A kick in the pants that Westminster so richly deserved

Daily Mail
The public’s deep concerns over mass immigration, with its devastating impact on housing, hospital services and schools, and the loss of sovereignty to a corrupt, unaccountable Brussels, were dismissed as the ravings of bigots and fanatics.
Yesterday, as Ukip claimed 150 council seats across the country, the three established parties  paid a very heavy price for treating ordinary people with such contempt.   .......
Why can’t the Prime Minister understand that, by labelling Ukip as ‘scaremongers’ and ‘closet racists’, he is insulting millions of small ‘c’ conservatives who have deserted his party over his commitment to windfarms, gay marriage and foreign aid?

Who's your mob?

The Black Steam Train
If you’ve read any ‘Aboriginal’ media interviews, or watched NITV for longer than an hour, you’ve probably come across the question ‘Who’s Your Mob?’, and for those who never heard it, let me explain it to you, and for those who have – I want to tell you why I despise the term.   .......

Can anyone please explain to me how it is racist to say “All Aboriginal people are (insert derogatory stereotype of your choice)”, but not racist to think all Aboriginal people use poor grammar and are capable of speaking or understanding in only the most basic of English, or have only one way to ask one another where they are from, or who their family are.  I’m told only the first one is racist, the other, simply ‘cultural awareness’.  

If that is what passes as ‘cultural awareness’, you can take it and shove the whole idea.  I speak, read and understand English at a level you would hardly call remedial.  This is not a skill unheard of for an Aboriginal person to possess, in any location."

Dave and Ed just don't get it: by branding Ukip racist they're damning millions of decent Britons

Daily Mail

Much of the media has obediently been doing the work of the three main parties. The BBC's normally admirable political editor, Nick Robinson, interviewed Mr Farage in  the tones one might employ for a convicted international war criminal.

Most newspapers of Left and Right (though not the Mail) have depicted Ukip as an extremist party inhabited by fruitcakes, crooks or dangerous lunatics.

The normally Eurosceptic Times and Sun have been among Mr Farage's most unforgiving critics. Of course, Ukip harbours some undesirable characters, and the media would be failing in their duty if they did not expose them.

But I suspect that the majority of Ukip members are solid types who are not racist, and I am sure the same can be said for most people who will vote for the party today.

But here is the extraordinary thing. Despite this barrage of insults from the political class and much of the media class - surely unprecedented in scale in modern times - Ukip still rides high in most opinion polls, and it seems likely that it will outdo the Tories in today's vote, and very possibly Labour, too."

Google admits it's reading your emails

theinquirer
"Our automated systems analyse your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customised search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection," it added. "This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored."

U.S. is Going Bankrupt One City at a Time

Heartland Institute
"Time to start watching U.S. cities go bankrupt. Prior to Detroit, there was Stockton, California, and, according to Stephen Moore, now the chief economist with the Heritage Foundation, there are more than sixty of the largest cities that “are plagued with the same kinds of retirement legacy costs that sent Detroit in Ch apter 9 bankruptcy” last year. “Keep an eye on ‘too big to fail’ cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York,” he warned. Among the twenty cities he listed in an August 2013 Newsm ax article, he cited Compton and Oakland, CA, Harrisburg, PA, and Providence, RI. What these and other cities have in common is that “the vast majority are located in states with forced unions, non-right-to-work states.”

Chinese minx v Scouse tigress: So what drives the brazen social mountaineer whose infatuation with Tony Blair destroyed her marriage to Rupert Murdoch

Daily Mail
"The couple’s split, it has emerged, was prompted by Murdoch’s discovery that his then wife had secretly spent two nights under the property’s terracotta roof with the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. According to an extraordinary account of the divorce, published by Vanity Fair this week, the press baron became convinced that his wife was conducting an extra-marital affair after ranch staff disclosed details of Blair’s visits. Employees told him of Blair and Deng ‘feeding each other during dinner, which made the staff uncomfortable’, the magazine claims. On one occasion, they allegedly ‘caught Mr Blair walking into the master bedroom and closing the door behind him’.

Wendi Deng's 'love note for Tony Blair' published

Vanity Fair
"Mark Seal uncovers the truth about the close relationship between Wendi Deng, third wife to media titan Rupert Murdoch, and married former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In an excerpt from the story, available on stands today, Seal reveals how the secrecy surrounding their intimacy quickly unraveled—first with the help of Murdoch’s loyal, observant staff, and later through a steamy, lovelorn missive."
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" Mr Murdoch’s discovery of his wife’s crush on Mr Blair was said to be the “final straw” that prompted him to file for divorce after 14 years of marriage. The News Corp executive chairman felt “betrayed” as he considered Mr Blair to be a close ally. According to Vanity Fair, a besotted Miss Deng invited Mr Blair to spend a weekend at the Murdoch family ranch in Carmel, California in October 2012 – omitting to tell him that her husband would not be there." (Telegraph)

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.

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."

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 !

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."

2013 was Barack Obama's worst year as president – his annus horribilis

Telegraph
"The litany of failure began with his attempt to pass a modest gun control bill in the wake of the Newtown massacre. The vast majority of Americans were favourable (if probably uninterested), the media backed it and – in the aftermath of that bloody horror – it seemed inevitable. Yet the President couldn't garner the votes. The problem wasn't just the Republicans being mean or the NRA being surprisingly smart, it was that Obama's 2012 victory had come at a price. He'd so slandered, slammed and irritated his opponents that they refused to work with him. And so the lame duck presidency became a dead duck. .....Syria. Presidents rarely have trouble sending Americans to war. There's a tradition that it's the executive's prerogative and Congress usually defers to the hawks. But on this occasion Obama first said he'd go to the Congress, then declined even to do that, then allowed all talk of war to slide into silence. Again, his nervousness about seeking approval wasn't just down to Republican partisanship (on this occasion, the GOP establishment queued up to back him). It was because Obama had weakened the case for war through incompetence. ........Finally, there was Obamacare. This was the most important screw-up of all because it related to the biggest proposal of the first term: universal healthcare coverage. It was promised that people could keep their old insurance plans, that costs would fall, that the system would be easy to navigate. On the contrary, millions risked higher premiums and losing their old plans. And the website – the basic nuts and bolts of the operation – functioned less professionally than a 13-year old's tumblr of cute looking cats. To be fair, many of these problems have been addressed. But the damage is done. Obamacare looks overambitious and poorly conceived.  ..........But rarely has a presidency been so damned by its own president. He has alienated much of the Congress, run a foreign policy based upon a conscious rejection of world leadership, spent too much, expanded the welfare state, and failed to ensure that his administration is at least functional."