All we hear is radio goo-goo, radio ga-ga.

Via Biased BBC and as Ufois2 linked as well: I can't get enough of getting a load of this puckered priest of propaganda banging his spoon on his high-chair – a BBC presenter ranted on about wanting George Bush to "rot in hell".

The Radio Ulster host was presenting his morning show yesterday - July 4, US Independence Day - when he said it was also the American President's birthday.

After telling his listeners Mr. Bush had just turned 60, he added: "May I say I hope you rot in hell".

Ironically, the popular presenter and Belfast Telegraph columnist got the birth date wrong - the current President celebrates his birthday tomorrow, July 6.

One Radio Ulster listener, who contacted the Belfast Telegraph, said: "I couldn't believe what I was hearing, especially on Independence Day."

It fits neatly into a business program interview I heard yesterday on the BBC World Service discussing credit cards (only American owned versions of the plastic fantanstic of course), where the guests were complaining about Americans and their personal debt. If this problem appeared anwhere else on earth, let alone old Blighty where the desease of betting on anything that runs on two or four legs seems to persist unabated - they'll know who's to blame.
One American activist type who clearly hasn’t lived in the US in ages said of credit cards: that is was “about the times”. That you had Ronald Reagan encouraging it with a phrase about “a shining White House on the hill” – that possessions turned into the goal of the good life, blah, blah, blah

Newsflash, Spanky – it was “a shining city on the hill”, and he was talking about the disposition of the American public spirit, not the private accumulation of anything. That a population working with a common goal can make a good society. It was largely about the elevation of the poor out of their hardship. Hardly the emboldening of avarice that our friend would like us to believe.

Of that vision, Reagan said in his farewell speech from the White House:

And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that; after 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

The phrase made it into the media discussion loop. Because it had a richness and depth haters of Reagan HAD to try to denigrate it and anything he said to cover for an absence of valid ideas that could inspire people to disagree with him. Just as his sincere and touching manner of letters writing belies the decade long unceasing charge that Reagan was illiterate, the vulgarity of the left reveals that they have no interest in a good and just society. It caused the same hostility to be turned back on them, and showed them to be unreasonable, intolerant, uncouth, and unworthy to lead well.

We see the same thing again from the one-note-Johnnies of the left – frequently abusing their positions in academia or otherwise. No notion of a good society that people can work toward, just some adoration of their favorite pieties and Rube Goldberg government management of peoples’ lives. “lifestyle concepts” do not make a philosophy – they are little more than a bribe to yet another faction of the population that they had cleft away into captive emotional isolation. What has never suited the type was to have the room to imagine a “Shining city on the hill,” or anything else that's much larger than their world view, outside the narrow frame of what remains little more than a variant on the failed Marxist class struggle theory.

One place where they’re still trying to sell it is back on the BBC’s airwaves. A quick survey of their news operation’s coverage of elections in Mexico has proved out that they aren’t just picking sides, but trying to project non-existent imagery on the two candidates, just as our friend with the “shining White House on the Hill” has. From Biased BBC again, and their commenters we get to play a game of who using BBC clues to identify the conservative:

One of the most popular politicians in Mexico ... It ended in a triumph for him ... As mayor of Mexico City, he won respect as much for his reputation for honesty, a gruelling work schedule and his humble lifestyle as for his ambitious public works and social programmes targeting the poor and disadvantaged ... He often draws on his humble origins - growing up in a village of 600 in Tabasco State, the son of a store owner... recognition of indigenous people's rights, scholarships for the handicapped and improving healthcare and education ... He says he will pay for social spending, higher pensions and wages by wiping out corruption, cutting down on government waste and cracking down on tax evasion

A Harvard educated lawyer, [he], is favoured by the business community. He has run a negative campaign.

One gets a platform presentation, the other is described by the ugly gruntwork of electioneering, imagery, and they go one to present any skeletons have in his closet.

Thay are, by the way, BOTH “career politicians” – but since that’s a seemingly bad thing, only one of them is identified as such.

It simply never ends. One more note on the plastic fantastic. The interview included the brains behind the Diner's Club Card, a charge card. They were talking to the wrong guy anyway.
The advent of the credit card came with Bank of America successful start of the BankAmericard some years later. The Graun, of course attributes this to Barkleys somehow, but that article goes back to 1998, before it became obvious that someone could use it to wag their finger at American-ness (living, breathing, etc., etc.)

Aren't they just darling?