A bit of a problem with this new president.

You might remember, a couple of years ago, my mentioning how insanely extremist American abortion law is:

It is commonly believed in the UK that American anti-abortionists are extremist nutters. What we see of them over here certainly tends to support that view. However, it is also commonly believed in the UK that American abortion law is similar to British abortion law. It isn't even close.

For instance, in my experience, Britons are surprised to discover that abortion is legal in the US during the ninth month of pregnancy for non-medical reasons.

There was some debate in the comments to that post about whether the American pro-abortionists I was talking about were the mainstream or the lunatic fringe. When Amanda Marcotte, staunch supporter of the current law and the woman who said

Getting an abortion is, from a certain angle, liberating the fetus from its womb-prison. That it can’t survive outside of it is not the fault of the liberator, I would think.

was made the official blogger of John Edwards, presidential hopeful, that pretty much settled that. In America, this stuff is mainstream.

So I was interested to discover that Barack Obama opposes the current law. Because he thinks it's too restrictive:

The first thing I’d do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing I’d do.

Yes, in a country where abortion is legal in the ninth month for non-medical non-emergency reasons, the elected legislature has felt the need to draft a law to make it even more legal.

I find it funny when people say that there's no difference between the two parties in the US and that the Democrats are, by British standards, right-wing. Yeah? Try drumming up support for this over here.

Merry Christmas.

For that special woman in your life, the perfect gift.

Grr.

OK, turns out I do have one little comment to make about the Budget after all.

I get most of my Christmas shopping done — certainly all the most expensive stuff — and then they lower VAT.

[sound of grinding teeth]

Trading standards.

If you buy something and it doesn't work, you take it back to the shop and ask for your money back. Except not with medicine. If I took some ibuprofen and still had a headache an hour later, it simply wouldn't occur to me to demand a refund. Why on Earth not?

So stop doing it, then.

I don't intend to comment on the Budget, other than to say that it was predicted over ten years ago and that those who made that prediction were accused of lying and scaremongering. As usual. But there's something it does which all Budgets do, which all politicians do when talking about state finances.

The Chancellor says that pensioners need his help. They're poor, some so poor that they die over Winter 'cause they can't afford fuel. And he has come up with a way to help them. It's the same technique all politicians use. He's going to tax them a bit less.

I feel it says something about our recent history that this way of thinking has become so entrenched that it wouldn't even occur to anyone to call him on it.

If a particular group of people are poor, it is outright immoral to take their money. If you want to take their money, you can, of course, claim that they're not that poor after all, that talk of their poverty is much exaggerated. Indeed, in a sane world, you would have to if you wanted to get away with taxing them without finding yourself roundly condemned as an utter bastard. But the public have become so convinced by the idea that the Government taking a hundred of your pounds and giving you back twenty constitutes some sort of gift that such justifications simply aren't necessary — indeed, not only are they not needed, but the Chancellor can get away with doing the opposite: he can claim that people are poor, and then boast about he is therefore generously going to take a bit less of their money off them than he used to. This is like giving people first aid by easing up a bit on the kicking you're giving them.

Once you've made the claim that certain people are poor and need financial help, the only moral tax policy is to stop taxing them. Completely. Obviously. To claim that people are poor and then keep taxing them anyway demonstrates the sort of cruel vicious streak which... well, if you know a bloke like that who lives in your area, you cross the street when he's coming and you leave the pub when he comes in. Yet politicians, for some reason, don't need to hide this sort of thinking, as they can rely on being congratulated for it.

The longer I spend in the world, the less I understand it.

Another brilliant quote.

But at least this one's funny deliberately.

There's a film coming out celebrating a Christian extremist who waged war against a democratic government in the hope of imposing a dictatorship which would cleanse the country of immigrants.

Why, yes, it is set in Ulster. How'd you guess?

 

Manufactured consent.

Aye, right:

ALISTAIR DARLING fired the starting gun for the General Election campaign yesterday, becoming the first Chancellor since 1979 to risk putting taxes up.

Sentences like that just go to show how brilliantly effective Labour's propaganda has been. And, to be fair, though they've been very good at it, it weren't Labour who started it.

Earth to journalism. In the period from 1979 to 2008, Chancellors put taxes up. More than once. It really happened.

That took quite some time.

Apple have always made excellent ads. Microsoft, on the other hand, have tended to make utterly crap ones. Where do you want to go today? was pretty good, but not great. And the Wow! ones were just dire.

And then Apple released their Hello! I'm a Mac ads. Brilliant ads. Really entertaining. With one teensy little flaw. Some genius at Apple, having hired a comedy duo, had the bright idea of getting the straight man to be the Mac and the funny guy to be the PC. We were clearly supposed to look at them and think, well, he may be failing in quite a likable and humourous way, but he's still failing. Whereas what we really thought was, well, he may be likably and humourously failing, but he's still likable and humourous. The ads didn't make me want to buy a PC, but they did make me want to make friends with one. And they made Macs look not only boring but smug. Let's face it, Macs probably are smug: it springs sadly and inevitably from being better. But the last thing Apple's advertising should do is draw attention to it.

And now it looks as if this trend-bucking from Apple has given Microsoft some much-needed inspiration. The new Windows ads are just excellent. They make me want to use Windows and meet people who use Windows and get annoyed with Apple for being so rude about all these nice talented decent people.

Apple still make the best operating system, but a lot of the other stuff they used to get consistently right appears to be going wrong.

The final dying gasp of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

DumbJon links to this simply perfect example of... well, of all sorts of things, which is what makes it so perfect: it illustrates American media bias, left-wing preoccupations and priorities, an incredible yet typical failure to spot the really very obvious indeed, and, of course, Bush Derangement Syndrome. Rush Limbaugh found it and has taken some time to take the piss out of it, presumably 'cause he's got to fill up all that airtime with something, but, really, the thing's self-parodying. He could have got away with playing the quote and then just broadcasting five minutes of silence.

The quote is from Evan Kohlmann, NBC News Terrorism Analyst, and is in response to that hilarious Al Qaeda press release.

KOHLMANN: Al-Qaeda is trying to counter this wave of Obamania. They are attacking Obama as a symbol of change in America. I think a better question is is that, is Zawahiri here taking a very dangerous step? Because, you know, Al-Qaeda itself has had problems with racism and bigotry within the ranks, and it was only about a decade and a half ago that Al-Qaeda was paying different salaries to its Arab members and its black African members. And the person administering that financial scheme, that payment scheme, is now the number three in charge of Al-Qaeda. He wasn't demoted, he wasn't punished for this, he was promoted. So I think the question is, is Al-Qaeda really in a position to be, you know, spouting off about the evils of racism when clearly they have as much problem with it as anybody else.

Yes, that is the question.

Charisma and recognition.

One side-effect of this financial crisis is that I've finally figured out who our Prime Minister is.

Allow me to explain.

The press have a way of writing, a certain form that they always follow. Things get more detailed the further through a news item you read. When writing about a member of the Cabinet, the first paragraph will always refer to them by title, and their name will eventually be mentioned four or five paragraphs later. Thus:

The Prime Minister will today announce something dead important.

It's so terribly important, he will say, that we really should bloody well pay attention.

Important things have been even more important than usual lately, especially in Wales, with many things seeing more than a 20% increase in importance, and some things that weren't that important becoming fairly significant.

In today's far-reaching proposals, Mr Brown will set out ...

Until about two weeks ago, when reading stuff like that, I'd get a sudden shock when I reached the name "Brown". "Oh, him?" I'd think. "Oh, yeah. I remember now." Up to that point, of course, having read the words "Prime Minister", I'd been picturing Tony Blair.