Warning To British Women

Lying about your age could send you to jail.

AN aspiring model who shaved eight years off her age in a bid to make it big in America narrowly escaped jail today.

Brit Saskia Porter, then 35, was convinced she had to recapture her late 20s at least on paper if the Hollywood job offer she had received was to going to become a signed contract.

Excited by the prospect it might also lead to presenting a television show, she lost little time forging her birth certificate and changing 1971 into 1979.

Porter then used it to get a replacement passport, telling the authorities her dog had dined on her old one, London’s Southwark Crown Court heard.

Yes, what she did is both criminal and foolish - she is not my cup of tea, but she is by no means hard to look at. Besides, if she really was worried about her age, she should have said that she was 50 or so - then she would have impressed the producers with how young she looked. (By the way, my wife looked at her picture and said: "She's 36?" Porter was worried about nothing.)

Theme Opinions

Well, I've gone mucking about with the theme here at the Crabitat again. Any feedback on usability, functionality or on the format itself would be appreciated.

The Seasonal Principles Of Obama

Charles Krauthammer chronicles the dizzying reversals Barack Obama has made recently. Obama has abandoned many of the left-leaning "principles" he used to woo the hard left of the Democratic party. And he has only just begun:

In last week's column, I thought I had thoroughly chronicled Obama's brazen reversals of position and abandonment of principles — on public financing of campaigns, on NAFTA, on telecom immunity for post-Sept. 11 wiretaps, on unconditional talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — as he moved to the center for the general election campaign. I misjudged him. He was just getting started.

Last week, when the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, Obama immediately declared that he agreed with the decision. This is after his campaign explicitly told the Chicago Tribune last November that he believes the D.C. gun ban is constitutional.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton explains the inexplicable by calling the November — i.e., the primary season — statement "inartful." Which suggests a first entry in the Obamaworld dictionary — "Inartful: clear and straightforward, lacking the artistry that allows subsequent self-refutation and denial."

Obama's seasonally adjusted principles are beginning to pile up: NAFTA, campaign finance reform, warrantless wiretaps, flag pins, gun control. What's left?

Iraq. The reversal is coming, and soon.

You thought Kerry was a flip-flopper? How disappointed the left must be, their idol has clay feet after all.

Er, Right Again, Paul

Paul Krugman starts his latest column this way:

Al Gore never claimed that he invented the Internet. Howard Dean didn’t scream. Hillary Clinton didn’t say she was staying in the race because Barack Obama might be assassinated. And Wesley Clark didn’t impugn John McCain’s military service.

Let's just look at the first two, shall we? Actually, Gore never did use the word "invent" about the internet. That's quite true. However, what he did actually say to Wolf Blitzer of CNN, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.", amounts to the same thing. So Krugman is partially correct, but not in the way he meant it. Dictionary.com lists the following as synonyms for create:

Main Entry:   create
Part of Speech:   verb
Synonyms:   beget, build, cause, compose, conceive, concoct, design, establish, fabricate, fashion, form, found, generate, imagine, invent, make, mold, originate, plan, procreate, reproduce, shape, start

On the second item, that Screamin' Howie never screamed, well, you can believe an agenda-driven columnist from the New York Times or your own eyes:

We report, you laugh at Krugman.

Wonder Why Food Prices Are Skyrocketing?

I have pointed out for some time now that so-called biofuels are an environmental and economic disaster. Now The Guardian, of all places, reports on a leaked report they have obtained. The report, from the World Bank, says that the biofuels craze has driven the cost of food up by 75%.

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

"It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House," said one yesterday.

It isn't the White House, really. It is Congress and European governments that have driven this madness. (No, I am not letting the White House off the hook, either.) Biofuels are nothing more than a grossly inefficient energy transfer scheme - and a way for vested interests to make huge profits off the backs of the people.

There have been many voices raised against the insanity of biofuels, but Europe and the United States keep blindly riding the biofuel bandwagon.

"Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.

Speculators and special interests are making things worse. It has never been easier to rape the planet than it is today. Just say you're "saving the planet" and you have a license to destroy. The human cost of biofuels is too high. It is time to stop this madness.