The scumbags at Powerline are trying to claim that Jimmy Carter is on The Other Side against America (presumably that’s the side of such well-known allies as Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomenei, Michael Moore and Jacques Chirac).

While the main accusasion is sufficiently insane to not even be worth bothering refuting [*], one particular bit stands out like a rent boy at a White House press conference. The Powerloons accuse President Carter of "conspiring with our chief enemy to try to influence an American Presidential election."

This is based on a report on NewsMax that in 1980, President Carter asked the Russians to give Jews extra emigration permits, so that he could claim credit for this deal in the election campaign.

This hardly seems outrageous, given that the Russians were offered nothing in return (other than the prospect of an opponent less mad than Ronald Reagan). But the mind-exploding thing about the whole made-up scandal is that *at the same time*, the Reagan team were cutting a deal with Iran to ensure that 51 American hostages would not be released until Ronnie’s inauguration.

Memo to all concerned: if you’re going to accuse your opponents of treason, then try not to pick occasions when they aren’t guilty of treason, but the people on your side are…

[*] Commendably, The Editors and Matt Yglesias do so anyway.

You know that UN Food for Oil corruption thing that people keep going on about? Well, the serious accusations in it (rather than ‘Iraqi officials added a couple of % to contracts and pocketed the difference’, which is a necessary evil when providing humanitarian assistance to people living under a corrupt regime) are pretty much made up.

I wonder how this will play in the right-wing media? (no, I don’t really; I’m perfectly aware they’ll ignore it as overly reality-based…)

So far, Mark Steyn is trailing Harry Hutton‘s Canada’s Leading Asshole poll, with 45 votes compared to Celine Dion’s 72.

While Ms Dion is undeniably an irritating witch, Mr Steyn is infinitely more of an asshole under the canonical definition of the term than Ms Dion (or indeed, anyone else alive). I urge you to vote for him as many times as you can persuade the system to let you (deleting cookies doesn’t work, but there are clever things you can do with proxy servers).

The Contaminants in Food (England) Regulations 2004 is a harsh law indeed.

"Any person who fails to comply with any of the requirements specified in a notice served under paragraph (1) shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary execution to a fine…"

It’s disturbing enough that we’ve reintroduced the death penalty for people who import inappropriate food into the UK – but fining people after they’ve been executed seems particularly harsh.

(via Jess, who doesn’t have a blog to link to. Freak.)

"So, all this energy is expended [by supposed left-wingers] attacking a man who has proven himself to be a committed anti-racist campaigner, at a time when both the New Labour and the Tories have been feeding, and feeding on, racist attitudes in their competingly tough ‘anti-immigrant’ campaigns." – Andrew Bartlett gets it absolutely spot on, at Harry’s Place.

That’s all there is to say, really. The spectacle of the two main parties battling over who can be beastlier to the blacks and the Pakis is disturbing and horrible, whereas a drunk man being rude to a journalist is moderately funny. And that’s pretty much where it ends, unless you’re a demented loon with your own weird agenda.

More Europhobic lunacy, this time from the EU Referendum blog: blogger Richard opposes the EU’s plans to stop airlines grievously fucking over their passengers, because he *enjoys* being grievously fucked over by airlines.

"I recall arriving once at Charlerois airport, for the last Rynair flight of the day, after a gruelling day in the European parliament, only to find that the flight had been delayed and then, well after midnight, cancelled without notice. Passengers were left to their own devices, without even a hint of compensation.

"I recall being so, so tired, and struggling to find a hotel for the remainder of the night, barely being able keep awake. But there was no feeling of recrimination. There had been an air-traffic glitch throughout Europe and Ryanair was as much a victim as we were."

For God’s sake; what kind of maniac could end up in such a situation with any thoughts other than "I hope Michael O’Leary dies in a horrible way" and "I’m never going to fly with these crooked bastards again"?

Australian interviewer Norman Gunston was the prototype for Ali G and Alan Partridge. No, I hadn’t heard of him before either: an excellent Radio 4 documentary introduced me to him yesterday. You can listen to it here for about another week.

(Tim Ireland also caught the documentary, and provided the biography link above)

The Kyoto Protocol came into force today. The aim is to avoid plunging the world into environmental disaster through man-made global warming.

Aside from a few cranks and paid shills, everyone in the scientific community believes this is a very real danger, and that Kyoto (followed by stricter measures) is a vital step. Unfortunately, the cranks and the paid shills have far more influence than they would in a better world.

One of the earliest of George W Bush’s many ‘God sent me to piss the world off’ moments was his decision to drop US support for Kyoto. This helped define the ‘ignorant cowboy’ image that his subsequent actions have done so much to confirm.

This is arguably unfair on the President. As Bush apologists frequently point out, he didn’t kill US support for Kyoto. Rather, the Senate voted 95-0 in 1998 to say it would not ratify any such treaty. Americans don’t like being told by experts that they probably ought to stop being greedy fucks or lots of people will die.

So why was Kyoto characterised as a Bush failing? Because the rest of the developed world spent four years trying hard not to be anti-American, despite the appallingness of more or less every aspect of American domestic and foreign policy. The only way to resolve this dilemma was by taking the position that Mr Bush was stupid, crooked and venal; that he certainly lost the popular vote and probably cheated in the election; and that therefore it was unreasonable to hate Americans for Mr Bush’s failings.

November 2004 made that position untenable. Rather than saying that we hate George Bush, smirking prick though he is, and blaming all America’s failings on him, we now need to say what we really mean.

We despise and fear a country willing to condemn millions to death for the sake of its SUVs, and willing to re-elect someone with such a record of incompetence, buffoonery and downright nastyness. We don’t hate all individual Americans; we don’t hate the efforts that the USA made during the first 150 years of its existence to advance human rights (and yes, to save our arses in WWII).

We do, however, hate what America has become.

SBBS may, from time to time, call for the assassination of public figures and/or people who displease us. We may or may not offer a bounty as part of this request.

We would like to make it clear that under no circumstances will such a bounty actually be paid out, and that we will be very, very cross with anyone who follows our example and carries out said assassination attempt.

This is not because we do not feel that the targets selected deserve assassination; quite the reverse. It’s because we feel that you (quae would-be assassin) are definitionally even worse than the selected target, and so such a move on your part would be inappropriate. Should you feel the unsurmountable desire to assassinate after reading an SBBS post, we therefore strongly recommend you target yourself.

SBBS cannot be held responsible, or even worthwhile.

Scouse cunt Mike Storey joins Melody Pfieffer on the SBBS £50 bounty list, for his puritan, philistine lunacy: "Places where people work should be non-smoking – that includes theatres. There are ways around this when we talk about actors smoking – they could use dummy cigarettes for example. But I would also say that soap operas and plays in which people smoke promote bad role models anyway."

People who seek to use the law to stop other people from smoking should be shot. It’s the only fair and proportionate response.