Man’s best friend – and man – assaulted by dam kangaroo:
A ROGUE kangaroo put a Victoria man in hospital after he tried to stop it from drowning his dog in a farm dam.
Chris Rickard, 49, of Arthurs Creek, sustained deep cuts to his abdomen and face after being attacked by the kangaroo as he tried to free his dog, which was being held underwater by the animal.
That would be a dam kangaroo, a particularly difficult subspecies. Spraying is not generally effective. Possibly using the correct bait in traps would work, however.
Edward Niedermeyer reveals the truth about the surprise announcement that General Motors would “repay” loans from the American taxpayers – even as it reported a huge loss for the third quarter. It seems that the “repayment” is anything but in reality:
For starters, $6.7 billion doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of what G.M. actually owes us. Over the past 12 months, the Treasury has given it some $52 billion in the form of cash, loans and the purchase of that 60 percent of the company’s post-bankruptcy equity. And that number fails to take into account the two bailouts of G.M.’s former lending arm, GMAC, or the $3 billion spent on the “cash for clunkers program,” which doubtless kept the company from posting even deeper losses.
Moreover, G.M. is not, in the strictest sense, paying back taxpayers at all. Rather, it is refunding $6.7 billion of an $18 billion escrow account that was given to it by the government when it emerged from bankruptcy. The rest of that account will be used to cover fourth-quarter losses (including $2.8 billion pledged for the rescue of G.M.’s major parts supplier, Delphi), repay loans from the Canadian government, and possibly prop up the automaker’s shaky European operations. That escrow account is due to expire in June, at which time G.M. will repay what remains of the $6.7 billion from this week’s pledge — and then pocket the estimated $5.6 billion remainder.
There’s much more, go read it all.
My own opinion is that GM will not, in the long run, survive at all. Chrysler is likely to fold even sooner. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I know I will not personally ever buy a vehicle from either company. I rather suspect that a lot of others feel the same way, judging from recent sales figures.
American taxpayers got taken for a ride on the GM and Chrysler bailouts by the Wizard of O and his munchkin minions – those companies are going to pay dearly for that as the taxpayers wake up to that fact.
When even the Germans are tired of Barack Obama and are comparing the Wizard of O to Jimmy Carter, one begins to suspect that the US has a real problem on its hands.
There are many indications that the man in charge at the White House will take a tougher stance in the future. Obama’s advisors fear a comparison with former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, even more than with Bush. Prominent Republicans have already tried to liken Obama to the humanitarian from Georgia, who lost in his bid to win a second term, because voters felt that he was too soft. “Carter tried weakness and the world got tougher and tougher because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators, when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead,” Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker in the House of Representatives, recently said. And then he added: “This does look a lot like Jimmy Carter.”
And the French talking tougher than the won is humiliating.
The Spiegel article makes it abundantly clear that Obama’s Excellent Asian Adventure was completely useless and that it almost certainly cost America face in the region.
Today, the MSM is trumpeting the rise in home sales, trying to ignore that those homes sold because of a soon-to-expire tax credit (since extended) and the fact that sales prices tumbled hard. This is supposed to hint that the economy has turned the corner and that those “green shoots” are back. Happy days are here again, right?
Well, not exactly. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago threw a huge bucket of water on the economic flare up today, in a story that the American press is not covering all that much as far as I can tell. Reuters, however, twigged to it.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago said on Monday its gauge of the national economy fell further into negative territory in October, in a report that suggested the economic recovery could be in trouble.
Trouble is an understatement. The Chicago Fed actually mentions the “R” word in their press release:
When the CFNAI-MA3 value moves below –0.70 following a period of economic expansion, there is an increasing likelihood that a recession has begun.
The economy is not recovering. In fact, this indicates the exact opposite. Other data also indicates that there is a problem. Gold is rising to all time record highs while the dollar continues it’s slide.
Yes, some homes sold at greatly deflated prices, everything else is looking rather more bleak.
Animals | Gaius November 23, 2009 | 
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