#5
Damn, I hate this crap, everytime OJ takes a stroll through the park or opens his lips, we all have to separate an get back on 'our sides of the street'! I hate being corralled like livestack!!! I AM NOT CATTLE!
#6
smn, you are not American either. Your "tells" say so. OJ is an embarrassment for only 12 + people - the jury that acquitted him and the "people" who supported him against all evidence to the contrary. Everyone else knows the truth
Posted by: Frank G on the road ||
09/20/2007 19:11 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Frank, why don't you just come out and tell us all that you believe in 'jury nullification'? If the second 'white' jury used it, why couldn't the mostly 'black' jury of the first? Either way you didn't take the federal case a solemn fair decision, or you wouldn't be so polarizing. Now, personally, I beleive OJ 'did it', but so do believe Phil Specter 'did it' (and his jury is hung) but you don't see black Americans out there biting his head off, or causing strife with whites over it. Now tell me, what side of the street do you want me on?
High School Musical actress Vanessa Hudgens has had a lawsuit filed against her for $150,000 over alleged unpaid lawyers' fees. The Disney star reportedly agreed to pay attorney Brian Schall 5 per cent of her earnings from October 2005 if he would represent her legally. Schall is now suing the 18-year-old, claiming that she has earned over $5 million since she approached him, but she still has $150,000 in legal fees outstanding. Representatives for Hudgens have not yet commented, according to the Associated Press.
The story wouldn't even be a story if the child hadn't apparently taken her own picture in her bedroom, nekkid and then given it to some lout who posted it on the internet. Her birthday suit looks perfectly nice, nothing remarkable but nothing ugly, no visible callouses, which probably means she's a pretty normal 21st century 18-year-old.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
Britney Spears has retained 50/50 custody of her children, but the singer is going to have to work for it. Calling her a "habitual, frequent and continuous" user of drugs and alcohol, a judge ordered Spears to submit to random drug testing twice a week and work with a parenting coach for at least eight hours a week. "The parenting coach is to observe [Spears'] interaction with the minor children and her parenting skills," Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner Scott Gordon wrote in court documents.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
K-Fed accused of looking "too white?" Not anytime soon.
#2
Those poor, poor children. How will they ever be able to hold their heads up in school, with those parents? Of course, with those parents, the genetics may relegate them to special ed. anyway.
That the world's population had quadrupled in the past 100 years partly explained this. Technological change had also had a significant impact on "this shell of the environment that surrounds our planet".
He went on: "In the last three weeks, the amount of ice melting in the Arctic has been completely unprecedented. In only six days an area the size of the US state of Florida disappeared; in the week before that, an area almost twice the size of Britain disappeared.
"It's melting 10 times faster than previously recorded. Experts are now saying that if we don't act with urgency, the entire ice cap could be completely gone in less than 23 years."
Mr Gore said that despite all the scientific evidence about climate change, inaction still ruled among governments and business.
Raising his voice almost to a shout, he said climate change was not scientific, political or ideological.
#1
Simple calculation to find the sea level rise. Check out a topgraphic map and buy your property.
When Al starts buying Florida property 40 miles back from the current beachfront, I'll worry. North Orlando elevation 60-70, south Orlando elevation 120-130.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/20/2007 15:30 Comments ||
Top||
#2
yet he flew over on private jet, and charged $25,000 a piece to touch the Goracle. Who said Snakeoil sales wasn't sweeeeeet
Posted by: Frank G on the road ||
09/20/2007 15:52 Comments ||
Top||
#3
If the entire Artic ice cap melted the amount of seal level rise would equal zero. Try taking a glass of water in ice, when the ice melts it does not raise to water level. Since ice is less dense than water (that's why it floats) it's posible the water level could go down after the ice melts depending on the ratio of ice to water at the start.
Has anybody wondered why the Great Lakes do not overflow when the winter ice melts?
If the Greenland and Antartic glaciers melt that's a different issue. That's like melting ice and pouring into a full glass of water or adding ice to a full glass.
#5
Big rafts of ice have broken off the Antartic floating ice. No big deal. If as you say the glacier ice on the Antartic Continent is increasing Miami Beach will become a mountain resort in 23 years. Take that Algore!
#6
GolfBravoUSMC - Ima concerned about this seal level..are they overbreeding? Have we alerted the Canucks? Oops, nevermind...
/emily litella
and yes, Ima pedantic asshole :-)
Posted by: Frank G on the road ||
09/20/2007 16:50 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Well, I knew about the Artic ice floating, of course, and just got momentarily confused with the Antartic ice.
or maybe I forgot.
Nice picture of the seagull, BTW. Missed that the first time, too.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/20/2007 17:35 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Bobby - I was speaking to the floating ice such as the Ross ice shelf along side of the Anartic continent. You know, like McMurdo Sound opens and closes every year.
King Mohammed VI has chosen government minister Abbas el Fassi, 67, to replace Driss Jettou as Morocco's next prime minister. El Fassi, previously minister of state without portfolio, is leader of the nationalist Istiqlal (Independence) party, which became the biggest party in the country's lower house following the September 7 election.
His party won 52 of the 325 seats available. One of his first tasks will be to propose a list of ministers for the king's approval. The appointment is seen by some as helping to keep the country moving in its present direction - with ties to the US, more privatisations and increased tourism.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
That's the direction it's been headed since I was there (working)in 1978. Then, and I suppose still, there were a lot of French and Germans going to the white sandy beaches at Agadir. Some day, Mrs. Bobby and I are going to go back.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/20/2007 7:01 Comments ||
Top||
#2
French and Germans together on the beach at Agadir? Hope there's no panthers lying about.
#3
Bobby: If you and Mrs. Bobby go to Morocco, watch whoever is serving your tea.
This heads up courtesy of two university students who took a side trip into Morocco a few months ago. After some very friendly Moroccans invited them for tea, they woke up 24 hours later in the middle of a road and missing their wallets.
The story of Zimbabwe's downward spiral now has a climax and even a possible end-date. A constitutional amendment passed Tuesday by Zimbabwe's parliament paves the way for joint parliamentary and presidential elections in March 2008. The bill also allows parliament to elect a new president if the incumbent does not serve a full term. Since his ZANU-PF party has a parliamentary majority, that effectively gives President Robert Mugabe the authority to handpick a successor, if he so chooses, even before the next election. Raising the possibility of Mugabe's departure, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG), a leading communist front think-tank on global conflict, said one of the keys to saving Zimbabwe was offering Mugabe and his allies amnesty from prosecution, and allowing them to keep fortunes amassed during their rule, in exchange for political reform and a free and fair election. It added that Zimbabwe's "only real hope" lay in the South Africa-mediated talks between the government and the opposition.
They'd be willing to give Bob amnesty. How many times have such groups demanded prosecution of Americans from George Bush to Donald Rumsfeld for 'war crimes'? Bob Mugabe has actually committed multiple, verifiable crimes against humanity, and the ICG wants to give him a pass. Sorta tells you everything you need to know, doesn't it.
Despite the often violent suppression by the government of opposition activity in recent years, Tuesday's bill had the support of both the government and the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change ( M.D.C.). This rare consensus brokered in the South African negotiations prompted Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who represented the government in the talks, to declare a "new unity of purpose" in Zimbabwe. Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the main faction of the M.D.C., agreed the development indicated progress in the talks.
Talking is certainly an improvement in Zimbabwean politics. But make no mistake, this is merely setting the date for a fight. Both sides have reason to believe that an election will work to their advantage. The ruling Zanu-PF, however much Western governments may dislike the idea, remains Zimbabwe's most popular and most effective political tribe party and it can expect to win.
Politics in Africa is tribal, and ZANU-PF represents the largest tribe. Of course they're going to win.
The M.D.C., on the other hand, believes that a campaign will give it a platform to get its message across to Zimbabweans and the international community.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Yeah, elections! Everyone knows elections are a magic pixie dust you can sprinkle on corrupt governments and failed states to make them all shiny and new. Meet the new boss!
A Dhaka court yesterday re-fixed October 4 for order whether to accept the charge sheet of the Tk 3 crore extortion case against Awami League Chief Sheikh Hasina, her sister Sheikh Rehena and their cousin Sheikh Fazlul Karim. Meanwhile, Hasina was shown arrested yesterday in a Tk 3 crore graft case filed with Tejgaon Police Station against her and six others on September 2.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
A Dhaka court yesterday framed charges against detained former BNP lawmaker Nasiruddin Ahmed Pintu in connection with an attempted murder case. Judgement of a money laundering case against Harris Chowdhury, former political secretary to former premier Khaleda Zia, will be delivered on October 4. Arrest warrants were issued against four Dhaka City Corporation ward commissioners in connection with a case filed for misappropriation of government relief materials.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
The ultimate culprits, as I said the other day, are the central banks and their historically low interest rates. With so much cheap liquidity, the sort of returns investors made on safe investments were peanuts and so they took greater risks for often only a slightly higher reward. We are now moving to a position where risk is more realistically priced. The Northern Rock bailout undermines that move.
As I was considering their statements, I thought of something else. As a preface, IANA economist, a financial analyst, or a CPA. I may also be just a little too focused on Islamic issues, but hear me out.
My question is this: Do shari'a-compliant monetary instruments and policies effect global financial systems? If so, how? The UK in particular (under Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown) has been working feverishly towards his stated goal of making London the "centre of Islamic Finance".
Other than providing full employment and posh London flats for the graybeard Learned Elders of Islam, what effect does shari'a impose on the global money and credit supplies?
In my unexpert opinion, Big Mo set up an economic system that is deliberately designed to fail, and fail spectacularly, making the only reliable source of income, prestige and power to be that of the spoils of war.
#2
Sea, I think that Mo did not have any concept of economics in modern sense. Although one of his wives was a businesswoman, it really did not rub off on Mo. His concept was rather simple, based on warlord framework. That reflects in the fundamentally parasitical nature of the Islamic system, as Mo is the mandated example to follow . The spoils of war can last only for a certain period, and then the Islamic society is in a decline, despite attempts, like Ottomans' especially in the midle of 19th century, to fuse western concepts with Islamic ones.
Unfortunately, sea of oil was discovered in the Gulf area, and that gave a shot to Islam for temporary revival. Hopefully, Gulf oil deposits won't last for more than 100 years, and hopefully in that time Islam will not be victorious, because that would mean a dark age for at least several centuries, as there won't be anything left to parasite upon.
#3
what effect does shari'a impose on the global money and credit supplies
Hard to say, because I don't think they've worked it out beyond the old cash-oriented policies. Modern finance is heavily dependent on things like derivatives that bundle the risk of the risk of various loans etc. Hard to see how they'd fit that in, but who knows?
#4
Modern economies are completely dependent on credit: taking out & paying back loans on interest. If the process freezes up, economies grind to a halt. Up to about 1907, freeze-ups like that were called "Panics," now they're called "Depressions."
UNITED NATIONS - A key General Assembly committee rejected Taiwans bid to join the United Nations on Wednesday, the 15th straight year the island has been thwarted in its attempt to become a member of the world body. The assemblys General Committee met behind closed doors, instead of in public, for the first time in years to vote on 167 recommendations for the agenda of the 62nd session, which opened Tuesday, including Taiwans membership.
The General Committee ... decided not to recommend this (Taiwan) item as part of the agenda of the 62nd session, said Janos Tisovszky, spokesman for the assembly president. He said 25 of the 28 members on the General Committee voted against a proposal urging the Security Council to process Taiwans membership application. Only three countries, which he did not name, voted in favor.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/20/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
TAIWAN's options remains the same - can either unilater declare full independence and sovereignty from China, as suppor by POPULAR REFERENDUM; OR it can over time await the winner of the US-China competition for domination of the Pacific.
#2
Lovely! Angola, LAO PDR, Rwanda, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Uganda, Yemen, Zimbabwe.... all welcome, but not a democratically elected government such as Taiwan?
#5
This would be the same Republic of China (Taiwan) which was a founding member of the United Nations
Well, sort of. It was the authoritarian government of Chiang Kai-shek. Not much closer to a republic than many of the aforementioned states. They kept the government and 'elected' officials from the mainland in power for decades well after every one else knew they weren't going home.* Open 'democratic' elections took a lot longer before you could reasonable classify it as a 'Republic'. However, unlike most of the 'aforementioned' regimes, it did successfully transition to a democratic structure.
*And the island was just 'liberated' from Japan who'd occupied it since the Sino-Japanese War of the prior century.
#6
Wouldn't want to have a prosperous, democratic Asian economic powerhouse hanging around making so many of the other members look like the perennial world-class losers they are. Can't have that, now can we?
#7
About 3/4 of the folks in Taiwan are happy that it was not granted under the current Prez.
They didn't want to hear him crowing about it for decades.
China is to enforce a freeze on all government-controlled prices in a sign of Beijings alarm about rising popular anger over inflation, now at its highest rate in more than a decade.
The order freezes a vast array of prices still under the control of government in China, ranging from oil, electricity and water to the cost of parking and park entrance fees. The order, issued jointly by six ministries on Wednesday, comes after a vaguely worded announcement on the need to prevent price rises by the State Council, or cabinet.
Any unauthorised price rises are strictly forbidden . . . and in principle there will be no new price-raising measures this year, the ministries said. Events since the initial State Council announcement that inflation in August hit an 11-year high of 6.5 per cent appear to have galvanised the bureaucracy into a tougher stance.
Qing Wang, of Morgan Stanley, said in Hong Kong: As inflation has gotten worse, the government may have felt it had to toughen its stand.
Rising inflation is sensitive in the run-up to the five-yearly meeting of the Communist party, which is due to open on October 15 in Beijing and will choose the senior leadership until 2012. The sharp spike in inflation is largely due to higher food prices due to a shortage of pigs after a disease killed millions and the rising cost of feed a global phenomenon.
But Chinese leaders and economists are increasingly worried that the impact of inflation and the subsequent government policy response, could cause severe problems for the economy. Though they were once solely a domestic concern, Chinese prices are now an international issue because of the possibility of the higher cost of consumer goods produced in China fuelling inflation in large export markets such as the US and Europe.
Beijing has raised borrowing costs five times this year, both to cool lending and to prevent negative real interest rates, which provide an extra incentive for people to take money out of banks to buy shares. China has raised the one-year deposit rate to 3.87 per cent, which is about equal to the eight-month average for inflation but well below Augusts 6.5 per cent.
The price freeze is the kind of administrative measure redolent of Chinas former planned economy but it may be less effective in China today, economists said. They will not be able to control the price of everything, said Chen Xingdong, of BNP Paribas, in Beijing.
#1
You can talk about subprime debt and global financial intrigure all you want, but the basic problem for Chinese inflation is that China cannot make the world's goods and their own goods as well. Something has to give.
#2
I always tried to imagine hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers making millions of items they themselves can not afford. At a certain point there's going to be either a rebellion or one hell of an inventory control problem.
#3
Inflation, yup. That's what happens when you have so much money going around. Only problem is, there are a ton of people who make $200/mo or less, and inflation hits them the hardest. Of course, they won't rebel, they have no guns. The only threat to the regime is splinter WJ or PLA officers.
#4
The problem is that when dictatorships (or, for that matter, any strong government) are faced with situations that make the 'people' unhappy they tend to create distractions or scapegoats to deflect the dissatisfaction away from themselves. If the problem gets bad enough in China I would expect them to blame Taiwan and demand that the wayward province be re-united with the nation, by force, of course. Common enemy means government is safe from insurrection.
#5
Freeze prices to control inflation. Yep, that'll work.
Buffoons...
Unless they can control the prices of incoming raw materials, soon the factories will be so far in debt because they can't make any money since their costs are greater than their profits that the whole system will blow up in their face. Geez these guys sound like dhimocrats.
#6
This seems to be a freeze on items the government already controls the price of.
This will just slow down the pace of increase in inflation. The only thing that will stop inflation is a recession, probably severe. Interesting times.
#7
Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. It results from the power that controls money supply, in our case the Fed, increasing the supply of money to quickly. Money is subject to the laws of supply and demand, just like any other commodity. Increase the supply of anything and the price will decline. It's just that when the supply of money is increased, it's the price of everything else that increases while the nominal price of money remains constant. That is why price freezes never work; they only create black markets.
To stop inflation, stop growing the money supply. This will usually induce a recession, but not always. And a recession will not necessarily stop inflation if money supply continues to grow too quickly.
#12
Price freeze to force shortages control anything.
Yeah, that'll work.
Brilliant guys, these Chinese. Wonder why we never thought of doing that....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/20/2007 15:24 Comments ||
Top||
#13
My friend owns a couple of businesses in northern (remote, not far from Siberia) China. The price of staple foods like eggs and grains has doubled in the past couple of years. As the south gets richer, rural folks are getting hammered. He used to be able to hire unskilled labour for $50/mo, now they make more than twice as much. His plant manager gets $1k/mo, which would be unheard of 10 years ago.
#16
Exactly my thoughts flash. I remember when 1 = $0.85 in the late 1990s, now $1.40. On the plus side, hopefully our leaders will soon realize just how stupid it was to ship our industrial base overseas and will also mandate producing our energy needs domestically.
Posted by: ed ||
09/20/2007 17:38 Comments ||
Top||
#17
BTW, the Canadian and US dollars hit parity. Those worthless slugs you sometimes get as change from vending machines are now worth something, or the dollar isn't worth crap.
Posted by: ed ||
09/20/2007 17:48 Comments ||
Top||
#18
Wonder why we never thought of doing that....
We did and it taught American industry an irreversible lesson in how to shave down what was once superior American quality to the marginal crap we see so much of today. Nixon's price and wage freeze installed quality fade as a permanent fixture in domestic manufacturing. Our national reputation has been suffering for it ever since.
#19
hopefully our leaders will soon realize just how stupid it was to ship our industrial base overseas
So long as assholes like Hsu can funnel Chinese funds into our political campaigns, don't count on it. Our politicians may as well be Beijing's sock puppets.
KIM Beazley has told how Australia cracked top-secret American combat aircraft codes while he was defence minister in the 1980s. "We spied on them and we extracted the codes," Mr Beazley told Parliament during his valedictory speech today.
Mr Beazley, who was defence minister from 1984 to 1990, said that when he took over the job he soon learned that the radar on Australia's Hornets could not identify most potentially hostile aircraft in the region. In other words, Australia's frontline fighter could not shoot down enemies in the region.
Mr Beazley said he was greatly tempted to "belt" the Liberals with this and lay to rest their claim to be best at managing defence. "I shut up, I said nothing," Mr Beazley said. "I went to the US and for five years, up hill and down dale, with one knock-down, drag-out after another, with Cap Weinberger, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, I tried to get the codes of that blasted radar out of them.
"In the end we spied on them and we extracted the codes ourselves and we got another radar that could identify (enemy planes).
Mr Beazley said the Americans were Australia's most important ally. "But they are a bunch of people you have to have a fight with every now and then to get what you actually need out of them," he said.
Mr Beazley said that the story of getting the Hornet codes was well known within Defence, but not beyond it.
He said the problem was that the old codes related to Warsaw Pact aircraft, rather than ones in Australia's region. The Americans kept saying they'd provide the codes, but never did. "So we tried to crack the codes so we could enhance them," Mr Beazley said. "And we made a lot of progress."
Mr Beazley said the Americans knew what the Australians were doing and were intrigued by the progress they made.
anyway, they've got some top computer science people at Monash Univ. in data mining in particular. Useful skill these days, when it often isn't a matter of human spying but rather of making sense out of encoded or massed digital info.
#6
I think it's a ploy to get a lot of hot [Comm-]Chinese chicks. Letting the word out like this is going to attract attention. Our boys down under have been reading about the 'honey pot' operations snaring Japanese in the defense field and want some of the action. Enjoy boys!
ONE OF the tired cliches about Europe is that its inhabitants all have mossy teeth, and have limited enthusiasm for matters of personal hygiene. This is a deporable generalisation, and not a serious subject for discussion. That said... crikey there is a jaw-dropping piece in today's Le Figaro, tucked away in the health pages (alas, not seemingly available on the internet).
The article quotes a pair of dentists, one from a Paris teaching hospital and one from the French dentistry association, and offers the following statistics (without citing sources).
- one million French citizens never brush their teeth
- half of all French do not brush their teeth in the evening
- 57% of French children under five have never brushed their teeth
- the average French citizen uses between one and two toothbrushes in a year
Hmm. This sounds like a situation in need of radical change. Has anyone told Mr Sarkozy?
#3
When I was a kid I'd go through a bar of soap every couple of days. (Of course that was due to my mother jamming it into my mouth a couple of times a day.) ;)
All in a day's work, they say, but it was not exactly a routine occurrence for the immigration officials at Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport on Tuesday evening, when a family of five United States citizens asked for asylum in Finland.
The group arrived in Finland from another Schengen country. This is unlikely to improve their prospects of being granted asylum, owing to the terms of the Dublin Convention, which generally assumes that someone seeking asylum is required to apply in the member-state first entered.
The authorities are not at liberty to divulge the reasons given for the application for asylum, but at least according to current information it is not believed to have any connection with the war in Iraq.
It is quite exceptional for US nationals to seek asylum in Finland. According to the statistics of the Directorate of Immigration (UVI), before Tuesday's events just one American citizen had filed an asylum application here during the current decade. The Directorate will now consider the latest application. The story was first reported on the online portal of Ilta-Sanomat on Wednesday.
#1
It is quite exceptional for US nationals to seek asylum in Finland. I would say it is quite exceptional for US nationals to seek asylum at all unless you consider draft dodgers heading to Canada.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
09/20/2007 17:37 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Some how this country managed with the departure of over 100,000 Tory loyalist after the American War of Independence. There's only so much tolerance.
#2
Lay this to some degree at the feet of the Dems in Congress. Remember the bill that made personal bankruptcy easier? Forced through by the Dems. The glut of subprime lending followed as predictably as night follows day.
#3
Residental property prices in Japan have fallen for 15 years straight and will fall again this year. This is just the trigger that starts the ball rolling.
#4
Well the banks, and their various paper fronts, speculating with credit to individuals who shouldn't have been able to sign on the dotted lines are just as responsible. One of the mistakes Ronnie made was bailing out non-FDIC banks and savings and loans in the 80s. It's set a precedent for the gamblers losers to ask the rest of us to bail them out. We're hearing it already now. I can remember it was hard to get credit. Today everyone get numerous enticements of 'pre-qualification' weekly. College students without any work history or financial record are signed up for life long debt. The prime is around 5%, but card interest rates still are in the upper teens. Every other active card holder is carrying the bad debt of forfeited accounts. Yet, I could bet in Vegas that the very same financial entities at the heap of the conglomerate paper structure will issue annual statements of 'profit' for the year they get us to cover their loses.
#5
Japan's problems have more to do with it's demographic situation than housing. I'd look for the same to happen in Europe and China where similar demographic problems exist before the US.
The fundamental problem is that the balance between fear and greed has been destabilized by government interference in markets. This interference allows markets to remain out of equilibrium for longer than would be the case absent the interference. As a result bad problems don't get fixes and grow to be really big bad problems. Then it takes a really big injection of fear to return to equilibrium.
Also: US $ hit a new low against the Euro today and is very weak across other currencies. China is about to launch a $300 billion investment fund which will diversify them away from dollar dependency and put more pressure on Treasury debt and the dollar over all.
#7
Thank goodness the deficit is down significantly, or we'd be in really bad trouble. As it is, the Treasury had discontinued issuing the shorter notes in recent years because they didn't need the money.
I'd guess that anyone with more intelligence than a cupcake pan knows that 1) diverisification in your investiments is a good thing and 2) large swings in investment hurt everybody.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/20/2007 16:59 Comments ||
Top||
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was quoted in the Financial Times on Wednesday as saying he wanted to lift the ban on the Islamic headscarf in universities as part of a planned constitutional overhaul.
The remarks by Erdogan, whose Islamist-rooted AK Party won a new five-year mandate in July elections, could reignite tensions with Turkeys powerful secular elite, including army generals, which suspects him of wanting to boost the role of religion. The right to higher education cannot be restricted because of what a girl wears. There is no such problem in Western societies but there is a problem in Turkey and I believe it is the first duty of those in politics to solve the problem, he told the FT in an interview in Ankara.
This article starring:
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The right to higher education cannot be restricted because of what a girl wears."
True. But the desired goal of higher education is made impossible by wearing the headscarf: a critically thinking graduate who understands she is not made more respectable, more modest or more worthy by covering her head in shame of her gender. That the Turkish PM finds headscarves acceptable in the university demonstrates he has a long way to go on his own educational path.
Read it all, but here's the end of the article...
Under the U.S.-Canada Safe Third Country Agreement, asylum seekers from the United States would normally be turned back. But those coming through the United States from Mexico are an exception because the United States would require those people to have a visa, but Canada does not.
Danny Yen, Canada Border Services Agency spokesman, explained that means the United States would not accept those people if turned back.
Legal Aid has begun footing the bill for the refugee claimants to get legal advice.
Immigration lawyer John Rokakis said seven Mexicans came through his door Tuesday with Legal Aid certificates paying for three hours of a lawyers time. Monday he saw three others and had a steady trickle last week as well. Few will have successful refugee claims, he predicted. Of the ones Ive seen there are maybe one or two that may have something, he said. One is a man who sought political asylum in the United States and was denied.
In the short term, the refugee claimants are the guests of city taxpayers. Some have U.S. bank accounts they cant access and others are destitute.
Teresa Piruzza, executive director of Ontario Works said, as of Monday, ten families and 18 individuals had applied for social assistance. Were just starting to process them, Piruzza said of the applications. Welfare currently pays up to $548 per month for individuals and $1,193 for families with two children under the age of 13.
As he recounted his story, Ortega repeatedly stressed his thanks to social services for helping his family. Social services, they help us too much, he said. I want to say thanks and to Canadians thanks. No, no, thank you, Canada. Enjoy 'em.
#1
eresa Piruzza, executive director of Ontario Works said, as of Monday, ten families and 18 individuals had applied for social assistance. Were just starting to process them, Piruzza said of the applications. Welfare currently pays up to $548 per month for individuals and $1,193 for families with two children under the age of 13.
We need to do a better job of communicating Canadian benefits to U.S. illegals.
#4
This is all my fault. I was up at the canada border, putting up signs saying welcome to the USA, and I realized I had been putting them up backwards....
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush on Thursday vowed to veto a reported deal in Congress to expand a children's health-care insurance program, accusing Democrats of wanting to send him the legislation to score "political points in Washington."
Speaking to reporters at a White House news conference, Bush said he wanted Congress to instead send him a "clean" extension of the State Children Health Insurance Program, or sCHIP, so he could sign it before the program ends on September 30.
He threatened to veto the expansion because, he said, it would "raise taxes on working people and would raise spending between $35 million to $50 million."
The president said he supports reauthorizing the program at $5 billion above its current funding over a five-year period, which Bush said amounts to a 20 percent increase.
"Unfortunately, instead of working with the administration to enact this funding increase for children's health, Democrats in Congress have decided to pass a bill they know will be vetoed. One of their leaders has even said such a veto would be, quote, 'a political victory,'" the president said.
Later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fired her comments directly at Bush. "The president is wrong when he says Democrats want a political victory," said the California Democrat. "What we want is a bipartisan bill. What we want is health care for 10 million children."
A leading senator and presidential hopeful also criticized Bush for his rejection of the bill.
"He is walking away from taking care of our children and I find that just unimaginable," Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, said.
"And I think to start engaging in name-calling and calling it government-run health care, and all of that, is not only wrong but it really ... does a great disservice to people in this Congress who are working in a bipartisan way to try to cover more kids and give them the health care they deserve to have."
Another Senate Democrat took to the floor after Bush spoke. "We're not playing politics," said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan.
"We were coming together in a bipartisan way to be able to give more children, American children, the ability to get their health-care needs taken care of. And it's time that we have the president join with us in the right set of priorities for American families," she added.
The House and Senate deal, according to two House aides and a Senate aide, adds $35 billion more to the current $25 billion, for a total cost of about $60 billion over five years.
Democratic congressional aides say their party wants to expand the program to cover an additional 4 million children and pay for it by raising the tax on cigarettes by 61 cents per pack. Bush opposes that, and has threatened to veto the bill.
Critics say the funding that Bush favors won't pay for the 6 million children covered over the next five years.
Two House Democratic aides said the deal is a bipartisan one because Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Charles Grassley of Iowa negotiated and signed off on it.
The aides said they have a veto-proof majority in the Senate and that it will pass in the House with some support from moderate Republicans, but concede they may not have a veto-proof margin.
Democrats emphasize that Bush is reneging on his campaign promise during his 2004 convention speech to cover children's health care.
House Republican leaders earlier this week argued that the bill represents a "huge expansion" of government-run health care.
They say Democrats are adding middle-class families to a program that was designed by Republicans in 1997 to cover the poor.
Bush was joined at the White House news conference by Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt.
About 9.3 percent of children under the age of 18 and 43.6 million Americans -- 14.8 percent of the total population -- had no health insurance last year, according to a government study released in June.
SCHIP is designed to provide coverage to "targeted low-income children," according to the HHS. Those children belong to families whose income is below 200 percent of the federal poverty level or whose family has an income 50 percent higher than the state's Medicaid eligibility threshold, according to the HHS Web site.
Some states -- according to HHS -- have expanded SCHIP eligibility beyond the 200 percent poverty level limit, and others are covering entire families and not just children.
#1
43.6 million Americans
How many of that number are actually illegal aliens?
How many of that number have chosen to spend their money on other things than health insurance?
How many of that number needed to see a doctor and really were turned away?
The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday softened his criticism of Sen. Barack Obama, whom he reportedly criticized earlier in the week for "acting like he's white" on the Jena 6 race case in Louisiana.
Jackson said in an interview Wednesday that "acting white" isn't a phrase he uses regularly, and that it doesn't accurately represent his feelings about Obama.
Jackson said in an interview Wednesday that "acting white" isn't a phrase he uses regularly, and that it doesn't accurately represent his feelings about Obama, the Illinois Democratic senator whom Jackson supports for their party's presidential nomination.
Obama, meanwhile, sought to take Jackson's comments out of a racial context, saying he thinks the discussion about the case isn't "a matter of black and white," but rather "a matter of right and wrong."
"We should stand as one nation in opposition to this and any injustice," Obama said, not so subtly adding that his previous remarks on the Jena case were advised in part by Jackson's son, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.)
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2007 11:24 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
What did Obama do? Send him a case of Colt .45 and a carton of Newports?
#4
Jesse needs to cool it with Obama, He should realize by know, that deep, deep down inside, when whites get to the voting booth, like Chris Rock said, will NOT vote for a black man to lead America. The vestiges of the slavery years will not sooth their 'plantation mentality' fears which are greater than the fears they have of 20 million Mexican illegal aliens bombarding 'white' America, and draining it's system resources! A no brainer for Jesse if he just think this thing through and keeping his trap shut until the primaries are over.
#5
as usual, smn, you post utter crap, not understanding Americans, yet professing total knowledge. Wasn't it you who said W would be "kicked out" Nov 8th?. I would support several blacks that I can name off the top of my head, starting with Steele. Nice try. You're not an American, are you?
Posted by: Frank G on the road ||
09/20/2007 15:36 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Take your blinders off Frank G, the Republicans are toast next November, the obstinance of "W" will be the Republicans undoing (atleast at the presidential level)! The only thing I can't see however is whether the electorate will give the next Democratic President 4 years alone or with coattails, to remedy the problem. If Bush was smart, he'd move those 160,000 troops to Afghanistan, and bring home Binny's head on that platter, like he promised me!
#7
non-answer as expected. Pappy can confirm via ISP
Posted by: Frank G on the road ||
09/20/2007 16:11 Comments ||
Top||
#8
smn, you might want to stop getting your news from wherever it is that you're getting it.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
09/20/2007 16:20 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Judging from the negative numbers Billery has, and congress' approval numbers, the dhimocrats have a very long fight ahead of them and the odds don't look good.
However, that being said, we are still some 14 months from the actual election. The entire political landscape will change several times before then. Don't bet on a horse to win when the starting bell just buzzed to open the gate.
#10
Mike N, My 'reach' into the internet, not withstanding the www is so vast and deep, that I have to drop 'breadcrumbs' to find my way back to Rantburg! 'Piling on' me, how does that affect Jesse's backpedaling of Obama? He may have read an opin such as mine that swayed his thoughts on the retraction!
#12
Take your blinders off Frank G, the Republicans are toast next November
If Hillary and Obama are any indication of where the democratic party is headed, then there are evenif not betterchances that neither of them will be sitting in the Oval Office in 2009. The two of them are both incompetent and thoroughly dangerous to the safety and national security of America.
Republicans still haven't shown the least inclination to point up this fact to the American people. Much like Bush they have a near-fatal inability to properly articulate the enormous threat presented by Islam. Some of them are coming around but it is long past tea to throw down the gauntlet and demand from the democrats some plainspoken positions on Islamic terrorism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how shari'a law represents nothing more than a massive violation of human rights.
If the republicans cannot find the courage to do this, only then are they "toast".
#14
what are you going to do when it turns out Binny's head on a platter doesn't solve the basic problems caused by the joint Pakistani/Saudi nuclear program? Or the Iranian one?
#3
There was never any doubt that the "black" vote would go to Hillary, wife of the first black president.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/20/2007 5:51 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Not so quick no mo(#3), women will actually be the deciders next year. Blacks can only make it interesting if the Dems and Repubs are close with their candidates. From what I've been hearing many more black voters are becoming Independents to add 'spice' to the races!
Nuon Chea, the top surviving leader of Cambodia's notorious Khmer Rouge, whose radical policies were responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, was charged Wednesday with crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Nuon Chea was arrested early Wednesday morning at his home in Pailin in northwestern Cambodia near the Thai border and flown to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, where he was put in the custody of a UN-supported genocide tribunal.
The tribunal is investigating abuses committed when the communist Khmer Rouge held power in 1975-79. Their radical policies have been blamed for the deaths of their countrymen from starvation, ill health, overwork and execution.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
Federal regulators appear to be shifting tack following intensified criticism from Democrats on Capitol Hill over their handling of the mortgage crisis.
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, indicated government-backed lenders could play a limited role in alleviating stress in the so-called jumbo mortgage market. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise and Oversight also provided increased flexibility to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide greater assistance to subprime borrowers and others who may have difficulty refinancing their existing mortgages in the current environment.
Senator Charles Schumer told the Financial Times that pressure from Democrats was finally starting to stir the administration from its slumber. We seem to be getting through.
Hank Paulson, Treasury secretary, and Mr Bernanke will testify on Thursday to the House of Representatives financial services committee on their response to the mortgage meltdown.
In a letter circulated on Wednesday in Washington, the Fed chairman suggested that if Democrats planned to press ahead with proposed increases in the $417,000 limit on the value of government-backed mortgages, then this should only be temporary. If the Congress is inclined to move in this direction, it should consider whether such action could be taken in a way that makes the change explicitly temporary as well as promptly implemented, he said.
Mr Bernanke noted recent significant disruptions in the jumbo loan market in a letter to Barney Frank, chairman of the House committee. But Mr Bernanke warned that entrance of government-backed lenders into this mortgage bracket could distort competition as credit markets returned to normal.
James Lockhart, head of Ofheo, also told the FT this week that he was open to raising loan limits in some cases.
David Rosenberg, an economist at Merrill Lynch, said raising the so-called conforming loan limit would reduce the burden on borrowers, particularly those in states with high real estate values such as New York, Florida and California, and help inject some liquidity in the secondary mortgage market.
Interest rates spreads on jumbo mortgages have increased five-fold in many cases.
#1
There's always INFOWARS > US FINANCIAL ANALYST > believes China may use "nuclear option" vv mass dumping of China-held US treasuries unless US allows China to invade Taiwan.
#2
How would that work, anyway? The only way to dump those Treasury Bonds is to find someone to buy them - simply offering them for sale will not do a real dump, a temporary drop in the value but not a true dump. A true dump would be a worldwide selloff at pennies a dollar for US T-Bills and that ain't gonna happen. Way too many countries with lots of money but not enough troops, law and order, population, unfriendly neighbors, etc hold T-Bills and would approach the Chinese selloff as a money-making deal for themselves.
#3
And besides which, in order for the Chinese to initiate a true dump of T-Bills, they would have to be willing to subtract several hundred BILLION dollars of hard currency from their economy in a very short period. That would have the impact of throwing China into a depression, as they would lose the ability to pay hard currency for resource imports like oil. Sort of self-inflicting the Great Depression of the 1930s on yourself, as a way to punish your enemies.
The US could wind up in a recession but China would be in a true depression, and considering the history of Chinese revolts and splintering, we could then wind up with 2 or 3 Chinas fighting each other -- and that does NOT include the independent nation of Taiwan.
Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.
"This is a very dangerous situation for the dollar," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas. "Saudi Arabia has $800bn (£400bn) in their future generation fund, and the entire region has $3,500bn under management. They face an inflationary threat and do not want to import an interest rate policy set for the recessionary conditions in the United States," he said.
The Saudi central bank said today that it would take "appropriate measures" to halt huge capital inflows into the country, but analysts say this policy is unsustainable and will inevitably lead to the collapse of the dollar peg.
As a close ally of the US, Riyadh has so far tried to stick to the peg, but the link is now destabilising its own economy. The Fed's dramatic half point cut to 4.75pc yesterday has already caused a plunge in the world dollar index to a fifteen year low, touching with weakest level ever against the mighty euro at just under $1.40.
There is now a growing danger that global investors will start to shun the US bond markets. The latest US government data on foreign holdings released this week show a collapse in purchases of US bonds from $97bn to just $19bn in July, with outright net sales of US Treasuries. The danger is that this could now accelerate as the yield gap between the United States and the rest of the world narrows rapidly, leaving America starved of foreign capital flows needed to cover its current account deficit -- expected to reach $850bn this year, or 6.5pc of GDP.
Mr Redeker said foreign investors have been gradually pulling out of the long-term US debt markets, leaving the dollar dependent on short-term funding. Foreigners have funded 25pc to 30pc of America's credit and short-term paper markets over the last two years. "They were willing to provide the money when rates were paying nicely, but why bear the risk in these dramatically changed circumstances? We think that a fall in dollar to $1.50 against the euro is not out of the question at all by the first quarter of 2008," he said.
"This is nothing like the situation in 1998 when the crisis was in Asia, but the US was booming. This time the US itself is the problem," he said.
Mr Redeker said the biggest danger for the dollar is that falling US rates will at some point trigger a reversal yen "carry trade", causing massive flows from the US back to Japan.
Jim Rogers, the commodity king and former partner of currency speculator George Soros, said the Federal Reserve was playing with fire by cutting rates so aggressively at a time when the dollar was already under pressure. The risk is that flight from US bonds could push up the long-term yields that form the base price of credit for most mortgages, the driving the property market into even deeper crisis. "If Ben Bernanke starts running those printing presses even faster than he's already doing, we are going to have a serious recession. The dollar's going to collapse, the bond market's going to collapse. There's going to be a lot of problems," he said.
The Federal Reserve, however, clearly calculates the risk of a sudden downturn is now so great that the it outweighs dangers of a dollar slide.
Former Fed chief Alan Greenspan said this week that house prices may fall by "double digits" as the subprime crisis bites harder, prompting households to cut back sharply on spending.
For Saudi Arabia, the dollar peg has clearly become a liability. Inflation has risen to 4pc and the M3 broad money supply is surging at 22pc. The pressures are even worse in other parts of the Gulf. The United Arab Emirates now faces inflation of 9.3pc, a 20-year high. In Qatar it has reached 13pc. Kuwait became the first of the oil sheikhdoms to break its dollar peg in May, a move that has begun to rein in rampant money supply growth.
#1
Great...the dollar's in the toilet. That's been one of our major strengths since WWII, and now it's gone. Freaking wonderful, thanks a lot guys. Once they get off the dollar, they ain't ever coming back.
#2
Of course we see above that the Chinese are facing inflation problems with their economy. How can the Euro be truly strong when the European economic productivity is so mediocre? Is all of this currency maneuvering just political manipulation - putting the US in its 'place'?
#5
If Soros's Number Two henchmen are not in favor, it prolly means it's in America's best interests.
Posted by: Frank G on the road ||
09/20/2007 14:08 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Yep Frank, "dollar collapse" is pure Hyperbole.
Fact: Soros made his money by causing instability, famine and chaos. But he's a Liberal so he's not evil like Murdoch is, the Media Giant is who hasn't robbed a mouthful of rice from even one starving peasant mouth like Soros has.
Some American Liberals are so sick with the disease that they would celebrate if Sorros made another fortune capitalizing on a currency swing and America slid into a recession.
Keep Smoking Pot Soros Acolytes!
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
09/20/2007 15:28 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Britney Spears has retained 50/50 custody of her children, but the singer is going to have to work for it. Calling her a "habitual, frequent and continuous" user of drugs and alcohol, a judge ordered Spears to submit to random drug testing twice a week and work with a parenting coach for at least eight hours a week. "The parenting coach is to observe [Spears'] interaction with the minor children and her parenting skills," Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner Scott Gordon wrote in court documents.
That the world's population had quadrupled in the past 100 years partly explained this. Technological change had also had a significant impact on "this shell of the environment that surrounds our planet".
The story of Zimbabwe's downward spiral now has a climax and even a possible end-date. A constitutional amendment passed Tuesday by Zimbabwe's parliament paves the way for joint parliamentary and presidential elections in March 2008. The bill also allows parliament to elect a new president if the incumbent does not serve a full term. Since his ZANU-PF party has a parliamentary majority, that effectively gives President Robert Mugabe the authority to handpick a successor, if he so chooses, even before the next election. Raising the possibility of Mugabe's departure, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG), a leading 
China is to enforce a freeze on all government-controlled prices in a sign of Beijings alarm about rising popular anger over inflation, now at its highest rate in more than a decade.
Rising inflation is sensitive in the run-up to the five-yearly meeting of the Communist party, which is due to open on October 15 in Beijing and will choose the senior leadership until 2012. The sharp spike in inflation is largely due to higher food prices due to a shortage of pigs after a disease killed millions and the rising cost of feed a global phenomenon.
The Rev. 
Federal regulators appear to be shifting tack following intensified criticism from Democrats on Capitol Hill over their handling of the mortgage crisis.
Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.
