Can’t I Turn My Back For Even One Bloody Day?
Due to a trip to IKEA on Thursday and Martin’s consequent attack of bookcase building and orgy of shelf filling, there’s been no pc access and therefore no posting since Thursday morning.
Sorry, couldn’t help it, but the bookcases do look nice.
Typically, the moment I walked away from the keyboard, Ian Blair got canned, the bailout bill passed (thus enabling the world’s biggest robbery with menaces EVAR), and WTF? What fresh hell is is this? Peter Mandelson’s back in government?
Well, bugger me three ways to Wednesday with a technicolour hedgehog. Sideways. I thought I’d lost my capacity for surprise.
We know why Brown’s done jumped the shark – he’s desperate, that’s obvious. But why would an egoist like Mandelson accept an effective demotion to accept a position under someone he’s known to loathe?
That brings me to my comment of the day, which comes from the responses to Michael White’s column in the Guardian:
Newsed1
Mandy did this for one reason.
He will become Lord Mandelson.
A man who wanted to live the life so much he took a secret loan, can’t believe his luck. No amount of spin or ‘borrowed’ money could have bought a title.
And Gordon snared a man whose self-preening is such that’s it’s worth 18 months onboard the HMS McTitanic for a lifetime of being a Lord
Mandy gets Ermine and Gordo gets the arch shit-flinger.
There’s no more to it than that.
BANG. Hits the nail right on the head.
Interested as I am in the minutiae and the niceties of politico-social etiquette, I have a small protocol question. Mandelson has a long -term partner who lives with him in Brussels. If they marry, as they are entitled to, do they become Lord and Lord Mandelson?
Picture Of The Day, Debate Edition
Thursday night comedy just got a whole lot better. I can’t wait.
Picture from the excellent Alaska politics blog Mudflats, curently busy nailing Palin’s ass on Troopergate.
An Outbreak Of Togetherness
Aww, I do like a warm and fuzzy family reunion.
It’s great to see the blind become able to see. And it’s even nicer when it’s the crazy distant relative some of us wish we’d just kept locked in the basement all of this time.
The relative is reactionary US political pundit George Will, who’s being welcomed in from the howling outer darkness of the back yard into the slightly uncertain semi-tolerance of the scullery. Crazy George was initially banished for doing this kind of thing:
He gently acknowledged great disappointment in Ronald Reagan after learning that Reagan used debate notes stolen from Jimmy Carter as he prepped, with George Will’s help, for debating Carter. That actually soured his private agreement with Republicans quite a bit, even if it’s not common knowledge to the audience he reaches.
That sourness didn’t stop him colluding with the theft though did it? But no matter what the hypocrisy, there’s always redemption:
He has however, now come to his senses, and come to share the view of me, his equally-distant relative. That view being, of course, that Sarah Palin should, under no circumstances, be a nominee for Vice President of the United States.
Huzzah and harrumble, for such a touching reunion!
Just Sayin’
Hmmm, November’s not far away is it?
But it’s not November yet, and bearing in mind the failed bailout and those billions Bush has just released on his own say-so, maybe it’s time to refresh ourselves on those super-seekrit superpowers he’s given himself to intervene in a crisis of his own definition?