The Elephant Bar Gets a Complaint from Google/Blogger

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After a careful examination of the facts, a meeting of the board, the Elephant Bar  management has decided to reply:


To Blogger, Google  and the offended:  "Fuck-off if You Don't like it." - Deuce

80% 0f gun Crime in UK Committed by Blacks. Blacks Make Up 2% of UK Population. Please Do Not Mention It.

Katharine Birbalsingh

Katharine Birbalsingh is the teacher who exposed the failings of the comprehensive school system at the Conservative Party conference last year. Katharine has been teaching in inner London for over a decade and plans to set up a Free School in south London to help to serve underprivileged children. Her book, To Miss with Love, is out now. Follow @Miss_Snuffy on Twitter to see what Katharine's doing now. Katharine's personal website is www.katharinebirbalsingh.com.

These riots were about race. Why ignore the fact?

By Katharine Birbalsingh Telegraph August 7th, 2011

A burnt-out carpet warehouse in Tottenham (Photo: Getty)

What colour is Mark Duggan? Mark Duggan is the man who was shot dead by the police on Thursday in Tottenham. The Tottenham riots last night were sparked when people protested his death. This morning, I first heard of the riots on the radio, then on the television. I read articles on the internet. But oddly, no one would say what colour Mark Duggan was. No one would say the unsayable, that the rioters were, I suspect on the whole, black. Then, finally, Toby Young’s Telegraph blog post on the riots was published. Is Toby Young the only  journalist out there who will dare say that these riots are about race?

Still, one paper did carry a photo of Mr Duggan. When I saw the photo, it confirmed what I knew instinctively: black youths once again have set London alight.

Some of the black kids I used to teach will tell you that the riots are absolutely justified. A number of adults would agree with them. Everywhere I read that the protest was understandable because “people are very angry”.

I’d like to know what they’re angry about. Mark Duggan is dead. He was shot by the police in a shootout. Duggan was in a minicab and shots were fired from both the cab and the police elsewhere. A police officer was hurt in the incident and a bullet was found lodged in a police radio. Either Duggan was shooting at the police or the driver of the minicab was. Either Duggan was in the wrong place at the wrong time and his death is a terrible tragedy – he was caught in the crossfire – or he shot at the police and the police defended themselves. Whatever the explanation, the police did not kill this man in cold blood.

Yet, a friend of Duggan who gave her name as Niki, 53, said marchers had wanted “justice for the family” and “something had to be done”. She said some of them lay in the road to make their point. “They’re making their presence known because people are not happy. This guy was not violent. Yes, he was involved in things but he was not an aggressive person. He had never hurt anyone.”

I wonder what “involved in things” means? I also wonder whether the police officer who was hurt at the scene believes Mark Duggan never hurt anyone. “Something had to be done”? She makes it sound as if the police are killing black people every other weekend and finally someone decided to take a stand.

At school I remember watching a presentation given to the kids by Trident, the Metropolitan Police Service unit set up to investigate and inform communities of gun crime in London’s black community. I didn’t know what Trident was then, and it struck me that all of the photos of people shot (the idea was to scare the kids) were black. So at the end, I approached one of the policemen and asked him what percentage of those involved in gun crime were black. I kid you not, but my question made this thirty-something white man who was, after all, trained to deal with the black community and its issues, turn pink.

He explained that about 80 per cent of gun crime took place in the black community. I smiled uncomfortably. But no, he said, it was worse than that. Then he told me that 80 per cent was black on black gun crime, and that of the remaining 20 per cent about 75 per cent involved at least one black person: black shooting white, or white shooting black. I pushed to know more. While he kept saying his stats were crude and he didn’t have scientific numbers, on the whole the whites who were involved in these shootings tended to be from Eastern Europe.

Was any of this ever mentioned in their presentation? Of course not. Just like the news about the Tottenham riots doesn’t mention race either.

Problems cannot be addressed unless people are willing to tell the truth. As with so many other things in this country, we stick our heads in the sand and refuse to speak out about it.

Maybe Obama Can Save the Republic With Hip-Hop

OBAMA THROWS “DOWNGRADE PARTY” AT WHITE HOUSE

Posted on Sunday, August 7th, 2011
By Frank Lake Weekly World News

WASHINGTON -   For the first time in history the U.S. credit rating was downgraded – and the White House celebrated in style!

Standard & Poor’s announced Friday night that it has downgraded the sterling U.S. credit rating for the first time in the nation’s history.  The Obama Administration not only shrugged off the announcement, and held another barbecue party before the President headed to Camp David for more parties this weekend.

“We’re still AA+,” said Jay Carney, the White House Press Secretary.  “An A+ is an A+, we’re still at the top of the class.  If we were downgraded to a B or B+ we would be concerned, but we’re still A rated!”

Obama’s had it’s second Hip-Hop BBQ in two days.   The President had Earth, Wind and Fire over to the White House along with Jay-Z, Beyonce and Oprah.  They all danced in a conga line around Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, who seem unfazed by the downgrade.

“It’s a tiny downgrade, we’ll be upgraded soon.  It’s no big deal.  Have another mojito,” said Geithner to WWN’s Frank Lake.

S&P decided to lower the AAA rating, held by the United States for 70 years, to AA+ after a bipartisan debt deal signed into law this week failed to assuage concerns about the nation’s growing spending.

Analysts have said a downgrade could increase the cost of borrowingfor the U.S. government and lead to tens of billions of dollars in more interest costs per year. That could translate into higher borrowing for consumers and businesses, too.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were at the White House “dancing barefoot in the Rose Garden.”

“The downgrade does not affect the White House,” said one White House insider, “we all just got 20% pay raises!”

Tom Hanks danced on a piano rug with Susan Sarandon.

“The president asked everyone to dance — and they did!” read a Politico account of the “Downgrade Party.”  The menu included barbecue chicken, ribs, hot dogs and salad.
Also present: Chicago pals, law-school friends, donors — and lots of kids of friends, who stole the show by doing dance routines to the hip-hop songs, in the center of the East Room.’
“This is the best downgrade party I’ve ever been to!” said one young White House insider.  “This is awesome!”

"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."- Bill Clinton

Is this the end of American empire? It's tempting to answer 'Yes'

After America's credit downgrading and the spectacle of deadlocked Congress, Alex Spillius in Washington argues that the US still has the power to solve its problems.

The Treasury Department says Standard & Poor's got their sums on deficit reduction over ten years wrong by $2 trillion Photo: BLOOMBERG

By Alex Spillius, Washington, Telegraph

8:50PM BST 06 Aug 2011, 

Did the American empire end last week? It is tempting to say yes.
Standard & Poor's decision to remove the world's economic superpower from its list of risk-free borrowers was a somehow fitting climax to a sorry chapter that exposed Washington's paralysis for all to see.
As much a political critique as a financial judgment, S&P's statement condemned the "effectiveness, stability and predictability of American policymaking", and indicted the gridlock that made a credible deficit-reduction deal impossible.
The agency had agreed with the Obama administration that $4 trillion needed to be saved from the $14.3 trillion debt over ten years. But the 11th hour deal to raise the borrowing limit and reduce the deficit that pulled the US back from the brink of a first ever default saved "only" a minimum of $2.1 trillion.
Mr Obama has yet to comment, and is spending the weekend at Camp David. The Treasury Department's only response was to accuse the rating agency of bad mathematics, saying they got their sums on deficit reduction over ten years wrong by $2 trillion, whatever that means.

• The agency stated plainly that it did not trust Congress to make the agreed upon two-stage process to reach the savings work.
• The deal agreed debt reductions of $900 billion, but the rest will have to be thrashed out by a special committee of Congress in the autumn, when the arguments of the last two months will be revisited all over again, causing more uncertainty for investors.
• The world is one collapsed southern European economy away from disaster and crying out for American leadership, and Washington gave us another committee.
• Republican deficit hawks in Washington - whom S&P singled out for failing to tolerate revenue-raising of any kind - like to disdain the mismanaged Mediterranean states as the PIGS - Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. But given the way their own country is coming apart at the seams, it could be called the Untied States.
• Nearly one in six Americans is living on government food subsidies averaging $282 a month per family. The official unemployment rate is 9.1 per cent, but is much higher if the long-term jobless are included.
• House prices have collapsed by 33 percent from the market's peak, more than the slide during the Great Depression. 
• Despite Mr Obama's best efforts at stimulus spending, American infrastructure was awarded a grade of D by the American Society of Civil Engineers, with one in five bridges classified as "structurally deficient".

Larry Summers, until recently leader of Mr Obama's economic team, puts the odds of the US economy returning to official recession (it still feels like recession in most places) at one in three. Others would call that optimistic.
The debate of the past few weeks was so fractious because Americans are scared.
The Tea Party is terrified spending will bring the country to ruin. The Democrats dread that their cherished benefit schemes for the elderly and poor will be cut to pieces.
Underlying both outlooks is foreboding and fear that America's time as number one is up, that the continuous path of growth that transformed the country from the late 19th century onwards has come to an end.
Middle class wages have been stagnant for 15 years and the housing and credit boom that put some fizz into ordinary lives have dried up. Entrepreneurship, the prized and nation-defining quality, is in a long term decline - the theory is that a deregulated and expanded Wall Street sucked up too much business talent. The BRICs - Brazil, Russia, India and China - loom as a threat to US dominance, which was built on a manufacturing base that is steadily moving overseas.
The country has some major mental adjustments to make. It will have to accept a weaker military - one that doesn't outspend the rest of the world combined. Americans will have to accept that there are half a billion middle class people around the world who can do a lot of the jobs they can, and think of new ones.
Both people and politicians may have to settle in the long term for being first among equals, rather than towering above the rest.
The America of today has been compared to Britain in 1914 or Rome at the peak of their might, before their rapid falls from supremacy.
Unlike the British however, the Americans have not assumed control of large parts of the world from which they must inevitably retreat. For all their involvement in every foreign policy issue, their global commercial enterprise has few strings attached, while withdrawing from both Iraq and Afghanistan within a few years will be a boon.
The country leads in industries vital to the 21st century and, for all its gloom, remains hard-wired to strive to improve. As the preamble to the US constitution says, the people's goal is to "form a more perfect union". There is still nowhere on Earth that compares for creativity, experimentation and drive.
Perhaps S&P's decision could be the shock that Congress needed. The downgrade may well raise interest rates for consumers, which could make both sides think again about being so intransigent and finally bring the compromise so clearly needed and which has been a hallmark of the country's legislative history.
As they resume battle after their summer break, Democrats and Republicans should recall the words of Bill Clinton, who said: "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."

Don't Blame the Messenger. Time to Slim Down.

Sure S&P is a deeply flawed organization. It would be interesting to see how many of the mortgages of repossessed and foreclosed properties are in AAA, S&P approved debt instruments. The messenger is flawed but the message has a ring of truth. Could anyone deny that the US Congress is anything less than AAA? The Senate under Harry Reid did not even bother to pass a budget for two years.

Has Obama overseen a AAA Administration? The Democrats passed a three thousand page healthcare bill that they did not read.

This is a long overdue wakeup call. Congress is worse than inept. It is hated and corrupt with some of the most stupid people in the country at the helm. Let's try and hold onto the AA.

Congress is so Good, We Need a Super Congress

Panic in The White House

Gee, where are the jobs?

$ Seven Trillion in New Debt - Our Head is Still in the Ditch

The debt ceiling agreement reached by Democrats and Republicans will likely prove enough to spur investors around the world to take a big sigh of relief, Pimco’s CEO Mohamed El-Erian said Sunday evening.

“This two step agreement is sufficient to lift the threat of a U.S. default and will therefore fuel a relief rally in markets around the world,” he said in an emailed response to questions about the deal by Dow Jones Newswires.

By “two step agreement,” El-Erian was referring to a process that includes both lifting the government’s debt ceiling as well as setting a framework for additional budget cuts later.

The U.S. still faces the risk of a downgrade of its AAA debt rating, however, he added.

“The impact on the AAA will depend on whether S&P sticks to what it stated back on July 14 when it placed America’s rating on negative watch,” El-Erian noted.

El-Erian, who doubles as co-chief investment officer at the world’s biggest bond fund shop, also observed that a “strict interpretation” of terms for a downgrade would likely lead the ratings agency to lower its view on U.S. credit.

“I suspect, the agency is under enormous pressure not to do so,” El-Erian added.

Barrons