Friday 14 August 2015

Matt Taibbi: Inside the GOP Clown Car

The thing is, when you actually think about it, it's not funny. Given what's at stake, it's more like the opposite, like the first sign of the collapse of the United States as a global superpower. Twenty years from now, when we're all living like prehistory hominids and hunting rats with sticks, we'll probably look back at this moment as the beginning of the end.
In the meantime, though, the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination sure seems funny. The event known around the world as hashtagGOPClownCar is improbable, colossal, spectacular and shocking; epic, monumental, heinous and disgusting. It's like watching 17 platypuses try to mount the queen of England. You can't tear your eyes away from it.
It will go down someday as the greatest reality show ever conceived. The concept is ingenious. Take a combustible mix of the most depraved and filterless half-wits, scam artists and asylum Napoleons America has to offer, give them all piles of money and tell them to run for president. Add Donald Trump. And to give the whole thing a perverse gravitas, make the presidency really at stake.
It's Western civilization's very own car wreck. Even if you don't want to watch it, you will. It's that awesome of a spectacle.
But what does it mean? Or to put it another way, since we know it can't mean anything good: Is this enough of a disaster that we shouldn't laugh?
I went to Iowa to see for myself...

Continue reading

HERE

The World’s Oldest Multicolored Printed Book Has Been Opened and Digitized for the First Time

'Ice' drug survey finds Australians hugely overestimate number of users

Introducing Okilly Dokilly

In an age of quadruple-tracked crushing riffs and an almost Borgesian multiplicity of obscure time signatures, it can be pretty hard to stand out as a metal band.
You need a USP, and Phoenix band Okilly Dokilly have a very specific one - their name, songs, and outfits are themed around friendly Springfield neighbour Ned Flanders...
HERE