[politics] Dear Ed Miliband – My Cruel Cartoons Will Hurt Me More Than You … ‘He has huge potential for caricature. Like John Prescott and unlike Tony Blair, his face tends to betray what is on his mind. Most politicians put on a guarded expression, but his face is more open and seems to let his feelings show. He has been caught gurning a couple of times, and looked like a rabbit caught in headlights just before the result was announced.’
[tags: Comics, Politics][permalink][Comments Off on ‘It’s The Others, Godfrey! Those Who Don’t Think Right!’]
3 September 2010
[books]
Digested read: Tony Blair A Journey … ‘You know, I had a tear in my eye when I entered No10 for the first time in 1997, though it wasn’t, as the Daily Mail tried to claim, because I was choked with emotion at how far I had come since I was a young, ordinary boy standing on the terraces of St James’ Park, watching Jackie Milburn play for Newcastle. It was because Gordon had hit me. Ah, Gordon! He meant well, I suppose, in his funny little emotionally inarticulate way.’
[blog] Reflections of Fidel … Fidel Castro has a blog!! … On Kennedy: ‘I confess that many times I have meditated on the dramatic story of John F. Kennedy…’ [via Kottke]
[tags: Politics][permalink][Comments Off on Have The Tories Formed A Government Yet?]
[politics] Adam Boulton loses his rag as Nick Clegg coos at Labour … Marina Hyde’s summary of yesterday events is well worth a read … ‘Loosely speaking, then – in fact, speaking with a looseness likely to be matched only by David Cameron’s bowel movements – that is where we are now. It should go without saying that in the time it takes to press the send key we shall be somewhere else entirely. Indeed, given that the cliche of the hour is that “we are in uncharted territory”, the cartographers should surely name these coordinates the Straits of WTF and be done with it.’
[tags: Politics][permalink][Comments Off on Marina Hyde’s Summary Of Yesterday’s Political Earthquake]
[politics] My Moment Is Yours, Ed Balls … Michael Portillo on tonight’s potential “Balls Moment” … ‘My name is now synonymous with eating a bucketload of shit in public.’
I remember once I had a woman come in who was really on the edge of a breakdown. She was talking about civil war and chaos, immigrants coming up the lanes of Sunderland with knives between their teeth to murder her. She was really in a terrible state.
“I just said to her ‘What paper do you read, love?’ and, of course, it was the Daily Mail. I just said ‘stop reading it and you’ll find life gets better.’ That’s the only advice I could offer.
[tags: Politics, Press, Tabloids][permalink][Comments Off on Labour MP: ‘Life can only get better – if you stop reading the Daily Mail]
4 May 2010
[politics] Voter Power … ‘In the UK, the only voters with any real power to choose the government are those who live in marginal constituencies. Less than 20% of constituencies can be considered marginal.The rest of us have little or no power to influence the outcome of the election. Find out the power of your vote in this election.’
[politics] Guido Fawkes Dreaming – The Change Coalition: ‘In what is the iconic picture of the election, Cameron walks out of his Millbank headquarters along the Thames embankment to 4 Cowley Street where Nick Clegg greets him and together they walk purposefully towards the Mall surrounded by photographers and cameramen as crowds cheer…’
[tags: Politics][permalink][Comments Off on Guido Fawkes Dreaming – The Change Coalition]
Nixon: I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it. (14-second beep to hide personal information) But nevertheless, the point that I make is that goddamit, I do not think that you glorify on public television homosexuality… even more than you glorify whores. Now we all know that people go to whores. …we all have weaknesses. But, goddammit, what do you think that does to kids? What do you think that does to 11 and 12 year old boys when they see that? …You know what happened to the Greeks! Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo. We all know that. So was Socrates.
Ehrlichman: But he never had the influence that television had.
Johnson has always had a geek’s penchant for self-education, and in that spirit he cultivated a side interest, and ultimately an expertise, in writing computer code. His Web log, which he named “Little Green Footballs” (a private joke whose derivation he has always refused to divulge), was begun in February 2001 mostly as a way to share advice and information with fellow code jockeys — his approach was similar in outlook, if vastly larger in its reach, to the guiding spirit in the days of ham radio. His final post on Sept. 10, 2001, was titled “Placement of Web Page Elements.” It read, in its entirety: “Here’s a well-executed academic study of where users expect things to be on a typical Web page.” It linked to, well, exactly what it said. The post attracted one comment, which read, in its entirety, “Fantastic article.”
[tags: Blogs, Politics][permalink][Comments Off on On The Rise and Fall of Little Green Footballs]
[tags: Funny, Politics][permalink][Comments Off on Tim Nice-But-Dim Tory Poster Photoshop]
13 January 2010
[books] I’m Not That Peter Robinson … Internet Hate Mob GO! … ‘Many thanks to all of you who have offered me your support in my time of difficulty – especially the person who said my wife was a homophobic slut who needed a good slapping around, and the other who suggested that I turn to Jesus Christ as my Saviour – but I must stress that I AM NOT Peter Robinson the politician, Northern Ireland’s First Minister.’
[tags: Politics][permalink][Comments Off on Diamond Geezer Calls the 2010 General Election]
24 April 2009
[what-if] Nixon’s Undelivered Moon Disaster Speech … What would Richard Nixon have said if disaster had trapped the Apollo 11 Astronauts on the moon? … ‘In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.’
[polictics] Slugger O’Toole on Smeargate: ‘… if you pick a fight with someone who has nothing to lose (and you do), you’re the one most likely to end up on the floor. To quote blog sceptic Geert Lovint, ‘blogging is a bleed-to-death strategy’. Mr Draper is a PR professional floundering in a world he barely understands, allowed himself to be entranced by the (what Lovint terms) ‘banal nihilism’ of one particular type of blogging, and now finds himself being bled to death through his own actions.’
[tags: Blogs, Politics][permalink][Comments Off on Banal Nihilism, Derek Draper and Smeargate]
[blogs] Nick Denton Quote On Blogging from 2002: ‘People like Doc Searls and Meg Hourihan are to the weblog as Oppenheimer and von Neumann were to the A-bomb. Gentle souls whose creation will be used by others more ruthless.’ Nick was certainly right about that wasn’t he?
[history] The Torture Colony … the disturbing story of how the the Pinochet Regime outsourced some of it’s murder and torture to a cult of religious Germans living in Chile … ‘…Colonia Dignidad was founded on fear, and it is fear that still binds it together. Investigations by Amnesty International and the governments of Chile, Germany, and France, as well as the testimony of former colonos who, over the years, managed to escape the colony, have revealed evidence of terrible crimes: child molestation, forced labor, weapons trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, torture, and murder. Orchestrated by Paul Schaefer and his inner circle of trusted lieutenants, much of the abuse was initially directed inward as a means of conditioning the colonos to obey Schaefer’s commands. Later, after General Augusto Pinochet’s military junta seized power in Chile, the violence spilled onto the national stage…’ [thanks Phil]
[knowledge] Clive Thompson on How More Info Leads to Less Knowledge … ‘Normally, we expect society to progress, amassing deeper scientific understanding and basic facts every year. Knowledge only increases, right? Robert Proctor doesn’t think so. A historian of science at Stanford, Proctor points out that when it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed: Ignorance increases. He has developed a word inspired by this trend: agnotology. Derived from the Greek root agnosis, it is “the study of culturally constructed ignorance.” As Proctor argues, when society doesn’t know something, it’s often because special interests work hard to create confusion…’
[comics] Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To ‘Savage Sword Of Conan’ #24 … ‘[Robert] Gates told reporters he may have gotten off on the wrong foot with the new president, citing an occasion when Obama asked him what he knew about 1984’s Secret Wars, a 12-issue limited Marvel release. Gates then handed a visibly confused Obama 1,400 classified pages on covert CIA operations in El Salvador. Later, the defense secretary attempted to find common ground with Obama by making casual references to the comic book Spawn…’
[funny] Making Light: The true history of the Bush years … as told by the Onion. I’m Really Gonna Miss Systematically Destroying This Place: ‘Still, I have to admit, sometimes I think I could’ve dismantled so much more. The very fact that the environment still exists, that a mere 4,000 troops have died in Iraq, that there is still the slightest glimmer of hope for the future left in this nation—it’s easy to feel like maybe I didn’t do my job. But no, no, there’s no use having any regret. I fucked everything up the best I could and that’s good enough for me.’
[tags: Funny, Politics][permalink][Comments Off on The True History of the Bush years from the Onion]
[twitter] Tony Benn is on Twitter … ‘I have been waiting for my website to be updated for a while. I feel this could be a decent stop gap. It is a little like a blog.’
[comics]
Garry Trudeau Submits Doonesbury Cartoons Featuring Senator Obama Win … Trudeau: ‘Fivethirtyeight.com, the most respected of the polling analysts, is now giving McCain a 3.7% chance of winning (and that’s without factoring in the huge lead Obama’s taken in early voting), so I guess I like my odds. Still, we supplied our clients with a week of reruns, just in case.’
[tags: Comics, Politics][permalink][Comments Off on Obama To Win According To Garry Trudeau]