Bouncing Hedgehog

Posts Tagged ‘America’

A small history lesson in Fascism for all my readers today!

Back in 1919 in Italy the fascist paramilitary group the Blackshirts came into being and were not disbanded until the end of World War II. The Blackshirts were organized by Benito Mussolini as the military tool of his political movement. Their “methods” became harsher as Mussolini’s power grew and violence and intimidation against his opponents became commonplace.

The concept behind the Blackshirts was copied by others who shared Mussolini’s ideas and brand of fascism. Sir Oswald Mosley in the United Kingdom had his group of Blackshirts too. In the United States they became the Silver Shirts, in Mexico the Golden Shirts, in Brazil Green Shirts and blue became very popular in the Irish Free state, Canada and Spain. Read the rest of this entry »

In one of my earlier posts I mentioned the absurdity of the cops in West Virginia announcing in the media that they were going to be doing drunk driver stops in a certain area at a certain time. Very specific stuff really and you’d have to be pissed as a rat to forget and drive through that area. This announcement was made both in the papers and on the TV.

Well… here we go again.

I was in Clendenin today and as I was entering a tobacco store two cops were leaving. Not too much out of the ordinary there except that… Read the rest of this entry »

I was absolutely gobsmacked to read that medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US. I know of no other country where this is the case.

The figures are really quite staggering. An estimated 1,500,000 Americans will declare bankruptcy this year. Now many people would put that down to Americans chasing the myth of the “American Dream” and buying crap that they really don’t need and certainly can’t afford. A new study (to be published in the August issue of The American Journal of Medicine) however, suggests that 60% of those declaring bankruptcy this year will do so because of medical bills. Read the rest of this entry »

I see that Gov. David Paterson has called for a thorough investigation but has stopped short of saying that race was a factor. Ok. I will accept that pending the investigation.

He was however, quoted as adding that the shooting was not deliberate.

Not deliberate? How does that work then? Read the rest of this entry »

Further to my earlier post about gas prices and how a wonderfully accurate survey said that pump prices were expected to peak this summer at $2.55 I think it was.

$2.55? I wish!

Now of course I am sure there’s absolutely no price fixing whatsoever going on in my area, but it really does seem odd to me that every single gas station (many different vendors) in my area have got gas at $2.75 today. So I guess the survey wasn’t worth the paper it was written on as summer is barely here and our prices are already 20 cents higher than the expected peak. Read the rest of this entry »

I was interested to see that Microsoft’s new Bing search engine has come in for a bit of a hammering as it allows easy preview access to porn videos.

I know Microsoft is a favorite whipping boy for many, but why are they being singled out? Porn is readily available from any search engine and a 6 year old could figure out how to access it. A simple 2 clicks of the mouse is all it takes. Read the rest of this entry »

I am sick to death of Americans bleating that their health system is the best in the world and that universal health care in general (and the UK system in particular) is the road to ruin. At least that’s the popular conservative right-wing bleat.

It is, is it? Right, first a short story.

My mother is 75 and her partner is in his nineties and they both live in the UK. Recently he fell and broke his arm. Because of his age and the fact that he’s on heart medication an operation to set the arm was rejected and so he had to spend time just letting it mend having had it set in plaster. Read the rest of this entry »

I definitely did a double take when I first saw this in the news. as it concerns one of my top rated morons of all time I just couldn’t let it go by without commenting.

Apparently, in 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing (and not so willing in some cases), President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac. Bush told him a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated. This worrying episode was confirmed by Chirac. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems the boys in blue have been at it again. An off-duty police officer saw a man breaking into his car and a struggle ensued. When the man broke free the officer (Omar Edwards) pulled his gun and gave chase. That seems a perfectly legitimate thing to do. After all he was a police officer.

A plain clothes patrol unit in an unmarked car saw the chase and stopped. Which is where it all started to go pear-shaped. Now obviously what should have happened is that these officers should have identified themselves. Did they? Nobody knows yet. Time will tell.

But… if they did identify themselves how likely is it that a fellow police officer would ignore that identification rather than identify himself? In Harlem? He’d identify himself pretty damn quick I should think. Read the rest of this entry »

I was interested to see an article today with the headline “Low pump prices lure Americans back to the road.” Really? Low pump prices? Where?

According to this survey (conducted by AAA) the average pump price in the US was $2.39 per gallon at the time of writing. Although with peak summer demand approaching – not to mention the spurious tax imposed by government at this time – they expect pump prices to peak at $2.50 per gallon. Read the rest of this entry »