Next best thing:

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

Land-based only, obviously.

paul spencer

Chiemgauer is the name of a regional local currency started in 2003 in Prien am Chiemsee, Bavaria, Germany. It is named after the Chiemgau, a region around the Chiemsee. The Chiemgauer program is intended to promote local commerce.^[1] The Chiemgauer operates with a fixed exchange rate: 1 Chiemgauer = €1.^[1]

Independent - Equalities minister: no reason to delay gay marriage

The Conservative cabinet minister who was handed responsibility for gay marriage legislation in the reshuffle today dashes the hopes of religious groups and the Tory right that the Government is preparing to delay or shelve its proposals.

Writing about her views on the subject for the first time on Independent Voices the Culture Secretary Maria Miller says she believes gay marriage must be legalised to preserve Britain's "proud history of freedom and fairness" and ensure that the institution remains relevant in the 21st century.

Giving the move her unequivocal backing she insists that safeguards are in place to respect religious freedoms but adds that that state must not stand in the way of opening up civil marriage to all.

Her intervention will be a blow to large numbers of Conservative MPs and peers who vehemently oppose the change and hoped that her appointment in the reshuffle as equalities minister in place of the Liberal Democrat Lynne Featherstone was a signal that the Government was preparing to change its mind and delay the plan.

pisspoor shifty apology, have seen teachers saying that they've been in reciept of some truly awful excuses and this they say outstrips them all.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Funny how the talking point right leaning media has been part of the redefinition of the word with its double back flip class warfare redirection messaging. The tacit nod to the less well off being rightfully pissed off at the klepto rich getting far more for what they do than everyone else... so redirecting that widespread latent envy and disgust from the stupidly rich who deserve that ire and re-aiming at enemies of the wealthy - "elites" Ivy league graduates (who are not Republican).. professors or others the right want to demonize... Very effective meme-war gambit that uses a redefinition to immunize those who deserve public ire and relabel actual elites with a connotation that rightfully belongs to the looters and opportunists who are effectively being given a magic pass by the idea peddlers via this word game.

The new meaning of "Elite": people allegedly "given" their status... but not the rich we all want to be like; no, no, now it is minorities pampered and awarded degrees and given jobs just for being a minority... a very deft inversion of the word elite... from being an accolade for those who have earned their status by hard work and expanding and honing their talents it denies all that and pretends they are some sort of alternate form of undeserving aristocracy while the actual wealthy entitlement class gets given a Teflon coating.

On September 25 there is a call to surround the Spanish parliament. There has been a fence ready to go up for two months, and it does whenever there's a demonstration in Madrid.

I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS

Europe is living through a strange and insidious era, according to the Greek writer Petros Markaris: the only ones who are speaking of the crises rocking the continent are the economists and central bankers.

The upshot is that it's the single currency that is becoming the essence of the Union - not an instrument, but its raison d'être, its sole purpose. The unity of the EU, Markaris writes, has been supplanted by the unity of the eurozone. Today we live in a Europe where only politicians and economists have the floor. "This is why the debate is so superficial, like most of Europe's leaders, and one-dimensional, like the traditional discourse of economists." Lacking a worldview, Europe has interests but no passions, and can be divided only into noble creditors and plebeian debtors. "We are headed," he says, "towards a European civil war mentality."

...

The Arab winter has revealed us for what we are: a community with neither ideas nor resources, and lacking a common government to tackle the global crisis. This explains our silence, or the inane babble of European representatives. It's difficult to say what Catherine Ashton, draped in the pompous title of High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union, is there for.

Amid the marches and arrests during the Occupy anniversary in New York Monday, it was easy to miss the launch of a new and serious campaign. Strike Debt, one of the more interesting Occupy offshoots, aims to bring debtors together to build a network and explore ways to resist life in debt. Underpinning the project is the radical aim of building towards collective acts of debt refusal.

Strike Debt grew out of a series of assemblies in New York's Washington Square Park where individuals would share stories about struggling with crushing debt -- be it student, medical, housing or credit cards. Just four months later, in time for the Occuversary, an anonymous collective from Strike Debt and Occupy have concrete projects underway. On the weekend, 5,000 hard copies of a text, the Debt Resistor's Operation Manual, were handed out in New York. The 100-plus page booklet offers practical advice to defaulters and those struggling in debt. The manual gives a plain language explanation of how various debt structures work -- including housing, student and credit card -- while detailing the debt system's history. It also offers tips on how to challenge debt collectors, errors on credit ratings, and bankruptcy laws.

"The manual is half survivor guide, half exposé of the lending industry," according to a release from Strike Debt, which continues, "the manual contains a wealth of information and advice, much of it from insiders within the lending industry." Indeed, one of the text's anonymous contributors told Salon that a former employee of a payday loan company sent information to the manual on how to default safely, explaining that it is not worth paying back payday loans.

Despite prodigious fund raising all year, the Romney campaign ran out of cash this summer and had to borrow $20 million from a bank to keep going. Part of the problem is that by law campaigns must separate money donated for the primaries from money donated for the general election. During the summer, the fund for the primaries was nearly empty but Romney was not allowed to use the general-election money until he was officially the Republican nominee, that is, after the convention. Getting the bank loan wasn't a problem since general-election money could be used as collateral.

The interesting thing about this story is the fact that despite the fact that Romney is personally worth about $250 million, he was unwilling to donate (or even loan) his campaign the needed $20 million. If you have just spent the last 5 years of your life campaigning for President and the race has 5 months to go, surely loaning your campaign a small fraction of your net worth seems like an obvious thing to do, but for whatever reason, Romney didn't do it. In 2008, he donated $40 million to his campaign.