And this, I thought, summed up the last couple of days nicely. 
quotes of note
"“Yes, reason has been a part of organized religion, ever since two nudists took dietary advice from a talking snake.”
— Jon Stewart..
"God is playing a comic to an audience that's afraid to laugh."
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
— Voltaire..
"What happens when we're dead? The irony is that all our questions will be answered after we die. We spend our whole life trying to figure out the truth and the only way we'll find out what it is, is to get hit by a bus. And the only comfort that religion offers is that God is driving that bus."
— John Ryman, "When Galaxies Collide"..
“Knock, And He'll open the door
Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun
Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens
Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.”
—Rumi.under the hood
find it here
Recent Comments
- Squirrel on the gop — french version
- Squirrel on the gop — french version
- gunnison on the gop — french version
- bluthner on How Did We Come To Believe in God?
- bluthner on the gop — french version
- gunnison on How Did We Come To Believe in God?
- bluthner on How Did We Come To Believe in God?
- gunnison on How Did We Come To Believe in God?
- Squirrel on How Did We Come To Believe in God?
- Squirrel on How Did We Come To Believe in God?
- bluthner on How Did We Come To Believe in God?
- gunnison on How Did We Come To Believe in God?
- Expat on How Did We Come To Believe in God?
- Expat on How Did We Come To Believe in God?
- bim_ballace on How Did We Come To Believe in God?
-
Recent Posts
- the gop — french version
- How Did We Come To Believe in God?
- A Conjunction of Books
- first taste
- 1000 words department…
- half a road is better than none..
- Response to gunny
- Clockwork Orange
- still working on it…
- Kill the Birds, tuppence a bag . . .
- Gunny Selling 9thousandfeet to Koch Brothers?!?!?!
- and in local news….
About this blog
Comments are most welcome. If you are registered you may comment without a captcha barrier, so registration is recommended.
Your email will not be shared with anyone for any reason without your express written request, and I won't spam you.Fair warning; bigoted, racist and homophobic comments will be deleted, and your access will be blocked.
Simple.This blog is not intended to be just one person's soapbox. Several people are able to post their own articles here. If doing that is of interest to any regular participant on this blog, just let me know via the contact page. The remuneration is the same for everyone. Glory, and the admiration and gratitude of us all ...
Blogroll
- americablog news
- boingboing
- columbia journalism review
- counterpunch
- crooks and liars
- csmonitor
- dictynna's net
- do the math
- EPI
- inequality.org
- irehr
- kottke
- letters from texas
- little green footballs
- media matters
- mock, paper, scissors
- mother jones
- nakedcapitalism
- neh
- newshoggers
- open secrets
- propublica
- RepublicReport
- right wing watch
- scitizen
- shorpy
- SkepticalScience
- smartypants
- splc
- testosterone pit
- the automatic earth
- the bulletin
- the rude pundit
- the spill
- thinkprogress
- this can't be happening
- this modern world
- truthout
- usc
- washington's blog
Sadly my sister in law standing for the Green Party didn’t win in Cambuslang West. The three seats were taken by the usual West of Scotland suspects:
Don’t ask me what stage one through six mean. When we got on the boat it was first past the post
Sad the Greens couldn’t do better, really. (They were, of course, Squirrel’s second preference.)
But really, at this time, we couldn’t afford the luxury of just voting for good policies; or even, necessarily, (or sadly) for ‘good’ people. We needed to both kick the Tories and finish off the LibDems pretty well for good and all. You have to go with what’s available. (Mission accomplished, with the LibDems, I think: beaten into fourth place in London by the Green candidate anyway.)
My French friend was saying tonight (again) that she rather admires the British electorate for its basic common sense and determination not to get distracted but to get on with what’s most essential. I think she’s right. I’m not at all surprised that Boris won: but it’s significant that he won with a lot less ease than the Tories would have liked. OK, we have a sort of soft spot for Ken, but he’s had his time; he’s been feathering his own nest more than is really appropriate for a real socialist; and, in fact, Boris hasn’t, overall, been that bad for us. Or, I suppose we’re really saying, “Knowing what we know now, could have been a hell of a lot worse.”
For all the Bullingdon Club background, he’s not a Cameron/Cleggeron Tory, nor a hard-right Thatcherite (any of which I think many of us feared he would turn into). But he’s on notice, too: next time, if the left can come up with someone new and not washed out and recycled, he’s probably done for.
And I’m not in the least surprised that elected mayors have been pretty well given the thumbs down. FFS, if it’s so provenly difficult for a London mayor to really exercise any power against a government that is supposed to be at least vaguely friendly and supportive, what the hell’s the point of having any that would be even more constricted? We’re not thick.
But Squirrel is wriggling in happy anticipation of whatever LibDem apologist the Grauniad can come up with this time to try to exculpate that wretched and even more diminished wrecking crew. If it dares. The outpouring of scorn and derision will be tremendous.
Ah yes Squirrel. My self professed progressive socialist brother and his wife moved to the Green Party having realized that Labour sold out on their ideals long ago.
Expat: didn’t they bloody just!
Still, Squirrel is ever hopeful and just for today nicely bright eyed and bushy tailed. After all, it’s only two years ago that the Tories and LibDems thought they could sew up the entire country between them for decades. Hah!
Maybe there will be enough people in the Labour Party to cotton on that what has happened to the LibDems can happen to them if they carry on being so pathetically half-baked.
And with more Labour councillors and more Labour councils, with luck it’ll get through that just trying to be ‘nicer Tories than the Tories’ like the LibDems won’t wash any more.
Nice to see Cleggeron being, really, pathetic. Wimbling about ‘difficult decisions’, when the problem is they aren’t ‘difficult’ at all: just wrong, nasty, and made far too damn easily.
LoL
Brits have a wonderful thing about the humour to be found in the sound, shape and form of words.
I’m always amused at the squirm the word cunning invokes in may Americans even when used perfectly in context.
As part of the regular squirrel trawl through the media, I’ve just found this winner of the award fro the week’s most desperate attempt at a tendentious comment in the NYT:
“Ed Miliband, the Labour leader — who gamely carried on campaigning even after someone cracked a raw egg onto his shoulder leaving his jacket dripping with its detritus. . .”
Ooh! Wasn’t that brave? Especially as it wasn’t even a rotten egg, apparently.
Time for bed said Zebedee – of to Rochester tomorrow to pick up middle one from college – night all.
Expat:
Maybe it’s because we’ve got so many words that aren’t pronounced how they’re spelt, or you become conscious of homonyms and so on young? I think you become aware of how words look quite early. There was the genius (or clever-dick, of course) who suddenly thought of changing “French Connection” to “FCUK”. . .Obviously someone who, like most of us, catch ourselves wondering why “shoplifters” advertise themselves so blatantly on the side of their vans . . .
A while back, when Mandelson lived nearby and had an armed policeman at his gate, I really admired his neighbours who scoured the Yellow Pages for someone to manicure their tree and found a bunch of tree surgeons who called themselves “Special Branch”. And the guys who looked after the jasmine just along the road and were “Three Surgeons”. (We had to ask, only seeing two: they were Irish and there were three of them . . .)
And last year there was a company that provided some of the Portaloos for Carnival, which I remember had a clever name that made everybody laugh, but I just can’t remember it. Pimlico Plumbers around here have made a speciality of their vans’ numberplates: B4TH and so on. (Mercifully, Swansea will not let them — or anyone else — have “SH1T”.)
And we have lots of visual punning fun too. Like our local estate agent’s “X-Ray mini”. There was a landscape lot who had a van covered in real turf. (I’d assumed it was artificial, but it was parked outside my flat one day, and that was when I found out it wasn’t.) Haven’t seen it for quite a while, though, perhaps it caught weeds? Or the drought and the hosepipe ban finished it off?
The French have to contrive it more, I think. (In the days when people bought audio cassettes, the sign over that section was “K7″, and a couple of years ago I saw this neat graffito on a lighthouse at Cap d’Agde: “La vie est mer2″.) And their logistics companies are very boring to look at by comparison. One that was parked near my local Tesco the other week had a brilliant panorama of London painted on the side composed entirely of vegetables. Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament were mostly asparagus. Superb!
Down the road from my mum’s house,close to Crouch End is a plumber’s business and supplies outfit called Patel & sons – their motto is ” You’ve tried the cowboys – now try the Indians”.
There’s an auto repair shop in Burlington called Girlington Garage. The owners/mechanics are women. Since it’s Vermont, they offer organic free trade coffee while you wait.
Hi y’all. Been excitedly following the UK local election results (yes, my wife is very patient, why do you ask?), and am having many a chuckle over what appears to be the Tory response: we haven’t been right-wing enough! We’re in govt – why are we doing what the LDs want?
What’s that line about not interrupting ones opponent when they’re making a mistake?
Not strictly a play on words but we had a garbage collector with a truck that claimed:
Expat: we have a local collection service which calls itself “What a Load a Rubbish”. . .
But: important news from Radio Londres on Twitter:
“53% de remise sur le gouda et 47% sur les Rolex” (latest); a little while ago, “Poulet sorti du four avant la fin de la cuisson. Température de la cuisse gauche : 52,6. Côté droite, les carottes sont cuites.”
“La petite ne grandira pas au château, je répète, la petite ne grandira pas au château !”
“On me signale qu’une calèche hongroise vient d’être arrêtée à Varennes”
At the Franco-Swiss border, now. . .
Better than we feared: I thought the polls the Grauniad was telling us about were a bit suspect. Looks, though, as though the Left on France have got their tactical voting sorted and, thank god, the LePennistes haven’t.
Squirrel,
Please explique the gouda — the Rolex is clear enough — and the carrots. I wouldn’t normally ask but the rest is just so good…
Gouda=Dutch cheese=Hollande. Carrots are red*.
*Our European ‘red’ of course, as in red flag, not yours.
C’est un très bon résultat pour tous en Europe. Les rapports de la mort de la socialisme ont ont été exagérés!
Oops. “ont été”
(Have to cut and paste to get the accents in.)
Squirrel,
Ohhhh..kayyy… Hollande is now clear. But I expected that being du “Côté droite” and being “cuits”, they’d have been a reference to Sarko. As in somebody’s hair, maybe.
And not just “pour tous en Europe.” This austerity horseshit will drag the whole world back down if Europe shuts down for a decade.
It looks as if the Greeks are also leaning toward the left in their elections…
Nat:
Just struck me after I wrote that that reference to ‘bien cuit’ they use could look slightly confusing. (Sorry, not sure of folks’ French.) You can’t translate it literally, because of our colloquialisms about being cooked. it’s more like saying “job done!” or “come out nicely, hasn’t it?”.
Nice starting pic on the BBC News 24 report on the French elections just now: a rainbow against a dark grey sky over Hollande’s town . . . (Hint, hint! Nearest the Beeb can risk to a partisan political comment in a news report; clever editor there
)
No. I’m wrong there. Sorry. I misread that myself. Not paying proper attention in the excitement.
In that one, “Carrots” are swindlers or frauds. “Tirer des carrottes” is to fool people or take someone for a ride.
So it’s actually, “On the right, the swindlers/conmen are done (“scalded” or maybe “burnt”?).”
Bugger. I really am going to have to find some way of learning more current colloquial French.
We still have a long hard battle on our hands, though. Looks like Golden Dawn will get ten per cent of the seats on the Greek parliament.
And very possibly, Le Pen’s FN will get more in the upcoming French one.
And it’s not entirely pretty here either. So the BNP/EDL got dumped last Thursday, but our neo-fascist equivalent to the FN and the other far-right European nationalist parties is UKIP, and they look as though they got a lot of the far-right votes.
One has to be careful what one wishes for. But at least, the further right the European right goes, as it now seems to be doing, the more centrist our socialists look without having to walk even a single metre in the same direction. (We hope.)
squirrel
Know the feeling.
In my time in Texas and New Mexico the Spanish colloquialisms totally kicked my ass.
“To draw the carrots” means to bamboozle? I would never have guessed. Any idea why?
In any case “tirer les carottes” reminded me that in New Mexico, “Tirar la masa” (lit; to throw the dough) means to take a shit. One cannot be too careful.
I’m encouraged that the EU voters are rejecting the right’s “austerity” lunacy. Now if they can just get on the same page over here we’ll be in business. Enough already with strip-mining economies to transfer wealth upwards, and from public to private hands.
“Any idea why?” Nope.
Will ask French friend tomorrow. But she might not know either. But we might ask her 20-year-old French niece if she knows.
Squirrel,
Feel a little better for not getting it (and feel like a moron for not getting gouda). But, damn, the Hungarian carriage stopped at Varennes is simply brilliant. Even if it is a bit unfair to Hungary, which seems to have given him away willingly enough.
And Gunny, I will not be asking for extra masa in my tomales any time soon.
Squirrel/Gunny,
I’m tempted to wonder if carrot doesn’t stand for some bit of carrot-shaped human anatomy, but that’s just a defect of character I should be trying to rise above, so if I hit “post comment”, it’s purely an accident.
Yeah, Gunny, it’d be easier if I was a teenager again, or knew some, but we keep a low-ish profile in the village in Languedoc. We keep well away from the other British immigrants around there, and at least we’re sort of accepted, because the house is in the village centre, and we worked very hard to restore it. (The local kids call it “The English House”, but I overheard some saying to one who asked if “that” was “it”, “Mais ils sont tres gentils” which was reassuring.)
You got to hope that nice means nice Squirrel
Nat:
There’ve been a few cracks on the lines of “Last call for the short shit in high heels for the flight to Los Angeles departing from Gate 12″ as well.
(And, no, not a clue as to whether “Gate 12″ — or LA — had any particular significance either. Can’t remember it, but Sarko — or Carla?– must have said something about going to LA if the French kicked him out. But he was notorious for having a hard-on for all things American.)
And he blew 50 million Euros (maybe a lot more, ‘cos he had it rebuilt) on a “presidential plane”, forget an executive jet, it was an Airbus A300 ffs, only last year I think it was. Hence Hollande saying he liked travelling by train . . .
He really had been doing his damnedest to copy US presidential style. A couple of years ago he paid a ‘semi-official’ visit to the Paris hospital where someone I know has her research lab. All the staff were thrown out, told not to come into work, all the neighbouring streets were barricaded off, people told to stay indoors, CRS with sub-machine guns on the streets, snipers on the roofs, army helicopters everywhere. It didn’t go down well at all.
Expat: on safe ground there still, I think! (At least no-one’s looked at me oddly or hurriedly changed the subject when I’ve used it so far . . .)
Squirrel,
LA: had to be about Carla, no?
FWIW:
Just been talking to French pal. She says “carrot” is Parisian slang, as is the phrase, she thinks, but she says she can’t remember what for, though whatever it is, it’s not obvious, she reckons. (If it was, she’d remember, I presume!)
Parisian slang always was pretty bloody obscure I think. I never got the hang of it just visiting, never got much in the way of elucidation either, and neither did she, even though she was a student at the Sorbonne and had some friends who used it all the time.
If anybody’s ever wondered what it’s like when an electorate decides to kill off a political party in Britain, I recommend a quick glance at this.
150 years, wiped out in two.
Even though it’s well deserved, my god, people are being cruel. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.
Interestingly, my impressions were that the responses were reasonably restrained and well expressed, considering. Grover Norquist had worse on his CiF column. But, yes, the depth and width of feeling towards the LDs is new to me. If only one could bottle it up until the GE…
I confess that i found Chris Riddell’s cartoon yesterday with Clegg and the dead LibDem bird heartbreaking. No, i don’t live in the UK and it’s theoretically none of my fucking business at all. But i’m a LibDem in spirit, and if we had a comparable party here, i’d be signed up in a flash. And i’m afeared they’d suffer the same fate as well. Still rooting for them, probably alone.
I’m almost the same – been on the verge of joining the party since the last GE, and have held back because I’m not sure the effort of greater involvement would be worth it. I’m hoping they learn well from this, but have passed beyond my ability to defend their current actions…
But that cartoon was heartbreakingly apposite.
Pornie:
Clegg promised, personally and directly to prevent any boost in fees for university students. That was before the general election.
It came out, last year that even before that election he agreed in private with his inner circle, who were already negotiating with the Tories, to increase those fees.
His word was not even good for a week.
The UK’s system used to shed pols who were found to be blatant liars. Those days are long past. But Clegg has no credibility left.
It’s a lot like virginity, you know.
Side note, utterly off topic:
Our Mikey has a new blog feature up on the DB, starting today.
He still does not appear on any homepage, to be found easily.
Kevin;
Actually he does, down toward the bottom there’s a rogues gallery of columnist’s mugshots, and he’s in with that bunch.
He’s just too “inside baseball” for me most of the time (can’t see the wood for the trees, etc), just as he was in the G, but he works hard and writes well.
I’m sure he’s paid well, but the comment culture on TDB is just awful, as is the comment architecture. I’m sure he misses CiF for that alone, though no doubt his paycheck is fatter now.
At least in this most recent piece he’s walking back his absurd predictions about the unemployment rate. He’s gonna be eating his words about a few other things too, before the fat lady sings.
Kevin -
“Clegg promised, personally and directly to prevent any boost in fees for university students. That was before the general election.”
And Barry promised he would never sign an HCR bill without a public option. Was a big reason i was so gung ho on him and down on Hillary.
Gunny-
“I’m sure he misses CiF for that alone, though no doubt his paycheck is fatter now
And more time to spend with his family as well, now that he has one. A column every day or two, or 3 per day? Can’t blame him. I miss the man though, a lot more than i thought i would. The Beast sucks. Maybe he actually was irreplacable. I’m not as cool with Ollie yet as you are, but he does deserve a bit more time. But not a whole lot. You’re better.
Lotta shit going on with congressional races. Brown / Warren in Mass, and looks like an Indy might be the front runner to replace Olympia Snowe. It’s not all about the Potus, there’s plenty of stuff to report on. Not to mention all the Scotus (why does that always sound like scrotum to me) and court stuff going on.
ps
Heh heh
I think you could expand that into a whole article unto itself, one of these days when there’s an idle moment or two.
I’d be willing to bet it’s not just you.
Gunny:
I just commented on MT’s piece of May 3, where he pointed out the obvious problem the Jellyfish faces in the electoral college. My comment cites the breakdown from electoralvote.com, based on current polling in each state. I repeat it here:
Strong D (Obama), 187 EV’s.
Weak D (<10 % lead), 67 EV
Barely D, 49 EV
Tied, two states, CO and AZ (!), 20 EV
Barely R (Rom-bot), 45 EV's, of which 29 are just in FL.
Weak R, 94 EV's, and
Strong R, just 76 EV's.
Several things jump out here.
1. Obama has several paths to his reelection, but the Jellyfish only has one way to wiggle through which is to carry just about every single 'swing' state. He cannot afford to lose any.
2. Florida will either matter a lot, or not at all. If enough other swing states go to Obama, then it won't matter, but if Florida goes to Obama, then it is over, stick a fork in the Jellyfish, if you can.
3. Obama has more "strong" than "weak" votes pending, but the reverse is true for the Jellyfish, who has only 76 EV's worth of "strong" states, vs. 94 "weak" EV's. So, there are also a variety of ways for Obama's team to mess with the GOP's strategy here, but fewer such opportunities for the handlers of the Slippery One.
4. If even Arizona is in play, as it is, then the GOP has a real problem everywhere.
5. The sum of 187 + 67 is 254, a number I've cited before. If all of those go to Obama, he only needs 17 more to win (271) – and there are at least a dozen different likely combinations of states that can provide that.
(By contrast, the R's sum of strong + weak states is just 170, they need 101 more EV's!)
It is always easier to see our own difficulties, than those of opponents. Generals and admirals fall for this all the time, history is full of ugly examples. (The Royal Navy at the Hellespont, before the Gallipoli invasion, is one such.)
***
And a side note, back to this thread's topic:
I just saw that cartoon about Clegg, with the pinned-up "resting" parrot.
Hilarious, and so richly deserved.
The price for his folly will be paid by millions, in degraded services. Even worse, the LD's cooperated in a recent bill to allow the US health insurance parasites into the UK. I cannot imagine a greater folly, more guaranteed to bring real suffering to human people.
Pornilicious one:
Actually, Obama stated before the election, loudly that his health care reforms would not cover everyone. He was going to reform the monster, not kill it. But neither he nor Hillary were willing to talk about taking the health insurance industry back into the nonprofit sector, where it belongs and where Kaiser P. and Blue Cross started, a long time ago.
Even the Public Option is a band-aid on the real problem, which is the profit-generating imperatives of the parasites. We are the only nation that allows health insurance for primary access to our care to involve profits. (Oh, and yes, now add the UK to that list of shame, thanks to Dead Parrot Boy!)
This issue was not even discussed anywhere near the Congress by either party in 2009.
Gunny -
I’d be willing to bet it’s not just you.
Et tu? Do a piece then, not much else going on. Lotta slow news days. I’m actually really busy now, believe it or not.
Kevin -
This issue was not even discussed anywhere near the Congress by either party in 2009.
But bills were certainly introduced. By some Republicans, even. Hillary said she would require all to purchase insurance. Barry said requiring uninsured people to buy insurance would be like requiring the homeless to buy a house. That clip from the Ellen Show has been mysteriously missing from the interwebs for a long time.
Squirrel -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9232884/When-did-Britain-become-the-kind-of-country-that-tolerates-voting-fraud.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9237369/Police-open-probe-into-alleged-voter-fraud-in-East-London.html
Ooh! I know this one! Any time between 1700-ish and 1832?
MT is a pimp too. How disappointing.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/07/gay-marriage-still-politically-complicated.html
Just found MT’s new blog. Looks like it’s the same sort of thing he did at the Graun. Bummer, we lost out there. The Beast still sucks. Anyone invited im over here yet?
Pornilicious:
MT’s list of states is astute. That is precisely the battleground for this election, plus Arizona.
We have to hold Pennsylvania and Virginia (both now leaning to Obama) then also take Ohio, or a combination of Michigan plus some other state to get 17+ more votes.
Or some such, I count 17 possible ways to get from 254 up to 271+.
We have the conservatives on the run on “social issues” right now, their war upon women’s rights has millions of independent and even Republican women mightily pissed off.
So, ok, wait a minute. The wimmins bit back, they’re pissed and they actually pay attention and vote. Whoda thunk it. Mayday! Backtrack. Ok, we’ll throw the gays under the bus then, there aren’t as many of them.
I actually signed up for an account there and left my first comment. That’s how dire CiFA is now. Here’s teh link for any interested -
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/07/let-s-get-started-then.html