Looting and rioting is easy and fun. After all, Rich kids in Britain do it. It’s cool. “Laura Johnson, 20, was found guilty of burglary from an electronics store and handling stolen goods, and admitted driving fellow looters between targets … Johnson is described as “going off the rails” after a privileged upbringing, which saw her achieve nine GCSE A grades and four A*s at A-Level at the sixth form of St Olave’s Grammar, the fourth best state school in the country. She spent her teenage years in a country house in Orpington with her wealthy parents Robert, 56, and Lindsay, 55, who run their own marketing business.”
Celebrities do it. “The son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour defiled the Cenotaph before joining the baying mob surrounding Prince Charles and Camilla.” Gilmour was a student at Cambridge. “The son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour did not realise he was swinging from the Cenotaph because he had grown up in the countryside without access to television, a court has been told.” Don’t people know it’s trendy to be rebellious? Who knows about what the Cenotaph is except the members of those dreadful clubs that the poor old pensioners belong to and stand for Last Post on Armistice Day?
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Today’s European disaster news has been dominated by reports that Catalonia, Spain’s “richest province” has 13 billion Euro in debts it can’t pay. The head of its autonomous government, Catalan President Artur Mas, says “we don’t care how they do it, but we need to make payments at the end of the month. Your economy can’t recover if you can’t pay your bills.” One is tempted to reply ‘who gives a damn?’ No Mas, Artur.
But nothing illustrates the level to which Spain sunk more than news that it’s Eurovision song contestant has been asked to intentionally lose because the country can’t afford to host the next event if she wins.
Bosses of Spanish public television have told Pastora Soler ‘to throw’ her entry as the Government battle to cut national debt and bring public spending under control. The 33-year-old singer said directors of state-run broadcaster TVE called her in to say: ‘Please don’t win. We don’t want to pay for it in 2013.’
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When Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran told author Charles Brandt where, how, and when he put Hoffa down, he was near the point of death. Sheeran, who was suffering from cancer, said he had just enough time to square things with God. “During his final illness … he told me he had made his confession and received communion from a visiting priest … the following day, a week or so before he lost strength and stamina, Frank Sheeran asked me to pray with him, to say the Lord’s Prayer and and Hail Mary with him, which we did together.”
Hugo Chavez, facing the prospect of personal extinction, temporarily forgot his Marxism and begged Jesus to grant him life. Richard “the Iceman” Kuklinski, who worked as a hitman for the Mafia and killed and sometimes tortured people for fun, also got the urge to confess in face of a terminal illness. Recently, a man confessed to murdering six-year-old Etan Patz in 1979 after learning that he was dying from cancer.
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May 22nd, 2012 - 11:00 pm
President Obama is getting beat up by shadows.
In Arkansas, the latest results, with about a quarter of precincts reporting, shows Obama beating Tennessee lawyer John Wolfe by a margin of 59 percent to 41 percent …
Meanwhile, in Kentucky, Obama is actually losing full counties to “Uncommitted.” Actually, Obama lost more than 40 counties across the state to Uncommitted…. It literally means that people are actively voting for nobody.
Mr. Nobody was having a pretty good night with Colin Powell too. The AP says “Former Secretary of State Colin Powell declined Tuesday to renew the presidential endorsement he gave Barack Obama four years ago, saying he wasn’t ready “to throw my weight behind someone” at this time.”
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The Wall Street Journal has blog roundup summarizing predictions of what will happen if Greece left the Euro. The scenarios presented vary; all seem to agree it would involve a period of acute short term pain followed possibly by long-term benefit. The two worst worries are a cascading run on the banks in the “periphery” and the rise of left and right wing parties.
The risk of capital flight is key. “We are most worried about deposit risk for the periphery, and we see plenty that can be done to alleviate these risks–crucially if there is the political willingness. For instance, allowing banks to access the EFSF/ESM [the European Financial Stability Facility and European Stability Mechanism, the euro zone's temporary and permanent rescue funds, respectively] directly. We have not thought that this was politically feasible but clearly there is a pain threshold that makes politicians take risks.” Alternatively, a euro-wide deposit insurance program would be a good idea, RBS says.
But the predictions are contingent. There is if and there is maybe. The biggest if is whether politicians will do the right thing. Why would anyone think they will? The most likely outcome is for politicians to behave exactly as they have before.
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May 22nd, 2012 - 11:44 am
A number of recent blogposts show how astoundingly easy it is to start a fake narrative and keep it going. A lie can keep ripping through explanations easier than a high velocity bullet through a paper wall. For example, journalist Mark Singer wrote about a book about how he was conned into slandering Dan Quayle by a guy called Brett Kimberlin.
This book relates a journalist’s worst nightmare: of getting deeply involved in a “big story” based on information from a single source who turns out to be a world-class liar. During the 1992 Presidential campaign Singer wrote a story for the New Yorker about the allegations by Brett Kimberlin, a former marijuana dealer then in prison for a series of bombings, that he had once sold marijuana to Vice President Dan Quayle. (The cartoonist Garry Trudeau was another journalist who pushed this story hard.) After signing a book contract to expand the story, Singer invested more and more time,and became frustrated by holes, inconsistencies and dead ends in Kimberlin’s tale. …
After Garry Trudeau in “Doonesbury,” the New Yorker’s Mark Singer was possibly the most prominent journalist to sympathetically report allegations that convict Brett Kimberlin had sold marijuana to Dan Quayle when the Vice-President was a law student. … Now free, the former dope smuggler helps ship commodities to Ukraine; but when Kimberlin (with Singer in tow) had a chance to meet Quayle at a book signing, he refused to confront him. Quayle, it now seems, deserves apologies. 50,000 first printing.
Dan Quayle’s reputation is restored, right? Probably not. If he’s remembered at all it will be as the only man who ever lived that was more stupid than George W. Bush. But Kimberlin kept going. Today he is suing everyone, but most especially bloggers, though he will sue anyone at a pinch. Patterico’s Pontifications notes the incredible extent of Kimberlin’s legal action.
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The New York Times describes more evolution in action in its article, Charting Obama’s Journey to a Shift on Afghanistan. The article is by David Sanger, based on his own book, Confront and Conceal. “President Obama’s thinking about what he once called “a war of necessity” began to radically change less than a year after he took up residency in the White House.”
in the first days of his presidency, Mr. Obama asked Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer with deep knowledge of the region, to lead a rapid review. At the time, the president was still speaking in campaign mode. He talked about remaking “an economy that isn’t dominated by illicit drugs” in Afghanistan and a “civilian surge” to match the military effort. But he said little about the Riedel team’s central insight: that Pakistan posed a far greater threat.
“If we were honest with ourselves, we would call this problem ‘Pak/Af,’ not ‘Af/Pak,’ ” Mr. Riedel said shortly after turning in his report. But the White House would not dare admit that publicly — even that rhetorical reversal would further alienate the Pakistanis …
Mr. Obama concluded that the Pentagon had not internalized that the goal was not to defeat the Taliban …
his goals now focus largely on finishing off Al Qaeda and keeping Pakistan’s nuclear weapons from going astray. Left unclear is how America will respond if a Taliban resurgence takes over wide swathes of the country America invaded in 2001 and plans to largely depart 13 years later.
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Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb died from cancer today. “Only Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Garth Brooks and Paul McCartney have outsold the Bee Gees“.
The group sang three-part tight harmonies that were instantly recognisable; Robin’s clear vibrato lead was a hallmark of their earlier hits, while Barry’s R&B falsetto became their signature sound during the late 1970s and 1980s. The brothers wrote all of their own hits, as well as writing and producing several major hits for other artists.
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What could go wrong with NATO, Occupy, the Anti-Racist Action and National Socialists converging on Chicago?
Who were the White Supremacists who were attacked at a Tinley Park restaurant in Chicago? The Sun Times reported that in the middle of the lunch on rush Saturday “a waitress screamed a fight had broken out in the dining room.” …
Just who were the assailants? Wikipedia describes the Anti-Racist Action group as “a decentralized network of anti-fascist and anti-racists in North America. ARA activists organize actions to disrupt neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups, and help organize activities against fascist and racist ideologies. ARA groups also oppose sexism, homophobia, heterosexism, anti-Semitism, and the pro-life movement. ARA originated from the skinhead and punk subcultures.” …
As for the White Supremacists, Fox Chicago reports that “they planned to have lunch at the Ashford House restaurant, 7959 W. 159th St, Tinley Park. Their internet postings refer to a ’5th Annual White Nationalist Economic Summit.’ Not clear is whether they chose this weekend and this suburban Chicago location as some sort of response to the NATO Summit in Chicago.”
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