Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
Isn’t that a brilliant flag?
He’s putting his feet and legs where his mouth is (that sounds odd) but what I mean to say is that he’s running about 1100 miles throughout the UK over six weeks to raise awareness and money. Donate just a bit here. I’ve been waiting until he got to Northern Ireland. I’ll pitch in my few pence now.
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
Great little collection of quotes from recommended movie, The God Who Wasn’t There.
Republicans, religion, and the triumph of unreason. (Doesn’t that just say it all? From the [UK] Independent)
As a result, 18,000 US citizens die every year needlessly, because they can’t access the care they require. That’s equivalent to six 9/11s, every year, year on year. Yet the Republicans have accused the Democrats who are trying to stop all this death by extending healthcare of being “killers” – and they have successfully managed to put them on the defensive.
These increasingly frenzied claims have become so detached from reality that they often seem like black comedy. The right-wing magazine US Investors’ Daily claimed that if Stephen Hawking had been British, he would have been allowed to die at birth by its “socialist” healthcare system. Hawking responded with a polite cough that he is British, and “I wouldn’t be here without the NHS”.
Not anxious to start taking any statins anytime soon.
Mark this site: PolitiFact has a great Truth-O-Meter for catching out political lies.
15 cool and crazy ways to tie your shoelaces (spotted via the inimitable Liam)
CSM: The “war on drugs” needs a timeout. (The failure drones on.)
Sunday, May 31st, 2009
Or have they come up with their own blend or “something entirely different” that seems to work rather well. Have started to read this most interesting article; will return to it.
American perceptions of European-style social welfare are seriously skewed. The system in which I have embedded myself has its faults, some of them lampoonable. But does the cartoon image of it — encapsulated in the dread slur “socialism,” which is being lobbed in American political circles like a bomb — match reality? Is there, maybe, a significant upside that is worth exploring?
LET’S FOCUS FIRST ON the slur. I spent my initial months in Amsterdam under the impression that I was living in a quasi-socialistic system, built upon ideas that originated in the brains of Marx and Engels. This was one of the puzzling features of the Netherlands. It is and has long been a highly capitalistic country — the Dutch pioneered the multinational corporation and advanced the concept of shares of stock, and last year the country was the third-largest investor in U.S. businesses — and yet it has what I had been led to believe was a vast, socialistic welfare state. How can these polar-opposite value systems coexist?
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