BBC: UK 'backs Blair for EU president'

Tony Blair will be the UK's official candidate for EU president, Baroness Kinnock has apparently confirmed.

The post will only be created if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified by all EU states - Ireland is to hold a second referendum in October.

There has long been speculation that the former PM would go for the post but he has not confirmed he will do so.

It is the first time a UK government minister has publicly announced Tony Blair is a candidate for the job.

The Stop Blair petition got 160 sigs today and counting.

The first REpower 5M turbine was installed at the first far-from-shore off-shore wind farm in Germany, alpha ventus. The farm, which will consist of six REpower 5M and six Multibrid M5000, altogether 60MW -- relatively small, but this is considered a test phase for a much bigger farm.

Also today, REpower got an order from Vattenfall (huh, yes, Vattenfall!) to supply 30 of the same type (150 MW total) for the Ormonde off-shore wind farm in Ireland.

Meanwhile, the network connection for the Baltic 1 wind farm in the Baltic Sea commenced.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

What's the weather where you are? Here, the first 35°C heatwave of the summer is at its first peak. I lived through the 41°C heatwave almost exactly two years ago, but still. Last night was already brutal, I couldn't open the windows until early morning (and then had to close again a few hours later). Now under the roof next to the computer, it's 32°C, outside, still two more... 35°C shall return on Saturday, and then again after a stronger cold front intermission on next Wednesday.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

Heading to Greece tomorrow night or the next day, depending on if shenanigans occur while trying to get my iphone out of customs tomorrow (not my brightest idea ever, but it will work out) and train availability to Thessaloniki. I may just take a bus, and I'm probably going to be taking buses more often than not throughout Europe. I don't know how long I will spend there - might be as little as one week before heading to Croatia.

you are the media you consume.

It is is warm, I work a lot and I love it, here in barcelona.

F.Gonzalez for president.... a la Sarkoziii.

I quit do not get this move of support.

Can someone explain why...persoanl stuff between Sarko and Blair... or something else?

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

Tonight's Open Thread was posted without a lead "thought."  We have seen that without direction, the "hoi polloi" is not capable of responding on it's own.

Thus ends the test, deciduously.  You will be further directed to follow the previous destructions.  that is all.

Skennah Kowa

I haven't really gone away... just a lot of work and travelling (let's see, for the past 2+ weeks - Bremen/Bremerhaven, Normandy twice, Antwerp, Amsterdam, London (yesterday, for work - I was just back in time for the rather spectacular fireworks of the evening)

I'm still likely to be mostly absent for this week and next, for more work, but hopefully with spectacular news after that.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Has a birthday today, which he planned to spike traffic on a dead night. Spies report he is taking a bottle or more of Rötkäppchen to some park in Berlin.

Pas auf Berlin!

(hey buddy, i wish you what.)

Skennah Kowa

Europe Should Hope Obama Fails
The continent has been free riding on the strength of U.S. capitalism.

It's clear by now that President Barack Obama wants to turn the United States into something more like Germany or Belgium -- a "social democracy" in which redistribution ("spread the wealth around," as Mr. Obama explained to Joe the Plumber during the campaign) is an expanding government's main concern.

Europe, for its part, has reciprocated our president's apparent love of their system by treating him like a messiah. He is the man, they sense, who will finally make good on George H.W. Bush's famous promise in 1988 to make America a "kinder and gentler nation."

Alas, this mutual love is self-defeating. That's because Mr. Obama will doom the low-growth, weak-defense European model to the extent he gets the U.S. to emulate it.

Consider some basic facts: Europe has been riding on our economic coattails and sheltering under our defense umbrella since the end of World War II nearly 65 years ago. Our markets have been open to European goods, and our strong currency and relative affluence -- the product of our much-maligned free-market economic model -- have provided Europe with a ready buyer. (Question: How worried were French wine-makers about Americans boycotting French wines in 2003? Answer: très worried.)

While providing a huge market for Europe's goods, we've also substantially relieved the European powers of the burden of defending themselves. Yes, France has an aircraft carrier and a nuclear force de frappe, but it's not really capable of projecting significant force around the world anymore. Germany, the world's third-largest economy, has a vestigial high-seas fleet and a modest air force. Even the Royal Navy is a shadow of its former self. "The U.S. last year spent about 44% more on defense than all other NATO members combined," Robert Wall recently noted in Aviation Week.

By assuming Europe's defense the U.S. has, in effect, allowed it the luxury of extremely expensive and ultimately unsustainable social-welfarism.

The great irony here is that the European model American leftists envy couldn't survive without its despised cowboy counterparty. If the U.S. economy weakens because of increased regulation, heavy-handed unionization, and higher taxes and debt to support an expensive social agenda -- all policies Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress are pushing hard -- it will hurt Europe.

The market for Europe's exports will shrink, and the U.S. will be less able to defend Europe. Europe is also facing a demographic cataclysm in the near future because of low birth rates (under 1.3 children per woman in the EU, well below the 2.1 necessary to maintain the population). Thus Europe will be increasingly unable to sustain its current welfare state, the very model that the left in the United States adores.

Mr. Durstewitz is co-author of "Younger Than That Now -- A Shared Passage From the Sixties" (Bantam, 2001).

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

July 14th Plaza terrace, Nice:

"Let them eat cake":

"Why I love France" thread (aka, "Happy Bastille Day")
by: leftake

In this thread, please go ahead and list all the reasons you love France, French food, French wine, French fries, whatever.

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=123729345519&h=-SuYj&u=6oKPM&ref=nf

paris painter:

"what's not to love? a country where the government is afraid of the people and not the other way around. a country where people will demonstrate at a drop of a hand and actually get results. a place where people mind their own business. a country where you get to kiss total strangers on the cheeks.a country with 35 hr work weeks ... Read moreand 9 weeks vacation means that more people can have jobs. a country where the arts are appreciated and where being an artist is considered "a real job". a country with medical coverage for everyone and great doctors. a place where quality still wins over quantity and a beautiful land with accordions, baguettes, 867 kinds of cheeses, the best wine in the world,a beautiful musical language,yummy pastries, incredible architecture, etc. and their very own gestures."

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

A single mother I know went into a coma as she gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. On waking from the coma she was worried as to the names her rather dense brother might have chosen on her behalf.

'What did you call the girl?' she asked. 'Denise', he replied.

Heaving a huge sigh of relief that it was a 'normal' name, she asked what he had called the boy. 'De nephew', he replied.

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith