CNN Hologram first....

This is very cool.

Daily Show has taken the piss out of it.


The obvious answer to the question "why?" is because its toys and it's cool! then again I am a nerd.
Via Comment Central

Time to celebrate?

Interesting flag to be waving.
Can you imagine the reaction if McCain had won and someone flew a swastika or KKK emblem? Craziness I tell thee.

The real reason Obama won!

You have to love a good conspiracy theory and this one is superb. The real reason Obama won is because he secretly used hypnosis to con everyone!

Tin foil beanie time methinks! *run away! run away!*
Hat Tip: Crossed Pond

Expectations Management begins for Glenrothes

An interesting piece by Ben Brogan appeared last night saying,

By the way, Labour word is that Glenrothes is a lost cause. The SNP will take it by 1500, give or take 500. I don't detect a Brown Central attempt to prepare a "shock" win. Instead they say that had they had a few days more it might have made a difference, and that without Gordon and Sarah Brown's personal intervention the result would be far worse.

Sounds liek the expetations management breifings have kicked off. Note the "Gordon made it be not quite so bad" line?

What a dumbass

I just knew when I picked up the Independent this morning there would be some idioctic article by Johann Hari about what Obama must do and indeed there is. It contains a three-point plan of the "timebombs" he must deal with and how.

Time-bomb One: A collapsing economy. The US economy is freezing like it's 1929 – and you have to decide now which wing of the Democratic Party can put it right. To your right, the Robert Rubin wing will tell you to concentrate on cutting the deficit, bailing out only the biggest, and batten down for the storm. They have the backing of the super-rich and their institutions.

To your left, the populist wing will tell you to spend big – on healthcare, renewables and infrastructure – in order to revive the economy. They want a new New Deal – and they have the backing of most ordinary Americans. In the first year of the Clinton administration, the wrong side won, and Rubin was unleashed to deregulate the banks. You need to make a better choice. Make yourself Franklin Roosevelt Mark II. Which leads us to...

So he wants to spend spend spend in a nation where the national debt already stands in excess of 65% of GDP. How marvellliusly intelligent. Just print money, it will be fine. Borrow even more at a time when the economy is going down the pan? Just what America needs right now is a massive spending increase of money they don't actually have and where the economy has been basically propped up by outside interests buying stakes in it. What a dumbass.

Time-bomb Two: A collapsing climate. You have become President at a crucial moment in the planet's history. We are close to the climatic Point of No Return: a two-degree rise in temperatures, which will trigger an unravelling of all natural processes. The last two Presidents killed Kyoto. You can save its successor, which has to be negotiated before 2012. But that means you need now to bring the US – the worst per capita emitter by far – into line. The economic crisis gives you the perfect opportunity. Stimulate the economy by launching the transfer to a low-carbon economy: paint your New Deal green. Big Oil will fight back hard and dirty – but every human being needs you to fight back.

Translation, tax every one really heavily for driving their cars and lorries and burning oil. How clever! In a nation that is geographically huge with an economy reliant on the ability to be mobile and travel, be it driving the car to local mall or transporting food and goods across the country - those things that need to be bought and sold to create economic stimulus - and what does Hari suggest? That's right, making it even harder and more costly to do. What a dumbass.

I will however give him his due on the third timebomb of Afghanistan. His solution is not to destroy the poppycrop but to buy it and make cheap painkillers. However, negotiating with the wing of the Taliban that are not global jihadists (allegedly) is pretty absurd because knowing really whether tyhey are or are not is dangerously naive. So only part dumbass this time.

Could this spell the end of kneejerk accusations of racism?

There is a question I have been pondering this morning that I would be interested to hear some other views on. Basically, if Barack Obama does something immensely stupid and idiotic after January that is reported widely in the the world's media and like his predecessor finds that photos circulate of him that were snapped at inopportune moment of facial expression, will anyone anywhere dare or be brave enough to do to him what they did to Bush?

Steve Bell - Guardian
This raises an interesting question I think about where the line in satire, and specifically satirising Obama will be allowed to be drawn. At the end of the day Bush found himself portrayed as a chimp because of what he did coupled with silly faces he pulled which made him look like... well a chimp. No one batted an eyelid at such piss taking of course as it was merely lampooning.

To be fair, it's not inconceivable for anyone of any race creed or colour to find themselves in the same situation. i.e. stupid things + silly chimp-like faces. After all, we're human beings right? We descended from primates, so its hardly surprising that we might look and act like them occasionally. The problem though of course is that Obama is black and thus to imply he looks and acts like a chimp or some other monkey would be instantly denounanced as racist even if that intent did not exist.

I guess in way what I'm wondering really is a much wider question of how, now that he has won, the satirists and cartoonists will handle his portrayal without finding themselves accused of displaying latent racism or the like. Alternatively, perhaps, now that America has voted for a black guy to be President all the identity politics stuff will fall by the way side and what might once have been considered "racist" could just become a "joke" without hidden meanings and prejudice?

This couldn't be a subtle coded attack now could it?

Over the weekend, Brown went off to Saudi Arabia to beg for cash to be given to the IMF (how things change for Labour huh?). This was spun and hailed as a great thing to do. On Monday, one of Brown's backbenchers tables a motion stating,

That this House is appalled at the decision of Barclays Bank to decide to seek Middle Eastern money rather than the support of the British Government to help tide it over current difficulties

Subtle huh? Even if David Drew (for it is he) is the only signatory to the motion. No Christmas Card from the PM to him then!

NOTE: A few more signatures on it now.

I can work when I want!

Away from the fun and games in Washington, the European Parliament are voting on the endorsement of the British opt-out from the working time directive. Whilst Brown is officially committed to the op-out his Labour MEPs are not and are looking to vote down the opt-out.

This mornign on the Today programme some Labour MEP was trying to argue that the opt-out was a matter of health and safety and no individual is allowed to opt-out of it as a matter of principle.

To which I say, what about the principle that if I want to work my bollocks off for 60- hours a week, why can't I and what right does a load of MEPs that have no link with my country have in telling me I can't?

Revisiting an old post

OK. So I lied, here is another quick US Election post. I've just spent a couple of hours in the car listening to the radio and comments from the papers about the whole 'race' thing being cast aside forever in the US. It reminded me of this post I did in January.

So it begins....

Following on from the last post Barack Obama is now President-Elect. His Electroal College win was 338 to 155 for McCain. The word "landslide" springs to mind. However, if you take a look at the popular vote you get a different picture.

The popular vote currently stands at 51.3% to Obama against 47.4% for McCain. IN comparison to 2004 which was 50.7% Bush, 48.3% Kerry what you actually see is a small movement of votes in a country that is still deeply divided politically. As my friends over at the Crossed Pond have noted,

this means that the sum total of the hatred of Bush, the war in Iraq, civil liberties under attack, the collapse of the Republican Party, and the financial crisis ripping through our economy swayed a couple of percent of the electorate.

Not of course that any of it matters to those who are outsiders. There will be joy for a while that the evil right wing GOP have been routed from the White House. Then, when the dust settles and the job of leading the free world begins for real for Obama, he'll make decisions that will continue to piss them all off.

That's it for foreign affairs now until after next January when the slide into the current status of sneering antiamericanism begins once more.

UPDATE: The following graph shows the percentage shares of the US popular vote, 1960 to date and illustrates the point quite well.

Via Croydonian