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.

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.)

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?

See more at The Story of Stuff

This via my new favourite local happenings thoughts events blog, the unequivocal notion.

People like Brooks don’t merely expect that political officials will ignore and violate their own campaign commitments once they get into office. They think that political officials should do that, that it’s naive and foolish if political officials actually take seriously the commitments they make to citizens during a campaign.

the political and media establishment joining together to deliberately distort American public opinion and thus render it irrelevant in what the political class does [...] The most significant fact of American political life is that political journalists (of all people) see their role primarily as defenders of, servants to, spokespeople for the Washington establishment. That’s how they obtain all of their rewards and remain relevant.

Tie this to this op-ed by Frank Rich (“They Sure Showed That Obama”) in which he describes the hysteria by the media following several moves by Obama (including the most recent stimulus) wherein the sky was falling to the Beltway insiders and talking heads but Americans in general felt diametrically opposed (or “in a parallel universe,” as Rich quotes Axelrod).

I’m further encouraged in skimming this article (to which I’ll p’rhaps return later to read in full) in which Obama is seen as savvy and practical (or as the title says, “An Eternal Optimist — But Not A Sap“). High points: clarity about goals but flexibility about tactics, constant reevaluation of efficacy of plans, elasticity, responsiveness, the long view:

and open to adjusting his own course to bring others along or simply to respond to evidence that his ideas aren’t working. But repeatedly he declared that no one should interpret that to mean he lacks any clarity about his goals: “My consistent bottom line is: How do we make sure that the American people can work, have a decent income, look after their kids and we can grow the economy.” Any compromises or course corrections, he argued, must serve those overriding priorities.

It’s very interesting that the “steering from point to point” is much in line with a book (excellent, thx Z.), on project management, advocating setting short term deliverables and inherent tasks with precision, but adopting a more flexible approach for items further out which may need to be adjusted or for which circumstances may dictate change.

INRE your recent actions as reported at {link above}
- Calling recent actions with bonuses “They don’t get it”
- Calling an add-ons to the stimulus package “ammunition for the other side to tear this thing down”
- Your bill to cap compensation at $400,000/yr. for recipients of bailout money

I STAND AND APPLAUD YOU.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

PS: She’s on Twitter.

Addendum 01 Feb: Speaking of who “doesn’t get it”: here’s some facts and figures on the Republicans.

International Herald Tribune article: government transparency, ethics. It’s all good.