:topic poetry can be handy mate lolI like your Robert Frost there.
:topic poetry can be handy mate lol
I said to some bloke the other day, waiting for a taxi in a 99% shadey street in North Sydney, and a couple of us trying to get warm in these narrow beams of sun...
"don't you just love these stingy rays of sunlight struggling feebly down between the houses tall" - and he looked at me as if I had 4 heads - at least I had the taxi queue to myself after that
Her name wasn't Oprah by any chance?
gg
This cynical choice has left McCain’s honour in shreds
Minette Marrin
I’m an American, California born. It’s true my mother was English and that I was brought up here from early childhood and think myself exceptionally lucky to belong here; I feel as English as I think anyone possibly can. Yet all the same, America is the land of my forebears on my late father’s side. I would even qualify to be a Daughter of the American Revolution, since one of my ancestors in North Carolina fought in the American war of independence. My grandmother travelled as a little girl in a covered wagon in the Wild West with my great-grandfather, who was an army officer. I have close family living in America still, and I have the right to vote there.
So I have always felt a strong sentimental attachment to the United States. I’ve felt proud of American achievements and generosity, and resented the unthinking antiAmericanism everywhere in Europe, ever since the first child in the playground of my first school shouted at me “Yanks go home”. Admittedly the spectacle of electioneering is a painful test of anyone’s respect for the United States. In their ghastly harrumphing electoral extravaganzas the Americans show themselves at their worst - vulgar, venal, naive, dishonest, stupid, wasteful, tasteless and vicious. Priggish though it may sound, I prefer to ignore these periods of national hysteria; after all, politics is nasty everywhere, it’s just that America does everything in extremes.
But last week everything changed............
A view from this side of the big ditch:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article4692133.ece
But last week everything changed. John McCain’s choice of Governor Sarah Palin was the last straw. It makes American politics look like a sick comedy. My faith in my native country had already been shaken by other elections and by other wrongs, such as the Iraq war (which I at first supported, to my shame). But the moose-hunting pitbull with lipstick is too much. I have never used my vote in the past, but if I had, I would usually have voted Republican. Today no rational conservative can vote for the Palin and McCain ticket. It makes America an international laughing stock. The fact that there has been a Palin bounce, after her charismatic speech, fills me with dismay.
............. What horrified me was not so much the woman herself, though she is clearly entirely unfit to be vice-president or president. It was McCain’s cynical and sudden choice of her. Would you give power of attorney over your entire life to someone you had only met once, or possibly twice? Of course not. You would give the matter and the person very serious consideration.
Yet McCain in effect is offering power of attorney over all the affairs of the United States and over all Americans, including me, to a woman he had barely met. I myself wouldn’t hire a house-sitter on such scant acquaintance.
Obviously McCain’s public relations people have been scouring the country for libertarian babes. But politics is not painting by numbers. McCain doesn’t know Palin at all, nor it seems did his vetting people; revelations keep emerging about her all the time. But he showed himself willing to hand the free world over to a stranger because his people think she is a psephological paragon. (??)
I had thought that McCain was, for a politician, an honourable man. Certainly honour is one of his top selling points. But who can think so now? In choosing a woman he doesn’t know or understand, purely for electoral advantage, he reveals a dishonourable lust for office, a disrespect for women generally and a dishonourable indifference to the future of his country. After all, if this known unknown woman does become president, it will almost certainly be because he himself is dead - quite possible given his age and health - and past caring.
In short Palin is an ill-educated, inexperienced hypocrite. The Republicans are trying to sell her to the voters as something she isn’t, and McCain hardly cares what she is. It’s a bad day for my native land.
Obamania makes way for Palinmania - US Election 2008
We've been through Obamamania. Now a new phenomenon is sweeping America – Palinmania.
By Toby Harnden in Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Last Updated: 12:53AM BST 11 Sep 2008
Governor Sarah Palin. Wasila, Alaska
Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, poses in the Alaskan cold for Vogue magazine Photo: JONATHAN BECKER/CONTACT FOR US VOGUE
Even before Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska had appeared on the stage to introduce Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, the chant went up around the hall: "We want Sarah!"
A tear rolled down the cheek of a middle-aged woman volunteer who moments earlier had been barking orders to keep the exits clear.
A mother clutched the hand of her 11-year-old daughter, whose face was made up like a clown with stars and the letters P-A-L-I-N painted across her face.
Outside, queues which began six hours earlier snaked around the sports hall as more than 9,000 people filed in. Hundreds would be left outside.
They held home-made signs with slogans like "God, guns, lipstick" and "Read my lipstick - Palin."
So the ice melts, the peguins disappear, and polar bears are now stalking humans - seeing a mother with a stroller walking with gun slung over her shoudler is highly disconcerting.
See they are even spinning of Chucks facts for Palin now. It's all getting a bit silly.
Chuck won't be happy.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris_Facts
There were never any penguins in the Arctic. They are living happily in the Antarctic, undisturbed by polar bears.
She will win it for them - that is why the American Empire is imploding before our very eyes. Celebrity has truely replaced morality in that civilisation and like all before them it will be the tipping point that signals the end.
Obama is imploding for sure. As for America, I suspect we will be here and leading the world for many many more years. You have to be an American I guess to know just how strong and resilient this country is. Go ahead, take your potshots at us. We are strong enough to take it. We are the most optimistic people on earth.
hi nomore4s,* Sarah Palin once guided Santa’s sleigh through an Alaskan blizzard with the light from her smile
A good indication of the low morale of the Democrats is the lengths the party and their admirers will go to to dig up dirt on Sarah Palin. And where they cannot find dirt they will use snide innuendo.
She may not be everybody's cup of tea, but she has more guts than her detractors.
zzzDad said:Obama is imploding for sure. As for America, I suspect we will be here and leading the world for many many more years. You have to be an American I guess to know just how strong and resilient this country is. Go ahead, take your potshots at us. We are strong enough to take it. We are the most optimistic people on earth.
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