US President Barack Obama has said he enjoys golf in large part because a game is the only way he can escape outdoors for hours at a time.

He said he misses the trappings of ordinary life - weekend lie-ins, trips to the market and walks in the park.

"I just want to go through Central Park and watch folks passing by," he told Hearst newspapers. "I miss that."

Mr Obama's security bubble precludes much privacy and spontaneity. He recently announced a re-election bid.

"I miss being anonymous," he told Hearst Magazines' publishers and editors at the White House.

http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/thewaryoudontsee

The Federal Opposition says the proposed regulations that will underpin national workplace safety laws are unworkable.

The Government has been moving to implement uniform laws across the country.

The Opposition supports the proposals but its spokesman on Employment and Workplace Relations, Eric Abetz, says business is worried about the complexity of the regulations.

WASHINGTON — The hard-fought budget compromise late Friday that narrowly averted a government shutdown calls for increasing Pentagon spending while imposing significant cuts on a wide range of domestic federal programs.

In the LRB, David Runciman provides some telling insights in a review of recent books about the “off-shoring” of the world economy into tax havens, where the hyper-elite hide their money from the taxes and regulations that ordinary citizens are subject to. The review also deals with the political machinations involved in this corrosive process, which lies behind much of our dysfunctions and discontents. You should read the whole article, which provides rich historical context, but are some excerpts, in medias res:

picture by Gus...

from Jeremy Buckingham

As I have said before, if Kevin was so keen on the ETS he would have carried on with it. He sort of blame others in his party for his decision to abandon it... Strangely Kev does not point the finger at Tony the Little Shit who sunk his baby.

We all know that Tony has no morals — well I mean proper human ethics and understandings of the mechanics of the earth, the only morals that count in my book...  The rest is just the management of the illusion of sin.

So the joke begins like this: An economist, a lawyer and a professor of marketing walk into a room. What’s the punch line? They were three of the five “expert witnesses” Republicans called for last week’s Congressional hearing on climate science.

But the joke actually ended up being on the Republicans, when one of the two actual scientists they invited to testify went off script.

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s top two national security officials signaled on Thursday that the United States was unlikely to arm the Libyan rebels, raising the possibility that the French alone among the Western allies would provide weapons and training for the poorly organized forces fighting Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s regime.

The war you have when you're not having a war...

The Opposition appears likely to support the Government's proposed company tax cut in the face of threats by the Greens to torpedo the measure.

The 1 per cent cut is part of the mining tax package that also includes a boost to superannuation contributions by business to employees.

It was negotiated prior to the election to defuse a backlash from the big miners over the mining super profits tax, which would have raised $60 billion more over a decade.

Greens leader Bob Brown has vowed to oppose the cut, saying the money would be better spent on social programs like dental care than giving it back to business.