You read it here first

Blair's abdication is nigh. Gordon Brown has a couple of years till a general election. The 'Conservative' leader, David Cameron, is universally recognized is an opportunist, unprincipled, inexperienced, socially liberal scumbag of the most transparent sort, BUT he's had much better poll numbers than his predecessors and is given an easy ride by large elements of the MSM, especially the BBC which played a big part in getting him elected leader against the favourite, the socially somewhat conservative, David Davis. Cameron is openly ridiculed and despised in some influential quarters, so he may not win the general election despite a pervasive feeling of 'throw the bums out and give us some new bums.'

If Labour loses the next election, but more importantly the election after that, then the last 10 years will seem like a golden age to the hordes of feather-bedded pols and tax-funded nosy parkers who infest Great Britain. Then the issues of Iraq and friendliness with the Toxic Texan will have receded and Tony Blair will be remembered as the Undefeated Champion of 3 General Elections, by far the most successful leader Labour has ever had. He will still be youngish, vigourous and his reputation will have been resuscitated. He won elections and he had principles, quite Thatcheresque.

I therefore forecast that Blair will be drafted back to power within 7 years.

Lies, damned lies and carbon credits

FT
Europe furious at US climate call

A spokesman for Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor and current G8 president, said Germany’s stance that climate talks should take place within the United Nations was “non-negotiable”.

Guardian
Truth about Kyoto: huge profits, little carbon saved

The [Clean Development Mechanism] is one of two global markets which have been set up in the wake of the Kyoto climate summit in 1997. Both finally started work in January 2005. Although both were launched with the claim that they would reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, evidence collected by the Guardian suggests that thus far, both markets have earned fortunes for speculators and for some of the companies which produce most greenhouse gases and yet, through a combination of teething troubles and multiple forms of malpractice and possibly fraud, they have delivered little or no benefit for the environment.

While the [Clean Development Mechanism] is run under the umbrella of the UN, the second market is overseen by the European commission.

The Guardian investigation is rich with comic detail of the brazen scams. God knows how much the envirocrats are skimming off the top. It all comes from you and me, folks, so smile while you're being shafted by these smug, moralising, gormless, elitist, manipulative, anti-scientific, parasitic, 3-pool heating, Stalinist twerps.

Kudos to The Grauniad for giving scoffers like me the material to berate their soulmates.

You read it here second

A funny blog is The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs ("Dude, I invented the friggin iPod. Have you heard of it?"). At the recent, wonderful reminiscence orgy of Jobs and Bill Gates, Gates opened with the line "First I want to clarify, I'm not Fake Steve Jobs" and raised the blog's profile a couple of notches to 50,000 visitors the next day.

So who is Fake Steve if he's not Bill Gates? The answer may be here and I'm more than half convinced despite the denial.

Bought the T-shirt

The game was Wednesday's European Cup Final when AC Milan beat Liverpool 2-1. On the left is Kaka , the Brazilian now rated as the best player in the world. On the right is Steve Gerrard, the Liverpool captain, a great player and leader.

Kaka is an evangelical Christian. His lifestyle and virtues are impressive. I shudder at such people, but that may be the devil in me. I shudder more still at the religion of Atheism, so I'm glad that Kaka sticks it up 'em in this photo.

The Nominees

It's been obvious to me for a while that Romney will be the GOP nominee. All his trends are up, he wants it and he's competent. The more he's exposed, the more he impresses. He sounds like the real deal and seems to handle pressure well. Giuliani is the competition thanks to his tremendous name recognition, but he doesn't have the desire and his cloudiness on abortion, immigration and other social issues dilutes his image as a forceful executive. McCain is frankly despised. So that's that.

Gore is waiting to be drafted with loving kisses and adoration and that will happen when it becomes clear that both H.Clinton and Obama are unelectable versus Giuliani or Romney. In dangerous times executive achievement trumps vapid socialism and bs about gender or race. Gore has zero executive achievement, but sounds like he does, at least against the insubstantiality of Clinton and Obama. He's electable and the serious liberals want and need the Presidency very badly now. Ergo they'll draft him.

So Romney v Gore it will be. Note that Gore will have Steve Jobs on his side. That may be pretty influential with young voters. Jobs has earnt credibility in a way that the Hollywood airheads have not. It will be a formidable clash. I'd back Romney just because he's right on the issues and is good in debate plus he has the good humour to gore Gore.

UPDATE: Obama and Clinton give a 360 degree demo of their Presidential demeanour (if 'Presidential' means 'cockroach') by their vote on troop-funding and the manner of it:

Both Clinton and Obama had remained publicly uncommitted in the hours before the vote. Neither were on the Senate floor as voting began. Halfway through, Obama walked into the chamber and cast his "no" vote. Clinton did the same a few minutes later.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I realise I've ignored John Edwards, but the man's a clown's clown, yea he beclowns himself in new ways. Kerry's ex-campaign manager's repellent story that Edwards told Kerry twice the same story about lying (the right word) on his dead son's slab at the funeral home prefaced by saying that he had never told anyone else - that witnesses the ambulance chasing, tort lawyering, gay-queasy, silky phony's unelectability. The netroots may like his stances, but their motive is to capture the Party rather than win elections.

Don't forget to breathe

The secret of long life - play chess, eat porridge, laugh:

A man who bet £100 ($240) a decade ago that he would live to be 100 is preparing to pick up his £25,000 ($60,000) winnings.
So confident was bookmaker William Hill in 1997 that it gladly offered Alec Holden odds of 250/1.
But the retired engineer, born April 24, 1907, celebrates his century - to the bookies' dismay.
Mr Holden, from Epsom in Surrey, joked: “I've been very careful about what I've been doing in recent months. If I saw any hooded groups from William Hill standing in the street, I avoided them.”
“Forty birthday cards came for me this morning, including one from the Queen - in fact, I think I saw her delivering it on her bicycle this morning.”
The bet was placed on December 10 in 1997 when Mr Holden was 90.
Mr Holden, who has two sons aged 70 and 60, puts his longevity down to porridge for breakfast and “remembering to keep breathing”. He also plays chess every day..

An influential author

Apparently there's an 'influential author' who is no longer required to be studied for English degrees at most US colleges. Of the influential Ivy League colleges only Harvard considers this influential dead white male compulsory reading for a foundation in English. Well, it would be perfectly apt for this influential dead parrot. this passe' penman to be dropped from English courses altogether. He wrote about honour,duty,kingship,good,evil,the sense of tears in things and the sense of mirth in things; stuff which critical advances have revealed as mere semiotics. Brave new world.

Altogether elsewhere..

Campus shooting, Obama's ears, nappy-headed ho's, Reid's surrender, the Royal Navy playing ping-pong in Tehran; these are the foreground phantasmagoria. The plates are shifting for better or worse. Auden's The Fall Of Rome has a sense of these times:

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves...
Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend...
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

"It's over. America lost"

Harry Reid : "What is our aim? Defeat at all costs and in spite of all terrors; defeat, however long and hard the road may be, for without defeat there is no victory for the Democrats. Saddam's dead, we lost. Saddam's not around to buy nukes to deter Iranian nukes; we lost. His sons are dead, we lost. There's an elected government in Iraq; we lost. US casualties are tiny in relation to past wars and present stakes; we lost. Terrorism is being fought oceans away from America; we lost. Or rather you lost, he lost, they lost, America lost, we won. Oh and we support the troops. Bring those children home; they lost. Don't take this as a come-on to terrorists and Iran; we lost anyway. Well, America lost, the Democrats won. How dare you question my patriotism."

The Constitution of the United States, Art. III, defines treason against the United States to consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort. This offence is punished with death.

Aborting Roe v Wade

Outside the Supreme Court nobody in America sincerely argues that Roe v Wade is good law as opposed to a desired outcome. Not liberal lawyers, not Justice Blackmun's doting clerk, not Jane Roe, nobody. Shouldn't that lead to something apart from killing 4,000 foetuses each day ?

Blogging for history

The Swift Boat Veterans ads against John Kerry were devastating - short,sweet,direct,irrefutable. Liberal iconography represents the SBV's as discredited. It's a big lie, but liberals are effective as a swarm. One of them states the lie, another takes it as a given and you need a disciplined effort to assemble the refutation, which you doubt will be accepted since liberals do not argue in good faith to establish how things are. They argue in bad faith to establish that things are as they want them to seem to be. (We need new words for Conservative and Liberal..Realist and Fabulist? Neocon and Neoconman? Babyhugger and Babycrusher?)

John Hinderaker of Powerline has assembled an efficient refutation in a single post. It's short enough and long enough and relevant enough to show in one place the truth of the SBV campaign and to discredit the meme that it's been discredited. The LSM is a numerous, agile, motivated swarm. If they say black is white and swarm over the shades of gray for imputed inconsistencies in the idea that black is black, then it takes an accurate, elegant mind to shove the big lie back down their throats.