One year ago today

Round about 1630 on this day last year, the bengals and I were just getting used to a quiet, kitten free apartment (having 'graduated' a batch of kittens only 48 hours previously) when the phone rang with an emergency request to take a rather bedraggled four week old kitten. She should have gone back for adoption in December but we didn't want her ending up as an unwanted Christmas gift so we kept her into the new year. By that time she'd adopted us and there was no way on earth I was giving her up. She's still here.

So here's to a year with Lady Jane Grey Kitten, my special snuggly Janey Jane Kitten Brain who has done so much to make an intolerable year bearable.

Jane one year ago:



Jane now:



Love you Janey!

Last call

Only two questions remain unanswered in the film quiz as shezan correctly identified no.7 as the rather tedious The Longest Day.

Final clues for the remaining two:

9. Is a WW2 flick with Gary Sinese. The title references a seasonal piece of music.

10. Has rather a lot of partner swapping for a Hollywood studio production of its era. It's not 'Fear of Flying'.

ETA: Extra picture for 10.



ETA2: Done!

Congrats to f4f3 for A Midnight Clear and dherblay for Beat the Devil.

Reflecting

I've held off commenting on the elections in the US because I have really mixed feelings about what happened. On the one hand I'm relieved that there is some prospect of a brake being put on the viler projects of the Kleptocracy, on the other I have little faith in a party that is really not so different from the Kleptos on the big issues and is even falling over itself to readmit a traitor like Lieberman.

The problem is that from where I stand democracy in the English speaking world is fairly badly broken and in the US it's really screwed up. (Which is not to say that it isn't the least bad of the available options).

The basic problem is that the system we've inherited was designed to decide which faction of the 18th century ruling elite would hold power while trying to stop them doing much more with that power than get their snouts in the trough. In the US that has changed remarkably little. Henry Dundas would have felt quite at home in contemporary Washington. Over the years the elites have been remarkably adept at keeping the system essentially intact in the face of Universal Suffrage, rise of the Mass Media etc.

A modern democracy would have, as a minimum:

• Districts delineated by, and elections supervised by, a non-partisan electoral oversight body
  
• A real party system with things like party policies and discipline over candidates/representatives
  
• Some real control over campaign finance
  
• Proportional representation of some kind
  
• A non-partisan process for appointing judges
  

None of these things are going to happen in the foreseeable future, not least because the average American today displays the same complacency over his/her constitution that Brits did 150 years ago. So we are stuck with one loose band of corrupt millionaires alternating with another one. It's hard to get really enthusiastic about which one is at the trough.

Just wrong

No one crossword should contain clues to which the answers are "Scooby Doo" and "Jogger's Nipple". Just saying.