Sometimes I'll just wander aimlessly around the internet and see what I can find. Here are several interesting (or weird or funny) things I've discovered lately, most of them with a political slant.
None of them, by itself, is worth dedicating a whole diary to, so I've collected them into a miscellaneous hodgepodge. Follow me down below.
I Want My Country Back -- My 19th-Century Country!
Here in Washington State, we have a legislator who wants to go back to the good old days, when state legislatures selected the U.S. Senator. Seriously. I'm not making this up.
So, how crazy is the state Republican caucus in their sloppy embrace of their crazy, tenther, teabagger, state sovereignty agenda? So crazy that state Sen. Val Stevens has introduced a Joint Memorial calling for the repeal of the 17th Amendment... the amendment that mandates the direct popular election of U.S. Senators.
-- from Horsesass.org
Doctors Without Borders -- With Really Cool Tents
Here's a video from Haiti. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, aka Doctors Without Borders) isn't just a bunch of doctors who jump on an airplane. They have major equipment. They find a soccer field and install portable operating rooms. Some of them even speak French.
-- from YouTube.com
What G.W. Bush Is Doing In Retirement
George W. Bush's Retirement To-Do List Regarding the Gophers on Crawford Ranch.
by Kate Hahn
- - - -
Convince gophers you'd be fun to drink beer with so they'll like you, but never do it, because you quit in the '80s.
When crop duster crashes into gopher mound, stand on clods of dirt from mound, surrounded by surviving gophers, and tell them the best thing they can do to help is go foraging.
When gopher holes flood, do not send help. Gophers can fend for own selves. Tell them to go to doghouse for shelter. Continue to ignore even as they signal from roof of doghouse.
There's more of the gopher story at the link below:
-- from McSweeneys.net
Gigantic Database of Politicians
It's alphabetized, cross-referenced, and it contains 193,000 names. I looked up politicians who were born on my birthday (October 18). I share a birthday with Jesse Helms and James Talent (the Republican Senator who lost to Claire McCaskill). I also share a birthday with this guy (just for an example of one of the entries in the database):
Donovan, Jeremiah (1857-1935) — of South Norwalk, Norwalk, Fairfield County, Conn. Born in Ridgefield, Fairfield County, Conn., October 18, 1857. Democrat. Member of Connecticut state house of representatives, 1903-04; member of Connecticut state senate, 1905-09; U.S. Representative from Connecticut 4th District, 1913-15; defeated, 1914; mayor of Norwalk, Conn., 1917-21; delegate to Democratic National Convention from Connecticut, 1920. Died in Norwalk, Fairfield County, Conn., April 22, 1935. Interment at St. John's Cemetery, Norwalk, Conn.
-- from PoliticalGraveyard.com
A Famous Politician I Had Never Heard Of
When I was young, I ignored the obituaries in the newspaper. This was in the old days when newspapers were printed on paper. Now that I'm in my fifties, I've come to appreciate a good obituary.
Jyoti Basu was born the son of a doctor in Calcutta. So he came from a comfortably middle-class family. He went to London to study law in the 1930s and came back a Communist. He was involved in politics for over 50 years. And he could have become India's first Communist Prime Minister.
Despite all this, however, his pragmatism increased. As chief minister of West Bengal, he realised that economic liberalisation and the rise of China were making old orthodoxies redundant. "We want capital," he said once. "Socialism is not possible now." Such remarks astonished his colleagues in the party. Nor did they relish his harping on what he called their "historic blunder": the moment in 1996 when, at the head of a "third front" alliance of left-wing, regional and caste-based parties, he almost became India’s prime minister, only to be stymied by his own politburo’s ideological squeamishness.
When I read such an obituary, I think, "What an interesting person! I would have liked to have talked to him over a cup of tea." The whole story can be found at the link below.
-- from Economist.com
(Jyoti Basu, almost India’s first Communist prime minister, died on January 17th, aged 95)
Why Did Martha Coakley Lose?
I stumbled onto this on YouTube. Neil Cavuto, blowhard egomaniac from Fox News has a theory. Voters boycott the Democrats who boycott Fox News. It's that simple. Maybe it's the wrath of God or voodoo curse or something.
On Cavuto's planet of hallucinatory delusions, which he likes to call "Common Sense," Coakley lost because she wouldn't appear on Fox. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Correlation is causation. Q.E.D.
-- from YouTube
Religious Fanatics -- As It Was In The Beginning Is Now And Ever Shall Be
-- from BizarreRecords.com