Betrayal

You deserve to be treated with respect by everyone, including yourself.

You have the right to end conversations and relationships with people who are hurtful and mean-spirited.

You HAVE to ask for or even demand what you need from others.

You cannot let people abuse your goodwill even one time. That is an invitation for them to continue.

You should avoid negative people with poisonous personalities.

You are capable and strong and you don’t need anyone else to tell you this; it just is.

You should make others re-earn your trust if they have broken it; it is not a gift you should give away easily.

You never, ever, ever have to validate your feelings or let someone tell you these feelings are unjustified.

You are responsible for your words and your actions, but you have no responsibility for the choices that others make.

You should trust your instincts and live accordingly.

You would be unwise to live in an idealistic world without recognizing reality.

You must love yourself before you can expect others to love you.

You can only be worth what you think you are worth; think of yourself as a diamond instead of a lump of coal!

From Watching Clouds:
http://watchingclouds.com/


My pet theory, which no one else seems to agree with, is that John Howard would have been better off being a true conservative; a true small government man who kept the ever spreading tentacles of government out of our lives. Instead during the eleven years of the Howard government bureaucrats came to control virtually everything we do. First there was the GST, which meant that not a single transaction of money doesn't pass without the government being there taking their slice. Then there was the endless and often insulting electoral bribes, which ultimately spread the power of Centrelink into the homes of almost every single Australian. You have to earn well over $100,000 - that is be in the top two per cent of incomes - in order not to be able to claim a government benefit for your children. There at birth, there at death. The so- called baby bonus - and I've never met a single conservative who thinks it is a good idea - has now risen to $5,000. That means that in effect I'm working so someone else can have a baby - and I really wish most of them wouldn't. There are reportedly now towns in Australia where every single girl under 18 is pregnant; and to these uneducated country kids $5,000 seems like an absolute fortune.

We were all betrayed; anyone who for a moment or for a lifetime put their faith in the Liberal Party of Australia. Everything went backwards; we lost control of our own lives. The gap between the average working wage and the fat cat public servants increased out of all reason; so that now there's barely a public servant in the country who doesn't earn at least twice the average wage. The legal caste are warmly blessed with wages six seven eight or even more times the average wage; not to mention the fabulous junkets they spend their lives on. I am free to do as I want, the voice said, but freedom in this country was very tight; and most people struggle financially. It was all over. The cruel indifference they had dispplayed came back to bite them; and they were tossed most emphatically out of government. Now the left is triumphant; and smug. All Rudd has to do is keep control of his own restive, preening, power mad crowd and he will survive. And the conservatives, the liberals, will be out of power for a very long time.

Not that I've ever been a great forecaster of political events in Australia. I remember firmly predicting that it would be the Kim and Cheryl show, as in Kim Beazley and Cheryl Kernot, and Howard would exit as the most unpopular prime minister in Australian history around the time of the introduction of the GST. Instead he want on to serve for more than 11 years, making him the second longest serving prime minister in Australian history while Kim and Cheryl are long gone. But the Liberals are now in a mess right across the country. The most senior liberal in Australia is the mayor of Brisbane; who's often described in insulting terms by other Liberals. They lied and lied and lied; that's what got me. The GST was meant to solve the funding problems. It did nothing of the kind. An extra $39 billion they ripped off us all last year and no one can see any benefit for it whatsoever. Instead Howard poured that money directly and without controls into the Labor states; and it promptly vanished in increased public service salaries. Nothing went to the people. Nothing.

The betrayals are endless and deep. I'm fine, I'm fine, don't worry, Howard is reported to have said as his staff were packing up their offices. That's all very well, but what about us, we've all just lost our jobs, the informant said. If you were a separated dad and believed naively the governments promises to reform family law and child support, you were completely dudded. If you were anti the high levels of immigration in this country and the social dislocation it is causing, people naively thought Howard was their man. Instead he increased the rates of immigration yet further; and there are whole crowded chaotic suburbs in Sydney now where half the population was born somehwere else and the remnant anglo host population lives out their lives behind locked doors or long ago fled to the country. If you thought the public service was out of control and needed to be trimmed back, and thought Howard as a conservative would stand up to the bureaucracy, you were wrong.

And if you thought goivernment institutions had a clear and piercing oversight, that they were fiercely and efficiently doing the jobs they were set up to do, you were sadly let down. The bureaucracy had a field day while lazy and inept hands-off-the-wheel politicians looked the other way. There are a host of well paid bureaucrats whose sole job role is to manage other bureaucrats; and any productivity or interaction with the real world is purely accidental. And the result is a country which should have been great but isn't. The result is a country which once knew pride and now knows only envy; as the toiling masses, their voices unrecognised and unrepresented, continue to be completely ignored. Australia has become ever more grotesquely over-governed, local, state and federal bureaucracies feeding off the toil of fewer and fewer people. It has to stop. It is unsustainable. If things do not change, and that looks highly unlikely, the deepening misery that is our mainstream culture will ultimately implode, or explode. And the luvvies will once more wring their preening hands over the violence and unreasonableness of the common man. And all will be lost, a once great country, a once great future, a once great place down the drain.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/02/tossup_between.html

A new poll out this afternoon shows that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are statistically tied among likely Democratic voters heading into Tuesday's primary in Massachusetts.

On the Republican side, former Bay State governor holds a sizable lead over John McCain, according to the 7News/Suffolk University survey. However, 27 percent of Democratic voters and 24 percent of Republican voters say they may change their minds before Tuesday.

Obama has 46 percent to Clinton's 44 percent, while 7 percent of Democratic and independent voters likely to vote in the Democratic primary were undecided.

The endorsement last week by Senator Edward M. Kennedy for Obama is a key factor. Asked to size up the impact of three endorsements for Obama and Clinton, 43 percent of Democratic respondents cited Kennedy's endorsement as the most influential, followed by Bill Clinton's of his wife (23 percent) and Oprah Winfrey's of Obama (9 percent).

"The Bay State's senior senator Ted Kennedy clearly has more clout in Massachusetts than the popular former president, Bill Clinton," said David Paleologos, director of the Political Research Center at Suffolk University. "Add to that the backing of Senator Kerry and Governor Patrick, with the resonant message of change as well as the Kennedy call for 'a new generation of leadership' and you have the reason why what was once Clinton country has become an Obama opportunity – and a political choice between the nostalgic and the new."


http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL1880448320080204


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - American troops accidentally killed nine Iraqi civilians while hunting down al Qaeda militants, the U.S. military admitted on Monday, the latest in a series of mistakes in which innocent Iraqis have died.

The deaths south of Baghdad on Saturday, which Iraqi police said were caused by a helicopter air strike, were announced as Iraq said it would soon begin talks with U.S. officials on an agreement covering the role of U.S. forces after a U.N. Security Council mandate expires at the end of 2008.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2008/02/03/2003400082

AP, BAGHDAD
Sunday, Feb 03, 2008.

Militants strapped a pair of mentally retarded women with explosives and blew them up by remote control in two pet bazaars on Friday, killing at least 91 people in the deadliest day since Washington began pouring extra troops into the capital last spring.

Brigadier General Qassim al-Moussawi, Iraq's chief military spokesman in Baghdad, said the women had Down syndrome and may not have known they were on a suicide mission.

The tactic would support US claims that al-Qaeda in Iraq may be increasingly desperate and running short of able-bodied men willing or available for such missions.

As of early yesterday, Iraqi officials were unable to break down the higher death toll in the two bombings. The police and interior ministry officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said the bombings showed that a resilient al-Qaeda has "found a different, deadly way" to try to destabilize Iraq.

"There is nothing they won't do if they think it will work in creating carnage and the political fallout that comes from that," he said in an interview at the US State Department.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the bombing in Iraq proved al-Qaeda was "the most brutal and bankrupt of movements" and would strengthen Iraqi resolve to reject terrorism.

Earlier, officials had said the first bomber was detonated about 10:20am in the central al-Ghazl market.

Four police and hospital officials said at least 46 people were killed and more than 100 people were wounded.

Local police said the woman wearing the bomb sold cream in the mornings at the market and was known to locals as "the crazy lady."

The weekly pet bazaar had been bombed several times during the war; but with violence declining in the capital, the market had regained popularity as a shopping district and place to stroll on Fridays, the Muslim day of prayer.

But this Friday offered a scene of carnage straight out of the worst days of the conflict. Firefighters scooped up debris scattered among pools of blood, clothing and pigeon carcasses.

The attacks were the latest in a series of violent incidents that frayed a gossamer of Iraqi confidence in the permanence of recent security gains.