It's not often the news makes me cheer out loud. But Radovan Karadzic, come on down! There's a cell in the Hague for you, next to the one where your buddy Milosevic cheated justice.Oh, and message for Ratko Mladic, you're next. Sweet dreams!
International: July 2008 Archives
It's not often the news makes me cheer out loud. But Radovan Karadzic, come on down! There's a cell in the Hague for you, next to the one where your buddy Milosevic cheated justice.
Meet Sean Tevis (left), from Kansas, who got depressed and annoyed that his local representative is anti-gay, anti-abortion and pro-censorship. Then he decided to run for office himself instead. Someone told him he needed fifty-two people to donate $500 to get a campaign together, but he reckoned three thousand people giving $8.34 was more likely.Sean's a web dork, and a fan of xkcd, a surprisingly funny stick-person comic, and the web bit of his campaign looks like this. Then it got discussed on my favourite website, which it turns out he's a member of. And he's waaay over his three thousand donors. Well done internets. Bring on the actual election.
My friend Adam recently had the pleasure of meeting Jon Stewart of the wonderful Daily Show.Adam's interview with him is here. Sample line: "As a comedian, as a person, as a citizen, as a mammal- in all of those areas, I am looking forward to the end of the Bush administration with every fiber of my being."
So where's our Daily Show, eh, BBC/C4?
Berlusconi was this week described by a source as an "amateur", "hated by many", and "regarded by many as a political dilettante who gained his high office only through use of his considerable influence on the national media". Furthermore, they said, he's "one of the most controversial leaders" of Italy, a country "known for governmental corruption and vice".The source was nothing less than a US government briefing. And they should know - George Bush ticks all the same boxes, despite not actually owning the national media. For both men they could also say "he relied on circumvention of the legal system either to take power or to retain it".
It's the apology that gets me, though. Should you really apologise for telling the truth, even to a guest?
John McCain doesn't get on with technology. Anything more recent than the A-4 Skyhawk he got shot down in over Vietnam seems to be a problem.The latest newfangled technologery to confuse him is the humble teleprompter, a vital part of any Republican campaign's arsenal since Reagan first gave a press conference during a nap.
As for computers, McCain admits to being "an illiterate who has to rely on my wife for all the assistance I can get". As Frank Rich put it in the New York Times (article, bypass registration here), "Getting shot down over Vietnam may not be a qualification for president in 2008, but surely a rudimentary facility with a laptop is". Quite.
I wonder if he's as IT-incompetent as Tony Blair, who, the story goes, used to leave tippex on the screen when trying to correct typos. Heaven help us if so, and if he gets elected.
Along with Jeff (formerly SNP Tactical Voting) and Malc (formerly In The Burgh), I now co-edit Better Nation, a group blog. Stuff will still appear here, but more will be there.
Subscribe to this blog's RSS/Atom feed
I also intermittently blog on the Scotsman's otherwise excellent Steamie.
If you want a stream of pointless and largely political observations I'm on Twitter too.