Is The American Political System Too Complicated?
This article made me think. Here’s a taster.
Can a democratic system function efficiently in an advanced economy in our modern, globalized world? A system based, say, on a couple of 18th century documents updated occasionally by nine people in black robes and a two-chambered legislature that must devote at least as much time to the raising of funds to re-elect itself? I think it can—eventually—but not everyone agrees.
There’s a lot more of the same.
Connecticut Abolishes the Death Penalty
About time too, but it’s here on the BBC
A Restaurant That Lives Up To Its Name
The Heart Attack Grill is in Las Vegas and it is living up to its name, as this story from Reuters show. Here’s an extract.
The female customer, a Las Vegas resident in her 40s, had been devouring a “double bypass burger,” puffing on cigarettes, and sipping a margarita when she collapsed Saturday night, the Grill’s owner told ABC News.
I won’t be visiting.
Santorum Gives Up
I think this is good for the world, as he would have made one of the worst US Presidents ever.
With all the religiously-driven troubles around the world, the one thing we don’t need is an extreme right-wing Catholic, totally out of kilter on womens’ issues and humanity in the White House.
He should crawl back with the dinosaurs and reeducate himself about the real world, where contraception and abortion are commonplace and legal, women work and guns and the death penalty are something you read about in history books.
Abu Hamza Can Be Extradited
I’m not going to comment on the legal reasons, as it does seem to me, that the verdict of the European Court to allow the extradition of Abu Hamza may create more problems than it solves.
After all, it’s unlikely he’ll get a slap on the wrists in a United States court, so what will be the reaction of his apologists here in the UK, when they realise he’s not going to come back? I think it might be better for everyone here if he was kept in a nice warm cell and released when his time is up.
But then I don’t have to get elected in a few years time.
The EU could put a whole cap on it, by passing a law that says that no-one could be extradited to a country with the death penalty on the statute book.
Another Mass Shooting In the United States
Sadly, there is has been another mass shooting in the United States, this time in Oakland.
When is the country going to get the simple relation, that guns kill people?
They send an awful message to the rest of the world. Look at the latest film from Hollywood; The Hunger Games. Quite frankly it is sick. Why has it been given a certificate in the UK?
The American Lottery
The news this morning carries a story that the Mega Millions lottery in the United States
It used to be the case, that American lottery winners paid tax on the winnings.
So that might be the worst prize as well!
Japan Joins the Evil Empire
Yesterday, Japan hanged three men.
The death penalty is barbaric, but in Japan, they just take you in the morning and hang you, after you might have been in jail for twenty or thirty years. Your relatives aren’ even told.
That though is truly barbaric. Even when we had the death penalty, it was carried out as humanely as possible, according to the standards of the time.
So Japan now joins the Evil Empire of Iran, China and the United States.
Sir Roger Bannister and the Affect of Heat and Humidity
I didn’t realise that one of the first papers that Sir Roger produced was about the affect of heat and humidity on people. He did his research in Aden in 1957.
I couldn’t find the paper, but I did find him quoted in a Powerpoint presentation on the subject, written Col. John Gardner, MD for the United States Army or Marines.
The notion that courage and esprit de corps can somehow defeat the principles of physiology is not only wrong but dangerously wrong.
I don’t know what the temperatures and humidity are like in Afghanistan are like, but do the British and American forces take note of the doctor.
The Anonymous Widower 