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.

Well he's not welcome here!

America's finest Big Fat Idiot has promised to flee the country if health care reform is passed.

As the official Yank in London (of and for London) I have veto power. I suggest he try somewhere where he might feel at home; perhaps Uzbekistan or Zimbabwe.

I have read Tom Payne and you sir are no Tom Payne

By happenstance I happen to be reading Tom Payne's Common Sense and The Rights of Man. I also, quite unfortunately for me, stumbled on a video of the right wing American commentator Glenn Beck comparing himself to the 18th century British radical.

I find it appalling that this narcissist has managed to get away with this extraordinary comparison. I can only imagine that it is that Americans are no longer taught about Payne because he thinking is far too dangerous to the corporatocracy that rules the states today and that he so well serves.

The two of them have one area of agreement; a contempt for government. Outside of that there is no common ground. Payne believed religion to be a force of oppression. He believed the concept of real property to be theft by force. He was a class warrior who opposed the power of the few wealthy to increase the suffering of the masses. He demanded revolution to rectify the imbalance.

Beck by contrast wishes simply to enrich himself; to placate his corporate masters.
He is without shame.

You may live in your own world, you own mind, Mr. Beck but you are not worthy of mention in the same sentence.

I shall leave you with a quote:

"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."

Ken Starr is (a) President

Perenial tormentor of the Clintons, extravegent waster of taxpayer money and all around good guy, Ken Starr, is now President of Baylor University.

Expect Baylor to launch a series of investigations into the whereabouts of that goddamn cigar in the morning.

They see them here, they see them there, they see them everywhere!

Socialists. Socialists. Socialists. Socialists. Socialists. And I could go on and on and on but all of this reminds me of a song....

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...

Meanwhile in cloud cuckoo land...

...we find lunatics making the case for privatising the issuance of currency.

Exploding wing nut heads alert

I plan to sit back and watch as America's right-wing-nut community goes berserk over the completely accurate comments by UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, that US must investigate and prosecute George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld et al for crimes against humanity.

The United States has ratified the UN convention on torture which places an obligation of states to prosecute violations and the US Constitution defines ratified treaties as the highest law of the land.

Fair and balanced and insane

Faux News' Chris Wallace (his father must be so proud) opines that Barack Obama may not actually be President of the United States because Chief Justice John Roberts fucked up the oath of office.

Today in Schadenfreude

Anorexic, radical right wing hag-ette Ann Coulter has had her jaw wired shut. I would have preferred that it was welded shut but one must take what one is offered!

Rush Limbaugh - secret Stalinist

The big fat idiot is planning a purge of the Republican Party and only the purest of the pure true believers will remain. Whether he will introduce a random drug testing policy is not, as yet at least, certain.

Wingnuts will be wingnuts

Just because they can there is already an impeach Obama group on Facebook. Clearly these bozos don't understand the idea of "high crimes and misdemeanours", which Bush & Cheney have arguably committed, and the fact that they don't agree with all (or any) of Obama's positions; a situation that clearly doesn't reach the "high crime and misdemeanour" threshold. Not to mention the fact that someone who doesn't actually hold a Federal office as of yet is certainly not impeachable.

Bozos.

A question for the American right

Will you, however reluctantly, admit that there is a progressive mandate both for the White House and the Congress or will spend the next two years bemoaning the failure of democracy in America?

Oi matey - your bleeding fifteen minutes are over already!

In an age of meaningless celebrity he is the ultimate meaningless "celebrity". It is clear that (not) Joe the (non-)plumber is a self promoting prat with no ideas to articulate and no talents with which to entertain us which makes him the perfect prop for the self-proclaimed pundits of the right and the "fair and balanced" folks at Faux News but one would think that even the Faux idiots would have the common sense to show him the door when he questions Senator Obama's patriotism and status as an American says that his "ideology is something completely different than what democracy stands for". One would of course be wrong because if (not) Joe the (non-)plumber says it it must be true.

Just good old fashioned investigative journalism

The (slightly less than) eminent Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, owned by renowned wing nut Richard Mellon Scaife, has been working overtime on the election coverage demanded by its owner and has discovered that Pittsburgh's hookers just love Obama! Thanks Dick.

Dear Mr. Monbiot -

I hope you are braced for the hate because once the American wing nuts get wind of your column in today's Guardian the sliming will begin. The column begins:

"How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist?

Like most people on my side of the Atlantic, I have for many years been mystified by American politics. The US has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage."

And ends:

"Obama has a lot to offer the US, but none of this will stop if he wins. Until the great failures of the US education system are reversed or religious fundamentalism withers, there will be political opportunities for people, like Bush and Palin, who flaunt their ignorance."

I hope you're prepared George (and don't try to correct them on their spelling - that's like poking a hornets' nest).

How do you say "Jihad" in Redneck?

Let us pause for a moment and imagine that 2 Muslim-American men are arrested by the FBI and it becomes public knowledge that these two Muslim-American men had plans, however confused or hopeless they might be, to kill over 100 American Christians, including decapitations, and then assassinate John McCain. Can you imagine the wave of righteous outrage and bile that would come spewing from the American radical right if these two men, instead of being sped off to Algeria to be tortured and then sent to the Guantánamo Bay Beach and Leisure Club to languish outside of the reach on American or international law, they were merely charged with "with possession of firearms, threats against a presidential candidate running and conspiring to rob a gun store".

Yes - the spittle filled braying would be truly terrible to endure so I can hardly wait for the wave of outrage over the fact that these two Christian-American men, who were clearly planning an act of terror (which would make them terrorists), who indeed intended to be "suiciders", are being treated so fairly and charged with such low level crimes. Could it be that if one's plans are simply to decapitate some niggers and assassinate an American hating socialist it really isn't that big a deal?

I wait, with bated breath, to be proved wrong.

Can't someone please make it stop????

No really. I mean it this time. Over on one of Faux News' websites some geezer named James Pinkerton works out that there are less than six degrees of separation between Barack and Beelzebub. Really. I'm fairly certain he's not being ironic!

21st century Fascism

It turns out that the recently deceased extreme right wing Austrian hate-monger Jörg Haider, may have had a bit of a thing going on with the man who is his successor at the helm of the Bündnis Zukunft Österreich.

Stefan Petzner told Austrian radio that Mr Haider, whom he met five years ago, was "the man of my life".

The BZÖ claims the relationship between the two men was strictly platonic.

Hr. Haider was married with two kids.

In praise of Colin Powell

Yes - Secretary Powell does have a lot to answer for but at least, in process of endorsing Barack Obama this past Sunday, he said out loud what everyone else inside the beltway has lacked to courage to say and that is, in response to The Aged One's off the cuff "defense" of Senator Obama:

"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?' The answer is 'No.
That's not America."

And a message to those merchants of hate, who I can only hope did not see him on Sunday morning or read what he said, attest that the endorsement is not based on thought or philosophy but simply "because the brothers hand together: isn't it time you found somewhere else to live?