My predictions is that as the population continues to age, stock markets and economies around the globe will continue to slide and perhaps even collapse. 50 years from now, the world will be much different from what it is today, all thanks to this generation’s reluctance to reproduce itself and acceptance of widespread massacres of unborn children.

There’s only one problem with all this new-found populism – it doesn’t exist because we Americans don’t do populist.  We all love our elites too much to go for that kind of stuff.  That’s right, I said ELITES and I mean left and right too.

What got me started on this was a movie trailer online I stumbled across a while back and the populist talk brought it back to mind.  The movie being advertised was one of those rightwing ‘documentaries’ that was supposed to mock Michael Moore’s methods in his films.  The point the movie was trying to make is that liberals are hypocrites because they are concerned about the poor and middle class…as they climb into their limosines and private jets.

OK, let’s get past the conservatives’ odd view that being a liberal Democrat concerned about the less privileged and middle class means that they have to become monks who take a vow of poverty (guess they never heard of noblesse oblige).  The Republicans, in their way, lay claim to those same concerns and none of their supporters hold them to the same standards as they do for wealthy Democrats.

The point is that movie could have just as easily been made by a liberal about conservatives and both would still miss the real issue by a mile which is, down deep, we REALLY like rich and powerful people a lot and we keep voting them into office.

Blame it on American guilt over being thrown out of all of the good countries when we were founded and that we really do miss royalty.  Lord knows we try hard to create our own – singers, actors, athletes – but they come up short and are discarded as quickly as they were crowned.  See, the thing about royalty is that they are what they are no matter what.  A Duchess doesn’t lose her title because she loses it in a beauty salon and shaves her hair off.  A Baron can go out drinking heavily and trying to take all the drugs nightly then go in and out of rehab like he has his own personal revolving door and he’s still a Baron.  American royalty substitutes don’t get that kind of a break – go a little too crazy in public, start to lose your voice a bit, be unable to hit those homers or make those touchdowns anymore and it’s the French Revolution again and off goes your head.

So where do we go for our royals?  Why, politics of course.

I’m not talking about any individual here, individual politicians are often subject to the same rules that all of the other royalty substitutes rise and fall by.  The royalty I’m talking about is who we always look to as ready to either represent us or lead the nation.  Who are our populists, our kings and queens?  Rich people, plain and simple.

You may be brilliant but if you don’t have the bucks, either earned or inherited, kiss off politics. Look around:  Sarah Palin and her family are worth at least a million dollars.  The last nominee for President for either major party that didn’t come to the race already wealthy was Bill Clinton but he wasn’t exactly hurting either and he’s made up for that since.  Ross Perot ran for President as an independent with tons of coin in the bank to back it up.  More examples abound and we even do the jobs of fooling ourselves about these people by dressing up our worship of the wealthy in the words like ”success” i.e. successful business man/woman etc. etc.

Our self-delusion is so complete that we consider these people “populists” and “ordinary folks who understand our problems.”  Then we act surprised when they act for their interests and not ours as if it wasn’t as obvious as hell that’s exactly what they were all about from the get-go.

So please, don’t talk to me about today’s populism until you’re ready to elect that intelligent janitor and send that mediocre-minded CEO packing.  Until then, GOD SAVE THE KING!!

http://ranting-liberally.blogspot.com

You have to wonder who these guys were talking to for the years they had to plan the Vancouver games.

I am still glad to have them though no matter. Now if we could just get some of that snow from Washington D.C.!

Bad weather, a fenced-off flame: It’s one problem after another at a limping Olympics

VANCOUVER, B.C. – From fire to ice, nothing seems to be going right at the Olympics.

The torch malfunctioned. Warm weather turned the slopes and the event schedule to slop. A Zamboni had to ride to the rescue from Calgary following a meltdown at the speedskating rink.

By Tuesday, the Glitch Games were in full swing: 20,000 standing-room tickets for the snowboarding venue were voided because fans had fallen between the bales of hay under the melting layers of trucked-in snow.

Want to take a picture of the Olympic cauldron? Make sure that camera is pressed up against the chain-link fence – provided there’s room to squeeze in and a Vancouver 2010 banner isn’t in the way.

Organizers expect to unveil a plan Wednesday to address the rising public outcry and bring people closer to the flame, the most distinguished and enduring symbol of any Olympics.

“Perhaps,” conceded Renee Smith-Valade, a spokeswoman for the organizing committee, “we did underestimate the degree to which people would want to get close to it.”

Perhaps. At a news conference, a Canadian TV reporter asked organizers why the flame was hidden behind “a ratty-looking prison-camp fence.” And the Globe and Mail newspaper chose to allude to another Olympic city – Berlin.

Addressing the head of the Vancouver Games, the paper cried: “Mr. Furlong, tear down this fence!”

Of course, no scheduling or logistics issue – or sporting event, for that matter – seems significant in light of the death of a Georgian luger on the first day of the Olympics.

And, to be fair, there have been bright spots. Moguls skier Alexandre Bilodeau gave Canada its first gold medal in three home Olympics. NHL superstar Sidney Crosby has the Canadian men’s hockey team looking for gold. NBC ratings have been strong.

But aside from that, it’s been one problem after another for a games governed not so much by the Olympic creed as by Murphy’s Law. Shades of Atlanta.

The cancelled tickets at Cypress Mountain – 28,000 in all – mean about $1.5 million in lost revenue for the games, and disappointment for people who spent $50 to $65 to see events like the halfpipe and snowboardcross.

They’ll get refunds, although anyone who bought secondhand may be out of luck. Fans whose tickets were still good, and who went up the mountain Tuesday to see events, were treated to blinding snow.

Athletes weren’t spared, either. Timing foulups marred both biathlon events Tuesday. A Swedish woman was held up at her start gate for 14 seconds, and two of the men went off too early. Officials later corrected for the errors.

“It is embarrassing,” said Norbert Baier, the International Biathlon Union’s technical delegate. “Why do we have this incompetence?”

The events schedule, meanwhile, looks like it’s been run over by a bobsled.

On Tuesday alone, the men’s super-combined, up in the mountains at Whistler, was postponed because of an overnight snowstorm. The snowboardcross finals were rescheduled. Women’s downhill training was cancelled.

This after downhill training was postponed repeatedly earlier in the Olympics because of wet weather that messed with the snow. It’s been so mild that locals have jokingly called it the Vancouver Summer Olympics.

“It’s getting ridiculous, for sure, how much changing of the schedule and shuffling around has been happening,” said Thomas Vonn, husband and coach of Lindsey Vonn, a multimedal favourite.

Then again, each day of cancelled training gives Vonn’s badly bruised right shin more time to heal. For everyone else, the delays are a mounting annoyance.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 the worst, this is a 10. That’s for sure,” said Patrick Riml, head coach of Canada’s women’s Alpine team.

“Wouldn’t mind racing already,” American Alpine skier Ted Ligety tweeted.

Indoors, there are the ice escapades. At the Richmond Oval, the speedskating venue, the resurfacing machine went on the blink Monday. Instead of a track as smooth as glass, it left piles of slush and pools of water.

So the Olympics, which has a sponsorship deal with Olympia ice resurfacers, had to call in a replacement – a Zamboni from a whole province over in Calgary, specifically designed for the size of a speedskating oval.

Vancouver organizers say they’re responding as best they can to problems mostly out of their control.

“It’s a little like losing your luggage,” Smith-Valade said at a news conference where she was bombarded by questions about all that’s gone wrong. “It’s not whether the luggage gets lost – it’s how you deal with it.”

All this started on Friday night, at the opening ceremony, where the traditional climax, the lighting of the Olympic flame, was a bust because of a hydraulic failure.

One of the four legs of the indoor cauldron failed to rise out of its trap door in the floor, leaving the structure weirdly unbalanced and one of the final four torchbearers standing around awkwardly with nothing to do.

It’s been enough to draw comparisons to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the gold standard of glitchy games. The press in Britain – which gets the next Olympics, in London – has questioned whether these are the worst games ever.

The International Olympic Committee insists it has no second thoughts.

“If we had the decision again, we would take the same decision,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. “It would come to Vancouver.”

Copyright © 2010 Canadian Press

It’s four months after the biggest act of terrorism ever on U.S. soil and it’s clear that the 9/11 attackers were foreign based, not domestic like the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building.  The country is the most united it’s been for a while and with bipartisan support the invasion and initial defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan takes place.   Now it’s 2002, time for the State of the Union speech to the nation and a new term is introduced into the national debate:  The Axis of Evil. 

Who are the three nations who Bush names as members of this Axis?  Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

Plans go into motion to build up support for a second invasion and war in the Middle East, this time supposedly to stop development, storage and possible terrorist use of what the Bush administration claimed were stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons by Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein.  The Republicans successfully use this as a campaign issue against the Democrats in 2002 as the ‘threat’ from Iraq is sold to frightened Americans. 

In 2003, Bush makes good on his threat to invade Iraq and we’re pretty familiar with what happens after that.

While a majority of Americans applaud the invasion of Iraq, the other two ‘members’ of the ‘Axis of Evil’ get worried that they will be next.  What becomes clear very soon is that the Bush administration is quick to invade a nation that was essentially defenseless after the first Gulf War but when a possible opponent shows that they have the means to fight back, the Republicans shift to just wanting to talk. 

Case in point:  Iraq is invaded, North Korea with it’s nearly 6 million member armed forces and potential to build nuclear weapons gets a good GOP talking to.  The talking continues during the Bush era even when North Korea does their first nuclear tests and test fires the missiles to deliver them. 

Would any of these three have a chance in hell of defeating an all-out conflict with America?  Of course not, but if the case for having one is weak on the U.S. side, any support vanishes rather quickly when a lot of Americans die or get maimed for what the country sees as an unworthy war.  If a party wants to build it’s war cred, pick someone weak to fight so you can win fast and get out.

Iran gets this message loud and clear.  Iran has armed forces but nowhere near the reported size of North Korea so what can they do to prevent invasion by the Bushies?  Announce loudly that they are close to making nuclear weapons.  Sure enough, the Republicans back off and instead of sending troops they send sanctions.  Despite much saber rattling on both sides that’s about where things stay until the election of Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, even with a President who has expressed no desire or interest in following the neocons’ plans for constant war in the Middle East, that’s where things still stand.  If you followed Iran’s rhetoric, you’d think Bush was still in the White House. 

The reason for this is now the Iran regime finds the threat of a foreign invader useful not on the international stage but the domestic one.  Iran is facing a major movement to reform it’s quasi-democratic form of government and as usual the people in power don’t want their power reformed away.  Attacking reform protestors in the streets, even executing some, isn’t getting the job done for the Iranian establishment.  So they are going for what works for every country – convince enough Iranians that they are in danger from outside attack and that silly reform thing goes by the wayside.

Now, the boogeymen in the case of the United States are hard to find here.  Sure there were the usual neocon war pimps howling for war with Iraq that they could watch from the safety of their homes but they are no longer in power.  Remarks from the Obama White House only vaguely spoke of further action and that looks to remain more sanctions than military.  So who steps in to take our place as a friend of the rulers of Iran who are seeking a foreign threat?  Israel, who openly talks of bombing raids of Iran.

OK, now what’s the problem from the side of the people in the U.S. and Israel for their desire to attack Iran?   Well, a couple of things:

First, the reports on where Iran actually is in developing a nuclear weapon is sketchy and contradictory, even as to whether they actually have an interest in actually making one.  Some reports say a nuclear Iran is months away, others say it’s still years off.  Iran wants to have its cake and keep it secret too – they claim they are close for the sake of bluster but never say for sure.

Second, the real threat from a nuclear weapon isn’t that anyone just has one – it’s whether they can get it to a target.   So far, Iran hasn’t shown much capability in delivering such a weapon anywhere beyond their underground labs.  Being afraid of a nuclear weapon without the means of it being delivered anywhere is like being afraid of a box of bullets.  Both have the potential for harm but that requires a gun to shoot them out of or a missile to launch them on.

With domestic uses for a Iran ‘threat’ in three countries now, unfortunately not much is going to change.  The Republicans want Iran around so they can make their usual “Democrats are weak on defense” argument for election time, a new conservative government in Israel wants to show their people that they will protect them and the Iranians want to have the threat of foreign attack to shut down that reform movement. 

And so it goes…..

http://ranting-liberally.blogspot.com

Yesterday’s events in Tehran display clearly the need for a tiered posture with the present Iranian state. Ahmadinejad spoke to a massive crowd on Azadi Square, the opponents of his election nowhere to be found. He exploits the reasonable expectations of UN members for inspection of the Iranian nuclear program to verify it’s peaceful usage, to incite us-verses-them nationalism. His message quite obviously is that Iran will not bow to outsiders on his watch.

He had a bit easier time of it whilst George Bush was around to saber rattle about attacking Iran, and never distinguished between peaceful nuclear power development and weapons development. Not so now with Obama nor Gordon Brown, whom by willingness to deal on that point,  help isolate Ahmadinejad as the saber rattler he indeed resembled yesterday.

There always however in the last year, has been the undercard of diplomats negotiating as the leaders engaged in the visible row. Ahmadinejad popping off usually seems to precede news of agreement on some point. And then of course there’s the fact he is not legitimately elected by many accounts. What is not well known is how effectively, if at all, the West is engaging and backing what is quite clearly a massive groundswell for Iranian modernisation under a far more secular government  

The Times

February 11, 2010

Iran crushes opposition protests with violence

 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7023684.ece

Iran’s regime thwarted the opposition’s hopes of turning the 31st anniversary celebrations of the Islamic revolution into another massive protest today.

It out-manoeuvred the so-called Green movement by swamping the official proceedings with huge numbers of its own supporters, preventing the media from covering anything else and blanketing the rest of the capital with security forces who forcefully suppressed the opposition’s relatively muted demonstrations.

President Ahmadinejad also sought to grab the headlines and divert attention from the protests by announcing that Iran had produced its first stock of 20 per cent-enriched uranium. He declared that Iran was now a “nuclear state”.

Opposition websites claimed a young woman named Leila Zareii, was killed and many others were wounded or arrested. The opposition leaders Mehdi Karroubi and Mohammed Khatami – a former president – were attacked, as was Zahra Rahnavard, wife of the Green Movement’s other leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Even Zahra Eshraghi, granddaughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 revolution, was briefly arrested. She and her brother, Hassan, are both opposition sympathisers and she is married to Mr Khatami’s brother.

“It’s pretty clear that Greens everywhere will feel demoralised… The overall feeling is one of disappointment,” one well-placed source in Tehran told The Times last night. “The opposition miscalculated,” said another.

The regime was determined to prevent the so-called Green Movement from hijacking the biggest day in Iran’s calendar and largely succeeded.

It filled Azadi Square with tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters for the main event – Mr Ahmadinejad’s speech which was broadcast live on state television. Opposition websites posted pictures of the fleets of buses that had brought in the huge crowd and said it was given free food and drinks.

Most foreign journalists are banned from Iran. Those that remain, and their Iranian counterparts, were bussed to and from Azadi Square and barred from reporting on anything else, meaning only the patchiest information emerged from the rest of the city.

Opposition websites said Revolutionary Guards and basiji militiamen were stationed everywhere and that they moved swiftly and violently to break up opposition demonstrations.

They claimed the security forces used live ammunition, knives, teargas and paintballs that would enable them to identify protesters later and that they were beating and arresting women as well as men. They were backed up by water canon, new Chinese anti-riot vehicles and helicopters. Some, wearing plain clothes, infiltrated the protesters. The mobile telephone, internet and text messaging systems were seriously disrupted.

Mr Karroubi’s son, Hussein, said his father had to get out of his car and walk towards Sadeghieh Square, where thousands of supporters had gathered, because the roads were blocked. He was joined by other protestors, but they found their way blocked by plainclothes security forces who attacked them with knives, batons and tear gas.

Mr Karroubi’s bodyguards had to bundle him into a passing car which managed to drive him away, but not before the security forces smashed its windscreen. One of the bodyguards was seriously injured. Mr Karroubi’s other son, Ali, was arrested.

Film clips taken with mobile telephones showed opposition supporters chanting “Death to the dictator” on streets and in subway trains and ripping down a poster of Ayatollah Khomeini. Unrest was also reported in Shiraz, Isfahan, Mashad and other Iranian cities, but it was impossible to verify the reports.

It was also impossible to calculate how many opposition supporters turned out as their demonstrations were scattered. However the numbers appeared to be significantly smaller than on December 27, the holy day of Ashura, even though the Green movement’s three leaders had, unusually, urged their supporters to protest.

One protester insisted the opposition had come out in significant numbers, but “the problem was that we were not able to gather in one place because (the security forces) were very violent”.

Another said: “It means they won and we lost. They defeated us. They were able to gather so many people. But this doesn’t mean we have been defeated for good. It’s a defeat for now, today. We need time to regroup.”

Major General Gholam-Ali Rashid, deputy chief of staff of the armed forces, was quoted as saying: “The massive turnout of the nation shocked the central command of the arrogant front, including the US, England and the Zionist regime.”

Copyright 2010 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Here’s the link to the letter from the Congressional Budget Office.

Points from the article:

• Medicare and Medicaid would be completely revamped
• As a result of the changes to Medicare and Medicaid, beneficiaries would likely be able to get a good plan, and thus will have access to only a very basic form of coverage.   Beneficiaries will also have to settle on a plan for themselves…that sounds like that very confusing drug plan where it was difficult for seniors to make informed decisions about what plan would be best for them.
• The last paragraph says it best:

“It is difficult to predict how such a sweeping change in federal spending on health care would affect the behavior of insurers, health providers, and individual consumers,” Elmendorf writes. “In particular, how spending would be reduced for physicians, hospitals, advanced technological treatments, drugs, or other health care is uncertain. However, it is likely that fewer services would be provided and treatments would be less technologically advanced compared with the circumstances that would exist under the alternative fiscal scenario.”

But then, who knows what the Democrats have to offer us?

Matters didn’t improve this morning, the day after Obama’s State of the Union address when the Republican in the household mused that it was believable in his lifetime (he’s in his mid-forties) that the U. S.  evolves into a dictatorship.  This is an Eisenhower Republican who hated Bush & the neo ~ cons.

Can’t you just see it though?  Our new corporate citizens invoking a war to protect their interests…and the gov doesn’t move fast enough, so they kinda sorta help it along…bloodless coup?

Do no evil, Google says. But the irony is that it did help the Chinese government block sensitive information from the Chinese internet users, which is necessary for it to operate in China. However, this time it seems to be really provoked and made its simmering feud with the authority public. Google is likely to quit China.

The post on Google blog states the Google China has been suffering from cyber attacks and also, the information of its clients, many of them human rights advocates, were accessed by third party.

What is more well-known is its self-censorship. For example, typing in words such as Tiananmen in Google.cn will never return you pictures or texts about the 1989 incident.

So, when last night Google announced it would lift the censorship, the Chinese internet users flooded to the website to search for all the sensitive terms they never had a chance to access. In twitters, forums, discussion boards, we witness an explosion of talks about Google and its possible departure, or exile, from China.

On Twitter, pzhtx said,

In the list of pop tags, “Tiananmen” rises to the first place. The Chinese netizens are saying goodbye to Google in this way.

People were mourning that they are now restricted inside the largest LAN network in the world, which is encircled by the strict censorship and the Great Firewall.
A tweet is madly circulated on the internet:

The sin of facebook is that it helps people know who they wanna know. The sin of Twitter is that it allows people to say what they wanna say. The sin of Google is that it lets people find what they wanna find, and Youtube let us see what we wanna see. So, they are all kicked away.

It directly affects millions of netizens, because since Google’s expansion in China, its search engine, Gmail, and Google Doc have been widely used. A netizen in Xiaonei, which is a social network website popular among young people, was panic:

I saw that “Google planned to quit the Chinese market”. I was scared awake…My Gmail, My Google docs, my Google Search, and my internet.

These days are uncommon for Chinese cyberspace. Baidu has just been hacked by self-alleged Iranian hackers, which prompted a cyber war. As a Chinese local search engine with the largest market share, Baidu is often compared with Google. Its reputation is blackened because of its stronger censorship and the fact that it has removed search returns about poisonous milk after taking money from the producers.

Baidu will show you nothing that you shouldn’t know, but Google is the opposite. It knows too much.

Google is highly praised among internet users:

Google quit Chinese market?! A firm of backbone! In a place without democracy, Google prefers to quit. What is more important, money or morality? I won’t say foreigners are impolite anymore, because they have shown us what it means by ‘sacrifice oneself for justice’. Look at the Chinese nowadays, the merit of ancestors were gone. I am ashamed to call us the offspring of the Huaxia Great China.

A sarcastic price of words is getting quite popular around the cyberspace.

People born in 90s: Today I stepped out of the Great Firewall and saw a foreign website named Google. Shit, it is all but a copy of Baidu.
Born in 00s: What do you mean by stepping out of Great Firewall?
Born in 10s: What do you mean by website?
Born in 20s: What is ‘foreign’?

Tang Peng shouted: Great Party, Long live the CCP dynasty!! Finally Google would like to quit the Chinese market ‘voluntarily’!!

People soon make up how the state-run media CCTV might comment on the incident.

Recently because Google encountered issues such as obscene search returns, infringement on copyrights, it is boycotted by the Chinese netizens. Also due to the decreasing revenue, it is considering to quit the Chinese market. This is another case of boycotting a perverted foreign website by Chinese people.

Right now, a campaign to put flowers to the Google offices in China is gaining momentum on the internet. It is thought to be a way to memorize Google and express the grief and anger against censorship. In front of the Google Beijing office, people have started to take action for a flower commemoration.