Liberal Burblings

Archive for the ‘USA’ Category

It’s a long story but I alighted upon the following intro to “Soap” on YouTube today. It made me go all gooey, so here it is in case it causes some small pleasure somewhere in the world.

The intros to “Soap” were utterly hilarious. Like this one – narrated by the late Rod Roddy (who was a very famous voice-over man in the States – he did “The Price is Right” for many years) it weaves a maddeningly complex web of plot intricacies and then ends with the familiar line: “Confused? You won’t be after this week’s episode of Soap”. As often is the case, the wonderful theme music makes the whole thing (and I have embedded the unadulterated theme music below the intro clip).

“Soap” was, of course, a spoof of daytime US soaps. It was the launchpad for Billy Crystal’s career.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BHQT3Omqtw&hl=en&fs=1&]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVffO-mNLdE&hl=en&fs=1&]

Unbelievable.

US President George W Bush has signed a bill removing Nelson Mandela and South African leaders from the US terror watch list, officials say.
Mr Mandela and ANC party members will now be able to visit the US without a waiver from the secretary of state.

It’s taken seven years and torture to get to the stage of charging just six of the 275 detainees at Guantanamo. And they will be tried by military tribunal.

Is this not the most shameful episode in the history of the USA?

It’s always difficult to know where to start when discussing Guantanamo. My instinct is to grab a couple of phone directories and to tear them apart with frustration and/or to resort to Anglo-Saxon verbiage aimed at George W Bush. Forming one’s thoughts into any sense of structure is difficult. My sense of outrage is so visceral that my reaction is best summed up by a loud guttural roar. Articulation through the English language on this subject was surpassed some time ago.

I am hoping for a decent outcome to the latest cases going through the Supreme Court: Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v United States. The cases rest on the right of habeas corpus. So we are talking basic rights here.

I have just been listening to Tom Wilner on BBC News24. He’s a lawyer for some of the defendants. His condemnation of the Bush administrations’ actions was stiletto-like. In an interview with The Talking Dog a year ago, he said:

On my own reflections, as a Jewish boy growing up in this country, we like to think that things like this don’t happen, we have too many checks and balances. But all the checks let us down.

…As the Denbeauxs’ Seton Hall report tells us, most people held at Guantanamo are not even accused of terrorism. While some complain of the security conditions Moussaoui will now be sent to– 23 hour a day lockdown and all– he was convicted! My clients haven’t even been charged! And yet while two are at Camp 4 with some human interaction, the others are in isolation for all but a few minutes of exercise a week, deprived of human conduct… and they are not even CHARGED.

All that is being asked for is a fair hearing for the detainees after six years of detention. Many of them were turned over for bounties and the evidence against them, which has not been shared with them, has often been procured by torture.

The real essence of Guantanamo is that it has been set up to avoid the law. It is outside the law.

Pass the Woking area yellow pages immediately….

2nd hat tip in ten minutes to Tom Watson (if I do another one it will be a hat-tip-trick).

I have occasionally tried to find comparisons of the popularity ratings of current and past US presidents. Unfortunately, the information is often in several different places, making comparison difficult. Hats off, therefore, to the Wall Street Journal, who display an excellent graphic on the subject. It is remarkably clear and has a bar on the left to click for detail on each President.

The two Presidents which stand out the most are Eisenhower, who seems to have been the most consistently popular of the post-war Presidents, and Clinton, who is the only one who was more popular when he left office than when he entered it.