I enjoy checking out the Guardian website from time to time. It's like spending a few minutes on a planet where the sky is green. Recently the Guardian's editorial crew directed their attention to a really pressing issue: an excess of World War II memorials.
This summer another second world war memorial, this time to Bomber Command, will be unveiled in central London. Even if this were an uncontentious subject of scintillating design, 2012 is far too late to be building memorials to those involved in a war that ended nearly 70 years ago. OK, so those young British aircrews suffered roughly a 40% KIA rate: what have the survivors done for us lately? Bunch of geezers, they are.
The war is reduced to being another chapter in Our Island Story, England alone, the last bastion of freedom. It is becoming Britain's foundation myth, and the way it is remembered is as important as the fact of remembrance. The aggrandising of conflict misrepresents and diminishes the truth. It's almost ... patriotic!
Their memorial, surely, is the NHS, social welfare and free education. I can see it now, the Seventh Armored Division Memorial Dole Queue. And a commenter chips in with this:
I agree with this editorial. WWII is well and truly over.
While we're at it, can we say enough is enough regarding Holocaust memorials? No, you jerk, we can't. But I do suspect that the Guardian could find the willpower to support a tasteful memorial to the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/24/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
"QUENTIN CRISP" WAR MEMORIAL ...
versus
* NEWS KERALA > UK DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER [Nick Clegg] DECLARES SNOBBERY ["class attitudes"] AS NATIONAL RELIGION OWING TO [types/kinds of upper-paying] JOBS DENIED TO THE POOR.
[QUADROPHENIA, HOW THE IRISH [repeatedly] SAVED BRITAIN here].
#4
I recently purchased Aldon F. Ferguson's brilliantly done book entitled the Royal Air Forces Burtonwood. From the forward:
Burtonwood was probably the largest military base in Europe during World War Two, processing over 11,5000 aircraft between 1941 and 1945 alone, but beyond that it was responsible for the support of initially the 8th Air Force, then additionally the 9th and ultimately the 12th and 15th Air Forces as well. Over 35,000 men were under the direct control of Burtonwood with 18,500 on the base itself. Nothing was too big or small, from rebuilding battle damaged bombers to manufacturing valve springs for aero engines, manufacturing timber packing cases or converting gliders into powered aircraft.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
05/24/2012 18:45 Comments ||
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#2
" Yesterdays revised GDP figures, showing that the country is even deeper in recession than we thought, would appear to support the mocking tone in which Krugman condemns the idea of expansionary austerity. But where is this austerity? In fact, one of the few positive contributors to output in the last quarter was government spending,"
A simpleton may actually think it creates actual GDP. Yet it removes money from where actually works and converts it into debt or worse, devalues the entire currency.
Government is probably 70% net loss if you include all the productivity lost by the market to comply with government shit.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/24/2012 11:10 Comments ||
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#4
Germany should start demanding land in exchange for loans. A few greek island isn't a lot to ask. Make it Greek Cypress and you solve an international crisis at the same time.
Not to mention all the money the unions don't have to spend on President Obama's reelection, having spent it on this failed attempt to keep Gov. Walker from succeeding.
#1
Not a 'done deal' yet. Lots of union and other leftist 'helpers' (from both in and out of state) organizing and delivering inner-city folks and university students to 'early polling' locations throughout major metro areas. Hard to say at this point if the vans stop at more than one polling place with their 'cargo'. Based on the makeup of the government poll workers (AFSCME) at these locations, checking to see if a person lives a their supposed address or has voted previously will not be a major concern.
Voter ID requirements (which Wisconsin had briefly until a liberal judge placed a restraining order keeping it on hold until after the recall election) would be a deterrent to these shenanigans.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
05/24/2012 14:38 Comments ||
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#2
LOTS of absentee ballots in this election. Many, no doubt, to be voted by a small group dedicated to properly representing the dead, comatose and mentally incapacitated - in other words, Democrats.
#4
The results of the 'recall primary' were very good for Walker. He got more votes running unopposed than the two major Dems did combined in a hard fought and well financed primary.
At least some of the funds that Walker is raising will be used for spot monitoring of voting. While some vote fraud is certain to take place, it is very doubtful that it would amount to more than a few thousand votes at most statewide. This is because there are relatively few people motivated enough to put themselves on the line. What is more important than vote fraud itself is the intimidation (e.g., tires slashed in pro-Walker neighborhoods) and assisted votes (e.g., voting in assisted living institution where an 'advisor' helped the voter).
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
05/24/2012 18:44 Comments ||
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#5
You forgot the imaginary friends Glenmore - please imagine that they are very pissed off about it :).
Short version: It is as bad if not worse than you thought it was. Reclassified as Non-Wot and moved to Opinion. Added link to original column.
The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household -- nearly four times the official number reported under unique rules set by Congress.
A U.S. household's median income is $49,445, the Census reports.
The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.
The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books.
Deficits are a major issue in this year's presidential campaign, but USA TODAY has calculated federal finances under accounting rules since 2004 and found no correlation between fluctuations in the deficit and which party ran Congress or the White House.
Key findings:
Social Security had the biggest financial slide. The government would need $22.2 trillion today, set aside and earning interest, to cover benefits promised to current workers and retirees beyond what taxes will cover. That's $9.5 trillion more than was needed in 2004.
Deficits from 2004 to 2011 would be six times the official total of $5.6 trillion reported.
Federal debt and retiree commitments equal $561,254 per household. By contrast, an average household owes a combined $116,057 for mortgages, car loans and other debts.
"By law, the federal government can't tell the truth," says accountant Sheila Weinberg of the Chicago-based Institute for Truth in Accounting.
Jim Horney, a former Senate budget staff expert now at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says retirement programs should not count as part of the deficit because, unlike a business, Congress can change what it owes by cutting benefits or lifting taxes.
"It's not easy, but it can be done. Retirement programs are not legal obligations," he says.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
