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Standing with the British. Glasgow's baptism of fire. Attack failed.

I'm watching the refreshingly sane, panic-free, reasonable coverage online on BBC News 24 (screen capture at right) concerning the failed Glasgow terrorist attack . The Queen was in Edinburgh for the opening of the Scottish Parliament, so the worthless religious buggers aimed their violent piety against a Scottish city. They failed, and the Labour Government under its a new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is, like the BBC and Britain as a whole, wisely refusing to over-react. No cities closed down, no panic, no major airport delays beyond Glasgow Airport itself.

In the wake of the unexploded car bombs found yesterday in London, London is defiant. The Gay Pride Parade went on as usual. (Image at left from the BBC.)

(Are you a Flickr member? Show your support for Britain at this time by posting an appropriate photo here.)

Let is also be said that, especially with the Edinburgh Festival approaching, the best solution for keeping Scotland safe is a United Kingdom.

The Member of Parliament (MP) for central Glasgow, who is a Muslim, rightly referred to the terrorists as criminals. That's what they are: thugs, not warriors. If George W. Bush had treated wisely the 9/11 attackers as criminals instead of elevating them to warriors and called for a never-defined, unwinnable "war on terror" (without end. Amen.) the world would be a better place today.

U.S. Senate staff: Religious Right out-contacting progressives by 5-to-1 to thwart Matthew Shepard Act

Have you watched this new video yet? According to staffers at the U.S. Senate, opponents of the Matthew Shepard Act are beating those in favor by a ratio of five to one in emails, calls, and letters. Please click here to contact your elected officials.

Young Americans Are Leaning Left

Graph from the NY Times article, "New Poll Finds That Young Americans Are Leaning Left." (Click to enlarge)

Gordon Brown and "Which Blair"

Gordon Brown (photo at right) is Britain's new Prime Minister. The MP I worked for in the House of Commons, Martin O'Neill, held the post of Labour Spokesman on Trade & Industry after his fellow Scotsman, Gordon Brown, had done the same.

The New York Times marks the transition occuring at 10 Downing Street with a solid editorial:

Tony Blair, who leaves office today, deserves to be remembered for far more than the disastrous war in Iraq. In 10 years as prime minister, he transformed Britain in positive ways and revitalized his Labor Party, which makes his failures in Iraq all the more lamentable.

Mr. Blair took what was best from Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative legacy and humanized and modernized it. He now hands it to Gordon Brown, a successor well-equipped to consolidate this achievement. Mr. Brown is not as gifted a phrase-turner, which for Blair-weary Britons may come as a relief. But he is a more rigorous and systematic thinker.

Mr. Blair’s most remarkable achievement was to bring peace and democratic self-rule to Northern Ireland. British leaders have been dealing with Irish issues for centuries, and mostly getting them wrong. Showing rare courage and vision, Mr. Blair got Northern Ireland just right.

On social policy, Mr. Blair (photo at right) revitalized Britain’s pioneering but rundown National Health Service and its underachieving schools. His reforms were Thatcherite in their free-market ideology, but Laborite in generous funding. The results have been less than could be hoped for, but they have created firm financial foundations on which Mr. Brown can build.

On foreign policy, Mr. Blair was unapologetically an activist and an interventionist, with largely positive results on Kosovo and hugely negative results in the far more important case of Iraq. In that fiasco, Mr. Blair’s great misfortune was to have President Bush as his partner. But his unforgivable failure was to serve as a mellifluous enabler, not as a badly needed voice of caution.

Mr. Blair should have, and probably did, know better. But he didn’t tell the truth to British voters about when and why he decided to go to war and about the quality of the intelligence he used to justify that decision. And he hasn’t acknowledged the failure of prewar planning and all the failures that have followed since. In three elections, British voters placed their trust in Mr. Blair to lead their country. On the most important issue of his tenure, he failed to reciprocate that trust.

Talk Radio's imbalance

An interesting new report out from the Center for American Progress: The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, by John Halpin, James Heidbreder, Mark Lloyd, Paul Woodhull, Ben Scott, Josh Silver, S. Derek Turner.

From the summary:

The disparities between conservative and progressive programming reflect the absence of localism in American radio markets. This shortfall results from the consolidation of ownership in radio stations and the corresponding dominance of syndicated programming operating in economies of scale that do not match the local needs of all communities.

Happy Pride Weekend

Happy Pride!

The reason for the season: the Stonewall riots.

(Photo by Joey Castillo: an attendee at a 2006 Austin, Texas LGBT Pride event adjusts the "New Glory" version of the Rainbow Flag that is effectively synonymous as the Gay Pride Flag in most parts of the world.)

Please tell your Senators to support the Matthew Shepard Act

One in six hate crimes are motivated by the victim's sexual orientation. Yet Federal laws don't protect these people. PLEASE tell your Senators to support the Matthew Shepard Act.

"Stand by"

Great ad.

What [blank] are/do/will you?

Another quiz result of mine:

Your Attitude is Better than 45% of the Population

You have a positive attitude... somtimes. You prefer to see the world through clear glasses, not rose colored ones.

How's Your Attitude?

Only 30% of republicans believe in evolution

Only 30% of Republican "believe in" evolution, according to a new poll. The Religious Right is not only alive and well, but still firmly placed as the base of the once-Grand Old Party, now the party of anti-intellectualism, delusion, cognitive dissonance, and denial in the face of facts--and a party with the communication mechanisms, money, and political lout to make their idiocies mainstream: abortion causes cancer, same-sex sexual attraction can and should be "cured," lesbian witches share some blame for 9/11, cutting taxes for the rich and corporations reflects Christian virtue and morality as Jesus would want, global warming is a lie of Satan, the United State will suffer collectively in direct proportion to our government's inability to allow and/or encourage Israel to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, however it wants, to whoever it wants, and the United States is a specially-chosen nation of Godliness, founded by evangelical Christians who if alive today would be supporting James Dobson for President.