The Policy Blender

It seems odd to me that Florida ends up as the state with the largest population, and thus the greatest number of electoral collage votes, that isn't strongly aligned so often in US elections. The residents of Florida, generally speaking, are unlikely to live out the term of the new president. Many children might believe Disneyland is where good people go when they die. It's not far off, as many good Americans go to Florida when they're warming up to dying.

At the moment the polls suggest that Florida will not be required. In what is a popular move over the past 50 years, the vote has swung hard the other way after two terms from the Monkey King. Obama looks to have more than 300 electoral college votes in the bag, and plenty in the balance, as the most recent polls see it. He needs 270. But we can't count the votes before they are cast. I'll be overseas and away from the media when the vote happens, but I have my fingers crossed in one particular direction, and it's a predictable one for those who know me.

Florida, though, I expect to go to the Republicans. Their candidate has a lot in common with the residents of the Sunshine State. Presumably the huge publicity around Sarah Palin comes from the fact that McCain would be unlikely to survive the first year of his presidency, so Palin would be more important than the usual vice-president.

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I'm afraid this is all going to be highly metaphorical and abstract - I haven't been watching the news recently, and my sources for this range from anecdotes on international politics outside Europe to a popular children's movie.

This afternoon I was watching Muppet Treasure Island. Without ruining the plot for anyone who hasn't seen it but still wants to, there is a "Good side" and a "Bad side" in the film, and Kermit is on the good side. There's a point when they get to the island where the band is playing and one musician asks the other "Hey, are we on the pirate's side or the captain's side?". The other replies "Don't get involved in the politics, just play the gig".
In Singapore I heard a bit about South East Asian politics, and the well-educated and informed people I was dining with at the time made the various political factions in the region sound like bickering children. And it didn't take long for me to realise that this doesn't apply to just South East Asia, it applies to the whole world. The people who make the best politicians, and the people who rise to the top in the various parties around the world are the people who are best at bickering. Blair, Bush, John Howard over here in Oz, the opposition leaders (or whatever you call them) in the US and UK, Ms Clinton and Cameron - they were probably all little fuckers when they were children, the sort of child that makes you wish they hadn't banned smacking kids or the cane. You know, the sort that lie about something with a big grin on their face, like they're getting away with something. And they don't get any more mature about it when they grow up, they just get better at hiding it (in most cases).

When kids bicker and there's no obvious solution, the parents normally send them to bed. The problem is, there are no parents to do this, and no bed to send them to. Either that, or there's only one parent, and it's the same age as everyone else, it's just built like a brick-shithouse. Or further, the one parent we have is really a collective of children, and a handful of the kids seem to ignore the parent half the time anyway. Anyone who has read Lord of the Flies knows what happens when there are no parents.


So, to continue a metaphor too far, how do we stop Piggy from being killed? How do we stop Ralph and Jack going off to different sides of the island and putting on warpaint? When do the grown-ups arrive? And when two countries are in dispute, should we send in one of the parents we have, or just play the gig? What I'm trying to say, in as flowery and roundabout a way as possible, is how do we solve problems between two countries when the leaders of those countries are invariably both smug little bastards who won't ever back down, and who deserve a good slap?

I have no idea what this cartoon means, by the way, it just had a reference to Southeast Asia in it.

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Video via dizzy

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There are three very valid reasons why we need the Trident Submarine-launched ballistic missile system (SLBM)

1. The past
2. The present
3. The future

In the past we were lucky. Nowadays we’re dealing with people that want to blow us and our way of life into small irradiated pieces. Who knows what the hell we’re going to face in the future?

Read my hair brained, one eyed, dangerously neo conservative logic here you tree hugging, lefty defeatists.

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Following on from the story featured in the British papers over the summer that a poor naive, unsuspecting rock musician was horribly exploited by a disabled woman, Policy Blender is pleased to bring you an exclusive story of conspiracy, exploitation and misguidance!

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At some point this year, homosexuals (pictured) will be able to adopt. This has caused outrage from the Catholic Church, and Christianity as a whole. It's probably caused outrage from Islam and Judaism too, but as the media (or the media I read at least) is generally pro-gay-rights and pro-hating-America, the Muslim angle has almost certainly been overlooked as it would portray. I'm not sure why Judaism hasn't come into it.

Oh, I just checked and both of these religion are right behind the Catholics and the Protestants - they think that people's religious beliefs are much more important than equality for people who choose to have sex in a different way.

I hope that one day governments begin to recognise that race, disability, gender and age are not choices, and so we shouldn't discriminate against people based on these things. Sexuality of any kind is about what you do and not what you feel, so it is largely a choice - but heterosexual and homosexual feelings are arguably not a choice, so we shouldn't discriminate against people based on who they are attracted to (with some notable exceptions I won't go into). Religious beliefs are a choice, though they're one that many people take so seriously they're prepared to kill and die to prove they made the right one. (I'm trying to spark a debate here, so please do argue with me). Where religion goes against any of the above, it should always take second place.

This site says the Bible doesn't say anything bad about homosexuality anyway. Perhaps it just creeps out the Pope?

Posted by Matt at 10:56 am | Permalink | Comments

The Policy Blender is proud to be published in our new ‘broadsheet’ format. Research has shown that, although our tabloid format was useful for commuters and more accessible in style, the pages were quite small. Our research also showed that not many people enjoy our quality output on the train anyway.

We would like to take this opportunity to assure our readers that, although we are no longer a ‘tabloid’ format, we will strive to maintain the historically low standards of which we are proud.

The same weak quality of satire, politically incorrect jokes and poor taste will be upheld, with every effort made to desecrate not only the English language but our cultural and historical values too.

Posted by Ben at 9:47 pm | Permalink | Comments

Ailing Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is tonight still alive (as at 17:34 GMT).

Hundreds of thousands of half-arsed student-rebel types around the world are yet again denied their chance to grieve by the Leftist idol’s impressive staying power.

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