Want To Make $200K a Year And Don't Mind Tight Places?

Then get your ass to the Australian outback where miners are so much in demand that salaries now average $100K a year. And if you're reliable and get some experience, you can eventually make over $1000 a day.

The downside: It's tough work and you live in a small dusty town with the nearest bar and brothel sometimes over ten miles away.

James Dinnison: the 25-year-old high-school dropout from Western Australia makes $200,000 a year running drills in underground mines to extract gold and other minerals.

The heavily tattooed Mr. Dinnison, who started in the mines seven years ago earning $100,000, owns a sky-blue 2009 Chevy Ute, which cost $55,000 before a $16,000 engine enhancement, and a $44,000 custom motorcycle. The price tag on his chihuahua, Dexter, which yaps at his feet: $1,200.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:42 PM | Comments (679)
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Thank God they got this raving religious lunatic off the street.

This Tea Partier is the sneakiest, most dangerous kind of Tea Partier -- the kind that "spends time blending in with Occupy Wall Street."

Nkrumah Tinsley, 29, was busted after cops saw his tirade at Zuccotti online, where he was recorded on video claiming he would torch the city during ThursdayÂ’s mass protest.

“On the 17th [of Nov.\], we’re going to burn New York City to the f---ing ground,” an angry Tinsley told a crowd of demonstrators in the video posted on Tuesday.

“In a few days, you’re going to see what a Molotov coctail can do to Macy’s.”

Below, f-bomb warnings, his Tea Party Call to Arms.
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Posted by: Ace at 03:48 PM | Comments (418)
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I watched last night's General Assembly meeting at Zuccotti Park through a live stream and it was every bit as creepy and bizarre as you would expect. The first order of business was to report that there was a "point of process" regarding people in the back being unable to hear, so they decided to repeat everything twice instead of once. This was actually quite helpful for note-taking, believe it or not.

The official meeting began by stressing the importance of "harvesting ideas":

• Write your ideas down and we will collect. We need to be building consensus and consensus takes time.

On the police presence:

• Not being allowed to go to the bathroom in the park is a violation of civil rights and qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment.
• We need to march on the police headquarters tonight after GA to protest police walking by while women relieve themselves and are exposed. This is a sexual assault.

On the occupation:

• Since we can't sleep here we should occupy in shifts.
• NY residents should let out-of-town occupiers sleep at their apartments.
• Occupy everywhere -- empty stadiums, airports, bus depots.

March tonight (they never got around to this):

• March in solidarity for everyone that got f**ked up last night and lost everything.

The November 17th event:

We are still planning the Nov 17 event. Our goals include:
• Shut down the NYSE.
• Shut down the subways.
• General strike.
• Those who can't participate, bring it up to coworkers at your office.
• Bring everyone you know to occupy and shut it all down.

Their long term plans:

• Establish a permanent place outside the park for national organization.
• Become an official non-profit that would remain radical.
• We need to start our own party called "The Occupy Party"

What strikes me about this whole "movement" is how similar it is to Kindergarten. I'm so proud of everyone. You are all doing an outstanding job. We're making such amazing progress. They chant the same tired four or five slogans over and over and repeat everything everyone else says. At around 11PM, they made an announcement that everyone would have to "obey the rules and be quiet so we will be allowed to stay." It reminded me of those times your parents would let you stay up later than your normal bedtime if you agreed to behave and be quiet so you wouldn't disrupt their dinner party.

Ace mentioned yesterday that I was worried about what will happen tomorrow. While the park was mostly empty last night, they still appear to be planning a major event for all day tomorrow. Had Bloomberg cleared the park a week ago, this probably would have fizzled out. Now, they're angry and itching for a fight.

Here is what OWS officially has planned for tomorrow. The tone on their websites is much more up-twinkly benign occupation talk, but there were multiple calls to "shut down" this or that and to "confront the fascist police forces" in the streets during the assembly (check out the #N17 hash for more). That message appears to be resonating. Like he says, they want to "burn the city to the ground". When Occupy Wall Street started many on the right were warning Democrats to avoid encouraging or embracing it, not because it was going to end up being a political liability to them, but because it had the potential to spiral out of control. Democrat mayors and politicians are attempting to dial it back, but it may be too late. Within 24 hours, I think we'll have our answer.
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Posted by: JohnE. at 03:20 PM | Comments (151)
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Community-Based Reality.

This is what decadence looks like. When a political party (and yes, the media is the opposite political party; the Democrats are simply the members of the party with few enough affairs and drug busts to run for office) simply cannot address the problems within it, but pretend them away, that's decadence, and that's decline.

As the ship sinks slowly into the icy water, they gayly sing songs and flirt with each other and crowd out the bad thoughts with forced revelry.

I haven't read it in some time (and may correct that tonight), but don't the revelers in Masque of the Red Death try their party-hardiest to ignore the fact that the Red Masked Stranger is moving through their ball and killing them?

Posted by: Ace at 02:40 PM | Comments (84)
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The #Occupy movement has failed (except for felony shooters). Please see below the fold for the last word in Occupy failure. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:05 PM | Comments (118)
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So? It's a green company. And he's a Kennedy. From Big Government:

President John F. KennedyÂ’s nephew, Robert Kennedy, Jr., netted a $1.4 billion bailout for his company, BrightSource, through a loan guarantee issued by a former employee-turned Department of Energy official.

. . .

Wagle was one of the principals in KennedyÂ’s firm who raised money for Barack ObamaÂ’s 2008 presidential campaign. When Obama won the White House, Wagle was installed at the Department of Energy (DOE), advising on energy grants.

From an objective vantage point, investing taxpayer monies in BrightSource was a risky proposition at the time. In 2010, BrightSource, whose largest shareholder is KennedyÂ’s VantagePoint Partners, was up to its eyes in $1.8 billion of debt obligations and had lost $71.6 million on its paltry $13.5 million of revenue.

We guaranteed loans for an ailing company, and a former employee of Kennedy helped decide whether BrightSource got the money. Sweet.

Obama supporter: It's good work if you can get it.

Follow me on Twitter.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 01:24 PM | Comments (112)
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At about 3:30 Eastern, the United States debt topped $15 Trillion dollars. From ABC:

The deficit has ballooned to nearly $48,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. This year alone, the U.S. will spend $1.3 trillion more than it takes in.

The debt has expanded at an alarming pace, from $7.5 trillion in 2004 and $5.6 trillion in 2000. At the current rate, Debtclock.org reckons that the debt will top $23 trillion in 2015, though the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office puts the estimate at $17.6 trillion.

Back in August after a protracted fight, Congress voted to raised the national-debt ceiling by $2.7 trillion to $17 trillion, while requiring $2.7 trillion in deficit reduction by 2021.

Compared with other developed nations, the U.S. has a debt to GDP ratio of 85 percent, compared with Germany at 74 percent and Japan at a whopping 194 percent. World debt clocks can be found here.

Real time debt numbers from USDebtClock.org. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 12:40 PM | Comments (156)
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Good afternoon, folks. As Ace runs an errand, I thought I'd toss something past you. And don't worry, it's not the usual marathon-length stuff I throw out.

Something interesting came across my desk in the past couple of days. It was an impressive entry-level rèsumè, with a bunch of big schools on it. Check this out…

B.A. in history with honors, Stanford University

Master of Philosophy in International Relations, Oxford

Master of Public Health, Columbia University

Currently pursuing a doctorate in public administration at NYU

What kind of gig do you suppose this person would be looking for?

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:10 PM | Comments (205)
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Due to a glitch in this poorly-drafted, ill-conceived campaign document.

This has been known for a while, but as ObamaCare comes closer to full implementation, it becomes more than theoretical.

The law encourages states to create health-insurance exchanges, but it permits Washington to create them if states decline. So far, only 17 states have passed legislation to create an exchange.

This is where the glitch comes in: ObamaCare authorizes premium assistance in state-run exchanges (Section 1311) but not federal ones (Section 1321). In other words, states that refuse to create an exchange can block much of ObamaCareÂ’s spending and practically force Congress to reopen the law for revisions.

Click on the link to read (or re-read) Obama's attempt to legislate as president-- the IRS is claiming it can, on its own power, re-write the law.

Time was we used to think laws had to be passed by Congress. Under Obama, not so much.

Thanks to Monty.

Posted by: Ace at 11:21 AM | Comments (120)
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I really think it's time for a second look at Perry. No, he's not perfect on ideology. But he's pretty good in most areas and very good in several (federalism, energy, taxes, regulations, business, social issues).

Yes, he's bad on immigration. Texas has long been different in its friendly relationship with Mexico (partly because a lot of real Texans were once real Mexicans).

But what are the odds that the Republican controlled House would push some kind of amnesty bill which a President Perry would then be at risk of signing?

Would you say that's a high probability? Or a very low one? I would say very low myself.

We don't have the perfect candidate we're looking for. He doesn't exist. People are thinking fondly of Tim Pawlenty now, whom they rejected previously as not seeming tough or presidential or charismatic. That's where we are -- in a state of Pawlenty Nostalgia.

The guy's bad at debates, true. But he did well in the last one, and the thing is, in interviews he seems in command of the facts and fluent. (Or as fluent as we've come to expect in a Republican candidate for President.)

And he does have that record. He has what are, for Obama, "bad facts" which are difficult to spin away. Perry's red state model produces jobs; Obama's blue state model does not. All the rhetoric and canned answers in the world are trumped by facts.

He's live-streaming an address in New Hampshire, but the sound doesn't seem to be working. It's working fine now. Some hitches in the video, but working fine. It's more of a Town hall, I think, a brief address and then questions. He's taking questions.

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Posted by: Ace at 10:39 AM | Comments (423)
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