Well, truck me!

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Media Matters : A rich man in a poor man's shirt

- by Jamison Foser
When longtime lobbyist and Hollywood actor Fred Thompson - a man who once rented a red pickup truck in order to campaign in Tennessee as a man of the people - indicated this week that he would seek the Republican presidential nomination, we knew how the media would describe him: Authentic. Folksy.

Let's back up a moment. Thompson didn't even drive the rented pickup, as The Washington Monthly reported in 1996:

Finishing his talk, Thompson shakes a few hands, then walks out with the rest of the crowd to the red pickup truck he made famous during his 1994 Senate campaign. My friend stands talking with her colleagues as the senator is driven away by a blond, all-American staffer. A few minutes later, my friend gets into her car to head home. As she pulls up to the stop sign at the parking lot exit, rolling up to the intersection is Senator Thompson, now behind the wheel of a sweet silver luxury sedan. He gives my friend a slight nod as he drives past. Turning onto the main road, my friend passes the school's small, side parking area. Lo and behold: There sits the abandoned red pickup, along with the all-American staffer.

The pickup was, literally, a rented prop designed to help a wealthy actor/Washington lobbyist/trial lawyer play the role of salt-of-the-earth populist.


Steve Gilliard 1966 - 2007

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The News Blog
It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog  passed away early this morning. He was 41. To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.
He had been in intensive care for some time but seemed to be making a (slow) recovery. Then he had a major setback from which he did not recover.

Check out Tom Watson's piece - Steve Gilliard, Our Virtual Brother

And James Walcott:
Nobody but nobody was more prophetic about how the invasion of Iraq threw open the gates of hell than Steve--he got it right when nearly everyone in the mainstream press and the entire rightwing blogsphere got it so triumphantly wrong. Somewhere somehow that voice must still be out there but it's no longer for us to hear, which is why his friends and readers can only mourn and give thanks for what we once had and have now lost.


Beatles Banjo

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John Walkenbach at The J-Walk Blog is a big banjo/ ukulele/guitar enthusiast.

He found a picture of a banjo (or banjo ukulele) called 'The Beatles Banjo' and wondered if the Beatles ever played a banjo on any of their recordings. It appears that they did indeed, on 'All Together Now' with John Lennon doing the playing.

George Harrison became a big fan of the ukulele and always carried a couple around with him just in case he met another ukulele fan. Joe Brown, a long time friend of George, closed George's memorial concert with this lovely and moving version of "I'll See You In My Dreams".

 

Take that eyetalian geezer, clever, yes, but dull as ditchwater 'e was

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Tim Lott: Scientists need to use their imagination
I sometimes wonder that science is not as given to prejudice and taboo as any other discipline. After all, to my layman's mind, to posit endless (unproven) universes seems to be no more unlikely than the idea that the forces that produced the universe had, at root, the potential to be intelligent. Apart from which, since all we human intelligences are products of the universe, is it cogent to argue that intelligence really arises from stupidity? Do thorns grow on grapevines? The narrowly rationalist view doesn't seem to add up.

I am as much an anti-theist as Dawkins. Or at least an anti-monotheist. But I also think the universe is stranger than the scientific imagination - which is a much inferior thing to the scientific intellect - can grasp.
Is he being serious? Not enough imagination? Scientists? Really? Did Galileo really lack imagination? Was Einstein just using his 'far superior scientific intellect' when he daydreamed about riding a beam of light, while travelling on the tram to his boring job at the patent office? Tim Lott wouldn't even be speculating on the complexity of the universe if scientists, using imagination AND intellect, hadn't established the reality of that complexity in the first place.

Numbskull

Perhaps we need fewer scientists and more 'imaginative' people like, say, erm, Damien Hirst. Which leads me nicely to this little exchange between Benji and George Szirtes on that hoary old standby 'is it art?' in which Benji gets stuffed, sliced and pickled. 

But was it art?

Via




Have you seen this man? What man?

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Scotsman - Olivia hit-and-run police wait to interview man in hospital

It's not just Portugal where police are reluctant to release images of individuals wanted for questioning. Lothian and Borders police have refused to issue a picture of a man wanted in connection with a fatal hit and run incident despite his being held at the scene by passers-by before escaping. Even the man's family have begged him to 'give himself up' and the passenger has been interviewed by police.

Police say they cannot release the driver's photograph due to Crown Office instruction, despite witnesses taking pictures of the Jeep.

Gordon Reynolds, 56, from Redford Avenue, who saw both men in the immediate aftermath of the incident, criticised the Crown Office for its "illogical" stance. Mr Reynolds, a maths and chemistry teacher at the Rudolf Steiner School, said: "Obviously, you have to assess the legal situation, but I'm puzzled as to why, if the identity of this person is known, a photograph cannot be released. It would be a clear image, meaning someone could spot him."I fail to understand the logic of appealing to passengers on buses to come forward when police have an accurate picture."

Bill Aitken, MSP, the Conservatives' justice spokesman, said: "I can well understand the frustration of these well-intentioned people and why they feel the law is wrong. However, in such cases, identification of an accused in court may well be critical and the defence advocate would most seriously argue the fact that an accused person's photograph in the newspaper has interfered with witness identification."



Using that logic Trevor MacDonald could get away with daylight robbery. And it doesn't seem to stop Crimewatch broadcasting images on it's show.



As I was saying...

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Bob Woolmer WASN'T murdered, police will reveal | News | This is London
Cricket coach Bob Woolmer died of natural causes, police will admit next week. In a humiliating U-turn leaving them open to worldwide ridicule, Jamaican police are to announce that his death is no longer being treated as murder. Instead, officers believe he died of heart failure brought on by chronic ill-health and possibly diabetes. The sensational twist follows an extensive review of the evidence led by a senior Scotland Yard murder squad detective.
Mmmm. This was what I posted on Friday March 24th:
But there is something about this that doesn't seem to hang together for me. It's totally irrational, of course, but my gut instinct is telling me that this wasn't a murder at all. I shall probably wake up tomorrow to find half the Pakistan team under arrest but for the moment I just cannot shake this doubt I have about the murder claims. Just a few things that trouble me: no struggle and, apparently, no other injuries to Woolmer apart from the fractured hyoid bone in his neck (admittedly a classic symptom of manual strangulation). Although his death must have occured between about 4am and 8am there were no sounds, no raised voices heard. There was no break in. And Woolmer was a big, strong guy. Strangulation is not a common method of killing a man...



Excommunicate! Excommunicate!

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Scots cardinal attacks abortion 'massacres'

According to the leader of Scotland's Roman Catholics, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, politicians who support the 'massacre' of innocents (aka abortion) should consider their position carefully before taking holy communion.
He denied wanting pro-choice Catholic politicians thrown out of the church, but said they "must consider their consciences and whether or not they can approach the altar to receive holy communion...

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, leader of Catholics in England and Wales, rallied to the cardinal's defence. He said: "The Catholic Church believes that every life has been created by God in his own image and likeness. "This means that all life is sacred, with value and meaning at every stage and in every condition, from the moment of conception."
What's that you say? Massacres? Innocent children slaughtered? Every life sacred? Perhaps Tony Blair should reconsider his plans for after he leaves No. 10. On the other hand, he has never shown any sign of being troubled by a conscience.

Dominus Vobiscum.


Big Brother/Donor

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Two from Sp!ked: Ofcom: Mary Whitehouse in liberal attire
Commentators and politicians have given their nodding approval to Ofcom’s insidious brand of ‘liberal censorship’. Censure by Ofcom is justified on the grounds that it is protecting the viewing public (which includes children, don’t forget!) from material that is ‘offensive’, ‘inappropriate’ and ‘unacceptable’. Why don’t we be done with it and employ Ofcom representatives in actual TV studios and behind the cameras, so that they can make sure that everyone in TV-land behaves according to its strict guidelines? I loathe Big Brother and the public school nihilists who produce it as much as the next journalist. But having Ofcom dictate the terms of British broadcasting is a far worse prospect, and a disaster for TV on a par with bringing back soap-in-the-sun Eldorado.
Big Donor: dismember me when I'm gone
The fact that Jade Goody mouthing off can earn a TV show a watching brief from the police, while a death lottery is treated as standard controversy fodder, demonstrates a widespread incapacity to see moral issues through anything other than a politics of fear and a discourse of therapy and vulnerability.Shows like Big Brother and The Big Donor Show rely on an easy formula for what constitutes free thinking – that any taboo or social sanction is, by definition, something to be bulldozed, rather than reflected upon in order to sort our deep and necessary moral structures from contingent ones. The result is a conformism of thought – and one that fits with the nihilist grain that runs through much of contemporary culture.

UPDATE: Whoops! It's a hoax.


Crawling in a manner likely to lead to...death

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The 'sus' laws, Israeli style. Gaza children 'shot by Israelis'
Two Palestinian children have been shot dead by Israeli troops in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources say. The children were estimated to be between 10 and 13 years old. They have not yet been identified.

An Israeli army spokesman was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that the army had shot at several Palestinians near the Gaza-Israel border fence. The Palestinians were crawling "in a suspicious manner" towards the fence near the town of Beit Lahiya, he said.