Remember You Read It Here First

One of the many groups to which I subscribe is a Yahoo Group on Mercedes Sprinter vans and their many derivatives. Whilst casually browsing its post t'other day I came upon a post by a Sprinter owner who has been tasked with erecting the PA system for the Obama inauguration which consists of many (3000 if memory serves) speakers mounted on poles in Lafayette Park with repeater amps at various points all of which is dull stuff except for the guy doing it I suppose, and he's having a blast. 

Oops careful with the bomb-specific terminology Rico, Homeland Security will be paying you a visit.

They're welcome to anytime. I'll make 'em a cup of tea. Anyway, dull stuff as I say but interestingly enough he mentioned in his post that his satnav was unable to lock onto a signal and he presumed it was being jammed by the aforementioned DHS and I don't mean the Social Services. Apparently they do this around George Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX for some reason, probably to prevent low level shoe-straffing runs by the local Muslim fanatics.

Lot of those in Texas are there?

Probably not on balance, but that's by the way of mentioning the mad Channels Islands flying vet, Maurice Kirk, who got himself in to all sorts of bother when he landed his light aircraft near said spread in order to hand deliver a thank-you note to the waning Prez for his (Maurice's) rescue by US Coast Guards. 

You could not make this stuff up!

Indeed not. He was detained with extreme prejudice, even unto the local funny farm, until is was established that he was a harmless British nutjob who'd done this sort of thing all over the world at varying times over the past twenty years or so whereupon he was deported back to Blighty with a stoney 'So long and don't come back'. 

Maurice Kirk, for it was he, was locked in chokey while the security services established his credentials. His long-suffering wife, asked to comment, said something to the effect that she hoped he'd be back by Sunday because it was his turn to do the washing up. 

Don'tcha just love the way it takes an englishwoman to bring everything back down to earth with humour.

I do, I do. Unfortunately, it seems, the US Authorities aren't seeing the funny side.

Oh Boy, Sparks Are Gonna Fly

If this report is correct and the new prez is trying to control the price of drugs in the USA we should be prepared for a huge fight. Already, as this report suggests, Big Pharma is marshalling its forces to lobby for a free market in health care i.e. the power to charge what they like for their snake oil. This presidencay is shaping up to be one of the most interesting for many a year but if I was the Presidents body guards I'd be increasing my life insurance many-fold. 

Ann Nixon Cooper or Joe The Plumber

Nothing could illustrate the differences between the two campaigns in the United States of America better than the citizens chosen by the respective candidates to illustrate Joe Public. While McCain picked Joe The Plumber who was quickly tracked down and turned out not only to have no plumbing qualifications but also to owe the taxman several thousand dollars, Obama picked a 106-year old black woman whose dignity and longevity were evident in equal measure. The contrast could not have been more stark. 

There seems little doubt that, if dignified statesmanship is what's required in a President, then America has made the right choice.

Presidential or What?

Who looks the most Presidential - Barak Obama or John McCain? Or perhaps Sarah Palin should be up there in the choice because, frankly, McCain ain't looking so hot health-wise. Three times cancer survivor is three times cancer getter n'est-ce pas? So his record on cancer is not to be envied. Does the USA want Sarah Palin as President? Perhaps they do. I heard a lady on Radio 4 this morning saying that we, the British more specifically the British Press, were being superciliously nasty to Ms Palin and that we had misjudged her appeal to the American people. Well dang my britches if that ain't the darndest accusation I ever heeard! Is it too much to ask that a Vice-President, possibly a President, can speak in joined up sentences and knows a little, just a little, whereof she speaks. I know we've all been conditioned to low expectations by eight years of W but maybe we might not be in the shit heap we're currently in if we'd had a President who could read without moving his lips. To replace him with another one who's definitely short on international experience is, to say the least, dangerous. Ms Palin is undoubtedly smart, a cute as a pet fox some might say, but is Alaskan native cunning enough on the international stage. I suspect not.

Baraknophobia - How to Engender Fear & Loathing in the American Electorate

TV conditioning is paying off for the GOP in the presidential brouhaha across the pond. Just the faintest suggestion that Obama has cast a sexist slur at the Palin person has been enough to provoke howls of faux anguish from Republicans across America. The five minute attention span of most voters means the far-right spin machine has only to make the accusation and the chattering classes heave themselves upright briefly on their nationwide sofas and bray their disgust on cue. It matters little that McCain himself used this attack in a blatantly sexist way against Hilary Clinton, Sarah Palin started the ball rolling by paraphrasing this old joke in a speech of her own or that Obama was not, in fact, referring to Palin at all, the mere suspicion of a sexist remark towards their new pin up has a significant percentage of the American right breaking out the sheets and the sisal and heading for the nearest tall tree. Ho hum we've got weeks of this shit to come and if it weren't so scary it'd be laughable. The merest hint that this wrinkled old scrotum and his bat-shit mad running mate might be occupying the White House is enough to make me want to find my own beam and perform my own rope trick.