I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

The title of this post is a quote from Will Rogers. He died in 1935 but I'll throw in a few more quotes just to show you that either the man was way ahead of his time or that nothing has changed in the last 75 years. I'm hoping for the former and not the latter.
Look, I never used to follow politics much.I understand politics as much as I understand the double luge.I had never even voted until the last election here in New Zealand. It has never bothered me too much as long as I thought that it didn't affect me. I'm older and wiser(and grumpier) and I have come to realize that these people do actually have an influence on my life and the worrying thing is that most of them are fuckwits! Will Rogers:"A fool and his money are soon elected."
It's amazing how quickly things can change. Last year, when it looked like Labour was going to lose out to National, I was a bit worried. Here in New Zealand, National's closest comparision would be the Republicans in the US. (I'm generlizing in a big way here, in very broad terms, so just bear with me. The biggest difference between National and Republicans is that most National party members believe in evolution.) and Labour would be,of course, the Democrats. Now it's a year later and I must say that National is doing a good (not great) job. Prime Minister John Key has done a good job and hasn't had any major slip-ups yet. He's brought in fresh blood who have done good job and been effective. Now it's Labour who look like a bunch of bumbling fools. Will Rogers: "Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated." Guess who I voted for?
In America, things are so compicated that I would even know where to start. It's only been a year for Obama and how quickly things have changed for him. When the Republican Brown got elected into my very blue state of Massachusetts there was an inordinate amount of handwringing.But why? Just because the majority elected you doesn't mean the majority isn't stupid. Just ask George Bush. Basically, voters in Massachusetts voted a republican into a traditionally democratic seat in response to Obama not being able to fix the problem that the republicans got them into in the first place.Here is an article from The New Zealand Herald that briefly touches on this subject and the media's influence. Immediately, Obama went from saviour to lame duck. His star has fallen almost as far as Tiger's but without the pornstars. Will Rogers:" On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does." Obama has had a unique chance in history and his party has basically screwed the pooch but you have to say that the odds were against him in the first place.Will Rogers:"(Will Rogers:"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat."). I'm not too busy patting myself on the back but I had always thought that America's bubble would burst and now that it has I must say that I'm a bit dissapointed. Not that the bubble did indeed burst but the complete apathy about the whole thing. I did think that Americans wouldn't really worry about too much so long as they could still buy their big pick-up truck, their big 60" LCD HD or ammo for their guns. But yet when the shit hit the fan for them I was stunned by the absolute lack of response. Ok, they did go out and elect a black president(something I never thought I would see in my lifetime) but I don't see how that is a response. Where were the marches in protest, where was the cry for change, where was the voice of moderation when America's future was being sold to Wall Street. Nope. Didn't see it.Will Rogers:"Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing -- and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even."
If I was to just focus on just one of the many things that are wrong with America right now (besides the fact that they couldn't find earth on a map) it would be this story from the New York Times that I read only just last night.
Meanwhile, back in my adopted homeland of Holland the government has just collapsed. Don't worry,it sounds worse than it actually is. Apparently, it happens all the time. Back in this old post, I mentioned how the dutch politicians were a bunch of old comprimisers. Well, apparently they couldn't come to a comprimise so they just wrote a letter to the Queen that they wouldn't be coming anymore and that was that really. A friend wrote me an email about it asking me if I'd heard. I asked him if he knew the amount of Dutch governments that Silvio Berlesconi has outlived. You'd have to be European to get the joke. You can email me at coolbreezenl@hotmail.com if you don't get it and I'll let you in on it.
Will Rogers:"There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you."

Just finished three weeks of needed vacation. It had been so long since I had a break that long that it was a bit weird. We stayed close to home and got some domestic stuff done. At the end of it we got to go and stay up in Tairua for four days and it really topped off the whole break. School holidays have ended and it was so quiet. Most of the days as you can see in the picture we had the beach mostly to ourselves. Now it's back to routine. I hope to be pounding out some more posts soon as that routine kicks in again. I'm being distracted by the Winter Olympics. I might have to find an angle for a story but as it stands now it's down to the oppressive restraint of free speech by the Canadian authorities (inexplicable really from the normally sedate and laid back Canadians, I mean really, the Olympic torch did look like a giant joint!). The only other storyline I can really come up with at this stage is the seemingly endless amount of smoking hot female athletes at these games. I'm wondering if this has to do with more stingent drug testing that has more Eastern European women with lesser facial hair showing off more of their natural features . You'll see in a few days which way I go with that. Mark

It makes too much sense, it can't be right

Here's Greg Easterbrook's disturbing analysis of Obama's State of the Union address and his new budget. Let's hope he's got it wrong. Here it is in full:
In 1781, George Washington Said Federal Borrowing Was Wrong -- It "Ungenerously Throw[s] Upon Posterity the Burden Which We Ourselves Ought to Bear" Last week, in his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama spoke of the need to restore fiscal discipline and end runaway borrowing. Members of Congress clapped and nodded approval. The following day -- the following day! -- the Senate voted to raise the national debt ceiling by $2 trillion, to $14.3 trillion. Resolve about reducing debt didn't even last 24 hours in the Senate. Then on Monday, President Obama released his next federal budget proposal, complete with a projected fiscal 2010 deficit of $1.6 trillion -- the worst-ever peacetime deficit -- and $100 billion in new deficit-based spending that Obama neglected to mention when speaking to Congress. The president's resolve about reducing the debt didn't even last a week.



Just five years ago, it was considered shocking when George W. Bush submitted a federal budget containing what was then the worst-ever peacetime deficit of $271 billion, stated in today's dollars. Now no one seems to shrug when the Congressional Budget Office projects mega-deficits for at least a decade to come. America has many problems, but no national emergency. If we are already borrowing to the hilt to subsidize today's interest groups at the expense of the young, what will we do if there is an emergency?



[+] EnlargeSaul Loeb/Getty Images
"My fellow Americans, the days of tax and spend are over. Now it's borrow and spend."A decade ago, the total U.S. national debt, converted to today's dollars, was $7 trillion. This year the total debt will hit $14 trillion. That means that in the past 10 years alone, the United States has incurred as much debt as was accumulated by our republic in its entire previous 211 years of existence. And the plan is to borrow, borrow, borrow more without accountability or the slightest restraint.



In his address, Obama called for a "spending freeze" not now, but next year. I'll quit smoking next year! The freeze would apply only to the roughly 15 percent of the federal budget that is not Social Security (the largest federal spending item), Medicare and Medicaid (No. 2), defense, interest on the debt -- or anything Congress stamps the word "emergency" on, such as the "second stimulus" handout many interest groups are demanding. Actually, such legislation would be a third stimulus -- Congress enacted a $152 billion debt-based stimulus bill in 2008, and a $787 billion debt-based stimulus bill in 2009. Calling the new bag of candy being demanded the "second" stimulus makes the idea sound less reckless and less like the institution of an annual giveaway to whatever special-interest groups have bought the most access that year.



In the course of conceding that no spending discipline would even be attempted until 2011 -- I'll lose weight in 2011 for sure -- the president declared, "We've already identified $20 billion in savings for next year." That amount would represent barely more than 1 percent of the projected 2011 deficit. But if the White House has "already identified" $20 billion that can be cut from the federal budget, why doesn't the cut take effect immediately? Because we'll quit smoking next year! When interest groups wanted handouts in the form of the 2008 and 2009 stimulus bills, and banks and Wall Street wanted handouts, the money began flowing right away, no waiting. When the president proposes an extremely modest spending restriction, it's delayed until the following year -- in order to give interest groups time to demand that the money be restored.



Won't we be saved by Paygo? After listening to the presidential address, the Senate voted to impose the Paygo rule on itself -- that any new appropriations must be offset by equivalent spending cuts or tax increases. The House of Representatives imposed the Paygo rule on itself in January 2007, and the U.S. national debt has risen by $5.4 trillion since. How can debt skyrocket under a pay-as-you-go system? Paygo applies to all spending bills -- unless they are security, defense, entitlements or interest on the national debt (those categories are the lion's share of federal spending) or unless they are "emergency" legislation. Essentially, every spending bill that has passed through the House in the past three years has had the word "emergency" in it somewhere, generating a waiver from Paygo. The Paygo concept is a complete fraud -- it almost seems designed for the purpose of insulting the intelligence of voters. And now the Senate has joined the fraud.



During the run-up to the 2008 mortgage-market implosion, many individual Americans and many investment firms borrowed in an outlandish manner, living high briefly while acting as if tomorrow would never come. It came. For the past five years, the U.S. government, under Republican and Democratic control alike, has been borrowing in an outlandish manner as if tomorrow will never come. It will come.

New Playlist

Here is a new Grooveshark playlist. It is a mix of "Six Degrees" and "Stream of Conciousiness". Don't try and figure it out. I just just started with Franki Valli and the Four Seasons and ended with dEUS. Don't ask me how I got there, I just did. By the way, if you double click on the photo you'll get an enlarged image. The light shining through Saturn's 2nd most outer ring on the left hand side is Earth. Pretty cool or not?