Dead Duck, follow that meme

It is of the nature of bloggers to follow that meme.
Elvis sang " You gotta follow that meme, wherever that meme will lead you"
Well of course he didn't'
However chasing the lame duck/ dead duck tension, I came across some thing unexpected

First

Dead-duck decisions


The behaviour of Bush and Blair casts doubt on the supposed benefits of fixed-term leaderships

Mark Lawson
Friday January 12, 2007
The Guardian

One of the most common criticisms of politicians is that their actions are dictated by electoral calculation: the tax cuts timed to expand wage packets just before polling day, the shiny new hospital in the marginal constituency. George Bush and Tony Blair, though, currently represent a fascinating challenge to that allegation. For the first time, Britain and America are simultaneously being run by leaders who will not be standing in the next election and who have no close colleague or friend they would like to be heir to their office.

So, if it's true that the need to get yourself or your party back in power makes politicians behave selfishly and cynically, then it logically follows that the US and the UK should at the moment be experiencing the purest and most selfless leadership they have ever seen. For the first time, we are witnessing an experiment into the kind of politics you get when legislators are freed from any need to grease the people's palms.

The biggest of our clinical trials tests whether the recent decisions of the president or the prime minister would have been different if they or a trusted deputy were scheduled for the judgment of the public. Would, for example, Bush have committed an extra 21,500 troops to Iraq this week if he or Dick Cheney had been looking at proofs of their campaign posters for the 2008 race?

Logic suggests that no politician whose job prospects still depended on public opinion would sign an order that so goes against the tone of the phone-in shows and the mood of the legislature. But that doesn't mean Bush's escalation of the American presence is an example of a selfless decision taken without political calculation.

Even when they have surrendered the possibility of further office, politicians are always running for something: the last big votes of biography and posterity. Indeed, despite our instinctive cynicism about the effect of electoral pressure, leaders may be at their most dangerous when thinking only of themselves as, in a very extreme form, is shown by the history of dictators.

Bush's last big throw of the dice in Iraq is only possible because there is no one near him - not even an ambitious vice-president with his eye on the White House - with any greedy personal reason to stay his hand.

The tempting comparison is Lyndon Johnson who, almost 40 years ago, opted out of the 1968 race once defeat seemed an inevitability, to concentrate on bringing peace to Vietnam. Bush is offered by the constitution what was given to Johnson only through humiliation: a spell in which, theoretically, he should be able to make decisions from the perspective purely of military good-sense.

Johnson, though, was tempered in his decisions by an obligation to his deputy, Hubert Humphrey, who was leading the Democrat ticket in his place. Having chosen a cardiac catastrophe as his running-mate, and with brother Jeb declining to run, Bush is in the almost unique position of owing loyalty only to his own place in history. But only the most charitable observer would assume that this total freedom from external pressure leads a man to selfless decisions.

Blair, his blood-buddy in this adventure, makes an interesting contrast, having supported Bush this time with words rather than bodies. While it's possible that he is far less committed to a Brown premiership than was Johnson to a Humphrey presidency, Blair's ability to act in Iraq or elsewhere during his election-free period of leadership is limited by parliamentary majorities and the fragile timetable for handover more or less agreed with Gordon Brown. While the prime minister doesn't have to worry about the next election, his colleagues do.

Bush's cussedness in his dead-duck months also casts doubt on another conventional wisdom of modern politics: that term limits are inevitably beneficial. Observing the exhaustion and default policies of Blair's third administration, I've argued in the past for a two-term cut-off in British politics. But the twilight of the current American president shows that imposing an off-switch on power brings other problems. A dead-duck leader may result in more dead soldiers.

Numerous crime novelists have used the plot of the terminally ill patient who dedicates their final months to settling matters for which they will never be called to account. We are seeing now - especially in Washington - the political equivalent of the man who has nothing to lose and needs think only of his own legacy and satisfaction. The effect is to lead us to the quite counter-intuitive conclusion that the need to be re-elected is in some ways a useful discipline for politicians.

Although they would be highly surprised by this historical paradox, both US and UK soldiers, and the Iraqi population, might be better off today if Bush and Blair, or a close associate of either, were running for office again.

Gruesome story follows relates to above photograph.

C.W. Moeliker
The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae) (page 243-247)

On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass façade of the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes. Then the author disturbed the scene and secured the dead duck. Dissection showed that the rape-victim indeed was of the male sex. It is concluded that the mallards were engaged in an ‘Attempted Rape Flight’ that resulted in the first described case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard.


Correspondence: C.W. Moeliker, Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, P.O. Box 23452, NL-3001 KL Rotterdam, the Netherlands; e-mail moeliker@nmr.nl


Keywords: homosexuality, necrophilia, non-consensual copulation, mallard, Anas platyrhynchos

Ig Nobel prize
The strange case of the homosexual necrophiliac duck pushed out the boundaries of knowledge in a rather improbable way when it was recorded by Dutch researcher Kees Moeliker.

It may have ruffled a few feathers, but it earned him the coveted Ig Nobel prize for biology awarded for improbable research, and next week he will be recounting his findings to UK audiences on the Ig Nobel tour.

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Green Bush

Bush 'prepares emissions U-turn'

I came across this some time ago. It could be a "dummy run", a leak to test the waters. At the time, I liked the Machiavellian possibilities.
The Republicans looking ahead see the caning that eventuated in the
mid-tems. Bush needs a new disguise to prepare himself for the future. The " Nixon in China" moment of turnaround.
All three quotes are from English papers, with American newspapers quoting these sources. Deniable leaks?
I still stick with the inference from the last article that, he is not a lame duck President, he is a Dead duck president, who on the stats could not make January 2009.
The state of the Union is Tuesday January 23

from The Independent
Bush 'prepares emissions U-turn'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published: 17 September 2006

President Bush is preparing an astonishing U-turn on global warming, senior Washington sources say.

After years of trying to sabotage agreements to tackle climate change he is drawing up plans to control emissions of carbon dioxide and rapidly boost the use of renewable energy sources.

Administration insiders privately refer to the planned volte-face as Mr Bush's "Nixon goes to China moment", recalling how the former president amazed the world after years of refusing to deal with its Communist regime. Hardline global warming sceptics, however, are already publicly attacking the plans.

The rethink follows increasing pressure on the White House from Republican governors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, the mayors of more than 300 cities, business leaders and Congress.

Over the past few days rumours swept the capital that the "Toxic Texan" would announce his conversion this week, in an attempt to reduce the impact of a major speech tomorrow by Al Gore on solutions to climate change.

The White House denied the timing, but did not deny that a change of policy was on its way. Sources say that the most likely moment is the President's State of the Union address in January.

Environmentalists expect the measures to fall far short of what is needed, but say this does not matter. "The very fact that Bush would reverse his position will liberate many Republicans to vote for meaningful pollution cuts," says Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust.

But Iain Murray, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Mr Bush's chief climate change cheerleader, is deeply alarmed: "We are left with the unpleasant conclusion that the only motivation is political."

Bush set for climate change U-turn


Downing Street says that belated US recognition of global warming could lead to a post-Kyoto agreement on curbing emissions

Gaby Hinsliff, Juliette Jowit and Paul Harris
Sunday January 14, 2007
The Observer

George Bush is preparing to make a historic shift in his position on global warming when he makes his State of the Union speech later this month, say senior Downing Street officials.

Tony Blair hopes that the new stance by the United States will lead to a breakthrough in international talks on climate change and that the outlines of a successor treaty to the Kyoto agreement, the deal to curb emissions of greenhouse gases which expires in 2012, could now be thrashed out at the G8 summit in June.

The timetable may explain why Blair is so keen to remain in office until after the summit, with a deal on protecting the planet offering an appealing legacy with which to bow out of Number 10.

Bush and Blair held private talks on climate change before Christmas, and there is a feeling that the US President will now agree a cap on emissions in the US, meaning that, for the first time, American industry and consumers would be expected to start conserving energy and curbing pollution.

'We could now be seeing the beginning of a consensus on a post-Kyoto framework,' said a source close to the prime minister. 'President Bush is beginning to talk about more radical measures.'

The move will be seen as part of a wider repositioning of the Bush government after its comprehensive defeat in last autumn's mid-term elections.

A change of heart on the environment was signalled earlier this month when the US administration unexpectedly announced that polar bears were now an endangered species because their habitat in the US state of Alaska had suffered from melting ice sheets caused by global warming. The government is now required to act on threats to the bears' survival. The EU has its own so-called cap and trade scheme, under which industries are given a quota of carbon dioxide emissions: if they exceed the limits, they must pay for extra credits that can be bought from cleaner industries - an incentive to firms to go green.

Downing Street is increasingly confident that the arguments pushed by Sir Nicholas Stern, author of the recent Treasury report on the cost of global warming, that doing nothing will eventually prove more costly than trying to avert catastrophe are now gaining in momentum. However, Stern warned: 'The US will work it out for itself. Nobody will be telling them what to do, and nobody should.'

Downing Street now expects a broad agreement between EU countries on a successor treaty to Kyoto to be thrashed out at the EU spring council, paving the way for an agreement at the G8.

Blair was also told in meetings with senior senators late last year that they would seek to push through measures on global warming which had been repeatedly blocked by the Republicans before the mid-term elections cost Bush's party control of both Houses of Congress.

But another source close to the negotiations warned that Bush had previously appeared to give ground on climate change, only to fail to make real concessions. The best hope could lie with a post-Kyoto deal for 2009, the source said - by which time Bush will be out of office.

Kurt Davies, research director on climate change for Greenpeace USA, said climate change was now expected to be one of the keynotes of the State of the Union address.

'The sands are clearly shifting on climate change for this administration, but there has to be a concrete follow-up,' he said. 'We were shocked last year when he talked about the US being addicted to oil, but then there was no follow-up to that.'

Bush tipped to talk tough on energy but snub Kyoto

By Caroline Daniel

Published: January 2 2007 17:01 | Last updated: January 2 2007 17:01

Energy will be a central theme of President George W. Bush’s state of the union speech this month, as it was in last year’s address when he briefly caught national attention with the claim that the country was “addicted to oil”.

But his critics doubt that he will do much more than call for more spending on alternative fuels, and again fail to embrace international efforts to agree a post-Kyoto regime to tackle greenhouse emissions.

“We’ve had the hydrogen economy, then alternative fuels, and ‘addicted to oil’,” said a senior industry lobbyist. “Yet on close Senate votes, such as drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, he has not put his prestige on the line by making personal calls. Energy policy has been the creation of Congress. Almost anything Bush says in the speech is irrelevant the day after he says it.”

The administration rejects that, with one senior official noting: “It’s a lot more than rhetorical: what was done with the 2005 act was substantial.” Mr Bush has identified energy as a key area for bipartisan co-operation in the next two years.

Al Hubbard, chairman of the National Economic Council, who is co-ordinating White House energy policy, has also raised expectations. In a speech at De Pauw University he predicted “headlines above the fold that will knock your socks off in terms of our commitment to energy independence”.

“One of the challenges is how they differentiate themselves from last year,” warned Spencer Abraham, energy secretary in Mr Bush’s first term. “You have had a big commitment to hydrogen and to ethanol. We thought $1.7bn over five years on hydrogen was big bucks but it was seen as insufficient by our critics. Maybe $10bn is enough to get attention. But the question is whether it is actually implemented by Congress.”

Current and former administration officials admit that the $2bn announced last year in loan guarantees for alternative fuels, such as clean coal technologies, has been snarled in bureaucracy. The deadline for applications has now been extended.

Growing concern from US executives was underscored in the report last month from the Energy Security Leadership Council, a high-profile group of executives and retired generals. They called for increasing the supply of domestic oil but also giving more attention to energy efficiency, notably raising Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, designed to improve vehicle fuel efficiency by 4 per cent annually.

The latter would be popular. According to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, 74 per cent of Republicans would support higher standards even if it increased vehicle prices. A Democratic aide on the House energy committee said: “Doing something meaningful on vehicle fuel efficiency would be a major step forward for this administration.”

Robert Hormats, vice-chairman at Goldman Sachs and a leadership council member, briefed senior White House officials, including Mr Hubbard, on the report. “Discussion was most extensive in alternative sources of energy and the idea of additional drilling,” he said. “There was some discussion of Cafe standards, but the point was if they prove to be technologically undoable, they are harmful.”

Another participant at the meeting said: “It was not just a courtesy meeting. They were most interested in the specifics and why 4 per cent was chosen as an annual increase, and whether the group would seriously engage or go back to running their companies.”

Mr Hormats told the Financial Times that he would like to see Mr Bush create a commission, using the council as a prototype, “with both financial and military people to develop critical mass to address this issue, like Alan Greenspan did in 1983 with social security.”

There is some optimism that the White House could move on Cafe standards. David Conover, director of the US Climate Change Technology Programme until February, said: “It is conceivable that he could endorse a set of principles giving him administrative flexibility to set Cafe standards, but more likely it will be a call on Congress to respond to his 10-month request to strengthen standards.”

Such a move could bolster Mr Bush’s credibility on energy but would face a difficult vote in Congress, given the lobbying power of car makers and the fact that John Dingell, who represents Detroit, will chair the House energy committee. In December Bob Lutz, vice-chairman of General Motors, warned that changing the standards would in effect “hand the truck and SUV market over to the imports, particularly the Japanese”.

There are fewer hopes of an administration shift on climate change. In spite of pressure from leaders such as Tony Blair, the British prime minister, senior officials resist deeper engagement on limiting greenhouse gas emissions after the Kyoto protocol ends in 2012, and remain privately dismissive of the conclusions in the British Stern report on global warming, which called for 1 per cent of gross domestic product to be spent on fighting climate change.

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Putting things in context, The Bush presidency

Please click on picture to see larger view

With the recent announcement on Iraq and the at most tepid response to it, Bush seemingly is headed to towards the dangerous territory of Approval ratings of less than 30%.
Truman during the Korean war with squabbles with MacArthur and Macarthy erached the postwar lows of 22 and 23.
Nixon reached these positions at his worst.
Floundering Carter and George Bush senior in his precipitous decline were the only others to have reached below 30.
George W. has already gone below the nadir of post TET Johnson at 34.
GWB has already touched 31 in May 2006.
But his trend is catastrophic,both he and his father benefited from the getting behind the Commander in chief with approvals of nearly 90% as a result of foreign adventurism. Junior couldn't even think of a new place to go to.
The support that America gave each was highly contingent on results, and when success was delayed or not achieved, a fatal slide began.
It is hard to now see Bush lasting out his term, Jon Stewart on the Daily Show since the Congressional Democratic landslide barely now shows any ability to hide his contempt for this buffoon.(The last neo-con in the WhiteHouse, they called him.)
Bush finally totally revealed as the backrom smalltime manipulator he always was.
Whether by impeachmant,the threat of impeachmant or just falling on his sword and accepting his incompetence there is no way this guy will hand over to Obama or Hillary two years hence.

Please click on picture to see larger view

Usually the undecided poll is of but academic interest however the current 4-6% is stunningly low over an extended period.
This reflects the viciously divided America that Bush leaves, with argument replaced by partisan snarls.
Perhaps the worst President ever.

Data from the Preidential; Project by Jonathan Wooley and Gerhard Peters.
Question (7/22/41 - 9/21/81): Do you approve or disapprove of the way [president's last name] is handling his job as President?
Question (10/30/81 - present): Do you approve or disapprove of the way [president's first and last name] is handling his job as President?

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Watch what you say?

I checked a few Indian blogs. It is a hobby OK

this is heard in the street from http://doyouwannafess.blogspot.com/

Apart from that, my cousin and I went for a walk around the pubbing area here the other day and three drunk women walked by us. One of them said to her friend, “Kim, you’re a big, fat slut!”

Kim looked aghast and yelled back, “Who are you calling fat?”

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VOAP

THis is what I needed the space on my ISP site for

I have been doing some work for MeiLing at Vietnam on a plate.
Here is the mockup of a website I did this afternoon
VOAP

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Swarf is dead Long Live Swarf

I have moved Swarf onto Blogger

The Beta process seems to be over
One of the problems I had here was that my ISP only gave me a stingy 10 Meg to play with so that was just about full.
It was one of the reasons i started Maelstrom in the first place.
I have wanted to use the space as a testbed for ideas, but have been blocked. I have been trying to get a few websites going.

If anyone cares the new place is
Swarf

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Rain in my Heart

Last night on BBC2 in England, an extremely harrowing documentary was shown called Rain in My heart. A documentary made by Paul Watson, sometimes called "the godfather of reality television" for his documentaries including his 1974 series 'The Family" and "Sylvania Waters" about Australian suburbia.
Here a Guardian Blog questions the amount of graphic material shown in the documentary.This has become of interest to me as I have been not drinking for the last three and a half months and not smoking for about five.
This has come about as part of a realisation of my increasing age,and that as a single parent to Pat every second week, I could no longer justify moments of lack of consciousness or in the end the cost of hangovers became too great.

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