A point of order

It is logically inconsistent to claim to be pro-life and to simultaneously make death threats. But then logical thought has never been a weapon in these folk's arsenal.

"Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

Perhaps I have lived away from America too long. Perhaps I have forgotten that the country was always this way. Perhaps so but I think not. There was certainly this level of vitriol in the years before I was born and the effect lingered into my early childhood in the early sixties. But it was not like this in my adult years in America until I moved away in 1993. When did it change? I haven't been back to the states for the past nine years and maybe it is only distance that has altered my perspective.



Where has the humanity gone? When did we cease treating each other like human beings?

No parent really wants their kids to be smarter than them...

...and it would seem that the (once) great state of Texas has a solution to that little dilemma; "fix" the kid's textbooks. Of course the real losers are (in no particular order):

• The school children of Texas.
• The school children and families in other states that are stupid lucky enough to use Texan-books.
• The country.

Of course any countries that look to compete with the US in the "knowledge based economy" can only be jumping for joy.

Why do Americans hate America

They want cap and trade, gays in the military and the end to the senseless embargo of Cuba. Thank God America's not a democracy or some of these terrible things might actually happen!

Only Jesus can save those Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys now!

Without further ado I direct you to PrayforFrance.org. One can never be certain these days but I don't think this is a piss take.

Come the revolution

Ameica and the world may look to McDonalds corporation to provide tasteless and expensive meals oozing with saturated fat, sugar and salt but, in Little Rock AR at least, don't look for them to provide for their minimum wage employees as they have denied worker's compensation to former employee Nigel Haskett after he was shot by a patron who he ejected after he abused a women in the store. Apparently the job description doesn't stretch to human decency.

In praise of the great state of Arkansas

As the state legislature brings new meaning to the old phrase "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition"!

Dear Mr. Rodriguez

I don't really care what you think as far as I am concerned cheating and drug abuse is far worse than stalking. Surely it's time you grew up.

And I certainly hope that you plan to personally reimburse every young man or woman, under the age of 18 say, who bought one of your shirts (or shoes or whatever), under the false pretense that you were playing by the rules. Perhaps someone should initiate a class action suit.

So this would be the farce bit

Karl Marx (am I allowed to say his name as an American?) once famously said that "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce".

With that reminder I bring you the news that not-Joe the non-plumber now seems to have a job as a non-adviser to the Republi-cons. It just doesn't get any better than this...

Jesus wants you to buy a Ford!

Is this who the salesman is going to see when he says he has to talk over his offer with his manager?

Come the revolution...

...one Mr. James F. Reda must surely be high on the list. Mr. Reda is an "executive pay consultant" and his reaction to the pay cap mooted by President Obama for those starving fat cats running taxpayer financed banks in the US is the following:

“That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus”

Well if Mr. Reda smokes I will be happy to provide him with a last cigarette.

And if you think $500,000 per annum is "draconian" he ought to have a look at the pay packet of American living in the real world; assuming said American is getting a pay packet at all anymore.

I, for one, am not all that sympathetic

In the middle of a recession a federal judge from Connecticut is resigning because he can't seem to get by on his salary of $169,300; an income that, without any additions and I'm sure he has some, puts him well within the top 5%. Of course, he is a Republican!

A great man passes

Fellow Pennsylvanian and chronicler of the Poconos (who didn't want to be Rabbit at least for a minute) John Updike has has died at the age of 76. No Nobel for him now.

I think I need to pay more attention to American football!

I confess my interest in the old gridiron sport has faded considerably in the sixteen years I've lived here even though I realise that de Iggles are doing rather well this year, even if unexpectedly so.

However I must confess that the following headline has reinvigorated my interest:

"The New York Jets And The Flaming Lesbian Catfight"

They shall be heroes

Amongst the illustrious guests at Barack Obama's inauguration next month will be some, but not all, of the "Little Rock Nine whose attendance at a previously all white high school in Little Rock Arkansas over fifty years ago required the intervention some damned activist judges and the US Army.

Today in infamy

On this day in 1955 a tired Negro woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a richly deserving white man and America has been heading down the slippery slope towards multi-culturalism and away from the Anglo-Saxon dominated society envisioned by the founding fathers every since.

There is no joy in Whoville...

...or in Louisville for that matter as Dr. Seuss's lawyers strike. Of course it probably serves them right for thinking that they could just have a "LouWhoVille" celebration without even asking.

The friends we keep

The Ottawa Convention to ban land mines is ban the use of land mines is ten years old and guess who hasn't ratified or signed it? Go on. I know you can.

Today in Schadenfreude

A jury in Kentucky of all places has found the head of the Imperial Klans of America personally liable for $1,000,000 in damages in a suit brought by a Hispanic teenager savagely beaten by racist thugs on the orders of Imperial Wizard Ron Edwards. It is expected that the ruling, if upheld, will drive the poor man into bankruptcy. I don't think Mr. Edwards should expect a Federal bailout anytime soon.

A bad idea on so many levels

The Great State of South Carolina is planning a sales tax holiday to encourage the state's residents (and perhaps those of nearby states as well) to buy more firearms.

{sigh}