Motley Moose – Archive

Yes, folks, it’s another pony diary.

Another pony diary — but this time with pictures!

Lotsa pictures, enough to gladden the heart of even the fiercest critic of picture-poor diaries.

By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

A while ago Great Britain held a general election to decide the country’s government over the next few years. Facing discontent and a nation thirsty for change, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the governing Labor Party were soundly defeated. The challenging Conservative Party, led by David Cameroon, gained 97 seats but failed to take a majority in Parliament. Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats, who had surged after a strong performance in the first debate by their leader Nick Clegg, badly underperformed their expectations.

This election offers a useful study of a political system outside of the United States. While more similar to the United States than most countries, Great Britain’s electorate also offers a number of intriguing differences.

A map of the results illustrates several aspects of this system:

Note: In Britain and most of the world, the party of the left – Labour – is traditionally represented by the color red (symbolizing the revolution and the so-called blood of the workers). The Conservatives are represented by blue; the Liberal Democrats by yellow.

More below.

The ranting lunatic who yesterday threatened to (effectively) execute the entire population of his country is today drawing his last set of breaths in power, and perhaps at all.

Consider this a Final Farewell Open Thread.

President Obama has declared the DOMA unconstitutional and ordered Eric Holder and the DOJ to cease and desist in their legal defenses of it.

After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny.  

The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional.   Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute in such cases.  

I fully concur with the President’s determination.

– Attorney General Eric Holder

Bouazizi, a 26-year-old street vendor, set himself on fire on December 17 after police abused and humiliated him. He died of his burns on January 4. The protest movement that began in Sidi Bouzid swelled to become a nationwide phenomenon, and spread to other countries in North Africa and the Middle East. Most recently, it reached Libya. http://blogs.aljazeera.net/afr…  

(Written by an American expat living in the European Union)

There are 59 million Americans who don’t have medical insurance. There are 132 million Americans who don’t have dental insurance. What if there were an alternate United States where everyone was medically and dentally insured? Well it just so happens that I live in what some call the United States of Europe otherwise known as the European Union and here everyone that I see everyday is fully medically insured. They live on average longer than we do in America and they pay less for their medical system than we do in America, even though they insure 100% of their populations.

Why can’t the Teabaggers see this? If they could see it, would it change anything? Would it change you? It changed me. It is possible to change America, one person at a time. All we have to do is get the word out that universal medical works in every major industrialized country in the world, therefore it can also work in America not only to provide health care but also to become America’s biggest employer with jobs that pay a living wage that can’t be outsourced.

What a busy week for news. If not the Wisconsin uprising, or the apparent civil war in Libya, now a powerful earthquake rocks Christchurch, New Zealand.

Believe it or not, my idiot sister and her fiancee are in Christchurch. It being summer down there and all, they decided to be unconventional and do their honeymoon BEFORE their June wedding…their honeymoon being a seven day cruise to Antarctica from Christchurch, which ended yesterday They are due to come home on Thursday.

She shot a text to me. They’re fine. They’re heading to Sydney ASAP.

what’s making news by you this busy February?  

When you first see photos of Scott Walker, newly minted governor of Wisconsin, one can’t help but notice a peculiar look of arrogance; haughtiness, superiority.  Perhaps Mr Walker thinks no one can stand against the power and money that is backing him. Truth is, Scott Walker runs on Koch Money:

… fueled by groups funded by the Koch brothers, David and Charles. David Koch, the son of a radical founding member of the John Birch Society, which has long been obsessed with claims about socialism and advocated the repeal of civil rights laws, personally donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association (RGA) in June of last year. This was the most he had ever personally given to that group. (Fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch matched Koch’s donation to the RGA with a $1 million donation from his company News Corporation, parent company of FOX “News” Channel.)

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