Wonkette
- If they cannot torture with impunity, what’s the CIA supposed to do for the next four years, sit on their thumb(screw)s? [Washington Post]
- Vice President Biden’s in Serbia today, looking to heal and stuff. [BBC News]
- Same-store sales at Home Depot fell 10 percent, but the home-improvement retailer did not do quite as horribly as expected in Q1. [Wall Street Journal]
- Direct democracy, huzzah! California voters put on their green eyeshades today and vote on a series of complicated budget measures that, in a sane state, the legislature would have to approve. [San Francisco Chronicle]
- Exciting socialist auto industry news: national emissions standards, everyone! And a mileage standard of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. A group of auto makers appear to be on board with this government-sponsored plan. [AP]
- The Speaker of Great Britain’s House of Commons will probably resign today because of an expense scandal. One guy expensed the cleaning of his moat, for example, which is apparently unethical. [Telegraph]
“Cleaning of his moat” sounds suspiciously like Republican code speak for something extra nasty.
Wait, you can’t expense moat cleaning? Dammit, I need a new accountant.
I have mixed emotions about this Daily Briefing. On one hand, I feel like Kent Brockman (”Democracy doesn’t work” and “Welcome Alien Overlords”) when I read about the fucked up nature of Kalifonya’s ballot initiatives. The whole idea of people voting for things they do not understand the consequences of (see Prop 13) is kind of evident. On the other, leaving Tommy Taxpayer to pay for overbred wanker’s moat is worthy of a serious pitchforking.
ManchuCandidate: Because of that, it’s probably a good thing they are all doomed to die today. Now the fun begins as Ahnuld and the legislature get to start tap-dancing to close the deficit, hopefully without gutting education funding.
will we even have cars in 2016?
Good gas mileage? Low toxic emissions? Why would anyone want this? If you hate lead-filled gasoline and love catalytic converters, you’re a Socialist. Rush Limbaugh said so back in the late 1980s, and I’m sure it’s still true.
As well as the moat there were helipad repairs, problems with tennis court plumbing, payment of mortgages that did not exisit, Britain’s richest MP claiming for a copy of a book THAT HE WROTE, the junior minister’s massage chair (when asked, on live TV, why he needed an £800 massage chair he criticised the reporter for spreading lies she should know full well it only cost £730) and, best of all, the Home Secretary’s husband billing the taxpayer for two porn films.
If someone in the House of Commons has a moat, what do the folks in the House of Lords have? Champagne-spewing bedays?
MarineMustang: Haha, c’mon, this is California you’re talking about. The education funding will be the first thing to go.
You know they got these big expensive buildings, called “schools” out there, made of bricks and other expensive stuff? What the hell’s wrong with sitting in a circle in the grass? It was good enough for Plato and his gang; they were plenty smart. And its sunny in California. So there’s a big cut they can make there.
And they got these people called “Teachers” out there; some of them making fifty, sixty grand a year? Heck, my mom would do it for half that, she needs a hobby…
‘A mileage standard of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.’
By which time the cost of gasoline will be $50.00 a liter, (our socialist muslin leader will, of course, have switched us over to the metric system by then. Because, you know, he’s a socialist.)
They never did any of those shenanigans in the past 300 years? Gimme a break. And Nancy, don’t let it scare you.
Lascauxcaveman: Which is why I’m never moving to California. Texas is stupid, Cali is just plain selfish.
California should just give all their state employees a gold pan and send ‘em into the mountains.
The people who own the moats are going to be our next government. Them and the people who write the Daily Telegraph. Ah, fuck. I’m moving to Americuh.
Texan Bulldoggette: Everybody with a bottle of champagne has one of those, just stand over a drain and mind the flying cork….
I’d like to speak up supporting the moat cleaning. A man needs a clean moat for two reasons. First, it keeps the peasants from climbing over the bodies and debris and laying siege to his castle. Sieges are non-productive (for the recipient at least) and distracting, so anything that keeps the surfs walking behind the oxen gathering “biscuits” is money well spent.
Secondly, how is a man with a smelly moat supposed to nail a fairy princess? Have you people ever looked at the British nobility? They need several generations of breeding with fairy princresses to filter a little of the ugly out of that gene pool
Well, the CIA guys could keep their hands in by torturing each other and comparing notes, written in dried lemon juice using back-handed, mirror-written text, encoded via secret glow-in-the-dark rings with a whistle.
Quoth the Telegraph: “Speaker Martin’s resignation was true to form: graceless and chippy.”
God DAMN I love the Brits.
When I was at the University of Maryland, the folks from the Society for Creative Anachronism* ran a ticket for the Student Government offices on the platform that they’d dig a moat around campus and fill it with ice and imported beer. They won. Yes, I voted for them.
* - Yes, the ones who whack each other with wooden swords on the weekend and like making homemade chainmail in their dorm rooms.
Terry: I’m guessin’ they failed to come through on that promise, yes?
The planks in their platform were balsa for show.
Did you look at the photos? What kind of moat is that? Looks more like an oxbow or a slow creek or bayou.
A moat needs a nice castle wall beside it, a drawbridge, and maybe some pointy spikes or something sticking up from the water to repell invaders.
TGY:
Yes, the University and Prince George’s County both thought a beer filled moat around campus was a bad idea. Can’t imagine why.
How progressive of the auto industry. Only took going out of bidness and sucking on the taxpayer’s tits for them to come around on mileage standards, though having Congressman Dingleberry controlling the relevant committee never helped.
Texan Bulldoggette: Moët & Chandon, actually.
hobospacejunkie: Odd how “auto industry” is beginning to sound as quaint as “record industry.” Oh Dickens, where art thou? Merry ole England here we come.
Damn I’m glad I got the fuck out of California when I did!
A clean moat falls into the category of Homeland Security expenditures. How can you fend off the Terrorists when they can just carry ladders right up to your castle walls?
19kevin8: From what I’ve seen, it’s actually pretty nice in a lot of places, provided you don’t require a public education.
Yeah, I was in the UK last week and read the Telegraph every day beginning with their breaking of the scandal. It was literally the funniest thing I have ever read in a newspaper. In addition to the moat, there were literally bags of manure, llama food, cases of tampons, diapers (who knew David Vitter was an MP?), and massive home renovation. It seems a complete role reversal–US politicians used to be known for corruption, while their UK counterparts were exclusively subject to sex scandals.
I looked at the “Tory Country Gents” slide show in The Telegraph. They may be corrupt bastards, but their sense of style puts our corrupt bastards in the shade.
Red Zeppelin:
No snark here. Who buys tampons by the case? Even at Costco, you only have to buy three boxes at once.
Good Lord what is happening to the British Empire if one can’t even expense one’s moat cleaning anymore? It was short sightedness like this that lost them India and, well, 9/10ths of the planet’s surface.
As anyone who’s ever listened to Barry’s “Senatorial Rantings” podcast way, waa-aa-ay back in the day, at the dawn of his federal career two years ago with change, he’s all about fuel standards. If he manages to push this through, look for a pornographic “Presidential Air Guitar in Shirtsleeves” spread on the WHite House flickr account in the near future.
35.5 mpg by 2016? What a show of courage in doing NOTHING 20 years after you should have done SOMETHING. At this pace, we will solve our environmental problems by 2040, when we go extinct.
IN the moat, do the backstroke..