Manifest Destiny

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When The Deal Goes Down

In the still of the night, in the world's ancient light
Where wisdom grows up in strife
My bewildering brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I'll be with you when the deal goes down

We eat and we drink, we feel and we think
Far down the street we stray
I laugh and I cry and I'm haunted by
Things I never meant nor wished to say
The midnight rain follows the train
We all wear the same thorny crown
Soul to soul, our shadows roll
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

Well, the moon gives light and it shines by night
When I scarcely feel the glow
We learn to live and then we forgive
O'r the road we're bound to go
More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours
That keep us so tightly bound
You come to my eyes like a vision from the skies
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

Well, I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard the deafening noise, I felt transient joys
I know they're not what they seem
In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain
You'll never see me frown
I owe my heart to you, and that's sayin' it true
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

Words and music by Bob Dylan
Copyright 2006 Special Rider Music



It's Christmas. We're happy. Simple ceremonies are held amongst the survivors. There is no discordance. They know there are other survivors, sometimes in the morning they can see the smoke from their fires. Once or twice a traveller passes by, but they rarely stop for long. No one has seen the Hooray Henrys for weeks, and there is speculation that the crisis is over, that they too succumbed to disease and hard times, and no longer go out hunting for stragglers. Their brutality was nothing short of astonishing, and their absence is the subject of much comment and relief.

People who had been hiding in the remoter reaches of the dump become bolder, and on some evenings now there's several of them gathered around their fire, taking full advantage of the makeshift benches he has made. He has never been so happy or fulfilled, at least not for many years. The landscape remains wet, soaked occasionally with the poisonous yellow rains, but during those days they hide indoors, curled up in the blankets, waiting for the rain and the time to pass. He remembers to this day the arrogance of the bureaucrats who destroyed their world. They remember with astonishment the city as it once was, with restaurants crowding down the sides of roads and the foot paths filled with joy seekers.

Molly continues to astonish him. He continues to gather strength. In a different world, in a different time, he was a vessel for the voices of others, he wrote for the city newspaper and he possessed a certain amount of fame. That was before the alcohol ate his soul. And before the world as they knew it collapsed. Their humble little world, the world they created for themselves, was everything now. There wouldn't be any discordant acts. He wouldn't do anything to upset her. The muscles gathered along his limbs, and he could feel, he knew, he was putting on much needed weight.

They had seemed so optimistic, so high minded, so true, all those global warming types who had argued for a fundamental change in their economy, for carbon credits and taxes on polluters. They forgot that those very same polluters were the ones who provided jobs, who were the engine room of the economy. The raging types of hysteria and high minded nonsense, he could remember even now wondering at its ferocity, wondering at the arrogant certainty of the bureaucrats. They never entertained for a moment that they could be wrong.

The Labor government looks increasingly pathetic. Malcolm Turnbull has taken over the reins, like a man fulfilling his manifest destiny, and Rudd and Sleazy Albaneze did their best to fill up the airways yesterday, and just managed to look like an incompetent waste of space. Familiarity breeds contempt, as we saw with Howard. His endless, pointless rabbiting on at press conferences earned him in the end nothing but contempt. They were frozen in time, as if another story had been overlaid on top of them, a story they could not understand or grasp.

It was in the shallow realms, where he had lived most of his life, that he sought the answer to their current predicament. Each night, as they curled up amongst the old blankets they struggled so hard to keep dry, his mind flittered back across everything that had happened, wondering, sometimes, if something he could have written would have made any difference. Probably not. They were set on their path, they were going to reform the economy, and theirt socialist agenda was concealed behind high flying social justice rhetoric; and talk of saving the planet.

Saving the planet! These people were more interested in saving themselves. They had swallowed the anti-business anti-corporate culture anti-wealth messages of the ideologues, and were now their fervent messengers. Business bad, subsistence good. Industry bad, growing your own vegetables good. They wanted to turn the world into vegans. Taxing cows for burping and farting, which is essentially what an emissions trading scheme did, was a good way to do it. All was lost, lost, now as he curled up beside her, grey hair in his face, and waited for the dawn to come.




THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/iemma-clings-to-his-seat/2008/09/17/1221330929924.html

Iemma clings to his seat

REBA MEAGHER resigned from Parliament yesterday, four days after she said she was quitting politics. The byelection for her seat of Cabramatta will be held on October 18, the day voters in Ryde and Port Macquarie will also go to the polls.

But there is still doubt over whether Morris Iemma will resign from his Lakemba seat in time for the byelection to be held on the same day.

The delay is sparking speculation the former premier is putting off quitting Parliament for financial reasons.

Nick Lalich, the mayor of Fairfield, is favourite to contest Cabramatta for Labor, and Robert Furolo, the mayor of Canterbury, is tipped to run in Lakemba. The Liberal Party has yet to preselect its candidates but has indicated it will run in Cabramatta, Lakemba and Ryde, the seat of the former deputy premier, John Watkins, which it is expected to win.

In Port Macquarie, six independents have put their hands up to contest the seat vacated by the now federal MP Rob Oakeshott. At least four of them were councillors on Port Macquarie-Hastings council before it was sacked in February.

The Nationals believe their candidate, the former nurse Leslie Williams, can win the Mid-North Coast seat.

The Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell, yesterday urged Mr Iemma to tender his resignation immediately.

"This state suffered for three years because of Morris Iemma's inability to make a decision," he said. "His ongoing dithering looks as though it's going to cost state taxpayers and his community of Lakemba even more."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7808565

WASHINGTON/FRANKFURT/TOKYO, Sept 18 (Reuters) - The world's top central banks joined forces on Thursday to throw a multi-billion dollar lifeline to global markets in a dramatic effort to free up bank-to-bank lending frozen by upheavals on Wall Street.
In an unprecedented move, the U.S. Federal Reserve made an extra $180 billion available to other major central banks to lend to their local commercial banks in a bid to get U.S. dollars circulating in overnight and short-term money markets.
The latest move brought to $247 billion the total amount of dollars the Fed was providing to other central banks.
In addition, the U.S. central bank pumped an extra $105 billion dollars into the U.S. market, a record amount that built on already large operations earlier this week.
Other central banks, including the Bank of England and the European Central Bank, also lent out extra funds in their own currencies as markets reeled in the wake of a round of takeovers and mergers among top financial firms and renewed concerns about how the U.S. economy will weather the storm.
Investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc filed for bankruptcy on Monday, roiling markets, and the Fed announced an $85 billion bailout of insurer American International Group on Tuesday, worried a failure could wreak untold havoc worldwide.
U.S. President George W. Bush sought to calm unsettled nerves on Thursday, saying authorities would take further actions if needed. "The American people can be sure we will continue to act to strengthen and stabilize our financial markets and improve investor confidence," he said

http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/2288/218/

If you hear that a thousand scientists agree that global warming is due to mankind, chances are that only ten of that thousand actually know enough about the problem to cast any judgment on the issue at all," says Dr. Roy Spencer.

Spencer is former senior scientist of climate studies for NASA and now principal research scientist at University of Alabama. He is among an elite and eclectic collection of heavy-hitting experts who debunk the claims of climate alarmists and radical envirhttp://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=2371992372220763819onmentalists on a new DVD from Coral Ridge Ministries and Answers in Genesis.

Global Warming: A Scientific and Biblical Expose of Climate Change contends that the doomsday prophets of global warming ignore much science in their rush to perpetuate a misguided campaign. The DVD credits Dr. Timothy Ball, Canadian climatologist and retired University of Winnipeg professor, with the charge that "funding that supports the theory of man-made global warming has created an industry that has generated a truth of its own."

What's all the fuss about? People on both sides of the argument agree that global warming is real. To be more specific, between 1880 and 2008, the earth's temperature has risen by 1.2 degrees F. The debate has to do with the causes of this minute increase – is it the "fault" of man or the natural progression of the planet?

It is a politically charged debate with strong voices on both sides. Ball says he has received several death threats since he began speaking out on his views on climate change. He and his peers on the DVD agree that Christians should be concerned about the issue, but they should also be concerned about their approach to the issue.

Dr. E. Calvin Beisner says Christians run the risk of endorsing a policy based on faulty logic or politically correct misinformation. For example, he said radical environmentalists work to prohibit poor countries from building hydroelectric plants. Those very plants would add quality of life for the poor by providing electric power. Beisner is founder of the Cornwall Alliance for Environmental Stewardship.

"The radical environmentalist movement – one of the key problems they have is, in order to make some of the statements they make, they have to basically ignore science," says Dr. Jay Wile, nuclear chemist and author of more than 25 technical papers in scientific journals.

Al Gore's Oscar-winning video An Inconvenient Truth is arguably the centerpiece of the global warming gloom-and-doom squad, and the experts say the video just doesn't tell the truth. For example, Gore and friends ring the alarm bell by claiming that sea levels may rise as much as 20 feet in this century. The latest scientific predictions cite 12-16 inches as a realistic figure.

The most widely publicized theory regarding the cause of global warming is the politically correct view presented in Gore's film. It is that greenhouse gases produced by industry are the main culprit in global warming.

Spencer says, "One of the big misconceptions about greenhouse gases is that carbon dioxide is the main one and that's not true. The earth's natural greenhouse effect is mostly due to water vapor and clouds." In reality, about 95 percent of greenhouse gases are water vapor, and the input of carbon dioxide by humans into the atmosphere is minuscule.

"Carbon dioxide is presented as a pollutant," Ball says, "because [the radicals] want to show that it's the by-product of industry, which is what they are attacking. In fact, there is no life on earth without carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Plants need it to produce oxygen, and without that oxygen, there is no living thing on the planet. To push to lower carbon dioxide levels is, in fact, endangering the planet and life on it much more than any increase in carbon dioxide [would do]."

The Gore crowd leans heavily on the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which claims a consensus of 2,500 scientists who have judged man-made greenhouse gases guilty.

"There isn't a consensus," responds Mike Oard, atmospheric scientist retired from the National Weather Service. "There are a lot of meteorologists, atmospheric scientists and environmentalists that say, 'We believe the natural processes are a part of global warming.'"

You won't see these experts on the evening news, but their scholarship, authority and insight are every bit as valid as what Gore and company bring to the table. Global warming is a volatile issue in the political arena, a moral question in the Christian realm, and a worthwhile study on the personal level. This DVD helps bring some balance to the debate.




Garbage in the streets, Darlington, Sydney NSW Australia.