maga, Yeradu Kanasu, Sharapanjara, Nagarahaavu, Upasane, Sampattige Sawal and Bilee Hendti were a fine blend of art elan and commercial masala. It was definitely the Golden Era.

Don't tell anyone that pretentiousness is not alive and well in India.

Green butchers on the prowl on OU campus

HYDERABAD: Green murderers struck again, but ironically this time they chose the sylvan Osmania University (OU) campus and axed 15 trees around the university sports complex swimming pool. However, OU authorities claimed the trees were felled to protect the swimming pool.

The OU officials maintained that since leaves of the trees surrounding the pool were polluting the water, they had ordered tree trimming, but the contractor axed 15 trees which were between eight to ten years old.

They claimed the physical education department, which maintains the sports complex, including the swimming pool, was running up a huge bill of Rs 62,000 per month for just cleaning up the pool and filtering water and hence the diktat to ‘chop’ branches was ordered.

“We had given orders to trim the trees. The contractor carried out the operation without the university’s permission. We had ordered for trimming the branches as swimmers were complaining of skin infections caused by the decaying leaves and twigs,”director, physical education department, Lakshmikanth Rathod said. However, even trees which were a few feet away from the pool were chopped down with the consent of the OU staff.

“We are ready to plant as many trees elsewhere to make up for the loss. We have been taking up continuous planting of saplings for trees cut down for construction activities,” he said.

'Green murderers' is a term right out of the loopy environmentalist playbook. Is green butchery a capital crime in India?

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Sunday night rock 'n' roll covers

Shocking Blue was a Dutch rock band from The Hague formed in 1967. Their biggest hit, "Venus," went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1970, and the band had sold 13.5 million discs by 1973, but the group disbanded in 1974.

The group charted a world-wide hit with the song "Venus," which reached #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in February 1970. Initially the disc was a big hit in the Netherlands, where it reached #3 in the summer of 1969. It subsequently sold 350,000 copies in Germany, and topped the U.S. chart for three weeks, becoming the Netherlands first American #1 hit. It sold over one million copies there by January 1970, and received a gold disc awarded by the Recording Industry Association of America. Global sales exceeded five million copies.

Before the breakthrough of "Venus," the group had a minor hit in 1968 with "Lucy Brown Is Back In Town". Once Mariska Veres took over the vocals two bigger hits followed, "Send Me A Postcard" in 1968/69 and "Long and Lonesome Road" (often mistakenly named as Long Lonesome Road) in 1969. "Hot Sand", the flip-side of "Venus" was also heavily plugged on Dutch radio.

The Original - Shocking Blue



Cover version - the execrable Bananarama (was a big hit for them)



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Bye, bye, America. See you on the other side.

With the news that the US economy is tanking faster than Battlefield Earth or Showgirls it's time for Joe Public to get serious, fast, about the magnitude of the problem.

The economy is moving in reverse faster than the government can measure.

Really? The same government that wants to implement universal healthcare can't actually measure the economy?

The contraction for the fourth quarter of 2008 had been estimated at 3.8 percent just a month ago. Then the Commerce Department raised it to an astonishing 6.2 percent Friday -- the largest revision since the government started keeping records in 1976.

I think you'll find there were a number of economists calling hooey on the government's projection of 3.8%. They had studied the collapse in investment at the top layers of production and drawn the inevitable conclusion that things were going south much quicker than mainstream economists were predicting.

That was the economy's worst showing in a quarter-century and raised the prospect that the nation could suffer its worst year since 1946.

Consider that the economy is still slowing so if it's not the worst year since 1946 then it soon will be...

"Consumers are just hunkering down and saying 'game over,' and businesses in response are cutting back on investment and employment," said Brian Bethune, economist at IHS Global Insight. "It's a negative feedback loop."

Now in its second year, the recession is expected to stretch at least through the first six months of 2009, as shoppers slash spending in the shadow of hard times at home and aboard.

Companies, in turn, are being forced to cut jobs and production while resorting to other cost-saving measures to survive.

The Commerce Department's new report was also weaker than the 5.4 percent drop economists had expected.

Why do mainstream economists have any credibility when every prediction they make is wrong, especially when it matters most? They're like climate scientists in that regard.

The biggest culprit behind the record-breaking revision: Businesses actually cut inventories instead of building them as the government originally thought. That reduced -- rather than added to -- economic activity.

Why the hell would the government expect business to increase inventories into the gale of a deepening recession? These people are lunatics. With excess capacity and inventories business was always going to liquidate stock levels - and jobs along with them. Low interest rates didn't help Japan. Why would they help America at this time?

In addition, consumers pulled back even more on their spending -- which accounts for about 70 percent of national economic activity. U.S. exports suffered a bigger drop and businesses retrenched further.

A large part of the solution is to provide tax cuts to business in order to stimulate jobs and therefore growth.

Unfortunately, President Obama and his team have decided that having wandered into a minefield the answer is to put their hands over their ears and stomp around like drunks while giving slippery, unsubstantive speeches to an increasingly concerned public and investor community. There's a reason why the Dow is in free fall.

President Obama has guaranteed the next generation a lower standard of living to what people enjoy now.

It will take something extraordinary - like the growth of Internet - to provide the productivity gain x-factor that helped the sluggish Clinton economy turn around.

Fortunately, the United States is an extraordinary country and I wouldn't put it past them to find this x-factor so there's always hope.

At this stage, though, I think that things are going to get a lot worse before they start to get any better so it's bye, bye, America. See you on the other side if our own set of looters don't manage to damage the Australian economy too badly in the meantime.

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The credit crisis explained

This is a great video on how the credit crisis came about.

It doesn't describe the government programs that led to the crisis, just the mechanics of how things became frozen.

Barney Frank, Chris Dodd et al should watch it...


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

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