|
|||||
|
And I have to say it’s a little unseemly for our government to officially take a position on a YouTube video, even one that sparked an international crisis. It’s even more unseemly that our government is taking the same position on that film as the people who just killed our ambassador in Benghazi. – the indispensable Michael Totten September 17th, 2012 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Did you hear what John Major had to say yesterday? “The ‘green shoots‘ of economic recovery are on the way as ‘darkest moment’ passed” Oh my God, I guess we are closer to the brink than I thought. – Perry de Havilland over a glass with some Samizdatistas. September 16th, 2012 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
This whole idea of ‘respect’ – which is a code-word for ‘fear’ – is something we have to get away from. – Salman Rushdie (interviewed on BBC Radio 4). Indeed. And not just in where the bullying religiose are concerned. Tolerance should not mean pretending to agree. September 15th, 2012 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
First of all, I think it is fair to say that no-one who wants to be taken seriously should use the words “Arab Spring” without heavy irony.
Matt Welch, stating what is alas not obvious to officials at the US State Department. Meanwhile, I note – as have others – that the killing of the US ambassador in Libya only made it on page 4 of the New York Times. All the news that’s fit, to, er, print. Okay, I understand the limitations of print journalism, but something tells me that a journalist and editors goofed. A US ambassador got murdered, FFS. The US elections got a lot more interesting, alas, for horrible reasons. The ghost of Jimmy Carter hangs over it. Some wise comments, I think, from Walter Russell Mead. He is even-handed in how he regards the options for Obama and his opponent:
And this:
As he says, we are living through a period where there is a lot of what finance geeks and others call “event risk”. There is a lot of it about. I am off to Turkey tomorrow. Gulp. September 12th, 2012 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
It says here “Egyptian protesters condemned what they said was the humiliation of the Prophet of Islam under the pretext of freedom of speech”… Pretext? I don’t think that word means what they think it does, unless it lost something in translation. – from a conversation overheard between two people in a cafe in London, reading the news on their iThingies. September 11th, 2012 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they’re not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That’s not a stand, it’s a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool. My own prediction: Obama’s finished. September 7th, 2012 | 57 comments - (Comments are closed)
It was extraordinary to see the convention chairman, Mayor Villaraigosa, try to ram through those platform changes yesterday. And succeed in doing so. But dishonestly. Bewildered, he kept having the delegates vote again. I was reminded of the European Union. Years ago, some countries were given the opportunity to vote on EU membership. When the people said no, the EU made them vote again, until they got it “right.” Remember? Repeatedly, about half the convention voted for the platform changes, and about half voted against. Then Villaraigosa declared — willy-nilly — that the yes votes were two-thirds of the convention! That’s what the people were booing about, I think. Maybe they were booing God and Jerusalem tangentially. It suits Republican politics to say they were booing God and Jerusalem (a lovely combination, by the way!) — and heaven knows I want the Republicans to win more than anyone else in the country can possibly do. But I think the delegates were mainly booing the rank dishonesty of the process. The Danish and Irish repeated referenda were about the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties respectively, not EU membership. But the analogy holds – only I don’t think that the EU has fiddled the count as yet. September 6th, 2012 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
“I don’t think there are any Liberal Democrats who have anything other than admiration for Ken and the way he works.” – an ‘aide to Mr. Clegg‘. Can you think of anything more damning? September 4th, 2012 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
On July 1 next year, Croatia becomes the 28th member of the European Union, and under the terms of the Treaty of Maastricht this new, proud sovereign state – not yet two decades old – must accept the entire corpus of EU law; and she must place her neck in the noose of the single currency. Unlike Britain or Denmark, the Croats have no opt-out. They are now legally obliged to give up the kuna for the euro, and I say, don’t do it, folks. It is not only a mistake. To submit to the euro would be a stunning refusal to learn the grim lessons of recent Balkan history Blimey, I can hardly believe I just quoted Mr. Toad. But whilst I share BJ’s sentiments on this, knowing Croatia reasonably well, I suspect there was less opposition to this than one might have expected due to the indigenous Croatian political class being such a dismal collection of pond scum and turds who floated to the top. I think the average Croatian could not see how shifting power away from these wankers could possibly make things worse. And of course they are entirely wrong on that score, as they will eventually discover. September 3rd, 2012 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
Profiling whole populations instead of monitoring individual suspects is a sinister step in any society. It’s dangerous enough at national level, but on a Europe-wide scale the idea becomes positively chilling. September 2nd, 2012 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
– Douglas Adams. The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (Episode 11 of the original radio series. This was apparently a bit too wild a riff to make it into the subsequent book adaptations). September 1st, 2012 | Comments are closed
I’m glad people are getting so much pleasure out of the Paralympics and I don’t wish to knock either the competitors or disabled people generally. But there’s a bubble of sanctimoniousness surrounding the event and its media coverage which definitely needed popping – and I salute Frankie Boyle for being fearless enough to do it. Brave outspoken souls like him are our final bulwark against the kind of cant and sanctimoniousness and sentimentality which first began to rot our national character in those grisly days after the death of Diana. September 1st, 2012 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||