h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Don't forget that when asked in an interview if he feels he has made any mistakes or if he would do anything differently knowing what he knows today about WMDs and the casualties after he declared victory and the atrocities and all that and he said he didn't feel he made any mistakes and he wouldn't do anything differently!

Well, I for one am glad that the Americans are open minded enough to have a mentally deficient person as their president.

Tee hee... Very even handed of them.

65% of Americans either don't know or don't believe that Evolution is a valid scientific theory.
25% believe that the Sun goes around the Earth
52% believe that humans once coexisted with dinosaurs
46% don't know how long it takes for the Earth to go around the Sun

Don't worry, we have our share of Dumbo's as well:

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/content/showitem.cfm/issue.1120/section.dumb

Margeret Thatcher as President of the National Union of Mineworkers is my favourite.

Donald

I love this from P.MA Eye too for those not in the know this is a thinlly disguised message from the Vicar of Albion (Mr Blair) to the parishners the population.

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/content/showitem.cfm/issue.1120/section.albion

I always enjoy Private Eye when one of my British office mates brings them in. We have a similar publication in Canada called Frank.
It is usually good, though I think slightly inferior to Private Eye and the original Spy magazine and on the whole less intellectual (if that is a word one can use when talking about Private Eye)

http://www.frankmagazine.ca/

Ben Elton wrote Lady Windermere's fan... tee hee!!!!

Did we really exaust this subject? - impossible!

Perhaps Farenheit 9/11 did it for us and no-one's got anything to add after that

Keep passing open windows all (yes ...ok - Americans included! - but only if you REALLY WANT to now ok? )


Kosh

Looks like the 'Bring democracy to Iraq, sorry AyeRack, is about to backfire'.

Nah, don't think we've exhausted this subject at all! I recently read (actually, only got about halfway through, then gave up as a bad job) a book called You Shall Know Our Velocity, by a chap called Dave Eggers, which I thought was a prime candidate for this thread.

Oh, and Koshana, please turn around 180 degrees...
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It's nice to see your back!

RF

Do you no whats really strange,the original date for the Invasion for AyeRack was the 17 of march....paddys day...the world would have had a very low opinion of Ireland if they had a live video feed to dublin..."Rick I'm here in Ireland where there are literally thousands of people cherring on our invasion,Their are over 6000 thousand irish people getting drunk on connolly street...their all waring green for some reason,but they have put together a spectatcular parade together in such a short space of time. This is Steve Clarkson Live from Ireland"

you could list various things, just as you could with most cultures. I think at least a part of the problem is generalisations are based upon what we know. mainly coming from vary narrow sources (tv beingthe main). unfortunately if it ain't popular then it doesn't air, as a result alot of the more intellectual (im not raising a class thing here) stuff gets missed. for low brow rubbish, and as this is all most have to go on its not hard to see people as idiots.

Even people i know and myself included at times don't really hate American's total (as in all). But more the portrayed few, and the governments or systems that do certain questionable things.

you can't oversimplify and say they voted for a man who doesn't care about global warming. as they are not forcing him to do it and when you have only got two candidates whos to say that Kerry wouldn't have done the same?

Kerry's policies were startlingly similar, Colin, in many ways. Also, because he has a brain, he might have been more of a problem for the world, long term, though not the USA.

There's nothing wrong with Americans as such - it's their foreign policy that makes many people in the rest of the world go aaaarrrrggggjjjhhh!!!!

Kerry's problem is that he had too much advice. There's two schools of thought in the US - beat the enemy until they admit that the US is militarily, if not morally, superior - and the other school, which says let's use democracy, diplomacy, and economic sanctions to get people to do what we want. The carrot versus the stick, in other words. Kerry thought that most people wanted us to use the stick, when I think most people (including me) would rather see us use the carrot. So there's a lot of talk from Kerry about staying the course in Iraq, and finishing what we've started...

The problem with campaigning, and politics, is everything has to be done in simple sound bites. Nobody trusts the American people to make intelligent decisions. They're all afraid that the other guy is going to get in the more pungent/poignant sound bite before they can.

So Kerry was afraid to say what he really thought, and as a result, his campaign suffered from wishy-washiness. I'm not going to accuse him of being a flip-flopper, because the worst flip-flopper of all was George W. Bush. This is another great sound bite example - how the heck did Kerry get labeled as a flip-flopper? Because Dubya got that sound bite in first.

I have great hopes for the Democratic party these next four years. Howard Dean isn't going to be afraid to say what he thinks. He's best remembered for his 'I have a scream' speech, but he's going to really solidify the moral indignation of the Democratic party.

Books to read:

• Where the Right Went Wrong, by Pat Buchanan. This is Pat Buchanan, after all, so he eventually lowers himself to blaming the liberals for everything, but he has some great points to make.

• Sex, Lies and Politics by Larry Flynt. This is an excellent book, great reading, highly entertaining, and I recommend it to everyone who's tired of the doublespeak that America's politics has devolved into.

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Yes! I was reading something to that effect in Time Magazine last night... They back Dubya to the hilt, so of course they were "wondering" why Kerry was still so wishy-washy even though his staff urged otherwise. (I don't know if that was true, BTW)

Kerry's a hard man to figure out. He's just come out in favor of more money for the operations in Iraq, even though he's said publicly that he did not support the action in Iraq. Of course, he thinks that we should clean up our own mess, which is admirable - but what does that mean? Are we going to be building what we've destroyed? Or training more Iraqi troops? Or just bribing more contractors... Who knows!

I read a scary column this week punting Condi Rice as the republican nominee for 2008.

!!!

nothing's wrong with americans. they are just prey of a bad social and political system

While using diplomacy and economic sanctions "to get people to do what we want" might be more palatable to many than bombing countries "back to the stone age", I think the word democracy is out of place. As methods of coercion they may be less violent, but I don't see how they are any more democratic.