Iraqi journalist throws his shoes at George Bush
It’s the least Bush deserves. An Iraqi journalist threw both his shoes at George Bush whilst the soon-to-be-former-President whilst he gave a press conference. Sadly he missed both times.
George Bush
For the benefit of Sarah Palin, and plot development, the Bush Doctrine
Later it came to include additional elements, including the controversial policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a potential or perceived threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate; a policy of encouraging democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating the spread of terrorism; and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way. Some of these policies were codified in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States published on September 20, 2002.
Click through for the full wikipedia entry. I have an idea for a bastardised version of the Doctrine causing the events that kick off my NaNoWriMo tale’s backstory.
The Barack Obama dildo versus the George Bush butt plug
Make what you will of the symbolism of a Barack Obama dildo and George Bush butt plug. What I will say is that I’m not so sure about the Obama caricature. After looking at it for a while I realised it looks more like the Spiting Image Neil Kinnock.
Cloud seeding ships to combat global warming
This could also be posted to How to Save the World for Free, but it’s relevant to the phone comic I’m working on.
Unmanned ships that sprayed sea water into the atmosphere to boost low lying clouds could produce sufficient cooling effects to counteract global warming due to CO2 rises. They’d cost £1m to £2m and at least 1500 would be needed. If they did work that’s £3billion to mitigate the damage already done and buy us time to find alternative technologies. That’s just over a fortnight of the abomination that is the Iraq occupation, to make such crimes less likely in the future.
So don’t be surprised when Bush and Brown don’t invest in it.
Yes, that’s right, new-clear. Say nukular and I may have to slap you. 1
It seems the Republicans have been listening to my rants every time Wubble U mispronounces nuclear. From the transcript of Palin’s acceptance speech-
Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we’re going to lay more pipelines … build more new-clear plants … create jobs with clean coal … and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources.
I heard a BBC continuity announcer say nukular the other night. There was some choice language aimed at the television.
[I still don’t think nuclear is any sort of answer- too long to build, far more expensive in the long run than they promise and just another example of governments thinking big when they should just be thinking- but correct pronunciation of the word is a matter of principle.]
"Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter"
Many a true word is spoken in jest. And it’s being reported that George W Bush signed off from a G8 meeting by being honest about his appalling environmental record.
via Donklephant
Technorati tag: EcoHouse
“Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter”
Many a true word is spoken in jest. And it’s being reported that George W Bush signed off from a G8 meeting by being honest about his appalling environmental record.
via Donklephant
Technorati tag: EcoHouse
It's the end of the W as we know it
George W performs It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)
That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane and Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn – world serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs.
Feed it off an aux speak, grunt, no, strength, Ladder start to clatter with fear fight down height.
Wire in a fire, representing seven games, a government for hire and a combat site.
Left of west and coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck.
Team by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered cropped.
Look at that low playing! Fine, then.
Uh oh, overflow, population, common food, but it’ll do.
Save yourself, serve yourself.
World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed dummy with the rapture and the revered and the right, right.
You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
Six o’clock – TV hour. Don’t get caught in foreign towers.
Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn.
Locking in, uniforming, book burning, blood letting.
Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate.
Light a candle, light a votive. Step down, step down.
Watch your heel crush, crushed, uh-oh, this means no fear cavalier.
Renegade steer clear!
A tournament, tournament, a tournament of lies.
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
The other night I dreamt of knives, continental drift divide.
Mountains sit in a line, Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs.
Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom!
You symbiotic, patriotic, slam book neck, right? Right.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it. can’t I have some time alone?
It’s the end of the world as we know it can’t I have some time alone? and I feel fine…fine…
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it. can’t I have some time alone?
It’s the end of the world as we know it can’t I have some time alone? and I feel fine…fine… (less)
King Tony to announce his abdication today
A few years too late, Tony Blair is to announce his departure today. As with any Prime Minister who stayed on too long, the positive achievements of the first term and a bit are overshadowed, and even negated, by the arrogant over stretching of Iraq, PFI etc.
Here are a few Spinneyhead Tony pictures-
Pictures taken from this post and this post.
Update A bonus Mirror front page from a few years ago.
Bone Machine
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6320781.stm
Molecular engines that could power nanomachines have been built at Edinburgh University.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/nico_pitney/2007/02/science_moves_forward_bush_mov.html
It must be repeated continually until people pay attention- Bush’s half-arsed nod to Climate Change is not as big a step as he pretends and his plans are still useless.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2004693,00.html
Children are to be taught about climate change in geography. Soon 13 year olds will understand the problem better than the "leader" of the free world.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2003520,00.html
Penguin is to produce a "wiki-novel". Spinneyhead has a wiki lying around somewhere, I just haven’t got round to doing anything with it yet.
Lenny Burnside may not be afraid, but I'm terrified
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6321351.stm
I’m not terrified of the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I accepted them a long time ago. What worries me is that, yet again, the warnings are going to be ignored.
Send Bush, Blair and all the pro-war idiots to Iraq to deal with the mess they’ve made and bring the soldiers back to install solar water heating on all the South facing roofs they can find, that’s what I say.
Blame Canada!
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_williams/2007/01/the_heat_is_on.html
Bush’s secret plan to combat Global Warming- invade Canada. I must check out Little Mosque on the Prairie, which kept being mentioned in the comments.
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving/story/0,,2003270,00.html
Children’s pester power is turning Green.
Lots o' links
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6289367.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6288957.stm
American industry groups are calling on George Bush to introduce mandatory emission standards in his State of the Union address. He’s not going to, but the sentiment is appreciated.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6287085.stm
Australians take to their bikes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6289357.stm
2012 Olympics to be the "greenest ever".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1996493,00.html
Tony Blair takes the credit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6289067.stm
Beachcomber pictures. Locals scavenge what they can from the wreck of the MSC Napoli. It’s like Whisky Galore, only with Pampers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6284377.stm
More pictures.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6288845.stm “Barrels of wine, shoes, hair care products, beauty cream, steering wheels, exhaust pipes, gearboxes, nappies, foreign language bibles and BMW motorbikes have all been washed up on the pebbled beach.”
http://smuggling.co.uk/
Smuggler’s Britain. Branscombe used to be a popular beach for landing smuggled goods.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6287047.stm
Can you keep what you find on the beach? (No, you’ve got to report it and you may then get a reward.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1996505,00.html
Does anyone really believe the supermarkets talk of going Green? Much like George Monbiot, I’m convinced it’s all PR and the very nature of their business makes them unsustainable.
And now some good news from the USA
I’ve stopped posting about US politics as much as I used to, though I’ve not stopped following it. So it’s good to see the Democrats retaking the House of Representatives and looking like they’ve gained significant ground in the Senate. I guess the Republicans (or maybe just George W Bush and his groupies) are now so unpopular that they just couldn’t steal enough votes to swing the result.
This satire needs lubricant
The George Bush buttplug. There’s nothing I can say. So here’s some copy from the website.
This President will really f*** you up the butt. You’re already familiar with the sensation, so why not REALLY FEEL IT with our exclusive Presidential Pooper Plug. Invade an Iraqi, an Afghani, or at even an Iranian when you want. With this fat headed, huge stub of a plug no ass is safe anywhere.
Made of 100% silicone with 4″ of useable length and a head 1-1/2″ in diameter, this butt plug will issue a 110% American ass drubbing. A 2-3/4″ base prevents the little prick from digging in without a timetable for withdrawal.
via Fleshbot
Technorati tag: George Bush, Sex Toy, Butt Plug, Satire
Rip it up and start again?
Darren at ProBlogger has set a challenge- tell him how you’d proceed if you were to start your blog all over again.
I started Spinneyhead in January 2001. The simple and most obvious thing I’d do would be to post more often, and longer posts. That would have been a little tricky, of course, given the fact that I was mostly posting on work time. Looking back on it, I should have posted more often about work and what I was putting up with, but done it after hours.
2001 wasn’t a good year for me, and I came out of it a lot poorer and significantly less healthy. Too much time on the road, drowning my sorrows and maxing out the daily expenses allowance on big meals. All in all it was ideal fodder for the sort of work blog that would get you sacked now but would then have been a short cut to notoriety (and maybe a book deal) then.
Then, of course, there was September 11th. I was working in Cardiff that day. At some point someone set up a TV in a corner of the office and, as we found out what was going on, we all gravitated to it to try and take in the events. I was shocked, obviously, and living with a guy who claimed he knew people who worked in the World Trade Centre made the degrees of separation smaller. Yet somehow I didn’t find myself caught up in the clamour for War On Terror the way so many others did. Even back then I felt that some of the stuff we were being sold was utter rubbish. Such as when people kept telling us that no-one had ever thought terrorists could use civilian aircraft as weapons. What about the Tom Clancy novel where an avenging Japanese pilot landed a 747 on the State of the Union? Surely Clancy was just the sort of people Bush Jr.’s people read?
Maybe I should have published these thoughts, controversial then but justified now, and had another shot at notoriety.
But the honest truth is, sometimes when you’re in a shitty situation it’s just too hard to see how bad it is, let alone write about it objectively. Especially when the person who’s making it worse, by agreeing to every idiot idea from management, is supposed to be your friend. And I’m not great with conflict, so I didn’t really want to tell the truth to all those revenge blinded Americans.
So in the end, this is the Spinneyhead you got instead. It’s still here. My enthusiasm has waxed and waned but never died, and the family has grown. Maybe, after all, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Technorati tag: Spinneyhead, Problogger
The Dumbing of Tony Blair
I think Tony Blair loves Dubya so much he’s trying very hard to emulate the Chimp in Chief by becoming as stupid as possible. A few weeks ago he showed a lack of understanding of efficiency when he said that energy saving wasn’t as important companies’ profits. Then there was the admission that some hypothetical higher being was as important to his decision making as reality. The last couple of days have seen the whole honours for loans scandal. And now he admits that he’s incapable of learning from his mistakes.
Technorati tag: Tony Blair is a liar, Tony Blair
"If you believe in Mr Flibble, it's made by Mr Flibble as well."
Mr Flibble is very angry.
Okay, so Tony didn’t do a Dubya and say that God told him to invade Iraq. But do you really want the country to be run by a man who’s decisions are influenced by what he thinks his invisible friend will make of them?
Michael: But you mention there, I mean the Prime Minister, the commander in chief, has the ultimate say about the nation going to war and that’s the most serious decision you can take in any event. I mean you’ve been called a liar and a warmonger and all that sort of thing, what’s your feeling, your attitude when you read that? And also too when you read of casualties and people blame you for those casualties, I mean that’s a terrible, awful thing to live with and I wondered how you coped with it.
Tony: Because the King of the Potato People won’t let me. I begged him. I got down on my knees and wept.
Michael: Of course.
Tony: I was just doing a little test — a little test to see if you had gone crazy. CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! If there is one thing I can’t stand it’s crazy people.
Michael: And you sent them there.
Tony: You don’t think there’s anything amiss? I’m sitting here wearing a red and white checked gingham dress and army boots and you think that’s un-amiss?
Michael: Sorry, what do you mean by that?
Tony: I mean by other people, by, if you believe in God it’s meant by God as well and that judgement in the end has to be, you know when you are faced with a decision like that and some of those decisions have been very very difficult, as I say most of all because you know there are people’s lives, this is not just a matter of a policy here of a thing there, but their lives and in some cases their death. The only way you can take a decision like that is to try to do the right thing according to your conscience. And for the rest of it as I say you leave to the judgement that history will make.
Michael: So you pray to God when you make a decision like that?
Tony: You want to fly on a magic carpet to see the King of the Potato People.
(Red Dwarf: Season Five- Quarantine)
Technorati tag: Tony Blair, Mr Flibble
"The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
I’ve been ignoring US politics, because it’s so depressing. The reasons are summed up in Counting Bush’s Mistakes at the Smirking Chimp.
The Environment: Here’s a little pop quiz: What happens if all the coral in the world’s oceans dies? Answer: Coral is the first rung on the food-chain ladder; so when it goes, everything else in the ocean dies. And if the oceans die, we die.
The coral in the world’s oceans are dying (called “bleaching”) at an alarming and accelerating rate. Global warming is the culprit. Nevertheless, this administration continues as the world’s leading global warming denier. Why? Because they seem to feel it’s more cost effective to be dead than to force reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. How stupid is that? And time is running out.
via BlogLeft
It's pronounced "nu-cle-ar" jackass!
insultthepresident.com “Because Everybody Deserves An FBI File”.
Okay, here is what happens. We write an insult, or you type in your own insult, and we (1) post it to the website for others to read, (2) send a physical letter of your insult to the President, and (3) mail you a copy of the letter with a certificate of authenticity, suitable for framing. That way when someone comes into your cubicle/home and sees a certificate that says,
“On April 10, 2006, Mary Smith told the President of the United States, ‘I’ve got things growing in my refrigerator that make better foreign policy decisions than you!'”
and they ask, “Did you really send a letter to the President that said that?” you can say, “YES I DID!” Sure, lots of people talk about disliking the President and his policies, but you TOLD HIM. Let the flame letters begin.
via A Logical Voice
Technorati tag: Dubya