Groundhog Day

What's that smell? No, it's not the groundhogs, it's the stench of immorality.

To them Blair was a liar, pure and simple. Moreover, there was no case for the war that could be made by Blair that they would accept. This stance enjoyed great popularity among the rest of the media, and among the vociferous anti-war propagandists which constituted much of the audience for the BBC and like-thinking organs of journalism.

What has been hilarious is seeing the talking heads all over British tv going on and on about the Hutton Report being 'unfair' to the BBC. It seems they would have liked the report to be at least a tad bit critical of Tony Blair and his government. Since when was fairness a one-way street? You want fair, you give fair.

Perhaps there is a just a need for a How to use your better judgement 101 in British journalism schools...

Obituaries are stories of lives. We select for publication at greater length those stories that are compelling, full of implication, and well written. I think it would have been very odd to ignore the story of Shipman. It’s a tragedy of British medicine that his name will probably be better remembered than the name of any other doctor of the 20th century.

So the 'story' was too good to pass up, huh, Mr Smith? And yet you seem to be saying that it's a shame that Shipman's name is so, well, well-known. Uh-huh. So why publish his obit then? And since when do obit notices have to be 'compelling', 'full of implication' and 'well-written'? If you and Mr Jackson had not written Shipman's obit as 'well' as you did (see obit byline), you wouldn't have published it? Right. Sure.

To see some predictions for the upcoming primaries and elections, go here. Or you could just vote for Mark Twain.

Some groundhogs have been making predictions. I never realized how many of these critters like the limelight. I see Louisiana has a crawfish instead of a groundhog... OK.

Maybe we should get the groundhogs to work for presidential campaigns. They'd probably do just as well, if not better, than the pollsters. And would be much cuter. For sure.