| Postman’s spooky song hits Vegas
Dean has written a total of 15 quirky tracks and each demo is produced at Farmtracks Recording Studio in Banwell. • HAVE you recorded a CD? WE want to hear from you. Call us on 01934 422500 or email newsdesk@thewestonmercury.co.uk and you too could have your music posted on the Weston Mercury website.
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Mr Brown's doomed, I tell you
This is climate change, Captain, but not as you know it. Mr Brown's friends would respond that his Government has been hit by the unlucky coincidence of a clutch of largely unrelated stumbles, few of which are actually the fault of the ministers in charge. .
Death by Car Bomb in Damascus
Wow. A tough and iron-fisted Generalissimo of the totalitarian Left left the world stage yesterday . . . but enough about Hillary Clinton. Sorry, couldn't resist an obvious Castro/HRC joke. Back in Wisconsin, though, Hillary's problem is as serious as Fidel's. This Wisconsin loss means that Obama's surging momentum will grow even more powerful. New polls showing Obama closing in Hillary's Texas redoubt provide more evidence. The race tilted decisively toward Obama after his wins last week in Maryland, DC, and Virginia. With this Wisconsin iceberg now slamming into the Clinton campaign, I'm reminded of the scene in Cameron's Titanic where the ship's designer rushes to the bridge, unrolls the construction plans, and informs the Captain that despite the small shudder of the impact and the normal feeling on the bridge, the great ship is doomed.
The Editorial Board
But Democrats have their hopes up this year because the GOP incumbent up for re-election, John Cornyn, 56, doesn't seem as popular as his Republican colleague, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Also, the GOP in general seems to be on the defensive over a deeply unpopular war and a struggling economy. Still, this race is a long shot for Democrats, who have not won a U.S. Senate race in Texas since Lloyd Bentsen did it in 1988. Democrats in the March 4 primary have four choices in nominating a candidate to run in this fall's general election, and easily the most qualified is Rick Noriega of Houston, a state representative and Texas National Guard officer. The other three candidates are Ray McMurrey, an earnest Corpus Christi government teacher; Rhett Smith, a San Antonio security guard who ran as a Republican for governor in 2006; and Gene Kelly, a Universal City retiree and perennial candidate.
Police raid apartment of rogue trader and bank HQ
Police have taken into custody the trader blamed for a 4.9 billion euros (US$7 billion) fraud at French bank Societe Generale, a judicial source said yesterday. The source said Jerome Kerviel, 31, was being held for questioning. Under French law, suspects can be held for an initial 24-hour period before any charges are pressed, but this can be extended. Police nabbed Kerviel from his vehicle in the underground car park of the financial brigade's offices in Paris, a source close to the investigation said. He was taken to a police station in Paris at about 2pm. The detention followed a police raid on Kerviel's apartment on Friday in the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly sur Seine, during which documents were seized. Police officers also went on Friday to the bank's Paris headquarters to seize Kerviel's computer files, prosecutors said, adding that "some items useful to the inquiry" were handed over voluntarily.
Iowans! Heed the Undernews!
Not to mention the teachers' unions. (What's "right" for the country is that mediocre teachers can be fired as easily as you'd cut a mediocre tight end from a football squad. What's right for the NEA is ...) ... 4:23 P.M. link ___________________________ I'm reluctant to write skeptically about the NYT's David Leonhardt--I owe him one, having failed to answer his reasonable response to a criticism of several years ago. (All in good time!) His contrast between Hillary Clinton's domestic policy approach ("narrowly tailored government policies, like focused tax cuts," relying on rational economic incentives) and Obama's (broader, "simpler" programs that acknowledge people don't act rationally) seems highly useful. But I don't see how the great health care "mandates" debate fits this typology very well Isn't it Hillary who is proposing the broad, simple program: 'Everybody has to buy insurance!' And isn't this mandate at least somewhat similar to Obama's semi-mandatory ("opt out") employer-deduction savings plan in that it acknowledges people, if left to their own devices, won't do something that might in fact be good for them or at least for society,** even if given a seemingly sufficient incentive? Won't Obama need lots of little complex subsidies to enable people to afford the insurance he won't require them to buy? And if he actually adds a penalty for those who buy insurance later, when they get sick, isn't he relying on the "idea that people respond rationally to financial incentives"? That said, Leonhardt does make Hillary's vision seem dreary ("She has proposed new tax credits for savings, tuition, health care, elder care and renewable energy use.
Obama and Progressive Change
And I already hear it coming so I will be clear, I DO NOT BELIEVE OBAMA IS PROGRESSIVE. I do not believe that he will create change. What I believe is that he can be an agent of change by bringing in political idealists, and then they will almost inevidably become disillusioned by the 2 corporate parties and either demand real change through the current system or join me and others in the Green Party. .
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