Scoundrels, riots and lying politicians

Big news in Budapest, y’all. Politicians lie. They lie to stay in government. They stretch the truth, misrepresent their position, say things are going better than they really are. Via the The Telegraph:

“It’s obvious that we lied [about the state of the economy] throughout the last year and a half, two years,” he said. In an expletive-riddled recording, Mr Gyurcsany [PM of Hungary] said: “No European country has done anything as boneheaded as we have.”

He went on to admit that it was only due to “divine providence, the abundance of cash in the world economy and hundreds of tricks” that the economy had not collapsed.

The Hungarian Prime Minister in a speech to members of his parliamentary party talked about lying to the electorate to stay in power. The speech was on tape. The tape leaked. Hungarians are understandably angry about it. They rioted in Budapest last night.

Now Hungary, of course, is a new democracy – so maybe they’re still naive enough to be shocked by this. Maybe we’ve not had such a bald admission of lying by Mssrs. Bush and Blair. Maybe the mark of a mature democracy is to let things ride, knowing that the system of constitutional democracy is more important than any individual personality or series of mistakes and indiscretions. But it seems less amazing to me that Hungarians have rioted over this discovery than that the majority of the US population haven’t reacted more angrily to a series of events from the rigged election in Florida 6 years ago, to the weapons of mass destruction, to the creeping dismantling of the US constitution by the Bush administration.

Missionary progress

My first day back at work yesterday, I was preparing a speech that I should have prepared before I left. (I’m giving it today – yikes!)

My colleagues were equally frantic preparing for a different and high profile event. Things were not going well. Nothing major…just a series of a unfortunate, frustrating, small things. Until they found out that the courier delivering materials for the event had been turned away from a high profile venue (if you’re not living in a barn, you’ve heard of this place) for “security” reasons.

My colleague turned to me and said “Give me some good news. At least tell me the Vols are winning.”

“I wish I could,” I said. “But it’s not bad, they’re 2-1 and they only lost by one point at the weekend.”

She seemed disappointed, but I feel that my upbeat attitude to the narrow Gator loss was helpful. I didn’t mention that it was the first SEC game. I showed her the picture of the cute VOL-aby, which raised a smile, but didn’t have the transformative effect I hoped for. A series of frantic phone calls later and the courier got through with the presentation packs.

But I think the important thing here is that I’m making a convert to Vol fandom.

The VOL-aby