If Daily Kos was a British blog, a news item today would appear in the diaries here as illustrative of what we love about the quirkiness of your country (whilst fully acknowledging our own).

It is a delightful story brought to my attention by the equally quirky Drudge. It is squeezed in between his accounts of apocalyptic natural weather disasters that he so enjoys recording, from forest fires to twisters that spell the end of life as it is currently known across the great plains of America and from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi Basin.

I am an avid reader of Drudge because I just know he will be the first to tell me of the arrival of the Rapture.  Today, however, he brings to my attention the great Californian initiative for an almighty universal bowel movement and co-ordinated toilet flush as a memorial to the late, great  George W. Bush. I love it, despite toilet jokes normally being regarded in Europe as a peculiarity to be found in a particular genre of German humour.

It is Easter. I am minded to let people know that I am still around.

Taxation

Well our now not beloved Labour Government in the UK has introduced its latest budget and, like all its predecessors, taken the cheap shot of raising revenue by increased taxation of motor vehicles, cigarettes and beer. No wonder we are becoming a less sociable nation.

I know it is annoying for me not to be joining in and rubbishing one Democratic candidate in favour of another, but I thought I would talk about politics.

You remember? How to beat the Republicans in November. Yeah, I guess it may be seen as a bit irrelevant and it sure is dirty work cleaning up the sidewalks but, you know, someone has to do it.

This work needs to start now. Only one important thing happened yesterday. No it wasn’t Clinton’s camp rejecting claims that she is running out of money or Obama supporters having a go at Firedoglake for raising the Rezko affair.

Mitt Romney pulled out of the GOP race, leaving the field clear for a focussed, concentrated GOP attack upon the Democrats for every day, every week and every month leading up to November . Not good if Democrats spend the same time trying to tear their party candidates down. In my weird book of presidential election strategy, this sure looks like bad political karma. So I hope some of you wiser birds on Dkos will try and squeeze a diary or two onto the Recommended List in the next few months that leaves Bush to his sad history, your great candidates to hoped for quieter debate and get deep down and dirty on the GOP and John McCain.

I’m a bit testy today. It is your fault.

I stayed up late to watch the Superbowl. I saw one of the most technically interesting football games that I have ever seen. In the last quarter, I also saw the most gripping and exciting game that I have ever seen.

I don’t resent my tiredness this morning. Even though I shall probably stay up late and watch the Super Tuesday results that are being covered over here by Sky News on our TV Channels.

American football is worth watching.  "American Football"? Yeah. That is what the whole of the rest of the world calls it. "Football" is what you lot quaintly call soccer.

Ah but I forgot. You can change the World. Barak Obama told us that in his Superbowl ad. You can make us call football "soccer". You have the military to ensure it.

I sit here and play Eva Cassidy records and idle my time away by desultory flicking through various American political blogs and finding little there that either suits my mood or feeds my mind.

Many complain that it is the in-fighting and the rancour of the present Primaries that make them turn away. For me it is not the venomous dislike of other candidates that I find ugly. It is the idolatry of their own preference that I find offensive.

I don’t know where this comes from, this belief that somehow a sudden and genetically impossible evolution will occur by the initiation of a single person to usher in a New World where most of our problems will be solved.  It is as sad to see the extent of the investment of hopes and aspirations placed in particular candidates by the left as it is to see the religious right look towards the coming of their divine Messiah to change the human condition.

Perhaps it is reaction to all the candidate diaries, or reaction to the candidates themselves, but a restless feeling inside this grumpy old man has been thinking the unthinkable.

Maybe none of your candidates are any good.

Certainly, it is fortunate that life out there in the real United States world appears different from that on Daily Kos. Thank heavens this is so. If the electorate got sight of all the negative things said about the different Democratic candidates on here, then Democratic chances in November, 2008 would be worthless.

Something happened on Daily Kos a couple of days ago that brought into perspective certain aspects of the current political scene in the United States.

First let me deal with the news story around which the reaction was based. In many ways it was unremarkable – a detail which may or may not have significance. I hope it does have some, as it may point to a rational way forward in Afghanistan. It was a comment made by the US Ambassador in Afghanistan, William Wood. The Daily Kos diary reported it as:

The United States supports reconciliation talks with Taliban fighters who have no ties to al-Qaida and accept Afghanistan's constitution, the U.S. ambassador said Thursday.
William Wood said the U.S. is in favor of a "serious reconciliation program with those elements of the Taliban who are prepared to accept the constitution and the authority of the elected government" of President Hamid Karzai.

For those few in any way at all interested, I have written a piece on how I spent Christmas Day The Lake District in Mist

It recounts how I visited Wordsworth's cottage and draws some parallels between his experience of the French Revolution and what is happening today.

In some ways, it also questions many of the current reactions that shriek out at us here on Daily Kos. It expresses my discomfort with some of the ugliness, whilst sympathetic to the frustration.

Because I have no candidate affiliations, do not wish to become involved in arguments of preference, but am intensely interested in your primary elections, I have started to publish observations on these over at ePluribus Media.

The first of these is called Where the Clinton Presidential Experience Hinders Them.

It discusses both the strengths and weaknesses of the campaign by Hillary Clinton.

Following an overnight session of Parliament and an emergency visit to Buckingham Palace by the British Prime Minister to gain Royal Assent from Her Majesty Quuen Elizabeth 11, we have learnt of a Promulgation to be announced in the House of Commons at 2.00 p.m. tomorrow.

It is not known by our anonymous sources from within the Office of the Lord Chancellor as to whom the Promulgation and Decree will be issued as there is some debate as to who actually constitutionally heads the United States government in the circumstances now prevailing. Indeed, legal officers in Downing Street are still trying to decide if there is any constitution remaining in the United States that would deemed as such under the new European Treaty signed by ministers yesterday, Thursday 13th April, 2007

I anticipated elsewhere that the kneejerk reaction of progressives to the story of British withdrawal in Iraq would be to simply comment that this showed the failure of Bush's and British policies The real value in the message that underlies what is happening I feared would be lost. This is what has happened with the front page story and yet I know that its populist derision of Bush will be easier to acccept and applaud than a more in-depth review of the events. There is a bigger message that we should be highlighting, not just working in the reality created for us by the White House by unthinkingly just seeking to ridicule them in terms created by their agenda and not ours.

The truth is that if we gleefully just denounce what is happening in terms of the British withdrawal in the way that our front page does, we are giving support to those who have said such action would be preciptous. Thus the writer of that diary concludes "The US may be obliged to send troops it cannot spare to maintain some access to this critical city."

We need to smarter than that and not just look to score minor points at the expense of more important aspects of such events.

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much. — Cry, The Beloved Country, Chapter 12

I borrow the title and the above quotation from Alan Paton’s magnificent novel because it so perfectly describes what affects so many of us writing on our liberal sites.

Yesterday, I read on here another in the series of recommended diaries under the strangely xenophobic title of "The Anglo Disease". My heart sank as commentator after commentator propounded economic theory in the tired rhetoric of the extreme left-wing that I last heard in the UK in the 1970’s. Throwing off the yoke of this enabled the British economy to become the largest in Europe, to the chagrin of many of its continental competitors.

What this language of socialist economics does is promote the real and unreal virtues of its philosophy whilst ignoring the fact that we progressive capitalists equally recognise not just the benefits of our system but also the abuses that can, and have, brought it into unwarranted disrepute..

Having a swipe at Ronnie Reagan and Maggie Thatcher doesn’t bother me in what was written. Only partly satirically, but certainly with some satire, I admit that what really bugged me about hearing the attacks on even a Democratic president like Clinton, in that thread, is that the thoughts on which these were based seemed so utterly dreary,  uninviting and ...well, unexciting.

In the last two years I have found myself becoming more and more critical of the BBC. Not least, I felt that they had succumbed too easily to the immense pressure applied on them by Tony Blair’s government over the issue of false evidence being given by the government to the British public regarding weapons of mass destruction as a preliminary to the Iraq invasion. The 2004 Hutton Inquiry and the subsequent Report raised questions about the BBC's journalistic standards and its impartiality from which it has taken a long time to recover.

Today I’m going to praise the BBC.

They have written thoughtfully and intelligently about the nature of "fair and balanced" journalism. They have done so in relation to the issue of climate change and, in particular, their treatment of climate sceptics. In doing this, they also present some thought provoking discussion that has much wider application about the whole nature of independent, balanced and measured reporting.

It seems particularly relevant as we consider the new and difficult challenges facing Markos as he moves from writing on an advocacy internet site into the complex mainstream media, where a different approach to engage a broader band of readership might be required.

[Promoted by DHinMI]

Lying on the hospital bed alongside me was Thomas Carlyle, the nineteenth century writer and historian. He made a strange companion for me to choose.

Really, I thought my mood would have resulted in a somewhat more enjoyable companion. I had some eight tedious hours in front of me on the day ward, attached to a puppy-dog of a drip feed slowly pumping into me multiple units of red blood cells. This, I am told, will now be a ludicrously regular and vital feature of this latest chapter of my disconnected life.  It is a rather stupid way of slowly dying so I am busily signing twelve month contracts with my broadband supplier, a week ago purchased a Volkswagen based motor caravan and I am making other long term commitments to turn the whole episode into just another crazy way of living.

This apart, it was collecting the new reading glasses from the optician that was partly responsible for the selection of the book. After almost two years of miscommunication regarding a not very significant eye cataract, I could at last again read without the fatigue that has made me disinclined to pick up a book during this time.

The BBC has just announced that Japan has issued an order to its ships to return to base, thus ending support of the U.S. in Afghanistan provided in the form of naval re-fuelling assistance to vessels involved in ground missions there.

Nothing is yet up on the BBC site or being reported elsewhere. It may well be that this story is played down in Washington - just another nation removed quietly from the list of those committed to pro-active support to the USA in its overseas war on terror.

The withdrawal of Japan is a surprise. As short a time ago as last Sunday it was predicted that the ruling party proposal to extend the support beyond its schedule ending on Wednesday would gain parliament's approval. The objections voiced by the public proved too overwhelming

Because of the importance attached to it by so many, I am reporting breaking news on Sky News in the UK at the moment.

This is that Al Gore will not be throwing his hat in the ring and has formally annouced that he will not stand as a presidential candidate.

I apologise that at the moment I have no other information than this very bare bones statement. I will upgrade the diary as the news comes in.

UPDATE: Plutonium Page has now found this story on the BBC web site

I share the delight of Kossacks in the recognition given to Al Gore today. I do not want to take anything away from it. Yet I am going to risk an extraordinary bluntness in my own comment.

By awarding it, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is making a very important statement but, unless Kossacks cease to take responsibility for the country of which they are citizens and are seen as such by the rest of the world, then feelings of partisanship pride should give way to a sense of national shame.

One of my favourite writers, Meteor Blades,  records "The "world" - or at least the millions of the world's citizens who have seen An Inconvenient Truth, and the far fewer who have read the IPCC's extensive reports on global warming - may indeed have an understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.