Today in infamy

On this day in 1955 14 year old Emmett Till was tortured and murdered by good Christian white folk in Money, Mississippi.

Reprehensible

The US government is warning their good friends on Whitehall that disclosing any "secret" information about the alleged torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed before his illegal transfer to the Guantánamo Bay Beach and Leisure Resort, even if ordered to do so by the British High Court, will damage the security relationship between the two countries. Lawyers for Mohamed are insisting on access to all of the records of his detention and interrogation before being sent to Gitmo. The US has said it will make records available to the kangaroo courts in Cuba but not to Mohamed's legal team. Mohamed was held in Pakistan and Morocco, after be illegally "rendered" there by the US, and it is alleged that amongst other things he was tortured aggressively interrogated whilst (the weak of heart may wish to stop reading now) have his penis cut with a razor. MI5 is alleged to have participated in the abuse of Mr. Mohamed.

Won't someone please think of the frog?

Museum officials in Bolzano, Italy are being pressured to bow the almighty will of God's representative on Earth, Il Papa, and remove a sculpture by Martin Kippenberger. The offending sculpture has been declared blasphemous by the infallible one as it portrays a crucified frog. Clearly the sculpture should not only be removed it should be burned or crushed or something lest it offend God and in Her anger She lets John McCain "win" the US election. Of course, this is nothing at all like Muslims getting upset about some cartoons!

I wonder if this applies to the Green Zone Pizza Hut

The Iraqi government has announced plans to ban public eating and close all restaurants and food shops during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. I suppose it should apply IF the Green Zone was actually part of Iraq but we all know better than that, don't we.

Where the fuck was this guy four years ago?

Senator John Kerry gave a bloody good, and McCain bashing, speech at the Democratic Convention last night.

My new hero

Meet Pia Sundhage, the coach of the US Olympic women's football team. Ms. Sundhage, a Swedish national has turned down the incredible opportunity to visit the White House along with the members of her gold medal winning team. Ms. Sundhage made it understood that "she doesn’t share Bush’ politics and isn’t interested in meeting him". It makes me feel all warm and happy inside!

Whilst you weren't watching....

...Israel continues to violate international law by building more settlements in illegally occupied East Jerusalem. I am sure that the US government will see to it that their good ally ceases this shameful violation of numerous UN resolutions post haste, or not.

1,000 reasons John McCain shouldn't be President

Number 80: John McCain has an ominous not-really-an-attack-ad-since-he-said-wouldn't-use-attack-ads in which he quotes Senator Obama as saying that Iran is a "small country"; Obama did indeed say words to that effect but he was comparing the threat of Iran to the threat that the Soviet Union has posed. The clear message is that you must be afraid and if you are afraid the only sensible thing to do is to vote Republi-con. Of course he probably hopes that we forget that The Aged One himself once thought Iran was so small it was merely a line between Pakistan and Iraq. But even if we do remember all should be forgiven because he was once without a kitchen table even if now he has seven or eight!

Not for the rest of humanity it wasn't, OK?

Captain Codpiece apparently told a bunch of Republi-con fundraisers that being president was, wait for it, a "cool experience". As for the rest of us we should just like back and think of 20 January 2009.

Bloody hell, now he's gone and done it!

Apparently former governor of Virginia Mark Warner mentioned science in his speech. Just when we had managed to drown out the claims of elitism. There goes the votes of middle America!

I wonder how they broke this to Ann Widdicome

Tory health spokesperson Andrew Lansley tells us that there's not excuse for being fat although he provides no specifics as to how he will rid the UK of this heinous obesity! Eugenics anyone?

Won't someone please make them stop??

Just when it seems that Rupert Murdoch's Faux and Balanced coverage had reached its nadir they manage to outdo themselves once again. Watch in amazement as Megyn (couldn't her parents spell?) Kelly points out that if you take Michelle Obama's speech, take out the words she actually said and put in some others she didn't actually say she obviously hates America!

At some point can't we just take their licence away?

I want to know who'll be answering the phone at 3 PM!

Unable to come up with any creative ideas of their own, a fact that should have been obvious from their policy statements, the McCain team have shamelessly stolen the Hillary Clinton 3AM phone call idea for his new not-at-all-negative advertisement. But if The Aged One becomes president who the hell will be answering the White House phone at 3 in the afternoon because, with a 72 year old tottering around upstairs that will surely be nap time!

Let us pause for a moment...

...and listen to the man who really ought to be the next American president, Dennis Kucinich.



At least they allowed him a forum to speak...

Do you want the less bad news or the bad news?

The less bad news, according to data released by the US Census Bureau yesterday, indicates that the gender pay gap in the US is at its lowest level ever, largely because women are making modest gains in income whilst men are making no gains at all. The bad news, as spun by the absolutely unbiased Wall Street Journal, is that the number of those lacking health insurance in 2007, before the economy went down the sub-prime hopper, declined marginally and that median incomes were also up marginally. The WSJ goes on to claim that the increase in those living in poverty in the GREATEST NATION IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE was statistically insignificant.

Godless UN attempting to destroy America

Officials from the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan say they have convincing evidence that at least 90 Afghan civilians, including 60 children, were killed in a US bombing run which, from the cozy confines of Crawford (TX) Middle School, highly paid prevaricator deputy sub-assistant Presidential spokesmodel Tony Fratto described as a "good strike". Mr. Fratto went on to say that "NATO forces...take every precaution to try to avoid innocent civilian casualties" so one can only imagine the carnage if we weren't so bloody careful.

I too am inspired

John McCain is right to be proud of his wife, who made her money (and his career) the old fashioned way, by inheriting it. And The Aged One is right to view his father in law as a great American success story who seems to have made his money the Republi-con way, by breaking the law. Maybe someone, other than a blog or two will ask him to explain but I rather doubt it. Holy shit, it must be true! Even Jerome Corsi and WorldNetDaily have noticed.

"Gee Jay did I forget to mention I was a POW (without a kitchen table)"

John McCain, on The Tonight Show, to explain how the plethora of homes owned by he and his wife is just a sad attempt to make up for the time he lost whilst an untortured prisoner in Vietnam without a kitchen table.



Oh, and let's stop calling John and Cindy's "little" place in North Arizona a "ranch"; let's call it what it is - their country estate.

Tories accuse Labour of hate crime

Apparently the calls for a windfall profits tax on energy firms by (mostly not-so-New) Labour backbenchers is apparently just a reversion to good old "socialist hatred" of the stinking rich according to Alan Duncan the shadow business secretary and will not lead to "fair taxation". The Rt. Hon. Mr. Duncan doesn't go on to explain what he might mean by "fair taxation" but it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to guess.

Can someone please explain to me...

...what the purpose of Cindy McCain's trip to Georgia is? Is she going to try and land the South Ossetian Anheuser Busch distribution franchise or is she just trying to take advantage of the the post war chaos to pick up a Black Sea front condo on the cheap? No wonder The Aged One can't keep track of how many homes he has!

I say off to Gitmo with them!!

Do you think that if these exemplary American citizens were brown and/or Muslim that the authorities would be downplaying the threat? And why the curious silence from the right about these obvious terror suspects about the lack of terror charges? All they are holding these upstanding members of the community on are drugs and weapons charges. I think if we send them off to an undisclosed location and put them under some "enhanced interrogation" we will get the truth out of them soon enough.

In case you haven't seen them these members-in-waiting of the master race look like this.

Why I like Pelosi's big idea!

Surrounded by brainless right wing protesters outside the Democratic Convention who were chanting "Drill here now" Ms. Pelosi suggested that we could make a good start by drilling in "their brains".

I have a better idea. Maybe we could start with whatever brains this lot has!

Whatever you do don't mention Kosovo!

The French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, with a supporting chorus from London and Washington, has declared Russia's recognition of the Independence of Georgia's want-away regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as a violation of international law. I hear echoes of something from the recent past.

Someone should probably tell Il Papa

If only the Catholic Church would go back to, oh let's say, the 10th century and bring back the traditional Office of Same Sex Union or even just to the 12th century for the Order for Uniting Two Men they might not be so hostile to gay marriage!

Meanwhile one would think that plans to make Cardinal John Newman a saint might have to be scuppered if the word gets out he was gay. Why am I reminded of J. Edgar Hoover?

Well done Hillary!

And thanks...now if we can just get those supporters of yours who are threatening to vote for woman-unfriendly John "The Aged One" McCain to get their heads out of their arse and think about what they might be doing to American and to woman-kind in general things might just be alright in the end.

Headline of the day

"MILF linked to Al-Qaeda".

At least I now understand why they're so reluctant to come out of those caves!

Today in Schadenfreude

The only news of any import that I have found to come out of the Democratic national convention so far is that one luxury box at the convention center was flooded by a "faulty" sprinkler. The box in question housed the Faux News contingent.

Hallmark...

...when you care enough to boycott the very best. The American (Only Our Kind of) Family Association wants you to boycott hallmark because they've launched a smallish range of gay wedding cards.

I think these people drink too much coffee.

So long to bad rubbish

British merchants of death BAE Systems, recently protected from prosecution for corrupt practices in the name of "national security" by our right wing Labour government, has now delivered an unveiled threat to quit the UK if military spending should ever fall below a "reasonable level". BAE's retiring CEO Mike Turner told the Financial Times that failure to give "the priority to defence that is needed" would mean that the UK would lose its "say in the world".

Nice, eh? Well personally I think you should just fuck off then. Perhaps you can find an empty office campus in Dubai next to that company so beloved of American Vice President and evil incarnate "I'm a Big" Dick Cheney, Halliburton.

Clearly I have no sense of imagination

Where folks in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough see an apparition of the virgin Mary in tree bark I only see a badly pruned tree.

Key quote from Christopher Moreau who is responsible for the miraculous sighting, which he first saw after cracking a beer in his back garden: "I am not a wacko".