I was apparently wrong about which Islamic fundamentalist regime controls the US presidency.

Matthew Yglesias sets me, and everyone else to rights.

I’ve just voted (hooray for postal voting!)

In a display of my maturity and fitness to vote, I voted for my neighbour and the two candidates with the silliest names.

Boringly, but fortunately, they were also the ones who came closest to my ideological views (not very, but never mind).

Update: disappointingly, my neighbour didn’t kindly offer to look after my ballot paper.

Go here (link may not work because Blogger is rubbish, in which case scroll down to “Saddam and 9/11”) for an impressively creative definition of “growing body of evidence”.

(if you can’t face the wingnuttery, “growing body of evidence” here means “the Chalabi lies we all knew about, the AQ leader we didn’t shoot or arrest in Kurdistan, and another recital of the Chalabi lies we all knew about”).

The US administration appears to be declassifying secret documents to suit their political goals. That’s really not the kind of behaviour I’d expect from the leaders of the world’s finest nation and the frontline fighters in the War against Terror.

Then again, it’s exactly the kind of behaviour I’d expect from GWB and his cronies. Go figure…

Zoe Williams comes up with a significantly better electoral campaigning strategy for the Tories than the current one.

Interestingly, her criticisms really aren’t that different from those voiced by right-wingers – and while she’s entirely taking the piss, she’s also right. Limp attempts to portray Tony Blair’s government as failing to deliver aren’t going to work, because the government hasn’t really failed to deliver.

The reasons Labour has lost popularity have everything to do with loss of trust in the government and in Mr Blair, and not very much to do with the noticeable improvements in the NHS, the railways, the crime rate and the education system (with the Iraq debacle a symptom, not a cause, of the distrust).

As a result, the parties that are gaining ground are mostly the “if you vote for me at least it’ll piss off all those Westminster tossers” crowd, whether Gallowayites, swivel-eyed loons, or fascists. Few BNP or UKIP supporters genuinely believe in those parties’ aims [1], but they think that Labour and the Tories are cynical, unprincipled liars [2].

In this context, “vote for us because while we won’t actually change anything, at least we’re not that sanctimonious grinning twat” is probably the most compelling slogan on offer.

[1] Exception: some UKIP supporters are probably stupid enough to believe the claim we could easily move from the EU to the EEA, and that within the EEA we would be able to avoid applying EU standards to almost everything we do.

[2] It’s slightly amusing in this context that the leaders of the minority parties are far more cynical, unprincipled and deceitful than any of the big three.

Open letter to Europhobics:

The reason the British fishing industry is in trouble is because there are hardly any fish left, because we’ve fished them almost to extinction. To avoid actually reaching extinction, we impose strict quotas on fishermen.

If the EU were to cease to exist tomorrow, this would not bring the miraculous reappearance of the fish.

Thankyou.

…for buggering up my Sunday plans.

Right-wing dementor Kaye Grogan has this to say about US domestic politics:

It does not matter to terrorists like Osama bin Laden, who is president in America.

Blimey. That would certainly explain the administration’s ‘anti-terror’ policy, not to mention John Ashcroft’s role at the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue.

Via the Gentleman of Poverty. And not via Backword, who had the same thought independently.

Israel adds further weight to the “you can never have a liberal democracy in the Middle East” theory.

No surprise really… this is the country that invented “this may look terrible to your Western eyes, but at least we’re better than the Arabs” – the line that the Americans now also seem to be following.

Did Bush bomb it because he heard it was a *gay* wedding?