Hurrah for Sarko!

For the most part I consider Nicolas Sarkozy to be an annoying little weed of a man. But for this, I salute him:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8112821.stm

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has spoken out strongly against the wearing of the burka by Muslim women in France.

"The burka is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience. It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic," the French president said.

Texas: It's A Whole Other Country

Sadly, it's not. It's part of this here US of A. The TX board of education apparently knows more about the age of the universe than the collected wisdom of the scientific community. And they took a vote, all nice and legal and democratic-like, to make sure that students in the many fine educational institutions in the great and god-fearing Lone Star State are taught accordingly.

Cretins.

The Texas State Board of Education has voted 11 to 3 that scientists are wrong about the age of the universe, and students should be taught accordingly. “During the Texas State Board of Education hearings on science standards for Texas schoolchildren, BoE member and staunch creationist Barbara Cargill decided that the age of the Universe was up for vote.“ Cargill is a notorious biblical creationist, who has stated outright she won’t rest until all textbooks in the state align with the bible.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/05/06/texas-is-only-6000-years-old/

The Quotable Mister Churchill

A noxious individual in so many respects, but he possessed that thing the Brits do so well: wit.

>>>
from "I'll Be Sober in the Morning" by Chris Lamb

The conservative Winston Churchill was often at odds with Clement Attlee, leader of the Labor Party,
which advocated a greater role for government in economic policy. Churchill once entered a men's room
to find Attlee standing at the urinal. Churchill took a position at the other end of the trough.

"Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?" Attlee asked.

"That's right," Churchill responded. "Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it."

...

Playwright George Bernard Shaw invited Winston Churchill to the first night of his newest play, enclosing two tickets:
"One for yourself and one for a friend – if you have one."

Churchill wrote back, saying he couldn't make it, but could he have tickets for the second night – "if there is one."

....

Lady Astor once shouted at Churchill, "If you were my husband, I'd put poison in your coffee."

His response: "If I were your husband, I'd drink it."

Another Nobel prize winning economist says: we're screwed

Joseph Stiglitz joins fellow Nobel-winner Paul Krugman in calling out the Obama administration. Both agree that the Obama plan will not work; Stiglitz is to be admired for stating in plain and unadorned language exactly why it won't work.

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ahnPchOxZMh8&refer=home

April 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration’s bank- rescue efforts will probably fail because the programs have been designed to help Wall Street rather than create a viable financial system, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.

“All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing ingredients,” Stiglitz said in an interview yesterday. The people who designed the plans are “either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent.”

"First Do No Harm"

Looks like the Gitmo doctors were back in the dorm sleeping off a kegger the day that the Hippocratic Oath was covered in class. Amoral bastards.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040603654.html?hpid=topnews

Medical officers who oversaw interrogations of terrorism suspects in CIA secret prisons committed gross violations of medical ethics and in some cases essentially participated in torture, the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a confidential report that labeled the CIA program "inhuman."

Health personnel offered supervision and even assistance as suspected al-Qaeda operatives were beaten, deprived of food, exposed to temperature extremes and subjected to waterboarding, the relief agency said in the 2007 report, a copy of which was posted on a magazine Web site yesterday. The report quoted one medical official as telling a detainee: "I look after your body only because we need you for information."

French workers seize company HQ, take execs hostage

Every time the French get a little irked, they shout "To The Barricades!" and do stuff like this, while we get whipped and snivel "Oh please sir, might I have just a bit more gruel?" And that, my friends, is why the frenchies have a 38-hour work week and get to spend the whole month of August lying on the Med beaches, while we have whatever the heck it is we have ....


http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/03/31/france.hostages.caterpillar.workers/index.html

Hundreds of French workers, angry about proposed layoffs at a Caterpillar office, were holding executives of the company hostage Tuesday, a spokesman for the workers said.

3 million hit the streets to protest the economy

Sorry to say, those 3 million people are in France, not the US. Why is it that the French hit the streets while we Americans don't? Like the writer of the piece says, "France is France." I wish Americans hit the streets more often. It might not fix anything in the long run (though it just might), but it sure beats huddling in front of our teevees and just "taking it," which is what we’re all doing now. If the AIG bonus nonsense was happening over in France, I guarantee there would be about 1.5 bazillion pissed off frenchies outside the corporate HQ setting up Madame Guillotine. As to why we Americans don't get out there like the French do, I suspect it's a side effect (a planned side effect?) of the whole "rugged individualism" myth, that toxic, retrograde aspect of the American character that says: I got mine, screw everybody else, and anyway "solidarity" starts with a "s" and so does that there "socialism", so it's gotta be bad fer ya.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7953555.stm

Why is it only in France that such demonstrations are taking place?

After all, it is people the world over who are bearing the brunt of the recession. But they are not on the street.

The answer is simple. France is France. It has its own political and social codes, forged in the Revolution and over the course of two turbulent centuries.