Thursday 30 January 2014

Australia changes the law to get spin bowler on team !

ABC (Australia)
Fawad Ahmed asylum case: Spin-bowler 'got special treatment' in borderline citizenship case "The Immigration Department had major concerns about the way promising Pakistani cricketer Fawad Ahmed got a permanent visa and then Australian citizenship, confidential documents indicate. .....They also say Ahmed is fortunate his asylum application coincided with Cricket Australia's search for a spinner. .....With Ahmed on the verge of deportation in mid-2012, Mr Bennett began a campaign to get then-immigration minister Chris Bowen to intervene and overturn the Refugee Review Tribunal's decision." Comment: We are all equal, but some are more equal than others - yup.

Wednesday 29 January 2014

Obama branded 'Typhoid Mary' as Democratic senators in tight races are terrified of campaigning with president after limp State of the Union address

Daily Mail
"Obama's political radioactivity is also giving down-ticket candidates something to worry about. He will visit Wisconsin on Thursday to speak at a General Electric plant in Waukesha. The Democratic mayor will not be there. Neither will Mary Burke, the Democrat running to unseat Gov. Scott Walker in November."

Sunday 26 January 2014

Tony Blair: Extremist religion will be the defining battle of the 21st Century

Telegraph
"He said: “But there is no doubt that those who commit the violence often do so by reference to their faith and the sectarian nature of the conflict is a sectarianism based on religion. There is no doubt either that this phenomenon is growing, not abating.” .....
Comment....Well it's a bit late to wake up to that. Who let all and sundry into the UK and gave them passports ? - you !

Wednesday 1 January 2014

The Obamacare We Deserve

NYT
"TODAY marks the beginning of health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act’s new insurance exchanges, for which two million Americans have signed up. Now that the individual mandate is officially here, let me begin with an admission: Obamacare is awful. ....... I believe Obamacare’s rocky start — clueless planning, a lousy website, insurance companies raising rates, and the president’s telling people they could keep their coverage when, in fact, not all could — is a result of one fatal flaw: The Affordable Care Act is a pro-insurance-industry plan implemented by a president who knew in his heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go. When right-wing critics “expose” the fact that President Obama endorsed a single-payer system before 2004, they’re actually telling the truth. What we now call Obamacare was conceived at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and birthed in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney, then the governor. The president took Romneycare, a program designed to keep the private insurance industry intact, and just improved some of its provisions. In effect, the president was simply trying to put lipstick on the dog in the carrier on top of Mitt Romney’s car. And we knew it. By 2017, we will be funneling over $100 billion annually to private insurance companies. You can be sure they’ll use some of that to try to privatize Medicare."