Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
Most of the footage showing those pirates off the coast of Africa show rather diminutive and dilapidated vessels loaded with heavily armed modern-day Jolly Rogers.Huntington's economy has withered, its poverty rate is worse than the national average, and vagrants haunt a downtown riverfront park. But this city's financial woes are not nearly as bad as its health.From wikipedia:
Nearly half the adults in Huntington's five-county metropolitan area are obese — an astounding percentage, far bigger than the national average in a country with a well-known weight problem.
Huntington leads in a half-dozen other illness measures, too, including heart disease and diabetes. It's even tops in the percentage of elderly people who have lost all their teeth (half of them have).
Huntington's city councilors are also elected to four-year terms at the same time as the mayor. There are eleven members of the council, nine of whom represent single-member districts, while the other two are elected at-large by the city as a whole. Huntington's city council has the authority to draft and debate ordinances and can override a mayoral veto with a two-thirds majority. There are currently ten Democrats and one Republican on the city council.No doubt Spiegel is re-routing its journos from Kannapolis to Huntington.
The great unwashed turned their eyes towards the heavens this past weekend as the great and glorious met to "do something" in order to save civilisation and/or further their hopes for future re-election. Of course, an "action-orientated" communiqué was issued:13. We underscore the critical importance of rejecting protectionism and not turning inward in times of financial uncertainty. In this regard, within the next 12 months, we will refrain from raising new barriers to investment or to trade in goods and services, imposing new export restrictions, or implementing World Trade Organization (WTO) inconsistent measures to stimulate exports.
The European Union (EU) put antidumping duties on Chinese-made candles and non-alloy steel products on Saturday, approving an earlier flagged move as leaders at the Group of 20 (G20) summit called for countries to avoid trade protectionism.
German-African-American artist Marc Brandenburg employs the usual auto-promotional bombast when he calls himself a bastard, but reveals a sort of ahuman and depersonalized view of human nature when all he can say about Barack Obama is that “he's practically white.”
The subheading found in print was promptly rewritten, but what they replaced it with is early as feeble to say that “Hopefully Obama will Survive his Term of Office”:He calls himself a "bastard", and Barack Obama and Lewis Hamilton as well. Berlin artist Marc Brandenburg likes bold words. WORLD ONLINE has talked with him about him and with him about racism in the United States. He is sure: if Obama look like Eddy Murphy - he would not win the election.
But never mind all that. The reality of those who actually live in the US, a place exceedingly less given to overnt and unstated racism that Germany is.
Brandenburg is a Berliner who hasn't actually lived in the US for any significant part of his life. Die Welt is asking him these questions in the most typically European way: not because of any actual life experience or generation knoledge of the 1960s, but because of the color of his skin and over some unspoken foolish notion that there is something in his genes that qualiies him to assume that Obama will be pander to his dramatic imaginings and be assasinated due to his skin color.
I can understand the motive. In a tacit manner it gives Brandenburg a way to imagine himbself a potential martyr and vessel for your attention and public expression of pity. I hope he makes at least one sale out of it.
A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.Undoubtedly the "experts" called oops, we screwed the pooch on that one. Hardly:
So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer
melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.
A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that
the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.
One may be excused from confusing the accompanying foto. Was the snap taken from the floor of that bastion of capitalism, the New York Stock Exchange, or from 1600 Pennsylvannia Avenues where the G-20 is currently meeting?
As regular readers of this site will attest, there are no depths to which the faith in governmentalism will not sink.A sister of Baby P, the 17-month-old boy killed while under the protection of Haringey social services, was allegedly seriously abused despite also being on the council’s "at risk" register.
ord is derived from the Haringey Director of Children and Young People's services, Sharon Shoesmith. This is a governmental employee who refuses to take responsibility for the absolute failure of the governmental department she heads and for the absolute governmental failure which ultimately led to the death of a 17-month old toddler, Peter Connolly.
Ohio Inspector General Tom Charles said his office is now looking at a half-dozen agencies that accessed state records on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher.
Remember the old saw about the pocket calculator being an off-shoot of man's mission to the moon back in the day? That seems imminently preferrable to the limitless possibilities of the current space programme.NASA plans to double the size of the space station crew from three members to six next year. The shuttle carries two new sleeping compartments and a water recycling system that will enable the crew to purify urine and other wastewater for drinking.
"We did blind taste tests of the water," said NASA's Bob Bagdigian, the system's lead engineer. "Nobody had any strong objections. Other than a faint taste of iodine, it is just as refreshing as any other kind of water."
"I've got some in my fridge," he added. "It tastes fine to me."
It's the European self image, and it's all about the warm-fuzzies found in free-riding and feeling good about having all kinds of fine principals that you proceed to ignore. Like human rights, security risks, and doing things that actually are good for the environment, or anything else for that matter.When Europeans talk about "multilateralism," they typically don't mean agreeing on a common policy to carry out together. They mean defaulting global security to the United Nations, where Russian and Chinese vetoes curtail effective action. At best, multilateralism à la Paris and Berlin is short for European approval for where and how Americans may intervene around the world.
The Continent's free-riding on U.S. security while criticizing the way that security is provided predates the Bush Administration and will outlive it. President Bush has mainly provided Europeans with an excuse for refusing the kind of cooperation they'd rather not provide anyway. Mr. Obama has promised a multilateral surge of troops into the Afghanistan-Pakistan front. He may find, like Mr. Bush, that most of those troops will have to be American.
- from the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it.The writer never thought (s)he would be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s (danke schön zu Larwyn).
…now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more imporant.)
Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: change.
Why?
I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now.
If forced to choose, would you rule in favor of the rights of sea mammals against a (nonexistent) threat or in favor of the safety of the United States fleet — and, therefore, of the country?
In the European Union, carrots must be firm but not woody, cucumbers must not be too curved and celery has to be free of any type of cavity. This was the law, one that banned overly curved, extra-knobbly or oddly shaped produce from supermarket shelves.So, relaxing 100 pages of legislation that "never" existed. Gosh, who knew?
But in a victory for opponents of European regulation, 100 pages of legislation determining the size, shape and texture of fruit and vegetables have been torn up. On Wednesday, EU officials agreed to axe rules laying down standards for 26 products, from peas to plums.
Advocates for the nation's automakers are warning that the collapse of the Big Three -- or even just General Motors -- could set off a catastrophic chain reaction in the economy, eliminating up to 3 million jobs and depriving governments of more than $150 billion in tax revenue.That any reader would have a slight reptillian flicker and recall the exact same wording used as a reason for the banking bailout in September.
"We've got to do this because the cost of inaction is so high to communities, to workers, to companies," said Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio. He was among many lawmakers worried that an industry collapse would be devastating for everything from school districts to small businesses.That any reader would think, "Why does this politician care so much?" Possible answers: humanitarian, economist, statesman, keeper of the people ....... not quite:
If the industry failed, among the hardest-hit communities would be Lordstown, Ohio, a village of 3,600 people about 50 miles east of Cleveland that has been home to a GM factory since 1966.Ahhh, so it might just be a vote-getting ploy.
A study by the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor estimated that the failure of Chrysler LLC, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. would eliminate up to 3 million jobs, including those at parts suppliers and smaller businesses that rely on the automakers.That any reader would take a spin around the Center for Automotive Research website to see what their bag is and who funds that bag (a'la Exxon funds all global-warming debunk reports). Sadly, no such financial information on the site. One can assume the Big Three give a few bucks to the non-profit organisation. A vested interest?
State, local and federal governments would lose more than $150 billion in tax revenue over three years, the study said.That any reader would see the true attention-getting aspects of the CAR report. Assuming the CAR report is entirely correct, the 3 million unemployed is one thing to try and get political attention (as well as possible future funding all around). It is the loss of more than 150 billion USD in tax revenue which really is designed to grap the political types by the lapel and say "the goodie bag will be a lot slimmer (as well as possible future non-funding all around)".
David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, said Detroit is losing money now because it has too many factories making more vehicles than the market is buying.That any reader would also need to be told that grass is green and beer makes you drunk, a truly blinding revelation.
Saturday in front of Berlin's Brandenburg gate, there was a retread of the kind of dope-palooza that one sees rather more frequently in places infected by French social though, such as people in Belgium striking over the cost of living as if the global commodities market was listening.
The usual amusement included home-made sandwich-board signs about how "without weapons sales, the rich could not exist" and "capitalism is failed" as if socialism ever succeeded.
The use of improvisation as a comedic device is one thing, using the very same to avert economic stagnation is quite another. The latest stand-up routine from Night at the Improv:Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. on Wednesday announced a major shift in the thrust of the $700 billion financial rescue program, at the same time joining several agencies in prodding banks to speed up the thaw in the country's credit system.Or was it all just a bait-and-switch routine?
Paulson said the $700 billion would not be used to buy up troubled mortgage-related securities, as the rescue effort was originally conceived, but would, instead, be used in a broader campaign to help financial markets and, in turn, make loans, including car and student loans, more accessible for creditworthy borrowers.
German Minister Cautions Against Rise of Right in Time of CrisisIs there ever caution called for against the rise of the Left in times of crisis?
Then, sooner or later, as if they let themselves not live in the third person for a moment, probably after the day's boozing has finally gotten to them, they spew some of the usual racist crap, or if they're sensitive, unwitting racist crap. All of this is, of course, supposed to be regarded as their divine illumination for our benefit.
The rest I leave to Denis BoylesLe Monde seems to have wisely realized that the entire Obama campaign may have created a sky-high set of expectations that may result in "regrettable disappointments" — especially, the paper warns, if Obama is serious about adding troops to Iraq, or if he puts Europe in an "awkward" situation with Russia by helping Ukraine and Georgia join NATO, or if he slips into protectionism as an economic strategy — and that those who sing his praises loudest now may be howling loudest later.
Which along with a new myth which is forthcoming, probably something along the lines of what the CIA that controls AmeriKKKa will not let Obama do to remake us in the image they long since resigned, is the architecture of the next form of underlying hatred they will hold for all 300 million of us. As you know, we'll report – you decide. Further to that Boyles over-estimates the capacity at reason he sees in the "new realists" trying to talk the EUphorics down off of the ledge – their readers would be hard pressed to understand why in America a president could not simply declare socialization of health care, or as virtually everyone whom I've talked to about it seems to find of utmost national import, the doing away with having to fill out declaration forms on airliners entering the US – in other words, and as usual - them, which is the only kind of change they can believe in.The gist here, if I'm not being clear, is that Le Monde, its readers, its bloggers, its coffee-drinking bureaucrats — the entire population of its small cosmos, in fact — are humming with an intensified version of the fervor that fills the tent just before the evangelist jumps to the pulpit. "With the 44th U.S. president, we reach the highest stage of worship, that accorded to God . . . Obama has already entered the pantheon. Soon, no doubt, he will perform miracles." Soon? Rousseau and Houdart must be kidding — and of course they are. This is meant to be arch humor, but something tells me not everyone gets the joke.
Funnier still at the fear of filling out a form, the same people who complain about this seem in abject ignorance their own casual references to "diese Schawrtzer" or the fact that a foreigner living in the EU faces a series of annual reporting requirements at the police station, and any other kind of window they can find. In the abstract, it's more akin to a round the clock rectal exam when you compare it to the "atmosphere" in America that they seem to so readily to whine about.
Nonetheless, they out that mask back on, and repeat what they think they should about the US just as they do in nearly every feature of their own lives as it relates to having an opinion heard by others. There are only so many ways to say "I love you, Barry," so naturally a certain amount of contrarianism has already set in. Le Monde, in an editorial called "After the Euphoria," tried to dial back the rapture a little by wisely observing that in the election, race had been a secondary issue — at least for white voters — since Obama had been very careful during the campaign not to become "the candidate of blacks." Mostly because he didn't have to, but that's a salient point, since if he had run a campaign based on entitlement, he would have lost —
Which is funny, because between calling me a racist for voting McCain, having to listen to their own racism, and their childish inability to realize that race is not shorthand for any sort of ideology that they want it to be, I still wonder why the UR-Europeans can't get a life and stop trying to project their own internal social problems on the way they look at the rest of the world.
[Barack Obama has] accomplished nothing other than to advance his career through rhetoricsays Thomas Sowell (thanks to Frank) as he speaks with Peter Robinson (6:00),
and it reminds me of a sophomore in college who thinks he can change the world because he's never had to run anything.
Because of the complete lack of balance of the mainstream media (thanks for the post to Larwyn), a group called 50 Million Americans is forming a citizens' coalition to fight media bias.
El presidente brasileño señaló ante el de Cuba, general Raúl Castro, que "en todo el mundo existe una puntita de alegría'' en las mentes de la gente pensando en "cómo sería de bueno que un negro fuera elegido presidente de Estados Unidos''.Thus speaks Brazilian President Lula (gracias to Angela) in Miami's Nuevo Herald, comparing Obama's election (celebrating it, in fact) to the ascension of leftist governments all over Latin America, while visiting the Castros in Havana, and proclaiming that the coming American administration will end the "blockade" of Cuba (it's actually more of an embargo, meaning that other countries are not prevented from enjoying trade rapports with the island, meaning in turn that the responsibility for Cuba's dire conditions can in no way be imputed to the "Great Satan"). (By the way: why is it, again, that the Miami Herald and its Spanish version have lost so many subscriptions in the past few years?)
El presidente brasileño, Luiz Inácio, Lula da Silva, afirmó hoy que la elección del demócrata Barack Obama como presidente de Estados Unidos sería como la suya y la de otros líderes de izquierda de Suramérica, y que el próximo gobierno norteamericano acabará el "bloqueo'' a Cuba.
"De la misma manera que Brasil eligió a un metalúrgico, Bolivia a un indígena [Evo Morales], Venezuela a [Hugo] Chávez y Paraguay a un obispo [Fernando Lugo], creo que será una cosa extraordinaria si en la mayor economía del mundo un negro es elegido presidente'', dijo Lula en La Habana.
The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisationquips Peter Hitchens (cheers to Larwyn).
At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.
…Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find.
…Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, [his admiring audience] knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know. They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidised slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges
…From now on, the rough boys and girls of America’s Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton’s stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to.
…the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities … grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.
…And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?
The fear however is that the world now becomes very much less safe for all of us as a result [of] a watershed election which changes the fate of the worldwrites The Spectator's Melanie Phillips (gracias para Luís Afonso).
Those of us who have looked on appalled during this most frightening of presidential elections – at the suspension of reason and its replacement by thuggery -- can only hope that the way this man governs will be very different from the profile provided by his influences, associations and record to date. It’s a faint hope – the enemies of America, freedom and the west will certainly be rejoicing today.
…What this election tells us is that America voted for change because America is in the process of changing – not just demographically by becoming less white and more diverse, but as the result of a culture war in which western civilisation is losing out to a far-left agenda which has become mainstream, teaching American children to despise the founding values of their country and hijacking discourse by the minority power-grab of victim-culture.The reaction of conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic to this undoubted change – not just in the US but in Britain too – shows the intellectual disarray caused by these profound developments. They say politicians must stop trying to hold the cultural line and go instead with the flow of change. In Britain, the Tory party has adopted this strategy. Now there are Republicans saying the same thing.
But John McCain is a Republican who does not fit the old template, who does subscribe to some of this ‘change’ agenda on a number of issues. As a result, he was incapable of attacking Obama on the most important grounds of all: that he stood for values inimical to America’s founding principles. When he did venture into this territory, it was half-cocked and far too late, appearing merely like the desperate throw of a loser.
…So now we are promised a change in America’s fundamental values. And they really will be changed. Obama has said in terms that he thinks the US constitution is flawed. America’s belief in itself as defending individual liberty, truth and justice on behalf of the free world will now be expiated instead as its original sin. Those who have for the past eight years worked to bring down the America that defends and protects life and liberty are today ecstatic. They have stormed the very citadel on Pennsylvania Avenue itself.Millions of Americans remain lion-hearted, decent, rational and sturdy. They find themselves today abandoned, horrified, deeply apprehensive for the future of their country and the free world. No longer the land of the free and the home of the brave; they must now look elsewhere.
…what would Rahm Emanuel do if he had Congressman John Boehner's job as House Minority Leader?asks James G. Wiles in the the Bulletin.
That's easy. Put as many long-range torpedoes into the water aimed at Senator Obama's ship of state before Republicans lose control of the Executive Branch as possible. Here are a few:File ethics complaints against Sen. Chris Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank for their relationship with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Countrywide Mortgage.
- Appoint U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzpatrick as a special prosecutor so he can pursue his investigation of Tony Rezko and his corrupt dealings with Illinois's governor and other creatures and spoilsmen of the Daley Machine. This will make it politically difficult for a President Obama to pardon Mr. Rezko and impossible for him to terminate Mr. Fitzpatrick as a federal officer come January 21 as a way of de-railing this investigation.
- Appoint a special prosecutor to investigate ACORN's voter registration methods and its dealings with the Obama campaign.
- Appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Obama campaign's on-line fundraising operation, including its disabling of the credit card security software on its on-line donations system. File a complaint with the Federal Election Commission regarding same.
- Appoint a bipartisan (love that word!) presidential commission to review the candidates' fundraising in this election cycle and to recommend changes in federal election laws.
Be it noted that, in his day, this is probably what Newt Gingrich would have done, too. It was then-Congressman Gingrich's persistent filing of ethics complaints against then-House Speaker Jim Wright, D Texas, which eventually brought Speaker Wright down and made possible the Republicans' re-taking of Congress in 1994 on the platform of the Contract with America.
"It's been tough, fellow Patriots; tough to stomach the idea that more than half of my fellow citizens who vote, have booted a genuine American hero to the curb for a rudderless charlatan. What a sad indictment on our citizenry that some are so eager to overlook his myriad flaws -- his radical roots, his extreme liberalism, his utter lack of experience or achievement. Barack Obama is the antithesis of King's dream: He's a man judged by the color of his skin rather than the content of his character. If it's God's will that Barack Obama is our next president, then so be it. We Patriots will pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and wade back to the war front, intent on liberty or death."— quoted by Mark Alexander
The loan that made up the difference, with closing costs, broker’s fee, taxes and insurance, meant a monthly bill of $1,873.96, about $100 less than her monthly take-home pay as an administrative assistant.Hope re-defined:
"I was hoping I would get a second job. I was hoping for a Prince Charming. I was just hoping things would get better," she said."Hope" in one hand and do something else in the other, see which one fills-up quicker. Of course if that "something else" is having the government pick the pocket of a more responsible citizen you may be in luck.
Mr. Obama repeated on Saturday that his first priority would be an economic recovery program to get the nation’s business system back on track and people back to work. But advisers said the question was whether they could tackle health care, climate change and energy independence at once or needed to stagger these initiatives over time.Attempts to be all things to all people = 0.
As a doyenne of No Pasaran you may be interested in reading the absurd as reality, so be it.Translation from that speak of politique:"What happened in the election opens a full new range of possibilities and now is the time to really move swiftly to exploit these new possibilities," Gore said of turning the power of the Internet to cooling global warming.
"Now is the time to really move swiftly to exploit these new possibilities before people actually think about and look into the issues and realize that what we are peddling is absolute horse-squeeze."
Sorry. No column today. The keyboard is not responding. History is a page being turned. Three words on the screen: "Yes we can." While it is impossible to joke with genocide or disaster, it is equally impossible to joke with an event that makes you weep for joy. The first worldwide good news since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 needs more than a pirouette or an amused wink. At this moment - but for how long ? - we can say with far more conviction than on 11 September 2001 : we are all Americans.(Désolé. Pas de billet aujourd'hui. Le clavier ne répond pas. L'Histoire est une page qui se tourne. Trois mots sur l'écran : "Oui, nous le pouvons." S'il est impossible de plaisanter avec un génocide ou une catastrophe, il est tout aussi impossible de plaisanter avec un événement qui vous arrache des larmes. La première bonne nouvelle planétaire depuis la chute du mur de Berlin en 1989 appelle autre chose qu'une pirouette ou un clin d'oeil amusé. A cet instant - mais pour combien de temps ? -, nous pouvons dire, avec beaucoup plus de conviction que le 11 septembre 2001 : nous sommes tous américains.)
No thank you, I won't be moving to Canada. Maybe Andorra, but never Canada.....
I am not interested in government or politicians making a difference in my life. I am interested in government and politicians staying out of my life.Investing oneself emotionally in government or politicians will lead you down the path of poor Richard: bereft, discouraged, depressed, and searching for that non-existent (at least in a democracy thus far) uber-talisman of using the hyper-force of the state to ensure absolute conformity from the masses and their wallets. The use of force because the hard-left is unable to persuade with thoughts and deeds.
What if what we have got to look forward to is years of two-way transatlantic lip service? Aport from health issues on a global scale, monetary policy coordination as an imperative at the moment, the respective publics on each side of the North Atlantic need to brace themselves for a potential slumber; and a sort of kabuki theater of asking one another for initiatives that might indulge the egos and worries of their populations (move European troops for ISAF, environmental commitments from the US and Canada), only to find it come in at too high a political or economic cost for their taste.
it actually feels like it's already started: the early morning: post U.S. election talk shows on German television (for example.) including a few people speaking at the more venerable looking round tables,were repeating the recitation of cultural and political complaints that we've had to hear over and over these past years including the mantras of the now victorious American left.
We are who we are, after all, and it might he too much to expect that this temperament of the American left and of the European popular media w N be any different today as it was (very literally,) two days ago.
Barring a disaster, I don't see the promise behind that enthusiasm found on both sides of the Atlantic preparing itself to accomplish anything that its' complaints seem to have wanted to promise, and still looks trapped in that vulgar habit of evasion and taunting, if one judges the reactions by and on the press for anything.
As with the kabuki mentioned earlier, there's also a risk of repeating a past no-one is sentimental about – one where the overtures themselves are a depressing and repetitive set of non-starters and amount to little more than domestic ideological politicking 'such as the European interest in bravery the U.S. sign a "son of Kyoto" treaty with some sort of transatlantic lip service as a secondary use.
la fact now we need to genuinely explore the model and ask just what is this ”'transatlanticism” that is so anticipated can really shape up to be. In the past it was largely limited to mutual security, economics, and dealing with potential pandemics on behalf of a world beyond that of the alliance – and this sort of bilateral, mission-oriented statesmanship was always was the strength of the likes of John McCain, JFK, and other veterans who ended up in politics.
It was also intentionally less socially intrusive and invasive, avoiding the issues that resembled the sort typified by "the personal is the political” in the interest of cultural respect and to contain the hegemon of homogeneity, something at risk where social issues are transformed into international issues.
A hope land many also have too is that the relationship isn't informed only by crises. As things go, who warts another "unifying event” to be forced on us in the form of a global financial crisis or large scale terrorist attack? There must be something more that can embolden the alliance in a way that is neither informed by fear or isn't an intellectually thread-bare act of just seeming vacuously "nice”.
The need for that bond is real, and we need it to deal with just those things that we wish didn't have to inform it to begin with - the real calamities, and our mutual well-being and security. But the sophistication just isn't there (zum beispiel) here in Berlin, where the only questions one gets about Obama is about his skin color, and literally nothing else.
Barack Obama remporte l'élection présidentielle américaine | ||
| Selon les estimations d'Associated Press, le démocrate est désormais assuré de l'emporter face au républicain John McCain. Il devient ainsi le premier Noir élu président des Etats-Unis. | ||
Barack Obama entre dans l'histoire américaineAm I wrong to point out that I predicted this in my post on racism?Le candidat démocrate, 47 ans, sera le 44e président des Etats-Unis. Pour la première fois, un métis va diriger les Etats-Unis, tout en bénéficiant d'une forte légitimité en raison d'un taux de participation très élevé. "Il en a fallu du temps, a déclaré Barack Obama devant une foule en liesse de 65 000 personnes à Chicago. Mais ce soir, grâce à ce que nous avons accompli aujourd'hui et pendant cette élection, en ce moment historique, le changement est arrivé en Amérique." Les électeurs votaient également pour renouveler un tiers du Sénat et les 435 représentants de la Chambre. Les démocrates ont renforcé leur majorité, gagnant 5 sièges au Sénat et obtenant plus de 60 % des sièges à la Chambre. Ce qui aidera M. Obama à faire passer ses réformes.
…the bean-counters, the snickerers and the snorters … will say that oh, sure there is an African-Americans (there are African-Americans) whom Americans have elected president, but… his (but their) skin color wasn't dark enough. "Would they ever" — insert knowing ironic smile here — "elect a really dark Negro?"
National emigration figures for 1999 to 2006 show that men are twice as likely to emigrate as women, and it is mostly the young (under 30) who emigrate. Furthermore, it is the Dutch in the top decile of the income distribution who are most likely to emigrate. Sixty-nine percent of Dutch emigrants choose a European destination. It should not be a surprise that most emigrants move to one of the neighbouring countries Germany and Belgium. However, it is well established that this applies mainly to cross-border migration, where people live just across the border and still work in the Netherlands. High housing and land prices in the Netherlands drive many to move to Belgium or Germany, which offer spacious houses that are almost unaffordable for middle-income households in the Netherlands. When Belgium and Germany are left out of the equation, 31% of emigrants are headed to European destinations. The US and Canada account for another 15%.Alas but why?
Examining the determinants of emigration intentions and subsequent actions reveals a clear picture. The determinants may classified into two groups: (a) the individual characteristics that one would expect to be relevant if emigration were a matter of private gains (like age, human capital, health, networks, psychological personality characteristics) and (b) the provision and perceived quality of the public domain of life in the Netherlands. Every individual depends on the actions and solidarity of others and perhaps more so in a crowded country such as the Netherlands which is also known for its extensive welfare state. The following elements were determined – based on a statistical analysis – to represent the public domain: (1) the Dutch welfare state and institutions which provide the public goods and services (law and order, social security, education, health care); (2) the quality of the public space (noise pollution, space, nature, crowdedness); and (3) the evaluation of social problems addressed by the government, like crime, pollution, and ethnic tensions.In other words, a poor quality of life – and this is THE NETHERLANDS we’re talking about, possibly the most interventionist nanny state in existence. Deep intervention in social matters seems to show that those with a latent anger and an expectation that the rest of the population is structured to serve their aesthetic needs stick with it.
The results of our study reveal that both the private and the public domain of life are important to understanding emigration from a high-income country like the Netherlands. The more negative one is about the public domain, the more likely it is that one will actually emigrate (see Figure 1). Of course, the Dutch who stayed are also negative about large parts of the public domain, but emigrants (“movers” and “dreamers”, i.e. those who intended to emigrate but have not yet) are far more negative than those staying behind.1 The biggest difference between emigrants and those staying behind is the evaluation of the quality of public space. Without knowing how people feel about the quality of the public domain, large-scale emigration would remain a mystery.
Our study suggests that the quality of the public domain is an important part of quality of life, and those Dutch who have moved are implicitly casting a vote of no confidence in those who govern the nation. This lesson may also be of some relevance to other European countries where emigration has taken off and crowdedness has become a concern. For example, England’s population density is similar to that of the Netherlands (394 inhabitants per square kilometre), and British surveys seem to register the same type of dissatisfaction witnessed in the Netherlands.Which is hard to believe given that one of the big criticism Europeans harbor for the US, Canada, Australia, etc., is the lower apparent quality of things like parks, streets, the artfulness or otherwise of public structures. For the Dutch especially this doesn’t hold, especially for those moving to places that are more angry and cramped like greater London.
reports Xiomara Pagés, a Floridian from Kendale Lakes.Obama supporters just came into my front yard and put signs against McCain on my car and on the sign of McCain in my front lawn
This is before Election day and before knowing who will win... Can you imagine?... what type of followers are these?...It just remind me of Castro Cuba's patrol not respecting the freedom of everyone. What a shame, Wake up America ...(*)
Thanks and God bless America!!(*) my next door neighbor is Black, and he came a while ago to show his sorrow for what happened, He doesn't approve of this.....we hugged because we both said Friendship should not be damaged for political reasons. That already happened in Castro's Cuba.....I wish a lot of people would understand that.
Acaban de entrar a mi patio de enfrente y a mi carro a poner letreros contra McCain
acabo de llamar a la policia y a noticieros,
diganlo por todos lados....y que se sepa
tome fotos de los letrerosEs asi es como quieren ganar las elecciones? haciendo lo mismo que los comunistas... ....pues no es solo entrar a una propiedad ajena sino atentado contra la libre expresion y la libertad de todo ciudadano de tener en SU PATIO Y SU CARRO. EL CANDIDATO QUE QUIERA..
YA YO VOTE....SOY REPUBLICANA Y VOTE' ya POR McCAIN (mi vecino es negro y vino hace un rato a presentar su pena por lo que me paso hoy que me pusieron letreros contra Mc Cain en mi patio delantero y mi carro, el no esta de acuerdo con este vandalismo, y nos abrazamos, pues el y yo dijimos que la amistad no debe perderse por diferencias politicas, no vale la pena, Ojala mucha gente supiera respetar esta division de familias y amigos, que ya paso en Cuba...
Que Dios bendiga a America
…Be Careful What You Wish For…
I was dead wrong about the surge and thought it would be a disaster. Senator John McCain led when many of us were ready to quit. Yet we march on as if nothing has changed, wedded to an old plan, and that too is a long way from the Democratic Party.I can no longer justify what this party has done and can’t dismiss the treatment of women and working people as just part of the new kind of politics. It’s wrong and someone has to say that. And also say that the Democratic Party’s talking points—that Senator John McCain is just four more years of the same and that he’s President Bush—are now just hooker lines that fit a very effective and perhaps wave-winning political argument…doesn’t mean they’re true. After all, he is the only one who’s worked in a bipartisan way on big challenges.
And the rusty trombone gets the mouthpiece. Or whatever... It seems hotel workers in Strasbourg are no obliged to police the private lives of Ministers of European Parliament, because it seems that many of them have to buy what their personalities can't provide otherwise: whatever preferred form of nookie they it is that gets their great deliberative body off.
It also seems that they have a Reaganite, aspirational streak, looking to be more than they are themselves: "The parliamentarians are not interested in street prostitutes. They prefer escort girls, call girls of a slightly higher level. They find little adverts and make telephone calls. That's how they take care of business," the NGO's Isabelle Collot said.
- Via Brussels Journal, who suggest that MEPs
deserve as much regulation as their victims.
Barack Obama's ties to the black nationalist movement in Chicago run deep, and that for many years the two men have had "an open line between them" to discuss policy and strategy, either directly or through intermediaries.
A student explains rather plainly the lesson drawn from life in France:why Obama sucks.I am living in France with two other Americans, both of whom voted for Obama. The election has come up a few times, and also the subject of socialism. I said, "I'm not voting for Obama, because I don't want to see my country become socialist."
As with the passionate babble and desperate defenses I've been hearing in Paris about DSK, the French will defend the idea, because it's all they have at this point. Once a pickle, never a cucumber!
One of my American friends, twenty-two years old, said, "What's wrong with socialism? I don't think it's a bad idea."
I was speechless for a second. But then those little warning bells that tell me, "say something. Don't let that pass. Even if her vote is cast, you can still try to give her an alternate perspective for the future," made me open my mouth.
So, I said, "What's wrong with socialism? We live in a socialist country right now, and you hate it here. You just spent all day yelling, "Damn these French!" Imagine this level of bureaucratic frustration and ineptitude taking over every aspect of American life." I didn't want to belabor the point. But I kept thinking of life here in a socialist nation
- With many thanks to Stavn
Thank a Leftist
The self-absorbed me generation types are terminal, some of them can only think of one thing on the way out.
What do you expect? Merging class-selfishness and class-warfare with fake concern gave Europeans socialism-by-any-other-name, now that they’ve made every personal matter one of the society at large, they’ve gotten to the point where they have to ration human rights – such as the right to live – to make that all-important “social budget”.
On pitiless Planet Warnock, people are valued in proportion to their ability to lead an independent life. If they can't do so, they are to be written off as valueless - and even more nauseating, they are being told they actually have a duty to end their lives.It doesn’t appear to be asking “what kind of life is worth living” if you can’t quite hang from an S&M trapeze anymore – not even that... The motive is depersonalized and arbitrary, identical to that of those of the old eugenicists: to dispose of those who can’t produce anything for them anymore, but require a resource from the glorious welfare state that they idolized for so long.
The elderly and chronically sick - indeed, anyone who constantly depends on others for care - often dread being a burden on their nearest and dearest. To be told that they must end this burden by finishing themselves off can only increase their guilt, despair and suffering.
On Planet Warnock, it seems that ties of family and kinship, acts of selfless love, the deep satisfaction from bringing comfort to those who are helpless or who are so poignantly leaving
reports Xiomara Pagés, a Floridian from Kendale Lakes.
Thanks and God bless America!!
acabo de llamar a la policia y a noticieros,
diganlo por todos lados....y que se sepa
tome fotos de los letreros
Que Dios bendiga a America
