We thought we’d let you in on some of our new BFFs [Blog Friends Forever], our new daily must-reads.

For Sadly, No! the mission is to prick the bubble of innocence ignorance of the [tag]Right-Wing Death Beast[/tag] by explaining the FACTS to Stupid and they do it in the most entertaining but actually well-informed, well-researched and cogent way. Yes, well, we just enjoy seeing dickheads having the piss taken out of them by clever people [with whom we just happen to agree...].

For example, today they have taken down this oaf, economist Donald [tag]Luskin[/tag], who keeps writing nonsense – for example, he wrote in the [tag]WaPo[/tag] on the 2nd of January:

Pretty much no one thinks this [tag]recession[/tag] could possibly already be over. And only a few brave souls dare to consider that it might only take another quarter or so to hit bottom. So it’s just a matter of, how bad is it really?

Call me crazy, but I actually think we could all end up being pretty pleasantly surprised. I admit I was one of the last people on earth to agree we were in recession in the first place. So let me make up for that mistake: I’ll be the first person to say it’s over.

Comparable to Whatever It Is I’m Against It, another of our Very Most Favourite blogs.

The Daily Quail is a brilliantly savage satire on the “reactionary, sensationalist, misinformed, under researched, often xenophobic” anger-inciting intolerance of “news”papers such as, I don’t know, say, the UK’s Daily Mail and others of its kind.

Rabid packs of disease-spreading [tag]immigrant[/tag] children are roaming wild in [tag]Sheffield[/tag] and putting a major strain on [tag]taxpayer[/tag] funded city resources, it emerged today.

Like the rats that caused the [tag]Black Death[/tag] of [tag]London[/tag] in 1665, 136 [tag]Slovakian[/tag] families have flooded into the [tag]Yorkshire[/tag] city since 2007, shamelessly looking for work and a better life for their families
…

The overcrowded conditions have led to outbreaks of un-British diseases such as [tag]Hepatitis[/tag] A, [tag]impetigo[/tag] and [tag]thread worm[/tag] amongst the [tag]migrant[/tag] offspring…

3 Quarks Daily is simply essential daily browsing. It’s a daily selection of some of the best writing on the most interesting ideas in Science, Art, Literature, Politics, Gossip and Philosophy.

Today, there’s a teaser from an article on [tag]Obama[/tag] in the New York Review of Books:

It’s my audacious hope that a man born and raised between opposing dogmas, between cultures, between voices, could not help but be aware of the extreme contingency of culture. I further audaciously hope that such a man will not mistake the happy accident of his own cultural sensibilities for a set of natural laws, suitable for general application. I even hope that he will find himself in agreement with George Bernard Shaw when he declared, “Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.”¹ But that may be an audacious hope too far.

And then there’s, well, not a blog really but a great entertainment: The News Quiz, a weekly (Friday) half-hour comedy radio program from BBC Radio 4.

To paraphrase roughly, “Enjoy a satirical take on the week’s news with the cream of UK comedy talent. Sandi Toksvig presents the hilarious panel show, with regular guests Jeremy Hardy, and Andy Hamilton (co-creator of Drop the Dead Donkey). Other panellists include Francis Wheen, Carrie Quinlan, Mark Steel, Simon Evans, Phill Jupitus, Fred MacAulay, Sue Perkins, Jo Brand and Greg Proops.”

Here’s a brief sample from last Friday’s show:

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We very much recommend downloading The [tag]News Quiz[/tag] each week to the mp3 player of your choice and listening to it in bed, or while walking/jogging or whatever other activity would otherwise bore you rigid. Actually, to be bored rigid in bed could be a sort of tragic irony, couldn’t it…. You’ll have to wait until Saturday to download it, because, as you know, we are so far ahead of the [tag]British[/tag] in so many ways.

¹ Schrödinger’s Patriotism? An example of Shaw’s mastery. Does he mean “Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction, because you were born in it, that a particular country is the best in the world,” or “Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that, because you were born in it, a particular country is the best in the world”? By placing the condition at the end of the sentence he allows both possibilities to exist, the ignorance and the hubris, superpositioned, like Schrödinger’s dead-and-alive Cat.

[tags]blogs, blogging, Britain, England, BBC, journalism, news, newspaper, Mail, satire, comedy, humour, Science, Art, Literature, Politics, Gossip, Philosophy, Sandi Toksvig, Jeremy Hardy, Andy Hamilton,Drop the Dead Donkey, Francis Wheen, Carrie Quinlan, Mark Steel, Simon Evans, Phill Jupitus, Fred MacAulay, Sue Perkins, Jo Brand, Greg Proops, values, Australian values, economic values, costs, price, assay, merit, standards, principles[/tags]