´óÏó´«Ã½

Shame that spending so much time on the US elections - sorry, election as you only comment on one of them - seems to prevent you from spending adequate time on the election in the UK where "Duff" Gordon is showing increasing signs of desperation.

Last night's piece from Crick was flimsy and unbalanced. Please ask him to try a little harder next week.

THE PRICE OF POWER

We have had four years of George W Bush and world's wounds will take a long time to heal. Bush bought both his terms; he was certainly not elected for being impressive.
In Britain, the push is on to fill the war chests of Labour and Tories, so that the next general election can be bought.
Our choice of leaders is man 'A' with speeches crafted by others, appearances choreographed, media manipulation and expert make-up, or man 'B' with speeches crafted by others, appearances choreographed - you know the rest.
How many men of integrity would accept power - of any sort - bought and engineered by a manipulative, immoral system? There can be only one inference . . .

Power corrupts; the PURCHASE of power pre-corrupts absolutely.

How ironic that we 'get what we pay for'!

How is it "arguably the most exciting Presidential election in decades" when - according to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ and seemingly every other media outlet - it's all in the bag and pointing to a massive landslide? Where's the rush of excitement in such a one-sided contest?

Does the excitement stem from the media having annointed one candidate several months ago and being on the brink of seeing their starlet romp to victory? Does it come from... no, I've run out of other possibilities for this supposed excitement.

Kindly explain, because while I see the ´óÏó´«Ã½ is excited about one candidate, I'm not spotting what's so exciting.

If the anointed one wins (which the media tell me is 99.99999999% likely), it'll be historic, but exciting..? If you think that such a one horse race is exciting, I'll invite you round to watch the ceiling I've just painted dry. Hours of thrills for you guaranteed. Errrr....

I can across a post on another blog that said this -

"

Media Coverage Study:
57% of McCain stories were negative.
29% of Obama stories were negative.

Newspaper Coverage:
69% of McCain stories were negative.
28% of Obama stories were negative.

NBC News Coverage:
54% of McCain stories were negative.
21% of Obama stories were negative.

MSNBC Coverage:
73% of McCain stories were negative.
14% of Obama stories were negative.

FoxNews Coverage:
40% of McCain stories were negative.
40% of Obama stories were negative.

Source: Project for Excellence in Journalism
October 29, 2008
"


Are these figures right ?




I hope our media don't go this way if the above is in any way factual !

#3 Conspiracy 2012

(Good Name)

"Does the excitement stem from the media having annointed one candidate several months ago and being on the brink of seeing their starlet romp to victory? Does it come from... no, I've run out of other possibilities for this supposed excitement."

Several months?. This is review from February, as it says from unedited American live transmission.

Prophecy, astute political analysis or just reading the writing on the wall already writ?




#2 Barrie

I have read and reread your post for any hint of goldy or bronzy.

So have to ask: 4 years?

or since the last election?

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I'm distracted from the content of the programme (and I hate to say this as it seems -is- so superficial) but who dresses Kirsty Walk? the clothes she wears are dreadful & make her look uncomfortable in her skin. Im sure when she started out she looked much better - at least I never noticed what she was wearing- now I'm distracted. Please dress her down to be more drab and background - tonight's offering is just dire!

Newsnight Review was far too simplistic dividing US arts into liberals and conservatives. They used Toby Keith as an example of right wing conservatism, clearly not realising that he has endorsed Obama.

Keith, along with "Okie From Muskogee", Merle Haggard are seen as representing a strand of reactionary blue collar white male opinion, a majority of whom have been voting Republican since the Nixon years. Maybe the fact that these musicians have come out for Barack Obama will help cement an Obama victory.

SAS Commander Resigns due to chronic underinvestment in troops equipment

Quote
In his resignation letter, he is understood to have accused ministers of "gross negligence" in allowing soldiers to go into battle without adequate resources.

The lack of equipment, he is reported to have said, was "Cavalier at best. Criminal at worst".



At the end of last year former Chief's of the Defence Staff spoke out about underfunding.


Add in all the inquests that have blamed faulty or lack of equipment over the years and it's near impossible to conclude there is not a pattern here !

Is it not time to haul a minister or the Government over the coals for this ?

9. At 03:57am on 01 Nov 2008, Steve-London

'Is it not time to haul a minister or the Government over the coals for this ?'

Maybe DG Thompson could re-emerge from his bunker to express the view how 'unacceptable' this is... to prompt a rush to 'look into it'... IF the public gets motivated to support the view of those who need to travel in... 'mobile coffins'?

Don't expect many coal-haulings. Some departments don't 'do' accountability.

Steve - London, if there were any justice the figures would show higher negatives for McCain. He has run a particularly negative campaign. I hope the era of "false equivalence" in the American media is put behind us, but I won't hold my breath. I think the NewsNight panel Friday night, alas, represents the worst of this tendency. Various patently false statements were made during the programme, which of course went unchallenged. I switched off when the radio guy said "he wasn't going to let" the other guest "get away with" a statement regarding the Iraq war: he then launched into the usual Republican talking points about Obama's opposition to the war, etc., which were false. Contrary to his statements, there were a lot of people who knew at the time the war was built on flimsy intelligence, including in the government, and Obama spoke out quite publicly when it was not politically expedient to do so. The guest's statements about Obama's positions were patently false and misleading as well. Naturally, as ever, these statements remain in the ether, poisoning legitiimate and honest political discourse in America. ´óÏó´«Ã½, please do better if you are to cover America.

OnLineJones, couldn't agree more. The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s perception of the political divide in America could use much more nuance. Much depends on the choice of guests, and those chosen were not representative or capable of addressing elements of the divide intelligently.

Why should Newsnight have known better? Here's an example: "NEW YORK, March 25 /PRNewswire/ -- ´óÏó´«Ã½ AMERICA's weekly news program Newsnight has exclusive footage of the Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball,"
who is currently in hiding in Germany. Airing this Friday, March 28, it's the first footage of him since the start of the war in Iraq. It was his fabrications about WMDs that were a key justification for the U.S. entering into the war." So, why is it that Newnight facilitates continuation of talking points meant to mislead viewers? If the Newsnight insists on giving extremists equal time on its programmes, why not allow statments made by them to be challenged?

On both sides of the pond clear blue water has emerged between the approaches to the economic crises being adopted by the two main parties.

After his initial panic, McCain has chosen to once more follow the Reaganomics approach with which Bush had continued the Republican tradition of the past quarter century. In addition, as announced in George Osborne’s speech at the London School of Economics, we at last have some idea where Tory economic policy is going in the UK. Unlike McCain they now claim to believe, as belatedly does much of the world, in a general philosophy of Keynesianism. At the same time, like McCain, they have dramatically reversed their position (one they held just a few days ago in the brief era of bi-partisanship) on Keynesianism borrowing to buy our way out of recession; now claiming that is ‘old-fashioned Keynesianism’.

Thus the UK Tories new approach is a strange form of Keynesianism; especially as delivered in Osborne’s lecture at LSE, whose academics would presumably have registered the anomalies. Osborne seems to be narrowly defining it just as the use of automatic stabilisers, which most modern societies would implement as part of normal social policy; and without a thought of Lord Keynes, even in a recession. It appears that Osborne then consigns all the rest of Keynesianism to ‘neo-Keynesianism’, which he seems to believe is a term of abuse. McCain, of course, will not abandon the now traditional Republican hate of such socialism!

For the rest of his economic solutions Osborne seem to hark back to Thatcher economics; in terms of interest rate control (the last remnant of monetarism), tax relief for small businesses and the middle classes, together with limits on government spending (monitored by an independent body). Similarly, McCain sticks with Bush and Reagonomics.

By the way, am I alone, however, in thinking that Osborne’s lack of understanding of economics was demonstrated – in front of LSE academics - by his idea as to what trickle-down theory is? As an economist myself I always thought it was the discredited idea that the wealth of the rich trickled-down to the poor. In the specific context of a depression, though, Keynes noted that money given to the rich was saved where that given directly to the poor was spent, thus helping us all spend our way out of depression. Osborne rather strangely thinks ‘trickle-down’ refers to government spending (typically on large scale projects) designed to boost the earnings of the poorer sections of society; especially those working in the hard hit construction industries. McCain, and the Republicans in general, show their own ignorance by labelling Keynesianism as socialist, indeed as almost Marxist!

Even so, is Keynesianism the new orthodoxy for most, or is there something really new out there, or was Thatcher right after all as the Conservatives still seem to believe (and Reaganomics for the Republicans)?

#14 Mercerdavies

"Even so, is Keynesianism the new orthodoxy for most, or is there something really new out there, or was Thatcher right after all as the Conservatives still seem to believe (and Reaganomics for the Republicans)?"

This is something I have been covering at Paul Mason's blog.

79. At 10:14pm on 27 Oct 2008, celticlionltd wrote:
Avoiding the Next Wave or Learning to Surf

Unfortunately I cannot put hyperlinks as my posts seem to have disappeared from the 'user store'.

What undirected Keynesian economic strategy will do is destabilise ecological systems resulting in large numbers of deaths.

There is something new, that is what we need to implement.

The self interest of everybody is best served by putting the interests of the ecological life support systems of the planet first.

I refer you to your own work.



Though work was available before this that could be applied practically, locally and hence globally.

....Short-term dated UK bank bonds are among the best performers in the market, fund managers agree, as they are now offering yields of 14 to 15 per cent while gilts are yielding just over 4 per cent a year...

14-15% the real price of money?



meanwhile from google news we learn everyone from Wogan, who thinks Ross will never work at the bbc again, to Parkison , who feels little sympathy, to Dyke, 'what goes around comes around’, to the lack of any big name comedy stars defending them means this story is not over?

#16 Book Him Dano

Thanks for the updates on the Ross Brand. I read the Times Dyke article. I can only refer to my Tuesday comment

8. At 7:29pm on 28 Oct 2008, celticlionltd wrote:
Did anyone see David Siletto on the 6 o'clock, he sort of put the ......stiletto in.

I can't think why the Ross Brand story has so totally dominated the newspapers and the TV news, with so many demands for their sacking. ........................................................How many journalists did Jonathan Ross say he was worth?:

A) 10

B) 100

C) 1000

D) About the same number writing the stories

'PUBLIC EXPECTATIONS' MANAGEMENT

mercerdavids (#14) "McCain, and the Republicans in general, show their own ignorance by labelling Keynesianism as socialist, indeed as almost Marxist!

Even so, is Keynesianism the new orthodoxy for most, or is there something really new out there, or was Thatcher right after all as the Conservatives still seem to believe (and Reaganomics for the Republicans)?"

So, if one of the candidates for the most powerful jobs on the planet shows HIS apparent ignorance (or more accurately his political team's apparent ignorance) this way, why do you expect Osborne to behave any differently? Just look at the nonsense which Blair and Thatcher came out with and got away with as they eroded the state for everyone's benefit.

They are politicians, not economists/academics. Don't just look to who elects them, who funds them? Once they're elected they start to speak the rhetoric of the (largely ignorant) electorate, not the language of academia (even when they're talking to academics they do this as they fear what they say will be reported to the electorate anyway) but they do the bidding of those who fund them. The rhetoric of hearts and minds matters to them, not truth. I'm still trying to get over hearing Michael Howard say on Newsnight that when he was Home Secretary he was advised by his Civil Servants that he couldn't do anything about the rising crme rate other than manage the public's expectations without anyone picking up on this. What are the incumbents supposed to do about the economy when they've legislated to break up the state and devolve its management to market forces?

I'm not joking. Why do so many people still naively expect them to be able to do anything other than manage 'public expectations' after years of legislation which deregulates and breaks up the state? It's all gone in one direction for 30 years, how CAN they do a U turn now without a revolution?

EVEN THE DALAI LAMA HAS GIVEN UP.

We are in good company JJ.

REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT: YOU DECIDE

Barrie (#19)

I'm not so . He's off with gall-stones, but he's a , and that's . Just the sort of thing the Neocons like to exploit in their subversion of statism abroad in order to weaken its prospects at home?

- "The Dalai Lama said last weekend that he had "faith and trust" in the Chinese people, but that his "faith and trust in the Chinese government is diminishing" -

Didn't we hear exactly that line from Ahmadinejad not long ago viz the American government and its people?

Will Palin be flying out to nurse the Dalai Lama?

I'M PALIN - FLY ME!

Brilliant gag JJ. But if you think Hocky Moms might fly, try this: I just heard some ´óÏó´«Ã½ chiefs are 'paid more than Brown'.

WE ARE PAYING BROWN????!!!!!

In passing, I saw a starving child give Miliband D a cheery high (low) five, so I guess the Palin magic was diverted, mid-fly.

My greatest fear is that DNA will show the UK to be in serious mega-debt to a low-IQ Danish pig-hand (it's always pigs) as a consequence of some ancient pledge made by an illegitimate monarch who usurped a disputed throne (recorded on a dodgy document) in the mists of time. Hey - Kuwait could belong to China! Send in McCain.

Barrie (#21) "My greatest fear is that DNA will show the UK to be in serious mega-debt to a low-IQ Danish pig-hand (it's always pigs) as a consequence of some ancient pledge made by an illegitimate monarch who usurped a disputed throne (recorded on a dodgy document) in the mists of time. Hey - Kuwait could belong to China! Send in McCain."

My greatest fear is that I'm right

Sahrah....Ra-Ra.

Obama... he's going to need protection.

Nothing sparkly yet to kick off a new week? Anyone in the the ´óÏó´«Ã½ not still on hols or in the US?

Hey, ho, here'll have to do.

Just noticed (well, had brought to my attention by.... the Daily Mail!) some councils are not keen on aspects of our language. Wonder what their make ups are?

Frankly, some folk have too much time on their hands. QED.

Also just noticed a wee glitch that might employ many officers for many days if they write the funding application well enough.

'et cetera' is often abbreviated 'etc', I believe.

Now, I see possible problems with either the easily offended or Japanese communities substituting "and so on".

It's all done .

Statism is traditionally left-wing not 'far-right' (cf. Hitler's National Socialism and Stalin's Socialism in One Country). The right-wing (be it Conservative or New Labour) tends to enact and 'enforce' policies which break up the state in pursuit of internationalism, i.e the neo-liberal global free-market (cf. the EU and Lisbon Treaty).

The which is going through Parliament had amendments which have been changed by the Lords. The original amendments to sections 174 and 176 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 were allegedly designed to reinstate what Thatcher prevented, i.e the right of unions to exclude 'activists' with views/intents contrary to a union's interests. However, this has been misrepresented in the press as if the amendments were designed specifically to purge/exclude members of the BNP, racists and the right (there is no mention of any specific group in the bill).

The prevented unions from excluding individuals who were members of political parties antagonistic to the interests of unions, and and thus undermine statist Old Labour (note how that, if true, would make Militant Tendency, the SWP and Conservative activists not such strange bedfellows...).

The Employment Bill in its current draft has amendments to sections 174 and 176, but not apparently to the liking of campaigners such as Searchlight (which it seems, is communist/Trotskyite?) and some other Labour back-benchers, who appear to want those with political views contrary to their own excluded from unions/areas of work. Note how those with contrary views are vilified using highly emotive rhetoric.

The bill will be further considered on Tuesday 4th November. This, all requires some .

Enjoyed the clip of Jeremy with Usher. Lulu has also sung in support of Obama according
to yesterday's 'Sunday Post'
which gave away a free DVD
to celebrate the Glaswegian's
singer's birthday. How cool is
she? Almost as hot as Usher?

UK LAW, LISBON REDLINES AND THE ECHR

An illustration of how this is all going to get more and more .