Idiot Government Prudes...

Australian "businesses will face fines of up to $5000 for displaying a "poster, pamphlet or other printed material" for films classified R18+".

That means a poster for Mad Max, for just one example.

Uh...if the government tried that crap here, I think I'd simply put a poster or three up in my home's front window, and then tell them to fuck off and come and get me.

What is seen & what is not seen

here's the BIG print...

Headline: Obama: ‘We want our money back’

In earlier remarks prepared for the appearance, Obama said he was determined that every dollar spent from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to rescue Wall Street firms, auto companies and mortgage holders is either repaid or paid for in some fashion.

"My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are owed," Obama said in his prepared remarks. "My determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people who have not been made whole, and who continue to face real hardship in this recession."

The president is proposing a levy of 15 basis points, or 0.15 percent, on the liabilities of large financial institutions. The tax, which officials are calling a "financial crisis responsibility fee," would apply only to financial companies with assets of more than $50 billion.

Here's the small print:

Those firms — estimated to amount to about 50 institutions — would have to pay the fee even though many did not accept any taxpayer assistance and most others already paid back what the government lent to them.

That's not payback -- that's pure theft. It's outright stealing.

Pay attention all you small-d democrats...

Daniel Gross, in SLATE, remarking on the comments of China's Xu Kuangdi, "a veteran apparatchik, engineer, manager, and leader...mayor of Shanghai from 1995 through 2001, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Sciences"...Mr Xu was explaining why democracy doesn't work:

Democracy promotes the sort of arguing that hinders growth. The performance of other Asian countries seemed to have suffered when fractious democracies emerged from authoritarian or military rule. Xu added a new one: It would promote unhealthy class warfare. If elections were to be held in a large geographical area where gaps between the rich and poor are wide, and in which people have different educational backgrounds, "it might cause turbulences to society," he said. "If somebody just went out in the street and shouted, 'I will divide the property of rich people into poor people,' I think he would be elected. But it is useless, as parity will not solve the problem of economic development."

Mr Xu is, of course, correct.

Now, if leaders in China fer cryin' out loud have realized that "parity will not solve the problem of economic development", then even the "Marxists" must now know that the whole egalitarian-collectivist argument is dead, and that that whole body of theory doesn't work. And they've now also realized that democracy is nothing better or different than "two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner".

That leaves only individualism (read: freedom) or totalitarianism.

And The West isn't exactly being the champion of individualism these days, what with Mr Obama (and he only for example and not just to single him out) doing his level best to emulate and put in place the worst of the old democratic-collectivist thinking.

I love this headline.

I hope he finds some.

LINK

Well, no kidding...

U.S. loan program may have made things worse

Not "may have". Did.

But Mr Obama bought a lot of votes with that money.