A Place to Stand

The Guardian have been promoting a series of stories about the News of the World engaging in very extensive tapping of the phones of celebrities (a significant criminal offence). Their reason for reporting this is that the editor, during much of this Andy Coulson is now the Conservative's chief spinmaster. It is simply inconceivable that all these journalists were doing this, spending a total of £1 million without him knowing & I believe his position is untenable & Cameron should cast him loose immediately.

The BBC has yet to receive a response from News International.

Mobile phones

The Guardian claims up to 3,000 high-profile figures were targeted including model Elle Macpherson, former deputy prime minister John Prescott and the publicist Max Clifford.

The News of the World editor at the time, Andy Coulson, said: "This story relates to an alleged payment made after I left the News of the World two and a half years ago. I have no knowledge whatsoever of any settlement with Gordon Taylor."

A lot of the stories in the paper were coming from information that was highly private

Mr Coulson, now the Conservative Party communications director, declined to comment further.

A spokeswoman for David Cameron said the Conservative leader was "very relaxed" about the story.

However the eagerness of the Guardian to launch a party political attack on the Conservatives has broken an unspoken conspiracy in that the entire media & indeed security services are engage in these criminal activities. Scotland Yard have said they don't want to open this up.

Since the Guardian have said the police & indeed MI5 knew all about this years ago but presumably found some advantage in not trying to enforce the criminal law it is hardly surprising that Scotland Yard are not enthusiastic about opening this can of worms.

Which is a very good reason why it should be opened.

As with MP's expenses we all know perfectly well this has been going on for years - remember they "never found out" who made the sqidgygate recording.

Some years ago I had a complaint to the PCC rejected over the Guardian saying that anybody who didn't support the Muslim leader in Bosnia should be attacked for "anti-Semitism" - the Guardian knew perfectly well the guy they were supporting was himself not only anti-Semitic but an unrepentent WW2 Nazi publicly committed to racial genocide.

Anyway, as a result I checked the paper fairly regularly & later found an article attacking a BBC journalist of Serbian extraction journalist for private emails of his. It was quite obvious that either the Guardian had hacked him or, as was hinted, MI5 had done so & provided them with it. Either way this was totally against the PCC's code & thus, naturally the PCC refused to investigate my complaint.

Certainly the NoTW have been behaving criminally. So have the Guardian & I'm sure a lot of other papers, with effective PCC support & indeed so have the police & MI5.

Labels: Media

people on November 4th, they’re going to have the choice. You can either support the ticket that will support policies to create jobs — we do that by reducing taxes and reining in government growth and allowing our country to be energy independent — or you choose the ticket that’s going to kill jobs by increasing taxes, just like Barack Obama is purporting today....

On November 4th, we’re going to set a course for the future of our great country. We’re going to go one direction or the other, and you understand that our ticket, what we’re all about is pro-growth,(my emphasis since it is amazing how few politicians mention that in a specific way) pro-private sector. We’re tax cuts. We’re reining in government. We’re proponents of the culture of life that would make America better off. We’re adamant about winning the wars with the strongest military in the world. All those things that we stand for that I think are so clearly articulated with our message, with the plan that’s been expressed, we can go that direction or we can go in the complete opposite direction of all those aforementioned goals that we have in mind if you choose the other ticket.

RUSH: This is an attempt by the media to make you stop being who you are. What it means is, they’re really worried about the effectiveness that you have.

GOVERNOR PALIN: Well, yeah, I guess that message is they do want me to sit down and shut up. But that’s not going to happen. I care too much about this great country

RUSH: I don’t mean to always harp on the media here because everybody does this, but this is a true observation here. If it weren’t for the media covering up for Obama and presenting him as a person he’s not, he would be at 30% in the polls. Your odds, therefore, are formidable

GOVERNOR PALIN: Oh, isn’t that something? The double standards are something else. But, you know what? If my skin isn’t thick enough to take those petty immature shots that are coming from some of them on the other side, then I have no business thinking that I could serve as vice president. And keeping it in perspective, too, Rush when you consider the true shots that actually hurt people across America — those who are worried about losing their homes, their jobs; maybe their kid or their spouse is over in the war zone, they’re worried about that person’s safety — those are the true shots that really matter...

RUSH: They’re standing in the rain for two hours to get in to see you after driving an hour and a half to get there, and that’s because you have reenergized them.

GOVERNOR PALIN: Well, I love ‘em and we’re not going to let ‘em down. I promise you, Rush. We’re not going to let you down.

Link to full interview

Limbaugh's opinion of now "When you have so many establishment types – inside-the-Beltway, elite, establishment types (Republican, Democrat, it doesn’t matter) – just so eager to destroy this woman, it means they’re still scared to death of her. And that, to me, is the bottom line."

Labels: International politics

Not often I say something nice about the BBC, normally it is about their censorship of genocide & the dissection of living people in the Nazi cause, or trying to sell yet another scare story to increase government bureaucray or pushing the catastrophic warming scam or (a few days ago) filling a panel only with Labour government supporters.

So, credit when it is due, it is really good to see that this BBC blog - Climate Change - the Blog of Bloom has survived since March. Describing itself as "A surprising blog from the Bloom team about climate change and the things people are saying and doing about it" it consistently gently removes the yellow fluid from the catastrophic warming stories everybody else in the BBC treats so po-facedly as they actually believed it.

Is The Climate Warming or Cooling

'Claims that global warming is not occurring that are derived from a cooling observed over such short time periods ... are misleading', the researchers warn.

Why the defensiveness? Because there have been rather a lot of these 'cold snaps'. There was one in 1977-1985 and another one between 1981-1989. Oh yes and there'll probably be one in 2016-2031, if the study's models are correct.

Cold snaps are to be expected as the planet warms, Easterling and Wehner hasten to add...

'It is reasonable to expect that the natural variability of the real climate system can and likely will produce multi-year periods of sustained "cooling" ... even in the presence of long-term anthropogenic forced warming', the researchers conclude.

So: expect chills interspersed with your 'hot flushes', Mother Nature. The doctor says they're perfectly natural.

And many others in the same vein.

How do they get away with it? Do they sneak into the BBC & put up these posts when the censorship gauleiters have gone home or something?

Labels: global warming, Media

Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week. Or so it says. Now on the one hand just because he says it doesn't mean it is the case. His site lists a lot of things he is said to have predicted correctly - The "Collapse of '09", "Panic of '08", Tax Revolts, Economic 9/11, Dollar Down, Gold to Soar, Cyberworld TV, Real Estate Fizz, Alternative Energy Biz to Boom, Recession 2007, US to Lose Iraq War (one month before war began), Go for Gold - Beginning of gold bull market, 2001 Recession, A Dot-Com correction by the second quarter of 2000 - which is a pretty reasonable record though since it is advertising we don't know when he guessed wrong. On the 3rd hand he is making a living selling forecasts to industry so he looks like the best guesser around.

Here is his forecast for America & by implication even moreso for other western economies that have been hollowing out their real economy for years & covering it by seeing people get rich through owning their own house ie us.

by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

“We’re going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we’re going to see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree,” said Celente, adding that the situation would be “worse than the great depression”.

“America’s going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for,” said Celente, noting that people’s refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis

&

“There will be a revolution in this country,” he said. “It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen.”

“The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop.”

“It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many more.”

“We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to. It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension.”

Good news is that I don't agree with him about food getting that expensive, at least not in the US. For technological states food is not that difficult - it could be easier if the Luddites were to allow us to use GM plants but we do know how to make a lot of it. Indeed I think we are probably getting to the technological level where you can be an undeveloped country without that much hardship as long as you don't want to drive, or fly, or keep warm, & are healthy & only want to watch TV.

Bad news is that I can go with the rest of it. We have destroyed most of our industrial capacity on the theory that China & India would be prepared to do the actual work forever. We have a government which regulates half the economy out of existence & spends half of what is left. Here is an article on the nonsensical regulation government has to introduce to provide makework for those on the payroll. That we have survived so much parasitism so long shows how productive our modern society can be. And how well we could be doing without it. Right now why would anybody set up a productive business under such parasitism when he could go to India or China? But if nobody does then Celente's forecasts will be optimistic.

In Scotland instead of government parasitism taking 75% it spends 60% of GNP, & we are more heavily regulated too, at least 60% which leaves 16% for us. Most of the remainder will be destroyed by Scotland's CO2 bansturbators as their cutting of CO2 by 425 over the next few years destroys half our current economy. What we have is a society built as a reverse pyramid where the productive base is equal to only 16% of the country. here is a reason why Pharaohs didn't build their pyramids that way up.

This is what our Ministry of Defence is preparing for. When the people come for the parasites with a rope I do not think the MoD should expect the army to protect them.

Yet we could fix the economy almost instantly - just fire the parasites, cut government's take to 20% & its regulatory cost to 5% & 3/4s rather than under 1/4 would be left for people to spend themselves. Technology is expanding so rapidly (Moore's law improves computers 50% annually) that any semi-competently run country could have a growth rate comparable to China & India's 10% & indeed the semi-competently run ones do.

Here is Celente's trends for 2009 which is indeed socially pessimistic but also technologically optimistic.

PS Hat tip to Jerry Pournelle's site, which i cannot praise to highly, for the original link here.

Labels: Fixing the economy, International politics

There has been some argument over when the first launch into space was - anywhere from some of the V2 tests up to Sputnik - mostly depending on how low you count "space" as.

However there can be no doubt about the first launch that went up there & didn't come straight back down.

On August 27, 1957, astrophysicist Bob Brownlee and other Los Alamos scientists detonated an atom bomb at the bottom of a 500-foot, concrete-lined vertical tunnel drilled in the Nevada desert.

The goal of the test, codenamed Pascal-B, was to see what would happen if a plutonium bomb was accidentally detonated. The expected yield was equivalent to a few tons of TNT. A steel lid, 10 cm thick and weighing several hundred kilograms, was placed directly above the bomb; it was expected that it would be blown off, but nobody knew exactly how fast.

It turned out that the yield of the Pascal-B was closer to 300 tons of TNT; when the explosion vaporized the concrete walls of the shaft, the lid rose on a column of superheated gas and emerged at an unprecedented speed of 56 Km/sec, as confirmed by high-speed cameras and by some calculations made afterwards.

They never found it.

As the article points out escape velocity is 11.2 km/sec. he article suggests that it would have been vapourised on the way up by the atmosphere but I think this assume it went upblunt side up whereas if air pressure pushed it side on the vapourisation would be little more than with with a normal nickel-iron metero & ones of that size to reach Earth.

If so it got up there just over a month before Sputnik on 4th October 1957

Dr Brownlee reports

Ogle: And how fast is it going?"

This last question was more of a shout. Bill liked to have a direct answer to each one of his questions.
RRB: "Six times the escape velocity from the earth."

Bill was quite delighted with the answer, for he had never before heard a velocity given in terms of the escape velocity from the earth! There was much laughter, and the legend was now born, for Bill loved to report to anybody who cared to listen about Brownlee's units of velocity. He says the cap would escape the earth. (But of course we did not believe that would ever happen.)

The next obvious decision was made. We'll put a high-speed movie camera looking at the cap, and see if we can measure the departure velocity.

In the event, the cap appeared above the hole in one frame only, so there was no direct velocity measurement. A lower limit could be calculated by considering the time between frames (and I don't remember what that was), but my summary of the situation was that when last seen, it was "going like a bat!!"

I very much regret that a Google search for the image in that one frame found nothing. I am sure it must still exist somewhere in US government records & would very much like to have been able to put it here. Perhaps sometime in future.

Labels: Science/technology, space

Realclimate is the blog always quoted by alarmists (Monbiot defends his rubbish regularly by quoting them. It's best known name is Michael Mann author of the Hockey stick graph which the IPCC used extensively. It was subsequently proven not merely that it was wrong & incompetent but that Mann had deliberately hidden the method of calculation which he should have known were false. One can see why it is the top alarmist site then. Neither my comments or the reply contain anything as amusing as a former editor of Nature saying the government's chief science advisor should be inn kindergarten as happened in the Deltoid discussion but the degree to which their "debate" depends on insulting is obvious:

149 - You say this report was – apparently “suppressed” – by the EPA & that it – supposedly – undermines what the EPA case.

Is there any actual doubt that the EPA did suppress it & that it, despite it coming from EPA personnel who clearly weren’t on message to what was required, not only undermined the EPA claims but flatly disagreed with them?

[Response: The Endangerment finding was open for public comment for months, no comments were 'suppressed' and Carlin could easily have put in his paper there. Instead he wanted it to be the official submission from his unit (NCEE) to the process which was not approved by his boss. How is that suppression? Who has an automatic right to get their institution to give their non-official musings on any subject they care to write about an imprimatur? No-one I know. But in any case, the real issue is whether there is any credible science in the document. There isn't, and so whether the NCEE was or was not embarrassed to be associated with this is not really my concern as a scientist. - gavin]

As for calling Friends of Science an “a astroturf anti-climate science lobbying group” – by “astroturf” do you mean it involves only a small number of people who all work full time for some organisation (government or industry) because if so Realclimate is astroturf. he “anti-climate science” line is even stranger. Science is a process of comparing differing theories so if climate science is a genuine science it must welcome examination. The only way it would be possible for Mr Gregory to be “anti-climate science” is if he claims the subject doesn’t exist i.e. that this planet has no atmosphere & thus no climate which can possibly be scientifically examined. If this is what you are really claiming that would indeed be extraordinary.

[Response: I might suggest that Gregory's and the FoS's connection to the practice of true science is somewhat ambiguous.... - gavin]
That Carlin & Davidson’s conclusions reflect those Friends of Science hold is not, obviously a reasonable criticism. All science is based on standing on others shoulders & it is no more a criticism of what they say than it is of Realclimate to say appear to be directly that same as the IPCC’s. Indeed the opposite is true & there actually is some limited value in being able to show that your views hold a consensus position.

Proper criticism in science involves disputing the facts & the closest you come to that is saying they show a “complete lack of appreciation of the importance of natural variability on short time scales” which actually isn’t disputing facts but merely stating that the 11 years of cooling isn’t enough to count. If that is your position presumably the 18 years from 1980 to 1998 when we had warming isn’t enough to count either. By your own argument the whole alarmist cause has, from the start, been guilty of exactly the fault you complain of except magnified since alarmists take this short period as evidence of a change unparalleled in human history, likely to make Antarctica the only habitable continent & justifying our destruction of most of the world economy (as we can all see) whereas sceptics are merely sceptical of such claims.

[Response: "Destruction of most of the world economy" - and you are accusing me of being alarmist for pointing out that climate sensitivity is not negligible? Funny that. - gavin]

CENSORED REPLY:

Re the responses to my post 149:
1 - You seem to now be disputing not whether the the report was suppressed but merely asking me to say why the author should think his bosses shouldn’t have done so. The answer is not because the author has right to be heard but that the EPA, as a body funded by the taxpayer, has a duty to put up all the evidence not merely what supports their programme. This should also be the self enforcing duty of all scientists.

2 - You might indeed “that Gregory’s and the FoS’s connection to the practice of true science is somewhat ambiguous” & I might make a similar suggestion about the Hockey Stick theory & Realclimate but if one does so without producing evidence one is simply dropping to the level of schoolyard insults. What exactly is your evidence that all those involved in Friends of Science, including Mr McKittrick, have no good relationship with science?

3 - Alarmists are calling for the ending of around 80% of combustion on the planet. There is a strong correlation between economic capacity & power usage & thus those who don’t publicly support a massive extension of nuclear power (admittedly there are a handful who do) are in effect calling for the destruction of around 80% of the world economy. This would indeed be “most” of the world economy & before doing so we should have undisputable evidence that warming, on a catastrophic scale such as would render “Antarctica the only habitable continent” is actually happening. There is a theory & there are computer models (ie a theory calculated on a computer) but where is the evidence of catastrophic warming?------------------------------

This was hardly a surprise since I have been censored by alarmists on Deltoid & the aptly named Brave New Climate but it does seem enough to establish a statistical conclusion - that alarmists are almost wholly unable to sustain their claims without censorship & so opposed to the principle of science to be willing to use it in scientific discussion, after lies & personal vituperation have failed them.

Gavin who put up the first answers will be Gavin Schmidt who has clearly learnt by his experience debating Michael Crichton in New York, that honest debate cannot serve the alarmist's cause.

If any reader knows of a single eco-fascist or alarmist site, anywhere in the world, which actually deals with science & doesn't believe in censorship I hope you will let me know because I find it difficult to believe that there isn't somebody both competent & honest selling this.

Sarah Palin's resignation statement:

Life is too short to compromise time and resources… it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: “Sit down and shut up”, but that’s the worthless, easy path; that’s a quitter’s way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and “go with the flow”.

Nah, only dead fish “go with the flow”.

No. Productive, fulfilled people determine where to put their efforts, choosing to wisely utilize precious time… to BUILD UP.

And there is such a need to BUILD up and FIGHT for our state and our country. I choose to FIGHT for it! And I’ll work hard for others who still believe in free enterprise and smaller government; strong national security for our country and support for our troops; energy independence; and for those who will protect freedom and equality and LIFE… I’ll work for and campaign for those PROUD to be American, and those who are INSPIRED by our ideals and won’t deride them.

I WILL support others who seek to serve, in or out of office, for the RIGHT reasons, and I don’t care what party they’re in or no party at all. Inside Alaska – or Outside Alaska.

But I won’t do it from the Governor’s desk.

I’ve never believed that I, nor anyone else, needs a title to do this - to make a difference… to HELP people. So I choose, for my State and my family, more “freedom” to progress, all the way around… so that Alaska may progress… I will not seek re-election as Governor.

And so as I thought about this announcement that I wouldn’t run for re-election and what it means for Alaska, I thought about how much fun some governors have as lame ducks… travel around the state, to the Lower 48 (maybe), overseas on international trade – as so many politicians do. And then I thought – that’s what’s wrong – many just accept that lame duck status, hit the road, draw the paycheck, and “milk it”. I’m not putting Alaska through that – I promised efficiencies and effectiveness! ? That’s not how I am wired. I am not wired to operate under the same old “politics as usual.” I promised that four years ago – and I meant it...

My choice is to take a stand and effect change ... we know we can effect positive change outside government at this moment in time, on another scale, and actually make a difference for our priorities – and so we will, for Alaskans and for Americans.

Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me – sports… basketball. I use it because you’re naïve if you don’t see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket… and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN. And I’m doing that – keeping our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities – smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom! And I know when it’s time to pass the ball – for victory.

... we can ALL learn from our selfless Troops… they’re bold, they don’t give up, they take a stand and know that LIFE is short so they choose to NOT waste time. They choose to be productive and to serve something greater than SELF… Now, despite this, I don’t want any Alaskan dissuaded from entering politics after seeing this REAL “climate change” that began in August… no, we NEED hardworking, average Americans fighting for what’s right! And I will support you because we need YOU and YOU can effect change, and I can too on the outside.

We need those who will respect our Constitution where government’s supposed to serve from the BOTTOM UP, not move toward this TOP DOWN big government take-over… but rather, will be protectors of individual rights - who also have enough common sense to acknowledge when conditions have drastically changed and are willing to call an audible and pass the ball when it’s time so the team can win! And that is what I’m doing!

Remember Alaska… America is now, more than ever, looking North to the Future....

In the words of General MacArthur said, “We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
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Well despite all the rubbish from the MSM (in Britain our fascist media talks about her with the sort of venom the NYT would use if the locals didn't know anything about her) that is not a woman giving up her chance to run for President that is a woman saying she has done the job in Alaska & she is going for broke.

Here are 3 comments I put on Belmont Club before I had read the full statement:

1 - Sounds to me that the “positive change outside government” remark does indeed mean establishing a movement & probably a think tank for new ideas. If so she is quite right to decide that she would not serve Alaska well by keeping the paycheck for that job. However it takes somebody with both integrity & guts to do it.

I think she does have to start campaigning early because with the media so uniformly hating her she has a much bigger wall to break through than other candidates - however once she has got through it & proven that (A) she has ideas that will work & (B) the MSM are scum who will tell any lie about her, then she is essentially fireproof against anything they throw.

I was very impressed when she said that a McCain/Palin Presidency would start building nuclear plants in January” & have no doubt that if that had been done & none of Obama’s silly spend & regulate bills gone through America would now be out of recession.

I expect the building of a genuine programme of new ideas, perhaps in combination with Newt, together with a running commentary on what Obama should have done instead of what he does. I also expect the building of a campaigning network, probably heavily using the blogsphere. I expect a programme containing a commitment to inexpensive nuclear power & relatively balanced budgets & hope for commitment to major cuts in bureaucracy (perhaps an Amendment allowing regulation to be challenged purely on the grounds that their cost is disproportionate to any benefit), a commitment to encouraging economic growth by the methods used in the fastest growing economies (low business taxes & economic freedom), a rational examination of evidence on global warming & substantial ongoing funding for an X-Prize Foundation.

In which case in 2012 she would walk it & deserve to.
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2 - One sign of how politically savvy she is is her looks. Ok as a cheerleader she was beautiful & she is still very good looking however she hasn’t let it hold her back. Beauty is not an advantage in politics because it makes it more difficult for people to empathise & this applies even moreso to women, particularly for the female vote.

So what is her most prominent feature - the one thing you could recognise in any cartoon?

The glasses. Most women would choose contact lenses & be thought pretty but not to be taken seriously. She went for glasses & not just any glasses but big, black, intelligent looking, intimidating glasses.

That woman is smart & self confident & competent & determined & doesn’t think the world owes her a living (as “leftist wimmen” usually do) & wants to do something rather than to be something. If any American politician can save western civilisation it is her
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3 - Regarding mentions of the possibility of Palin getting an Oprah like TV slot. This need not be necessary. Remember the unknown British politician, Danial Hannan who got millions of hits when he put his speech to Gordon Brown about how incompetent he was on Facebook

Imagine Palin doing that - weekly. She can say anything she wants, the advertising will pay for the rest of her campaign, she will get 10s of millions of viewers almost all supporters & even the NYT couldn’t ignore it (they famously refused an op-ed piece from McCain but not Obama).
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Having read her words & highlighted the bits I thought particularly important I find not only my expectations but most of my hopes justified. Note the joke about "real" global warming :-) which is rather further than she has gone before. The only thing not covered is the X-Prize Foundation which is hardly a a major issue in Alaska. She has also implied that she will be working to support favoured candidates in the 2011 Congress race, something not practical if she had remained Governor. And not necessarily all Republicans which would help getting swing votes in the Presidential race.

Talking of X-Prizes brings me to Newt Gingrich who is in favour of such prizes & has recently proven the most effective Republican in Congress. Newt has ideas, by the bucketload. He may well also be setting his cap at the White house in 2012 but I think they are both people who are more interested in achieving things than in having job titles. He certainly has Washington experience she lacks, though holding any sort of top job, as she has, is a sort of experience you can only get one way.

If they were to have an agreed programme running for President & Vice-President I almost don't think it would matter who had the top job (& after all that is what primaries are for).

Labels: global warming, International politics