Gloria (in excelsis), the telephone sex worker (wink, wink), has her say in today’s Age, having been “seething for weeks”:
She has a range of illnesses, including emphysema, and was particularly incensed about the proposed $7 GP visit fee.
It is probably ungracious for me to mention it but you can go to a doctor three times for the price of a pack of smokes, or perhaps we could say, for the return on 14 minutes of telephone sex. Why does anyone think free medicine is a right?
This is truly beyond parody. From The Guardian, North Korea: an unlikely champion in the fight against climate change. As the story says:
North Korea’s energy security problem is well documented, revolving around four distinct challenges: supply, generation, power transmission, and secondary usage. Of these four challenges, electricity generation and transmission are the two that can be addressed through the UNFCCC.
Renewable energy may be the most appropriate vehicle for increasing generation capacity because unlike large centralised fossil-fuels, renewables can be scaled locally which reduces their up-front cost.
Just how batty are these people. From Powerline where Steve Hayward thought the story might have come from The Onion but this is so disconnected from reality that insanity comes to mind as a possible inspiration.
The United States is becoming an ideologically driven police state. The ideology is a Rampant Liberalism where no distinctions are permitted to be said in a host of areas at risk of career and reputation. In all these areas, and you know what they are, the rule is that if you have nothing good to say then don’t say anything at all. But this ideological assault is now being coupled with a repressive use of the policing agencies. The US remains prosperous because of its inheritance from the past, but even that is no longer guaranteed going forwards say a decade and a half. It is this story that has again brought these issues to mind.
Look at the above picture. Does she look like the sort of person who would attack an armed officer of the law especially where there were quite a number of other such armed officers of the law right there as well. Here’s the story.
This is a photo of Arielle Lipsen (a good friend of mine) who was thrown to the ground and hit with the butt of a DEA agent’s rifle. She is now wrongfully being charged with assaulting a federal agent during a DEA raid of her sister’s smoke shop in Texas. Her sister gave the following statement to a local news site:
“She was having a conversation with a female agent, and trying to give the agents the lock code,” Ilana Lipsen claimed. “She was trying to tell them there was no key, but a code. There were too many officers and about half of them were doing nothing, then this one agent charged at her, threw her, kicked her legs out from under her, and when she was falling, her leg brushed up against his leg. That’s when he said ‘you’re trying to beat a federal agent’ and shoved the butt of his rifle into her neck.” (via BigBendNow)
Arielle reached out to me last night asking if I could help get eyes on her story because not only is she being wrongly accused, but her bond restrictions are insane. She said: “Part of the bond restrictions is that my sister retract all her statements from the press and say that I was never assaulted and that she lied.”
There are a lot more details here, here and here.
She asked me if I could get people’s eyes on this story. This is a thing to scream about. There’s no reason for a federal agent to put his hands on an unarmed, unthreatening citizen. Not only was she assaulted (LOOK AT THAT PHOTO) but now they might actually send her to jail.
Wow. Can they put restrictions like that on her bond?? They won’t let her out unless they tell the press they lied? I can’t eve wrap my brain around that.
This is from the account in the local paper:
On Tuesday, both Ilana and Arielle Lipsen were indicted on federal charges.
Arielle Lipsen was indicted on one count of assault on a federal officer causing bodily injury and Ilana Lipsen was indicted on one count of person under indictment receipt of ammunition.
Purple Zone owners Ilana Lipson, and her mother, Rosa Lipsen, are currently under state indictment for multiple first-degree felony manufacture, deliver, or possession of a controlled substance following four previous raids beginning in November 2012.
They’ve pleaded not guilty to the charges.
“They’re just trying to find something against me,” Ilana said. “This is extreme harassment. I’m aware of my 4th Amendment rights and they violated it.”
The catalyst for the most current raid, Lipsen also claims, was her internet search history, as well as her business dealings with China.
“They link people with internet search history. I own a hookah lounge, so I’m always looking at new products, and I breed, train, and show Arabian horses, so I’m always looking at them online. I do business with China. All my e-cigarette merchandise is bought directly from Chinese distributors,” she said. “It’s the last reach from the DEA in Brewster to get something from nothing. There were 30-plus officers at my shop, and they seized my personal and business computers, my camera, my cell phone, and my registered guns. They also seized packages of kratom, which is a legal herbal stimulant. They absolutely did not find anything illicit or any contraband.”
The officers, Lipsen also said, turned the security cameras in her shop to face the walls and not capture any agents in the raid.
“I’m not aware of the agents doing that,” said DEA Spokesperson Lilia Rico, who also said that the DEA don’t run cameras during raids.
The guns and ammunition seized in the raid, Rico also said, were taken as Lipsen is currently under state indictment.
Photos by citizen photojournalist Cochran that he had posted to Facebook during the end of the raid were deleted, then reposted once Facebook officials found nothing conflicting with their code, despite requests from authorities.
“The whole deal is just scary,” said Cochran, who witnessed the tail end of the raid. “It just shows the violent, confrontational aspects of modern policing and the increasing militarization of the nation’s police forces, as well as accusations of funding terrorism to get access and warrants against anyone.”
The use of terror, Cochran and Lipsen said, has been a part of Operation Synergy phase II.
“They claimed that I had ties with Hezbollah and Syria, which is ridiculous,” said Lipsen. “How can I, a Jewish woman who supports the State of Israel, contribute to those groups or states?”
And then from C.L. we have this, AWFUL! Imperial Cops Murder Afghan Vet For Missing Plates (SHOCKING VIDEO). The man is already in handcuffs when the police set upon him. This is the essence of the story:
Police stopped Afghan veteran for missing plates.
Tommy Yancy was savagely beaten, tasered and attacked by five officers after the traffic stop.
Yancy died on the street.
And here’s the video:
There are still people who will discuss these things in public so the news can get out. The reasons, though, we know any of this at all is because there are still people foolhardy enough to say things in public and with pocket videos everywhere, some of it gets recorded, But with the IRS and other federal agencies on the loose, you must be a very brave person to take any of these things on. Not only is this out of control, there seems to be no feedback loop that will end any of this any time soon.
The intial story via Instapundit.
Given the star studded cast here at Catallaxy, I am almost embarrassed to mention that I found my way into The Australian this morning, but there you are. It’s a story by Christian Kerr on the various kites that were flown in advance of the budget [mixed metaphor alert] to test the waters. Here is the relevant passage from the complete story:
An obsession with kite-flying and budget cosmetics has left the government reeling in the wake of the worst received economic statement in two decades, experts say. . . .
RMIT University economist Steve Kates said that hit was harder than it could have been because of “strangely muted” messaging from the government in its first months in power.
“What they needed to do was sit down and talk about the structure of the budget and the looming deficits right away,” Dr Kates said.
He said voters would have understood the need for cuts if they knew about “landmines” left behind by the Gillard government.
“They didn’t make the case about the state of the economy,” he said. “They left themselves extremely vulnerable.”
He said the release of the audit commission report was left too late, meaning its recommendations were lost among budget speculation.
The thing about the budget is that not one person came out and said, “that’s nailed it; just what we needed”. It has been disappointment all round, a gift to Labor. It is a major question where to lay blame for this screw up of a budget. It didn’t go anywhere near addressing the problems that needed to be addressed, it’s a mish mash of policies that are defensible but only barely, and the political side has been atrocious. Reading Martin Parkinson’s comments both yesterday on the budget and today on superannuation reminds me the extent to which Joe Hockey was led around by Treasury. This was Martin Parkinson yesterday:
The Australian public needs to know that the nation faces a challenge and a tough budget was necessary, Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson says.
Dr Parkinson said while it was not his role to comment on specific government policies, Australians “deserve” to know there is a challenge ahead.
“It’s within my responsibility as Treasury secretary to say to the community we do have to actually take this seriously to start to address the issue,” Dr Parkinson told a business lunch in Sydney on Tuesday.
“It is (a challenge) that if we start today to take sensible decisions, particularly those that are essentially structural policy changes that take place over time, we’ll be in a much better situation.
“Otherwise we’re banking the house on 33 years of uninterrupted economic growth and there’s no precedent for that.
“We’re banking on another 10 years of fiscal drag and … that has quite significant regressive impacts.”
Parkinson should have gone on Day One. Instead, a Labor man to his back teeth, he has led this government down a primrose path and into a wilderness of policies only a Keynesian could think would make a significant difference and even then, ones no Labor government would touch. Where were Hockey’s political instincts, never mind his economic judgment, when all this advice was being put to him? Doesn’t Joe read Catallaxy, and if not, why not?
I read the brief rap on this story, Actor Alec Baldwin arrested after riding bike wrong way, and thought typical arrogance, right down to the “don’t you know who I am?” business. But then I read the actual sequence of events, which included his arrest because he did not have identification with him as he was doing what everyone who rides a bike has done at some point in their lives. And who wouldn’t have been irritated. Read it.
Actor Alec Baldwin was arrested Tuesday and issued two summonses — one for disorderly conduct — after riding a bicycle the wrong way on a New York street, police said.
The “30 Rock” star allegedly became angry and started yelling at police after they asked him for identification to give him a summons, police said. The other summons was for riding a bike against the flow of traffic. Baldwin is to appear in court July 24.
“Police stated that he got belligerent and started arguing with them and using profanity,” Deputy Chief Kim Y. Royster said.
Baldwin was not carrying identification and police took him into custody, police said.
The actor reportedly became angry at the officers, yelling “Give me the summons already,” a law enforcement official said.
After his release, Baldwin took to Twitter, posting the badge number of the officer he said arrested him and saying, “photographers outside my home ONCE AGAIN terrified my daughter and nearly hit her with a camera. The police did nothing.”
In another tweet, he lamented, “New York City is a mismanaged carnival of stupidity that is desperate for revenue and anxious to criminalize behavior once thought benign.”
Once in custody, Baldwin was taken to a nearby precinct, where he reportedly asked the desk supervisor: “How old are these officers, that they don’t know who I am?” according to a law enforcement official.
Baldwin was stopped for riding a bicycle the wrong way on Fifth Avenue and 16th Street, police said.
The only reason you might know that someone was arrested and handcuffed for riding a bike on the wrong side of the street is because it is Alex Baldwin. This story could not happen in any other country in the world. This is definitely an “only in America” story. Can you actually disagree with him where he wrote, “New York City is a mismanaged carnival of stupidity that is desperate for revenue and anxious to criminalize behavior once thought benign.”
America is in a very dangerous place.
This is an incredible video that came with this story on The Washington Post Is Super Confused About Where Babies Come From. The Washington Post is confused about many things, so why not this too? But the evidence that life begins at conception is unarguable unless there’s another agenda in play.
The mail has just brought me my own copy of Simon Newcomb’s great 1886 economics text, Principles of Political Economy. Just for fun, I offer you one of the questions at the end of one of the chapters that no modern student of economics ever gets asked or would likely have a ready answer to.
Trace the economic effect of the frugal New England population putting their money into savings banks. What do savings really consist in?
Even the notion of a frugal population is pretty antique. But all the difference in the world lies in the answer to that question.
The belief that AGW can be rolled back by evidence is a quaint enlightenment notion that has had about as much evidence as global warming. Apparently, the new Godzilla film is drenched in AGW and anti-nuclear sentiments as well. The title of the review explains the rest: Suspend your reality for Godzilla: It’s an anti-global-warming alarmism smash.
The film opens at a huge quarry, where humanity’s insatiable thirst for fossil fuels (or diamonds or platinum or something) has uncovered a terrifying secret: a pair of radioactive MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms). The point here, nominally, is that man brings about his own destruction by despoiling the planet. However, it’s worth noting that the one of the MUTOs immediately attacks a nuclear power plant, while the other, later, attacks a repository of nuclear waste. In this, the MUTOs feel like close cousins of the worst of the greens, those folks who demand action on climate change yet mindlessly attack nuclear power—the sole technology that could allow us to maintain our standard of living while reducing carbon emissions.
As the film progresses, the intellectual center of the picture is revealed to be Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe), who takes an almost zen-like approach to the MUTOs. He believes that Godzilla, who he has been searching for his entire adult life, is not a threat to humanity but a part of Earth’s natural biosphere. The giant lizard exists to “restore balance.” Serizawa also laments the “arrogance of man” for thinking he can control nature; the good doctor believes that the only way to stop the rampaging MUTOs is to let Godzilla fight them and kill them, to let nature run its course. The leaders of men disagree, opting to try and gather all three of the giant creatures into the same area off America’s west coast, where they will be destroyed by a thermonuclear warhead. This plan backfires, leading to a nuke threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of San Franciscans.
Etc, etc etc. Anyway, great cinematography. And since it’s only a movie, what possible influence could it have?
This business about a double dissolution is quite a conundrum. On the one hand I do not want the government to lose. The other side is so much worse that comparisons are just not viable in my mind.
And no doubt Labor would like to win. But a DD would take place say in the next six months after not a single measure to fix the economy had gone through the Senate, and after Labor will have run on a campaign of fixing nothing since there’s nothing to fix. Since they know better, this will be a truly poison pill, specially since it will of necessity be an ALP-Greens government. And if things don’t get fixed, they will inherit their own whirlwind of disaster (but, of course, so will we all).
And if the Libs do win, they will be in place to do all of the things they need to do with three clear years to make the politics work for them. And they may wipe out the minor parties in the meantime with only Palmer a possible remaining presence.
And then there are still the boats. What would Labor promise that will hold an ounce of credibility?
Tony may yet turn out to be a better strategist than I have been giving him credit for.
The global warming clergy will never give up their faith. They have grown insanely wealthy and powerful on the back of bamboozling the hoi polloi and have no intention of letting go the riches that have flowed in their direction since this scam began. So if you are one of those with an open mind about the minimal likelihood of a carbon planetary death over the next century, then the assault on Professor Lennart Bengtsson will just seem par for the course. And while James Delingpole thinks this may be “a bridge too far” for the AGW brigade, it is really nothing more than a small skirmish in The Great Climate War that was settled long ago. So while it’s a big story today and even made it to the front page of The Times, you are kidding yourself if you think it will make the slightest difference. Other than the billions it will cost us in wealth, since it is billions we do not have and will never earn, money we will never receive cannot be used in a campaign of our own to turn this particular tide. The only thing we have on our side are the facts. So it goes. But the Bengtsson moment is nevertheless a moment worthy of our consideration.
Bengtsson is a scientist who has moved from having accepted the global warming hypothesis to a more sceptical approach, last month joining the board of Nigel Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation. This is the story of the reaction from his fellow “scientists”.
The leading Swedish climatologist and former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, astonished the academic world with his decision to join the advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), founded by renowned climate change critic Lord Lawson.
Explaining his decision earlier this month, Professor Bengtsson said he wanted to learn from the highly qualified experts at the GWPF in areas outside of his own expertise and to help widen the debate through his own extensive meteorological knowledge.
His perceived “defection” was described as the biggest switch from the pro-climate change lobby to the sceptic camp to date.
But in his resignation letter to the London-based GWPF today, the 79-year-old said the enormous pressure he had felt from around the world to his appointment on the organisation’s Academic Advisory Council had become “virtually unbearable”.
Prof Bengtsson added: “If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF.
“I had not [been] expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship, etc.
“I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.”
The Professor’s letter concluded: “Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.”
As someone commented, this ‘has the potential to do as much harm to climate science as did the Climategate emails’. Exactly my point. It will do no harm at all.
Law of Markets 