Last night, Jon Stewart recalled the Paul Ryan speech and the ‘hard truths’ he chose to tell.
Stewart noticed the speech was not exactly as honest as Ryan is made out to be.
Monthly Archives: August 2012
Four reasons why the BBC gives a platform to extreme voices
Yet again, the BBC gave airtime this morning to the scaremongering Andrew Green.
This raises the point that there is adverse selection in political debate: fanatics are given attention whilst sober, rational voices are overlooked.
There are four channels through which this happens:
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Apple rejects app on drone attacks
An application built for iPhone that alerted users to news of drone attacks by the US government has been rejected by Apple.
‘Drones+’ was built by NYU student Josh Begley to notifying users whenever a drone attacked somewhere in the world.
But Apple said in a statement: “We found that your app contains content that many audiences would find objectionable.”
The application was built using information collated by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
The application was simply a news feed summarising each entry from TBIJ’s database and maps of drone strikes.
It did not reveal any confidential information or gave advance warning of strikes.
Josh Begley said about Apple’s response: “I think their position is often just they don’t want to let anything through that could be seen by anyone at any particular table that could be seen as controversial.”
The 27-yr-old told the Guardian: “I built it because it is something I would like to use myself”.
Figures from TBIJ show drones attacked Pakistan 75 times in 2011, causing up to 655 deaths.
TBIJ say he is now thinking about creating an app for Android phones instead.
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The image on top is a mock-up not an actual screenshot, by TBIJ
How athletes help the image of Muslims
contribution by Urmee Khan
At the risk of coming across all sentimental, the Olympics and Paralympics have made Britons feel fluffy as lint but the biggest winners of the sporting summer are undoubtedly we Muslims.
How we pine for Gaz Choudhry, the Pakistan-born wheelchair basketball player from Ealing, to be the next Mo Farah. Choudhry has played alongside Paralympians such as Ade Adepitan and he won Gold at the 2011 European Championships.
And it’s not just Olympic sports.
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Watch: Clint Eastwood disaster at convention
Last night, the Republicans unveiled the actor Clint Eastwood as their mystery speaker, opening up the primetime portion of the Republican convention.
What he gave was a hilarious, rambling, mumbling and often incoherent address next to an empty chair that was meant to represent President Obama.
Watch the short version
The full speech
Genuinely lol-worthy.
Nine commitments to a progressive digital policy the Labour party should make
contribution by Paul Bernal
I left the Labour Party in 1999, partly because I was leaving the country and partly because I was already becoming disillusioned as to the direction that Labour was taking – a stance that the invasion of Iraq only confirmed.
One of the reasons I have not been able to bring myself to join has been the incoherence and oppressiveness of Labour’s digital policies, which are not those of a progressive, positive and modern party, of one that represents the ordinary people, and in particular the young people, of Britain today.
I’ve written in the past about why governments always get digital policy wrong – but here is my first attempt at putting together a skeleton of a progressive policy for digital government.
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Guido Fawkes hypocrisy over dictator money
The high convocation of right-wing dishonesty that is The Commentator has
today found adversely upon PoliticsHome, now under the control of Tory donor Michael Ashcroft, for running adverts from Press TV.
Why so? Well, Press TV is owned by Islamic Republic Of Iran Broadcasting, is based in Tehran, and is owned by the Iranian state. And The Commentator doesn’t like them.
And from this we can only conclude that other regimes with dodgy records are also A Very Bad Thing, especially if they have any connection to the Iranians. So perhaps those whopper generating souls at The Commentator can riddle me this: their so-called “Political Editor”, the flannelled fool Henry Cole, is first and foremost employed by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog, yes?
Staines has been quite open about his willingness to run adverts on the Fawkes blog from whoever is prepared to stump up the going rate for them. And, as Cole is a permanent employee to the extent that he receives paid holiday as well as a salary, one would expect that he is happy about this arrangement.
So who has been buying advertising space on that blog recently?
Well, those buyers have included a regime with a truly dodgy recent electoral record, support for the beleaguered Syrian Government, and a history of support for, er, Iran: yes, the Guido Fawkes blog has been taking advertising from the Russians.
Only on that occasion, the buffoon Cole and his Commentator pals did not have a problem with it. Now the Iranian connection is elsewhere, they have a conscience.
It’s about time we started taxing wealth in the UK
Nick Clegg wants to tax wealth. So do I. There’s no other way to reduce wealth inequality in this country, and that wealth inequality is deeply destructive of community in the UK.
That it so happens revenue can be raised a the same time is a bonus.
But Clegg is wrong if he thinks that a mansion tax (as Matthew Oakeshott is suggesting he’s demanding) is going to address this issue.
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Francois Hollande and the coming European storm
contribution by Tom Gill
President Francois Hollande could well have done without it, but a storm is heading his way over Europe.
Contrary to commitments on the campaign trail, he’s swung behind the European Fiscal Compact, a new treaty that imposes draconian limits on what the government can spend. And he’s rejected the option of taking the question to the people in a referendum.
But that just what three quarters of French want, according to a new CSA poll conducted for Monday’s l’Humanité newspaper. And that includes sixty-six percent of Socialist supporters
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‘Gove pushed schools to become Academies in my constituency despite objections’
contribution by Ben Bradshaw MP
During last week’s furore over the drop in GCSE English scores it was suggested the downgrading might be a deliberate ploy by the Government to make it easier for them to force schools to become sponsored Academies.
Deliberate or not my experience as a constituency MP is that schools are under constant and growing pressure to convert, even if they don’t wish to and their performance does not require them to.
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