The pains of wealth

Richard Branson is a billionaire UK entrepreneur and businessman, who is known for his numerous business ventures and his high energy style.

Last week he was in Vancouver, British Columbia touting Virgin Airlines service from the city, along with BC Premier Christy Clark.   Based on news reports, Branson apparently invited the "delightful" Premier (his words) to come Kite-surfing on his back with him.  However, it appears that he had initially failed to mention the dress code and placed the picture below as an example of the requirements on his blog!

What every businessman yearns to be!

Clark's liberal government has nearly zero chance of being re-elected next year and she personally has extraordinary low polling numbers amongst the electorate.  In response to Branson's bravado she gave the following response:

I think when you meet with the CEO of a billion dollar company who wants to do business with your province, you can get a little bit more respectful treatment than that.

Frankly she missed the boat (or kite-surf) on this one.  She should of ran with it and told the public that as a divorced woman she'd enjoy frolicking in the waves like that, but her duty is to country first and helping local businesses be more cocky like Branson in the global marketplace, unlike the wealth destroying socialists of the NDP or the anti-tax crackpots of the BC Conservative party.


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If there was a better advertisement for capitalism and the benefits of the free market system over the sclerotic and dismal prospects of socialism, I'd like to see it.   Mothers, make sure your sons grow up to be businessmen!

Why are Americans such assholes?

The above billboard was in Tucson, Arizona!

Gawkler reports:

A reporter in Arizona tells us, "KNST tells me they took that billboard down at 9:30 a.m. Monday morning." Not quite quick enough to beat the internet.

If images and statements associated with violence didn't have anything to do with what recently happened in Tuscon, why did they take the sign down?  Shouldn't these same people re-double, in fact "re-load" their campaign against the evil liberal empire and stand their ground in their honest attempt to sell hatred and violence to the indolent and ignorant?

When are Americans going to stand up to the extremists in the right and label those who pursue a violent and nihilistic vision of politics as the real "anti-Americans!"

The Other Fame Monster

I'm not a twelve year old girl, so I'm not really sure what Justin Bieber is about.  Although, I understand he's an androgynous teenage singer from Ontario, Canada.  Regardless, an interview in today's Guardian newspaper illustrates that perhaps the concept of young people manufactured to be a global media stars without the benefit of having a strong family framework, probably isn't very good for the developing child. To illustrate consider the following excerpt:

A few days after the Sunrise incident, Justin was in New Zealand, being interviewed by a presenter with a strong Kiwi accent. He asked Justin if Bieber was the German word for basketball.

"German?" Justin asked.

"German," said the interviewer. Justin looked blank-faced. "German," said the presenter. "You know? German."

"I don't know what that means," said Justin.

"Here," said the interviewer, showing him the word German written on his card.

"I don't know what that means," said Justin. "We don't say that in America."

It's one thing not to be able to understand multi-varable calculus at the age of 14 or not to have a grasp of global political forces driving the Basel III accord even if you're much older, but not to know what Germany is? 

I'm sorry, but the child is clearly a moron, just like his backwater and hick parents.  Where do these assholes come from?  Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan...etc, they're all white-trash morons whose money-grubbing parents catapulted them into a world in which these children barely understand and clearly in the case of the latter two stars, unable to cope with.  Teenage actors, singers, and entertainers rarely do well in life.  Education is one of the ways that allows these young people to make better decisions and hopefully salvage themselves in the upcoming years, when their lives start to disintegrate around them.  However, if you read the Guardian's article, it's pretty clear there's not much in this kid's head and what education he's getting is useless.

Hallowed Ground and Charlatans...

There has been a lot of banter recently about WTC/ Ground Zero site as being hallowed ground.  For those who lost family members in the devastating terrorist attacks, the site no doubt invokes many passions and notions of what is sacred.  However, the argument that is being offered is not about Ground Zero per se, but about the appropriate manner of land usage surrounding the site and lower Manhattan specifically.

McClatchy Press has a good summary of the debate currently raging in the MSM about the proposed Cordoba cultural center to be constructed at Park51 place, two blocks from Ground Zero.  I'll highlight a few of the important points.

• Current plans for the cultural center include, "a 13-story, $100 million multi-use facility that's modeled after the city's popular 92nd Street Y. It would house a pool, gymnasium, a 500-seat auditorium for public events, and a Sept. 11 memorial, in addition to a prayer space."  Portraying the center, one that will ostensibly be used primarily as a gymnasium and memorial to the 9-11 victims, as solely and explicitly as a mosque, is simply dishonest.
• No one religion or ethnicity was targeted during the attack.  People from numerous countries and many religions, including Islam, died on that day.  All those people died because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
• The article provides some of the other commercial and non-profit activities within proximity of Ground Zero:  a strip club called the New York Dolls gentleman's club, an off-track betting parlor and smaller mosque that's been there for four decades. The New York Daily News recently tallied the businesses within a three-block area of the World Trade Center site — 17 pizza shops, 18 bank branches, 11 bars, 10 shoe stores and "17 salons where a girl can get her lady parts groomed."
• The people behind the center have been applauded by both the Bush and Obama Administrations, as voices of religious moderation and have assisted America's state department and intelligence units against violent extremism.

Although a number of prominent politicians, such as NY's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have supported the proposed cultural center, many others have issued vitriolic and unsubstantiated statements.  For example, Newt Gingrich stated that because Saudi Arabia does not permit churches and synagogues in their country, then it is natural that Americans should equally be permitted to engage in such territorial and religious bigotry.  Apparently the former Speaker of the House of Representatives is unable to remember that the US constitution's first amendment explicitly and unequivocally guarantees the right to individual religious worship:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Equally, perennial buffoon Sarah Palin, has demanded that Muslims "refudiate" the project.  As an American, she is entitled to her own demented view of a flat earth-centric universe; however, she is not entitled to her own exclusive language.  Palin is a dangerous and deranged demagogue who is interested solely in extending the cult of Sarah to television viewers and right-wing radio listeners in America's racist and conservative conclaves.  Her bizarre contribution to the argument, while confusing to those of us in the reality-based universe, serve to divide Americans and further inflame international hostilities towards the nation as a whole.

Anytime government in collusion with popular sentiment serves to undermine the liberties and rights of law-abiding minorities, then it is not a matter of democracy, but a question of injustice.  America has a long and sordid history of intolerance, bigotry, and violence against minority groups.  Do we really need to be reminded that the only reason America exists today, is because it murdered its original inhabitants, stole their land, and broke nearly every treaty ever signed with them in the past 200+ years?  We and civil minded Americans should step back and think about what Abraham Lincoln said on his first Presidential inaugural address to the citizens of America:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Sucky, Sucky, Mr. Jones?

Apparently the real emerging market is not to be found in the Mekong delta or in the bustling streets of Rio de Janeiro, but rather in the pants of lonely Western men, who are desperately in search of that perfectly porcelain-skinned oriental beauty.

Some cunning Beijing entrepreneur (or at least that's the claim) has come up with an i-phone application that allows any man who has fallen victim of a restraining order in the West, to exhibit his worldly grasp of Mandarin through this app and seek the ideal oriental mate.

The creators of the application ask worthy consumers whether they have ever "found [themselves] speechless while dating a Chinese girl?" How one lands a date with someone, who doesn't speak the same language is another question. Although perhaps when the creators of this application talk about dates, they are actually speaking about the nightly rituals and exchanges of bodily fluids that occur in Shanghai's less than refined nightclubs.

Angry Asian Man finds the whole thing sad. Not me! Given that the Chinese have stolen all these jobs from these hard working American men, it is only fair that they have at least the chance to strike back at the heart of their nemesis. As I'm sure Confucius once said, "All's fair in love and trade wars caused by globalization Mr. Jones."

No one is really watching Cable News

CNN was the first cable based news station to be invented to broadcast 24 hour, seven days a week. Over the past 30 years it has spawned clones of itself (Headline News), multiple imitators (Fox News & MSNBC), and numerous speciality derivatives (Bloomberg & CNBC). Under the original ownership of Ted Turner, the station produced novel real-time and informative reports about American politics and international news. Viewers were able to see in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989, and national events as they occurred. When Saddam Hussein wanted to know how the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 was going, he’d routinely turn to CNN’s live broadcasts with Peter Arnett and Bernard Lewis at the Al Rashid hotel in Baghdad to get his information.

This month CNN dropped to fourth place in terms of viewers, falling behind Fox, MSNBC, and even its own sister-channel HLN. While it is simple to bemoan the death of critical analysis and the concomitant rise of entertainment or fluff media masquerading as news, the real question one should ask is who is still watching these stations? Fox News proudly pounds its chest at coming first month-over-month, but is that title even meaningful? Consider the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and its off-shoot the Colbert Report, two fake news shows that get 50% more viewers than FOX’s number one evening show the O’Reilly Factor. It gets worst. Spongebob Squarepants, a Nickelodeon produced children’s cartoon, gets five times more viewers than the Factor (yes I know, I’m comparing rotten tomatoes with squishy sponges).

Here are the numbers:

For the month, CNN averaged 202,000 viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 – the group that television news organizations use as their basis of success because of their advertising sales. That was far behind the dominant leader, Fox News, which averaged 689,000. But it also trailed MSNBC, which had 250,000 viewers in that group and HLN, which had 221,000.

Given the amount of energy that goes into producing and distributing these programs, why are any of these stations in existence? With more than 300 million citizens, surely there are more than a few hundred thousand persons interested in the daily happenings in the world? First, the viewers of these shows skew towards the elderly and the DC-NY-LA technocrat class who dictate to the general population what they need to be told and more importantly what cannot be said. PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer gets higher ratings than all the cable news programs combined. One can assume that people who are interested in real facts and not opinionated drivel or state sponsored propaganda have long left American cable for other media like the internet or international carriers (i.e. BBC, CBC, France24).

Second, much of what is broadcasted simply isn’t news. In pursuit of advertisers’ dollars, management have dumbed-down content for the larger population. By putting lipstick on Michael Jackson’s dead corpse, Anne-Nicole Smith's drugged body, OJ’s wife, or a plethora of other tabloid stories and wheeling it out for public consumption, they have essentially ceded any credibility as agents of democracy who are tasked at holding the powerful in check.

No one is really watching, listening, or caring what is on any of these channels. No one cares what Anderson, Bill-O, Greta, Glenn, Campbell or any of these talking heads have to say, because it is of no consequence or value to the majority of the entertainment guzzling and consuming American public or those who actually independently think.

Quote of the Day: Short-term thinking

People just want to go on doing what they're doing. They want business as usual. They say, 'Oh yes, there's going to be a problem up ahead,' but they don't want to change anything.

- James Lovelock

Whether it involves the current economic disaster, which was worst than the combined dot-com bust of the nineties and the S&L crisis of the 80's/90's, or the current projections related to the effects of continued industrial pollution, toxification of the environment, and ultimately climate change, we all seem to realize that we have very serious problems, but of course few are actually willing to engage in the challenges of actually disrupting the status quo.

In the Bible it says, "And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land perish not through the famine." Genesis 41:33-36. For a civilization to survive it requires long term thinking and everyday sacrifices by all. There used to be a time, a short while ago, when the thought of being in debt and accumulating unnecessary material wealth was a moral failing. Today it is the norm. Gangs of thieves inhabit the sky-scrappers of New York and London, silently looting from public coffers and awarding themselves for their brilliant immorality. Standing Imperial armies are sent to secure natural resources in the name of freedom, while quenching indigenous opposition. The servant classes fret about credit card payments, stagnant wages, and mounting debt, while plotting how to keep up with the Jones' next door.

The song remains the same.

France falls out of love with topless sunbathing | World news | The Guardian

France falls out of love with topless sunbathing World news The Guardian


Sacre bleu! C'est terrible!

I've officially cancelled my trip to the French Riveria this year and all following years unless this travesty is rectified.

Historical feminist writing details how the row over toplessness was a struggle for women to do what they liked with their bodies. What has been projected on to it today are different values, identified, not with equality but desire, sexualisation of the body, voluptuousness and the body perfect.

It's less about women feeling at ease and free. It has been linked to the harsh cult of the body beautiful, where no imperfection is tolerated.

Will these feminists make up their bloody minds!

First they were shouting, "pants down and tits out." Now they've aligned themselves with the religious right in demanding everyone cover up!