The Aged P

My other piece of advice, Copperfield, said Mr. Micawber, you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and, in short, you are for ever floored. As I am!

Ah, Wilkins Micawber….if only you were in Washington to talk some sense to President Obama. The politicians might be able to conjure up some sort of last minute Debt Ceiling fix that can flatter the markets for a few microseconds but some would argue that it will really be like covering plague sores with heavy theatrical make up – and in a way the actor analogy is highly appropriate. Boston University’s Professor Laurence Kotlikoff sees the current situation as a piece of political theatre choreographed to distract the public from the cold stark facts of economic reality.

Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills.

Kotlikoff differentiates between the “official” debt of approximately 14 trillion and what he calls actual net indebtedness of 202 trillion. The true extent of the government’s liabilities have been hidden by a deft piece of legerdemain, that oh so useful tool of the crooked accountant – relabelling.

Congress has been very careful over the years to label most of its liabilities“unofficial” to keep them off the books and far in the future.

But unofficial or not the liabilities are already there, dark clouds on the horizon that will never clear but will eventually blacken the whole sky.

Why?

We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.
This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.

This isn’t just a problem for America. It’s a problem for most of the western world. It’s the eternal confidence trick that promises rainbows and unicorns with just one rub of the genie’s lamp.

We shake our heads at the tortured self destruction of Amy Winehouse. We congratulate ourselves they we have never been weak enough to become enslaved to the drug dealers haunting the other side of the tracks. But in reality the massive amounts of debt carried by western governments are the symptoms of our own society’s addiction to robbing the future to pleasure the present.

Read the rest of Kotlikoff’s piece here – it paints a chilling picture but implicit within the message is the desperate need for political leaders who have the courage to tell the truth to their fellow citizens and the steel to confront the pied pipers of the Obama left or, as Jeff Randall of the UK Daily Telegraph calls them

media dons, Princeton’s Paul Krugman and British-born David Blanchflower, professor of economics at Dartmouth College, championing fiscal incontinence as the route to salvation.

In 1940, when Churchill promised the British people nothing but “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” it was the first time for decades that they had heard a politician treating them as adults by telling them the truth. They responded, not with despair but with a grim determination to confront the harsh realities of the present with a shared sacrifice so that future generations could live in peace and freedom.

That was leadership.

Where are the Churchills of the 21st century?

Hot Air comments are never quite as fiery as those at Free Republic but sometimes they can be irritating. At the thread about the Norwegian terrorist attack I was struck by two reoccuring themes – firstly that the perpetrator must, by definition, be Muslim…you know like the IRA or ETA….and, more disturbing, comments almost making light of the situation with “amusing” remarks implying that the Norwegian authorities didn’t really have a grip on events.

Because the Norwegian Prime Minister is the leader of the Labour Party and the young people killed and injured at the island were attending a summer camp organised by the youth section of the party there were also remarks about socialism as a manifestation of the decadence of Europe, marxist indoctrination etc

Norway was a dull, boring place where nothing had happened for 200 years opined one commenter (conveniently forgetting the German invasion of 1940, the five years of Nazi occupation and the very active Norwegian resistance) while another proclaimed that Norwegians were “soft” because gun ownwership was highly restrictive…..which, interestingly enough, is absolutely untrue – in fact it ranks 11th in the world for gun ownership.

The ignorance displayed about Norway was simply astonishing, almost as astonishing as the strange definition of “education” held by one or two of the commenters. When I, a South Londoner, born in 1940, spoke of my education being interrupted by bombs, I was referring to the V2 rocket attacks that devastasted certain areas of South London in 1944 which held back my entry into full time infants reception class for several months. Obviously to some education can only mean university so much was made of earnest calculations.

I as a baby lived with my mother in London during the bombing of 1940 and 1941 but, of course have no personal memory – but by the time of the V2 rockets I was well over four years old and I do have disjointed recollections of sheltering in the cellar at the sound of the air raid siren.

I don’t mind being criticised for my opinions or even mocked by those who have little understanding of history – that’s all part of the rough and tumble of political activism – but I am as sure as hell not going to be called a liar by a bunch of gormless morons who, like that IRA admiring bandwagon jumping weasel Rep Peter King, think that terrorism only began in New York at the start of the 21st century.

Someimes I wonder at the mutual ignorance of each other’s history and tradition displayed by Brits and Americans and despair. For if our two countries, so closely linked by language, law and culture are so full of misconceptions, what hope for our relationship and understanding with the likes of India and China….

BTW – unlike some of the Hot Air commenters I shall not jump to conclusions even though it is being suggested that the perpetrator might be a non Muslim Norwegian with right wing views….

Russian girl gets ready for election campaign by encouraging others to “Strip For Putin”….an idea for the USA? Would it get the vote out?

I am sure Robert Stacy McCain would approve….

The BBC’s Jonny Dymond has been sounding out some of the usual suspects from the US liberal left over their reaction to the News of the World phone hacking affair.

The top brass at the Beeb have obviously got the nod from their friends at the New York Times (“the Democratic Party at prayer”) that the Obama machine is very interested in the possibility of slipping a knife between Murdoch’s ribs and defenestrating Fox News. Dymond, therefore, was temporarily withdrawn from the Tea Party=militias=KKK =racism desk at AgitProp HQ and ordered to link up with the planners at Operation Fox Hunter.

Washington correspondent Jonny Dymond reports on whether any “bad habits have slipped over to the Atlantic”

Jonny isn’t talking about his own bad habits of slipping things across borders… Lithuanian customs officers still have him on file. Nor was he talking about CNN’s Piers Morgan’s habits because, so far, the BBC doesn’t appear to be too interested in a left wing tabloid not owned by Murdoch.

No – we are now reaching what I predicted was the most important item on the agenda…..the preparation of a full frontal attack on Fox News.

Others with noses closer to the DC beltway have also been sniffing the air, particularly the UK Telegraph’s Toby Harnden. He tried for ages to get a feel on the Murdoch/USA issue from Obama apparatchiks in Congress and the White House but kept on getting blanked.

They were all waiting for Valerie Jarrett to tell Obama what his decision would be.

It was a go.

Straight away Sen Jay Rockefeller had new batteries inserted and was wheeled out to transmit the official party line.

SEIU is almost certainly being fed more Soros money to add to it’s taxpayer funded coffers in order to organise “spontaneous” demonstrations of anger outside Fox properties. “Independent” op-ed scribblers at NYT and WaPo have received templates for their thoughtful “fairness” pieces.

I called this Dan Rather’s revenge not because it was Fox that pulled that neat little trick. Fox is too timid to operate behind enemy lines like the right blogosphere. Fox’s importance is to act, like the UK’s Mail and Sun, as a counter balance to the distortion of the news as it is passed through the left wing filters of the establishment media. The right blogosphere’s role is to dig up the evidence for the lies, corruption and hypocrisy of the left’s mouthpieces in New York, Hollywood and elsewhere.

Unlike Chappaquidick and the NYT/Guardian Wikileaks campaign nobody has been killed as a result of News of the World phone hacking. Yes it was unsavoury and seedy – but that is the nature of journalism. It’s a competitive dog eat dog world where you are only as good as your last story – just like Hollywood, politics and drug dealing. So the key to fighting the forthcoming onslaught is not to excuse the activities that took place several years ago under the Blair/Brown Labour government that refused to take action because at the time they were supported by the Murdoch press.

The line to take is to condemn all dirty tricks then follow up with just a representative sample of nefarious activities undertaken by the Democrats and their surrogates over the last ten years….you’ll be spoiled for choice.

Then, as was once suggested by a certain Chicago Light Bringer, get in their faces.

The big question is – what will the GOP political/media”leadership” do over this? Surely it won’t bolt for cover and hide under the table with its thumb in its mouth while the mob is baying outside the door….will it?

Surely there will be someone who will run to the fight – with a smile and a rapier….

In the old Soviet Union one tool Kremlinologists used to forecast shifts in the political climate was to peruse the inside pages of Pravda and spot the apparently insignificant article that they could identify as a marker for any forthcoming reconfiguration.

The articles were placed as signposts for mid level Communist Party members to prepare for changes in direction in their party “work” which, for the CPSU, as with any other totalitarian party, was almost exclusively agitprop –agitation and propaganda.

The BBC in very many ways can be seen as an agitprop arm of the British liberal/left cultural elite, a group which usually manages to direct the UK’s political and social agenda even though much of it (EU membership, unrestricted immigration, political correctness etc etc)is deeply unpopular with the majority of the population.

Moreover, with the globalisation of information media ,the lack of any patriotic affinity in the mindset of this elite allows it to integrate seamlessly with its equivalents in the USA and elsewhere

So the appearance of this article by Tom Geoghegan on the BBC website “Rupert Murdoch:Could his US empire be affected?” should be ringing alarm bells for conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic. For this is not really about the rather shady ethics of a few phone hacking tabloid journalists. Indeed, while the story only appeared to involve celebrities and politicians it never really gained traction. Moreover, because the hacking took place several years ago under a Blair/Brown Labour government that at the time was very cosy with Rupert Murdoch and his tabloids meant that it remained low key with Milliband, Balls and co. Besides News of the World staff had been jailed and the editor at the time had resigned so heads had rolled.

But what has given it legs in New York and London is the revelation that the paper’s staff had hacked into a murder victim’s mobile phone. This has, quite rightly, created immense public anger – and given the liberal/left media elite, so often out of tune with popular opinion, a golden opportunity to spearhead a lynch mob.

It’s not about Murdoch and his papers – after all the dead tree press as a vehicle for news is a dinosaur on its way to extinction. The real target is Murdoch the TV baron with Fox News in the USA and Sky News in Britain. Note how Geoghan slips “right wing” into the mix. It’s a standard adjective that is permanently attached to any comment about Fox News in the UK and, it must be admitted, a brilliant example of the effectiveness of well organised agitprop. The fact that every other US network/cable news platform is imbued as deeply as the BBC in the liberal/left metro mindset is always studiously ignored.

It is no accident that the long buried phone hacking story was disinterred by the New York Times last autumn and quickly picked up in Britain by the Guardian and the BBC just as Murdoch’s bid for the whole of Sky. the BBC’s only meaningful TV competitor was about to go under public scrutiny. All three have a keen interest in undermining Murdoch and emasculating Fox because they know that Murdoch is the only player in the game who threatens the dominant position of the liberal/left cultural elite in the UK and the USA.

A perceptive piece in The Commentator reads the runes with chilling accuracy. This is not about journalistic ethics. It’s a fight to protect the authority of the great and the good against the upstarts of the new media – and, at the moment, the right wing establishment is doing what it does best….running for cover.

It’s the revenge of Dan Rather.

Perhaps Marie Antoinette really said “let them eat noodles”. But until now I never saw those seemingly inoffensive strips as the most effective way of persuading the electorate to put their marks against your name at the polling station.

It appears, however, that in Thailand, according to The Bangkok Post, some people see things differently.

The party she leads won a sweeping victory in the recent Thai election but Yingluck Shinawatra has been accused by her political opponents of bribing voters by handing out free noodles during the campaign.

They are saying this violated electoral law and therefore she should be disqualified from office and the election declared null and void.
The row centres around this picture which was seen by a local opposition activist who contacted party leaders.

Barefaced bribery, said Yingluck Shinawatra’s opponents.

Not so, say her supporters. A local noodle seller, Chongrak Waeokhok, 63, happens also to be an admirer of their leader so, knowing her heroine was going to be campaigning in the area, she paid for the ingredients herself and merely asked her to pose over the noodle pot.

According to Thai media electoral officials have completed their investigation and the report will be published shortly.

In the meantime if someone with a passing resemblance to a local politician comes up to you in a pub and says “psssst…want some noodles?” transfix them with a glare of icy honesty and reply “I am incorruptible” – or, on the other hand, just hold out a plate….

In the summer of 2003 Aarti Naik, who lives in a slum district of Mulund, a suburb of the Indian city of Mumbai, failed a key school test. Her father, with very traditional views of girlhood decided enough was enough. She needed to leave school and start earning money until the time, hopefully, some nondescript drifter would marry the girl without a dowry and take her off his hands.

So for three years she worked, night and day, making ribbon flowers for sale, earning 9 rupees per days. She rarely left the family home, a 15x15ft single room divided into a living area and a tiny space for cooking and washing – her father disapproved of an unmarried young woman crossing over the threshold into the street.

A life of grinding, soul destroying poverty beckoned. She would grow up, like her mother and neighbours, in meek acceptance of her lot, ignorant and illiterate, her spirit crushed out of her by the prejudices of her father and her culture.

Howeve, in 2006, after three long years with the ribbon flowers, she decided to defy her father and retake her school tests – and passed. In another act of defiance she undertook a two year course to complete her higher certificate, graduating in 2008.

But those final years of study were hard because the girls were only taught to learn things by heart

She realised that many of her friends fell by the wayside because they didn’t know how to learn. So she set up her own tiny school and offered to teach the daughters of her neighbours – for nothing. She applied to a local NGO for some funds – and set up Sakhi (“female friend”)

At Sakhi, Aarti teaches them basic English and focuses on reading and writing. She encourages them to understand what they read and asks them to narrate or write down what they understood.
The kids are engaged in simple letter games like one involving a set of homemade cards — each carrying a letter of the English alphabet, which they must arrange in the proper order.
Aarti also ensures that they interact with each other in English, a language that is rarely spoken in the neighbourhood

What she soon discovered was that the girls’ mothers, who initially saw Sakhi as a means of getting their daughters off their hands for a few hours each day, suddenly realised that they had gained in self esteem as well as in terms of academic learning – which is why she saw the involvement of the mothers as the key to the success of her model.

At the end of the first year she organised an event to which the parents were invited. Each girl gave a little speech.

Parents who thought their girls were demure and didn’t talk much were surprised to see how confident they were outside of their homes.

Imagine the tears of pride at those moments of revelation.

Provided with seed money by local charities Aarti has a vision. She hopes to develop Sakhi as a model to get girls in slum communities across India to develop enough self confidence to lift themselves out of the cycle of poverty.

I think Robert Stacy McCain would agree that this is real women’s liberation. This is one tiny act of defiance against the bonds of ignorance and submission that hold so many women in thrall in societies across the globe. And it is from millions of such individual actions that true social progress can be made.

Read more about Aarti here – then visit her facebook page and ask to be her friend with a message of pride and respect.

She deserves no less.

Celia Walden at the DT tells us all exactly what we want to know – how Hollywood awaits Will and Kate with bated breath and botoxed cheeks.

It really is a toss up as to who writes the the biggest amount of Polly Filla guff in the Daily Telegraph….Celia Walden or Bryony Gordon. Of course perhaps neither of them actually exist. Instead there might be an IT programme called “Breathless Brown Noser” originally developed at CNN towards the end of 2008 for items about the Obamas and Clintons.

The programme generates well worn adoration clichés by itself – all the operator has to do is insert specific “celebrity” names which then appear to imply that the “writer” is also a regular at these events while we, the ordinary public, are like the poor kids with our noses pressed against the window watching the gods and goddesses at play.

Maybe Celia and Bryony aren’t real people getting paid six figure salaries for scribbling crapola. Instead – given the massive downsizing tsunami accompanying the Telegraph’s transformation into the Daily Mail for Waitrose shoppers – it’s all being done by a seedy, sweaty tabloid hack on a supermarket shelfstackers wages.

The tragedy is that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge do appear to be a genuinely nice young couple, attractive and lively who have caught the imagination of millions across the globe.

In a world often overshadowed by grim economic forecasts and the threats of death cult fanatics they symbolise the portents of an alternative more optimistic future.

Of course they are not Ordinary People Like Us. Kate was once but she is now in a different world.

Of course the photos and TV clips are embellishments of artifice – but so is almost everything else we see in the media. It’s a World of Spin, folks where even Guardianistas like Polly(Tuscany villas) Toynbee pretend to be against the toffs.

But put it this way –who would you rather see your kids and grandkids take as role models for their future, the royal couple or the narcissistic posturing PR puffed nebbishes of Hollywood and the right hand sidebar of the Daily Mail?

They deserve better than airhead Walden and her Hello style ramblings. But, let’s face it, the once mighty Daily Telegraph has followed along the primrose path to perdition by converting itself into a gossip rag. Thank goodness I gave up wasting money on buying this dross and just peruse it online for free. Rumours of a DT paywall still float around. It would indeed give me a perverse feeling of delight to refuse to contribute to the household accounts of dimwits like Walden and Gordon.

Nothing at all at the BBC website about Guardian contributor Kia Abdullah’s crass and heartless twitter comments on the tragic death of three British students in a road accident in Thailand.

‘Is it really awful that I don’t feel any sympathy for anyone killed on a gap year?’
‘I actually smiled when I saw that they had double-barrelled surnames. Sociopath?’

All across the twitterverse and blogosphere within hours and hitting the dead tree press by Sunday even the Guardian had to do a nifty piece of sidestepping.

But the BBC obviously felt the story wasn’t worth covering.

I wonder why?

For a rock & roller from the 1950s the last part of the 60s was a musical desert, a psychedelic neverland of hippie peace and love. Dominated by legions of posing middle class pseudo revolutionary students wearing flares, bulbous shoes, multi coloured shirts and big hair the skies were crowded with rainbows, unicorns and the droning white noise that thankfully smothered the endless nasal strangulation of totally meaningless lyrics.

Then, at the very end of the decade I struggled across yet another dry, windswept dune and came across……an oasis…and what made it even better that, with such a hippie name and look all the poseurs expected the usual flower power drivel.

What they got was pure unadulterated southern rock….heresy for them but a return to the promised land for me…..