Yearly Archives: 2014

History happens all the time

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Here’s a cumulative list of stories from Drudge over the past couple of days. The most important: Obama Popularity Hits Low in Poll After Prisoner Exchange. He’s fallen to 44%. That is, if there were an election, he would win in a walk tomorrow. Meanwhile . . .

From the Middle East:

Washington Watches As Iraq Speeds Toward Disaster…
‘Mass beheadings’ by al-Qaeda forces in Mosul and Tikrit…
Governemt on brink of collapse…
Refugees flee tide of terror…
Turkey calls for emergency NATO meeting…
Militants Sweeping Toward Baghdad…
U.S. Embassy Prepares for Possible Evacuation…
Jihadis Become World’s Richest Terror Outfit after Looting Bank for $429 million…
SPIRAL: Al-Qaeda seizes Iraq city…
Surprise Assault…
Arms windfall for insurgents…
Jihadis Become World’s Richest Terror Outfit after Looting Bank for $429m…
Terrified residents flee…
Maliki offers weapons to citizens willing to fight…
White House Struggles With Naming Foreign Policy Achievements…

On the border.

‘FREE PASS’…
EX-BORDER AGENTS: IMMIGRANT FLOOD ‘ORCHESTRATED’…
Sheriff Likens Influx Of Illegals To Hurricane Katrina…
Arpaio Worries Of Disease Being Brought Into USA…
Illegals flagging down border patrol to gain entry…
Central American newspapers tout Obama amnesty…
DANGER: CONDITIONS DETERIORATE AT AZ SHELTER…
Widespread sexual activity…
Issa: ‘Flood Going To Mean Children Dying’…
Border Agent Issues Plea for Help…
PAPER: Influx ‘threatens to transform nation’…
‘Vast swaths’ of border unprotected, cartels ‘in control’…
Homeland Security chief: ‘Problem’…
Illegals flagging down border patrol to gain entry to USA…
Central American newspapers tout Obama amnesty program…
CONDITIONS DETERIORATE AT AZ SHELTER…
Chicken pox, staph infection fears…
Widespread sexual activity…
Feds violating child abuse laws?
Valerie Jarrett in secret meetings with activists…
PAPER: Influx ‘threatens to transform nation’…
Homeland Security chief: ‘Problem’…

Is there perhaps at least a chance that things might change?

DC ROCKED: CANTOR LOSES PRIMARY…
SALON: Drudge and the right’s frenzied paranoia…
MAG: Immigration Reform Will Go Down With Cantor…
Todd: Children Flooding Border Sealed fate…
White House Spins: It Wasn’t Immigration…
GOP Leadership in ‘chaos’…
Meet The Candidate Who Beat Top Republican…
‘Miracle From God’…
Press Conference…
‘Tea Party’ no help…

Change? Forget it. The President to come.

HILLARY: Taliban 5 ‘Not a Threat to the United States’…
Backtracks From ‘Dead Broke’ Comments…
‘I Fully Appreciate How Hard Life Is For So Many’…
Diane Sawyer destroys on Benghazi…
POLL: Popularity slips…
CLINTONHEADS SPEND NIGHT ON STREET FOR BOOK SIGNING…
Rules: ‘NO Posed Photography With Author’…
‘Media Mutiny’ After Press Barred…
HOLDS AT #2 ON AMAZON?
PRICE SLASHED…
Outside groups go to war…
Huma back by her side…

Huma back by her side – the news just gets better and better.

As for the economy, same as ever; nothing new to report.

The latest news from the front

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Here’s a story from Drudge: Obama Popularity Hits Low in Poll After Prisoner Exchange. He’s fallen to 44%. He’d win in a walk tomorrow.

From the Middle East:

SPIRAL: Al-Qaeda seizes Iraq city…
Surprise Assault…
Arms windfall for insurgents…
Jihadis Become World’s Richest Terror Outfit after Looting Bank for $429m…
Terrified residents flee…
Maliki offers weapons to citizens willing to fight…
White House Struggles With Naming Foreign Policy Achievements…

On the border.

Illegals flagging down border patrol to gain entry to USA…
Central American newspapers tout Obama amnesty program…
CONDITIONS DETERIORATE AT AZ SHELTER…
Chicken pox, staph infection fears…
Widespread sexual activity…
Feds violating child abuse laws?
Valerie Jarrett in secret meetings with activists…
PAPER: Influx ‘threatens to transform nation’…
Homeland Security chief: ‘Problem’…

Is there perhaps at least a chance that things might change?

DC ROCKED: CANTOR LOSES PRIMARY…
SALON: Drudge and the right’s frenzied paranoia…
MAG: Immigration Reform Will Go Down With Cantor…
Todd: Children Flooding Border Sealed fate…
White House Spins: It Wasn’t Immigration…
GOP Leadership in ‘chaos’…
Meet The Candidate Who Beat Top Republican…
‘Miracle From God’…
Press Conference…
‘Tea Party’ no help…

The President to come.

HILLARY: Taliban 5 ‘Not a Threat to the United States’…
Backtracks From ‘Dead Broke’ Comments…
‘I Fully Appreciate How Hard Life Is For So Many’…
Diane Sawyer destroys on Benghazi…
POLL: Popularity slips…
CLINTONHEADS SPEND NIGHT ON STREET FOR BOOK SIGNING…
Rules: ‘NO Posed Photography With Author’…
‘Media Mutiny’ After Press Barred…
HOLDS AT #2 ON AMAZON?
PRICE SLASHED…
Outside groups go to war…
Huma back by her side…

Huma back by her side – the news just gets better and better.

As for the economy, same as ever; nothing new to report.

The crossing of the Rio Danube

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illegals in us

It will take a while, but the end is in sight. Compare and contrast:

The Gothic War is the name given to a Gothic uprising in the eastern Roman Empire in the Balkans between about 376/7 and 382. The war, and in particular the Battle of Adrianople, was a major turning point in the history of the Roman Empire, the first barbarian invasion in a series of events over the next century that would see the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

A new idea: helping the environment while not clobbering the economy

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lake superior ice bergs

It’s across the front page of The Age and presumably The SMH but it is also posted at Drudge under the heading, Aussie Prime Minister seeks alliance to ‘dismantle’ Obama’s climate policy…. On Drudge it comes with an accompanying story, about icebergs on Lake Superior in June! (see the picture above). This is from the SMH, editorially assisted by myself to balance the editorial charaterisation posted by Mark Kenny as part of his story:

Tony Abbott is seeking a conservative alliance among “like-minded” countries, aiming to dismantle global moves to introduce carbon pricing, and undermine a push by [far-left] US President Barack Obama to push the case for action through forums such as the G20.

It’s not as if ruining your economies through actions to contain global warming is necessarily a left-right thing, it just turned out that way. Helping the poor by creating so many more of them is not my idea of policy genius. This is more my sort of thing:

[Mr Abbott] said it was important that policies to address output did not “clobber the economy” while not helping the environment.
The comments were immediately backed up by Canada with Mr Harper declaring there was no chance of any country acting for the planet if it involved costs to its economy.

“It’s not that we don’t seek to deal with climate change,” he said.

“We seek to deal with it in a way that enhances our ability to create jobs and growth, this is their position.

“No country is going to take actions that are going to deliberately harm jobs and growth in their country, we are just a bit more frank about that than other countries.”

The uncompromising attitude of both leaders suggests neither is inclined to yield to pressure from the US to revive the issue of climate change ahead of next years’ climate summit, nor back any international coordination such as additional regulations or a trading scheme.

Politics is politics. Icebergs in June at the start of summer but half the world is worried about global warming so you gotta say what you gotta say. But you must also do what you must also do. One more reason why bringing Labor back would be a step into the dark ages, in more ways than one.

Mystery Monster off Australian Coast!

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Stop worrying about politics, just think about this: Great White Shark Devoured by Mystery Monster off Australia Coast:

In the film, Australian scientists explain that the great white shark had been tagged with a tracking device. They said the shark was eaten by a mystery creature in the depths of the ocean four months later, with the tag washing up on shore about 4km from where it was initially tagged.

In a clip from the film, Riggs says: “When I was first told about the data that came back from the tag that was on the shark, I was absolutely blown away.”

The shark had been swimming at a depth of 1,900ft when there was a huge temperature change – going from 7C to 25C in just seconds.

Scientists say this could only have happened by the shark being eaten by another creature – the latter temperature indicates that the tag was inside the stomach of another animal.

“The question that not only came to my mind but everyone’s mind who was involved was, ‘what did that?'” Riggs said. “It was obviously eaten. What’s gonna eat a shark that big? What could kill a 9ft great white?”

With the temperature going from 7C to 25C in just seconds it’s the final proof of global warming for sure.

World War I in photos

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world war one anzac

Some quite spectacular photos from World War I starting with this one of the ANZACs.

Looking out across a battlefield from an Anzac pill box near the Belgian city of Ypres in West Flanders in 1917. When German forces met stiff resistance in northern France in 1914, a “race to the sea” developed as France and Germany tried to outflank each other, establishing battle lines that stretched from Switzerland to the North Sea. Allies and Central Powers literally dug in, excavating thousands of miles of defensive trenches, and trying desperately to break through the other side for years, at unspeakably huge cost in blood and treasure. [Editor’s note: Photographer James Francis Hurley was known to have produced a number of WWI images that were composites of pieces of several photos, and it is possible this image is a composite as well.]

A lost generation indeed.

Chomsky and the Obama surveillance state – he doesn’t like it

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What does one make of this: Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination Is Being Created in One of the World’s Freest Countries. Having been someone who has helped create the world that’s beginning to frighten him, my sympathies for his concern are pretty minimal, but why did he even think anyone on the left would ever care even a smidgen about issues like these.

In the past several months, we have been provided with instructive lessons on the nature of state power and the forces that drive state policy. And on a closely related matter: the subtle, differentiated concept of transparency.

The source of the instruction, of course, is the trove of documents about the National Security Agency surveillance system released by the courageous fighter for freedom Edward J. Snowden, expertly summarized and analyzed by his collaborator Glenn Greenwald in his new book, “No Place to Hide.”

The documents unveil a remarkable project to expose to state scrutiny vital information about every person who falls within the grasp of the colossus – in principle, every person linked to the modern electronic society.

Nothing so ambitious was imagined by the dystopian prophets of grim totalitarian worlds ahead.

It really is pathetic this whining jerk, like all those communists who ended up with a bullet in the brain in the basement of the Lubyanka. Well it is bad, but if you think there is a party on the left anywhere who is either going to worry or do anything about it when the government is from the so-called left you are even more naive that this latest bleat would make you already seem.

US – five years into its 20 year lost decade

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The Japanese have had a twenty year lost decade following their own Keynesian stimulus. This is America reported at Drudge today:

92,009,000 Americans Not Working…
Labor Force at 36-Year Low…
7 Million Have Left Under Obama…
Lethargic economy…

And we could end up with the same kind of outcome if we don’t get on top of our debt and reduce unproductive spending. Decline is slow, and not everyone becomes poor, but in the end as a nation, we are less well off and the way out becomes more difficult every year. If the Labor Party is merely ignorant about what’s in store if we don’t fix the deficit, then it’s par for the course. But if they do understand but are still standing in the way of change, then they are despicable.

People want to live in a just society

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This is Dinesh D’Souza talking about his new book, America: Imagine a World Without Her:

The left is very successful at appealing to the principle of justice, and justice for the man lowest down. Sometimes, as conservatives, we miss the force of that. We reply by chanting “Liberty!” But we have to remember that justice is a key principle. Right, the Pledge of Allegiance: “With liberty and justice for all.” So we can’t ignore justice, and what I do in the book and film is to engage the left on its own terms. I go “Ok, let’s really look at whether or not America has been good for the common man.” Forget about the rich guy, he’s going to do well everywhere. Let’s judge a society by the kind of life it makes available to the ordinary fellow. So I’m willing to argue that the left is actually attacking ordinary people.

People do want to live in a just society and only a society based on individual freedom can deliver it, and as an added bonus it comes with prosperity as well. But we have to be prepared to say it, which first means we have to understand it. D’Souza spells it out remarkably well.

Negative interest rates in Europe specifically designed to lower saving and raise inflation!

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Just what Europe’s economies need, lower saving and higher inflation:

Mario Draghi: “Together, the measures will contribute to a return of inflation rates to levels closer to 2%”

The European Central Bank has introduced a raft of measures aimed at stimulating the eurozone economy, including negative interest rates and cheap long-term loans to banks.

It cut its deposit rate for banks from zero to -0.1%, to encourage banks to lend to businesses rather than hold on to money.

The ECB also cut its benchmark interest rate to 0.15% from 0.25%.

The ECB is the first major central bank to introduce negative interest rates.

If one set of Keynesian policies don’t seem to work there are then others they have that will fail just as well. And if -0.1% doesn’t work they can lower the number even more. And the thing is, they are clueless about why none of this will work.