As the food crisis began to bite, the rumblings of discontent grew louder. Finally, after a day of discussing food shortages and soaring prices, the famished stomachs of the G8 leaders could bear it no longer.

The most powerful bellies in the world were last night compelled to stave off the great Hokkaido Hunger by fortifying themselves with an eight-course, 19-dish dinner prepared by 25 chefs. This multi-pronged attack was launched after earlier emergency lunch measures - four courses washed down with Château-Grillet 2005 - had failed to quell appetites enlarged by agonising over feeding the world’s poor.

The G8 gathering had been seen as a “world food shortages summit” as leaders sought to combat spiralling prices of basic foodstuffs in the developed world, and starvation in the developing world.

But not since Marie Antoinette was supposed to have leaned from a Versailles palace window and suggested that the breadless peasants eat cake can leaders have demonstrated such insensitivity to daily hardship than at the luxury Windsor hotel on the Japanese island of Hokkaido.

After discussing famine in Africa, the peckish politicians and five spouses took on four bite-sized amuse-bouche to tickle their palates. The price of staple foods may be soaring, but thankfully caviar and sea urchin are within the purchasing power of leaders and their taxpayers - the amuse-bouche featured corn stuffed with caviar, smoked salmon and sea urchin, hot onion tart and winter lily bulb.

Guests at the summit, which is costing £238m, were then able to pick items from a tray modelled on a fan and decorated with bamboo grasses, including diced fatty tuna fish, avocado and jellied soy sauce, and pickled conger eel with soy sauce.

Hairy crab Kegani bisque-style soup was another treat in a meal prepared by the Michelin-starred chef Katsuhiro Nakamura, the grand chef at Hotel Metropolitan Edmont in Tokyo, alongside salt-grilled bighand thornyhead (a small, red Pacific fish) with a vinegary water pepper sauce.

They have told their people to tighten their belts for lean times ahead, but you feared for presidential and prime ministerial girdles after the chance to tuck into further dishes including milk-fed lamb, roasted lamb with cepes, and black truffle with emulsion sauce. Finally there was a “fantasy” dessert, a special cheese selection accompanied by lavender honey and caramelised nuts, while coffee came with candied fruits and vegetables.

Leaders cleverly skated around global water shortages by choosing from five different wines and liqueurs.

Earlier, the heads of state had restricted themselves to a light lunch of asparagus and truffle soup, crab and supreme of chicken served with nuts and beetroot foam, followed by a cheese selection, peach compote, milk ice-cream and coffee with petits fours.

Fresh from instructing his population to waste less food, it can only be hoped that Gordon Brown polished off every single morsel on his plate.

Andrew Mitchell, the shadow secretary of state for international development, said: “The G8 have made a bad start to their summit, with excessive cost and lavish consumption. Surely it is not unreasonable for each leader to give a guarantee that they will stand by their solemn pledges of three years ago at Gleneagles to help the world’s poor. All of us are watching, waiting and listening.”

Take THAT starving poor!!!

“Just need to get the “right” people elected” huh? Good luck with that.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, seeking to allay renewed concerns over the health of the nation’s financial system, said the central bank may extend its emergency-loan program for investment banks into next year.

“The Federal Reserve is strongly committed” to financial stability and is “considering several options, including extending the duration of our facilities for primary dealers beyond year-end,” Bernanke said in a speech to a conference in Arlington, Virginia.

Woot! More inflation!

Bernanke also endorsed proposals to set up a federal liquidation process for a failing investment bank. The Treasury should “take a leading role in any such process” in consultation with regulators, he said. Such a resolution mechanism may help reduce concern that investors and dealers begin counting on Fed aid in case their bets go wrong.

So like enforcing the current bankruptcy laws? I somehow doubt it.

Fed officials are working with the Securities and Exchange Commission and securities dealers “to increase the firms’ capital and liquidity buffers,” Bernanke said.

More inflation!!

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon told the same conference that he supported Fed and Treasury proposals for “policies, because of what happened, to take proper action if a large investment bank goes bankrupt.”

Of course he does. He, and the rest of Wall St., directly benefit from this intervention and inflation.

Without any liquidation procedure in place, the Fed in March decided to make a bridge loan to keep Bear Stearns out of bankruptcy. The central bank then agreed to take on $30 billion of hard-to-trade Bear Stearns assets to help secure its takeover by JPMorgan.

“The Federal Reserve in essence bought $30 billion of mortgage product from Bear Stearns; I want to remind people we bought $350 billion,” Dimon said today. “We don’t really think” the deal will end up costing taxpayers money, he also said.

I do. Anyone with a cursory understanding of economics could see that taxpayers will be both directly and indirectly paying for this. The indirect in terms of all the likely new regulations and powers the Fed will get on top of the inflation that will continue to destroy the middle class and poor are likely the greatest costs.

Congress should legislate “consolidated supervision” of investment banks and other big securities firms, with the unspecified regulator having authority over capital, liquidity holdings and risk management, Bernanke also said today.

The Fed should also get “explicit oversight authority” over payment and settlement systems, putting the it on a par with counterparts from around the world, Bernanke said.

U.S. central bankers will already play a part in setting capital cushions at securities firms under an agreement yesterday with the SEC. The two agencies will collaborate in determining “guidelines or rules concerning the capital, liquidity and funding” arrangements of investment banks, the accord said.

Because obviously planned economies have worked so damn well. They function like clockwork everywhere they have greater control. Right Ben?

EASTON, Pa. — The Easton City Council is considering a law that would let the city permanently seize the car of anyone caught cruising for a prostitute.

However, it is unclear if such a law would hold up in court. Easton defense lawyer Gary Asteak said the city cannot impose a severe penalty for what state law calls a misdemeanor. Still, Pennsylvania law lets police seize cars used in drug deals.

Police Chief Larry Palmer said he doesn’t know how the courts will rule, but said such a law is worth trying. Once a few cars are seized, it will make people think twice about going into Easton to find a prostitute, Palmer said.

What if you are cruising on a bicycle? A skateboard? Better yet, what if you approach a prostitute while taking a mid-afternoon stroll? Will they seize your sneakers?

There should be no laws regarding sex for consenting adults. Period.

Government should not only be kept out of the bedroom, but also out of the backseat of some guy’s Chevy.

Paul Hogan is best known as Crocodile Dundee, but he is now getting publicity for his fight against the tax-hungry Australian Tax Office. The Australian reports on the case, and quotes Hogan’s justified complaints about the government’s rigged rules. Hopefully Hogan will prevail, much as he did the last time he was subject to a shakedown attempt:

A defiant Paul Hogan had a typically plain-spoken and blunt message for the Australian Taxation Office yesterday: “Come and get me, you miserable bastards.” As the ATO enlisted the help of the Internal Revenue Service in the US to pursue the actor for allegedly undisclosed tax liabilities, a bemused Hogan insisted he had paid more than enough tax - a figure he estimated to be in excess of $100million - in Australia. …”I’d like to make a deal with the tax office that I’ll give them every cent I made, both me and (partner John “Strop”) Cornell, if they give me every cent they made out of my movies. As a guy who brought millions into
Australia, they should build a statue at the tax office to me and send me a Christmas card. I lived in America and still paid tax in Australia for 4 1/2 years when I could have paid tax in America, and it would have been cheaper, because I thought we needed the money back home more than they needed it here.” …Hogan railed against Operation Wickenby, a taskforce headed by the Australian Taxation Office, working in conjunction with other agencies such as the Australian Crime Commission. “If you become a victim or a target for the ACC, the crime commission, you’re not allowed to say you are, you’re not allowed to say anything they said to you or that you’ve even been questioned, or you can go to jail,” Hogan said. “If the ACC interrogated me, then I couldn’t tell you what they asked me or I can’t even admit they did because I could go to jail, but the ACC has some dickhead who can leak information to the press and anyone else who’s interested.” Hogan said he was being targeted only because he was “high-profile and because I’ve got money”.

Awesome. If only Wesley Snipes had reacted like this.

I’m sure Hogan is going to screwed but at least he’s talking a good game and raising awareness.

A group of high-profile progressive bloggers and libertarian Republicans are rolling out a new political action committee called Accountability Now to channel widespread anger over pending legislation that would legalize much of the president’s warrantless electronic surveillance of Americans, and grant retroactive legal immunity to telephone companies that cooperated with the spying when it was still illegal.

Progressive author and lawyer Glenn Greenwald, who writes for Salon, and blogger Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake are spearheading the effort. They’ve hired the political media consultants behind a historic Ron Paul online fundraising drive to organize a similar “moneybomb,” set to go off on August 8.

“That is the day Richard Nixon resigned, and the idea is that 35 years ago when you did this kind of stuff, you were forced out of office, and now congress drops everything to make your crimes legal,” says Hamsher in an interview.

The campaign marks a milestone in the evolution of online grassroots organizing. The PAC is cherry-picking the tactics and tools that proved most successful in the presidential primary campaigns, and is using them to corral online support for the single issue of domestic spying. The PAC’s money pay for advertisements in the districts of the House Democrats who voted for the spy bill — potentially causing problems for those capitulating on the Bush wiretapping program.

Key to the new effort are consultants Trevor Lyman and Rick Williams, whose successful online money-raising effort for Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Texas congressman, broke records last year. The pair masterminded a “moneybomb” drive called “This November 5th.” that brought in an unprecedented $4.2 million in contributions in a single day. A repeat effort in December raised another $6 million for Paul.

Now the pair have built a web page for Accountability Now where opponents of the spy bill can commit in advance to donating money to the PAC. Similar to the Ron Paul drives, netizens can grab Accountability Now badges to place on their blogs, which link back to the fundraising pledge page.

The moneybomb is only one out of several techniques, both online and off, that Hamsher’s Firedoglake is experimenting with to make offending members of congress feel the anger of their constituents.

Firedoglake has already hired Advomatic Designs in New York City and Advomatic Laboratories in Anchorage, Alaska to create an online VOIP widget that lets voters call their senators ask them what their stance is on the spy legislation, and to urge them to vote for an amendment that would remove the telecom immunity provision.

Using money its already raised, the group ran a full-page advertisement in the Washington Post Tuesday with bullet points explaining what’s wrong with the pending legislation.

The Senate is expected to follow the House in approving the new spy legislation Wednesday.

You can go to DownsizeDC.org to easily send the following message to your congress critters.

Please do everything you can to defeat the Senate version of HR 6304, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Please use your power to filibuster.

You can also send Barak Obama a message asking him to lead the fight in fighting this.

Update:

Arstechnica has a brief article on the Bingaman amendment which is causing some stir.

Instead of immediately granting retroactive immunity to telecoms being sued for their role in the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program—or, what amounts to the same thing, instructing a federal court to grant such immunity—Bingaman would stay the suits until 90 after the delivery of a report by the Inspector General’s on the president’s secret surveillance programs. Immunity would still follow automatically at this point, but the provision might provide an incentive for the administration not to drag its feet in complying with the investigation, and it would give Congress the opportunity to reconsider once it actually knows what behavior it is immunizing. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and prominent immunity opponent Glenn Greenwald have both endorsed the amendment.

Perhaps tellingly, even this stay-and-delay provision is apparently unacceptable to Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who in a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) write:

Any amendment that would delay implementation of the liability protections in this matter is unacceptable. Providing prompt liability protection is critical to the national security. Accordingly, we, as well as the President’s other senior advisers, will recommend that the President veto any bill that includes such an amendment.

Just when you thought you’ve heard it all…

A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser®. According to this promotional video found at the Lamperd Less Lethal website, the bracelet would be worn by all airline passengers.

This bracelet would:

• take the place of an airline boarding pass

• contain personal information about the traveler

• be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage

• shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes

The Electronic ID Bracelet, as it’s referred to as, would be worn by every traveler “until they disembark the flight at their destination.”  Yes, you read that correctly. Every airline passenger would be tracked by a government-funded GPS, containing personal, private and confidential information, and that it would shock the customer worse than an electronic dog collar if he/she got out of line?

What a wonderful idea.  Why not just implant us all with lo-jack chips and be done with it?

Since ethanol mandates cause deforestation and skyrocketing food prices, the European Union is now reconsidering its biofuel mandates.  Ethanol subsidies have many bad effects.  They have caused rioting and starvation in many poor countries.  They also have harmed the environment and increased food prices and support for Islamic extremists.

Looks like the market has spoken.

The National Children’s Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.

This could include a child of as young as three who says “yuk” in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.

The guidance by the NCB is designed to draw attention to potentially-racist attitudes in youngsters from a young age.

It alerts playgroup leaders that even babies can not be ignored in the drive to root out prejudice as they can “recognise different people in their lives”.

The 366-page guide for staff in charge of pre-school children, called Young Children and Racial Justice, warns: “Racist incidents among children in early years settings tend to be around name-calling, casual thoughtless comments and peer group relationships.”

It advises nursery teachers to be on the alert for childish abuse such as: “blackie”, “Pakis”, “those people” or “they smell”.

The guide goes on to warn that children might also “react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying ‘yuk’”.

Staff are told: “No racist incident should be ignored. When there is a clear racist incident, it is necessary to be specific in condemning the action.”

Warning that failing to pick children up on their racist attitudes could instil prejudice, the NCB adds that if children “reveal negative attitudes, the lack of censure may indicate to the child that there is nothing unacceptable about such attitudes”.

Nurseries are encouraged to report as many incidents as possible to their local council. The guide added: “Some people think that if a large number of racist incidents are reported, this will reflect badly on the institution. In fact, the opposite is the case.”

I want to know what they plan on doing when they find these racist toddlers. Are the children and their parents sent off for reeducation?

I have blogged before about the “Church of Universal Coverage,” my affectionate term for those whose support for universal health insurance coverage is impervious to reason — or would be, were they to subject it to reason.  I read something today that has me wondering whether the Church might be waking up to the fact that it is indeed a religion.

The July/August 2008 issue of the journal Health Affairs contains a letter from Mitch Roob, the Indiana official who oversees Gov. Mitch Daniels’ (R) health care agenda.  Roob writes:

Like other advocates for children’s health, I have an almost religious conviction that the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is effective public policy . . . Although I have no empirical evidence to support the assertion that SCHIP is a beneficial and effective way to invest in children’s health, I worked to expand the program . . . I was not able to base this expansion on empirical evidence because their is none . . . The lack of actual evidence of the benefits for children is simply damning to the program . . . Public policymakers need more than just a conviction that SCHIP works and is worthy of public investment.  We need facts.  [Emphasis added.]

Wow.  I mean, wow.

I see three possible outcomes.  One, all that cognitive dissonance causes Roob’s head to explode.  Two, the Church hierarchy dispatches its goons to burn this heretic at the stake for noticing that their god has no clothes.  Three, the Left decides “to hell with it,” admits that it has a religion, and files for tax-exempt status.

Still Don’t Think Universal Coverage Is a Religion?

In case my last post didn’t convince you that universal coverage is a religion, here is its apostle’s creed:

To believe in universal health care is to believe that we can do more and do better, all at once - that it is possible to have hospitals full of high technology and emergency departments with room for all comers; that it is possible for people to choose their doctors and have a say in their treatments; that it is possible to make the economy more free and more efficient; and that it is possible to do all of this for everybody, not just an economically or medically privileged few, in a way we can all find affordable.  [Emphasis added.]

(As delivered by Church of Universal Coverage high priest Jonathan Cohn and chronicled in the book Sick, chapter 9, p. 231.)

I may think that government often serves the few at the expense of the many, that people respond to incentives, that tradeoffs are unavoidable, that there may be better ways to promote health, and that introducing coercion into human affairs creates more problems than it solves.

But just try telling that to someone who believes.

Creepy. No wonder economics doesn’t have an effect on these people.

• I was told by an Iranian Jew that we (non-Muslims) need to actively attack Muslims because otherwise they will take over the world. When I said you can’t generalize like that and you can’t hold the son responsible for the father’s doings he agreed but then went on to tell me that when you look at their society, them collectively, you can and must.
• A French tourist became very interested in what we were advocating. It was obvious he was no in agreement with the more extreme aspects of government removal from our lives but he was courteous. He said we would be considered very very radical in France and “libertarians” in France would be more along the line of small government Republicans.
• One older gentleman got hostel with Isaiah Matos for being against the war in Iraq. “They are keeping us safe!” “I hope you don’t get elected!”
• A young man from NJ who had never heard of the libertarian movement nor even Ron Paul became very interested in what we were doing. I explained the LP, the Ron Paul Revolution, the FSP, wasted vote fallacies, etc.
• A current US soldier who was a Ron Paul supporter. He confirmed that Paul does indeed have a large following in the military.
• Just before I left I got into a 20-30 minute argument with a woman. After eventually stating I was against all coercive measures used by those who call themselves government including all forms of taxation she went nuts. She refused to let me finish a thought and would say she didn’t want to talk any further but would. She claimed all I wanted was to not pay taxes. Insinuating that I wanted to leech off others. When I said: “No, I don’t want to be forced to pay for services I don’t want by the threat of violence.” She asked how is government violent. Isaiah quickly pointed out the war but when I tried to show her what happens when I refuse to pay taxes she acted dumb. “I don’t know what happens when you don’t pay property taxes. I rent.” When I went to continue she said she was leaving… but didn’t. Eventually she told us to just leave if we don’t like it. I asked her whether Washington, Jefferson and the other Founders should have just left. She tells us that they fought the revolution only because they were not represented in taxation and that they had setup a democracy so if 51% of the people want something the other 49% are screwed. That’s just how it is. The former being entirely simplistic and the latter being outright wrong I tried to tell her to read Common Sense and other works by Paine and that we had a constitutional democratic republic, not a democracy. She told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. She at one point noticed our support for gun ownership. After I explained to her that gun prohibition is about as effective as drug prohibition and that at worst the data is inconclusive and at best shows that higher gun ownership by non-criminals leads to less crime such as in Florida in the late 80’s early 90’s she scoffed saying she had lived in Florida so she knew better then I did and when she said she’d have to look it all up she refused to accept any sources. She also wasn’t very receptive to XYZs gun advocacy. She even brought up the so very stereotyped: “What about the roads?” She again refused to let me tell her about private communities and roads which exist now.

So I left flustered. Worse then arguing with people who won’t accept truths is when they won’t even let you provide them.

Since we had so many people manning the booth I decided to just hand out pamphlets to people walking by. I noticed many were drawn to the tax cut pamphlet.