What do you call a woman who starts every sentence with "My husband..."?

What time is it, Mr Wolf?

"Make me president and I'll fake footage of a base on the moon" says Newt

From The Evening Standard:

White House hopeful Newt Gingrich today promised to fake footage of a permanent US base on the moon by 2020 if he beats Barack Obama to become president. The former House Speaker, front-runner to win the Republican ticket after his surprise win in South Carolina, also wants America to fake footage of a voyage to Mars.

On the campaign trail in Florida, where the next primary will be held on Tuesday, he said: "We want Americans to think boldly about conspiracy theories of the future. By the end of my second term, we will have the first almost-credible CGI of a permanent base on the moon and it will be American. We will have commercial near-earth activities that include cover-ups, hush money, unexplained suicides and dream manufacturing, because it is in our interest to acquire experience in trying to create the illusion of space travel. Hollywood clearly has a capacity that the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to matching."One small step for a cameraman, one giant leap for Obama's chances of re-election.

Nasa's film department recently suffered a brutal round of spending cuts and the plan will be strongly supported by the special FX community, which fought in vain to stop Mr Obama wielding the axe. Mr Gingrich, 68, said the advertising slots during any TV broadcasts would mean the project pays for itself - he would offer part of Nasa's PR budget as a prize to tempt commercial innovation and investment.

"I'm prepared to gamble the last prestige of the presidency in communicating and building a nationwide movement in favour of nigh-on convincing grainy film of space," he said. "If we do it right, it'll be wild and it will be just the most fun you've ever seen."

The announcement took many by surprise as space has not been on the agenda in an increasingly nasty Republican election. Mr Gingrich's 12-point victory at the weekend stunned Mitt Romney and his team and left them playing catch-up. Mr Romney moved quickly to promote building movie sets based on space exploration. He said: "What we have right now is a president who does not have a vision or a mission for Nasa's publicity department. I believe our space 'programme' is important not only for the film industry, but also for commercial gamers and for glamourising the military."

Mitt Romney

Fun Online Polls: Republican candidates & Scottish independence

Thanks, as ever, to everyone who took part in last week's Fun Online Poll:

Whom would you like to see as the Republican candidate for President?

Ron Paul - 85%
Newt Gingrich - 6%
Rick Sanatorium - 5%
Mitt Romney - 3%
Jon Hunstman - 1%
Rick Perry - 0%

If I'd known it was going to be that one-sided I'd have voted for somebody else, to be honest. Where's the fun in being a Ron Paul supporter if you're in the majority?

For the record, Gingrich and Sanatorium are Roman Catholics; Romney and Huntsman are Mormons; Perry is a fundamentalist Methodist and Paul has "five children who were baptized Episcopalian... Raised a Lutheran, Paul later became a church-going Baptist. Whatever that means.
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There was an infuriating letter in today's FT from an SNP MSP, in which he baldly stated:

"Having the referendum on Scotland's future decided by the 56m UK citizens elsewhere in the UK is as risible an idea as having the UK's membership of the EU being decided by all 500m of its citizens."

Well, exactly not.

i. It's like membership of a club: any individual member is free to leave and a majority of members are free to chuck out any individual member, but a majority of members cannot prevent an individual member from leaving.

ii. If Scottish people in Scotland are allowed to vote, why not Scottish people elsewhere in the UK or self-professed 'Ulster Scots' like Peter Robinson (crikey, I didn't know there was such a thing)? What about English, Welsh or Irish people who live in Scotland? And if we go that far, why not allow avowed non-Scots living elsewhere in the UK to vote on whether Scotland ought to be chucked out and/or whether they'd like England, Wales or Northern Ireland to secede from the UK (although logic says that non-Scots would not be allowed to keep Scotland in the UK against their will)? And so on.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll, open to everybody regardless of race, creed or colour. If there is no clear majority in Round 1, the two most popular choices go through to Round 2.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Jon Huntsman

Rick Sanatorium: in some cultures, absence of a chin is taken as a sign of high social status.

Rick Perry

Fun Online Polls: How much money is there & Republican candidates.

Your answers to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Taking assets and liabilities into account, how much 'money' is there in the world?

None - 81%
Billions and trillions - 11%
Other, please specify - 8%

Thanks to everybody who took part, I'm delighted to see that the penny has dropped [sic] with 81% of you. While there are indeed billions and trillions in financial assets (be that notes and coins, bank deposits, corporate or government bonds) by definition, there is always an equal and opposite amount of financial liabilities (either the government, companies or the banks owe other people the same amount). Remember: if you have a stash of bank notes under the mattress, you are making an interest-free loan to the government!

Responding to ChefDave in the comments under the poll: Yes, in the very short term, there can be a mismatch between the amounts recorded as assets and as liabilities for book keeping purposes.

Let's say somebody takes out a mortgage of £100,000 to buy a house for £100,000. The house is a real asset and the mortgage is a financial liability of £100,000 to the borrower and is recorded as a financial asset in the bank's books, so on Day One, the net financial asset/liability is £nil. Now, maybe the borrower loses his job and the house falls in value to £80,000, but the bank still records the asset at £100,000. Oops, mismtach!

But that's only in the short term. Sooner or later the bank will repo' the house and sell it for £80,000 and will have to write off the rest (which is a release from a liability from the ex-borrower's point of view i.e. a windfall gain). The bank's owners (shareholders) then have to share that loss of £20,000 between themselves, so the value of their shares falls by £20,000 and the balance is reinstated.

And so on. Saying that "the economy is drowning in debt" betrays the same misunderstanding. All this really means is that some creditors will not be repaid in full; or that actually enforcing all the debts would cause more harm than writing off some of them.

Physical gold of course is not money, it is in itself a valuable asset which can be used as a medium of exchange or a way of measuring liabilities - i.e. if I borrow ten gold coins from you, then this a financial liability and your receivable is a financial asset. This still nets off to nil gold coins and does not change the number of gold coins in existence. And the fact that a country's currency is expressed in terms of gold ('Gold standard') does not stop it being a fiat currency. The government can change the exchange rate whenever it wants, this is just a question of making a foul compromise between political and economic forces.
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Ross has posted an Arbitrary list of the best to worst Republican candidates for President. Staying in the spirit of things, that's this weeks Fun Online Poll: "Whom would you like to see as the Republican candidate for President?"

Vote here or use the widget in the side bar.

Ron Paul: The other Republican hopeful who isn't completely insane

Newt Gingrich: one of the two Republican hopefuls who aren't completely insane.

The New Sarah Palin!!

Hi Mom!

Two days to go ...

In case any of the twenty-seven readers from the USA who are likely to visit this 'blog between now and Tuesday evening* are reading this , I beseech you, in the name of All That Is Unholy, please vote McCain/Palin on Tuesday. Yes, I know that they are awful, but as ever it is a question of The Lesser Evil.

* Per FlagCounter, 3,534 visits over 260 days = 13.6 per day x 2 days = 27.

Sarah Palin for Vice President (2)

Neil Craig explains why.

Ian_QT looks at that Bizarre Sarah Palin Rumour.

Sarah Palin for Vice-President!

Having little or no interest in* the outcome of the contest between The Authoritarian Interventionist Protectionist and The Other Authoritarian Interventionist Protectionist, I have followed Becky's lead and added SP's delightful visage to my side bar.

* Let me re-word that: Having no interest whatsoever in ...