Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Obviously a majority of non-UK citizens can't be as well-informed on the Brexit issues as a Brit, assuming Brits tried to educate themselves on it, still I'm surprised at the vote. Well, maybe I'm not surprised. After all, we're the country where Donald Trump has a decent chance of becoming leader of the free world.

I personally don't think the Brexit is a good idea. I think the UK had an excellent approach of keeping the Pound and not adopting the Euro: I think the unified currency was a really bad idea, as Greece, Spain, etc. have demonstrated.

We all live in Interesting Times, I guess. I have a theory that every country occasionally goes insane. I think the USA is well in to moving in to such a time where we have people voting against their interests in the name of party ideology where the political parties don't give squat about the people who vote for them, perhaps the UK is entering a similar stage.

Trump is symbolic of only part of the problem. The reality is that greed has overcome helping your fellow man and doing good. It seems that most companies' sole purpose is providing increasing dividends to their top investors, the rest can go hang.

There's some interesting discussion on Slashdot about the result of yesterday's Brexit vote, only time will tell what happens in the long-run.

In the end, it's too depressing to think about. And ultimately, we're all dead anyway.

People of a political kidney never can, never will at any time acknowledge the slightest possibility that they might be mistaken. That way lies the imminent crumbling of dogma, and the freakish implication that those holding opposite views could be, after all, tolerable, decent, even respectable.

http://www.gocomics.com/pibgorn/2014/06/22

This is a major change and problem with our divided political system, it's gotten to the point where they can't be friendly with each other out of the office. It's one thing to respectfully disagree with the opposition, it's quite another to consider them heretical and the antithesis of all good things.

"Ambassador, dear, you are lying. You are calling white as black and black as white."
-- Ukrainian official Vasyl Filipchuk to Russian EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov

"He reminds me of a character from Dr. Strangelove."
-- Mikheil Saakashvili, former president of Georgia, on Chizhov

There's so much doing on that we don't have accurate information on. The thing that struck me as the most odd was that the day after the then-president of Ukraine agreed to hold new elections in about two months time, he's fled the country back to Russia. Something weird happened and I haven't heard what. Then all these military forces appear in Crimea and take over, fait accompli. Putin tries to feed everyone a huge line of bullshit that these are local defense forces. I'm surprised that the news didn't take the numbers painted on the trucks and look over old photos and footage and match them to Russian bases. Putin then holds elections with almost no notice and no outside monitoring, and what do you know -- 95% of voters want to go back to Mother Russia! That number is especially interesting since while the country was approx 55% ethnic Russians and probably not all of them want to be nationally Russian again, there's also large numbers of Kossacks and other ethnicities that don't want to be Russian.

I can understand Russia wanting control over the country that is the home port of its Black Sea fleet. But Russia and Ukraine have a high level of mutual dependence, and Crimea is highly dependent on Ukraine as it doesn't have land ties to Russia.

This was a very stupid move on Putin's part which lost him all credibility in the rest of the world and made every Russian-speaking but non-Russian country around him very nervous.

I came across an article that said Russian Spetsnaz forces (their equivalent of American Green Beret, British SAS, etc) had been captured inside the Ukraine with fake IDs and information that showed they were there to plan disinformation and unrest campaigns and possibly sabotage. Unfortunately I didn't keep the link, so I don't know if the story has been proven false or what, but it hasn't been picked up by the media that I follow.

"The Conservative Party have attempted to delete all their speeches and press releases online from the past 10 years, including one in which David Cameron promises to use the Internet to make politicians 'more accountable'. The Tory party have deleted the backlog of speeches from the main website and the Internet Archive — which aims to make a permanent record of websites and their content — between 2000 and May 2010."

http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/11/13/1734213/britains-conservatives-scrub-speeches-from-the-internet

Apparently if you buy a domain that was previously archived by the Internet Archive and change the robots.txt file to block archiving, the IA deletes all of the previous scans. Also apparently the Canadians under Harper are doing a similar thing. There are still archives if one knows where to look, but it will make fact-checking previous claims and promises more difficult.

How long until American politicians start practicing unspeaking?

Jon Stewart talking about Fox News: "Its modus operandi is to foment dissent in the form of a relentless, irrational contrarianism to Barack Obama and all things Democratic to advance its ultimate objective of creating a deliberately misinformed body politic whose fear, anger, mistrust and discontent is the manna upon which it sustains its parasitic, succubus-like existence."

"The abandonment of the republic is a matter of two steps: from being "the people" to "the governed," then "the policed.""

http://www.gocomics.com/pibgorn/2013/06/09

I've enjoyed Heinlein since I was a kid and was never able to get in to Rand regardless of who waved her at me. This article does a good job of explaining why Heinlein's brand of Libertarianism is probably truer to the Libertarian ethos, or at least as far as the author is concerned.

But you always have to remember the varying styles of Libertarianism, just like the varying types of Republicans and Democrats.

http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article08051101.aspx

and they want Obama and the Dems to stop doing the same!

This is the problem that I see with American politics: the two parties want to advance their agenda at the cost of all else, regardless of what is good or best for the country. Two parties CANNOT represent the full spectrum of political philosophy, and the rate at which lies spread from both parties throughout the media just makes me a sad panda.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/05/11/136207994/gop-freshmen-admit-to-playing-politics-ask-obama-to-stop-doing-same

"I saw my father march with Martin Luther King."
--Mitt Romney

"He was speaking figuratively, not literally."
-- Eric Fehrnstrom, spokesman for the Romney campaign, responding to questions raised by the Detroit Free Press


As it happens, Russet's father DID march with Martin Luther King. How can you speak figuratively about a purported fact? Is "figuratively" now the polite term for a lie?

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/us/us_congress

DeLay Announces Resignation From House
AP - 1 hour, 57 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Succumbing to scandal, former Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Tuesday he will resign from Congress in the face of a tough re-election race, closing out a career that blended unflinching conservatism with a bare-knuckled political style. "I have no fear whatsoever about any investigation into me or my personal or professional activities," DeLay said in a statement to constituents. At the same time, he said, "I refuse to allow liberal Democrats an opportunity to steal this seat with a negative, personal campaign."