With devastating, unassailable critiques like this, Hitchens is nearly forgiveable.
"The Republicans are the fiscal conservatives in Congress, at least in the years when they aren’t actually in power. They were never going to rally around an expensive new government program that fails to provide a single new market for corn-based products."
"Last Friday, a huge crowd of fans marched in a ticker-tape parade in downtown Manhattan to celebrate the Yankees’ World Series championship. More than once, as the fans passed through the financial district, the crowd erupted in rhythmic, echoing chants of “Wall Street sucks! Wall Street sucks!"
"The defeat of Gov. Jon Corzine made it clear that the young and minority voters who turned out for Obama will not necessarily show up at the polls in order to re-elect an uncharismatic former Wall Street big shot who failed to deliver on his most important campaign promises while serving as the public face of a state party that specializes in getting indicted."
"Wait: Virginia elected a conservative? And a moderate in New Jersey was able to unseat an unpopular incumbent? And a gay marriage thing that’s never happened before also didn’t happen last night? Well, it’s a good thing you have me—Mr. or Ms. Political Analyst!—around to detail all the many troubling implications these developments carry for the guy on the national stage who received 69 million votes last year! What’s fascinating, though, is that fourth graph: because there actually was an election last night where our national political opiates got mainline-slammed into the bloodstream of local politics, with all the can’t-help-yourself sloppiness and unintended consequences that metaphor implies. And by any stretch, it’s hard to see how that turned out well for the GOP."
"The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats’ prospects next year. But the electoral math is less interesting than the pathology of this movement. Its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we’re seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes."
"Sources familiar with the plans - drafted in 2003 for the 2005 Metropolitan Rail Expansion Program - say the north-west link could provide a minimum of six trains an hour in each direction, without the need to upgrade any of City Rail’s major infrastructure. It would require only the construction of an extension between Rouse Hill and Epping stations, and a new junction north of Epping."
This SMH article seems to suggest that a simple and fairly affordable north-west rail line could be up and running wth relatively little difficulty, and that the state government has been sitting on it because it won’t make them look cool the way building a spanking new metro would.
"How long ago was it that a black woman would be denied entrance to a whites-only restroom? Well, at one point in the afternoon, a white woman wearing a shirt that said “Kill Fags,” which appeared to be a homemade silkscreen job, felt a similar call of nature. At the door of [A LOCAL SPORTS BAR], she met Matt [LAST NAME REDACTED], one of the bar’s managers. He told her that she could not use the restroom.
“So you’re refusing?” she asked.
“Yes,” Matt said. “There’s no public option here.”
“Bastard,” she said.
“I can do you one better,” Matt said. “I suck cock.”
He then put his tongue in his cheek and cupped his hand, moving it back and forth in front of his mouth in the internationally-recognized gesture for fellatio.
“I’m one of those,” he said, pointing at her shirt.
She left to find a bathroom more accommodating to her sort."
From Modern Art Notes. Amazing.
"People will have to adjust their attitudes to public and active transit."
Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay on the
two-way bike path planned for University St. Montreal has quite a bit more autonomy than Sydney, and they’re making great progressive moves in creating cycling infrastructure as a result.
"But does anyone seriously believe Peter Garrett will block the development?"
