Happy Winter Solstice! What I Shall Not Miss This Christmas

The Polemicist

by Michael House

KING’S SUTTON England—(Weekly Hubris)—12/12/11—In a week’s time, I am going away for my first holiday of the year. I’m going trekking in Ethiopia. There will be no newspapers in English, no TV, no radio. My mobile phone does nothing except make and receive calls, and take photos, so I shall receive no tweets, twitters, pokes or any of the other witless activities that constitute “social” networking. Here are some of the things I shall not miss.

I shall not miss reading about the latest Teabagger who becomes the favorite to beat the boring Mormon for the Republican Presidential nomination.

(Digression: if Sarah Palin and her like knew what “Teabagger” means in Britain, they would not so describe themselves: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tea%20bagger).

It was, of course, very satisfying to see Crazy after Crazy bite the dust: mass-murderer Rick Perry; Palin-lite Michelle Bachmann (earthquakes and hurricanes are God’s way of getting our attention); serial groper Herman Cain; now, all history.

But the bottom of the barrel is being well and truly scraped: Newt (of the living-dead) Gingrich is the new standard-bearer of the extreme Right. Republicans are apparently prepared to overlook his adulteries, his attempt to impeach Clinton while conducting an affair, his divorcing his wife while she was recovering from cancer, his disciplining by Congress for ethical lapses and his “contract with (or should that be on) America.” To say nothing of that stupid grin and smug, fat face.

To all Republicans: please, please choose him as your candidate.

I shall not miss reading about ex-KGB thug Vlad (The Impaler) Putin, apparently blaming Hilary Clinton for the fact that many Russians object to his rigged elections, the ballot-stuffing, the multiple voting, the gagging, harrassing and framing of opposition leaders. I understand that the vote for his party this time bagged only 95 percent of the electorate, a dramatic fall from the 137 percent in the last Duma election. This kleptocrat dictator, having served eight years as President, and having then put a stooge in place for four years to keep the seat warm, intends to go for another eight of stealing state assets, assassinating political opponents and nosy journalists, and protecting fellow-dictators at the United Nations.

I shall not miss headlines in the gutter press praising David Cameron for vetoeing a new European Union treaty on the ground that it would regulate the vultures in the City of London and stop their creating another financial disaster.

Yet again, we are the odd-one out of 27 EC nations.

I seem to remember a famous headline from the 1930s: “Fog in the English Channel—Continent isolated.”

Cameron is unpopular with his Right-Wingers in Parliament because they think he is conceding too much on policy to his coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats—despite their agreeing to vicious austerity measures which make the poor carry the burden of the crisis created by the bankers.

So, he has to throw them a bone from time to time. Most of them are ferociously anti-European Little Englanders, so Cameron’s defiance of the evil, cheese-eating, surrender-monkey Frogs and the sinister, power-crazed Krauts is just what the doctor ordered.

Last night, I watched the final episode of David Attenborough’s incredible series on the North and South Poles, “Frozen Planet,” subtitled “On Thin Ice.”

Almost unbelievably, the BBC, when selling the series to US TV channels, had given them the option of not showing the last episode (which depicts how global warming is melting the ice caps and eroding the glaciers, with the inevitable result that sea levels will rise and low-lying land will be swamped) for fear the Americans would refuse to buy the series because of the risk of offending the half-wits who pretend that global warming isn’t happening.

The episode will be shown on the Discovery Channel on March 18^th, 2012: don’t miss it.

So . . . I shall not miss the US’s disgraceful conduct at the Durban Climate Change Conference, where the planet’s second largest polluter refuses to support a legally binding treaty on emissions. While the greatest catastrophe facing our planet slowly unfolds, the American government buries its head in the sand.

This prompts the question: in what way is Obama an improvement on Bush?

Happy Christmas, everybody!