#3
Im not sure about this acidification issue from CO2 but around the Arab states they are slowly poisoning the oceans with salt. I know, sounds silly. They have large desalinization plants to create drinking water. The sludge created from it is the garbage in the water and the salt. They dump it back into the ocean. The salt levels, and PH levels are so out of sort that the oceans around these countries are dying.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
06/04/2009 12:39 Comments ||
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#4
This just in: Oceans are getting wetter!!!
Posted by: European Conservative ||
06/04/2009 18:39 Comments ||
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#5
This is real hooey. Parts of the ocean are intensely acidic, like North of Sicily, where the water is mostly sulfuric acid; and in other places it is as intensely basic. pH varies wildly by time of year, depth, current, etc.
#7
the (salt, solids) return contents to the ocean are addressed in each and every extensive environmental permitting document required for permitting of every desal plant - this is utter bullshit and the lying weasels who oppose desal are strict anti-development/anti-human footprint expansion assholes
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/04/2009 21:22 Comments ||
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#8
I'm no scientist, just a dumbass pilot. While in Soddi I met a team trying to figure out how to manage the changes the sludge created in the red sea and persian gulf. The issue was both the Red Sea and the Persian gulf are small in size and the current flow is slow vs the number of desal plants on the coastlines.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
06/04/2009 23:34 Comments ||
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#1
OTOH, WORLD NEWS > SOLAR CYCLE 24: SOLAR FLARES AND SOCIAL COLLAPSE, OR CRUSHING COLD TEMPERATURES AND GLOBAL FAMINE; + YEAR 2100: THE FINAL DECADE OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION [ "perfect storm of MASSIVE POPULAT GROWTH, DWINDLING RESOURCES, + CLIMATE CHANGE]???
#2
WAFF > VIETNAM GEARING UP FOR WAR WITH CHINA? PRC fears SEA/AREA DENIAL to CHINA SEAS RESOURCES + INDIAN OCEAN iff Vietnam proceeds wid efforts to extend its sovereignty to its offshore UW continental shelf.
ALso, WOLRD MIL FORUM > IIUC SPRATLEY ISLANDS DISPUTE MAY SPARK SUBMARINE ARMS RACE BETWEEN CHINA, VIETNAM, MALAYSIA, AND INDIA; + INDIA SHOCKED: CHINA'S SECRET NAVAL BASE IN THE INDIAN OCEAN [PLAN monitoring/listening sta. on MADAGASCAR].
All governments end in failure. But never in modern British political history has there been a collapse as startling and dramatic as that which is taking place at Westminster this week.
Attention: British writer in full spate. Prepare for deliciously cutting languiage. You have been warned!
The Labour Party has been braced for months to receive a drubbing in today's European and local authority elections. But even before the first ballot is cast, never mind counted, ministers have been throwing themselves from high places in a fashion that would incur the disbelief of lemmings. Many of those who survive appeared last night in a state of mutiny as Gordon Brown took his first bumbling steps towards a Cabinet reshuffle. The latest rout began on Tuesday.
A clutch of ministers and MPs broke it to their families that, like it or not, they intend to spend more time with them. Jacqui Smith, Tom Watson, Beverley Hughes and Patricia Hewitt led the list of parachutists suddenly proclaiming a determination to return to the simple pleasures of dish-washing, bedtime stories and other activities in which, presumably, they will do less damage to the national interest.
Hazel Blears, she of the imbecile grin, yesterday joined the rush, at least 48 hours before her inevitable sacking. Chancellor Alistair Darling appeared to be living on borrowed time, following revelations about his abuse of Commons allowances. But reports last night suggest that he is clinging to his desk at the Treasury, rejecting proposals of a job swap.
Geoff Hoon, the Transport Secretary, is even more tarnished by the expenses scandal, but may be less vulnerable because no one notices whether he belongs to the front bench or not.
And the Prime Minister? Gordon Brown inhabits an extraterrestrial zone far off among the planets. He has divorced himself not merely from the electorate, but from mankind. His public pronouncements are periodically beamed back to Earth from a Downing Street space station. Inside the capsule, he conducts meetings and thinks great thoughts. But there is no evidence that these are founded upon any awareness of what is taking place in real Britain, and of what 'hard-working British families' (those people he hoped would vote for him if he gave them enough taxpayers' money) are saying to each other about him. The latest tidings of reshuffle chaos emphasise that he has even lost control of his own Cabinet.
Brown will cling to the grandeur of power until the last possible moment. He believes himself much more fit for the job than David Cameron, his despised rival. He is untroubled by embarrassment, far less a sense of personal responsibility, for the economic plight of the country. He imagines himself saving us, heedless of the fact that his policies as Chancellor have contributed mightily to this mess.
But hardly anyone else in the Cabinet, or indeed the parliamentary Labour Party, any longer believes in this administration's fitness to govern. The most startling aspect of the events of recent days and weeks has been the collapse of government confidence.
To run a country, just as to play tennis or boss a business, self-belief is indispensable. To win a match or launch a sales campaign or steer a Whitehall department, you need to be convinced that you can do it better than the competition. Suddenly, there is hardly a man or woman with keys to a Cabinet red box who possesses that assurance.
Even before today's election results have been posted, many ministers and MPs are in the mood to throw in the towel. It is important to remember how deep were the troubles of the Brown regime, before the MPs' expenses scandal was even heard of. The public finances are wrecked. Every day for months, economic commentators - around the world as well as here at home - have heaped scorn on the absence of any plausible fiscal plan for salvaging Britain's exchequer. Brown and Darling are committed to spend, spend, spend to win an election.
They offer no hint of what might happen thereafter, though we can guess, and it is not pretty. Elsewhere in government, there is a void of competence. Forget Jacqui Smith's bent housing arrangements and her husband's publicly funded taste in movie viewing. From the day Smith became Home Secretary, it was plain that she was not up to the job. The same is true of most of her Cabinet colleagues. They look what they are: tail-end charlies of an exhausted and discredited regime. The best and brightest of New Labour's people came and went years ago. Brown is pinning great hopes on his imminent reshuffle.
But who is fit to join the Cabinet, to replace the regiment of ministers who should go? There is no galaxy of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young heroes and heroines, waiting on the backbenches for a weekend call from good old Gordon. New Labour has expended its ammunition, used up its talent. Almost all of Brown's MPs know this.
I wrote before the last election, in 2005, that there might come a time when Labour would regret winning it. Few, if any, British governments have proved able to make effective use of power for more than two terms. Harold Macmillan triumphed in the 1959 election, when the Tories had already ruled for eight years and survived the Suez disaster. But thereafter, his administration lapsed into frustration and ridicule. Margaret Thatcher's third term ended in tears, with her eviction in 1990, followed by six years of painfully limp-wristed stewardship by John Major. One of the most striking aspects of the last phase of Major's regime was a collapse of ministers' self-confidence.
By 1997, few Tories believed they deserved to beat Tony Blair's New Labour. They knew they had shot their bolt. But, even in those dark days, the Conservatives still had ministers of the calibre of Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke, Douglas Hurd - big beasts all - occupying the top jobs.
There was nothing resembling today's shambles, with Cabinet pygmies stampeding for the exits, and the economy in tatters. Labour veteran Sir Gerald Kaufman warned in his book How To Be A Minister: 'If you are contemplating resigning your ministerial office, be entirely sure you want to go.'
Almost everyone in this Government, with the exception of the Prime Minister and his creepy crony, Ed Balls, seems desperate to be somewhere else. That even includes some ministers who have escaped unscathed from the Commons expenses scandal and whom Brown is willing to keep in their jobs. Meanwhile, Alan Johnson is widely touted as Brown's most likely successor, if there is a putsch following today's election results. Yet Johnson's most notable achievement as a minister was his surrender to the public sector unions when the Government sought to check their pension bonanza in order to make Labour's client supporters share some fraction of the private sector's sufferings.
Whether Brown or Johnson leads Labour, its credibility is irrecoverable. Of course, the Tories have their own expenses embarrassments. Their front bench includes some miserable specimens who may well prove to be the Smiths and Blearses of the future.
But only a General Election and change of government can draw a line under the sorry past and farcical present. It is absurd to suggest, as the Prime Minister did at the weekend, that he is the appropriate man to preside over reform of parliament, far less over salvaging our finances.
The statesmanlike course for Gordon Brown is to go to the country. But it would be naïve to suppose that this heroic fantasist will do any such thing. If he did, he might earn the British people's gratitude for the manner of his departure. Otherwise, he will be subjected to their anger and bitterness as we are forced to suffer another year of bungling and paralysis like the last.
It was probably inevitable that, after 12 years of office, the Labour Government should have run out of road. But the sheer indignity and chaos of this administration's predicament defies belief. Gordon Brown has lost control, and it seems fanciful to suppose he can ever get it back. The British people deserve to be delivered from a regime that has become ridiculous.
Yummy.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/04/2009 00:17 ||
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#1
The British people deserve to be delivered from a regime that has become ridiculous.
#6
What the UK needs is a total political reform and transformation. Why does a country of say, 60 million need over 600 members of the house when in the US we have over 300 million with only 435 members of the lower house?
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/04/2009 10:48 Comments ||
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#7
Jack,
650 in the House of Commons + 700+ in the House of Lords!
#8
I dunno: I'm not sure there's an ideal size for a legislature. Too big a deliberating body and nothing gets deliberated. Too small and the number of people each member represents is too big, which means that you and I lose contact with our representatives (unless we come bearing envelopes of cash).
Posted by: James ||
06/04/2009 15:27 Comments ||
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#9
Looks like the wheels have completely fallen off the Labour party now...
#5
Go ahead and try to part a Chinese family from their money. Just try. The British nicknamed them "The Jews of the Orient". There is probably more gold buried in China than in circulation.
#6
CHINESE MIL FORUM > ALL ASIAN BASE COMMODITY CURRENCY: ASIAN NATIONS AND CHINA [ASEAN + 3] TO DECOUPLE FROM US ECONOMY WITHIN FIVE YEARS.
OTOH, SAME > THE IMPORTANCE OF CATHOLICISM TO BEIJING [111-138Milyuhn Christians and growing]. By 2025 MIGRANTS will comprise 2/5th's of China's URBAN POPULAT.
IOW, CHINA'S RIPE FOR THE CONVERTIN' + MISSIONARIN' + ......!
(CNSNews.com) - The $700-billion financial industry bailout legislation approved by Congress last fall gave the Obama administration all the authority it needed to take ownership of General Motors this week, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told CNSNews.com.
On Monday, President Barack Obama announced the federal government was granting another $30.1 billion in aid to GM and taking ownership of 60 percent of the automaker as it enters bankruptcy.
When asked by CNSNews.com to explain "why specifically the government should be able" to take "control of 60 percent of a company" and put $30 billion in it "without direct congressional authorization," Gibbs said the following:
"Well, I think the money is based on the Troubled Asset Relief [Program], and is related to money that was approved in the prior administration through that program to deal with, as they had in the past administration, they were dealing with loans to cover--basically to bridge the operating costs," he said.
"Obviously, you know the history of this," said Gibbs, "the companies sought additional money, and the president believed that their restructuring plans weren't sufficient enough to meet the requirements of viability--and he's asked them to go back. We've seen one company emerge from bankruptcy with a buyer and another company there now."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/04/2009 00:08 ||
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#8
Hitler never produced many of the "People's Car" - it was a funding scam. They made people pay in monthly to get one, but never produced enough to even begin fulfilling the "demand".
#8
McCain needs a LONG rest - say, 30 years or so. The strain of being a US Senator has totally rotted his brain. Of course, he's joined in that malady by about a dozen other RINOs and thirty or fourty Democrats. We really need to repeal the 17th Ammendment.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/04/2009 14:30 Comments ||
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#9
... and World Peace!
Posted by: European Conservative ||
06/04/2009 18:38 Comments ||
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#10
but according to Allahpundit, Meghan McCain is the future of a party she hadn't ever voted for. F' em both...and John too. Notice that now we can proudly say Barack Hussein Obama? What a change. It would be good to have a GOP candidate who's willing to win
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/04/2009 19:51 Comments ||
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#1
"But, I paid those taxes. I wrote the check on the deck of a Swift boat in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968. the event is seared--seared!--into my memory."
Posted by: Mike ||
06/04/2009 9:56 Comments ||
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#2
Its a clerical error. I make them all the time.
Posted by: Abu at 711 ||
06/04/2009 10:50 Comments ||
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#3
Kerry is now qualified to be appointed to an important post by Obama.
President Barack Obamas promises of change are falling short for one core Democratic constituency: gays and lesbians, whose leaders say Obamas administration isnt keeping up with the times.
Gay rights campaigners, most of them Democrats who supported Obama in November, have begun to voice their public frustration with Obamas inaction, small jokes at their communitys expense and deafening silence on what they see as the signal civil rights issue of this era. Well, it is a capital offense under Sharia---so count your blessings
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.
