"Why are you covering your face? You don't have a heart."

What happened (my own remarks are in italicized brackets and bold is mine)-

Police lobbed teargas shells apart from carrying out a "mild" truncheon charge (Ed -which didn't happen) on the protesters on Sunday. Many fainted because of the gas engulfing the covered venue and minor fires erupted.(what if they had turned into major fires or a stampede happened and killed hundreds? It was very possible.Wouldn't have meant anything to this 'compassionate' government.'Inclusive growth' is for those who don't get in the way.Those who do risk being excluded all the way to the other world.) "There was complete chaos. People could neither open their eyes nor keep them shut," recalled Shiv Kumar from Saharanpur. Protesters alleged that women and girls were manhandled. ( Bravo, Sonia, you go fight for women's rights!)

"First, people tried to stop the security personnel from reaching Ramdev. A young man took him away on his shoulders. But later he returned to address us," said Swami Akhandanand from Haridwar. He said about 1.20am things went out of control, "We had no report of where Ramdev went. He was asking everyone to maintain peace."

Eyewitnesses said by 1.30am, there was unrest in the camp with cops almost taking over the entire venue. "There was no provocation. What threat could women, children and men who came to participate in a satyagraha would pose?" asked Anita, a Ramdev follower from Sikkim.(The threat to gaddi*, no doubt)

Cops, however, said Ramdev's supporters pelted bricks and threw flower pots on them. Half an hour after the eviction operation began, the venue was full of smoke and it was difficult to anyone inside to breathe. Volunteers were seen taking out people who had fainted. Many were complaining about their missing belongings. But none was willing to leave Delhi before getting the order from the yoga guru.

"We will not go home. We need to see Baba," said Monika, a young supporter from Rohtak. Amid anti-government slogans, a woman shouted out to the cops, "Why are you covering your face? You don't have a heart." (Bandits and dacoits do this)

At 3am, most Ramdev supporters were on streets around the ground, especially the Jawaharlal Nehru Marg. People had taken over the entire pavement outside the MTNL office. But within minutes, a platoon of cops started driving them away.(Scram, you dogs! Fighting for your rights,bloody hell!) The police brought buses for volunteers to take people away.

"They can throw us out of Delhi by using force. But we will take this protest to villages and cities. The government has crossed all limits," said Sudha, who had come from Jharkhand. (Take that and remember next time -Delhi belongs to the Congress!)

The police kept driving away protesters until they had cleared the stretch between Ramlila Maidan and the Kamla Market roundabout.

Since police had also sealed Jantar Mantar (no shelter for you!)to avoid any gathering there, the exhausted protesters headed to Bangla Sahib Gurdwara beyond Connaught Place.

Timeline of events by News X

*The colorful Indian language translator-
        gaddi - seat, here it means the seat of power
       

It takes balls to thrash innocents -Delhi Police has them in depotful

Leader of the ferocious dog squad unleashed on the unsuspecting and peaceful protesters, Dharmendra Kumar, Special CP (Law and Order), tries to 'explain' away the allegations of atrocities. 'Explain' is perhaps not the right word as he is not interested in taking questions. Just watch it for a spectacle of sheer hubris. Our masters are dripping in such contemptuous arrogance, from 10, Janpath Road* down to the lowest beat constable(who is low and adept at beating innocents like street vendors).

Power made me God

Video. Original link.

Dripping in arrogance, yes, but not drop of sympathy in that drip for what his goons did-

The injured Mr Sibal could not find

Tehelka was the first media network to reach Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital in New Delhi to find out the condition of the injured in the late-night police action against Baba Ramdev’s supporters at a time when the government alleged that no serious injuries had been reported.


The reporter Revati Laul was speaking with the injured when the Chief Medical Officer of the hospital asked her to leave, despite the fact that the injured wanted to give testimonials of the police brutality they faced. Tehelka photographer Naveesh Tejpal was not allowed inside the hospital building with his camera. Therefore, the correspondent had to take these pictures on her mobile phone. They serve as evidence of police brutality. One woman, Rajbala, is critically injured with multiple fractures to her spine and all four limbs paralysed; two others have got serious head injuries. More than 60 people who were injured were admitted to this hospital.

Sunil Kumar at the LNJP Hospital. He got skull fracture. He claims that the police blocked most exits of the Ramlila Maidan

Ravindar Singh from Himachal Pradesh. He is injured in the head and stomach. He says he became victim of the police cane-charge

Cane-charge that according to Kumar didn't happen?! Lying rascal! (I mean the scoundrel feigning injuries and not Kumar who is a saint)
 
 Catch more here by Tehelka's reporter  Revati Laul. She showed courage to find some of the missing injured. However that pales in comparison to the balls required to thrash unarmed civilians, most of them just woken from sleep at 1 a.m, with a police force over 5000 strong.

Bravo, Dharmendra Kumar, you deserve a medal and it is probably being minted at the backyard of  10, Janpath Road.





*   10, Janpath Road  -The residence of Sonia Gandhi, India's de-facto mistress. 

Media Crooks on fire

No, I don't mean Barkha Dutt et al. in a burning inferno though the thought might cockle some hearts. I mean the passionately written blog Media Crooks is in a fit of (justified, I think) outrage and is producing some fiery stuff. E.g. see this, this or an earlier posted this. Don't miss.

Rahul Gandhi -Mums the word

Rahul Gandhi was very vocal about the police atrocities against the farmers at Bhatta Parsul in the opposition held state of Uttar Pradesh. Yet, over 24 hrs after Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi unleashed their dogs(aka Delhi police) on peaceful protesters at the Ramlila Grounds in the Congress ruled Delhi at 1 a.m., the boy king has not squealed a word.

Mums the word

Why so mum, Rahul?
What are you waiting for?
Mummy?

Would you buy a used car from Kapil Sibal?

Kapil Sibal, a senior government minister, has been accused by anti-corruption activists of betrayal. He has been the Congress Party's henchman ('negiotiator' doesn't quiet tell the truth)to see off the attacking waves of activists. Today His Madam's Voice changed his tune and along with other Sonia's boys went on a full frontal attack himself on Baba Ramdev. Like Goebbel's tricks followed Hitler's Blitzkriegs, Sibal's hysterical propaganda followed Delhi police's sudden(but pre-planned) attack on the sleeping activists at 1 a.m. Sunday.

Watching Sibal on several channels, I was intrigued by his looks, or rather the vibes he gives out with his expression. He 'looks' highly corrupt and manipulative to the extreme. He may be a saint for all I know (ha!), but he definitely has the creepy mien of a grasping politician.Still photos do not quite catch it but still -

Would you trust him?

  You be the judge-
If you knew nothing about this man, would trust him just by his 'look'?
Would you leave your pre-adolescent daughter in his charge for a few hours?
Would you trust him with your investments?
Would you buy a used car from him?



Update-
  BTW, after yesterday's state assault on the protestors , Baba Ramdev called Sibal the  "the most scheming man ever."

Bugger! The Climate Change won't let you fight Climate Change

Climate Change is now behaving like those clever internet viruses that once they enter your computer will disable any anti-virus active. You are left without tools to fight it.

The  anti-virus of Global Warming is 'renewable' energy - you know like those giant landscape blighting, "bird-chomping, bat-crunching, taxpayer-fleecing monstrosities" aka windmills. But what good are they without .... wind?

Wind farms: Britain is 'running out of wind'

Despite the freak gales that battered parts of the country last week, climate experts are warning that many of Britain’s wind farms may soon run out of puff.

According to government figures, 13 of the past 16 months have been calmer than normal - while 2010 was the “stillest” year of the past decade.

Meteorologists believe that changes to the Atlantic jet stream could alter the pattern of winds over the next 40 years and leave much of the nation’s growing army of power-generating turbines becalmed.

The Coalition has drawn up plans to open more wind farms in an effort to meet Britain’s European Union target of providing 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.More than 3,600 turbines are expected to be installed in offshore wind farms over the next nine years.

But statistics suggest that the winds that sweep across the British Isles may be weakening. Last year, wind speeds over the UK averaged 7.8 knots (8.9mph), a fall of 20 per cent on 2008, and well below the mean for this century, which stands at 9.1 knots (10.5mph).

And what on earth could be the cause?

Usually Britain has warm, wet and windy winters, thanks to Caribbean air carried here by the Atlantic jet stream, a fast-flowing current of air.

But the last two winters have featured exceptionally low temperatures and were remarkably still when they should have been the windiest seasons of all, as high pressure diverted the jet stream from its normal position.

You know, those frigid winters that were blamed by such eminent experts as Monbiot on Climate Change. The devil! I mean the Climate Change and not Monbiot. A devious creature indeed (again not Monbiot. There is no reason for confusion, is there?).

Bugger! The Climate Change won't let you fight Climate Change. There is no hope now and our only solace would be, as we wait to fry slowly, to languish in the comfort of a 20 room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) like Al Gore has or fly like crazy across the world (even if that would kill the planet sooner. Its gonna die anyway,ain't it?) like the disgraced IPCC chairman R.K.Pachauri or drown our woes over a few bottles of the choicest something at some exotic location similar to the ones where the UN holds its climate conferences.

Al Gore's super mansion - What global warming?

On the other hand, from the same article there is this-

Meteorologists have found that the position of the jet stream has been influenced by the lower levels of activity on the Sun. This decline in sun-spot activity is expected to continue for the next 40 years, with potentially serious consequences for the viability of wind farms.

Even a monkey has enough common sense to wonder after reading the above that if the sun can cause serious change in wind then just maybe it can cause that teeny-weenie apparent change in global temperatures that has the climate scientists and their poodles in the press in such a panic.

From which we learn that the climate experts are not monkeys - and if they are, they are a rare breed . Simians without rational thought.

Bill gets off the toilet as Jill sits on it

The Gray Lady gets a new editor who by looks appears to be the tough liberal type with  four testicles of steel and poisoned knuckles for her opponents. Barely has the new boss moved in that she gladdens the old faithfuls by convincing them that she intends to carry on the hoary New York Times tradition - that of flushing inconvenient facts down their politically correct dual flush toilet.

In the New York Times article announcing the surprise leaving of Bill Keller(kicking out?) and the anointment of  Jill Abramson there slipped in some revealing(but not really, if you know the Times) facts-

Ms. Abramson, 57, said being named executive editor was “the honor of my life” and like “ascending to Valhalla” for someone who read The Times as a young girl growing up in New York.

"In my house growing up, the Times substituted for religion,” she said. “If the Times said it, it was the absolute truth."

Now we know what religion the liberals practice. Thanks for clearing it up.

But somebody at the Times must have realized the enticing free fodder this provides to its hated right wing opponents. An open invitation to snark.You know like Peter Wehner of the Commentary magazine (the Death Star of conservatism) saying-

When Journalism Substitutes For Religion

This is a practically perfect quote from Ms. Abramson, simply in terms of giving voice to what one imagines the people who run the Times are like. She believed the Times wasn’t simply a great newspaper; the stories were written on tablets of stone. (Perhaps she viewed reporters at the Times as secular prophets and the op-ed columnists as secular apostles.) But it goes even deeper than that: the Times was a substitute for religious faith, meaning it must have provided her not simply with the news but with existential meaning and moral guidance.

For a person to have viewed (and presumably to still view, at least to some degree) a newspaper with religious reverence and its stories as sacred text is slightly weird and quite revealing. Devotion to a journalistic enterprise is one thing; cultism is quite another.

Jill Abramson’s mindset is exactly the kind conservatives assume liberals at the Times possess. To see it confirmed by her own words is, in its own way, quite useful.

and with Jay Nordlinger of the National Review (another power center of the dark side) adding his own ridicule of Jill's religious beliefs.

Can't have that, can we?

So up goes a revised version of the article with the following lines missing -

  “In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.”

 And no mention that it has been edited. They love transparency like their messiah Obama does. So transparent that we wouldn't notice anything. Except for the pesky right wing bloggers who are noticing.

Unfortunately for the Gray Hag(is she a lady?), the original quote has been picked up by other sources like Howard Kurtz and Politico which even gives the vanishing quote as a caption to the image of the quadruple-balled Jill-

So Jill starts where Bill left off - by using the toilet. Looks like it's going to be an overworked loo.

Everything you know about fossil fuels may be wrong

Very likely, isn't it, since most of what you 'know' came from a MSM that has inhaled the environmentalist propaganda in hookah-fuls and exhales it out just as it went in. Michael Lind seems to have escaped the toxic device. The case for a rapid changeover to renewables (wind, solar now or the Earth gets it!) rests on, he says, poof, thin air, in fact on vacuum.

The mind numbing hookah of environmantalism* 

Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong

Are we living at the beginning of the Age of Fossil Fuels, not its final decades? The very thought goes against everything that politicians and the educated public have been taught to believe in the past generation. According to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. and other industrial nations must undertake a rapid and expensive transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy for three reasons: The imminent depletion of fossil fuels, national security and the danger of global warming. 

How true.



 

As everyone who follows news about energy knows by now, in the last decade the technique of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," long used in the oil industry, has evolved to permit energy companies to access reserves of previously-unrecoverable “shale gas” or unconventional natural gas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, these advances mean there is at least six times as much recoverable natural gas today as there was a decade ago.

The implications for energy security are startling. Natural gas may be only the beginning. Fracking also permits the extraction of previously-unrecoverable “tight oil,” thereby postponing the day when the world runs out of petroleum. There is enough coal to produce energy for centuries. And governments, universities and corporations in the U.S., Canada, Japan and other countries are studying ways to obtain energy from gas hydrates, which mix methane with ice in high-density formations under the seafloor. The potential energy in gas hydrates may equal that of all other fossils, including other forms of natural gas, combined.

If gas hydrates as well as shale gas, tight oil, oil sands and other unconventional sources can be tapped at reasonable cost, then the global energy picture looks radically different than it did only a few years ago. Suddenly it appears that there may be enough accessible hydrocarbons to power industrial civilization for centuries, if not millennia, to come.

Abundant energy for centuries. That won't please the chicken littles environmentalists.

So much for the specter of depletion, as a reason to adopt renewable energy technologies like solar power and wind power. Whatever may be the case with Peak Oil in particular, the date of Peak Fossil Fuels has been pushed indefinitely into the future. What about national security as a reason to switch to renewable energy?

Ok, what about it?

The U.S., Canada and Mexico, it turns out, are sitting on oceans of recoverable natural gas. Shale gas is combined with recoverable oil in the Bakken "play" along the U.S.-Canadian border and the Eagle Ford play in Texas. The shale gas reserves of China turn out to be enormous, too. Other countries with now-accessible natural gas reserves, according to the U.S. government, include Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, France, Poland and India.

Because shale gas reserves are so widespread, the potential for blackmail by Middle Eastern producers and Russia will diminish over time.

So-

Two arguments for switching to renewable energy -- the depletion of fossil fuels and national security -- are no longer plausible. What about the claim that a rapid transition to wind and solar energy is necessary, to avert catastrophic global warming?

Yes, yes, whadabboudit? Do tell!

The scenarios with the most catastrophic outcomes of global warming are low probability outcomes -- a fact that explains why the world’s governments in practice treat reducing CO2 emissions as a low priority, despite paying lip service to it. But even if the worst outcomes were likely, the rational response would not be a conversion to wind and solar power but a massive build-out of nuclear power. Nuclear energy already provides around 13-14 percent of the world’s electricity and nearly 3 percent of global final energy consumption, while wind, solar and geothermal power combined account for less than one percent of global final energy consumption.

(The majority of renewable energy consists of CO2-emitting biomass -- wood and dung used for fires by the world’s poor, plus crops used to make fuel; most of the remainder comes from hydropower dams denounced by Greens.)

To wit-

The arguments for converting the U.S. economy to wind, solar and biomass energy have collapsed. The date of depletion of fossil fuels has been pushed back into the future by centuries -- or millennia. The abundance and geographic diversity of fossil fuels made possible by technology in time will reduce the dependence of the U.S. on particular foreign energy exporters, eliminating the national security argument for renewable energy. And if the worst-case scenarios for climate change were plausible, then the most effective way to avert catastrophic global warming would be the rapid expansion of nuclear power, not over-complicated schemes worthy of Rube Goldberg or Wile E. Coyote to carpet the world’s deserts and prairies with solar panels and wind farms that would provide only intermittent energy from weak and diffuse sources.  

There is more, much more. Do read, save and bookmark the article. Remember this gem - there is NO case for  wind, solar and biomass energy. The political elite, in bed with a fascist environmental elite, is looting you to subsidize the crazy renewable schemes. You are already paying and you will be asked -no, forced - to pay more. Much more.




*Markos Botsaris by Jean-Leon Gerome 

Clueless Pundits

Vikram Sood, former Secretary, Research & Analysis Wing(RAW), India's external intelligence agency (it is frighetining that a person of such paranoid views - just read his articles - was in such a senior position. One may not know for a long time the damage he did)-

Why do I keep getting it wrong?

Four years ago, in May 2003 the Iranian authorities proposed a package deal to freeze their nuclear programme in exchange for an end to US hostility. The Iranians offered full transparency about their nuclear programme and full cooperation with the IAEA, on Iraq, terrorism and even material support to Hamas.
      - Vikram Sood,  October 15, 2007

(emphasis mine)

ChewBarracka!

Never has one seen such class gracing the American presidency -

Obama Sits in Front Row and Chews Gum at Joplin Memorial Service

Video

The MSM and the lefty blogosphere is either ignoring it or coming to Barry O's defense by such logic as -

We see their priorities in the face of a massive disaster.
What’s more important, chewing gum or the memorial service?
(from the comments)

or a variation of "What's wrong with chewing gum?", "When did it become criminal?"


Let us help our clueless lefty friends out.
Let's see if this is too difficult. We shall go over it word by word and slowly -
CHEWING      GUM      AT       A      MEMORIAL       SERVICE.

I hope something struck. Read it again if you will, again slowly. Hopefully, some more of it trickled in(or down).

Now let's continue, slowly of course and repeat if necessary (and you may consult a dictionary) -
MANNERS.

CHEWING      GUM     AT      A      MEMORIAL     SERVICE      IS     DISRESPECTFUL     AND   REALLY     BAD     MANNERS.

There got it? Good for you even if it is beyond Barry O's grasp.

Clueless Pundits

Eminent Indian media person, Prem Shankar Jha-

What do I know?

The countdown to a massive aerial bombing of Iran, possibly using bunker busting nuclear weapons, has begun.
      - Prem Shankar Jha, May 04, 2006

Did I say I'll be back?

My apologies for an unexpectedly long break. It was the combination of a holiday (loved it), indisposition (very fatiguing - felt all squeezed out like toothpaste run over by a truck) and above all a frustrating blogger's block (yes, there is such a thing) the size of Milky Way.

Anyway, the things will be settling down to normal soon or so I hope. Whatever normal was.

In the immortal words of Jim Carrey (Real audio file)-

"Did you miss me?"


No, no, don't tell!

From the LNC Quote Shop

Mark Steyn-

When the west’s bestselling atheists, stand-up comics, transgressive artists and all the rest belittle Christianity but steer clear of Islam, they’re not just engaging in prudent self-protection. They’re objectively advancing the cause of Islamic imperialism – because their selective mockery acts in support of the bullies’ core belief, that Islam is different and must be accorded a special deference: In practical terms, their selectivity comes to the same conclusion as any bigshot Talib in a hardcore madrassah. I said somewhere in America Alone that we’re operating to the same rules as the old Cold War joke: An American tells a Soviet that in America everyone is free to criticize the president. The Soviet replies, “Same in my country. Everyone is free to criticize your president.”

Book of the month -March, 2011

Introducing with this post a new feature of The Liberty Blog and the Liberty News Central -The book of the month. Starting off with the latest in The Politically Incorrect Guide to series-

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism

  

 by National Review
deputy managing editor Kevin D. Williamson 

From the National Review description of the book-

Stalin’s gulag, impoverished North Korea, collapsing Cuba . . . it’s hard to name a dogma that has failed as spectacularly as socialism. And yet leaders around the world continue to subject millions of people to this dysfunctional, violence-prone ideology.

In The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to Socialism, Kevin Williamson (“chancellor” of NRO’s exciting Exchequer blog) reveals the fatal flaw of socialism—that efficient, complex economies simply can’t be centrally planned. But even in America, that hasn’t stopped politicians and bureaucrats from planning, to various extents, the most vital sectors of our economy: public education, energy, and the most arrogant central–planning effort of them all, Obama’s healthcare plan.

In this provocative book, Williamson unfolds the grim history of socialism, showing how the ideology has spawned crushing poverty, devastating famines, and horrific wars. Lumbering from one crisis to the next, leaving a trail of economic devastation and environmental catastrophe, socialism has wreaked more havoc, caused more deaths, and impoverished more people than any other ideology in history—especially when you include the victims of fascism, which Williamson notes is simply a variant of socialism.

Williamson further demonstrates:

Why, contrary to popular belief, socialism in theory is no better than socialism in practice

Why socialism can’t exist without capitalism

How the energy powerhouse of Venezuela, under socialism, has become an economic basket case subject to rationing and blackouts

How socialism, not British colonialism, plunged the bountiful economy of India into stagnation and dysfunction—and how capitalism is rescuing it

Why socialism is inextricably linked to communism

If you thought socialism went into the dustbin of history with the collapse of the Soviet Union, think again. Socialism is alive and kicking, and it’s already spread further than you know.

What’s the central characteristic of socialism?

That’s easy—it’s failure, says Williamson.

Thats worth a repeat in large letters-

What’s the central characteristic of socialism?

That’s easy—it’s failure

Now somebody tell that to our Supreme Court judges.

Turn Chacha Manmohan S.Gandhi into approvers

There is this news -


Raja* should turn approver, says Shourie


which made me put on my thinking hat-
One turns someone into an approver to catch bigger fish or to catch several other big fish who collectively must be worth more than the approving fish.
But who is a bigger fish than Raja? Nobody -except Manmohan Singh and the Gandhi family(who collectively can be called Chacha Manmohan S.Gandhi in the words of inimitable Sauvik Chakraverti) and the DMK supremo and family.
Or who all can be the big fishes collectively more important than Raja? Perhaps several corporate CEOs and their political enablers.

So do you see Raja leading to the above? Maybe to a few business honchos and some minions to feed the frenzy of public opinion. Chacha Manmohan S.Gandhi and his merry gang will again get cleanly away, all the while claiming credit for following the rule of law.

Here's an idea - turn Chacha Manmohan S.Gandhi into approvers. Surely they know a few highly placed corrupt politicos and babus. More than a few, I bet. Can anyone believe they don't?

Only, no investigative agency has the balls to touch the real bastards. For the modern Mughals, the guard dogs are lap dogs. For us, they are just rabid. Totally useless and best avoided.




*Raja is the tainted former minister reluctantly booted out by the PM Manmohan Singh after serious allegations of corruption.

From the LNC Quote Shop

Bloody marvelous comment by O'Geary at this post-

Once upon a time, primitive peoples believed that, with enough human sacrifice, they could change the weather.

Today's advanced post-industrial peoples believe that, with enough human sacrifice, they can change the climate.

That's real human progress for you

All quiet on the civility front

It was only a few weeks ago but yet it seems like ages. We were being lectured on civility by a horde of talking heads and pundits. The hordes have since fallen silent though much incivility has occurred. All quiet on the civility front. The guns are silent. Pundits AWOL. Hysterical TV anchors and anchorettes mum. As if it was long, long ago in a different era.

Their silence about civility is, one suspect, the silence of support even as we are getting lessons in goodwill from the left-



Rhode Island union supporter to cameraman – “I’ll f**k you in the ass, you faggot”

Video

Union Protester Berates Jewish FreedomWorks Employee: ‘You Are a Bad Jew!’

Dem Rep to unions: Time to get ‘bloody’

They pushed and shoved until he fell on the ice, screaming the whole time to get the “F**K”out of here, they took the elderly man, pushing and shoving him
 

Elderly 'Teabaggers' Not Dying 'Fast Enough' Laments Libtalker Mike Papantonio

CWA union thug strikes young female FreedomWorks activist Tabitha Hale

Video

As John Hinderaker put it-

So that's what the Democratic Party meant by "civility!" If they had made that clear in the beginning, it would have saved a lot of trouble.

Getting around the Blogger template upload problem

Ah, the geniuses of Blogger have been doing naughty things - so naughty that they have messed up the back end of the Blogger platform, leaving thousands of poor blooging souls like myself to go crazy in our pajamas (bloggers are supposed to work in PJs). Have a look.

The problem has been summarized thus -

In the design back end of Blogger, you can not use the following features.

1. Expand Widget Template.
2. Preview your Template Savings.
3. Clear Your HTML Template Savings.
4. Save your Template in HTML Mode.

A couple of possible work arounds till blogger gathers it's marbles back.

Difference between private and public-sector unions

James Taranto provides the much needed clarity on the difference between the public and private unions and why the protesting public employees in Wisconsin are neither fighting for the rights of the workers nor for the taxpayers.

There is a fundamental difference between private- and public-sector workers. A private-sector labor dispute is a clear clash of competing interests, with management representing shareholders and unions representing workers. In the public sector, as George Will notes, taxpayers--whose position is analogous to that of shareholders--are usually denied a seat at the table:

Such unions are government organized as an interest group to lobby itself to do what it always wants to do anyway - grow. These unions use dues extracted from members to elect their members' employers. And governments, not disciplined by the need to make a profit, extract government employees' salaries from taxpayers. Government sits on both sides of the table in cozy "negotiations" with unions.

Collective bargaining in the public sector thus is less a negotiation than a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers. The notion that this is "in the economic interests of the middle class" for government employees in Wisconsin and elsewhere to get above-market wages and extremely lavish benefits is just laughable. Sure, government employees are "middle class," but so are the vast majority of taxpayers who don't enjoy the special privileges that come from owning the means of coercion.

(emphasis mine)


And neither is Governor Walker Hosni Mubarak or Hitler.
Nor is Bush still the president.

But, hey, these are government teachers.

Black Holes are racist!

Quick, somebody tell Stephen Hawking - Black Holes are racist!

Julian Assagne looks like his condom!

Picture of Julian Assange's Famous Leaky Condom

Turned sideways by the Harry's Place, it resembles Assagne himself ! -

Is this some kind of karmic signal?