Miss Of No Appearance

Sounds like another Eskimo to me.

Ken Clarke Was Not Available For Comment

Rehab is science, dammit!

Man of No Affiliation

Guy who tortured cute puppy - really - turns out to have a name beginning with M that isn't Mike, Mark or Mikhail.

In related news, even the Mail can't bring itself to report what's really going on. All of which sums up why dogs are better than MSM journalists - at least dogs only lick their own genitals.

Zero Tolerance for.... Whatever!

It's not just libertarians who've been drawing heavily on the world's humbug reserves post-Wikileaks. Consider the position of the mainstream left: they're outraged that their new hero is being investigated for sexual assault on nothing more than the testimony of a couple of alleged victims?

And?

Hey, this is one more than PC Plod normally needs to start an investigation. Plenty of men have been bought to trial on less evidence and with far less tin-foil related reasons to suspect the credibility of the witnesses. Indeed, the left has spent years chipping away at the rights of the defence to raise issues like this in rape cases.

If the accussed in this case was an accountant from Leeds, the left would be busy right about now explaining how women don't lie about rape.

Knee-Jerk Scepticism Is Gullibility Standing On Its Head

Item number 1017 in why I don't take libertarians seriously: the way they claim the state is rubbish at everything, except when their goofy conspiracy theories requires the state to be a finely-oiled machine. Consider Exhibit A.

Hey, it's possible the little rat is being set up, but in so far as we're talking about a twisted loser terrorist groupie with delusions of granduar who's suddenly been propelled to global celebrity, I'm thinking a vast worldwide conspiracy might not be the only explanation for him getting named as a sexual predator (of course, the whole belching zillions of secrets thing also argues against the idea that the CIA are secretly controlling the world).

Still, in so far as libertarian's new pin-up is a guy who's aligned himself with some of the most virulently anti-freedom elements on the planet, at least we need hear no more about the compromised, and compromising, nature of democracy.

Fat Slobby Monster Threatens Civilisation

I'm with Snafu - cutting back on the cutbacks is bad news.

My problem isn't just the narrow question of whether or not we can afford to have half the country on the government payroll. The problem's bigger than that. It's the tacit acceptance of the world view that sees elephantine government as a normal part of our national life.

Even if we had an eccentric trillionaire underwriting our fiscal insanity, this kind of thing would still a ludicrous example of governmental overreach.

Professional Econut Is A Nasty Creep Shocka!

No, not Al Gore, the Canadian one.

Who says ecolunacy is just nostalgia for the days of serfdom?

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

Hey, now aren't you glad we bailed out our loveable Irish friends?

Hospitals & Schools & Sneering

As far as this goes, I'm with the folks at Big Hollywood. Who wants to see a formerly great women struggling with age and decline? I prefer to remember her as she was at the height of her powers, in 'Kramer Vs Kramer' and 'Sophie's Choice'.

Joking aside, all the obvious points about the left's lack of class apply, plus extra points for gutlessness. I mean, really? This is what they call challenging work: beating up an elderly woman? What's next? A lacerating attack on the Corn Laws?

There's one more thing though. We keep getting told that the evil right doesn't want people to pay their fair share of taxes, but the self-same people have no trouble raiding the public purse to make petty political points. Will no one think of the children?

Cristina Odone: Still Worthless

Say what you like about Crissy, but she does perfectly exemplify every prejudices of the chattering classes. Take this article:

[Americans] are stuck in a Profumo Scandal/Burgess and Maclean era, where gays are blackmailed by the Soviets into betraying their country. During the McCarthy witch-hunt, the “Lavender Scare” was a campaign to identify and prosecute gay politicians: homosexuals and Commies were often conflated, both perceived as subversive and immoral sub-cultures.

See what I mean?

Using such a tired cliché would be bad enough, but with the Cold War now long won and files opened up on both sides of the Iron Curtain, we now know there were quite a lot of witches out there. McCarthy was substantively correct: US security really was utterly dysfunctional. Even mainstream leftists have given up talking about supposed 'red scares' in favour of 'four point six SEVEN actually' style quibbling.

More to the point though, Odone is not merely resurrecting a decades-old smear, she trying to turn history round 180. If McCarthy really was dead set on gay bashing he should probably have started with his own Chief of Staff, Roy Cohn. As it was, leftists had no qualms about gay baiting Cohn, McCarthy and the rest of his staff, culminating in the bizarre Army-McCarthy hearing where the Senator was accused of allowing his office to be used to pressure the US Army to give special treatment to a former staffer who been conscripted (clearly, a US Senator being questioned over whether or not a private soldier 'often' rode in the cab of trucks doesn't rise to the level of witch hunting).

Odone's position isn't just wrong, it's the opposite of truth. There's no actual point here except that everyone the chattering classes don't approve of is a knuckle-dragger. Hence, her claim to detect some kind of super secret conspiracy behind the Tea Parties. Nope, she doesn't have any actual evidence, but you know what those people are like....

As such, it's business as usual for the MSM. Odone's rubbishy article boils down to simple class hatred. McCarthy and the Tea Partiers were/are ignorant hicks rudely interrupting the proper business of government. Meanwhile, anyone who doesn't support her fellow Metropolitan luvvie, and odious weasel, Alan Duncan, must be some kind of nasty old bigot.

They may as well just stop pretending there's any logic there and just start issuing lists of who's hot and who's not.

Tiny Minority Alert!

Surely the real question about this is where are West Midlands Police when we need them?

Best Blowback Story Evah!

Hey, you'd think someone would do something about this PC garbage, wouldn't you?

Heh.

If not hoist by his own petard, Cameron has at least been hoist by a petard that he had assured us was a perfectly lovely petard that none but right-wing extremists could possibly object to.

After all, this is the central issue of the whole PC thing. True, these guys will never see eye-to-eye with Cameron but do these comments rise to the level of actual criminality?

Clearly, the only answer is to suspend The Dave for six months while a Board of Inquiry looks at this case.

Joking aside, this guy has a point, or rather two aspects of the same point. Cameron's apparent belief that his job is Comedian-in-Chief and that all his jokes boil down to sneering at people who aren't him speak to the same issue. Sure, The Dave keeps all but telling us he was born to rule, and how everyone who opposes him is a therefore clearly some kind of freak, but as George Bush Snr would say 'where's the vision thing'? How does he see his role as PM? What's he trying to achieve? Nada. He's much happier telling us how everyone else sucks than explaining just why we should trust him in power.

Church of Liberalism Rocked By Murderous Priest Scandal

And talking of elite articles of faith that never actually stand up to scrutiny, loveable scallywag Learco Chindamo is back in the pen. What are the odds, hey?

Probaly quite a bit better than any of those sneery creeps who defend the rehab industry ever retracting all those editorials denouncing anyone who questioned the whole farce as some kind of tabloid-poisoned peasant driven mad by a combination of cheap lager and daytime TV.

Yes, and they can stow all that 'the dog ate my resources' garbage too. This case, just like Jon Venables, was another flagship case, with guaranteed public scrutiny. If Chindamo had gone on to win the Nobel prize or a VC, we'd never had heard the end of it. Instead, it turns out that rehab works perfectly, except in every case we ever hear about.

Again, I repeat, in so far as elite opinion demands faith in something which keeps failing every time we look at it, in what sense is this the smart position to take?

Quote of the Day

Janet Daly gets it mostly right:

George Osborne – who was once a proud Eurosceptic himself – has rounded on the sceptic tendency within his own party. “I told you so,” he says sulkily, “is not an economic policy.”

Well, no but it’s a start. It is, in the present crisis, a necessary precondition for any realistic economic policy: we need some brutal honesty here about the staggering mendacity and utter stupidity of those who concocted this conspiracy against the peoples of Europe, this folie de grandeur which appeared to be based on ideological wishful thinking and economic illiteracy. Those of us who were pilloried and ridiculed by the political establishment of the day and its camp followers at the BBC are demanding apologies, not because we enjoy the sight of people on their knees (well, maybe we do in this case) but because we want definitive proof that the lessons have been learnt.

The thing is, if the Certified Super Geniuses keep screwing up, in what sense are they actually, y'know, smart?

The fabulousness of the Euro wasn't some side issue these guys occasionally referred to in passing. Until five minutes ago you couldn't shut these guys up about the single currency. More to the point, the whole Euro thing was a litmus test: there were the smart people who supported the Euro and then there were the knuckle-dragging morons too thick to get it.

Anyone who claimed the Emperor was 100% deficient in the drapery department was told in no uncertain terms that he was, in fact, clad in a very finely-woven cloth. Now it turns out that there really was no there there, we're still morons for being crude enough to point it out. Win , lose or draw, it turns out these people are better than us.

Shocka! Professional Charistocrats Are Lefty Kool Aid Drinkers

Seriously? Is anyone shocked by this?

The only real surprise is that there are still people on the right prepared to treat these people as anything other than the leftist kooks they indisputably are.

How It All Went Wrong

Great post by Norman Tebbit explaining how even he once drank the EU Kool Aid. It really hits on what underlines much of modern politics, and not just in an EU context either:

To a large extent we had more in common with each other across the bonds of nationality than with our fellow nationals at home. I became a member of a tribe which cut across my national tribal links.

The flip side works as well. The idea that goofy projects like the EU are the product of elite super geniuses naturally leads to the corollary that those who oppose them are clearly dirty peasants and morons.

The whole point about our governing class is that it often seems as though they regard themselves as citizens of the Republic of Elite, while their fellow countrymen outside the tranzi elite are a bunch of wacky foreigners.

On the plus side, at least back in the day, his colleagues really were an elite, at least in the sense that they did a difficult and demanding job.

Now? Not so much:

The problem I see now is that our new political class has little experience of life outside Westminster except in their homes in France and Spain, and no feeling for the mass of British people, so they are easy meat for the internatonalist dream which is reinforced by the doctrines of political correctness and the self interest of the international bureaucratic elite.

Their supposed qualifications to rule are based on a tautology. Our governing elite is elite because they're members of the governing elite. That's their only qualification. If Cameron wasn't a politician, what would he be? What skills does he bring to the table that have any application outside the context of an utterly dysfunctional political culture?

Ditto, any of them.

To the point: Cameron doesn't just support Big Government, Big Government supports him. He is a product of the system and every bit as dependent on Big Government for his career as any loser bureaucrat in the Office of the Hat Czar.

BBC Issues New Rules On Openess

Accurately reporting stuff BBC staffers have said in a public forum is unfair.

Reporting private comments made by a police officer at a crime scene is just good journalism.

If only the officer concerned had spent a wodge of taxpayers cash producing a whole report documenting her concerns, the BBC would bent over backwards to keep it secret - right?

Molesters of No Appearance

Down in the comments to this post, an anonymous commentor points out another entry for the 'Zero Tolerance for Violence Against Liberalism' files.

Hey, it's a win:win for the left. The femiloons get to push their absurd meme that all men are predators while avoiding the existence of a certain demographic that really do think women from outside their demographic really are asking for it.

Yes, indeed: who can these guys be who have issues with women, and particularly drunk ones? We may never know.

13th Thargoidian Battle Phalanx Sued Over Abductions

So..... just checking my MSM scorecard here: seems like the fact some of the future guests of Club Gitmo once passed through Britain makes them British, but passing through a terrorist training camp doesn't mean they're terrorists.

Ditto, these guys might have the same ideology as terrorists, behave just like terrorists, associate with terrorists and go where terrorists go, but they're only suspected terrorists. Meanwhile, their own hardly disinterested testimony is enough to establish as undeniable truth that they've been tortured. Ah-huh!

Hey, if nothing else, I guess that means we've got to go easy on people who claim they've been abducted by aliens. After all, there's every bit as much supporting evidence for their testimony as for these jihadist atrocity stories. Plus, at least the abductees aren't part of organisation that trains its members to make bogus abduction claims and they don't think mass murder is a perfectly reasonable way to get your point across, so they're probably more reliable witnesses too. Then again, given recent history, I'd say there was plenty of evidence that the aliens aren't so much walking amongst us, as sitting on the bench in the Supreme Court.

CCHQ Wrecked In Riot: They're Going To Need A Bigger Hug

Enough with the sympathy for the Tory Party: windows smashed, arson, threats to kill, and cops standing round letting it happen? Pfft!! What happened yesterday was just a scaled-up version of what's happened to thousands of families who've fallen foul of local hoods, and all The Dave has offered them is a load of garbage about reaching out to the thug community.