Okay. If you tried this ploy on your parents, you wouldn’t get away with it. If your kids tried it on you, you wouldn’t fall for it either. So why are the American people letting the Government get away with this ploy? I don’t know. And I don’t get it. Maybe there is just so much going on that it gets lost in the mix. Maybe it’s because of the deceptive and disingenuous way it’s being presented by Pelosi, Reid, and Obama.
Here’s the ruse: “Give us more of your money today, and we will reduce tomorrow’s health care costs. We will increase efficiency. And we will do all of this without increasing the budget deficit!”
Yeah, right.
What exactly is stopping them from reducing health care costs and improving the efficiency of health care delivery now? Why do they need more money today to accomplish these things tomorrow? What magical powers does the next dollar of tax collections have that the current ones don’t?
Exactly. None. So when Congress asks to increase taxes and the deficit in order to fix health care tomorrow, let’s respond to them as we would our clever but errant children: Ask to see some proof today first.
You know how that will turn out. And so does Congress. That’s why they just keep promising the moon. What I don’t get is why we continue to let them get away with it.
[Not just the US Government plays on the roundabout – I’m sure they learnt from the Brits! Ed.]
The humungously uninteresting saga of Tiger Woods’ infidelities
The press has been full in recent days of the Tiger Woods saga. I have followed this with a combination of astonishment and disgust and touched on it yesterday’s Post.
Astonishment? Not at Woods’ extramarital adventures. Frankly, I am astonished that anyone could possibly be astonished to learn of his frailties.
I must have been about 13 when I took an interest in John F Kennedy, mostly because of his assassination. As a young teenager I read and listened to the news over the coming months and gradually realised that this great American hero and hope for the future was a serial philanderer. And as I grew up I realised that this is the kind of behaviour that rich and powerful men in particular get up to.
I soon realised that some men simply give in to their sexual drives; integrity, promises and faithfulness just go out of the window. Once again – just like the British MPs who filched public funds by the £1,000s – BECAUSE they can do it (for a while) they DID do it.
This is regrettable for stable marriages and the happy upbringing of children, but it is a fact. And so Woods’ antics were
Paul Newman
not the slightest bit surprising. In fact, what IS surprising is to hear of famous people who have NOT given in to basic urges, the most famous recent example being the much-loved and missed Paul Newman.
No, what astonished and disgusted me was the press interest in Woods’ philanderings. Of course, the media only publicize what they think people want to hear or read about, and this in order to sell more copies and rack up more advertising revenue. And as the media are not stupid, it clearly IS true that many people ARE interested in the sexual antics of famous people.
But what does this tell us about the seriousness of the human race? All this fuss over one more weak, unfaithful and ultimately boring husband when on the same day hundreds of thousands died of treatable disease, when goodness knows how many more tons of ice melted, how many more tons of CO2 were released into the air, how many more victims of the hellish North Korean regime there were?
He’s a famous golfer? Oh dear …. someone good at putting a ball into a hole? This is supposed to be IMPORTANT?
Sadly, the whole episode is just another example of the fatuous obsession with celebrities, as if they are somehow more interesting or important than anyone else. No, my local postman is far more interesting than Tiger Woods, and I don’t think he cheats on his wife either.
And as for comment about the business wisdom of Woods not talking to the press? Oh dear again – one weeps. Why should anyone CARE whether he talks to the press or loses sponsors? Who GIVES a damn? Well, apparently, millions. And this is fairly depressing when there is so much else to worry about. And if big name sponsors of the once “Mr Clean” of world sport are now looking rather foolish, well I for one won’t shed any tears. They peddle fantasy, shallowness and envy; it’s time we had a reassessment of priorities and bit more common-sense and realism.
Please Mr Murdoch et al; give us a break from Tiger Woods; he is just nanoscopically irrelevant in the grand scheme of things and what on earth has his private life got to do with his golf anyway? But I expect we will have to suffer months of reading about the vast settlement his wife will get as his divorce is dragged through the courts and the media. Oh dear, I need a drink ……
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.
I must say that I am very confused about bringing an admitted terrorist into our country and its court system, where everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty, has an attorney assigned to them if they cannot afford one, and they enjoy the full rights and benefits of any other individual accused of a crime in the United States.
Evidence will be brought to bear on the case and, based on the preponderance of the evidence as presented skilfully by attorneys on both sides, and as adjudicated freely and with respect for the law, the judge and/or jury will find KSH innocent or guilty.
If, as Eric Holder, Obama’s choice for the U.S. Attorney General, has indicated ‘KSH’ should be found guilty of horrible crimes and should be brought to justice, I am wondering what is Holder’s real purpose of trying this mastermind here. He must know that there is a chance that the well-meaning set of 12 honest, everyday jurors in this case, through legalese or side-deals or bias, might find to acquit. Right? Then what?
Holder says he’s guilty, yet brings him here (while trying others in a military tribunal) to “try” him in a courtroom which Holder expects to find him guilty. I see the twisted mess we are left with if this happens. But where’s the upside?
For those readers who are not regular BBC television viewers, the Beeb has for many years run an excellent factual/science & nature series under the name of Horizon. Just recently there was a programme with the title of How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?
Sir David Attenborough
It was presented by that familiar face on the BBC in terms of the natural world, Sir David Attenborough. It was an appropriate and worthy person to present the information.
But before getting into some of the details underpinning the programme, there seems to been an enormous and unspoken omission at Copenhagen – why no debate about global population trends?
Luckily the media noticed the rather obvious exclusion. Here’s the UK Daily Telegraph newspaper (online version) of the 8th December, 2009. An extract:
Population growth is the one issue accused of causing driving climate change that no one at the Copenhagen climate summit dares to talk about.
The argument is that more people consume more resources, therefore producing more greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
The global population is currently at 6 billion and could rise to 11 billion by 2050 if fertility rates continue, not only threatening the climate, but food shortages and conflict as well.
Organisations like the Optimum Population Trust, that is backed by Sir Jonathan Porritt, Dame Jane Goodall and Sir David Attenborough, advocate birth control as a way of slowing climate change.
As Sir David has said: “I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more.”
A study by the London School of Economics found contraception is almost five times cheaper as a means of preventing climate change than conventional green solutions such as investing in green technology.
We have been looking for ways of cutting down our energy requirements and coupled with trying to grow as many of our own veggies as possible, 2 small flocks of chickens for eggs, we have now acquired a reconditioned, wood-burning cooker.
It arrived last Wednesday and weighs in at just under a third of a ton. It was manoeuvred into place by 2 men, some planks of wood and a few rollers made from off-cut, scaffolding poles.
Our youngest son and I fitted the flue and fired it up on Thursday evening. What a transformation!
The quality of heat and ambience it creates in the kitchen/dining room is amazing. It is like being transported back to a bygone era where everything seemed less stressed and slower. Whoever gets up in the morning lights it first and it seems to be able to rise from cold to a useful temperature in 20 minutes. It uses a very small amount of wood to keep it in all day and we have switched off all the heating in the adjoining rooms. We cooked a roast dinner in it on Sunday and a load of mince pies plus bread over the weekend.
It’s not instant and it has its own foibles but we love it – a bit like most of us, I expect!
A summary of the different collections is listed here, many of them wartime photographs that bring a multitude of emotions to the surface: incredible bravery of the pilots; photographic standards of 70 years ago, man’s inhumanity to man; and so on.
I pondered a bit about writing this Post because, well ….. well…, see what you make of it!
Author's Mum
Being born in England in the early part of November, 1944, World War 2 still resonates within me.
Early home in an industrial part of West London meant that my mother and father had a ring-side view of the German V1 and V2 rockets that were being visited on London at that time.
My mother, 90, still recounts her enormous sense of relief when VE Day was announced (May 8th, 1945) because she then thought that her son’s future life was more or less assured.
So back to these aerial photographs held in those collections.
Here’s a picture of the visitation of war on the beautiful French town of Caen.
Linger a while and look at the damage, mostly to private homes. The photograph was taken just slightly more than a month before I was born.
These are very strange times: thank goodness for Blogs.
Learning from Dogs is a relatively young Blog (first Post was July 15th, 2009) but already it has opened the eyes of all the authors to the power of plain speaking. All of us involved in bringing you a dozen Posts a week find inspiration for our creative juices from the corners, far and wide, of the virtual world of digital communications, the World Wide Web.
Because we are in the midst of huge turmoil it’s very difficult to see the underlying trends of change at work. But see them we must if we are to be smart and work out, for the best, what needs to be done at the scale of the individual and the family.
So with that theme in mind, go to the Blog called Jesse’s Café Américain and read a recent Post about the behaviour of the price of gold. But also read beyond the subject of gold and reflect on the deeper message.
We were invited to our friend’s 25th Wedding Anniversary on Saturday, 21st November.
English pub
It was in a local pub and they had invited many friends, some of whom we had not seen for many years.
One friend had started his own architect business, built it up over the last 10 years and, although he had lost a large amount of work because of the recession, things seemed to be picking up.
I mentioned that my work had dropped off dramatically since the summer. He said:
Well, Jon. You can make your own mind up what you do. You can either decide you’re going to go bankrupt or you can decide that you’re going to succeed – in spite of everything.
For some reason, that short conversation had a huge impact on me and I realised that it really is mind over matter and once we make our mind up about something, good or bad, it tends to happen.
As part of my job I often spend time in the UAE. Many different nationals coming here on the promise of work so that they can send some of the hard-earned money back to their families, often the only means of family survival.
Thus I was touched this morning by a lovely welcome from a Filipino woman who works in a Lebanese café which I often frequent. I asked after her young daughter …
Yes, she said, she is now 7 years old, and she will see her daughter again in 8 months time, because she is leaving the job when her visa expires, which will enable her to get her passport back, and then her return airfare will be paid so that she can return home.
“My daughter was 2 and a half when I last saw her.”
There are thousands of people like her in the same situation, and they still carry on with a smile knowing that others depend on them for life!
Ask to see some proof today first.
Learning from Dogs 