It must sadly be noted that Ben Bernanke slipp’d twixt cup and lip in a recent statement reported by the wise and perceptive Cubachi….
Fed Chair Bernanke says the government has no strategy to tackle fiscal crisis
He is not correct. Sources tell me that there was an additional reason for this visit…
Hey girls – don’t bother with boring old stuff like Maths or Physics or Engineering….leave that to the Chinese and South Koreans. Here in the UK we know what you really need and we’ll use taxpayers money to make sure you can get it.
To be truly successful you have to learn to walk in high heels. Once you can do that then everything will come your way because you will feel much more confident.
Students have been taught how to walk in stilettos as part of a government-funded course, a south London college said on Wednesday.
The six-week “Sexy Heels in the City” course was offered as an extra-curricular activity at South Thames College and finished in May.
I am sure this must be an equal opportunities course and therefore open to the boys as well. Then, despite the shrinking economy and collapsed industrial base we can at least all glide down the road to oblivion completely at ease in our stilettos…….
This is the deal. You’re Bobbie Johnson, the Tech/IT honcho at The Guardian – you are The Man…….on the edge, in the fast lane, so where it’s at that everyone else is not just yesterday but yesteryear.
Then suddenly you hear from the jungle drums that The Guardian is losing circulation, advertising and money. There’s talk of downsizing so you cut loose before being pushed and take redundancy. You need to scout for another slot, however, so you decide to punt a few hundred words towards another UK paper. You need something that is ostensibly about IT but also presses the right media buttons.
No problem. Contact The Daily Telegraph and offer a hit piece on Sarah Palin. The so called right wing Telegraph has been using Alex Spillius and Toby Harnden to trash Palin for nearly two years so you simply cannot lose.
The result?
Sarah Palin vs the hacker
The student who faces decades in jail for guessing a password.
Now you do not have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out where the piece is headed. It starts with an unexceptional bit of scene setting describing how David Kernell (“Rubico”)hacked into Palin’s yahoo e mail account in September 2008 at the height of the media feeding frenzy following her selection as McCain’s running mate. Johnson not only proceeds to sanitise Kernell’s action but goes the full McGinniss and paints Kernell as the victim of – yes, you’ve guessed it – a Palin witch hunt.
So why was the whole weight of the law brought down upon David Kernell? Many believe Palin used the case to stay in the limelight ahead of what may be another run for office in 2012.
………….
After the verdict was read out and David Kernell emerged into the Tennessee sunshine, I asked his prosecutors whether they would have pursued the case so zealously if the victim had been somebody less high-profile.
Mark Krotoski, the Assistant US Attorney, played the question with the deadest of bats.
‘We felt the conduct in this case warranted each one of those charges,’ he said. ‘The victim of this case certainly was mentioned, but it wasn’t a big part of the presentation of the government’s case.’
Now ace reporter Bobbie is not at all happy with that. Our fearless sleuth just knows there is something darker hiding behind those bland words of the Assistant US Attorney. Indeed there is almost a suggestion that Mr Krotoski, having issued his smokescreen statement climbed into an unmarked black helicopter to be spirited away to some secret desert compound.
It’s a conspiracy, man……..and it’s SINISTER……
That’s the official line, but, to others, it feels like youthful misdemeanours are being manipulated for political and professional gain.
As Kernell’s friend Brett Ballinger – sitting in the quad of the university – asked: ‘What are they trying to push on him? Did any of them ever sit down and ask, “How did he really hurt these people and is it worth us going and destroying his life?’”
You can just sense Bobbie’s growing sense of excitement – it’s that Woodward/Bernstein moment when our fearless investigative reporter smells Pulitzer. You see he knows that Palin is just a construct, a puppet whose strings are being pulled by darker figures determined to drive America away from the forces of light that sprang forth out of Cook County in 2008 – and Kernell is clearly an agent of The Light.
This is why Kernell has to be crushed by the forces of Darkness.
Bobbie’s task, therefore, is to slash at the tangled undergrowth of lies and insinuations that surrounded this case with the Sword of Truth and he does this in an original and unexpected way.
He ignores the evidence presented to the court and considered by the jury – after all, what do they know?
Bobbie digs down really deep and finds the truth from…… Kernell’s friends. Not only does he discover how the young student was just an average Joe with no interest in politics but he cracked into Palin’s e mails as an intellectual exercise.
Moreover, by being so predictable in her yahoo security codes she was really just “asking for it” (a phrase frequently heard in the investigation of another familiar crime) Thus Bobbie, in an act of masterly legerdemain, whips the mantle of victimhood from Palin and places it squarely on the shoulders of our innocent middle class student…
Bobbie Johnson – ace reporter?
Bobbie Johnson for a Pulitzer?
Not, I fear, in a million years. His whole “conspiracy/Kernell as victim” thesis is one of the soggiest bowls of cold porridge since Geoffrey Dunn’s last HuffPo Palin hit piece. So, let’s dig in our spoons and analyse some of the bits floating on the top of this mess.
Rubico was not some mastermind hacker or hard-core political activist. Instead, he was a middle-class, lanky economics student called David Kernell.
Who happened to be the son of Democratic Rep. Mike Kernell of Memphis, a long serving member of the Tennessee House and Obama supporter. Rather disingenuous of Bobbie to initially imply that David was just some kind of ordinary Joe.
Of course when it became known that Kernell had a political background some people began connecting speculative dots – not surprising considering the tsunami of vitriol thrown at Palin by Obama activists in the weeks following her nomination.
It didn’t matter that Kernell and his father denied the political plot: suddenly Rubico’s blunder had become a cause célèbre in the battle between Left and Right.
From all the evidence it is crystal clear that Kernell’s father had no knowledge of his son’s hacking activity. However the fact that his son denied any political motivation might be enough to satisfy Bobbie’s razor sharp forensic skills but for the slightly more cynical it is a claim more open to question. Indeed Bobbie himself inadvertently allows us a glimpse of a very interesting cat in the bag
buoyed by his success at gaining access, Kernell had bragged about it on an online messageboard called 4Chan.
‘There was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped,’ he told them.
‘All I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor… and pictures of her family.’
“Nothing that would derail her campaign” – bit of an odd statement coming from someone so apolitical isn’t it, Bobbie?
Then he produces a cute little puppy to tug at our heartstrings and show how well intentioned Mr Ordinary Average Middle Class Student really was – he decided to prove to the world that there was no smoking gun in Palin’s e mails by….POSTING THEM….
Kernell posted some of the things he’d found as proof – photos, screen shots, the new password – before realising he could be in serious trouble.
He suddenly got scared and a few seconds later, he disappeared.
‘If this s— ever got to the FBI I was f—-d,’ he wrote later on the site. ‘I panicked… I posted the pass and then promptly deleted everything and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state.’
But of course he was too late. The stuff was swarming around the cyberworld within nanoseconds.
Palin’s family started receiving abusive emails and phone calls and the McCain campaign went into temporary panic mode.
Later, Palin described the moment she discovered what had happened while watching the news on television.
‘I thought: what kind of creep would break into a person’s files, steal them, read them, then give them to the press to broadcast… in order to influence a presidential campaign?
‘And what kind of responsible press outfit would broadcast stolen private correspondence?’
Hey Sarah – who the hell do you think you are? John Edwards? You’re a conservative woman, for crying out loud – you and your family are fair game!!!
Indeed Bobbie can hardly restrain himself when she actually has the nerve to speak to the court and pretend she has feelings…
When the case finally came to trial last month, Palin played it for all it was worth. The former candidate, now a presenter on the Right-wing TV channel Fox News, arrived in a blacked-out four-wheel drive.
After taking her place on the stand, she delivered her testimony in front of a packed courtroom.
Kernell, she said, was responsible for ‘the most disruptive and discouraging’ moment of her failed campaign to reach the White House.
Ignoring other setbacks during the election – the huge gaps in her knowledge of foreign affairs; the $150,000 bill for her wardrobe – she explained how her adolescent nemesis had affected her chances of success.
Crocodile tears according to Bobbie. It was a student prank, nobody important was harmed, give Kernell a mild slap on the wrist and let’s all move on.
Oh and Mr Editor of The Daily Telegraph you ought to take me on as your regular IT/Technology guru – not only am I a brilliant journalist but I am also cheaper than Shane Richmond, currently Head of Technology (Editorial) for Telegraph Media Group.
I suspect our Bobbie is fishing for a regular job again though of course I can’t prove it. I am sure that if I spoke to Bobbie’s friends they would tell me what a regular stand up guy he is. But he will have to get up very early to put one over Shane Richmond because, just one day after Bobbie’s puffed up posturing Mr Richmond’s rapier was skilfully slipped between the Johnson ribs in another Daily Telegraph piece….
I don’t take Sarah Palin’s side on many issues but it seems clear to me that David Kernell………….should go to prison.
……..
The sentences for those charges of which he has been found guilty amount to a maximum of one year for unauthorised access and up to 20 years for obstruction of justice.
It would certainly be harsh for Kernell to receive the maximum sentence, though we will have to wait and see whether the judge agrees, but some of the arguments in his defence have been absurd. They have suggested that the case is being pursued simply because the target was Palin and that this was just a youthful prank that went too far.
………
Is that the case here? I think not.
Kernell was not a child when he did this. Regardless of how easy it was to guess his way into Palin’s email account, he must have known that doing so was wrong. He can’t have thought that changing her password was acceptable. And in posting some of her messages to a public forum – something that eventually led to Palin’s entire email archive being made public – he can’t possibly have thought that he was just playing a prank. Can he?
……….
Even if he did think this was just a small prank, his actions amounted to a serious – and possibly malicious – invasion of privacy. He should have been aware of that at the time. If he does go to prison, he has only himself to blame, not a rightwing conspiracy led by Palin and her supporters.
Whoops, Bobbie – oh well you could always try the Willesden & Brent Times – or The Huffington Post……
He used a speech this morning to paint a near-apocalyptic picture of a country in which wasteful public spending has run up unsustainable debts.
He said: “There are three simple reasons why we have to deal with the country’s debts. One: the more government borrows, the more it has to repay; the more it has to repay, the more lenders worry about getting their money back; the more lenders start to worry, the less confidence there is in our economy.
“Two: investors do not have to put their money in this country – they will only do so if they’re confident the economy is being run properly, and when confidence in our economy is hit, we run the risk of higher interest rates.
“Three – and the real, human, everyday reason this is the most urgent problem facing us is that higher interest rates hurt every family and every business in the land. They mean higher mortgages and lower employment.
“They mean that instead of your taxes going to pay for things we want, the money you work so hard for is going on paying the interest on our national debt.”
President Obama coming clean about the US deficit?
No – Prime Minister David Cameron giving a reality check to the UK….
Two helpful Australians connect the dots for us on the economic crisis. Perhaps they might be persuaded to visit Washington for a few months so that President Obama and his Democratic colleagues in Congress can enrol in their “Economics For Idiots” course….
A neat little twist in the McGinniss/Palin FenceGate saga…..
Eric Boehlert at the allegedly objective MediaMatters fancies he has landed a telling blow against Sarah Palin when he reveals that the place next door was for several years a halfway house for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics.
Until 2007, the house operated as a way station for recovering drug addicts. Catherine Taylor, who inherited the house decades ago, said the Palins never complained about the recovering drug addicts and ex-cons who lived next door.
Cue for a classic Media Matters Gotcha moment from Boehlert
This seems to completely undercut Palin’s hateful attack on the 69-year-old McGinniss and her claim that he poses a unique threat to her.
Au contraire, Mr Boehlert – I think this makes my respect for Palin go up a notch or two.
I would suspect that in the USA, as well as here in the UK, many people would object to such a halfway house in their road, let alone next door. We class such an objector as a NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) because they are, of course, totally supportive of such places but would prefer to see them in somebody else’s road. Often, indeed, they are of the Liberal/Left and always eager to attend charity functions that support halfway settlements to show how much they care – but try to get one built in their communities and you’ll soon be hit by a tsunami of smoothly snake oiled lawyers shafting you in a matter of microseconds.
But the Palins, with all those children bouncing around the grounds, never raised a peep about the addicts and alcoholics just 15 yards from their property?
Maybe it’s because they believe in live and let live and giving folks a second or even third chance.
Or maybe they would prefer to have a group of ex cons as neighbours than someone who is a special friend of Jesse Griffin….
Apart from the super rich most people have to work in order to attain a reasonable standard of living. At the end of the day they can at least go home and enjoy the fruits of their labour – unless they are unfortunate enough to be mugged on the street or have their home burgled. Muggers and burglars, of course, being lazy prefer to let their victims work so that they can steal their earnings from them.
Fortunately we can usually take precautions against thieves by avoiding certain areas and locking up our houses. But there is no safe street or effective lock that can prevent one other hand from dipping into our wallet or purse and grabbing our hard earned cash – the government.
Governments, like criminals, are unable to create wealth. Thefore they must wait until we earn it – then take it from us. This little video, which comes from The Taxpayers Alliance shows how far into the day an average person must work before he or she can actually keep their wages from the government’s sticky little fingers.
Remember, folks, they need your money to pay for stuff like this or this or these and, of course, for some very important people…..
A DUTCH woman has spent 45 years caring for the grave of a British airman she never knew.
Tiny Claessen, 79, has weeded it and cleaned the headstone out of respect for the fallen hero who died in a Second World War bombing raid over Holland. Tiny then returned every week to leave flowers, plants and candles at the grave in her village of Beesel, near the German border.
“He gave his life so people like me could live free and happy. It was the right thing that he should be respected and remembered. It felt like he became a member of my family, like a brother.
It began in the early 1960s when she was helping her mother tend her father’s grave. She asked her daughter to promise to look after the grave when she was dead and gone, a promise Tiny made willingly. Then her mother showed her another grave, overgrown and neglected. “Tend that one as well for he has nobody here to do it for him.”
It was the grave of Flight Sergeant Henry” Harry” Hiscox, the tail gunner of a RAF Lancaster bomber shot down over Beesel in July 1944. Having been in the Home Guard and Fire Service, he answered newspaper advert asking for volunteers for the RAF. He put his name down and after training was posted to 75 ‘New Zealand’ Sqn. RAF.
By 1944 he was 35 years old, the “old man” of a crew who were mostly in their early twenties. He had flown as rear gunner on 35 sorties over Germany so at that point he need not have flown any more, indeed he should have become an instructor. He would have gone on training younger men and possibly being commissioned but preferred to “do the job himself”.
Harry had been thrown from the plane when it crashed into a field. His body was found by local children and German soldiers placed him in a coffin and brought his body to the Town Hall where they allowed the locals to pay their respects. But on the day when his remains were buried in the local cemetery, probably on the orders of the SS, no villager except the gravediggers were allowed to attend or even place flowers on the grave.
Later that night, however, they threw flowers over the graveyard wall and later placed this poem, written by a local Dutch Resistance leader on Harry’s grave.
English airman, we stand around this grave of yours in this foreign place.
Your valuable life you gave in forfeit so that we can live in freedom.
Now you lay here quietly to sleep while people in your homeland wait,
Your child maybe asks his Mother why she can’t laugh with him anymore.
You arrived here in our midst, fighting for a beautiful ideal.
The enemy have buried you without honour, without glory
English airman, we will surround your grave with respect and flowers and ask with thanks, our good God for your happiness in the everlasting life.
Tiny, who felt it was her duty to remember the airman for the “price he paid for my freedom”, has now received a letter of thanks from the RAF.
And Henry’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren have told Wales On Sunday of their gratitude.
The family have already met Tiny after the lifelong wish of Henry’s daughter, Thelma, to visit her father’s grave was fulfilled four years ago
Every year students from the local school play a leading role in a remembrance ceremony on the 4th of May at Harry’s graveside for, to the people of Beesel his grave is the focal point of the Dutch Remembrance day.
Thelma was nine when he died. She knew her dad was buried in Holland, but didn’t find out the exact location until 2006.
During that emotional visit, Thelma, her children and grandchildren were overwhelmed to meet Tiny, who joined them in an annual Remembrance Day ceremony on May 4. Sadly, Thelma died last year.
But since the meeting in 2006, both families have remained close friends.
Henry’s grandson, Paul Lewis, 60, of Caldicot, said: “She sends us birthday cards and writes in Dutch. She’s a lovely lady.”
Of the ceremony in Beesel, he said: “It was absolutely unbelievable. The people couldn’t possibly have done any more for us.
Harry Hiscox and millions like him paid for our freedom with blood and bone. The least we can do is, like this gentle Dutch lady, honour that debt in our hearts….
George Osborne, the new UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, spells out the cold, hard facts of economic life.
“We simply cannot afford to increase public debt at the rate of £3bn each week. Our huge public debts threaten financial stability and if left unchecked would derail the economic recovery.
“Public borrowing is only taxation deferred and it would be deeply irresponsible to continue to accumulate vast debts that would have to be paid off by our children, and our grand children for many decades to come.”
He has only just started to hack away at the undergrowth. Will he and his Lib. Dem. assistant David Laws have the courage to maintain a sharp edge on their axe blades in the face of screams of protest from those with a vested interest on leeching off the hard won earnings of ordinary, everyday folk via the tax take? Only time will tell – but at least it’s a beginning……
Dr Liam Fox, the new UK Defence Secretary, speaks a strange sort of language (he’s not a doctor of constitutional law or linguistics, by the way, but was actually the sort of doctor who you went to see because you were ill – in other words a real doctor)
“We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened.”
Sorry – I didn’t quite get that. It sounds a little old fashioned in this age of “let’s all be friends and dance around together with flowers in our hair while genuflecting before the United Nations” doesn’t it? Our main concern should be the people of Britain? We should make our own global interests our number one priority?
Didn’t he get the memo? We live in a global community and our actions need to be approved by “world opinion” as represented by that international mafia of confidence tricksters, thieves, murderers and charlatans who strut and preen themselves in the corridors of the UN in New York.
“The first question I asked myself when I got the job was, ‘Do we have to be in Afghanistan? Is it worth it for those who have lost their lives or limbs?’ You have to keep asking yourself that question each day.”
You mean that it’s not all about letting politicians feel good about themselves – instead you have to consider the price in terms of blood and bone?
At present Dr Fox thinks the game is worth the price.
“We can’t afford to see Afghanistan roll backwards into a failed state that could become a base from which terrorist campaigns can be launched anywhere in the world.”
But there must always be a hard nosed sense of realism. The price is worth it at present to defend Britain’s interests but our soldiers should not be maimed or killed to spread “democracy”
“National security is the focus now. We are not a global policeman.
But after the briefings he has received since taking up his new job he has no doubt about where the main danger to our security lies – it’s in Tehran.
“There is a lack of urgency and understanding in this country about the threat posed by Iran.”…… “You’ve had Ahmadinejad talking about wiping Israel off the face of the map. People here may think that’s hyperbole but there are people in Israel who remember the last time someone said ‘We’re going to wipe you off the face of the map’ and had a damn good try at it.
He doesn’t appear to be the sort of person who feels that all you need to do with the Iranians is to sit down and have a nice friendly chat with them. There might have to be a lline clearly drawn in the sand to help focus the minds of the mullahs, even a little unpleasantness.
“Unless we get a sense of urgency into the European Union and other Western countries, there’s a danger that we either end up with Iran with a bomb or a bombed Iran.”
Dear me – I don’t think that sort of talk will go down all that well with the White House. No doubt a low level hack will be sent to remind London that
No – I don’t think President Obama would want someone like Dr Fox in his cabinet…….
