Jeg ved at der stadigvæk er et flertal som mener, at krisen nok ikke bliver så slem igen, og at vi nok snart skal komme igennem det og tilbage til de gode tider. Og jeg håber da, at I har ret… Jeg tror bare ikke på det.

Efter at have fulgt udviklingen og læst med på diverse udenlandske fora, blogs og netaviser, så har jeg meget svært ved at se hvordan tingene kan blive bedre - ihvertfald ikke før de har været markant værre end de er nu. Der er mange som skriver om mangel på mad, ingen penge til velfærdsydelser og massearbejdsløshed med voldsomme optøjer til følge.

Hvor dybt verden kommer til at falde afhænger fuldstændigt af vore politikere og deres evner/vilje til at gøre hvad der skal til. Og indtil videre ser det sgu ikke for godt ud.

Så vi har besluttet os til at prøve så godt vi kan, at forberede os på det værste. Går det så ikke så galt, jamen så vil vi stå i en situation hvor vi kan spare en masse penge og leve lidt mere spændende - bliver det virkeligt slemt… Så dør vi ihvertfald ikke af sult.

Forberedelserne handler om, at vi i så stor grad som muligt vil prøve at være selvforsynende.
Det gælder dyrkning af egne grøntsager og hold af kaniner til slagtning og høns for æg og kød.
Det betyder, at vi nok ikke helt har kunnet eller villet koncentrere os så meget om bloggen her, men har i stedet besluttet at oprette et forum til udveksling af idéer og gode råd.

Så hermed en opfordring til alle vores med-sortseere (eller neo-pionerer som Michael kalder det ;)) til at komme og deltage og både dele ud af jeres viden og erfaringer og suge viden og inspiration til jer.

VELKOMMEN TIL KRISENETTET

New discovery of the “Obama Moron” particle.

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the most dense element known to science. The new element, the Obama moron (Om), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called peon.

Since the Obama moron has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of the Obama moron can cause a reaction that would normally take a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete. The Obama moron has a normal half-life of 2 - 6 months before begins to self-destruct.

The Obama moron has a strange effect on the Governmentium particle by increasing it’s mass. This characteristic of the Obama moron leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever the Obama moron reaches a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as “the critical economic morass.”

When catalyzed with a trillion dollars, the Obama moron’s effect on the Governmentium particle becomes the Administratium particle, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many Obama morons something that scientist didn’t think possible.

Nærmer vi os afslutningen på USA’s tid som supermagt?

Skulle kineserne få held med deres foretagende, så vil alle Obama’s planer grundstøde og USA vil blive til et nyt Zimbabwe..med atomvåben.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7851925a-17a2-11de-8c9d-0000779fd2ac.html

http://home.comcast.net/~jaygale/obama.html

Når der er overskud, så brænder pengene i lommerne på socialdemokrater og når der er underskud vil de gøre alt for at bruge løs af lånte penge.

Poul Nyrup er kammet helt over og mener vejen ud af krisen er et livsvarigt gældsfængsel for vore børn fordi deres forældre går i total panik over en normalisering af prisniveauet.

Og den slags omvandrende “kaosteoretikere” vil man give magten herhjemme…?

Socialdemokratiske ledere råber på hjælp

Torsdag den 19. marts 2009, 17:06

Vi gør langt fra nok. EU-landene bør sætte mere blus under kedlerne i den underafkølede økonomi. Det mener en stribe socialdemokratiske EU-lande op til topmøde.

 

Det kræver flere penge, “yderligere skridt” og en “stærkere og dristigere” plan, hvis EU skal medicinere verdensøkonomiens alvorlige hjerte- og kredsløbssygdomme.

Det mener en kreds af socialdemokratiske EU-lande, der ønsker flere offentlige investeringer og en “beskæftigelsespagt”, der skal løfte Europa ud af krisen.

Landekredsen tæller blandt andet Østrig, Ungarn, Bulgarien og Slovenien, som dermed sætter sig imod en stribe centrale EU-medlemmer, der klart afviser flere hjælpepakker op til krisetopmøde i Bruxelles torsdag.

- Vi står over for den værste recession siden 1930′erne, men Merkel, Sarkozy og Juncker siger nej til at gøre mere for at modvirke det, udtaler formanden for de europæiske socialdemokrater, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen.

Den tidligere statsminister mener, at EU-Kommissionen “spreder fiktion”, når de hævder, at unionslandene allerede bruger 400 milliarder kroner - eller 3,3 procent af blokkens samlede BNP - på alskens initiativer, der skal hjælpe erhvervslivet, fremrykke offentlige investeringer og stimulere efterspørgslen.

- Det reelle tal er langt mindre og væsentligt under, hvad USA bruger, siger han og anklager den tyske og franske leder for at “underminere Europas troværdighed” i Washington.

/ritzau/

http://www.berlingske.dk/article/20090319/verden/903190406/

James Hansen har erkendt at Glowbull Warming er et “dødt brand” og kreditkrisen giver heller ikke plads til den slags eksperimenterende hippietankegang og derfor må den demokratiske proces sættes ud af spillet, så IPCC’s “sandheder” kan tvinges igennem som lovgivning uden forstyrrende input og Al Gore kan tjene sine millioner af dollars på cap-and-trade i fred.

Leading climate scientist: ‘democratic process isn’t working’

David Adam, environment correspondent guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 March 2009 18.31 GMT
Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist has said.

James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. “The democratic process doesn’t quite seem to be working,” he said.

Speaking on the eve of joining a protest against the headquarters of power firm E.ON in Coventry, Hansen said: “The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.

“The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I’m not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we’re running out of time.”

Hansen said he was taking part in the Coventry demonstration tomorrow because he wants a worldwide moratorium on new coal power stations. E.ON wants to build such a station at Kingsnorth in Kent, an application that energy and the climate change minister Ed Miliband recently delayed. “I think that peaceful actions that attempt to draw society’s attention to the issue are not inappropriate,” Hansen said.

He added that a scientific meeting in Copenhagen last week had made clear the “urgency of the science and the inaction taken by governments”.

Officials will gather in Bonn later this month to continue talks on a new global climate treaty, which campaigners have called to be signed at a UN meeting in Copenhagen in December. Hansen warned that the new treaty is “guaranteed to fail” to bring down emissions.

Hansen said: “What’s being talked about for Copenhagen is a strenghening of Kyoto [protocol] approach, a cap and trade with offsets and escape hatches which will be gauranteed to fail in terms of getting the required rapid reduction in emissions. They talk about goals which sound impressive, but when you see the actions are such that it will be impossible to reach those goals, then I can understand the informed public getting frustrated.”

Teleprompter-Messias har som den første siddende præsident indgået en kontrakt med et forlag om udgivelsen af en bog.

500.000 dollars skal ”Fresh Prince of Bill Ayers” have i royalties for en børneudgave af “Dreams of my father”.

Mon han forærer alle pengene til godgørende formål…? I doubt it.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

EXCLUSIVE: Obama’s $500,000 book bonanza
Jim McElhatton and Christina Bellantoni, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

As he empathized with recession-weary Americans, President Obama arranged in the days just before he took office to secure a $500,000 advance for a children’s book project, a disclosure report shows.

The terms of the book deal were disclosed in a Senate financial disclosure report filed Tuesday.

Analysts say there don’t appear to be any rules that would bar such transactions after a president takes office, but it’s unclear whether an incoming or sitting president has ever signed a book deal upon entering the White House.

“I don’t recall any sitting president entering into a book deal,” said campaign finance lawyer Jan Baran, former general counsel to the Republican National Committee. “They all have historically done that after they leave office.

“I recall the only ones who did sign book deals while living there were first ladies, and my recollection is they gave it to charity.”

Mr. Obama approved the $500,000 advance on Jan. 15. The advance is against royalties under a deal with Crown Publishing, a division of Random House. The project calls for an abridged version of his book “Dreams From My Father” for middle-school-aged children, according to the disclosure.

A White House aide said that the deal had been in the works for weeks and that the publisher will abridge the book. The aide, speaking on a condition of anonymity, said the publisher will get half of the money while Mr. Obama will sign off on the final version.

In addition, the financial disclosure showed Mr. Obama brokered an amendment to an existing book deal with Crown Publishing to put off writing a nonfiction book until after he leaves office.

The book deal came on top of nearly $2.5 million in book royalties paid to Mr. Obama last year for “Dreams From My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope,” according to the Senate report, which was filed by Robert F. Bauer, who served general counsel to Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign.

The disclosure also cites income, listed as more than $1,000, paid to first lady Michelle Obama from the University of Chicago, where she had worked as vice president for community and external affairs.

Just as in 2007, public interest in Barack Obama the presidential candidate helped Barack Obama the author earn lots of money from book royalties, according to his latest financial disclosure report.

Last year, Mr. Obama reported earning $949,910 in royalties from “Dreams From My Father” and $1.5 million from “The Audacity of Hope.” In 2007, he reported $3.2 million in book royalties from Random House.

Mr. Obama’s books have helped boost the Obamas’ income considerably in recent years, from about $1 million in 2006 to more than $4 million in 2007.

After getting permission from the Senate ethics committee in January 2005, Mr. Obama agreed to a $1.9 million advance for two nonfiction books and a children’s book, of which $200,000 was to be donated to charity, according to his 2007 financial disclosure.

Ken Gross, former associate general counsel at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and a campaign finance expert, said there doesn’t appear to be any rules that would prevent Mr. Obama from signing book deals while in the White House.

“There are members of Congress who have had deals and they get paid, I don’t know that he would have needed to sign that before January 20,” Mr. Gross said.

Last summer during a campaign event, Mr. Obama offered voters a glimpse into how he approached writing his two previous books.

Someone at a Fairfax town hall asked whether he had words of inspiration for young writers, and he responded by talking about the importance of reading and added he’d made time to read his daughters all of the books from the Harry Potter series.

“I´ve written two books; I actually wrote them myself,” he said.

On writing, he said it helped him to keep a journal.

“It forces you to ask questions of yourself, how to reconcile different attitudes and how to process different experiences,” he said, and “voice your opinions in a coherent way.”

“By the time I wrote the book, I had a better sense of where my life had been and why I was doing what I was doing,” he said.

• Chuck Neubauer contributed to this report.

 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/19/obamas-500000-book-bonanza/

Og få manden til at erklære Kina krig!

A teleprompt blunder has led to Barack Obama thanking himself in a speech at the White House in a St Patrick’s Day celebration.

Obama and the Irish PM share the joke during their joint address

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen was just a few paragraphs into an address in Washington when he realised it all sounded a bit too familiar.

It was. He was repeating the speech President Barack Obama had just read from the same teleprompter.

Mr Cowen stopped, turned to the president and said: “That’s your speech.”

A laughing Mr Obama returned to the podium to take over but it seems the script had finally been switched and the US president ended up thanking himself for inviting everyone to the party.

Mr Obama is an accomplished orator but is becoming known in America as the “teleprompt president” over his reliance on the machine when he gives a speech.

 
Obama In St Patrick’s Day Teleprompt Blunder

http://kpn.dk/blitz/article1634772.ece

Vores hverdag bliver bombarderet med disse talentløse ligegyldigheders gøren og laden…

Skal vi ikke droppe straffeloven et kort øjeblik og befri verden for den slags lort?

Faldt lige over en artikel med en grum konklusion.

Andelen af smittede pr. capita i USA’s hovedstad er nu større end hårdt ramte områder i Afrika.

HIV/AIDS Rate in D.C. Hits 3%
Considered a ‘Severe’ Epidemic, Every Mode of Transmission Is Increasing, City Study Finds

By Jose Antonio Vargas and Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, March 15, 2009; A01

 

At least 3 percent of District residents have HIV or AIDS, a total that far surpasses the 1 percent threshold that constitutes a “generalized and severe” epidemic, according to a report scheduled to be released by health officials tomorrow.

That translates into 2,984 residents per every 100,000 over the age of 12 — or 15,120 — according to the 2008 epidemiology report by the District’s HIV/AIDS office.

“Our rates are higher than West Africa,” said Shannon L. Hader, director of the District’s HIV/AIDS Administration, who once led the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s work in Zimbabwe. “They’re on par with Uganda and some parts of Kenya.”

“We have every mode of transmission” — men having sex with men, heterosexual and injected drug use — “going up, all on the rise, and we have to deal with them,” Hader said.

In addition to the epidemiology report, the city is also releasing a study on heterosexual behavior tomorrow. That report, funded by the CDC, was conducted by the George Washington University School of Health and Health Services.

Among its findings: Almost half of those who had connections to the parts of the city with the highest AIDS prevalence and poverty rates said they had overlapping sexual partners within the past 12 months, three in five said they were aware of their own HIV status, and three in 10 said they had used a condom the last time they had sex.

Together, the reports offer a sobering assessment in a city that for years has stumbled in combating HIV and AIDS and is just beginning to regain its footing. A more accurate accounting of the crisis offers a chance to contain what is largely a preventable disease.

So urgent is the concern that the HIV/AIDS Administration took the relatively rare step of couching the city’s infections in a percentage, harkening to 1992, when San Francisco, around the height of its epidemic, announced that 4 percent of its population was HIV positive. But the report also cautions that “we know that the true number of residents currently infected and living with HIV is certainly higher.”

The District’s report found a 22 percent increase in HIV and AIDS cases from the 12,428 reported at the end of 2006, touching every race and sex across population and neighborhoods, with an epidemic level in all but one of the eight wards. Black men, with an infection rate of nearly 7 percent, carry the weight of the disease, according to the report, which also underscores that the District’s HIV and AIDS population is aging. Almost 1 in 10 residents between the ages of 40 and 49 has the virus.

The report notes that “this growing population will have significant implications on the District’s health care system” as residents face chronic medical problems associated with aging and fighting a disease that compromises the immune system.

Men having sex with men has remained the disease’s leading mode of transmission. Heterosexual transmission and injection drug use closely follow, the report says. Three percent of black women carry the virus, partly a result of the increase in heterosexual transmissions.

“This is very, very depressing news, especially considering HIV’s profound impact on minority communities,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Health’s program on infectious diseases. “And remember: The city’s numbers are just based on people who’ve gotten tested.”

Ron Simmons, who is black, gay and HIV positive, said he’s not shocked by the study’s findings. “You have a high incidence of HIV among African Americans, and a lot of African Americans live in the city,” said Simmons, who is a member of a black gay support group. “D.C. also has a high number of gay men, and HIV is high among gay black men.”

Charlene Cotton, a D.C. resident who got an HIV positive diagnosis five years ago, said breaking the taboo on discussing HIV is the key to moving forward. “You need to start at home and talk about it,” Cotton said. “It’s so hush-hush.”

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said he is aware that some advocates have called on elected officials and others to more aggressively and publicly address the crisis. He praised the city’s recent efforts, however, and expressed his frustration about the struggle ahead.

“In order to solve an issue as complex as HIV and AIDS, you have to step up,” he said. “It’s the mayor and certainly other elected officials. But it’s also the community. You have this problem affecting us, and you tell people how serious it is and it literally goes in one ear and out the other.”

David Catania (I-At Large), chairman of the D.C. Council’s health committee, said that although the District’s testing and monitoring have improved in the past two years, the AIDS office is still playing catch-up. The city was in the forefront of the crisis when it created the office in 1986, but it fell far behind. Hader took control in 2007. She is its 12th director and the third in five years.

“Frankly, there can be no excuse for the state of the HIV/AIDS Administration that I found in 2005,” Catania said. “I cannot speak to why it was not a priority previously. For years prior to 2005, mayors and previous individuals allowed things to exist in an unacceptable way. And I do blame this government for part of the epidemic we’re confronting.”

Until recently, the District’s AIDS office lacked a fully staffed surveillance unit to collect, analyze and distribute data. Inevitably, the office lost credibility, and although it has received millions in federal and local funds — $95 million this year — some care providers questioned whether resources were being properly allocated.

Critics also say congressional control over the District had restricted the AIDS office’s ability to combat the virus among drug injection users by banning the use of local tax dollars for a needle exchange program. After almost a decade, the ban was lifted last year.

The study is the most precise count to date, according to the authors. The document is an update of a breakthrough 2007 report, which brought into clearer focus a picture of a city in the grip of a complex and “modern epidemic” that had traveled from a mostly gay population to the general one and disproportionately hit blacks.

For years, District HIV/AIDS workers depended on estimates that put the rate at 1 of 20 living with HIV and 1 of 50 living with AIDS.

The current study notes that its tracking occurred as the city made a switch from a code-based counting system to a name-based one. The surveillance unit interviewed medical providers to find unreported cases, pressed providers who did not consistently report to the administration and searched databases for unreported cases.

More than 4 percent of blacks in the city are known to have HIV, along with almost 2 percent of Latinos and 1.4 percent of whites. More than three-quarters — 76 percent — of the HIV infected are black, 70 percent are men and 70 percent are age 40 and older.

Heterosexual sex was the principal mode of transmission for blacks with the disease, 33 percent. Men having sex with men was the chief mode of transmission for white residents, 78 percent; and Latinos, 49 percent. Black women represent more than a quarter of HIV cases in the District, and most, about 58 percent, were infected through heterosexual sex. About a quarter of black women were infected through drug use.

The companion study, “Heterosexual Relationships and HIV in Washington, D.C.,” is a detailed look at those whose social networks include individuals at high risk of infection and aims to analyze people’s choices and actions before they set foot in a clinic or get HIV.

The 750-participant study targeted four areas in wards 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8 with both high rates of AIDS and poverty. Salaries of a majority of participants — 60 percent — were under $10,000 yearly; a similar percentage had never been married; and 43 percent were unemployed.

The survey’s methodology — interviewing those with connections to high-risk networks rather than those who exhibit high-risk behavior themselves — highlights a shift in the direction by the CDC, which developed the survey protocol.

There is good news in the AIDS office’s report: More people are getting HIV diagnoses early, while they are still healthy, as a result of a policy of routine testing implemented by the city in mid-2006. Publicly supported HIV testing expanded by 70 percent.

Walter Smith, executive director of the DC Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, praised the study but also lamented that it did not offer more current data on new infections. The report said that detailed information on new HIV cases is not included because the transition from the code-based tracking system to a name-based one takes five years to be mature, according to the CDC.

“I’m not criticizing them for that,” he said. “But we’ve had more testing, more needle exchange programs. We don’t have, at this moment, any understanding about what impact the new programs have had.”