Sunday, October 31, 2010

Calendar: All Hallows: Celebrate Halloween with me, viewing Johnny Cash sing Gospel-style his great Resurrection song!

Here's a way to celebrate All Hallows Evening in communion of saints, especially Saint Johnny whose body the grave just can't hold down. The dang commercials interfere with this blog-entry terribly, probably becawz I had to reduce the YouTube offering to fit it into my frontpage format. So, I've also posted this video to refWr+t backpage, or you can go to my yUT2be page (where you can subscribe to my vid library compiled for your enjoyment, mostly), or to the original post by Chris Milk. Or you can view/listen on Mashable where there's a great wr+t=up. Take a look at the ent+r Johnny Cash Project webs+t.


Thanks to Chris Milk, and to all the participants who contributed to the visuals. The Johnny Cash Project inv+ts us to continue to make viz contribs to this hommage video. Thank you J o h n n y for your l+f and music!

EconomicsUSA: Biz-generated Agendas: Money Morning, and MarketWatch both suggest alternatives to Obama policies

First off,  MarketWatch has bundled 4 articles under the heading "Jobs and the Economy: Here's how Washington coud get us back to work" (MW frontpage, Oct31,2k10).  The 4 articles may be found at these locations:

•  Nutting: Stimulus worked, but not that well.
       Sea of debt, h+ productivity undermined job growth
•  Gold: White-collar recession, blue-collar depression.
       Loss of Manufacturing jobs hollows out the economy
•  Powell: US ret+rment system ranks 10th -- out of 14.
       Netherlands tops list; China comes in last
•  Delamaide: Report from a parallel political universe.
       Getting our country back from the banksters

Secondly, there's this morning's email newsletter from Money Mornings in a blog-entry entitled "An Open Letter to Washington: How to fix the deficit and end the Bush-Tax-Cuts" (Oct28,2k10):

MARTIN HUTCHINSONContributing EditorMoney Morning




Dear Mr. President and members of Congress:

In the months that follow Tuesday's 
midterm elections, and into the New Year, you all face three very significant challenges. You must: 
  • Find a solution to the Bush-tax-cuts controversy.
  • Rein in the huge-and-growing U.S. budget deficit.
  • And better police Wall Street, which got us into this mess in the first place.
You can solve all three of these problems with a single, simple proposition. And you can do so without having to ask U.S. taxpayers to dig into their wallets or savings.

Let me explain.
-- EconoMix

Click the time-stamp below to Read more ...

PoliticsUSA: Midterm Elections: Polling shifts, pointing to massive Republican gains at least in Representatives -- whatever happened to PropRep?

Reporting in Washington Post, Jon Cohen and Dan Baltz in "Voter unrest echoes that of 1994, poll shows" (Oct31,2k10) tell us that a "sour mood threatens the Democrat congressional majorities" becawz "seven in 10 voters see the country as off course." The very ruff balance sheet of pollsters assign opinion as s+ding with Republicans 49%, while Democrats get 45%.

 If true and if the ratio holds, that doesn't mean the shift of actual seats will reflect the actual voting numbers. Rather, since the USA has a winner-takes-all anti-proportionality voting system, the Repubs will take far more seats, I woud think, than the actual total votes presently indicate. Even were proportionality instituted state-by-state, still there woud remain an increment favoring the Big Parties. I coud go for that version of Proportional Representation in the USA, but at present I woudn't venture to suggest precisely how PropRep shoud be figured and formulated into law...

I just think the present system is unworthy of the Great Republic in the 21st Century, since the changes from the Founders' world when the Fed Constitution was effectuated or no longer just. Of course, the earlier provisions whereby state legislatures or state senates elected each states' two Senators, has long been attenuated. In other respects also, the earlier provisions have been updated. It's time for another update, state by state, I believe.

-- Politicarp

Thursday, October 28, 2010

PoliticsCanada: Abortion: Conservs permit Roxanne's Law to be debated

Association for Reformed Political Action has done a remarkable job in refocussing the attention of the Canadian Parliament's House of Commons on the fact that there is no Federal law in Canada that's been voted on by the proper representatives of the people, to permit or disallow the w+dspread practice of abortion here. There is, of course, an abortion industry, and there is demonstrably a coercive trend to cut the life out of young mothers at the behest of abortion counsellors.

But, it seemed, everywhere there was a streak of political cowardice which prevented even discussing the matter, especially when the Pro-Life movement was riven by purists who coud be satisfied only with the Aristotelian-based dictates of the Roman Catholic Church, which long ago had abandoned any desire to discuss its biotistic absolutizations of the "consistent ethic of life." You know, the zany position that condoms were nasty, becawz human sexual intercourse coud only have the purpose of reproduction. That the most devout and church-obedient Catholics are happy to impose such nonsense on our society has led to an impasse that extended r+t into the ranks of Parliament.

The proposed law is not des+nd to prevent all abortions. The origin of this approach, a rejection of the purist all-or-nothing approach sponsored by the pro-Life movement in a longterm self-defeating stance on the issue, is to be found in a tragic death of a teenage mother, Roxanne.

When it comes to politics and abortion, Canadians should be given a gigantic F on our moral report card. Of all countries in the world, we seem to be the only one that can't have a reasonable discussion about abortion or make any laws on the matter. So when Member of Parliament, Rod Bruinooge, introduced a bill in the House of Commons this spring that would make it a crime to coerce a woman to have an abortion, one might have expected a good number of people to shout forth a collective and joyful HURRAY! The reality is quite the opposite.

You may remember Rod Bruinooge from ... a couple of years ago when he became the new chair of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus. With a Metis-Dutch heritage and a previous life devoted to computer game and film productions, he isn't exactly a stereotypical pro-life leader. But he has made it clear that he wants to challenge the status-quo when it comes to abortion.

Providentially, Bruinooge will get the opportunity to have an item of Private Members Business (a bill or a motion of his choice) debated and voted on this fall, as a result of the "lottery" system that determines at the start of each Parliament the order in which Parliament will deal with each MP's chosen item.

Bruinooge chose a bill to address an issue that touched his heart. The bill was inspired by a fellow Winnipegite, Roxanne Fernando, who was brutally murdered for refusing to have an abortion. It was therefore fitting to call Bill C-510 "Roxanne's Law" in her memory and to put a face to the reality of the pressure that women face to "get rid of the problem" of a pregnancy that is unwanted by an upset boyfriend or family member.
ARPA's animator, Mark Penninga, has written-up the new approach among even some conservative Reformed folk, mostly of the Canadian Reformed denomination (to a large extent followers of the Dutch theologian, newspaperman, and controversialist Klaas Schilder). Penninga unravels the sad history of overweening zeolots who controlled the anti-abortion movement, not least of all in parliament. For the longest t+m, Prime Minister Steven Harper restrained these folks from launching a political suic+d mission. But now due to the strange phenom of the private-members lottery, the rules make the Bruinooge move qu+t an end-run move. "Ho humn? Roxanne's Law is soething to be excited about!," Penninga entitles his piece. He says forthr+tly that "No abortions are actually prohibited by C-510 (so all unborn children are still treated equally" under its provisions. But sadly, he says, "no babies are directly protected by this legiaslatiohn (as they were with the Unborn Victims of Creime Act), but at least their mothers are given additonal protection in order to help the choose life." I l+k that.

I don't have the wit or the pretension to solve the problem, but I do think that there are t+ms when we can't just prohibit women who so choose, to end the new life within the uterus. Some pregnant really do have an awful existential problem where having an unwanted ch+ld woud reduce them to penury and slavery. With a ch+ld some women cannot escape abusive husbands who suck the l+fe out of them and keep them in poverty from which they can't escape. I haven't the foggiest notion how to overcome this aspect of the des+r of some women for an abortion, in a safe and t+mly way. The Pope and his Protestant parodies can preach about the glorious sacrifice of women, all they want; but if that sacrifice is not the woman's choice, what good is the whole imposing edifice of neo-scholastic moral theorizing and magisterial dicta? Not even condoms, you say?

I do hate the very idea of late-term abortions. And I do hate the practice of pulling late-term ch+ldren from the womb, only to leave them on the clinical table to die. Doctors who practice their dubious "medicine" this way are in fact criminals, in my opinion. They shoud be lockd up for ch+ld slawter, again, in my opinion. But I don't claim to have wizdom on the matter, only strong feelings of repulsion to what I regard as an abuse of medicine. On the other hand, I want to be able to work with a merciful doctor when I become physically disabled. I don't want to fall into the hands of the "caregivers" of the elderly in my coming state of enfeeblement. Again, I don't know how gov can accomodate, or others l+k me, when the t+m comes. I have no immediate family for whose interests I m+t otherw+z want to just vegetate and suffer, wh+l receiving their presumably ben+n ministrations.

EconomicsUK: Growth: As draconian cutbacks and gov-jobs layoffs set in, Brits see 0.8% GDP growth (better than was expected)


Market Pulse (Oct26,2k10) has a newsbrief item that tells us much about the way trends are going for the Kingdoms economic situation.

LONDON -- Britain's third-quarter gross domestic product grew by 0.8% compared to the previous quarter, the Office for National Statistics reported Tuesday. Compared to the same period last year, GDP grew 2.8%. Economists had forecast a 0.4% quarterly increase and a 2.4% annual rise. The economy grew at a 1.2% quarterly pace in the second quarter.
The leading reformational economist, Dr Bob Goudzwaard has long tawt us that the growth ethos was the killer in the economic values of the overdeveloped West. We're in a situation in Europe and North America where we have been experiencing a slowdown in growth to seemingly microscopic proportions, coming on the heels of overinflated mortage losses due to gov policy, collapse of the stock market, and even more the de-industrialization of our core industries (to the del+t of Enviros and pain for our workforce with its 10% unemployment outlook).

Having got what he wanted in the 'overdeveloped West,' and seeing China, India and Brazil unleashed in their hot pursuit of growth, I wonder what our mentor woud prescribe nowadays. Recently, I heard on the Net a brilliant study of macro-trends in the globally economy, by Dr Bob, given at Redeemer University College, Anacaster, Ontario. While I digest these reflections, I still find myself wondering when the GDP statistics arrive quarter by quarter, what is Dr Goudzwaard thinking now?

-- EconoMix

EconomicsHaiti: Health: Money disappears, few homes for homeless, but some br+t spots even in the face of fast-spreading cholera

Who wants to read about the symptoms of cholera, this disease that's on the attack in Haiti at present? No one. Yet christian journaletics often has to face some of the ugliest facts hurting the world and its people today. So, I'm not going to start off with the D-word in the quote form New York Times (Oct24.2k10) below.

Before turning to cholera, I want to mention that huge pledges of aid money, and considerable amounts of donated funds to private relief appeals, are not reaching the Haitians after all these months.  A week or two ago, Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, clamored regarding the h+ly visible public figures who earlier appealed for contributions to Haitian relief (incidentally garnering "brownie points" while in the spotl+t on this matter).  So many of the organizations have not gotten the money to the people on the ground that O'Reilly decided to go after the hotshots who now were silent about the widespread non-delivery by the relief rackets.  How else can a TV nooztainer move the broken-wingd Angels for Haiti?  And whose racking off, if nothing else, the interest that woud accrue were the contributed funds sitting in a bank? [I pawz to note that Haiti relief advocate George Clooney is presently busy trying to keep the Darfur and South Sudan impending re-disasters in the attention of the powers that be and the public. He's the exception. Sean Penn deserve special honourable mention becawz he keeps returning to Haiti and keeps the slow develops in focus for the public, too.]  Back a bit, a prominent Republican Senator was qu+etly blocking even USA gov funds promised -- becawz Congress had made no provision actually to allocate within the budget, which woud have meant cutting expenditures from other accounts where gov holds its gravy.  That goes to the heart of the current gov dishonesty about its budget, its various accounts, and the funding of projects without fiscal control and without increasing the national debt we owe in large part to China.

Poor, poor Haiti!

Before I go to the D-word, one small ray of l+t you may otherw+z have missed, has to do with the fact that shelter stronger than tents under the downpour of rain and mudification of the camps for the homeless, has seen a tiny amelioration recently.


Despite $1.2 billion in donations, Haiti shows scant signs of recovery">Aid money for Haiti disappears before reaching destitute.

Homes for Haiti: Simple, low-cost, prefab houses/shelters for homeless Haitians post earthquake">Wesley Clark et al.
Diarrhea, while a common ailment here, is a symptom of cholera. And anxiety has been growing fiercely that the cholera epidemic, which began last week in the northwest of Haiti, will soon strike the earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince metropolitan area.

“It travels with the speed of lightning, I’ve heard, and it can kill a person in four hours,” said Jean Michel Maximilien, a camp leader. “So of course we are all on edge.”
For now, the cholera outbreak, with more than 250 deaths and more than 3,100 confirmed cases, has been contained to the central rural regions around the Artibonite River, 60 miles north of the capital. But Port-au-Prince is tensely preparing for its arrival in the densely populated slums and tent camps here, with treatment centers being established, soap and water purification tablets being distributed and public safety announcements stressing hygiene.
The government reported optimistically on Sunday that the epidemic might be stabilizing. Fatalities have declined — from 10.6 percent of known cases three days earlier to 8.2 percent now.
But international health authorities cautioned against premature optimism. “We cannot read too much into the slight improvement in the fatality rate,” Dr. Michel Thieren of the Pan American Health Organization said. “The epidemic has not spread yet, but it is still increasing roughly at the same rate in the Artibonite area.”
Since the January earthquake, this devastated country has been bracing for a secondary disaster — a hurricane, an eruption of violence, an outbreak of disease. But nobody anticipated that cholera would make its first appearance in 50 years. It was “the one thing we thought we were relatively safe on,” said Imogen Wall, spokeswoman for the United Nations humanitarian coordination office.
This outbreak, this blockage of funds, this abuse of the American public's contributions is happening r+t on our doorstep and within our own house.

Poor, poor Haiti!

-- EconoMix

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Indonesia: Twin Natural Disasters: Tsunami and Volcano strike the Indonesian archipelago

Updated (Oct27,2k10):

In ticker feed reports, Associated Press via Yahoo! News carry the bad news of two natural disasters hitting the country within hours of each other.  Slamet Riyadi sends his dispatch from Mount Merapi, Java, the largest of the country's 17,500 islands.  These territories include more than 129 active volcanoes which the gov tries to watch to give advance warnings of an over-the-top eruption.  About 20 people were badly burned by hot ash from the live volcano.  But the count may be incomplete; fatalities, so far, have not been mentioned.

In the same breath, as it were, the same source carries another report from yesterday (Oct25,2k10) by Niniek Karmini, from Jakarta,  about a powerful earthquake that has "triggered a 10-foot (three-meter) tsunami that pounded remote island villages in western Indonesia, killing at least 113 people and leaving scores more missing...."  The cluster of Mentawi islands, a 12-hr boat ride from Sumatra, were the worst hit in this round.

Earthquake, fire and flood.

Updated (Oct27,2k10)

by Sara Schonhardt,  Correspondent / October 27, 2010 Jakarta, Indonesia
Christian Science Monitor



Days after a tsunami hit the Mentawai Islands in western Indonesia, the government has put a relief plan into action that includes emergency air drops and tons of aid supplies. But the fact that the string of islands off the coast of Sumatra is so remote, is posing challenges for large-scale relief efforts.  ...
Large cargo ships, which can handle rougher weather, can take up to 48 hours to make the more than 150-mile journey from Sumatra. ...
The latest figures count 272 people dead and more than 400 missing. The Ministry of Health will deploy a medical team of 15 doctors by helicopter tomorrow, but for now Soetrisno said the number of severely injured victims remains low [compared to the 2k04 tsunami of Northern Sumatra which killed 160,000].
Still, on Wednesday evening President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced that the national and local governments were capable of responding to the disaster.
-- Owlb

EconomyUSA: Energy: Massive solar in desert opposed by ultra-Enviros

Woudn't you know, but a 3,600-acre desert wilderness of Federal land in northern California is about to be "planted" with 346 thousands of billboard-size solar panels, and it's being viewed by alarmed species-chauvinists who are bitterly opposed to destruction of the habitat of a "rare turtle" ("desert tortoise," no Latin species name is given) in the Ivanpah Valley.  No more soup for the Piutes of the neiborhood, but they're long gone anyway.


The other rascal of the piece is Bright-Source Energy, Inc, out of Oakland, regarded by other Enviros as equivalent to the "robber barons" of Nineteenth Century industrializing eastern states of the USA.  So we're told by Tiffany Hsu, reporting in Los Angeles T+mes (Oct23,2k100:
[It's] just another "Big Solar" corporation chasing down profits on the public dime.
"It's the old centralized robber-baron monopoly model," said Sheila Bowers, an activist with the advocacy group Solar Done Right. "This is the worst way to go about getting clean energy — it's slow, it's remote, it's devastating to the environment, and taxpayers are footing most of the bill."
Construction of the facility, perched on the eastern edge of San Bernardino County, is expected to be completed in 2013.Chevron Corp., BP, Morgan Stanley and Google Inc. are all among the investors.  The billion 37 million Fed loan guarantee is justified by the project's advocates becawz "without the government support, the solar thermal industry might struggle against cheaper technologies such as photovoltaics."
-- EconoMix 

Juridics: Uzbekistan: Massive fine for having a film of the life of Jesus



Forum 18's reporter Felix Corley (Oct25,2k10) documents oppression of Protestant owning a film about the life of Jesus.  The first paragraph is a summary, and then follows the entire report by Corley:


Uzbekistan has imposed a massive fine on a Protestant for owning a
Christian film, Forum 18 News Service has learned. Murat Jalalov was fined
-- apparently on the instructions of the NSS secret police -- after police
raided his home. The film and other confiscated materials for analysis by
the state Religious Affairs Committee, which said that the film "could be
used among local ethnicities for missionary purposes" and was therefore
banned. All the confiscated material was ordered to be destroyed. An
official of the Committee, asked by Forum 18 what happened to confiscated
religious literature ordered to be sent to the Religious Affairs Committee,
claimed that "I haven't seen any". Asked whether the Committee itself
destroys such literature, as court verdicts often order it to be destroyed,
he responded: "We don't destroy religious literature". Such confiscations
and destructions - even of texts such as the Bible and Koran - and fines
are common. Separately, a man - not a religious believer - has been fined
for refusing to reveal his son's whereabouts. The son is being hunted by
police for his religious activity. Also, Jehovah's Witnesses have told
Forum 18 that more than 100 fines have been levied on their members in
2010.

Main article by Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service
:

A court in Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent found a Protestant, Murat Jalalov,
guilty of owning one copy of a Christian film, Protestants who asked not to
be identified for fear of state reprisals told Forum 18 News Service.
Jalalov narrowly avoided a 15-day jail term in the trial on 30 September,
and was instead given a massive fine - apparently on the instructions of
the National Security Service (NSS) secret police. Other religious
believers have been fined for offering religious literature on the street.
One man -- not a religious believer -- was fined for refusing to give police
the whereabouts of his son, whom police were seeking to prosecute for his
religious activity. Jehovah's Witnesses have told Forum 18 that more than
100 fines have been levied on their community members across Uzbekistan so
far in 2010.

Fines for unregistered religious worship are frequent. In defiance of its
international human rights commitments, Uzbekistan bans religious activity
that does not have state permission. In one recent case, five members of a
Samarkand [Samarqand] Baptist congregation were given large fines in
September, which they failed to overturn on appeal on 14 October (see
forthcoming F18News article).   



-- Lawt posting Corley


Click the time-stamp just below to Read More ...





Saturday, October 23, 2010

EconomyUSA: Mortgage foreclosures: Banks and financial houses slop-around with documentation

Banks and mortgage lenders have been screwing around with people's home-owning documentation, then flawnting their lackadaisical attitudes and (lack of proper) procedures. They've put many mortgaged owners in a turmoil of tainted transactions after seizing their homes and putting the owners into the streets, while tossing the paperwork (which may or may not contribute directly to the loss of owners' homes).  The paperwork in each specific case may be  "fraudulent documents" at the core of the banks' and mortgage financials' modus operandi.  
Reports Gretchen Morgenson and Andrew Martin, reporting in New York Times,  "Battle lines forming in clash over foreclosures" (Oct20,2k10) wri+t of "a potentially seismic legal clash that pits big lenders against homeowners and their advocate concerned that the lenders' rush to foreclose fluts private property r+ts."  They continue: "Banks “have essentially sidestepped 400 years of property law in the United States,” said Rebel A. Cole, a professor of finance and real estate at DePaul University. 'There are so many questionable aspects to this thing it’s scary.' " While some ... banks have ... suggested they can wrap up faulty foreclosures in a matter of weeks, some judges, lawyers for homeowners and real estate experts like Mr. Cole expect the courts to be inundated with challenges to the banks’ actions.
“This is ultimately going to have to be resolved by the 50 state supreme courts who have jurisdiction for property law,” Professor Cole predicted.
Defaulting homeowners in states like Florida, among the hardest hit by foreclosures, are already showing up in bigger numbers this week to challenge repossessions. And judges in some states have halted or delayed foreclosures because of improper documentation. Court cases are likely to hinge on whether judges believe that banks properly fulfilled their legal obligations during the mortgage boom — and in the subsequent rush to expedite foreclosures.
The country’s mortgage lenders contend that any problems that might be identified are technical and will not change the fact that they have the right to foreclose en masse.
“We did a thorough review of the process, and we found the facts underlying the decision to foreclose have been accurate,” Barbara J. Desoer, president of Bank of America Home Loans, said earlier this week. “We paused while we were doing that, and now we’re moving forward.”
Some analysts are not sure that banks can proceed so freely. Katherine M. Porter, a visiting law professor at Harvard University and an expert on consumer credit law, said that lenders were wrong to minimize problems with the legal documentation.The Morgenson-Martin article is a good 3-pages long, chock full of significant details.  I urge everyone concerned about their homes, their banks, and the economy generally will find t+m to read this excellent work of economic journaletics.  Learn about robo-s+ning on the articles page 3.  Oh, don't miss the detail about bank use of counterfeited documents to take an owners' home.
Thanks to Lawt for some great advisory conversations!
-- EconoMix

PoliticsUSA: Women's vote: Nov 2 Fed election will have women trending away from Dems toward Rplcns

Apparently a major trend has emerged in the current Federal election campaigns, a trend that evidences a shift of women voters from Dems to the Republicans.  In 2k06 women voted for Democrats nearly 60%, with Rpblcns trailing with only 36%.  This year with two weeks remaining before the major part of the balloting occurs (early voting with absentee ballots are also trending upwards this year), women are going 49% for the Republicans but only 46 percentage points for the Democrats. The USA Today chart is by Julie Snider; the text of the noozreport is by Mimi Hall (no date given).

As Snider's chart indicates, the net gains of the Repubs since 2k10 until now is 13%, while the net loss for Dems in the same period is 13%, just as in an accounting ledger.

The survey sample is superior this round, rising from 511 responses in 2k06 to 956 this year.  Repubs can't take any pleasure in the outcomes for this year as far as the raw stats are concerned.  They've pushed ahead of the Dems, but by only 3 percentage points and there's a 6+ % margin of error for these counts.

Neverrtheless, of course, overall the Repubs are doing so much better in among women in 2k10, as compared to 2k06.  The beautiful, elegant First Lady, Michelle Obama, has been sent out on the campaign trail to overcome the statistical advantage that the GOP has been registering.

-- Politicarp

Friday, October 22, 2010

PoliticsUSA: Kentucky Senate campaign: Overweening ambition drives Democrat Attorney General to smear Libertarian Republican and Presbyterian candidate who rejects faith-based social service

A blog called Hot Air has revealed that Rand Paul, a Republican candidate for the Senate in Kentucky, does not support the very important important role of tax-supported faith-based agencies (not churches!, as the blog falsely states) to have a level playing field in competing with secularistic organizations to perform service tasks that they often can better provide than can a directly-governmental bureaucracy.

John McCormack quotes a speech given by Paul in 2008, before his run for the Senate officially launched, about his reasoning on defunding faith-based government initiatives:

“One, I think the money sort of pollutes the mission of a purely Christian organization, or Muslim or whatever organization it is. And it obscures the church-state separation that there really ought to be. We shouldn’t have tax money flowing into churches, and we should let churches do charity work, and that’s wonderful, but they shouldn’t be corrupted with government money.”

Whether or not one agrees with this reasoning, it’s at least a rational argument, and one heard from many people of faith who worry about the co-opting influence of government money in churches. It’s hardly an attack on religion. As for ending tax deductions for churches, Paul supports that because he wants an end to the income tax altogether, which would mean the end of all income-tax deductions. Paul wants the income tax replaced with the Fair Tax, and all deductions would be eliminated in the change.

This ad may not be quite as offensive as Grayson’s despicable attack on Webster through the use of out-of-context sound bites that made Webster sound as if he said the exact opposite of what he actually said, but it’s pretty close. Sticking “Washington Post 8/11/2010″ on a known smear doesn’t sanitize it at all. Unless Conway wants to demand religious tests for office, what’s left in this ad is almost as awful, too.

I don't like MSNBC's reporter Chris Matthews, but I have to give him credit for his on-camera investigative journalism in this case of Jack Conway's violation of the Westminster Catechism regarding "unnecessarily exposing the sins of others" (something l+k that) -- even were the anonymous allegations true. The alleged events were said to have taken place some decades ago, when Conway's opponent was a student at (Baptist) Baylor University in Texas.

The come-uppance for Conway, Attorney General of Kentucky, occurs on the same YouTube page  (subscribe free to my yUT2ube Channel that now includes this video) where a commenter named Schmauey blurts out:
Hey Jack, maybe the women of Kentucky would like an answer about YOUR frat (SAE [Sigma Alpha Epsilon]) at Duke which was known for raping women. Why was your frat kicked off campus Jack? Why did the national SAE organization disown your chapter at Duke, Jack? Could it be because of all the rapes and sexual assaults?
All that important 'hit aside, we come back to Dr Paul's position on equality for faith-based organizations in receiving gov funds to conduct social services much more cheaply than the gov can. That's why the gov puts out money to secularistic organizations, and presently allows the faith-baseds service orgs to compete against the secularistics, often winning the available funds becawz their applications and performance records are better than those of the secularistics.

Rand Paul is an optometrist with blindspots that prevent him from seeing what great good faith-baseds do for down-and-out folks in need of help, but which orgs need better funding than their own fundraising and volunteers can provide. I woud never vote for a candidate l+k Paul becawz of the blindness of his brand of Libertarianism. Were Paul to be elected, he woud undoubtedly be a strong influence in the Tea Party Caucus in Congress, and that means he'd have too much destructive influence on gov social assistance of all kinds, turning these programs entirely over to the secularists. That's not pluraliformity. And that's not Christian compassion. However, the alternative in Kentucky's Senate election campaign is self-r+tchus dumpster Jack Conway, whose overweening ambition leads him to stop at nothing to get a six-year term in the Senate.

Were I voting in Kentucky, I think I'd have to hold my nose and vote for Paul, praying for him that the Lord woud break his subchristian political ideology and lead him to an authentically Christian political vision. I can't believe that all, or most, Christian Libertarians and Christians participants in the Tea Party, are l+k Dr Rand Paul. That woud be a heartbreaker.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

EconomicsFrance: Pension Strike: France's almost-general strike against pension reforms in the offing?

MarketWatch's reporter based in London, England, William L. Watts, under an overly-dramatic headline "Police move to break fuel blockades in France" as "Gov vows to press ahead with plan to raise retirement age" (Oct20,2k10) cawtiously suggests that the French pension strike is beginning to wind down.  At the same t+m, the gov has not budged on its move to raise the retirement age (from 60 to 62) and full-benefits benchmark (from 65 to 67).

Blockades of depots and strikes by refinery workers have resulted in shortages, with about a third of filling stations running dry on Tuesday, according to an Agence France-Presse report. Rail service and flights have also been disrupted.


But observers said disturbances are likely to fade after Tuesday’s widespread demonstrations, the latest in a prolonged series of strikes and protests. Tuesday’s action was the sixth day of nationwide protests in two months.

“The strike is losing momentum in the transport sector,” said Laurence Boone, economist at Barclays Capital, in a research note. “Paris pubic transport is running almost normally, international trains are running normally and about 50% to 70% of flights are maintained.”
The government has started to tap strategic oil reserves, which hold around three months of supply, and has begun reopening some refineries, Boone said. Also, college students will go on midterm vacations at the end of the week, which will likely curb their participation in any protests.

“The biggest problem would be if I failed to do my duty, to make sure that we can pay for today’s and tomorrow’s pensions,” Sarkozy told journalists Tuesday, Wall Street Journal reported.

“While positions have hardened on both sides ... the strikes which have crippled the French downstream oil sector are not likely to go on for an extended duration, and will probably be resolved by next week,” said Greg Priddy, global oil analyst at Eurasia Group in New York.

Union leaders are divided over what to do after the bill is voted on in the Senate, which is seen as virtually certain to approve the measure, the Financial Times reported.
Some unions see little point in extending protests beyond the Senate vote out of concern that further disruptions will turn the public against the protests.
In the French Senate, delays accumulated which played into the hands of the extreme leftist unions who love protests, demos, and barricades. The logic of their approach always tends toward its ultimate, violent revolution in the tired old Marxist style.

-- EconoMix


PoliticsUSA: Polls: WSJ offers a credible report on Fed electoral trends re upcoming Nov 2

Wall Street Journal's reporter / analyst Jonathan Weisman gives us the poop on the current state of play (as of October 14-18:  note that a spread of 5 days for an opinion survey in the USA skewers the result; it's bad polling, but in this case nevertheless probably the best around).  I saw the Fox News' commentator Liberal millionaire leftist Alan Coomes just poo-poo any poll that doesn't reflect his own predilections, claiming that the Republicans lead only in "battleground states," whereas everywhere else his Democrats are leading and will prevail, the extreme leftist maintains. Maybe he's correct about the current trend, just two weeks before most voters get out to the polling places.

However, the battleground state of Ohio puts the lie to the ministrations of the Coomes hypothesis.  It went for Obama by a huge majority, it's an industrial state suffering for some years from radical de-industrialization  and unbearably h+ unemployment.  Obama has abandoned his role as Prez to spend weeks out of office (but I doubt he'll return a proper proporation of his pay cheque), campaigning for the re-election of congressional Democrats, especially in Ohio.  There Obama has to mobilize his Black and student base.

His playing of the race card becomes even more glaring in the neiboring state of Pennsylvania, where he spends his second most campaign t+m this round, drumming up Black voters, especially in Philadelphia.  Philadelphia has a notoriously unscrupulous Democratic Party history in elections, and in Obama's first national campaign the Philly voting was bedevilled with violent threats by the Black Panther Party, wielding baseball bats and positioning its demented minions close to the doors of polling places to intimidate Whites from casting their ballots within -- all of which the Attorney General of the USA, Eric Holder, has refused to prosecute because the videotaped vote-corruptors are Black, by his own statement, as reported by a Fed prosecutor in the inJustice Department.  Only Whites cawt in similar activities woud face the strong arm of the law, according to the whistleblowing gov lawyer.

I'm sure the Panthers have learned their lesson, and will be much more stealthy in this round since Holder has given them a carte blanche, so the pantheroids won't want to embarass their Attorney General again.

The WSJ/NBC joint poll is worth reading if you're at all interested in the trends in American opinion surveys among potential voters.  Read and go figure for yourself, I urge.

-- Politicarp

Sunday, October 17, 2010

EconomyUSA: Corporate Governance: SEC formulates core principles for applicable to publically-traded business

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) formulates 'Core Principles' for the boards of directors of corporations.  These 10 principles embrace: the fundamental objectives of a board, management's responsiblity in governance of a company, relationship between shareholders' trading activities, voting decisions, and governance.

I'm waiting to see what Prof Bainbridge (in his blog of that title) has to say on this formulation; he's a/the leading expert on corporate governance in the American legal-studies profession.

Here are NYSE's definition of core principles for publically-traded businesses:

  • 1.) The board’s fundamental objective should be to build long-term, sustainable growth in shareholder value for the corporation, and the board is accountable to shareholders for its performance in achieving this objective.
  • 2.) Management has a critical role in establishing proper corporate governance, as it has primary responsibility for creating an environment in which a culture of performance with integrity can flourish.
  • 3.) Shareholders have the right, the responsibility, and the long-term economic interest to vote their shares in a thoughtful manner, in recognition of the fact that voting decisions influence director behavior and conduct, and that voting is one of the primary means of communicating with companies on issues of concern.
  • 4.) Good corporate governance should be integrated with the company’s business strategy and objectives, and should not be viewed simply as a compliance obligation separate from the company’s long-term business prospects. Yet there is a risk that the number of new governance mandates and “best practice” recommendations over the past decade can lead even the best boards to adopt a “check the box” mentality when trying to comply with certain governance requirements.
  • 5.) Legislation and agency rule-making are important to establish the basic tenets of corporate governance and ensure the efficiency of our markets. Beyond these fundamental principles, however, the commission has a preference for market-based governance solutions whenever possible.
  • 6.) Good corporate governance includes transparency for corporations and investors, sound disclosure policies, and communication beyond disclosure through dialogue and engagement as necessary and appropriate. Investors also should be held to appropriate levels of transparency and be required to disclose holdings, including derivative or other security ownership, on a timely and equal basis, subject to the recognition that certain information relating to trading and investment strategies may be proprietary.
  • 7.) While independence and objectivity are necessary attributes of board members, companies also must strike the right balance between the appointment of independent and non-independent directors to ensure that there is an appropriate range and mix of expertise, diversity, and knowledge on the board. While the commission fully supports the NYSE’s listing requirements generally providing for a majority of independent directors, the commission also believes that, as provided for under the NYSE’s listing standards, a properly functioning board can include more than one non-independent director.
  • 8.) The commission recognizes the influence that proxy advisory firms have on the market, and believes that such firms should be held to appropriate standards of transparency and accountability. At a minimum, such firms should be required to disclose the policies and methodologies they use to formulate specific voting recommendations, as well as all material conflicts of interest, and to hold themselves to a high degree of care, accuracy, and fairness in dealing with both shareholders and companies by adhering to strict codes of conduct. The advisory services also should be required to disclose the company’s response to its analysis and conclusions.
  • 9.) The SEC should work with the NYSE and other exchanges to ease the burden of proxy voting and communication while encouraging greater participation by individual investors in the proxy voting process.
  • 10.) The SEC and the NYSE should consider a wide range of views to determine the impact of major corporate governance reforms on corporate performance over the last decade. They also should periodically assess the impact of major corporate governance reforms on the promotion of sustainable, long-term corporate growth and profitability.
I found this item blogged on Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation.  The NYSE's Commission only applies to companies governed by a Board of Directors, which is already an indicator for size (total assets, total number of employees, etc) and other parameters which point to a given company's phenotype (Dooyeweerd); the NYSE Core Principles formulation does not hold for individually-owned or partnership-governed businesses.

-- EconoMix

Friday, October 15, 2010

Switzerland: Construction: Break-thru by massive tunnel-drill creates longest route under mountain -- for trains

Associated Press reports today's big break-thru in the new European rail-line that will use what will become the world's longest tunnel.  Until now Japan had held that record. The tunnel has been mined under the Swiss Alps which, until the new transport route opens, is traversed daily by long lines of trucks driving along mountain roads.  The tunnel will eventuate the de-industrialization of the mountain passes, like that of Saint Bernard as you motor your automobile into the marvellous town of Aosta on the Italian s+d of the mountain. The AP report appears today in Toronto's Globe and Mail with a pix of the massive drill-head that has become the hero of the construction operation.  Frank Jordans, "Swiss smash through mountain to create world's longest tunnel" (Oct15,2k10).

Swiss engineers have smashed through the last stretch of rock to create the longest tunnel in the world.

A gigantic drilling machine broke the remaining wall 2,500 metres below the imposing Piz Vatgira peak in the Gotthard massif several minutes ahead of schedule Friday afternoon.

Miners, VIPs and journalists inside the tunnel cheered as Switzerland reclaimed the tunnel record from Japan's Seikan Tunnel.

The 57-kilometre Gotthard Base Tunnel is an important milestone in the creation of a high-speed rail network connecting all corners of Europe.

It will allow millions of tons of goods that are currently transported through the Alps on heavy trucks to be shifted onto the rails, particularly the economically important link between the Dutch port of Rotterdam and Italy's Mediterranean port of Genoa.

“It's a day of joy for Switzerland,” said Peter Fueglistaler, director of Switzerland's Federal Office of Transport. “We are not a very emotional people but if we have the longest tunnel in the world, this also for us is very, very emotional.”
The unbearable conditions faced by motorists on the Alpine roads, thru its mountain passes, have at last been amerliorated.  And the burden of carrying goods from Italy to Switzerland, and back again, has begun to shift toward future rail freit.  It all makes good economic sense, also an aesthetic relief on the roads that shoud in a couple of years see a huge reduction in truck traffic.

-- EconoMix

Russia: Dagestan: Terrorist bombing in security-vital republic threatens entirety of Russian Federation

Dagestan, the Russian Federation's largest republic in the North Caucusus (a huge region), had
experienced a brutal massacre in 1999, largely unknown until the video of the hideous event came to public l+t only last April. "This video, dated 1999 and filmed in Dagestan, shows the brutal execution of six Russian conscripts at the hands of Chechen rebels lead by Salautdin Temirbulatov." We've provided the link for readers who want to view the worst, altho with the warnings about the vid's graphic presentation of extreme violence, no one at refWr+t has yet viewed it. In any case, the leading republic for corruption, Dagestan, has experienced yet another act of extreme political violence:

This time, a suicide bomber rammed a car loaded with explosives into the gate of the military unit of the 136th Motor Rifle Brigade, which is deployed in Buinaksk. In this Dagestani town, 41 km away from the capital Makhachkala, terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage happen all too often. However, the latest incident is especially prominent in the chain of tragic events in Dagestan.

The target of the suicide bomber was the military unit of the Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, which makes up the 58th Army. This army was formed in 1995 especially for action in the Greater Caucasus. It participated in two Chechen campaigns, in operations in other North Caucasus republics and also in the five-day war with Georgia. Today it is Russia's main strike force in the country's most volatile region, a region that also has an unstable border with Georgia. The recent incident in Buinaksk has put this area back in the spotlight.
Additionally, Brown informs us that "Dagestan shares borders with Georgia and Azerbaijan, and Makhachkala is one of Russia's few year-round ice-free ports, so the republic is of vital importance for Russian national security."

Brown seeks to go behind the appearances, the news-reported but unanalyzed thread of violence woven into the warp and woof of Dagestani society, its diffuse causes. He shoud be heeded by the Dagestani expatriates who've made their fortunes elsewhere in the Russian Federation, but it shoud be heeded by the Russian gov itself in regard especially to its military project in the North Caucusus. But as in most such cases, the hoped-for heeding is doubtful.

-- Politicarp

JuridicsUSA: Health / Illegals: Alliance of 20 states allowed to sue Feds re Obamacare

Reuters reporter, Tom Brown, presents the action by a US District Judge, Roger Vinson, to let states sue the Fed gov over the new healthcare law. Brown:

Opponents of Obama's overhaul of the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system have said it violates the Constitution by imposing what they consider unlawful taxes and requiring citizens to obtain healthcare coverage, among other issues.
A fascinating Constitutional case has also been admitted continuance, altho most other of 6 claims have been thrown out. The Supreme Court USA (SCOTUS) need not accept cases, but with 20 of 50 states now joining the suit, it seems unlikely that SCOTUS will turn down this one.

Another case brawt by the Fed gov Department of Justice under Attorney General, Eric Holder, regarding Arizona's new illegals law, has been joined by a bevvy of Latin American countries -- "Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru and Chile — [which want] to submit friend-of-the-court briefs in Justice’s challenge to SB 1070, which [Arizona Gov Jan]Brewer signed into law in April and is considered one of the nation’s toughest immigration-enforcement measures [against illegals]."

-- Lawt

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

PoliticsUSA: Opinion shift among Blacks: New rhetoric arises among new breed of Blacks with conservative political principles



A new wave of opinion-change to pluralize Black political worldviews is at work and articulate in the lead up to the November 2 elections -- the Federal Congress, numerous States, and yet others.
The entire trend is slow and apparently quite deep in the American Black population, otherwise a solid block, ideologically ranging from left to ultra-left. Fabian Socialist to Revolutionary Socialist.

The rhetoric of this small yet burgeoning Black opinion includes digital means, camcorders, powerful public speach-acts by a fascinating person, all in a visual-and-sound presentation that says simply we're in an urgent situation, simply and urgently.

-- Owlie Scowlie

Saturday, October 02, 2010

PoliticsIsrael: Peace Talks: Settlement freeze only hindered negotiations

Reporter for Ha'aretz, Israel's left liberal self-anointed élite, Yossi Verter, says of the immediately current situation, "In terms of results, the construction freeze was a failure - it delayed the Palestinians' entrance into talks and may end negotiations completely."

-- Politicarp

PoliticsEurope: Latvia: Center-minority govt voted in as new majority

BBC News Europe

2 October 2010 Last updated at 18:27 ET Share this page | Facebook | Digg | Twitter |Email | Print

Latvia government 'set for win'

Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis: ''Voters have voted for stability and rejected populism''
Latvia's centre-right government will be returned to power for a third term, exit polls and early results suggest.

If the results are confirmed, the coalition led by Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis would have a majority in parliament for the first time.

His government pushed through some of the toughest austerity measures in Europe, backed by the IMF and aimed at readying the country to join the euro.

They include wage cuts averaging 30% at a time when unemployment stands at 20%.

Continue reading the main story
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Mr Dombrovskis' supporters began celebrating a short time after the polls closed on Saturday evening, says the BBC's Damian McGuinness in the capital, Riga.

Deep recession

Early results gave Mr Dombrovskis' coalition a majority for the first time
With results in from more than 75% of polling stations, Mr Dombrovskis' coalition had nearly 61% of the vote, the national electoral commission said.

"Voters have sent a quite clear message that they prefer stability and continuity," Mr Dombrovskis told the BBC.

"There had been several parties calling to scrap (the) international loan programme, for scrapping the economic stabilisation programme, promising all kinds of wonders. But we see that voters were not really buying it."

The left-wing opposition party Harmony Centre, which draws its support from the Russian minority, got nearly 23%, the electoral commission said.

Presenting itself as a social-democratic alternative, Harmony Centre campaigned against the austerity measures.

Mr Dombrovskis has not ruled out forming a coalition with Harmony Centre, which has won seats in parliament for the first time.

But if the exit polls prove accurate, he may not have to, our correspondent says.

Since 2008 Latvia has endured one of the worst recessions in the European Union.

Investors see Mr Dombrovskis as the main guarantor of an austerity deal that included a 7.5bn euros ($10bn) bailout led by the International Monetary Fund and the EU.

Mr Dombrovskis, who is also aiming to adopt the euro as the national currency in 2014, took over as prime minister when the crisis was at its worst in 2009.

France: Culture Wars: les Pensions 60 ou 62?

This info, blockquoted below, comes from BBC News Europe, (Oct2,2k10)

2 October 2010 Last updated at 13:52 ET Share this page Facebook TwitterShareEmailPrint

French hold a third day of protest against pension reform

[See refWr+t page1

French hold fresh pension protest

Hundreds of thousands of people across France have taken to the streets to demonstrate against President Nicolas Sarkozy's plans to raise the retirement age, according to police figures.

More than 200 protests were planned throughout the country.

It is the third day of demonstrations against the proposed reforms, which go before parliament on Tuesday, in the last month.

The government wants the retirement age to rise from 60 to 62.

President Sarkozy says this is essential if the French pension system is to be viable in the long term.

His opponents say society's poorest people will be hit hardest by the changes.

In pictures:

French pension strikes

France's bitter war over pensions

French horror at 'Anglo-Saxon' reforms

Trade unions in France are proclaiming a success their day of mobilisation against planned reforms of the pension system, says the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris.

They say nearly three million people - about the same as the previous protest on 23 September - turned out in demonstrations across the country.

The first protest over pensions was on 6 September.

However the interior ministry, using police estimates, says turnout was down, at less than one million on Saturday.

These were the first demonstrations to take place on a non-working day, a change reflected in the make-up of the crowds, with many women and families taking part for the first time, our correspondent says.

The pension reform bill, which has already been passed by France's lower house of parliament, will be debated from 5 October by the upper house, the Senate, where it is expected to pass comfortably.

Controversial proposals

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in a third day of protests

French workers can expect to spend more of their life in retirement than those in any other country, according to figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Under current rules, both men and women in France can retire at 60, provided they have paid social security contributions for 40.5 years - although they are not entitled to a full pension until they are 65.

The government says it will save 70bn euros (£58bn) by raising the retirement age to 62 by 2018, the qualification to 41.5 years, and the pension age to 67.

Unions and opposition politicians say the plan puts an unfair burden on workers, particularly women, part-timers and the former unemployed who may struggle to hit the 41.5 year requirement.

[Leftwing unions] have made counter-proposals, including calls for taxes on certain bonuses and on the highest incomes to help fund the pension system.

Features and Analysis

France's bitter war over pensions

The French are some of the strongest fighters
when it comes to resisting worsening pension
rights - but even here change is inevitable.

Sinking of the Bismarck legacy

Lost pension hopes in DR Congo

In pictures: Retirement in Vietnam
The global pensions conundrum
China's pensions in crisis waltz
When retirement takes you by surprise
What retirement means to you
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In pictures: French pension strikes 23 SEPTEMBER 2010, EUROPE
France's bitter war over pensions 13 SEPTEMBER 2010, BUSINESS
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The global pensions conundrum 14 SEPTEMBER 2010, BUSINESS
France passes pension reform bill 15 SEPTEMBER 2010, EUROPE
From other news sites

Yahoo! UK and Ireland
French unions keep up pressure with latest pension protest
56 mins ago
Reuters UK
UPDATE 3-Students and families join French pension protests
2 hrs ago
Daily Express
French pension protest on streets
2 hrs ago
France24
FRANCE: French unions hail protests as a success but government says numbers are "down"
2 hrs ago
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Students, families to join French pension protests
10 hrs ago
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