Bugs

God bless you ... this claim of constant victimization makes me wish I could show Ms Mallick some real victimization. (Just kidding.) A lot of this 'stereotyping' is just a general expectation about how men and women should act. What really gets me is how, when the manipulation is severe, women like Mallick will use guilt and shame to force the guy to 'man up' when it suits them. She's contemptible, not because she's a woman, but because she's just so vile.

It seems to be going on all over the place. This, from North Carolilna: http://www.newbernsj.com/articles/machine-91656-screen-voter.html

It seems to be already going on, with the early vote ... The article can be read at http://www.fox5vegas.com/news/25511115/detail.html

Tempers do seem to be getting short. Of course, this pales in comparison to the Gladney incident. He's still in a wheelchair.

It's not a parallel situation. Omar is a war criminal. He pled guilty to avoid being dealt with as a war criminal. Either that, or a brigand. He was the only prisoner at Gitmo against which there was a clear case of murder. The Americans would be entitled to march him to the wall, and shoot him, just as would have happened to the fictive Quebecois hero if the Nazis had caught him. The killer did not wear a uniform, and was not serving his country. He is not covered by Geneva. I wonder if Oleg ever ponders what the Taliban or al Qaeda did to their prisoners? It's probably futile to discuss this with someone who is a hardened anti-American cipher, but it is worth noting that before the Muslim-dominated UN horned in, armies worked out how prisoners were to be treated through the time-honored principles of vengeance. For those who think that war is a kind of game, governed by rules, it's probably a fresh new idea to consider that war is, in fact, the breakdown of those rules. War is the Hobbbesian world, where life is nasty, brutal and short. If your enemy tortures wantonly, you torture his troops more. Don't kid yourself, that's the way it has always been, and probably it will continue to work that way. Add to that, simply because the only place where these arcane human rights precepts are applied is in the Armies of the west. Not even Oleg would think that Saudi Arabia should lay off hanging people from the ceiling until they confess. The Taliban used to skin their Russian captives alive, preferably within earshot of the Russian camp. No UN inquiries ever ensued. Oleg gets himself into a lather about the Americans trying to dominate the world ... revealing how little he knows, and how much of his mental imagery comes from fiction. There is no doubt that the Americans have been one of the powerhouses of the 20th century, but it didn't come from domination of anybody. It came by finding cheaper and better products to compete with other products in world markets. They earned their own wealth. It was the effort to stop conflicts on a global basis, and to encourage the world to move towards free trade, that has left them in their present situation, almost broke, with a currency that probably will be destroyed by the present leadership group. All in an attempt to get nations like China into trade relationships with them, to preserve ... PEACE!!! If that wasn't what it was about, then they had to be the biggest fools in world history. Lets not the rest of us get in a lather about those fictions, shall we?

We shouldn't be too self-congratulatory about this -- in fact, our banks lusted to get into the derivative game, and confronted the Chretien government with their fait accompli merger -- they were determined to form two or three mega-bank. Chreitien and Martin, God bless them, stopped that. But credit does, in important ways, determine the price of housing. Can anyone doubt, if people had to put 25% down, or look for a second mortgage, prices on houses would never have been bid up to these levels? The present, artificially low interest rates has revived a slumping real estate market (at least in Toronto) and made it a minor boom. So -- doesn't it also follow that when mortgage rates go up, the cost will drop like a stone? Toronto has tens of thousands of new condo projects starting up right now -- based on cheap money. It's going to be awful, trying to sell those places if the interest rates are 8% in two years. That over-production is a efficient economy reading the signals right, but the signals are wrong ...

Yes, we should. Is this what really happened? We heard only of the Belgium troops pulling out. And Romeo claims that he was calling for authorization to head tbis all off ... and was refused by white racists!

Why can't he have a justifiable point? Do we know he's being ridiculous? The Dutch troops did wilt under pressure. I remember one of our guys being chained to some probable air target by -- I believe -- the Serbs, and we weren't too aggressive, either. Who knows what the full story is? But what's wrong with an open mind? I know, for a fact, that having male and females fight side-by-side has lots of failures attributed to it, but it isn't politically correct to say so. We pretend.

Not only that, it seems to make health care worse for a lot of people. The people with the gold-plated plans face extra taxation, for instance, as a kind of punishment. $500 billion is being slashed out of Medicare. Of course, you never know until you see the final bill, and even then ... but it's about a lot more than A lot of the protesters started out with very specific questions about their own situation, and were recipients rather than ideological ... they had concerns, and the politicians dismissed them as astroturf. Apart from the merits of the case, the bill has been larded up with other issues, a different kind of 'pork', particularly the kind 'pro-choice' crowd like. It's bound to increase the difficulty in passing it.

Yeah, the Sudan is doing real good ...

Personally, I find it hard to get upset because the rich and powerful have a little action on the side ... My respect for Tiger has only grown, after a close examination if the women he victimized so wantonly ... had I known that being able to drive a ball 300 yards could do for a guy ... But Spitzer is disgusting. What kind of schlubb keeps his socks on?

Is the only thing to be discussed is this interminable wrange about who to blame? Christ, there's more than enough blame for everybody. What about Greenspan and Bernanke? What's more regulated than banking and mortgage finance? The problem is the regulators -- Fannie Mae in particular -- gamed their own rules. And what about the bankers, major supporters of the Democrat Party? There is no 'good' and 'bad' here. Anybody got any ideas about what to do about it? Or what's going to happen? My point is that the Treasury can compel the banks to do their accounting by strict, mark-to-market rules, any time they want to. It doesn't require Congresss, it's simply a change in a regulation back to what it normally was. And that would start to clear the logjam of foreclosures. Which makes this program probably a farce.

I guess this is American politics, but it affects us all ... it's another plan to make everything OK by passing money around that ends up making things easier for the banks. See what you think ... Just so you know, the whole article is at: '>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/business/08short.html?src=sch&pagewanted=all There's five million mortgages that ultimately face foreclosure. Obama's team has already put up $75 billion, paying the down payment on low-interest mortgages. [For the life of me, it sounds like NINJA mortgages are still in vogue. (NINJA = No Income, No Job ...)] Now, they acknowledge that this plan has hardly put a dent in the problem. And, of course, all of this could, it is feared, risk the fragile recovery. (Ahhh, what recovery are they talking about? The jobless recovery? Maybe they just don't want to shake people too much before November and the elections? The point is -- there can be no recovery until huge amounts of exactly this debt is 'liquidated'. The article doesn't say this, but another facet of this problem is that the banks can't afford to take the losses that liquidation will force on them. There is, after all, a long-used, well worked out bit of law to cover these situations. It's called foreclosure, and bankruptcy -- and that's exactly what the financiers and bankers fear more than anything ... deflation! Instead, the government hopes to let the home-owner off the hook with the bank, by giving all the parties a pittance. In the example given, for instance, the two mortgage holders would each get $1,000 from the government to forgive the underwater portion of the debt, so the house can be sold. But if the bank does that, it loses an asset worth $150,000 on the books, and replace it with $48,000 cash. It's capital base goes down by $102,000. How many times will the bank do that if each time, it takes the bank closer to its own closure by FDIC? The article lists 'advantages' to the plan, but they come down to spreading the burn around so the banks can be saved. Because this plan makes no sense, whatever, if there isn't a wink and a nudge going on ... that, in fact, the banks won't have to be closed after all ... for some reason or another which they haven't figured out yet. It's just the way the Obama White House operates. But there are problems. A lot of properties have two, three, four or more mortgages on them. All of these claims would be automatically wiped out by a foreclosure. If the first lender can only get a fraction of his money, then certainly the rest will be screwed. How long do you think it will be before bank managers are working with outside buys on tricky little deals that end up with his friends getting good properties cheap? See what I mean? This is just another way to appear to be doing something. The problem is the banks, and they are in a regulatory situation that gives them zero good choices. They ought to be compelled to 'mark to market' at some point in the future. That means, they have to evaluate their asset, the loan, at its current market value ... lots lower, in most cases. At the same time, the banks have to maintain a ratio of their own money to the loans outstanding. Marking to market would have quickly reduced the bank's capital to zero if the rules were in effect -- and they would already been out of business. It's unreasonable to expect the banks to face up to their own bankruptcies, and do the right thing. My conclusion is that Obama and gang are just fooling around ... they are trying anything to avoid facing up the the problem -- liquidating the debt, and most centrally, the mortgage debt --- because the country is being sacrificed to the banks. Comments?

Ain't this a bitch. The details are at… http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.6a237570be4660439e371341ae8452d5.a41&show_article=1 This is the kind of trading scheme that is the model Obama is trying to impose on America, and hence, intro which we will follow. The idea is that each state, then industry, then individual plant each divide an allocation of permissible pollution (called the Annual Absolution), and can sell what it doesn't use. There are known as Indulgences, and their price reached a peak at 30 euros, about $40 a tonne, before it turned out that there is no scientific basis for the policy. Since the fraud was exposed, the price has collapsed to 13 euros a tonne, at present. Still, 13 euros x a gazillion tonnes ... it adds up. Just so you know, steelmakers and cement plants are huge polluters. I guess this means ... the critics were right. What a sad end for so many well-meant hopes, those hopes taken and crushed by venal forces who care nothing in mankind survives or not ... it just shows you, good intentions are not enough. Comments?

Even more ... this is from a month or so ago, but still, this bit of blather shows it wasn't a solitary event. This time, the interviewee gets a few licks in ... like "... Now you're answering your own question, maybe you should be your own guest ..." Do you suppose Ratigan thinks this is hard-nosed journalism?

I think the Obama team is going to have to give up some bodies, in a false atonement exercise, in the future -- but not now, and not yet. Healthcare is going to be treated as a victory for them. They may want to change styles in Congress, but the Democrats see their first year as one of willing collaboration with the Republicans. (What they mean is they are willing to give some Republicans some of the pork.) Obama's real problem is the economy. Bernanke is safe, but Gleithner is vulnerable. I think they work as a team, in reality, and Obama would sacrifice Rahm to save Gleithner because, after all ... Bernanke prints the money.

I don't have cable, but no channel is as excessive in its partisanship, top to bottom, as MSNBC. You probably don't see it because you share their hysteria. More objective folks can see that people like Cavuto, or Joe Scarbough, are ten times the professional that Olberman is. O'Reilly and Hannirty are restrained compared to these guys. MSNBC is the home of news hysteria. They ought to call it PMS-MSNBC.

Acorn was cleared? The charges are still going through the courts -- the ones about registered dead people for the election, etc. The point is that they were clearly giving advice on how to beat immigration, and offered help in setting up a brothel exploiting underage women from foreign lands. The ones, involving voter intimidation in the actual polling station was dropped by Obama's appointee for Attorney General Holder, a notorious fuck up, politically. He's the boob who thought it would be a great idea to give the creep that planed 9-11 a public trial. I guess that's OK in punked's world, because ... after all ... he's black. The fact is Shady's closer to the truth than punked is ...

Another hilarious attempt by the MSNBC to mug a spokesman for the Tea Party ... It's as if Keith Olberman has become the pace-setter for announcers ... when it comes to wretched excess, Olberman is the most wretched, but Ratigan is hot on his tail. We Canadians can look at this and laugh, because none of us support either side ... and we can see who's being stifled, etc But how much better are our media, for all the patina of professionalism they take on?

We know that Tom Delay, with whom this is compared, was a lightweight compared to Rangel, and he was forced to resign his chairmanship. There were others. Rangel is a running sore of corruption, and he uses a very powerful position -- Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee -- which he uses for his own advantage. (If you're a Democrat, you don't have to worry about an audit.) There's no way this Congress can claim any special ethics purity, except that the concept of ethics seems to have disappeared.

You will excuse me if I intervene in this bunfight, now that it's over ... but as I tag along here, I get inceasingly bored by Punked's necessity of replaying the constant narrative ... Democrats good, Republicans bad ... like something sung at school, part of opening exercises. Let's pretend that one of the benefits of being Canadian is that we don't have to beat each other over the heads over that bullshit. The interesting thing about this is how the majority of the American public is resisting. Government medicine is being imposed on the public. The people don't trust it. They don't believe that the whatever million they claim are uninsured can be given insurance, and the cost go down, or even stabilize. Everything about it is illegit. There are tie-ins to drug companies, and other suppliers of medical supplies, there are fines for having a gold-plated plan, it provides state funding for abortions, people who don't buy in will face fines. It's really coercive. Not only that, the thing was presented as an emergency measure, a thousand pages and more of dense legalese, a cubic foot of pulp, requiring immediate passage in a few days. Nobody seems to have read the whole thing, but the Senate Bill stripped the House version. Most Americans, it seems, compare it with what they're getting, and they don't like the deal. I think that's the part that creeps Punked out. How can any one not want government medicine? Just the thought seems crazy to him. It's like not wanting government education ...

Do you have some special information that nobody else has? It's one thing to disagree with somebody, and it's another thing to call them 'crazy'. The guy talks about abortions. He is strongly against them. But what he says is true. Every abortion ends a human life almost as soon as it is started. You wouldn't argue with that, surely? Just for the record, I don't have any strong opinion on abortions. Sorry, I won't be dragged into that. I think you just want to shut such people up. Why? Because they outgun you, intellectually, perhaps? After all, you don't actually refute what they say ... you simply express and attitude, as if you know how others should feel. Why is it wrong to protect human life, in all its forms? Give us a reason to support you.

France has, hesitatingly admitted that, well, yes ... they were drawn into the bit of nastiness in Rwanda and Burundi ... that spat between the Hutus and the Tutsis a few years back ... After it was over, central Africa was full of recriminations, and secondary wars continue to this day. The whole thing seems to have bee blacked out by the media. But there was a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Rwanda that took public testimony from any who cared to testify. The hearings went on for months, as thousands and thousands of people told their individual stories. France responded by issuing arrest warrants against the Tutsis, including prominent members of the government ... They refused to testify, and the diplomatic relations were broken. None of this got in our news. France has blood in its hands. Kruschev, in a similar situation, had the sincerity to denounce Stalin for the gulags ... the French seem to lack that class, the sincerity required. They always acted as if they knew nothing of the buildup of the massacre. Strangely, though, the incident that started the incident was when a plane, carrying the leaders of both Rwanda and Burundi, crashed. It was hit by a missile that had been supplied by France. (Mitterand, the socialist President of France, had a son who was often described as an arms dealer in Africa.) Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation established that France was invovled in initiating the violence, and preparing for it. It flew in the weapons required, including machetes. They stood aside when the violence started, after the Belgium troops had withdrawn, in those crucial hours when Kofi Annan was refusing the Canadians the orders to act to prevent the violence. More testimony, from many sources, told of how Tutsis fled to the French for protection, and how the French turned them over to Hutus ... who, many times, hacked them to pieces. France insisted that it could not have foreseen the genocide. In 2006, they responded to the information coming to light from the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, by issuing arrest warrants for eight Tutsi officials close to President Kagame, suggesting that they had deliberately provoked the genocide of their own people by assassinating a moderate Hutu president in May 1994. Make no mistake. The evidence is clear, and France is simply ignoring it. They are going through this charade without acknowledging a scrap of guilt. I think it is contemptible. if this were the Americans, what would the French be saying? In fact, if this were the Americans, what would the world be saying? Truthfully, the world only cares about the corpses if they can be used in anti-American propaganda. France is the big imperial power in Africa, and makes mischief all through Africa and the Arab world, and it's time the world's media started telling us about it. The whole article is at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sarkozy-admits-frances-role-in-rwandan-genocide-1911272.html Comments

I don't think that's the issue, is it? What's at stake is the respect that Williams gets from his electorate. Danny Williams presided over a health system that was derelict, to the point of misdiagnosing hundreds of women suspected of having breast cancer. Some women lost breasts unnecessarily, and other women died because their cancers weren't discovered. When insiders saw the numbers, he stifled their efforts, and didn't react until it was public. Even then, he did nothing for awhile, and in his usual grandiose style, suddenly began making a lot of noise and acting as if he was cleaning house ... And when it's his turn to use the public system, he goes to Miami. If I were part of his flock, it would seem to me that he might pull up his sox, and do an adequate job, if he had to pay another price to go 'away'. It's the Bolshevik tendency that runs all through the political elites ... you know, the Communists who had private dachas on the Black Sea ... in the same way, our political class has its own healthcare, as the previous poster noted. Maybe they wouldn't be so cavalier with our health care if they used it.

They're at it again! The headline screams: " ... United States the heartland of climate-change skepticism ..." United States? Don't you have to be delusional, as the snow settles a foot deep in Virginia, to believe that BS? When even the perps, themselves, concede that there's no scientific reason to believe them, as the word gets out that they even gather less basic data than was the case a decade or two ago, with (now) only one temperature reading in whole of Arctic Canada. Besides, it isn't the US that's obdurate. It's China, and India isn't going to go any further than China. Well, they author sniffs, " ... Science can be controversial in a country where evangelical Christians make up a quarter of the adult population...." I love the pretension of journalists, particularly Canadian ones, who generally have so little to be pretentious about. Yes, we are forewarned. It makes you wonder, doesn't it -- where has this dude been? The basic data upon which he claims where based was dummied up, and now it seems everybody except reporters for Reuters knows it. Look at his incredulity, the poor dear. In interviews with Americans across the country, global warming is often seen as exaggerated, part of a plot to sabotage the U.S. economy or an intrusion in people's lives. These are all ridiculous notions driven into the numb skulls of the religious dim-witted by talk-radio hosts, as far as Reuters is concerned. It makes you wonder what's wrong with the French? Or the Japanese? Don't they read? No, so far as our earnest Reuters man, it's the powerful U.S. oil lobby that makes the difference. Personally, I think the confusion is over. The opponents were right. The proponents were lying and cooking their data, to the point that they destroyed things to cover up their thumbprint on the scales. In the meantime, the whole northern hemisphere is cooler and snowier than it's been in years, and there are responsible scientists who worry that we are entering a long-term cooling cycle. Journalists should watch this and judge themselves accordingly. When scientists lose their credibility, the way this pack of academic bullies have, it isn't easy to redeem themselves. Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2602901#ixzz0gQSeppbv .