The Classy Left Part 2.

No sooner does Sarah Palin become McCain's running mate than sites like the Daily Kos start attacking her daughters, by claiming that her 5th child is actually a grandchild and her eldest daughter Bristol is the mother! There are two reasons to believe that this is preposterous, firstly if it were true then she would be crazy to put herself up for election with a skeleton like that in the closet. Scondly the chances of a teenage mother giving birth to a down syndrome baby are extremely small, around 1/20 of the chances of a 43 year old mother doing so.

The Classy Left

Seven years ago John McCain had a melanoma which was successfully treated. This means that the classy left get to use 'Cancer Ridden' as an insult.

I was reading the likes of Kos and Democratic Underground last night and several of the commentators were blaming Sarah Palin for her son's Downs Syndrome, I suspect it will only be a matter of time before that meme breaks into the mainstream too.

Palin Into Significance.

A few months ago I looked through Wikipedia at all the current incumbent republican governors and senators to see who looked like VP material, in the end the three outstanding candidates looked like Tim Pawlenty and Sarah Palin. John McCain thinks so too and has picked the Alaskan governor Palin as his running mate. She looks like a brilliant choice to me for the following reasons:

1) Young
2) As a governor has actually run something (Dems are saying that Alaska only has 600000 people, but that is far larger than anything Obama or Biden have run, by a couple of orders of magnitude)
3) Attractive
5) Son in Iraq
6) Never plagiarised Neil Kinnock
7) Conservative bona fides established.
8) Reformist anti corruption campaigner.
9) Took on her own state party to become governor.
10) Female, I don't care much for tokenism but it blunts Obama's novelty value.

Worstall On A Roll

The WHO (not the band) have issued a report which basically calls for the implementation of just about every left wing hobby horse going. Tim Worstall is so struck by the inanity of it that he has dedicated no less than 16 posts (at the time of writing) to fisking it starting here.

When organisations start deviating from their purpose to take up political posturing then it almost inevitably coincides with a decline in effectiveness in how they perform their core tasks. As the WHO is one of the few multinational NGO's to have done good work (ie the eradication of Smallpox) this is a worrying step. It might be time to start stocking up on vaccine for a Polio epidemic in the next few years.

Shameless Seamus & Sad Vlad.

Having you illusions shattered is never easy, I remember how I cried for days when I learned that Santa Claus wasn't real, it ruined my 21st birthday. Now another dream is coming to an end because it appears that far from being a well informed expert on current affairs, Seamus Milne is in fact an utter ignoramus who bullshits his way through subjects he is barely capable of comprehending and butchers the facts mercilessly in order to fit the party line. In his latest column Shameless informs his loyal readers:

There has been much talk among western politicians in recent days about Russia isolating itself from the international community. But unless that simply means North America and Europe, nothing could be further from the truth. While the US and British media have swung into full cold-war mode over the Georgia crisis, the rest of the world has seen it in a very different light. As Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former UN ambassador, observed in the Financial Times a few days ago, "most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia". While the western view is that the world "should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia ... most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be clearer."

It's only the West that objects to Russia's behaviour. Alas the rest of the world doesn't appear to want to play along with Milne's wish fulfillment fantasy of the third world masses uniting behind a challenger to AmeriKKKan capitalist hegemony.

Russia faced increased diplomatic isolation over its military action against Georgia on Thursday, with its Asian allies failing to offer support and France saying EU leaders were considering sanctions.....

Even China, which often sides with Russia in diplomatic disputes, issued a veiled criticism of Moscow's actions, saying it was "concerned about the latest changes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia" and calling for dialogue to resolve the issue.

In fact Putin is now claiming that the Americans made him attack Georgia. This would be like George Bush claiming that the Bilderberg Group were behind the invasion of Iraq. Searching for conspiracy theories is quite common, but when the man who makes the decisions claims that that the Illuminati are behind it all this is either full blown insanity or desperate backtracking from someone who has overplayed his hand.

This supports the theory I put forward last week that Putin is in fact a moron.

Claim To Lame & Other Local Snippets.

In my local newspaper today, page two was devoted to a contestant from the reality show "Shipwrecked" having a photoshoot to plug a local business. That's not even a Big Brother level reality TV star! Can anyone spot a more minor "celebrity" in a news item?

In the same newspaper there is a more interesting story about a local museum which has an exhibit about Charles Darwin and the theory his most famous theory. Someone complained about the accompanying signs explaining the theory, and so the council decided to blank out the "offensive" paragraph so as to to upset the unnamed religious fundamentalist who lodged the complaint.

It is only a minor story in itself but it is symptomatic of a wider trend.

Blog Updating.

I'm going to be updating my blog roll over the next few days as it has been a while since I did so and I liked the new look blogger lists that sort the links by the most recently updated, which I recently saw over at John Ward's site.

I haven't been checking out many new sites over the last few months so if anyone has any suggestions about what is worth looking at please feel free to say so. As you can see from my sidebar I have a section devoted to blogs that link to me, so if anyone does link to me and I haven't put a reciprocal link in, again let me know.

Caligula Would Have Blushed.

Barack Obama (pbuh) has been compared to many people during his rise to where he is now, JFK, Jimmy Carter, Tony Blair and no doubt many more. If it really is the case that he is going to be delivering his acceptence speech to the Democrat conference in front of a faux classical temple, then perhaps the best comparison is with Caligula.

One thing the Greeks frowned upon a great deal was hubris.

(via House of Dumb)


Update: Rumours that Obama is going to appoint his horse to fill his old Senate position when he become President are completely unfounded. Although he is having an ass as his V.P.

Toad Denounces Lizards

David Aaronivitch has churned out his latest piece denouncing the "lizards" who don't believe that under Labour, tractor production is reaching heights barely believable under previous governments:

In 1996, after 17 years of Conservative government, the past six under the premiership of the cricketing Major, Great Britain went to the Atlanta Olympics and won precisely one gold medal. We ended that Games in 36th position, just behind Ethiopia and just ahead of Belarus. It wasn't just that Greece did better than us - Kazakhstan got four golds. If one were to take the Olympics as any kind of indicator of national health (and why should we not?) we would have to conclude that the past 12 years have been very well spent.

So on Aaro's reading by 1996 Britain was in a worse state than Ethiopia and Kazakhstan? I wonder how he would explain the 1988 table where the two leading countries ceased to exist by the time the next games came around, no doubt to the consternation of the East German and Soviet Aaronivitches.

Free Speech & The Blogosphere.

The blog Harry's Place is down at the moment as a result of legal threats made to their hosting service. They are currently at this address.

The reasons require a bit of background information which I shall attempt to summarise briefly:

• The lecturers union the UCU launched an academic boycott of Israel a few years ago whilst under the influence of a hard left faction before the more moderate members reversed that policy some while later.
• The issue has remained extremely significant within the union and there is some discussion list where the issue gets discussed.
• One member of that list is leaking the content to Harry's Place, who have published some of it.
• This includes posts by one anti Israel activist, Jenna Delich a Sheffield based academic who has been circulation material from the website of David Duke, the notorious former Klansman. She also links directly to Duke's website so there is no possibility that she didn't know the source of what she was circulating.

Either her or her supporters complained to the hosts of the domain and got the site shut down this evening.

The best way to respond to threats to free speech is to give what is trying to be suppressed as much publicity as is possible so as to defeat the purpose.

Update: Just before I pressed "Publish Post", I checked again and see that they are back up for now.

Telling Their Arse From Their Antlers

As regular readers may know I am always keen to help scientists push forwards the frontiers of human knowledge. So 364 days after my last attempt to be helpful comes another opportunity. Scientists have discovered that cattle and deer tend to lie in a North-South axis rather than an East-West one, a useful thing to know as it obviates the need to carry cumbersome compasses, however there is a problem:

The scientists were unable to distinguish between the head and rear of the cattle, but could tell that the animals tended to face either north or south.

Ok the trick to identifying which end is which is fairly straightforward if you follow these suggestions:

• Count the number of eyes, if there are two it is the face, if there is one brown eye you may be at the other end.
• Try putting a treat in the animals mouth, if it swallows it then it's the face again, if you get kicked, don't blame me.
• Check which direction the animal moves in, usually the head is at the front.

Bored

I'm utterly bored and can't think of anything worth writing about. Thankfully other people can, so here are a few things worth having a look at:

• Iain Dale starts a blog meme, asking what you were doing when various epochal events occurred.
• The Grauniad's Jeremy Lott on why Joe Biden is a poor Vice President pick for Obama.
• A Taekwondo player is unhappy with his disqualification. This is why it's better to judge rhythmic gymnastics or diving than combat sports.
  

Great Moments In Olympic History

Can this be true?:

For the Atlanta Games in 1996, the French synchronised swimming team prepared a routine based on the Holocaust. They were to goose-step toward the pool, before diving in and re-enacting the arrival of female Jews at the concentration camps, their abuse by Nazi doctors and their last march to the gas chambers. It would be set to music from Schindler's List. Alas, reminding us why politicians should never meddle in sport, they were ordered to abandon the enterprise by the then French sports minister, despite their protestations that it had "great emotional value".

Damn the French sports minister for sabotaging what would have been the single greatest moment in sporting history ever.

A Traveller Returns

After giving a bunch of foreigners a pounding, Britain's finest prepares to fly back from the Far East. Yes that's right Gary Glitter is coming home, and the Home Secretary has declared that she doesn't think he should not be allowed to go abroad again.

Which is understandable because for as long as he is living in the UK Glitter ensures that Gordon Brown isn't the most hated man in the country.

Sasquatch Fails Test.

"Bigfoot Fails DNA Test"

But he still has to pay child support, it's an outrage!

I wonder what would motivate someone to fake a bigfoot corpse anyway:

Also present were Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, the two who say they discovered the Bigfoot corpse while hiking in the woods of northern Georgia. They also are co-owners of a company that offers Bigfoot merchandise.

Oh.

Mind you this zoologist doesn't reckon that the existence of the sasquatch is completely crazy.

Update: I suppose we should all just be thankful that they weren't selling Jack the Ripper merchendise.

Putin, Genius Or Moron?

In some quarters Putin's invasion of Georgia and the lack of serious resistance he has face proves that he is some kind of genius, but I think there is a stronger case for arguing that he is the same bumbling moron who screwed up the Kursk rescue, the Beslan siege and the attempted murder of Victor Yuschenko.

Yes Russia now looks to have brought two Georgian provinces into Russian control but at the cost of driving Ukraine into the Western camp and earning his country near universal contempt in the civilised world. The word for someone who would trade the Ukraine for two tiny provinces plus the uncritical love of the far left is not 'genius'.

Doing Anything To Be On TV.

With the possible exception of Jeremy Kyle there are few more unpleasant sights on television than a man's pile infested rectum. This was on Channel 4's latest production "Embarrassing Diseases", a programme which as the title suggests is about ailments that ou wouldn't usually want to discuss with complete strangers.

I'm just mentioning this for two reasons firstly because seeing as I now have the image of that ring of big purple piles imprinted on my mind for all time it seems only fair to share the misery and imprint it on your mind too. Secondly isn't it a demonstration of how strong the desire to be on television is, that people with conditions that are so embarrassing that they have refused to speak to their doctors about it for years, decades in some cases, are suddenly willing to be probed in front of a camera for the voyeuristic pleasure of the discerning viewer.

Remote Controlled Police.

Policing to targets leads to the police making arrests that boost their statistics rather than those which would cut crime:

A senior police officer has criticised some Home Office targets, saying they have had a damaging impact on policing in England and Wales.

Chief Constable of Staffordshire Chris Sims said they encouraged a "policing to targets" culture, rather than one focusing on the public's needs.

It's a fair point, but it is inevitable that we rely on targets if the police forces are all run by the Home Office. When the people in charge of the police are so remote from what's going on they have to use a simplistic set of statistics to determine what is going on. So if the police are to actually focus on the important stuff then control should be transferred to a locally accountable body.