Our Awful Situation

Archive for March, 2008

« Older Entries

Putin, having solved all of Russia’s other problems, proposes tunnel to U.S. via Alaska

Posted by Charlie Kilo on March 31st, 2008

Maybe Putin could use some of his own billions for the construction then charge EUROs for admittance:

VLADIMIR PUTIN, the Russian president, is to raise plans for a tunnel to link his country with America when he meets his US counterpart, George W Bush, next Sunday.

The 64-mile tunnel would run under the Bering Strait between Chukotka, in the Russian far east, and Alaska; the cost is estimated at £33 billion.

Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club and governor of Chukotka, has invested £80m in the world’s largest drill but has denied that it is linked with the development.

Proposals for such a tunnel were approved by Tsar Nicholas II in the early 20th century but were abandoned during the Soviet era. If finally built, the tunnel would allow rail connections between London and New York.

A Kremlin spokesman confirmed last week that Putin seeks to build “a real bridge” between Russia and America when he meets Bush at the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Officials in Washington and Moscow view the talks as an opportunity to ease expected tensions about this week’s Nato summit in Romania. Clashes are expected over America’s planned missile defence system in eastern Europe and whether to allow Ukraine and Georgia into Nato.

Russia said last month that it would have to aim its own missiles at Ukraine if it joined Nato and hosted military facilities.

While Russia cannot block Nato membership, allies know that boosting links with the two former Soviet states would strain ties with Moscow – ties that are already damaged over the independence of Kosovo and the US missile shield.

Although Nato’s 26 members agree in principle that the future of Ukraine and Georgia lies within the alliance, some are wary of angering Russia, which provides a quarter of Europe’s natural gas.

Or perhaps it could be just another convenient invasion route?

USA 2008: The Great Depression

Posted by Charlie Kilo on March 31st, 2008

The Independent, one of the UK’s largest papers, has declared that the United States is in a “depression”! They report:

Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.

The increase – from 26.5 million in 2007 – is due partly to recent efforts to increase public awareness of the programme and also a switch from paper coupons to electronic debit cards. But above all it is the pressures being exerted on ordinary Americans by an economy that is suddenly beset by troubles. Housing foreclosures, accelerating jobs losses and fast-rising prices all add to the squeeze.

Emblematic of the downturn until now has been the parades of houses seized in foreclosure all across the country, and myriad families separated from their homes. But now the crisis is starting to hit the country in its gut. Getting food on the table is a challenge many Americans are finding harder to meet. As a barometer of the country’s economic health, food stamp usage may not be perfect, but can certainly tell a story.

The story also reports a 5% increase in unemployment in March. The plot thickens…

Update. Here’s additional coverage from the New York Times: As Jobs Vanish and Prices Rise, Food Stamp Use Nears Record

Well, that explains a lot…

Posted by patriot on March 31st, 2008

Majority of doctors favor socialized medicine

Posted by patriot on March 31st, 2008

Apparently the tide has turned, and more doctors are all too eager for centrally-managed government health care:

More than half of U.S. doctors now favor switching to a national health care plan and fewer than a third oppose the idea, according to a survey published on Monday.

The survey suggests that opinions have changed substantially since the last survey in 2002 and as the country debates serious changes to the health care system.

Of more than 2,000 doctors surveyed, 59 percent said they support legislation to establish a national health insurance program, while 32 percent said they opposed it, researchers reported in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Expect some of this.

Vatican: Muslims more numerous than Catholics

Posted by Charlie Kilo on March 31st, 2008

Via Reuters:

Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday.

Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican’s newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world’s population and Catholics 17.4 percent.

“For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us,” Formenti told Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.

He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world’s population — or about 2 billion people.

The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people. It did not provide a figure for Muslims, generally estimated at around 1.3 billion.

Formenti said that while the number of Catholics as a proportion of the world’s population was fairly stable, the percentage of Muslims was growing because of higher birth rates.

He said the data on Muslim populations had been compiled by individual countries and then released by the United Nations, adding the Vatican could only vouch for its own statistics.

When socialists take Wall Street

Posted by Charlie Kilo on March 31st, 2008

Via Inteldaily:

Wall Street, which historically has been a bastion of vehement opposition to government intervention in the so-called free market, now takes it as a matter of right that the U. S. government and its central bank (as well as the central banks of other countries) will come to its rescue. The principle invoked–if it can be called that–is that Wall Street’s institutions are too big to fail without causing a worldwide financial panic. This is an interesting form of extortion: “We’ll bring down the world economy unless you bail us out. Never mind that we paid ourselves huge bonuses using other people’s money while creating this mess.”

Read more

CIA and Google team up

Posted by patriot on March 31st, 2008

Surprise, surprise:

Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies to help them better process and share information they gather about suspects.

Agencies such as the National Security Agency have bought servers on which Google-supplied search technology is used to process information gathered by networks of spies around the world.

Didn’t see that one coming! :)

Fed changes announced

Posted by patriot on March 31st, 2008

Says CNN:

Among the plan’s biggest proposals is to provide additional powers to the Federal Reserve, which, along with the Treasury Department, has attempted to shepherd the nation through the housing crisis. Earlier this month, the Fed orchestrated a marriage between JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) and Bear Stearns (BSC, Fortune 500), which was on the verge of a collapse that could have caused shockwaves throughout the financial system.

Under the Paulson plan, the Fed would essentially serve as a financial markets moderator, stepping in if the nation’s markets were again threatened by an episode like the near collapse of Bear Stearns. Currently the central bank is responsible for setting the country’s monetary policy as well as acting as a supervisor of certain banks and all bank holding companies.

The article makes no mention of who must approve this new system of oversight, but one must assume that it will be sent to Congress instead of mandated through fiat executive order.

The proposal would also establish a new federal regulator for the mortgage industry, affecting both lenders and brokers, which now follow a patchwork of state regulations.

Paulson’s plan includes other bold moves, including bringing previously unregulated financial entities like hedge funds and private equity firms within the reach of federal authorities and federalizing the oversight of the insurance industry.

But it is cautious in not pushing for too much regulation, which could meet with criticism from Congressional Democrats.

As the article implies, Republicans will probably lap this one up like a thirsty dog. Ridiculous!

HUD chief allegedly plans to resign

Posted by patriot on March 30th, 2008

MSNBC reports:

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson, buffeted by allegations of cronyism and favoritism, is expected to announce his resignation Monday, sources close to the matter told the Wall Street Journal.

Jackson was to appear at a press conference Monday morning, according to the Journal. Asked if Jackson was planning to resign, HUD spokeswoman DJ Nordquist told the paper in an e-mailed statement that she was “not at liberty to say what the announcement is.”

How many resignations are we at now for the Bush administration?

Propaganda machine fires up for global warming

Posted by patriot on March 30th, 2008

Al Gore, the messiah of global warming, is launching an aggressive propaganda campaign to change the public’s perception of global warming:

Former vice president Al Gore will launch a three-year, $300 million campaign Wednesday aimed at mobilizing Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, a move that ranks as one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history.

The Alliance for Climate Protection’s “we” campaign will employ online organizing and television advertisements on shows ranging from “American Idol” to “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” It highlights the extent to which Americans’ growing awareness of global warming has yet to translate into national policy changes, Gore said in an hour-long phone interview last week. He said the campaign, which Gore is helping to fund, was undertaken in large part because of his fear that U.S. lawmakers are unwilling to curb the human-generated emissions linked to climate change.

“This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public’s sense of urgency in addressing this crisis,” Gore said. “I’ve tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it.”

« Older Entries
{ }

Search

Recent Posts

Sites of Interest

Archives

Categories