DUFF & NONSENSE!

Charlene-Cheri-Beth-Sue and me!

Charlene-Cheri-Beth-Sue, the owner and Chief Executive Officer of TypePad, has writen to me, personally, I am sure, to enquire whether or not I would like to take up a special offer.  My interest quickened, nay, raced, but apparently it did not involve her sending her private jet to fly me to California for the weekend for the celebrations to mark the fact that daily visits to this distinguished Blog have moved into double figures!  Instead, it offered a new service by which my 'visitors' could mark up any of my posts that took their fancy as "Favorite".  Alas, I had to point out, gently, to 'CCBS' (as I fondly think of her) that such an exercise was redundent for readers of D&N because all of my posts were "Favorites" and that forcing my readers to choose would be quite intolerable.

She insisted that "Blogging is a fun, social activity. It’s even more fun when you get feedback".  I shuddered at the word "fun" and groaned at the thought of encouraging "feedback".  Can you imagine encouraging Dr. 'Teabag' and his ilk to even greater efforts?  And as for "social activity", well, surely the whole point of blogging is that it is deeply and unrepentantly anti-social.  I sit, or rather slump, here in front of my keyboard, unshaven, unbathed and dressed, if that is quite the word, in my 'jimjams' and dressing-gown, spewing forth torrents (oh, alright then, trickles) of bile and neither you, dear reader, nor I have any wish to close the gap in the ether which seperates us.

I am beginning to have second thoughts concerning Sue-Cheri-Beth-Charlene!

Whither Britain? #1

Hasn't it gone quiet?  I mean, you can almost hear the leaves hitting the ground from the Autumnal trees.  Well, not really, and anyway, what I mean is that politically it is all quiet on the global front, and the home front, too, come to that.  An optimist would be glad but pessimists, like me, worry about what is looming over the horizon.  Nothing we can do about it, of course, so we must just wait for the next clap of political thunder.  In the meantime, and during this eerie interlude, I have been pondering on the somewhat pompous question raised in my title - Whither Britain?

Various thoughts have made their sluggish way round and round what passes for my mind in recent days but it was a news item on the BBC that has provoked me to start hitting the keyboard.  Recently released war-time papers tell of an incident involving Capt. Peter Lake, MC and Croix de Guerre, who died in June at the age of 94.  He was one of those intrepid soldiers who parachuted into France prior to D-Day in order to train the French resistance.  The invasion took place and later in a small town in SW France he came across Gen. de Gaulle and the following conversation took place beginning with the General asking him his name:

General de Gaulle: "Jean-Pierre, that's a French name."

Mr Lake: "My nom de guerre, mon general."

Gen de Gaulle: "What are you doing here?"

Mr Lake: "I belong to the Inter-Allied Mission for Dordogne, and I am at the moment with Dordogne troops at Marennes, mon general."

Gen de Gaulle: "But what are you doing here?"

Mr Lake: "I am training certain troops for special operations."

Gen de Gaulle: "Our troops don't need training. You have no business here."

Mr Lake: "I obey the orders of my superiors."

Gen de Gaulle: "You have no business here, I say. You have no right to exercise a command."

Mr Lake: "Mon general, I exercise no command."

Gen de Gaulle: "We don't need you here. It only remains for you to leave. You too must go home. Return, return quickly. Au revoir."

I repeat this tale as an example of the deep-seated detestation the French hold, even nurture, for the British.  Of course, you will complain that a single exchange of words coming from a man noted for his Gallic haughtiness and visceral dislike of 'les Anglos' should not be taken as representing the views of the whole of France, nor do I, but what I do say is that it expresses the views of an exceedingly large proportion of the French populace and that the passage of time has not eroded it, in fact, since the end of the war I suspect it has increased.  That view is, quite properly if you are French, reflected in the common-place prejudices of today's French politicians.

If that was the limit to it, I would remain phlegmatic, but it is not.  In my opinion this anti-Anglo prejudice is deeply embedded in the political classes of virtually every European nation with the exception perhaps of Scandinavia and Holland.  I should make clear that I do not believe this anti-Britishness is expressed in foam-flecked hatred or anything like it, but simply in a moody antipathy that delights in scoring points of a nation they dislike for reasons which, like most prejudices, are lost in the history of our times.  Even the Germans are thought better of than the Brits, even if that is partly the result of Germany, huge and powerful (and for the moment peaceful) squatting in the centre ground of our continent and thus dominating much of the political discourse.

For my own part, I must confess that their antipathy to us is shared by mine for them, so please do not think that I complain of it, quite the contrary, I have never believed in international brotherly love.  Some countries you like more than others, but even such likes or dislikes are always subject to national interest and may be buried or flourished according to the circumstances.  However, it is precisely this national interest which seems to have been buried in our dealings with the European Union. Grand Whigs, like my e-pal, Oliver Kamm, drool at the mighty edifice that Europe is building, not so much, I suspect, because they admire it as such but more because they are of a mind that is excited by huge constructs, much in the same way that inter-war intellectuals gasped and gushed at the mighty Soviet Union.

That very wise, shrewd man, Marx, er, the funny one with the cigar and the moustache not the hilarious clown with the beard and the manifestos, once said that he would not wish to be a member of any club that had him as a member.  Paraphrasing that somewhat I would ask why we should, like a double-glazing salesman, try and shove our foot in the door of a club in which the vast majority of the members detest us and are only too pleased if they can do us down in some way?

Alas, as the "#1" in my title indicates, there is more to come from me on this subject because I do believe very strongly that we need to take a new direction - and I love playing a political traffic cop!

Irresistible!

I am grateful to 'Dom the Observant', a frequent visitor here, for spotting this excellent piece of wit which came from here via here.  Bearing in mind my recent post on Norman Rockwell, the timing was exquisite - and the joke's not bad either!

A naughty but witty commenter remarked, "So that's what Mohammed looked like."

 

From your man in the pin-stripe suit and the bowler hat

Of course, to a chap of my age the description above instantly calls to mind the image of the City gent.  Nowadays, he's more likely to be wearing a shiny blue Italian suit with no tie and - Shlock-Horror - brown shoes!  The chances of him being a true 'gent' are about the same as they have always been since Stock Exchanges first opened - tiny.  You will have guessed that my Post today is on the subject of Stock Exchange wheeling and dealing, and you will be expecting the usual level of personal expertise from me on this subject, as with others, that is, not much.

I have been prodded into this subject by a coincidence of e-mails.  The first came from my e-pal, 'JK', who provided me with a link to the Rolling Stone site and an article by one of its writers, Matt Taibi.  You can read it all here but I should warn you that it runs to 8 pages, even so, Mr. Taibi writes clearly and understandably on a complex story of financial jiggery-pokery in which he accuses high officials of the Bush administration of conspiring with Board members of some of the big Banks to bring about the downfall of Bear Stearn which was the catalyst for the financial earthquake which has ensued.  In particular he points the finger at Tim Geitner, who is now Obama's Financial Secretary and the executive board of Goldman Sachs who, as Glenn Beck detailed on Fox News a few weeks ago, have provided an extraordinary number of senior executives to fill places in the Obama regime.  The fact that Goldman's have just announced handsome 3rd quarter profits indicates that they, at any rate, have skated across the desperately thin ice without too much trouble!  Mr. Taibi implies collusion and financial misedemeanour at the highest level but I am not qualified to comment on those accusations.  Taibi is very persuasive but in the 'Comments' (which irritatingly begin at the bottom and go up rather than down by date) a writer 'tlott1999' pours cold water on the whole thing and accuses him of gross exaggeration.  However, the essay is well worth reading for the light it sheds on the mechanics of insider dealing and short selling.

No sooner had I read that than an e-mail arrived from Cafe Hayek, one of my absolute favourite blogs for economic good sense as you would expect from its name, telling me that one of the Blog's principals, Don Boudreaux, had written an article for the WSJ intriguingly entitled "Decriminalise Insider Trading" - my emphasis.  As always, Boudreaux, a Professor of Economics at George Mason University, writes with pellucid clarity and impeccable logic and I urge you all to go and read him argue what appears to be a hopeless cause.

ADDITIONAL:  For those "bewitched, bothered and bewildered" by all the arguments for and against America's efforts to erect a national health service, here is an article by two keen investigators who have been fact-checking 'Oprah' Obama's actual words.  You may remember the fuss when Rep. Joe Wilson shouted out "You lie!" as 'The One' was speaking to Congress on this subject.  Well, you may not be too suprised to learn that Wilson was dead right, and the authors of this article demonstrate 21 lies from Obama's own words.

Thanks again to Cafe Hayek.

Not just 'wannabe' commissars, but STUPID 'wannabe' commissars!

I thought Rahm Emanuel was dangerous because he was clever.  I thought Axelrod was dangerous because he was shrewd.  I thought Obama was dangerous because he was so quietly intelligent.  WRONG!  They're all as thick as a sack of spanners - and given their jobs, that makes them really dangerous! 

Who, in their right mind in American politics, or in this case, their Left mind, would willingly cross the street and pick a fight with the most popular TV news channel in the USA?  Well, if you're inexperienced you might try one dig, but as soon as you saw that with every dig their ratings went higher and higher, reaching a bigger and wider audience of voters, you would stop if you had more brain cells than a microbe.  But not the Obama regime which, with the intelligence quotient of a retard, took on Fox News and despite all the warnings, today tried to ban them from access to a question and answer session with a government official.  The remainder of the White House press pool, ABC, NBC, CNN and CBS, suddenly found the courage that has been singularly lacking recently and promptly told the White House they would boycott the meeting if any one of the pool was excluded.  'Collapse of stout party' soon followed and the White House gave in.  You can read and see a video of the story here and as you do so just remind yourself that this is the team that is negotiating on behalf of the free world with the likes of Putin, Ahmedinejad, and the Dear Leader.  Feeling comfy, are we?

On top of his stupidity, however, Obama is also an accomplished liar, I mean, a world-class, Olympic medal-holding, Nobel Prize winning, copper-bottomed, fibber of the first water!  Should you doubt me, those scallawags at IHTM have a little video in which he tells 7 'porkies' inside 2 minutes - here.

Simply terrific!

Just go here and enjoy!  Immensely evocative, great skill and deeply moving.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8321463.stm

 

The Four Freedoms

If, and I know this is hard to believe possible, I have ever given you cause to smirk and snigger condescendingly, well, now is your moment.  I have long been an admirer of the late Norman Rockwell whom I first came across in sundry barbers' shops in the '50s which frequently, and inexplicably, always had old copies of the American magazine, Saturday Evening Post, for which Rockwell provided the cover illustration.  In those youthful days, of course, I had little in the way of a developed aesthetic taste, but I just liked the pictures.  Not least, I suppose, because they often told, or at least, implied, a story.  Twenty years ago I made my one and only visit to my favourite 'other country' and spent a delightful fortnight in New England and whilst criss-crossing the territory I came across the township in which Rockwell spent much of his working life.  There was small museum there dedicated to his work and what added a special touch was that the elderly couple who were on duty that day had, decades before, been used by Rockwell as models for some of the children who feature so often in his work. 

Like any artist, particularly artists with a huge output, his work is uneven, but has tremendous allure even for those with the most cynical and jaundiced outlook.  For a start, and a very good start for any artist, Rockwell had humour, so many of his paintings and illustrations immediately raise a smile of recognition of different types of people and all-too familiar situations.  However, in my opinion, his best work raises him to the highest level of artistry.  Below are four paintings produced as a result of the eloquence of President Roosevelt, who in a speech a few months before Pearl Harbour, spoke of 'the four freedoms', freedom from fear, from want, and freedom for worship and for free speech.

In no particular order, this is Freedom from Fear.  It seems very far from fear being so cuddley and cosey as the parents tuck their children into bed, but the headline on the paper reports on the terrors and atrocities of war.  The rag doll on the floor speaks for itself!  From a compositional point of view, I like the glimpse of the warm light downstairs and the bannister rails leading our eyes and imaginations down to another space.  The warmth of that light contrasts with the very dark background which frames the man in his white shirt, and the faces of the two parents. 

  

This next one, Freedom from Want, is less successful, I think.  The attitudes of the diners are too strained and un-natural, and for no discernible reason.  The white window and the white tablecloth together are too dominant.

Again, the next, Freedom of Worship, does not quite come off, in my view.  It has a mysterious, ethereal quality to it but what I do think is outstanding is the depiction of the old lady in the foreground, particularly her hands.  Rembrandt was a master of painting old men, particularly himself, and I find that 'portrait' of an old lady equally moving.  It is helped, of course, by the contrast with the fine, chiselled features of the younger woman next to her.

But now we come to a masterpiece, Freedom of Speech.  As Bruce Cole in a review in the WSJ points out:

Rockwell found a subject that is active and public, a subject he could grasp and shape into his greatest painting forging traditional American illustration into a powerful and enduring work of art.

For inspiration, he thought of the New England town-hall meetings he knew so well, with their long tradition of democratic public debate—a tradition, as we have seen this summer, still very much alive. [My emphasis]

I make no apology for quoting Mr. Cole at length:

Using a classic pyramidal composition, Rockwell focuses attention on the standing speaker whose age, worn and stained jacket, rough hands with dirty fingernails, and plaid shirt set him apart from the neat coats, ties and white shirts of the older men in the audience. Although he is a working man, this figure, his face reminiscent of Lincoln's, is unafraid to voice his opinion—which we suspect is contrary to that of the others in the room. Standing tall, his mouth open, his shining eyes transfixed, he speaks his mind, untrammeled and unafraid. In Rockwell's vision he has become not only an active public participant in democracy, but a defender of it. He is the very embodiment of free speech, a living manifestation of that abstract right—an image that transforms principle, paint and, yes, creed, into an indelible image and a brilliant and beloved American icon still capable of inspiring millions world-wide.

What I like enormously in this picture is the man in the bottom right corner with his head turned upwards and over his shoulder.  It is the sort of pose you will see in countless Rennaissance paintings, usually Roman soldiers or disciples gazing up to the crucified Jesus, and somehow you always get the feeling of the painter straining for a posed effect so that he can show off his skill at depicting the musculature under the skin, but here, in Rockwell's homely Town Hall meeting it looks perfectly natural but gives the composition a tension.  The main figure is simply heroic, in the classical sense, because he is so simple!

Go on, treat yourself to a Rockwell print, there are plenty here, for example, and I promise you that you will enjoy looking at them for a very long time without tiring of them.

A Czech checks the Federal cheques!

Being a simple minded fellow myself I am always a believer in the old adage that one picture is worth a thousand words.  Of course, that comes with a health warning to the effect that clever people can often tamper with pictures - so beware!  However, I am certain you can take this graph as mathematically accurate because the originator is a mathematician, well, actually I think he's a physicist but, hell, these days where does maths end and physics begin?  His name is, like virtually everything in Czech-land, unpronounceable - Lubos Motl, with a sort of 'v' over the last 's', and don't ask me what that means!  Apart from the economic 'state of the nation', Lubos often casts a cold, scientific eye over the wilder claims of the 'HAFs'.  An interesting blogger even if some of his physics is a tad difficult for a dummy like me.

Anyway, if I throw a number at you, like, say, 1.4 trillion, are your re-actions a shrug, a puff of air through the lips, a muttered, "Golly-gosh, that's, er, big" before you rush away to paint the mother-in-law's kitchen rather than spend more time with me?  Can't say I blame you.  But here's another big number, this one, provided by Lubos, is a quote from one of my heroes, Richard Feynman:

There are 10^{11} stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

Heh! you can now spit out, that's nothing, a mere bagatelle, because according to Lubos, 10^{11}, or a hundred billion, is actually 14.2 times smaller than the American Federal deficit!  That stands at 14.2 trillion, or at least it did a week ago but by now I bet you can add a few more billions to the total - and that's before Obama starts the big spend on his 'National Socialist Health Service'. 

Anyway, if all those big numbers are giving you a headache, just look at the picture:

'Nuff said', I feel; or, if you prefer it, "Stick around, you ain't seen nuttin' yet!"

And here is today's totalitarian forecast . . .

Allow me to repeat myself, it is, after all, an old man's perogative.  A couple of posts down, I wrote the following:

The plight of the working man in the democratic west is no longer a matter of urgency, so new means must be attached to new emergencies in order to raise new streams of revenue for the governmental coffers - step forward, amongst others, global warming!  All over the western world, government ministers and their 'hand-maidens' are smacking their lips at the prospect of huge amounts of money from taxes aimed at avoiding an entirely mythical end of the world!  [My emphasis added.]

How wise I am, how prescient I am - and how cheap I  am considering you get all my wisdom for nothing, my life already!  Anyway, no sooner written than I turn to the ever-vigilant Anthony Watts to receive this slap from one of his contributors, Dr. Tony Brown, who obviously keeps his ears, and eyes, very finely tuned to governmental and quango activity:

“Personal carbon rations would have to be mandatory, imposed by Government in the same way that food rationing was introduced in the UK in 1939… Each person would receive an electronic card containing their year’s carbon credits …see the Tyndall Centre’s study on “domestic tradable quotas”… and their recent establishment on the political agenda…the card would have to be presented when purchasing energy or travel services, and the correct amount of carbon deducted. The technologies and systems already in place for direct debit systems and credit cards could be used.”

(Environmental Audit Committee minutes-House Of Commons-London)

What that means is a return to wartime rationing!

Dr. Brown opens his article with these words:

Preface. This is a factual account of the highly politicised concept of catastrophic man made climate change. The views quoted above are supported in principle by the UK govt but said to be ahead of their time. However, the means to achieve them are now being quietly introduced into main stream thinking through the systematic use of a political agenda that uses the alarming notion of catastrophic man made climate change as the means to force through a measure of social engineering unequalled in the UK in modern times.

There then follows a long but highly detailed list of the monstrous agit-prop campaign which has H.M. Treasury smacking its lips.  I need hardly remind you of Gordon Brown's ridiculous apocalyptic frenzy the other day in which he warned that government leaders had only 50 days to save the planet.

You're being had, People, watch your wallets!

A giant leap for Mankind, er, well, for me, at any rate!

I received a bollocking from 'SoD' (no respect these days from the younger generation!) because there was no automatic 'linkie-thingie' (sorry for using high tech language) on my 'Comments'. With the sort of snapping-snarling charm for which I am rightly famed, I told him that if he was that worried he should sort it himself - and he did!  So now, dear readers, if you paste in the address of another site it will automatically become, er, an automatic linkie-thingie!  Here are just some of my reviews:

Find your own damn quotations: Neil Armstrong

Brilliant, brilliant, now where did I put my specs: Bill Gates

A credit to our wonderful edukashun service: Ed Balls

Wot's a 'linkie-thingie'?: My milkman

When are you coming down to sort out the garden?: The little 'Memsahib'

 

Can't, shan't, won't!

Alan Sullivan, or 'my other set of eyes', as I fondly think of him, links to an essay by David P. Goldman (aka, 'Spengler') in The Asia Times.  This will give you a brief flavour of his speculations concerning Asia but if you are of a nervous disposition it may be wise to avoid it:

India can't let the fundamentalist side of the Pakistani military take power without responding.

Iran can't let Pakistan's Sunnis crush the 20% Shi'ite minority.

Israel can't allow for the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons.

Saudi Arabia can't let Iran dominate Iraq.

Turkey can't let Iraq's Kurds form an independent state.

China can't let Turkey agitate among the 100 million Muslim ethnic Turks within its borders.

And all this volatitility, including four (maybe five)* nuclear powers, which might lead to a chain re-action not altogether different from the Balkans in 1914 is taking place just as America under Obama is quietly but deliberately taking steps to downgrade itself as a super-power and retire from the field. 

I say again, British leaders need to start now in thinking ahead to a world in which the USA is either too weak or too indifferent to play its part in world affairs, or even worse, as I speculated the other day, it positively sides with totalitarian states.

* In (yet another) momentary 'brain fade' I wrote of two nuclear powers but, of course, in the list there are four and one potential.

Me, me, me ... and Ayn Rand!

I know, I know, I'm a fickle fellow but, alas, I must rescind my offer in a recent post for Ms. Ayn Rand to have my babies.  The fact that she has been dead for 27 years is neither here nor there, my reasons for premature withdrawal are philosophical rather than physiological!

In my previous post I admitted to being very taken with her philosophical views but even then I added my 'get out' clause, "even whilst reserving some doubts".  If anything these doubts have grown as, in my dull-witted way, I have slowly mulled over her various propositions.  Yesterday I came across two book reviews, here and here, on the subject of Ayn Rand in The American Thinker which confirmed my hesitation.

Perhaps the most shocking, and I really do mean 'shocking', part of her philosophy is her insistent hostility toward altruism. Now, I am not so steeped in her works for me to be precise as to whether she confined her detestation of it only as it appears in political philosophy or whether she includes personal behaviour.  Certainly she will have none of it when it appears in political form because she denounces it as a fraud foisted on the unwary as a means of enslaving them.  To understand why, one only has to glance at recent and current communistic regimes in which individual desires and wants are subjugated for the so-called 'greater good'; and you don't have to look much further than our own political parties, yes, all of them, to hear similar if softer sorts of the same clap-trap.  In essence the message is always the same; in the name of morality, that's 'Big Brother's' morality not necessarily yours, we will stop you doing 'x' and insist that you do 'y' even though that might harm you in order that the lot of others will thereby be improved.  Speaking of the Enlightenment philosophers, she writes:

The great treason of the philosophers was that they never stepped out of the Middle Ages.  [...]  They were willing to doubt the existence of physical objects [Kant, Hume, etc], they were willing to doubt the validity of their own senses, they were willing to defy the authority of absolute monarchies, they were willing (occasionally) to proclaim themselves to be skeptics or agnostics or atheists - but they were not willing to doubt the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal, that he has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.

Under all its countless guises, variations and adaptations, that doctrine - best described as the morality of altruism - has come from prehistoric swamps to New York City, unchallenged.  In savage societies, men practiced the ritual of human sacrifices, immolating individual men on sacrificial alters, for the sake of what they regarded as their collective [my emphasis] tribal good.  Today, they are still doing it, only the agony is slower and the slaughter greater - but the doctrine that demands and sanctions it, is the same doctrine of moral cannibalism."

That is difficult, if not impossible, to deny given the history of the 20th century.  Rand idolises the producer, the businessman, the man who uses his skill, his labour and his daring to meet a need that he perceives amongst his fellow men and women.  He does it, not out of altruism, but  because it satisfies him personally and rewards him handsomely - if he succeeds!  Such people, she maintains, should be feted as heroes, not, as they usually are, denigrated as villains.  She points to the 19th century which was a period closest to the ideals of free market capitalism and which saw unbelievable growth in wealth and well-being for the world's population. For Rand, everything she believes was encompassed by the Founding Fathers:

The New Intellectuals [as opposed to the 'old' ones with their collectivist ideas] must remind the world that the basic premise of the Founding Fathers was man's right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness - which means: man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; and that the political implementation of this right is a society where men deal with one another as traders [her emphasis], by voluntary exchange to mutual benefit.

Rand came to America after her family fled the communist revolution in Russia so you can understand her vehement hatred for all things socialist.  However, it seems to me that in her extreme views she simply mirrors the way in which collectivist philosophers think.  They construct a theoretical edifice whilst ignoring the characteristics of the building materials, that is, human beings.  Rand does much the same in the opposite direction.  For example, and to use a trite metaphor, in pursuing his happiness, 'Lord Gradgrind' might well eschew altruism and decide that small boys and girls should work in his factory for a penny a day, and given that they are impoverished and hungry they might well agree and thus comply with Rand's notion of dealing with each other as "traders" indulging in "voluntary exchange for mutual benefit".  But can anyone with even the faintest sense of charity accept such a state of affairs?  I think not, and indeed, I know not, because the 19th and 20th centuries also saw, in the democracies, a steady improvement in the condition of the workforce without the horrors of collectivisation.

Today we can see that these efforts have gone too far, not as a result of actions by the workers themselves, but mostly because of the malignant and growing power of the political class.  Hiding behind apparently 'good intentions' with which it is difficult to argue, they accrue more and more money by means of a vast array of new taxes, the distribution of which then gives them enormous power.  The plight of the working man in the democratic west is no longer a matter of urgency, so new means must be attached to new emergencies in order to raise new streams of revenue for the governmental coffers - step forward, amongst others, global warming!  All over the western world, government ministers and their 'hand-maidens' are smacking their lips at the prospect of huge amounts of money from taxes aimed at avoiding an entirely mythical end of the world!

I believe we need a Randian revolution to undertake a 'slash and burn' attack on governments in general, and the political class in particular.  However, we should not assume that Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy will cure all our ills, it will merely change them - but as my old mum used to say, a change is as good as a rest!

 

Yippee - some good news . . . no, really . . . honestly . . .

Well I seem to have been coming over like Pte. Fraser with manic depression in many of my recent posts, so here is a link to something that resembles a faint, watery sunbeam shining fitfully through the storm clouds but promising good news.  It is on the subject of - and please stop yawning - gilts, bonds and government debt!  No, I don't understand all the ins and outs of this abstruse subject, either, but Edmund Conway of The Telegraph does and, moreover, he explains it in simple English.  Even more important, his article points up the fact that Britain is peculiarly well-placed to withstand future shocks to the government bonds market as interest rates shoot up.  I mean, "There Will Be Blood" but British blood might not flow as freely as others.  Read it, it has an inherent interest as well as the good news, and Conway explains everything beautifully.

How many seats will the BNP take from Labour?

Lots and lots, I hope, enough anyway, to pour concentrated bleach into the gaping, open wound of Labour's crass stupidity.  Lest you doubt their imbecility read Fraser Nelson's post at The Coffee House in which he reports that Nick Brown, the Labour Chief Whip, no less, has put down a motion in the Commons to ban Nick Griffin and his side-kick from access to Parliament - despite these two being recently elected to the Euro-parliament by their British constituents!  What else illustrates better the contempt for ordinary voters which years in office has swollen like a maligant tumours in what passes for brains amongst Labour 'big-wigs'?  As Nelson puts it far better than I can:

Whose fault is it that Griffin was elected in the first place? As I argued in the News of the World a while ago: if I had my way, I'd base Griffin in Westminster so MPs would see his smug face walking past them every day. I'd have them queuing in front of them in the canteen, propping up Annie's Bar, holding court in the Churchill dining room with his skinhead guests, the works. I want him in their faces, until they take seriously the problem he represents. For Griffin is there mainly on white working class votes. He is a reminder of the MPs' collective failure to reach out to forgotten voters - their failure to tackle the immigration debate, their obsession with swing voters in swing seats.

In hoping that the BNP will take seats off Labour, what I really mean is that I hope they reduce the Labour vote enough for others to take previous safe Labour seats.  I do not under-estimate the potential danger they pose, and I agree whole-heartedly when Nelson writes this:

I find them [the BNP] wholly loathsome, genuinely racist and fundamentally un-British. Where I differ from most is that I also regard them as a real danger in our politics and society, rather than a lunatic fringe. Their views (anti-EU, anti-mass immigration) are that of the mainstream in Britain but find no Westminster representation.  Looking at Westminster's response to the BNP so far, I'd say the horror story of their success is far from over.

Will it be secession and a new civil war?

Sorry to keep harping on about the (dis)United States, it is either a sign of my worry or my paranoia. However, in a week in which the US deficit has reached $1.4 trillion, that is, more than the total national US debt for the last 200 years, one is entitled, I feel, to get out the worry beads.  There might have been some cause for hope if the current US government was intent on cutting its spending, but on the contrary, it is printing and spending like Mugabe on acid!  To put it in perspective, the previous year's deficit was $459 billion!  It is the biggest deficit since WWII.  According to forecasts, by 2019 the Federal government is likely to be paying 15% of its income just to meet the interest on its loans.  But what will they be paying if interest rates world-wide begin to rise under the threat of inflation?  Now, I have no desire to frighten the horses, so I will add this quote:

Some hold out hope that Congress and the administration will act before another crisis erupts. Robert Reischauer, a former head of CBO, said that in an optimum scenario, Congress will tackle the deficits next year. A package of tax increases and spending cuts could be phased in starting in 2013 and gradually grow over the next decade. The administration has pledged to include a deficit-reduction plan in its 2011 budget, which will go to Congress in February. [My emphasis]

And there, mes enfants, in that last simple sentence lies the crux of the matter.  Will an increasingly unpopular president, currently facing agitation from groups to the Left of him, quite apart from the Right, and with Congressional elections approaching in November next year, really take the axe to spending programmes whilst simultaneously raising taxes on voters?

And I would add a further question - does this president, and the people who surround him, really want to avoid the train crash that is coming when the dollar collapses and inflation rips away?  To a Marxist, this is an ideal scenario in which civil unrest can be used as an excuse for emergency powers.  In my previous post on this subject I suggested that an assassination attempt on the president might provide the tipping point, but wide-spread civil unrest would be even better.

But, again, if you are a Marxist, the wet dream scenario would be for the mainly Republican States whose financial position is reasonably stable to attempt to secede from a bankrupt Union.  Do the people of Texas really want to keep paying for the follies of California?  There-in lies the seeds of destruction and self-immolation, as foreseen, apparently, by Ayn Rand in her philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged.  According to Peter Morin the die is already cast as the train hurtles on under the control of Marxist ideologues and the only option for the brave of heart is to leap off.

Thanks again to Alan Sullivan for the links.

A premature ejaculation!

I am always rushing here to tell you excitedly about some book I am only halfway through reading because my enthusiasm for it will not allow me to wait until the end.  Today, I am going one better, or worse, depending on your point of view, I am going to become over-excited about a book which I haven't even read at all!

I learned of it from a review in The Telegraph written by Tom Holland, the author of a history of the Roman Republic called Rubicon, about which I raved a few posts back. (A confession will follow!)  The book is called Lustrum and it is written by Robert Harris.  He, apparently, is enormously good friends with Peter Mandelson - but we mustn't hold that against him.  His book is, I learn, the second in a trilogy (so be advised to find out the name of the first and begin there) and it is set in the first century BC, that tumultuous period leading to the destruction of the Republic.  Apparently, this trilogy centres on the great Roman orator and politician, Cicero, who, judging from Holland's history, is exactly the right 'hero' upon which to hang the story.  I cannot quite find the words to express my fascination and enthusiasm for this period which is simply stupendous in its excitement, its danger, its drama - and its importance - and filled as it is with a cast of not just larger than life, but almost larger than imagination, characters.  Anyone wishing to gain an insight into politics need look no further.

Now my confession.  I have bemoaned, many a time and oft', the pile of waiting-to-be-read books which threatens life and limb in my study.  Now there is a 'real and present danger' of a second pile growing on my other side to be called the 'half-read-waiting-to-be-finished' pile.  In my school days I grew quite tired of my perceptive teachers who filled report after report with the dread words "Duff lacks concentration".  How right they were, blast it, but enthralled as I was by Holland's history of Rome, a friend loaned me the latest Arden edition of King Lear.  Whenever I direct a Shakepeare I try to read as much of the scholorship on the subject as I can to make up for the fact that I never went to university to study it and in fact I didn't really get going with Shakespeare until my 40s.  The Arden is always in the mix although I have often found its use to a director limited.  In the introduction essays there are often pages of stuff about, say, 'Compositor A' and 'Compositor B', and the way in which they buggered about with Shakespeare's texts as they squeezed them onto small pages for the Quarto editions - all very interesting, I suppose, but somewhat arcane.  However, the 1997 edition by Prof. R. A. Noakes, whilst being steeped in his impeccable scholasticism, is written with a view to putting this impossible play on a stage.  Terrific!

Anyway, I thought I would just sample a few paragraphs before returning to Holland's book, but alas, like a smoker who has sworn to stop, I took a few quick, surreptitious drags and was hooked.  All else was put to one side for finishing later whilst I discovered, under Prof. Noakes's tutelage, the hideously embarrassing fact that I really knew very little about Lear and had understood even less!  Oh dear!

Second thoughts

Well, I can only manage one thought at a time!  However, I have been mulling over my previous two posts and I wanted to add something more.

My post on possible outcomes for America reminded me of the last time I worried slightly for its future when its then president, Richard Nixon, was caught in a criminal conspiracy to burgle and bug his political opponents.  I trembled slightly but was both relieved and full of admiration that that the institutions of the Republic held fast during that crisis.  Even so, there is a world of difference between criminal conspiracy and political conspiracy.  Criminals are by nature usually incredibly stupid which is why the police, not always the brightest of the bright, are able to catch so many of them; but politicians almost by definition are exceedingly crafty.  Marxist politicians, in particular, have a long history and experience of conspiracy.  They are infinitely more dangerous.  I remain nervous for and on behalf of a country I admire enormously.

Additional: This is a must read, gloomy though it be. My thanks to Alan Sullivan for the link.

I have been reminded of my other post on the necessity of change in the political structures of my own country by an article in the The Telegraph by Charles Moore, a shrewd observer - well, he was a former editor of The 'Speccie', so what else would you expect?  In it, he draws attention to an MP of whom I was only dimly aware until now - Douglas Carswell, Member for (lucky) Harwich.  He it was who gave the Westminster tectonic plates a shove by laying down a motion of no-confidence in the previous Speaker.  As Moore points out, by a delicious irony, on the same day that ex-Speaker Martin, that pig-ignorant and pig-greedy swine was elevated to the Lords, Carswell was putting forward a Ten Minute Rule Bill suggesting that all candidates should be chosen by open primaries of all their constituents, and if later they are found to have seriously misbehaved it should be possible for those same constituents, if they can raise sufficient support, to recall them to account for themselves.  Without having analysed all the ins and outs, that strikes me as an eminently intelligent idea - thus, the chances of it ever happening are remote!

What do we do if the USA turns totalitarian?

Never happen, I hear you cry. Well, yes, you are probably right but then again you may possibly be wrong.  And anyone seriously interested in geo-strategic problems always considers well ahead of time the possibilities along with the probabilities. So, consider: Obama told us in his own words (and it's on video) that we should judge him by the people who surround him.  Well, Glenn Beck did just that and it turns out that one of his hand-picked 'czars' was a black, racist, revolutionary Marxist.  He was forced to stand down, not because of his revolutionary activities for which he once went to jail, but because he turned out to be a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.

Now Beck has shown a video of a woman who is the White House Communications Director, and is also married to Obama's personal lawyer.  During the campaign she was spoken of as one of the four top advisors to the candidate.  In that video which is only a 4 or 5 months old, Anita Dunn, the lady in question, is shown giving a speech to the children at a Catholic High School.  In it she states, loudly and very clearly, that she has two favourite political philosophers from whom she draws inspiration.  One was Mother Theresa, and given that she was speaking at a Catholic school, that was unexceptional; but her second favourite was - Mao Tse Tung! 

You can pick any number you like between 40 and 70 million human beings who perished directly as a result of Mao's dictatorship.  When it comes to mass murder he makes Adolf Hitler look like a mere dilettante!  But imagine the shrieks and howls if a Bush White House staffer had come out and quoted Hitler as an example to school children.  Of course, Beck concentrated on the Mao Tse Tung quote but I was taken by some of her other words, for example:

But the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point [ie, Mother Theresa and Mao], which is, you're going to make choices. You're going to challenge. You're going to say, "Why not?" You're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here's the deal: These are your choices. They are no one else's. [...]

You know, you don't have to accept the definition of how to do things, and you don't have to follow other people's choices and paths, OK? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war.

Or in other words, children, ignore the dictates of society as taught to you by your parents and your teachers and your priests, and instead just do your own thing - and do it militantly - just like good old uncle Mao!

But outside the immediate White House entourage there are swarms of Left-wing activists, not just liberal Democrats, but people with ties to hardline revolutionary groups who have infiltrated many of the Obama-supporting organisations.  Take Magarida Jorge as a typical example:

A few months ago, Margarida Jorge was a low level supporter of the Missouri Communist Party, working with ACORN, Jobs with Justice and the like.  Now she plays a key role in a nationwide organization at the center of of the national healthcare debate.  Her job is to defuse the opposition to Obama's health care reforms by applying the skills and techniques developed by her Communist Party friends.

Or this prize pair of radical specimens:

In 1995 former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn helped launch Barack Obama's political career at a small function in their Chicago home.  Bill Ayers also hired Obama to head the Annanberg Challenge, a $50 million fund which enabled Obama to fund organisations which could enhance his political career.  Later Ayers worked with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund, together doling out millions to leftist causes.

It has been rumoured that Bill Ayers was the ghost writer of Obama's biography but Obama has denied it and since his run for office he has distanced himself from this couple - apparently!

Both the above quotes from the indefatigable Trevor Loudon at New Zeal.

I could go on but instead let me point you at Obama's foreign policy as it is slowly revealed.  It surely amounts to no more than a gradual sucking up to every monstrous dictatorship in the world.  Islam is kow-towed to, the Iranians now know that the US will do nothing about their nukes; Putin knows that he can dominate Obama as his recent unilateral withdrawal of the missile shield without a single Russian concession proves.  Two allies, Poland and the Czech Republic, have been left looking foolish, and a severe chill will have fallen over the Ukraine and Georgia.  The Chinese begin to flex their monetary muscles and the USA can do nothing as its currency sinks out of sight under the weight of Obama's reckless spending.  It is only a matter of time before it is Chinese military muscle that is flexed.  A tiny nation, Honduras, who applied its own properly constituted laws via its own courts to deal with a potential dictator have been leaned on by the Americans in an effort to force them to take him back.

The first thing that revolutionaries want and need is a domestic crisis.  In that sort of maelstrom their simplistic slogans are made easy to swallow.  I believe the USA is likely to enter another financial crisis as the dollar becomes a basket-case currency.  This will impact in all sorts of ways and is likely to destabilise American society.  At that time, I will not be surprised to see a physical attack on the president used as an excuse for the introduction of extreme emergency powers - and hey-ho, we'll be off to the races!  It would be extremely useful for the militants if such a crisis can be engineered prior to the Congressional elections next year, perhaps permitting an emergency postponement during which their grip can be tightened.

I repeat, all this is just a possibility, but events need to be watched in case it moves up to a probability, and at that point, we, in Britain, will need to do some very hard thinking as we try to come to terms with a world in which the mighty United States of America ceases to be a defender of freedom and democracy but instead joins with the totalitarians.

 

Time for change - not 'over there' but 'over here'!

The stench emanating from the cesspit into which the Mother of Parliaments has fallen is now so great that even an arch-conservative (small 'c', please note) like me is gradually coming round to the idea of change.  The small changes are relatively easy, for example, MPs are entitled, like any employees, to expenses but henceforth each and every claim must be published on the internet for us to examine and to make clear our feelings.  However, I think the change that is required needs to be very much more radical.  Cameron has already made clear that he will reduce the size of parliament which is an excellent idea but I think he needs to turn his attention to the Lords which is, thanks to Blair's messy compromise, neither one thing or another.

Any parliamentary democracy needs a second chamber which should, in my view, eschew as far as possible 'whipped' party politics.  In other words, the 'Lords' (or Senators, as I prefer to call them) should be free to be members of a Party caucus but should not suffer any retribution if they vote against the Party line.  They should be a mix of the appointed and the voted.  However, the appointed should be in the 'Senate' by virtue of the job they held prior to retirement, for example, top military 'Brass', retired Permanent  Secretaries, retired judges, religious leaders, TUC and CBI office holders, retired leaders of regional parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Ulster, retired heads of professional bodies, former Chancellors of universities, and so on and on.  The point is that these people would take their seats by right not by appointment of the current prime minister.  They would serve a maximum of 6 years before giving up their seat.

Some 'Senators', perhaps a majority, would be elected but they would only be permitted to stand for election after having secured the signatures of 'x' hundred (or thousand) supporters.  Having done that, all their election expenses would be paid by the state and it would be illegal for any candidate to spend money from another source - particularly any political party!  The 'Senate' would sit for bi-annual terms and any elected 'Senator' would be able to sit for 3 of those terms (ie, 6 years) before having to face re-election, in other words, one third of the elected 'Senators' would face re-election every two years. All 'Senators' should receive a generous salary and pension according to the number of years served.

So, we have a mix of elected and non-elected 'Senators'.  I insist on the non-elected element because it would be utterly foolish to ignore the expertise of these experienced men and women.  But what would be their power?  I think it should be three-fold and take the form of increasingly severe delaying power.  First, they should have the power on a majority vote basis to send a Bill back to the Commons for re-consideration, much as the Lords can do today.  This will be an irritation to the government but will force MPs to re-examine.  Second, on a higher majority, the 'Senate' should be able to send a Bill back for reconsideration in the next Parliament which will be a very real setback for a government timetable.  Thirdly and finally, their last power would be a 'nuclear option', that is, on a fairly hefty majority, say, two thirds, one third, they should be able to send a Bill back which can then only be decided by the Commons produced after a general election.  They should have no power to initiate measures.

Those of my readers of a 'pox-doctor's clerk' mentality will instantly pick away at my lack of stringency - how many 'Senators', what's the mix between elected and non-elected, exactly how big should the majorities be, and so on.  Well, I leave that to others, I am only concerned to limit the powers of 'elected dictatorship' under which we have suffered in recent years and this is simply a general, not detailed, approach to the problem.

Spud suckers? Or 'Spud-U-Like'?

I apologise for the lack of posts in recent days due in equal measure to domestic duties, a lack of inspiration and - the ladies of the Women's Institute.  I will, perhaps, explain that final, cryptic remark a little later.  In the meantime, 'SoD' has volunteered a post on the subject of spuds.  At the end you will not know whether to laugh or weep!

Remember the Times article in 2006 that first brought our attention to the £180bn per annum extorted from our wallets to fund the quangos? :-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article626687.ece

Today, apart from observing that £180bn a year is a little bit more than HMG’s net borrowing requirement forecast for 2009/10 of £175bn- meaning that by liquidating the quangos we could return the public finances to surplus in one executive action - I wondered if the quango voted “most useless quango of the year” by the excellent blog site Burning Our Money, namely the British Potato Council, had, at the very least, been singled out from the other 910 to 2566 (how many depends on who you believe – see Times article) by HMG for liquidation as a token of contrition given the credit crunch, recession, spiralling debt, ‘n’ all that?

Not spuddy likely, of course!

You’ll remember the British Potato Council has an annual budget of £6m of our money and 56 employees performing such useless acts as hiring a dance troupe called the “Chippie Dales” to visit schools indoctrinating the nation’s kids into the benefits of crisps and chips.  Meanwhile, another quango – the Food Standards Agency - spends £143m of our money countering the crisps and chips propaganda by hectoring the nation’s children on the dangers of cholesterol.

Well here we are, a couple of years down the line, and not only is the British Potato Council looking pretty chipper, but it seems as though it’s actually increased its budget by 30% and, via a simple accounting trick, managed to avoid attracting attention to the fact.

If you look at page 36 of the British Potato Council’s “accounts” you’ll see their total income for 2008 is £6m.  Eh?  That’s down from the 2007 figure of £6.153m on the same page, isn’t it?  Nope! Not when you look at the heading of the 2008 column and realise that the BPC shortened its accounting year for 2008 to 9 months thereby making the annualised figure £8m – up nearly £2m, or 30%!

Please let it end.  Soon.

Son of Duff

(That's enough 'chip' jokes, Dad, er, sorry, I mean Ed!)

ARKANSAS - gateway to, er, well, somewhere, I'm sure . . .

Come on, own up, you goddammed Limeys, exactly how many times have you thought about Arkansas in the last, say, 30 years?  Well, don't feel too bad about it because I suspect most 'Arkies' (or 'Ozarks', even) don't think about the place much, either.  I sense a certain smug satisfaction amongst the male population of Arkansas that the slickest 'slick Willy' of all time hailed from that great State and managed to multi-task superbly as he sat at his desk in the White House.  Apart from that, what's to know?

Well, it is the task of this blog to entertain - but also to educate, as well!  Thanks to my 'Arkie' e-pal, 'JK', we at Duff & Nonsense are now able to point you to a learn-ed book on the history of the State: “Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies and Good Ol’ Boys Defined a State”.  Alas, despite its author's immense scholasticism, somehow I can't see it hitting the NYT Best Sellers list, which is a pity because there is much, I suspect, to be enjoyed in it .  After all, us 'Limeys' live in a land full of towns and villages with strange names so there is fellow-feeling for a State with towns called Greasy Corner, Booger Hollow, Possum Grape and Toad Suck.

Its tendency towards the eccentric, another much beloved trait amongst us 'Limeys', is instanced by this:

Then-Gov. Mike Huckabee once lived in a triple-wide trailer while his governor’s mansion was undergoing renovations, and a state law mixup briefly did away with a minimum age for marriage.

That last unfortunate mixup only added to the disgraceful imputation that, rather like the inhabitants of Norfolk in England, 'Arkies' look suspiciously like each other!  Alas, this proud State has become the butt of jokes:

In his book, Blevins recounts a Saturday Night Live sketch in which comedian Dana Carvey, impersonating Ross Perot, notes that a half-million dollars is “enough to buy a still and a new outhouse for every family in Little Rock.”

I have to say that when the smart-Alec metros make jokes of a place, the more I like the sound of it and the more I'd like to get to know it - especially if they all own stills!

In the meantime, my thanks to 'JK' for the link.

Dear Director-General, 'mea culpa, mea maxima culpa'!

I shall pay my BBC licence fee with a skip and a smile next year when it falls due.  I am a humble penitent who has committed the sin of calumny against this splendid and august British institution.  Yes, yes, you can drag up all those rude tirades I aimed against the BBC in the past, but that was just youthful - who sniggered? - impetuosity. 

Either that, or, and this has only just occurred which is silly of me because it is so obvious, the BBC has been following this blog closely and altered its editorial line accordingly  lest it bring down on its miserable head the wrath of Duff!  Yes, yes, on second thoughts that is much the more likely.

Anyway, the BBC, or at least its eminent and wise climate correspondent, Mr. Paul Hudson, has taken a very un-BBC line on global warming.  Under a heading of "What happened to global warming?" he writes (his emphasis):

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

In one brief, easily understandable article he sums up the pros and cons of the AGW controversy.  I must stress that he does not, quite properly, take sides or come to a conclusion:

So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly. [The Met Office - heh, heh, heh!  Sorry, but I couldn't resist a brief interjection - remember their summer forecasts for the last 3 years?]

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

He ends with another extraordinary paragraph coming from the BBC - a joke - in the face of pending catastrophe, no less!

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

Alright, it's not a great joke but just bear in mind the source - the climate correspondent of the BBC!

Settled science?  Heh, heh, heh!

My thanks to Drudge for the link.

Back to 'skool' #2

I have received a double jab to provoke this particular post.  The first came as a result of the history syllabus suggested by Michael Gove MP which I published in a post just below.  A commenter, 'TBS' ('The Bearded Socialist' but I can't keep typing that out every time!), complained of a lack of classical history in it which is true but there is only so much time in a school life.  Thinking back to my own schooldays, I cannot recall any classical history lessons beyond the bit that impinged on Britain when that upstart, Julias Caesar, invaded.  In retrospect, most of my Roman 'history' came from a somewhat doubtful 'historical' source, William Shakespeare.  Brilliant playwright, of course, but most proper historians cross themselves when they watch one of his 'histories'.

The other jab I received came from a book I have just managed to reach off the top of the tottering stack of 'waiting-to-be-read' books in my study.  It is called RUBICON: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic and it is written by Tom Holland.  What a superb book! He brings the Republic to life, you can almost smell it (and Rome did smell!); he dissects Roman society like a pathologist, laying open all their class-ridden strata, the drive by everyone to achieve greatness because that is how you would be judged by your peers; the ferocious and deadly politics; the problems with empire; the disparaging derision aimed at the previous owner of empire - the Greeks.  Now I see clearly why, years ago, the elderly, classically educated MacMillan made that elliptical remark to the young President Kennedy to the effect that Great Britain would be the Athens to his Rome.  The parallels are there, of course, but not, I think, as close as all that.  Even so, reading this book and learning of the dynamic and ruthless politics of Rome and then contemplating modern America with its own Senate full of greedy, grasping politicians who regularly put themselves and their interests before those of the Republic, you cannot help but shudder.

Holland's book is an education, in the very highest and best sense of the word.

Be honest, girls, waddya think?

No, no, it's not me!  It's the late Ted Kennedy and according to the National Enquirer, via those rascals at 'IHTM', "Ted Kennedy slept with more than a thousand women", a fact of which he was inordinately proud and, despite the photos below, they were not all short-sighted blondes! 

Indeed, whilst many of them lacked, er,  taste, shall we say, many of them were exceedingly bright because, again, according to the Enquirer , Kennedy "spent at least $10 million in hush money over the years to keep his skirt-chasing a secret!"  Well, as we can see, he had plenty of fat to go around. 

 The lads at 'IHTM' dispute the '1,00 women laid end to end' boast:

Our sources say it was only 500 women, not 1000. But since Kennedy was seeing double most of his adult life, the mistake is understandable.

Some people say you should never speak ill of the dead, but hell, if you can't make an exception of Ted Kennedy, where can you?

'Camelot', when you savour the word, is, I suppose, a very suitable epitaph!

 

Back to 'skool' #1

Before all this internet 'thingie' started I was happy in my ignorance.  I mean, I read the papers and watched the 'telly' and whilst I had just sufficient native wit to suspect that much of it, being the work of hacks with little or no expertise, was either tendentious or innacurate, I knew that to delve any deeper to check the truth would involve hours in a library.  Now I am a man who has raised inertia to an art form.  Frankly, I'm amazed that Tracey Emin hasn't used me in one of her, er, 'art pieces', sitting in an armchair gazing at nothing.  It could win the Turner Prize!  Also, I have often confessed here that I wasted all of my school years by trying, and failing, to be 'Jack the lad'.  However, now, all is changed. I can remain in my armchair and magically all the accumulated knowledge of the world is literally at my finger-tips.  And do you know, I'm still too bloody idle even to check for obvious errors in our less than wonderful media, even though I am dimly aware that somehow, somewhere, they have got a story wrong.

OK!  So now you're feeling smug and superior, because you're bright and energetic, so let me ask you this: Have you heard of the North West Passage?  Well, of course you have.  Everyone has.  It's that bit of ice and sea, mostly ice, up above Canada.  A couple of hundred years ago some daft British officer tried to force the passage and perished with all of his crew, I believe.  But have you heard of the North East Passage? Oh, alright, clever clogs, you may have, but I hadn't up until this morning.  Is there a point to all this I hear you muttering?  Indeed there is.

For the last few weeks I have been reading about a couple of merchant ships which were, unbelievably, forcing their way through this icey passage.  According to the media, this was one of the few benefits of global warming because the arctic ice had melted and finally a way through had been found and huge economic benefits would follow.

All bollocks, of course, which, if I had paid attention to Mr. Needham's geography lessons 55 years ago, I would have known!  The North East Passage, which basically runs along the top of Russia, has been open for shipping in summer months since - 1934!  Amongst other global warming dummies (the BBC, The Independent, etc), The Times swallowed the false implications of this story whole and then followed up by using it as the basis of an advertsing campaign on posters plastered all over the London underground. 

The advertsing copy reads:

To help you navigate the changing world we have more dedicated science and environment correspondents than the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail or Independent.

Alas, I can only think that all those "dedicated science and environment correspondents" followed my example and spent their schooldays arsing about.  The UK Register gently explained:

Only one problem: The Northeast Passage has been opened for commerce since 1934 – and never ‘closed’.

Over the years hundreds of thousands of freighters have passed through, and after Russia put Soviet-era politics aside it was extended to foreign commerce in the 1990s.

Anthony Watts, from whom I derived this report of media laziness, suggests that complaints should be made to The Times for its rubbish reporting and its deceitful advertising, and usefully he provides the means to do it:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/services/contact_us/

And also the Advertising Standards body

http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/how_to_complain/

Go on, complain, I have!

 

The Norwegian sense of humour

Frankly, I never thought of Norwegians as great jokers and clowns, but there again, I never think about Norwegians.  Silly me!  They are obviously a nation of pranksters and humourists and their latest gag is a side-splitter - Barack Hussein Obama is given the Nobel Peace Prize.  Oh my giddy aunt, the tears are rolling down my cheeks - I think they're tears of laughter . . . on the other hand, when I consider some of the immensely brave people struggling against various tyrannies around the world who have been passed over in favour of this Chicago 'mobster' I may just be crying.  He will be in good company amongst the pantheon of gangsters, tyrants and murderers who are amongst the past winners.

I bet Putin, Ahmadinejad, Chavez and 'The Dear Leader' are rolling about on the floor howling with laughter.  Alas, I don't think 'The One' has much of a sense of humour so he probably won't get the joke.  Unfortunately, he will take it seriously and it will only re-inforce his sanctimonious, holier-than-thou air of having been sent down on earth to show us all the errors of our ways.

Someone pass me a sick bag!

Additional: Benedict Brogan of The Telegraph makes a couple of excellent points:

What this does is accelerate the elevation of President Obama to a comedy confection, which he does not deserve, and gives his critics yet another bat to whack him with.

I disagree with one part, Obama deserves everything he's going to get - unless ...

He should turn it down, even if he does look great in white tie and tails.

In view of the courageous people he has displaced that would be an honourable and a smart move which would raise him up a notch or three in my eyes, at least.

Additional #2:  He didn't, and so nor did I!

The Deadly Duo!

Further to the story I posted down below on the subject of two 'transvestites' set upon by a couple of yobs, but who turned out to be cage fighters in drag on their way to a fancy dress party, I could not resist copying this picture of The Deadly Duo published in today's Daily Mail.

Daniel 'Lionheart' Lerwell, 23, and James 'Lights Out' Lilley, 22, told how they dealt with the drunken pair in just a few seconds.

James, a bank worker by day and professional fighter by night, said: 'As they walked past me one of them said: "Nice dress, gay boy!".

'He then threw a punch at me.

'He was on the floor two seconds later. I don't take any nonsense from idiots like him.'  

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218957/Meet-Lionheart-Lights-Out-The-cross-dressing-cage-fighters-hit-drunken-thugs.html#ixzz0TMOW1cGV

I'm still chuckling!

I think this is worth an A-

Before I tell you what is worth an A-, I suppose I should provide you with a quick re-action to Mr. Cameron's speech.  In summing it up, one word springs to what passes for my mind - intelligent!  It was intelligent from an electioneering point of view in that it made no effort to hide the pain that would accompany the climb to the mystical summit to which he promised to lead us.  Thus, if the Tories are elected 'The Great British Public' will have no cause to complain when the various axes begin to fall on services and the taxman cometh.  Of course, they will complain, they always do, but they cannot accuse the Tories of having sold them a dud bill of goods.  Secondly, it was intelligent in its content.  I had my caveats on certain points, and I wouldn't trust that bunch of scrounging crooks who sat behind him further than I could piss into a gale, but the overall ideology, if you like, the philosophy, that drove the speech was entirely sensible, honourable and proper.  Within a few months words will give way to deeds and then shall we see "power being power what our seemers be."

Additional: I have just read Fraser Nelson's take on Cameron's speech and, as you would expect, he sums it up much beter than I did.  Worth a read.

I am obliged to the ever-excellent Paul Waugh for asking the shadow education minister, Michael Gove, for his notion of what constitutes an ideal history syllabus.  To be fair, I must also thank Mr. Gove for putting his ideas out for inspection:

THE GOVE HISTORY LIST

The people who make up Britain - Celts, Anglo-Saxons.

The Roman Invasion

Dark Ages

1066

Liberty and the Magna Carta and Simon de Montfort

War of the Roses

Tudor revival

Henry VIII

Elizabeth I

English Civil War

Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights of 1688

Union of Parliaments in 1707

The Growth of Liberty in the early 18th century

Beginnings of industrial revolution

Napoleonic Wars

The Struggle for the Vote in the 19th century, including Great Reform Act, Chartists

Queen Victoria and Great Victorian scientists such as Darwin and Faraday

Growth of the mass media and the mass franchise in the Edwardian Age

Great War

Great Depression of the 1930s

World War Two, including Churchill's role

New Elizabethan Age,

SSWindrush and the New Britain

Modern history to the present

I think that is a pretty good list and most importantly, it tells a sequential story.  What do you think?

On "the point of precedency between a louse and a flea".

I am obliged to the good Doctor for the use of his famous quotation, so useful in so many different areas of life, but particularly so in the case I am about to mention.

In the High Court today, proceedings under  the aegis of an Employment Tribunal continued, as Ms. Sharon Shoesmith, the nu-Labour apparatchik  in charge of non-Social non-Services in Haringey whilst 'Baby P' was slowly tortured to death under the myopic eyes of the department for which she was responsible, pressed her case of wrongful dismissal.  In the normal course of events one would, despite all those liberal prescriptions which are constantly rammed down our throats and make us choke, instantly make up one's mind and hope that not only would this women lose her case but that she would be placed in the stocks in Haringey High Street to be pelted with ordure by the locals. But . . . but . . . the person she is gunning for in this case is Mr. 'Ed' Balls, the minister in charge, whom she accuses of acting unlawfully under pressure from the media.  Now 'Ed' Balls is, of course, one of the most appalling shits in this jakes of a government and one would dearly love to see him humiliated and reprimanded.  But . . . but . . . then the winner would be Ms. Shoesmith.

Surely, if there really is an 'Intelligent Designer' he will arrange for both of them to be run over by a bus outside the High Court.

In politics is honesty the best policy?

On the whole, taken in the round, by and large, weighing the pros and cons, I think so.  From that introduction you can judge the strength of my commitment.  I am provoked to this wobbling, feeble conclusion because much to my surprise I have been hoist in my own petard by young George Osborne, our aspiring Chancellor of the Exchequer.  Of course, it goes without saying that Tory Central Office reads this blog assiduously although I am frequently disappointed that they fail to act on my considered advice more often!  I have been boring on advising for some time that the Tories must climb down from the ivory tower of dreams erected for them on borrowed money by the Labour party and tell the British public what they already know in their heart of hearts, that as a nation we lack a financial pot to piss in!  Indeed, that there is a very good chance that the pot itself might be repossessed by the pot-lenders who actually own it. 

Of course, I didn't listen to young George Osborne's speech yesterday, life is too short and get shorter by the minute, but I gather from the hacks that whilst he failed to tell the whole story, he did at least give away part of the plot, enough anyway, to send shivers down a few wallets.  Most of those wallets are in the back pockets and handbags of people working for the state.  Thanks to Brown's 12-year-old, gerrymandering policy of creating hundreds of thousands of (non) jobs in the public sector - there are now in excess of 5m of them - Osborne's 'honesty' is a high-risk strategy when faced with an imminent election. 

How will the voters re-act?  I don't know.  In a democracy, we get the government we deserve, so if in fact we are a nation of 'stoopids' then we will 'enjoy' another 5 years of Gordon Brown, thus continuing the real-life example of a one-eyed man leading the blind.  However, there might just be a chance that my fellow subjects have finally awoken and smelled, not the coffee, but the ersatz crap we have been sold over the last 12 years.  Of course, Osborne did not tell the whole truth and practical politics was his reason.  He might risk raising a whinny of nervousness amongst the frightened horses but he certainly did not want to start a stampede.  Labour will be forced to cough up more bad news at the time of the budget report in a few weeks - unless, of course, realising that they are a lost cause at the election they throw decency and love of country away and promise to spend and spend even more as a ploy to make the Tories look like 'Lord Gradgrind'.  At least now, the Tories can cloak themselves with a small figleaf of honesty and say they (partly) told us the truth.  Whether it does any good, of course, depends on you . . . and you . . . and  . . .

A real funny!

Alas, I must confess to being a 'funny freak'! (Sorry, Larry, didn't quite catch that . . . )  I appear to have gathered about me a collection of people with not enough to do (just like me) who send me gags and 'funnies' from the internet, and I pass them on to several long-suffering friends.  Well, it lightens a few minutes of the day and strengthens my resolve as I brace myself to dive into the horrors of Blogdom. 

However, today, I found a real, live funny in The Daily Mail of all places!  It concerns Dean Gardener, 19, and Jason Fender, 22; a couple of tough, swaggering, hard men with about 3.5 brain cells between the pair of them.  This pair of mighty Titans fell out of a pub in Swansea and happened upon a pair of transvestites dressed in the regulation gear of ultra-high heels, mini-skirts and wigs.  Whether or not that is a usual sight in Swansea I cannot say but this being Nu-Britain I am not surprised.

Anyway, Dean and Jason with all the gruntish, animal cunning which serves to guide them through their stunted lives, instantly recognised an easy target and determined to 'sort out' this pair of 'poufs'.  Alas, if only they had paid more attention in their Philosophy 101 course they would have understood that reality is not always what it seems, because this particular pair of dolly 'birds' were actually cage-fighters going to a fancy dress party.  Of course, I realise that my learn-ed and discriminating readership may not be aware of the 'sport' of cage-fighting.  I, myself, only became aware of it whilst flicking idly through the TV channels one night.  The name describes it exactly, two men fighting in a cage with, as far as I can tell, no rules whatsoever, except that Kalishnikovs are not permitted - although it can only be a matter of time!  Even a nasty old brute like me can only bear to watch about 10 seconds of it.  Anyway, Dean and Jason duly received their lesson in practical philosophy and, er, street fighting.

Me?  I'm still laughing!

Little (modern) things mean a lot

I have suffered in recent days. Oh, alright, not as much as poor 'Sis' and her son - read about it here and weep - with rage as much as anything.  Even so, I have been on the rack, suffering acute pain which I bore with all the brave stoicism of a British gentleman.  The little 'Memsahib' keeps calling me "whiney"; I can't imagine why because I have only cried out about 12 times a day, and if you just knew the sheer level of pain . . . well, I think I deserve a medal!  What is it, I hear you ask?  Sorry, I forgot to say - a hang-nail, you know, one of those little ones right in the corner of your finger which always catches anything you handle.  This one began very small which is when I first tore off the top of my finger - well,not literally, but it felt like it - so I had to wait through a few days of agony for it to grow long enough for me to get the cutical scissors on it!  Yes, cuticle scissors, one of the marvels of the modern age!  OK, OK, so it's not the jet engine or penicillin, but just think for a moment what life must have been like without them.  Imagine, poor old Socrates reaching for his goblet of hemlock but catches a hang-nail on his toga and ends up dancing round his cell with his hand under arm saying some really un-Socratic things! Or poor old Marx having scrounged (yet another) load of dosh from Engels the Chump, about to slide the sovereigns into his pocket when he catches a hang-nail and drops the lot on the tavern floor and quickly learns the value of labour as he scrambles about trying to pick them up before the workers in the pub get their hands on them.  Well, you see what I mean, a world without cuticle scissors - such neat, sharp, beatifully designed and so fit for their purpose - would be hell on earth.

Perhaps some of you can think of more "unconsidered trifles" of the modern world which we take for granted - and, anyway, who the hell first invented scissors?  I'm off to lie down now, being brave is very exhausting.

I want Ayn Rand to have my babies!

OK, OK, I know she's been dead for years but there are the miracles of modern science and all that sort of thing, aren't there?  Perhaps I had better explain.

For reasons too tedious to repeat here, a few months ago I went into an old 'Stately Home' which had been vacated and found a considerable number of paperback books left behind looking for a new owner.  Like an alcoholic in a brewery, with trembling hands I swiftly went through them and departed with enough books to start a new pile of 'waiting-to-be-read' books to go alongside the existing pile which threatens to cut out the sunlight into my study!  Amongst them was "For the New Intellectual" by Ayn Rand, er, the new woman in my life but for God's sake don't tell the 'Memsahib'!

Of course, I don't really qualify for this book being neither 'new' or 'intellectual' but I just had to have it.  You see, as I have told you before, I left school at 16 having totally wasted my school years but much later in life I came back to some of those subjects which I had missed.  In particular, in my late 30s, early 40s, I began to take an interest in philosophy, and pretty soon, amongst others, I gravitated towards the libertarian end of the spectrum, people like Robert Nozick, Karl Popper, and above all, Friedrick Hayek.  As my reading spead, I kept coming across references to Ayn Rand but the fact that much of her philosophical writings were expressed via the medium of fiction novels, I never actually read her.  Thus, this little paperback dating from 1961 which begins with a long introduction to her philosophy followed by extracts from her novels was a must-have.  During my holiday I read the introduction and was hooked - even whilst reserving some doubts!

For a start, she pulverises the Rationalists with their 'clever-clever' arguments which throw doubt on anything and everything that exists in the real world but whose opinions, in my view, amount to little more than language and logic games - and was part of the reason I gave up on philosophy.  Asked to assess the 'reality' of a solid oak door, they would provide long, detailed, sophisticated, but ultimately specious, arguments to insist that no trust should be placed in its reality, but they will always be careful to open the door first before passing through it!  Prime amongst them is Kant with his ridiculous Platonism and the belief in something he called "the thing in itself".  Rand sticks up for the Empiricists who take the world as it is experienced through our senses, not through fanciful mental constructs.

She is, of course, famous for her vitriolic attacks on all forms of socialism, indeed, of most forms of government, irrespective of party, because of its inherent tendency to do wrong.  She divides the leadership of the political world into two types, the 'Attilas' and the 'Witch Doctors'.  The first acts on brute force without consideration of anything other than the immediate; the 'Witch Doctor' lacks the strength of purpose of an 'Attila' and thus takes no risk,but what he does do is provide the 'Attila' with justification for his deeds by spinning a web of deceit over the populace to keep them in line.  In previous centuries these 'Witch Doctors', under the auspices of kings, were the men who ran our organised religions, but today, with the disintergration of spiritual belief, their place has been taken by the 'Intellectuals', about whom Rand is scathing.

Even I, dumb as I am, can see some potential pot-holes in her philosophy, but like my other 'heroes', Hayek and Popper, she espoused her views at a time when it was highly unpopular and unlikely to advance your career.  I shall return to her, I think.

Seeing double, or treble, or even more . . .

My American e-pal, Renee, asks if I can name two movies which I could watch "over and over".  Of course that last phrase demands clarification; does it mean night after night for a week or, say, a couple of times a year, or even a couple of times in a lifetime?  Certainly there are films I could, and indeed, have, watched over and over again, but with fairly large intervals between screenings.  For example, Gigi, Shakespeare in Love, Cabaret, Much Ado About Nothing, are very old friends to me.  Unfortunately, they all suffer the same drawback in that they are never quite as good on the 'telly' as they are on a big screen in the cinema.

Poor, old, live theatre comes off worse.  It is true for me that I get more of an intellectual and emotional thrill from a superb piece of theatre than I do from cinema, but the cost and logistics of theatre visits makes return trips virtually impossible.  An exception is Les Miserables which due to its enormously long run has allowed the 'Memsahib' and I to revisit it several times.  I don't care if the opera snobs sniff in disdain, 'Les Mis' is a superb piece of theatre.  Equally, and obviously, there are plays that I have seen 'over and over' in different productions by different directors and actors, mostly Shakespeare and, of course, Tom Stoppard - not forgetting Alan Ayckbourn, too, of course.  Re-makes of films are rare and, in my opinion, they usually fail and I can't quite work out why.  Often, I suspect, it is the director's inability to resist the allure of modern computer effects which robs the re-make of the simplicities and craft of the original.

As I have been writing I have tried to think of other films to add to my list but, alas, the mind has switched to default mode, that is, blank.  What about you?

Obama: Just another hypocritical huckster leeching off the poor

Some of you may not take the time to read the various comments threads here which is a pity because they usually contain more sense than the posts!  This site is enriched by a variety of correspondents many of whom are witty, or shrewd, or observant, or a mixture of all three.  In this case I am obliged to regular contributor, Hank, for finding the original investigative report by the Boston Globe, to which I referred in an earlier post, into the stew of corruption and malfeasance that permeates the entire political and social life of Chicago and in which President Obama was buried up to his neck with just his smirky, smiley face above the ordure!  The man slid and slithered his way through this jakes of a City taking money and benefits from crooks who were literally robbing the poor; and, in effect, by standing on the heads of the weakest and the feeblest he reached up and took the top prize pausing only to delicately shake the last piece of shit from his highly polished shoes before high-tailing it to Washington - but not forgetting to take a few of the crooks with him in various advisory capacities.

Please, take time to read this report, it will tell you more about Barack Hussein Obama than all the mighty words of the political analysts.  My thanks to Hank for his efforts:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/27/grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy/?page=1

'The One' is down and out in the first!

Oh joy unconfined!  The Chicago 'families', that is, the nexus of politicians, crooked property developers and gangsters who have run, manipulated and robbed the 'Windy City' blind since the days of Al Capone, have lost their Olympic gamble.  They stuffed their right arms up inside Obama's suit, pulled his strings and forced him to go to Denmark to clinch the deal - I mean, hey guys, who's gonna say 'no' to Barack Obama, our man? - and guess what, the 'Olympians' said 'NO', as loudly and clearly as they could in the very first round of voting.

There is a God!

Briffa's second clanger!

This follows on from my post below in which I rolled around on the carpet, clapping my hands, drumming my feet on the floor and howling with laughter at the antics of the Hot Air Fanatics (HAFs) and the fact that due to their own overweening arrogance they had taken a step too far and published a paper with The Royal Society who, unlike virtually every other scientific publisher, actually lived up to its insistence that authors archive their basic data and make it available to others so that it might be tested.  The mug who fell into this bear trap was a certain Keith Briffa, a 'scientist' who earns a tidy sum from me and you working for the Hadley Centre which is based at the Met Office.  One is tempted to describe him as a 'tree-hugger' because he is one of those who pursued the chimera that tree-rings would provide accurate data for temperature conditions back into several centuries.  His work, and others like him, was the basis for the infamous 'hockey stick ' graph which purports to tell us all that global temperatures were nice and even up until the late 20th century when suddenly they took a running jump upwards.  As I told you below, poor old Briffa has just had all his trees chopped down by that quiet, persistent but deadly investigator, Steve McIntyre, who with the help of The Royal Society (give 'em a bonus, your Maj!) managed, after several years of trying, to extract some of the basic data which showed nothing like the results claimed by Briffa et al.  Now,however, Briffa has responded.  You can read the whole thing here, but I would suggest to you that buried in the text is one, critical, crucial sentence, and it goes like this:

My colleagues and I are working to develop methods that are capable of expressing robust evidence of climate changes using tree-ring data.

'Isn't that a beaut'? 'Don'cha just lurve it'?  In one sloppy bit of grammar this buffoon has blown the gaffe, because his sentence can only mean that the methods he and his colleagues have developed so far are not robust!  In addition it implies that his s0-called 'scientific' endeavours are not aimed at following where the evidence leads, but are intended to find evidence for his conclusion, that is, climate change.

Should you wish to depress yourself, you may go here and count up the hundreds of thousands of pounds that Keith Briffa has accrued over the years by way of grants, most of them via government Quangos, straight from H. M. Treasury, or, me and you, as I like to think of it!

My thanks to Anthony Watts and several of his commenters.

Beck, the attack dog, bites - again!

When the incomparable Glenn Beck (Ch. 509, every night at 10.00 pm) sank his fangs into (ex)-presidential adviser, Van Jones, and shook him round like a lifeless rag-doll before dropping him down by the dustbins, I wondered who his next victim would be.  As a lover of blood sports, which is why the slow, lingering, political death of 'ur wee Gordie' has me whinnying with pleasure, I could hardly wait to see who he would pick on next.  Well, for a few days now he has swung his head this way and that, sniffing the air, dribbles of saliva falling from his jowels, but last night he pounced and, joy of joys, his victim is a woman!

Valerie Jarrett is, like Van Jones, an unknown to anyone not intimate with the details of the Obama court.  For the benefit of Brit readers (oh dear, I just used a diminutive which Dr. 'Teabag' and other readers tell me is a racist epithet - how awful!) I can best describe the lady as a female consigliori to the Obama family. She has been at the president's side since his first days in Chicago and once used her influence to get his wife a cushy job in the City.  She was herself the CEO of Habitat, not that ever-so-nice shop, but a huge property company and slum landlord in Chicago.  This for-profit company, from which she, a Democrat who cares, er, ever so deeply for the plight of the poor, earned over a $1m a year, owns acres of public housing in the City which it has allowed to run into wrack and ruin.  The Boston Globe described one estate thus:

About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale — a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.

Now, changing the subject slightly, you, like me, might have wondered why Chicago, a city that is virtually bankrupt because of its inherent corruption, would attempt to host the Olympic games in 2016?  You may also, like me, have been puzzled when the White House suddenly changed its mind, having originally stated that only the First lady would fly to Copenhagen to help pitch for the 'prize', and announced that 'The One', himself, would also fly out to twist a few Olympian arms.  (Not one but two huge jets and all that carbon - poor old Al Gore must be blubbing in his bath.)  So who changed his mind, and why?

Could it possibly be anything to do with the fact that whole tracts of Chicagoan property will have to be demolished and rebuilt with spanking new buildings thus producing huge windfall profits for the property owners?  And who, sitting at the president's right hand fits that description? The stench of Chicago corruption now wafts down the elegant corridors of the White House.

If my American readers will permit a pathetic British attempt at an Americanism - go, Glenn, baby, go!- or something like that.

Additional: You can read Beck's script from last night's show here.