I've barely been to ET in the past weeks, tho i've been lurking.  Had many comments on verschiedene issues in my brain, but they disappear just as quickly as they arise when one's focused elsewhere.  Went to Bremen, paid the rent on the transition Wohnung, and learned that the neighbors who might be able to check out my life through the glass ceiling in the living room are not really neighbors, they're a Pouf (House of Prostitution.)

but i'm really liking Bremen.  Hansastadt and all.

i'm nowhere near organized like ceebs to move (or was that tbg?) but i'll likely survive.  Plus being stupid i'll pay for both places for December, so i can move at my own snail's pace.

Speaking of rg providing some welcome heat, here's an African tribute to moving...  The Unknown Cases; Masimbabele.  (Don't believe there is any real video of the this classic from a decade or so ago.)

Skennah Kowa

I have already directed my economic team to come up with an Economic Recovery Plan that will mean 2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011 -- a plan big enough to meet the challenges we face that I intend to sign soon after taking office. We'll be working out the details in the weeks ahead, but it will be a two-year, nationwide effort to jumpstart job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy. We'll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.

Infrastructure, education, alternative energy.  I think those are precisely the priorities we need.

Somewhere in cyberspace, the ghost of de Chardin is smiling.

trust him to provoke russia in this way, maroon

george...

WAGE PEACE
...or else!

this html game is starting to _interest me...

old dog, new shtick!

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

... All these measures serve to show the shift in the country's macro-control policy, according to Luo Yunyi, director the Institute of Investment Research under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The country had long clung to a prudent fiscal and tightened monetary policy to prevent the economy from overheating.

"To expand domestic demand through increasing fiscal investment is a viable short-term tool to offset the negative influences caused by the current export decline and inactive consumption. But it is also badly needed in the long run given that the country has to think over how to make full use of its huge size of savings and to meet the conditions for its accelerated process of urbanization and industrialization," he said. ...

Stimulus package to push long-term growth | China Daily - Opinion

Affordable housing seems to be a pillar of this new package:

The government's efforts to use infrastructure construction to expand domestic demand and raise people's livelihoods, such as those to solve the housing problem for low-income residents and efforts to strengthen rural infrastructure construction, have not only been in accordance with the spirit embodied in the report delivered by President Hu Jintao to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) earlier in March.

They will also map out an unequivocal direction for the national economic growth in the future. The country's economic advancement is mainly for the improvement of living conditions of ordinary people.

To provide them with basic accommodation has long been on the government's top agenda. In the 4-trillion-yuan package, the top authorities have made crystal clear the plan to step up construction of low-priced and low-rental houses for middle and low-income residents and renovation of shanty towns and ramshackle houses in rural areas.

Govt plan signals shift from growth-first policy | China Daily - Opinion

... which is one of the key concerns expressed in this prominently featured opinion piece written by a Western economist on the same day:

China must be cautious in raising consumption | China Daily - Opinion

There is an important lesson to be learned from the West here. It has been precisely the encouragement of Western consumers to stretch themselves to take on ever-larger mortgage commitments and higher housing costs relative to income, which necessitated the low (sometimes non-existent) savings ratios out of income and the reliance on credit for significant consumer spending decisions.

Affordable housing, avoiding a excessive proportion of income committed to housing costs is the only sensible way to sustain rising general consumer spending without a credit explosion to finance it.

According to a recent OpinionWay/Le Figaro/LCI poll, 17 percent of the French are considering supporting him. Bertrand Delanoë gets only 13 percent, Ségolène Royal 9 percent. Among Socialist and other left-wing voters, Besancenot's rise is even more dramatic: Twenty-six percent already see him as the "best opposition leader," whereas Delanoë gets 19 percent, Socialist chairman François Hollande 10 percent, and Royal 9 percent. Moreover, 65 percent of all respondents say they have a "very positive" opinion of him.

http://michelgurfinkiel.com/articles/183-France-Beware-of-the-Red-Mailman.html

 He is just as happy to advertise his friendship with the rappers Joey Starr et Monsieur R as he is to advertise his admiration for Che Guevara. "In the political arena, you get the impression that he comes from another planet", laughs Léon Crémieux, a member of the LCR's Central Committee.

The style may be out of place on the Left, but the younger generation is happy with it. "By drawing new causes like ecology and anti-globalisation into the arena, he's been able to build up a base among first-time voters", as the researcher Vincent Tiberj emphasises. Within the generation born between 1977 and 1982, Besancenot's vote has reached 12%.

http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1386

But then, a lot in presidential campaigns is also determined by media coverage ; I think in 2002 small candidates where strongly covered by the media, whereas in 2007 they made Bayrou into the "third man"...

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

Nummer Einz in Deutschland!!!  I'm going there now to celebrate with Mike, our fearless whiskykenner.  (If you realize that this tiny kneipe in Remscheid beat some of the best hotel bars in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, as well as whisky havens going back centuries, you can grasp what this means.)

Skennah Kowa

Earlier a guitarist was playing Satie's Gymnopédies.

Then nice biere de noel in the local bar.

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience

That employees tend to rise to the level of their incompetence is the Peter Principle,  formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1968 book The Peter Principle.  It is also too often true.  Some brave souls realize the predicament and voluntarily return to the last level at which they could preform competently.  Fortunately for the others, admitting that you have promoted someone to a position for which he is incompetent is rather awkward unless you are the owner, so they tend to stay in their positions until something really bad happens.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Migeru:

Didn't techno have a soundbite along the lines of "regulation is what makes honest business profitable"?

The Scoop search function is crap; you can never find anything that way. I always use the Google search.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

Maybe it was discussion around agency workers, or migrant workers? ie regulations and giving workers better rights so that unscrupulous employers can't exploit them to undercut other businesses.

Ad astra per aspera