Now I’m really scared

Mr Rudd has a plan to save capitalism:

The Prime Minister has vowed to use the “greatest market failure” in 75 years to commit his Government to sensible new market regulation and intervention to stabilise the economy and save jobs.

“The time has come, off the back of the current crisis, to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed, that the emperor has no clothes,” Mr Rudd says in a lengthy essay for The Monthly magazine, to be published next week, The Australian reports.

Twenty years of economic reforms that have freed up the economy and given us unprecedented prosperity are now to be replaced by regulation. And the leaders of the new socialist intervention will be those Labor social democrats like Mr Rees, Mr Bracks etc. Oh dear.

Bush’s Legacy

The reviled former President left behind at least one great legacy:

SOLDIERS, police, prisoners and displaced people cast early ballots today in provincial polls that will define Iraq’s political landscape as US forces withdraw and Iraqi forces seek to defend a fragile calm.

Polls open to the general public on Saturday in the first Iraqi election since 2005….

Interestingly the Dali Lama likes Dubya:

“I love President George W Bush.” He went on to add how he and the US President instantly struck a chord in their first meeting unlike politicians who take a while to develop close ties.

His Holiness has some words of wisdom on non-violence and terrorism too:

NEW DELHI: The Dalai Lama, a lifelong champion of non-violence on Saturday candidly stated that terrorism cannot be tackled by applying the
principle of ahimsa because the minds of terrorists are closed.

“It is difficult to deal with terrorism through non-violence,” the Tibetan spiritual leader said delivering the Madhavrao Scindia Memorial Lecture here.

Bush I and Clinton

Teenage girl in horrific hours-long sex ordeal

The teenagers are too young to have their names revealed but it would be interesting to know their background:

SEVEN youths, some in school uniform, subjected a 13-year-old girl to sex acts, one of which was filmed and sent to a mate, a Sydney judge has been told.

The girl, who felt threatened and intimidated, performed oral sex on five of the youths during her hours-long ordeal at two isolated toilet blocks and on a building rooftop in Sydney.

During one incident, she was told, “Just smile like you’re enjoying it,” while one youth later gave her his phone number and asked her to call him.

At times, youths yelled at their mates to “hurry up, it’s taking too long” and “your turn’s up”. …..

The offences took place in July 2007, at two different toilet blocks in Yagoona parks and later on the rooftop of a Bankstown building.

The facts said the girl agreed to meet KD at the Bankstown Bus Depot on that day, after having first met him days earlier at a shopping centre. ……

Housing to become cheaper

Heres some good news, well its good news if you are looking for a house to buy. The housing bubble is going to burst:

AN international group has predicted that the housing bubble in Australia is yet to burst.

The public policy group Demographia says a comparison of median house prices with median household incomes in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Britain and the US found Australia has the most cities in the “severely unaffordable” category – where house prices are more than five times the median income…..

Demographia says affordability in Australia is worsening relative to Britain, Ireland and New Zealand, where prices have recently collapsed. Australia will be next, it said.

The government should do absolutely nothing to prevent this. Let the market work and give a chance for home buyers to enter the market.

Earth’s new neighbor

We have a new neighbor, a small asteroid called 2009 DB:

An asteroid the size of a small house is slowly passing through space less than twice as far away as our moon.

The recently discovered space rock poses no immediate threat. It will, however, hang around.

The asteroid, catalogued as 2009 BD, is an oddity. Astronomers think it might be what’s known as a co-orbital asteroid, “circling the sun in near-tandem with our planet,” according to the web site Spaceweather.com.

Spaceweather.com has this to say:

Newly-discovered asteroid 2009 BD is slowly passing by Earth today only 400,000 miles away. The small 10m-wide space rock poses no threat, but it merits attention anyway. The orbit of 2009 BD appears to be almost identical to the orbit of Earth. 2009 BD may be a rare co-orbital asteroid, circling the sun in near-tandem with our planet. Extrapolating the motion of 2009 BD into the future, we see that it remains in the vicinity of Earth for many months to come, never receding farther than 0.1 AU (9.3 million miles) until Nov. 2010

Its unfortunate theres no quick launch facility available that could get a space probe out there to have a look at it. More here.

Young Liberal reject slavery

Noel McCoy’s proposal to bring back conscription ended in farce:

Anyway. The time comes for the motion to be debated. Noel asks for a mover…

*dead silence*

NOT A SINGLE DELEGATE WAS WILLING TO EVEN MOVE THE MOTION.

Not one. Every single voting delegate from every single state delegation was against this ridiculously stupid motion.

The motion lapsed and went promptly into the dustbin of history where it belongs.

It’s good to know that the Young Liberal Movement believes in freedom.

Thanks to Tim Andrews for the update.

Carnival of Space 87

The Carnival of Space #87 is up at the Martian Chronicle. Have a read of the week’s top Space blog posts!

Turnbull and biochar

Today Malcolm Turnbull gave a major speech at the Young Liberal’s convention were he outlined the Liberal’s answer to global warming. There’s much of it I like. Agriculture is central to the plan (the Nationals should love it) with much emphasis on revegetation and biochar. I especially like the promotion of biochar, which as well as producing charcoal to improve the soil and suck CO2 also produces syngas which can be made into methanol fuel. (Now if I can only convice Malcolm to run with my flex fuel proposal).

I’m less entusiastic about his alternative enegy plans. Rather then building a couple of pilot solar plants a fair dinkum commercial 500 megawatt nuclear plant would make a real contribution .

Lets bring back slavery

That’s what the Young Liberals are proposing:

THE Young Liberals are proposing nine months of compulsory national service for all young Australians, to be completed before age 24.

The service would not be restricted to the military but include community and foreign service and trades.

Under the plan, young Australians could do their service overseas, working in foreign aid and development, either in programs run by the Australian government or helping non-government bodies such as the Red Cross or Doctors Without Frontiers,,,

And the reason for this:

Young Liberal president Noel McCoy said the aim was to provide a sizeable low-cost workforce that would help to offset the effects of the financial crisis.

In other words slave labour. Have they got rocks in their heads or what?

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Further thoughts, I think Obama proposed something similar during his campaign, have they Young Libs been watching too much American politics?