How despicable is Sarah Palin? I know this is beating the proverbial dead horse, but a clip of the Palinmonster that surfaced yesterday has only served to reinforce how ludicrous, shallow and loathsome she truly is. Here is the clip. Short quiz to follow. What is the most despicable moment in this exchange? A. ”Oh, [...]
Archive for the ‘Politics’ category
I guess we’re in the farce part
One of my favorite bloggers these days is the pseudonymous Yves Smith, who spent a quarter of a century working in high finance but now refers to “banksters” with nothing but contempt on her blog, naked capitalism. Like many bloggers, Smith has a “links” post at the end of each day with some stuff she [...]
Eastern architecture pt. 3: Fernsehturm Berlin
One of the more famous landmarks in East Berlin is the TV tower (or Fernsehturm Berlin), which was constructed by the GDR in the late ’60s as a way to showcase its technological superiority over the West. My first impression as I exited Alexanderplatz metro station was that I was not moved either by its [...]
Book Report
This is my book report for eighth-grade social studies. I read a book called “Game Change.” It was really good. It was all about the presidential campaign of 2008, which took place when I was in the sixth and seventh grades and the summer in between. I didn’t understand much about politics then, but now [...]
Out
This week I found myself trying to explain “the closet” and “coming out” in a bit more depth than is usually given the subjects, as every water cooler and blog in the country resonated with some form of the search phrase “elena kagan lesbian”: Now we have Eliot Spitzer, among others, assuring us that the [...]
Monday photo: Ants
(Click to enlarge) I took these photos in downtown Bogota, where artist Rafael Gomezbarros covered the Colombian Congress building with this art installation of giant ants. Apparently this has been an ongoing, Christoesque project in which the ants have appeared on different public buildings throughout Colombia at different times; according to Gomezbarros, the ants “represent [...]
Hi, my name is Parliament. You may have heard how hung I am.
Are you as fascinated as I am by the British elections?
Picking a horse
So, I envisaged this blog as a detailed policy analysis of the Labour (!) and Liberal Democrat manifestos as I decide how to cast my postal ballot (when and if it arrives) ahead of the May 6 General Election in the UK. However, I don’t have the time nor, it turns out, the inclination to [...]
They’re off!
Yes! May 6 is the day of the General Election in the UK. And you’ll be excited to know that Stella has a vote. It may be her last vote in the UK. After 15 years, ex-pats can no longer vote. I’ve voted Labor all my life. And thought I would always be able to [...]
Will the pope resign?
I’m reading the excellent Capitalist Realism, by Mark Fisher of k-punk, and came across a great bit that I wanted to share. Fisher writes, What late capitalism repeats from Stalinism is just this valuing of symbols of achievement over actual achievement. As Marshall Berman explained, describing Stalin’s White Sea Canal project of 1931-33: Stalin seems [...]
