“Go back over there and apologize to those flowers!”

Woman to child at Palomino’s restaurant, after child ripped flowers from planter and threw them on floor, overheard by Michael Callanan.

San Fransisco er ikke det eneste sted i verden, hvor planter er genstand for den højeste respekt. Schweiz indførte rettighededer for planter for lang tid siden.

Når beboerne i Brisbane, Australien går i byen, håber politiet, at de snupper lidt ectasy. Stoffet er ganske vist forbudt, men det giver betjentene langt færre problemer end det fuldkommen lovlige rusmiddel alkohol.

A Central District officer who did not want to be named said they had about the same number of police rostered on Saturday nights as they did weekday mornings. “We’re at the point where we’re saying thank God 80 per cent of them are using an illegal drug rather than alcohol, even though in 10 years they’ll be suffering manic depressive disorders,” the officer said. “But we just couldn’t deal with that many people affected by alcohol.” … Australian Medical Association Emergency Department spokeswoman Alex Markwell said alcohol definitely contributed to a lot more injuries than drugs. “Young men especially can become aggressive on alcohol and get involved in fights and assaults,” she said.

“Apparently, U.S. law now applies everywhere in the world except Guantanamo Bay.”
- Radley Balko om den amerikanske regerings forsøg på at presse schweiziske banker til at bryde schweizisk lovgivning og udlevere materiale, som den amerikanske regering godt kunne tænke sig.

I Frankrig lader man stadig ikke til at være kommet sig over Irlands nej til Lissabon-traktaten. Her er det parlamentsmedlem og rådgiver for Nicolas Sarcozy, Alain Lamassoure, der giver irerne en opsang:

[Lamassoure] said it was a mistake for the Government to hold a referendum on Lisbon and described such plebiscites as “tools for dictators” as evidenced by European history. “If you hold 10 or 12 referendums and in every state there is 80 per cent support for an idea there is still only a less than 1 per cent probability that the measure will pass everywhere,” he said.

Fra Politiken.dk, “Jesper Langballe overfaldet”:

DF-politikeren Jesper Langballe er blevet overfaldet. Partiet insisterer på, at sagen anmeldes til politiet.

Hvad ligner det, sådan at forlange, at folk med upopulære holdninger skal kunne gå på gaden i fred for voldsmænd?

Langballes beretning, fra jp.dk:

Da jeg var kommet ud for at ryge, sad der et par bumser på en bænk. En af dem fór op og råbte: ‘Hvad fanden, er det dig’, og så haglede det ellers ned over mig med knytnæveslag. Og de var hårde, skal jeg hilse at sige. Men ved et rent lykketræf fik jeg pareret dem alle sammen. Men tilsidst fik han mig ned i asfalten, da jeg blev væltet ved et slag. Og da blev jeg bange.

Jp.dk beretter om et tilkaldt tæskehold fra det autonome miljø – dette bliver dog afvist af bartenderen fra beværtningen, som Langballe blev overfaldet foran.

Nok er weekenden nys overstået, men dette citat er så rigtigt, at jeg ikke ville vente en uge med at bringe det. Jonathan Chait om det nyeste indenfor politisk korrekthed: Den evigt stakkelsgjorte middelklasse.

Democrats and Republicans have developed an exquisite sensitivity toward any slight against the white working class. Blue-collar whites now occupy the same position in American politics that people of color hold in the smaller political subculture of academia: a victim-hero class whose positions (usually as interpreted by outsiders) enjoy the presumption of moral superiority.

The victim-hero class is the object of competitive flattery and the subject of mutual accusations of disrespect. You can’t read a Peggy Noonan [tidligere taleskriver for Reagen og konservativ klummeskriver] paean to real America–”a healthy and vibrant place full of religious feeling and cultural energy and Bible study and garage bands and sports-love and mom-love and sophistication and normality”–without thinking of a junior faculty member extolling the dignity of Guatemalan peasant women. Bill O’Reilly’s [konservativ talkshow-vært fra Fox News] or Tim Russert’s [journalist på NBC, tidligere ansat af demokratisk senator] endless invocations of their working-class backgrounds are the equivalent of the campus activist who introduces every opinion by saying “As a woman of color . . . .”

“‘Need’ now means wanting someone else’s money. ‘Greed’ means wanting to keep your own. And ‘Compassion’ is when a politician arranges the transfer.”
- Joseph Sobran

I en tid, hvor folkevalgte politikere vil have mangel på støtte til demokrati gjort til fyringsgrund i det offentlige, er det værd at huske på, hvad den store danske filosof og teolog Søren Kierkegaard skrev om denne styreform.

Af alle tyrannier er en folkeregering den kvalfuldeste, den åndløseste, ubetinget alt storts og ophøjets undergang. … En tyran er dog kun én; man kan altså, hvis det så synes én, indrette sig på at undgå ham, leve fjernt fra ham o.s.v. Men hvor skal jeg i en folkeregering undfly tyrannen? Ethvert menneske er jo, i en vis forstand, tyrannen; det er blot han skaffer et opløb: en majoritet.
Dagbogsoptegnelse fra 1848

… Bush Sr., altså. I 1998 skrev forhenværende præsident George H.W. Bush en bog sammen med sikkerhedsrådgiver Brent Scowcroft, med titlen A World Transformed. Heri forklares det, hvorfor det havde været en dårlig idé at fjerne Saddam Hussein under Golfkrigen.

Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in “mission creep,” and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable “exit strategy” we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different – and perhaps barren – outcome.

På mit natbord ligger Johan Norbergs In Defense of Global Capitalism, fyldt med klare argumenter og oplysende tal. Som dette:

The total cost of agricultural policy in the 29 affluent OECD countries burdens taxpayers and consumers with a staggering $360 billion. For that money, you could fly the 56 million cows in the countries once around the world every year – business class – with plenty of change left over. If they’re willing to fly coach, the cows could also be given $2,800 each in pocket money to spend in tax-free shops during their stopovers in the United States, the EU, and Asia.