Just A Flesh Wound

I'm a sucker for Monty Python references.



By the way, while I think she is being sincere here, Hillary Clinton will not be taking this fight to the convention. That's because the superdelegates are rushing to Obama at such a rate that Michigan and Florida can be seated, even with her most favorable numbers, and he'd still win. He has a majority of pledged delegates and that will soon include Michigan and Florida, too. I don't like the primary system for Democrats for a variety of reasons, but under the system we have, the people and the superdelegates have made their choice. There's a reason Obama is simultaneously being very admiring of and ignoring the challenge of Clinton, and running the general election - and by the way I like this tactic:

Ten years ago, Obama said, McCain proposed barring registered lobbyists from working for candidates' campaigns.

"John McCain then would be pretty disappointed in John McCain now, because he hired some of the biggest lobbyists in Washington to run his campaign," Obama told a crowd of 15,000 at a Tampa arena.

McCain recently instituted a new no-lobbyist policy on his campaign, forcing out some top aides.

"And when he was called on it, his top lobbyist actually had the nerve to say the American people won't care about this," Obama said.

He does have a knack of picking up on things in the alternative, progressive media and using them. Obama can play this game of how he doesn't buy into framing or partisan gamesmanship, and he certainly analogizes that to blogging, but he's so far been running this general election like a blogger - speaking truthfully and forcefully while armed with new information to use against his opponent. I'll let him play the unity and hope line - but he's proving himself through his actions.

Happy Easter

The best gift I could give is this snippet from Monty Python's Life of Brian, which they recently screened at St. Thomas the Martyr Anglican Church in England, complete with song lyric sheets so you could join in the fun.



Life of Brian is a brilliant film that's really about the purity of religious teaching and how those with money to gain or axes to grind twist it. It's satirical aim is at the Church, then, not Jesus. It's also, from the above clip, a rumination on the particular need to believe in something greater than oursevles. Far from blasphemous, it's about what religion should be rather than what it can become.

Monty Phython Liberals

Once conservatives tried to co-opt South Park for their own, I was wondering if they'd expand out to other comedy shows and claim them as part of their own conservative culture. Well, read this piece by Pythoner Terry Jones and be safe in the knowledge that there's at least one group of comics, the best in the history of the planet in my humble opinion, who will resist such dishonest labeling.

I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.

Read the whole thing, as they say. It reminded me of this classic:

Dear Sir, I am glad to hear that your studio audience disapproves of the last skit as strongly as I. As a naval officer I abhor the implication that the Royal Navy is a haven for cannibalism. It is well known that we have the problem relatively under control, and that it is the RAF who now suffer the largest casualties in this area. And what do you think the Argylls ate in Aden. Arabs? Yours etc. Captain B.J. Smethwick in a white wine sauce with shallots, mushrooms and garlic.

Still the best, after all these years. And there are no Monty Python Conservatives to be found, either.