Bush, the US and all the baloney

Could there be a bigger about turn in views and policies?

“Science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it”
–  oh come on, can you cut the crap; I mean this much crap. Has Mr. Bush been living in a cave or did your scientific advisors suddenly graduate
“By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases.”          — Hahahha, nice one, oh wait, all the other nations already have it; so saying  “America and other nations” doesn’t make America sound like a leader, it sounds plain idiotic

He said the US would convene a series of multilateral meetings involving the biggest polluters – including China and India – to seek agreement on a reduction target and how to achieve it.
— aha, so just include China and India as if they are the culprits so far . Just to let you know Mr. Bush,  China and India may be big polluters now but it’s the western world that everyone (ie. 169  countries) agree contributed to today.

Tony Blair, British prime minister, described the US move as a “huge step forward”.
— Now this is what I call a waste of a line in an article!! Bush doing something and Blair treating it as the best thing ever since sliced bread – oh my, how new is that

Legacy hunting has taken a whole new scale, and George Bush has shown his ignorance and insulted the intelligence of the world-at-large once again.

You want my view: either US should listen to the French Ambassador tell the Chief Of Staff in the TV series, The West Wing “You are so used to calling yourself leaders of the free world. So…… lead”.

Or they should shut up

 

Food for thought from today’s FT

Views on 3 articles that really made me read them completely on FT today:

1. UK considering Tax on Virtual Income: Second Life is having multi-dimensional effects, isn’t it! UK regulators are wondering when should they start charging virtual income, generated and staying completely within Second Life. If you think this is a small amount, think again. Second Life Economy page keeps a running tab: $ 1.59 million was spent in the last 24 hours (that is not a typo, and that is US Dollars ) .Agreeably, almost everyone earning money in SL would be like a business person thus adding the extra complication of establishing Cost Of Sales.   The important issues are:should Linden dollars that remain completely virtual (i.e. are not converted to real currency) be taxable; does a cost-benefit analysis show any point of trying to collect tax on this; and what impact will this have on the users/avatars and their spending. This is just fascinating; FT quotes analysts that Second life may be the 21st century’s avatar of “offshore accounts”

2. MySpace establishing formal US Presidential candidate program:

News Corporation will soon be able to track and monitor online donations made to presidential candidates through its MySpace subsidiary, giving the media group an increasingly prominent role in the 2008 presidential election. This involvement in candidates’ fundraising is new territory for News Corp, which, until now, has limited its interest in presidential elections to media coverage via its print and broadcast outlets.

If you want to prove the power of social networking to anyone, use this data piece! A giant media conglomerate is taking the biggest (by far) online social network places. Wonder if this is what Chris DeWolf and Tom Anderson (founders of mySpace) envisioned! But, hey this is interesting. I will try to follow this more in the coming weeks. Just imagine how many entities are being put in a completely new environment here: the candidates themselves (mySpace giving them tutorials to develop good profile pages), mySpace (started and wanted to remain as a music-lovers social network), NewsCorp (what all can mySpace be leveraged for) and the political system itself (the voters!!)

3. US Buy-out funds bids go to record high of $82 billion in May so far: I am out of depth here, but by god these are big numbers.   May has been the month where US buy-out funds have made bids totaling 82 billion USD.

Next question in your mind – maybe the number of deals has gone up.
Answer:  No, they have reduced

Next question in your mind – maybe buyout-groups are bidding as a team
Answer: No, club bids have reduced, are reducing.

Basically, huger deals are being bid for. I guess these groups (1) have the momentum going in their favor right now, both in terms of invested capital and interest from the target companies (2) are confident that these bigger companies have bigger scope for streamlining (no double-edged sword intended) and extracting value

By the way, a small piece of trivia, an Interrobang is the punctuation symbol for combination of  question mark and exclamation mark