To publicly comment on the singular importance of the Iraqi elections without crediting President Bush for having the courage and fortitude to free those people from a tyrannical leader who threatened the security of the free world – shameful.
Of course, you also failed to acknowledge President Bush’s role in enabling the historic Afghanistan elections of 2009. I just hoped you would have matured a little since then.
The media is not doing much better on this issue. But then we expect less of our media than our President.
US health care reform comes with strings, nay chains.
Once a single-payer health care program is enacted into law, the US Government will assume the right to tell us how to live our lives. Our health will be their responsibility. Government officials will feel empowered to tell us what to eat and drink, what risks to take, whether we can smoke, how much weight we can gain and how much exercise we must get.
If you have any doubt, consider the following statements from the Obama administration over the last year. The clear message is if the government pays for something with tax dollars, it has both a right and a responsibility to tell the recipients of those dollars how to conduct themselves.
“This is America. We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success,” Obama said. “But what gets people upset — and rightfully so — are executives being rewarded for failure. Especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.” http://wcbstv.com/national/executive.pay.limits.2.926332.html
President Obama challenged top bankers to explore “every responsible way” to increase lending, saying they were obliged to help after being rescued by taxpayers. He asked them to “take a third and fourth look” at their small-business lending. He also exhorted the executives — both in private and in public — to drop their opposition to an overhaul of the nation’s financial industry. “If they wish to fight commonsense consumer protections, that’s a fight I’m more than willing to have,” Obama told reportersin the Diplomatic Reception Room of the executive mansion. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34416646/ns/business-us_business/
Obama said it is “wholly unreasonable to expect that American taxpayers would or should hand this administration or any administration a $700 billion blank check with absolutely no oversight or conditions, when a lack of oversight in Washington and on Wall Street is exactly what got us into this mess.” Obama said taxpayers should be treated like investors if they are being asked to underwrite the bailout. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/23/campaign.wrap/index.html
“What’s really frustrating me right now is that you’ve got these same banks who benefited from taxpayer assistance who are fighting tooth and nail with their lobbyists up on Capitol Hill, fighting against financial regulatory control,”Obama added. http://au.biz.yahoo.com/091213/31/2aafh.html
The heads of US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may each receive pay packages of up to $6m (£3.7m) for 2009, depending on company performance.
Now I’m not an American nor do I really understand the issues BUT when taxpayers put in $111,000,000,000 of THEIR money into these organisations (that’s $365 for every man, woman and child on the US Census!) and so many of those same US taxpayers are up the proverbial financial creek without a paddle, there has to be a better way of rewarding top bosses (of US publicly owned corporations) than the option of $6,000,000 each!
But the regulator which decided the pay levels said the awards were 40% lower than before the government bailout.
The sums involved reflected the need to attract and retain talent, it argued.
Frankly, I just don’t believe that there aren’t many other incredibly capable business leaders who would do these jobs for a fraction of six million dollars. (The present incumbents are Michael Williams at Fannie Mae and Charles E. Haldeman Jr. at Freddie Mac who will receive a base of $900,000 in 2010 with the opportunity to earn $5.1 more if “certain targets are met“.)
Read the article here – I’m going to lay down in a dark, quiet room for a while!
A round up of this strange world that we all live in.
[In fact Chris wrote this on Sunday, 13th but due to the backlog of LfD posts to be published, it has been held until today, the 20th. The points are still as valid. Ed.]
Judges in charge of Britain’s controversial new Supreme Court have been provided with robes they will hardly ever wear at a cost of £137,956 to the taxpayer.
The hand-crafted black brocade robes – embroidered with real gold thread – will not be worn by the 12 Supreme Court Justices in normal session.
They will be donned only perhaps twice a year for ceremonies such as the State Opening of Parliament or the beginning of the legal year. The rest of the time, the judges will wear everyday suits.
A snip at £140,000 ($224,000) Photographer – Ron Coello
It’s only money …. plenty more where that came from…
BRITISH POLITICS: Few things are more pathetic than the Liberals‘ current poll rating of 17%, with Labour on 26% That the worst government in the history of the world is still way ahead of the Liberals is of course a tribute to the lunacy of Labour voters, who seem not to understand the terrible damage this govt has done. Still, some of them have done very well under Labour: doctors, judges, high-ranking civil servants, consultants …. all more or less bribed with the people’s money.
Lib-Dems must be very depressed; if you can’t get a decent poll-rating when up against this motley bunch of venal, pompous, pretentious and incompetent misfits then you wonder really what the point of their party is.
Democracy?
Still, you get the government you deserve, so they say. Except that the British voting system is hopelessly undemocratic. In the next election a vote for the Lib-Dems is probably going to be wasted, risking the danger of letting Brown sneak in despite everything.
As for UKIP, it is a perfectly tenable position to want to get out of the EU. I’d guess that 30% of the electorate would want this, and that’s a very conservative estimate. Yet they have NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER of getting ANY representation in parliament.
This is not democracy, but of course it suits the two dinosaur parties very well indeed.
TIGER WOODS: what a pathetic, sordid saga this is. Not his bedroom antics, but the media obsession with it. People are dying all over the world of treatable diseases, of inhuman treatment at the hands of the North Koreans or others. Democracy is destroyed by religious nutters in Iran, millions more tons of ice melt, while politicians bleat uselessly (and expensively) in Copenhagen (I note they didn’t choose Scunthorpe! Might not have got such a good turnout!)
OIL: Oh, and on the climate front and the importance of reducing emissions I note that the Iraqi government is predicting oil output to rise to 12 million barrels a day within a few years – the same as Saudi Arabia.
That IS good news!!!!! … the British Labour government will hit us with every stealth and non-stealth tax you can imagine “to save carbon” and pay for yet more consultants and managers while the rest of the world greedily sups up billions more tons of oil.
Apparently, this has been a bumper year for oil discoveries …. you couldn’t make it up! An extra-terrestrial observer must be scratching his head wondering how the universe could have spawned up such a bizarre species.
Yet the press is full of Woods ….. and because he is good at golf … hitting a ball into a hole, a skill of such nanoscopically-sized irrelevance to the world’s problems. What sort of mentality is it that is even interested in yet another, crass, boring superstar who has failed to resist the temptations that money brings?
JFK was the great hero who would save the world but turned out to be just another, faithless, lying philanderer. Who can have any illusions since the days of Marilyn Monroe and the extinguished candle?
OBAMA PEACE PRIZE: The surreality of this obsession with over-sexed but hyper-boring celebrities is matched only by that involved in the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama. What exactly has Obama actually DONE?
Nobel prize winner
Crucially, there is practically NO change in the Middle East (except the major change for the good brought by the reviled George Bush and Tony Blair! the world is nothing if not full of irony); the USA still cravenly supports Israel, which CONTINUES to build and/or enlarge settlements, which denies any possibility of ever putting right some of the wrongs of the past (Palestinian exiles, appropriation of their land, stealing of their capital and so on – even the West Bank roadblocks are mostly still in place.)
Yet even in the pathetic there can be humour, as when he said that to bring peace the USA had to make war, or words to that effect.
Yes, he is of course right, but it was still funny. I wonder what Mother Theresa would have said? And Nelson Mandela? He had to sweat out decades in prison preaching non-violence to earn his NPP, while Obama only had to get elected to get his. Truly the triumph of hope over reality.
Perhaps hope is all there is left. I nearly said “we have left”, but then I realized that I haven’t actually got much myself.
“To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.” Quote by Will Durant.
During his China visit Obama said that “the US accepted that Tibet was part of China, but went on to push for the early resumption of talks between China and the Dalai Lama.”
This is the usual fatuous “appeal” issued by Western worthies to the Chinese Communist Dictatorship to act honourably towards people it dislikes. As ever, it is a waste of breath, but a diplomatic ritual that has to be endured.
Obama knows it is pointless, the Chinese pretend to listen but also know it is pointless as nothing will change. We all know – or should – that it is pointless. Why then do they do it?You can’t call it self-delusion since nobody is deluded.Frankly, I am not sure what to call it.
Of course, the Chinese claim to Tibet varies from ludicrous through spurious to extremely questionable at best …..
… and Taiwan is a free and independent state, and more to the point democratic. It is a disgrace that free, democratic countries have never recognized it.
The truth (that’s what we want, isn’t it?) is that the CCP is a murderous and illegitimate dictatorship, never having submitted itself to a vote. This may of course be very wise on their part, but it isn’t honest, is it?
In the way of dictatorships, it is quite prepared to massacre its own citizens to protect its power, as happened in the seemingly long-forgotten Tiananmen Square. It is a pity that the free world seems compelled to overlook all this in grovelling to China. We have to deal with them, but issuing fatuous appeals, come on ….
I wonder what the parents of those killed by the CCP thought as doves of freedom were released over Beijing during the last Olympic Games?
By Chris Snuggs
[Footnote from the Editor. This is a hard-hitting Post about the reality of relations between the USA and China. It is a reminder of the truth about such relationships. Readers may want to view this to understand also the reality of trade with China. Some of the images are deeply disturbing.]
Learning from Dogs 