Author: R J Adams

It’s eight o’clock on Thursday evening. Throughout America, millions are completing their final preparations before sitting down to watch the sports event of the year, billed as the fight of the decade. In the red corner will be Sarah “Pit Bull” Palin, a relative newcomer from Alaska; in the blue corner, Joe “Jabber” Biden, veteran of many a good scrap and the title holder in tonight’s bout.

Can Palin the Pit Bull out-punch the belligerent Biden? On form it seems unlikely. She hasn’t performed well in recent practice bouts, and while her staying power is not in doubt, she’s found herself on the ropes repeatedly over the last weeks.

Biden’s experience and vigor should make this an easy contest for him to win, and many are predicting a knockout in the second or third.

Of course, it’s a waste of time. There are no judges ringside. They’re all out in the country glued to their television sets, cheering on their favorite. Whatever the outcome of tonight’s bout, virtually all America has made up its mind who their particular winner is going to be, even before the first punch is thrown.

America needs to stop, and take a long, deep breath, before deciding to vote for McCain/Palin in November. While there are many in this country who don’t give a tinker’s cuss how it will effect the rest of the planet, nevertheless, nations outside the US wait expectantly for a result on November 4th that will either begin to restore American credibility, or confine it to the trash can for years to come.

The world has not forgotten how George W Bush came to power in 2000, or how he was reinstalled in 2004. The damage of those eight years lies heavy with many Europeans, and others throughout the globe.

World bankers outside the US may not be lily-white in their innocence of the sins committed by Wall Street, in the last great fling orchestrated by Bush’s de-regulative administration before it finally slithers away into its deep, dark hole, but the people of the world are well aware of the avaricious virus that evolved in America, before spreading like a plague into financial institutions globally.

It won’t matter how well Sarah Palin competes against her adversary tonight. Just as the citizens of America have already made up their minds, so the citizens of the world are united in castigating Palin as the far-right, warmongering, Christian fundamentalist that she truly is.

It was the US that invented the “three strikes and you’re out” rule.

Voting McCain/Palin into office on November 4th will assuredly result in the rest of the world consigning America to the “sin-bin” for decades to come.

Filed under: The end of multilateralism

This morning started badly. So did yesterday morning. I’m never at my best prior to midday, and certainly not before I’ve had my daily dose of morning ‘Britishness’, in the form of thirty minutes of sanity delivered via the BBC World News from London.

Unfortunately, it’s something of a hit and miss affair. Our local PBS station, ‘WILL’, is run from Mister Millikin’s university. Sadly, Mister Millikin has been dead for God knows how many years and it seems whatever he bequeathed to the university wasn’t sufficient to cover the cost of operating a modern TV station. As a result, it’s always a gamble whether they manage to capture the BBC signal as the satellite whizzes overhead. Rumor has it, a little man with a safety helmet climbs the university flagpole every morning at 4.55, waving a long metal aerial until someone on the ground shouts, “That’s it! Hold it there!”

Yesterday morning I awoke as usual, made my tea and toast, then settled back to immerse myself in the delicate and genteel tones of the BBC news anchor. What I got was thirty minutes of a kid’s cartoon, consisting of half a dozen belligerent little brats and a dragon, all yelling at each other.

Obviously, there was no-one available to climb the flagpole that morning.

Today, history repeated itself. Once again, I was forced to suffer the agony of brats yelling and shrieking in the name of kindergarten entertainment. A caption revealed this “educational program” was paid for by a grant from the federal government.

If I was content to watch the American news media, CNN or FNC, it really wouldn’t matter. In fact, it’s unlikely CNN or Fox News viewers would notice any difference if their programming was suddenly replaced by a cartoon featuring screaming brats. All would appear normal. But, frankly, I’m not prepared to suffer the in-your-face, “we-have-ways-of-giving-you-an-instant-headache,” US media at five in the morning, and when I have to, due to ‘WILL’ not functioning as it should, it’s guaranteed to leave me in a very bad mood for the rest of the day.

It wouldn’t be so bad if they’d just inform the viewer as to what’s happening. A simple banner floating across the screen: “Sorry, no BBC News. Our man fell off the flagpole” would suffice. But, no. I’m left wondering if it’s going to start late, eventually, or not at all. Consequently, one keeps enduring the screaming brats in the vain hope they’ll eventually disappear and be replaced with Michael Buerk, Fiona Bruce, or anyone who speaks English English, and doesn’t scream.

And that’s why, despite their monthly pleas for pledges and contributions, I refuse to dig in my pocket and support the channel financially. It’s not because they couldn’t run a piss-up in a brewery, let alone a TV station, it’s because they don’t have the common decency and good manners to inform their viewers when a program is unable to be broadcast.

I’m sorry, but at five o’clock in the morning, that’s definitely not British.

Filed under: Dashed poor show

Every US Federal employee, whatever their department, is required by law (Section 111 of Title I, Division J, of the Fiscal Year 2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act (Pub. L. 108-447)) to be provided with “educational and training materials concerning the US Constitution” on initial appointment, and henceforth annually on September 17th of each year.

Also, every federally funded education establishment (presumably most schools) “shall hold an educational program on the United States Constitution on September 17 of such year for the students served by the educational institution.”

Whilst it could be argued most educational curricula demand some degree of political education for a nation’s schoolchildren (though this bill, interpretated literally, would require it even for children as young as kindergarten) requiring all government employees to undergo such “re-education” annually smacks of Huxley’s Brave New World, or Orwell’s 1984.

The exact wording of the section is laid out below:

Consolidated Appropriations
Act, 2005 SEC. 111. (a)
The head of each Federal agency or department
shall—
(1) provide each new employee of the agency or department
with educational and training materials concerning the United
States Constitution as part of the orientation materials provided
to the new employee; and
(2) provide educational and training materials concerning
the United States Constitution to each employee of the agency
or department on September 17 of each year.
(b) Each educational institution that receives Federal funds
for a fiscal year shall hold an educational program on the United
States Constitution on September 17 of such year for the students
served by the educational institution.^[1]

This bill was signed into law by the Bush administration in 2005, though it was proposed by a Democrat, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

Incidentally, “Constitution Day” is designated a ‘holiday’. Unfortunately, as the law demands schoolchildren must be in school, and federal employees in work, to receive their Constitution education program and training materials, it’s a ‘holiday’ in name only.

How typically American.

^{[1] “Public Law 108–447” .pdf document.}

Filed under: Strange New World