First Lt Omar is sworn to uphold the law and fight the insurgency that threatens Iraq’s evolution into a free and democratic state. Instead, he is exploiting his knowledge of US tactics to help the rebel cause in Fallujah.

“Resistance is stronger when you are working with the occupation forces,” he points out. “That way you can learn their weaknesses and attack at that point.”

What would it take to repeat Glidden's journey? Probably no amount of money could get you through Israel and into Syria today or over the Khyber Pass and into Afghanistan. Glidden's worries focused on logistics, securing gasoline and oil, contingencies for breakdowns. Today's road warrior must deal with politics, terrorism, poverty, and hate, tougher by far than worrying about when the needed valves would arrive or where you'd find your next can of gasoline.

UPDATE: Strangely enough, it sounds like the San Francisco Pride Parade was among the most sane such events.

Fahrenheit (Fah"ren*heit). adj:
The temperature in the atmosphere when it reaches the boiling point.

UPDATE: Nope, there it is again. That's exactly what it said.

UPDATE: Yeah, I know Michael Moore can't necessarily be blamed for this. It's probably some less-than-gifted hack working for the distributor.

But you know, I don't care who is behind this. I just have an objection to stupid crap on my TV. Especially in the middle of MXC.

(Ya hearrrd me.)

I've tried just about every character type and I'm settling on my favorites. Last night, for fun, I decided to make myself a Captain America type hero...you know, go the whole patriotic route.

So I logged onto the Guardian server and created myself a Science origin Tanker with Invulerability and Super Strength. I dressed him in red, white and blue, adorned him and named him FLAG WAVER.

Once I got to a populated area, other people in the game started reacting to my character, but not in the way I expected.

"Ugh. I hate our country."
"How can you wave a flag of a country that kills other countries for oil we already have."
"Bush is an idiot."

I inquired if these people were from another country that maybe didn't look too kindly on the US. They all stated that they were Americans, but they just didn't really like America.

I have to say that I was flabbergasted. No. I was disgusted. I really didn't know what to say back to these other players. I certainly didn't log into the game to get into a political debate. If anything, I logged in to escape that stuff.

UPDATE: Aargh! Now Comedy Central is blaring Michael Moore on The Daily Show! 11:00! across South Park.

Could someone please come get me when this is over?

A few days later I ended up in the Arab quarter of Brooklyn, where stories are plentiful about harassment of the Arab-Muslim community.

The talk is not only about Guantanamo Bay, but also about young men disappearing for weeks on end, forced deportations, being hauled in for questioning for speaking out of line.

They talk in detail about Section 215 - the bit which deals with personal records, and of the Metropolitan Corrections Facility on the corner of 29th Street and Third Avenue, where people are held without trial and access to lawyers.

"I don't know what's happening to this country," said Ihab Tabir, a Brooklyn immigration lawyer who is originally from Jordan.

"If you say anything against what is happening in Iraq for example, you can be arrested.

"You can't speak openly on the street anymore. I tell you, everyone is afraid."

The Army's powerful 1st Armored Division is proclaiming victory over Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr's marauding militia that just a month ago seemed on the verge of conquering southern Iraq.

The Germany-based division defeated the militia with a mix of American firepower and money paid to informants. Officers today say "Operation Iron Saber" will go down in military history books as one of the most important battles in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

"I've got to think this was a watershed operation in terms of how to do things as part of a counterinsurgency," said Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, a West Point graduate and one of two 1st Armored assistant division commanders, in an interview last week as he moved around southern Iraq. "We happened to design a campaign that did very well against this militia."

When the division got word April 8 that Sheik al-Sadr's uprising meant most 1st Armored soldiers would stay and fight, rather than going home as scheduled, it touched off a series of remarkable military maneuvers.

Soldiers, tanks and helicopters at a port in Kuwait reversed course, rushing back inside Iraq to battle the Shi'ite cleric's 10,000-strong army.

Last week, Sheik al-Sadr surrendered. He called on what was left of his men to cease operations and said he may one day seek public office in a democratic Iraq.

Gen. Hertling said Mahdi's Army is defeated, according the Army's doctrinal definition of defeat. A few stragglers might be able to fire a rocket-propelled grenade, he said, but noted: "Do they have the capability of launching any kind of offensive operation? Absolutely not."

Yeah, I know, I'm just repeating what a lot of people in the blogosphere and elsewhere are complaining about, but I want is to do something about it. I tried before with the website Front Line Voices to get the story out of the heroism of our troops, but I know that isn't going to do it. The sad fact of the human condition is that people respond much more to pain than pleasure. Thus, the way to get people motivated, to keep people focused on the goal, is to show them the barbarism of our enemy. And I don't mean the horrible pictures of the beheading - that's just shocking people. Show the jubilation of the terrorists over their killing. Show the writings of the enemy in praise of death. Show everything we can about who these people are, because the fact is that all except the most morally forgone of our society will recognize evil when they see it staring in his or her face. Shades of gray won't hold up when people see just how black the depravity of the terrorists are.

If I had my way, the head story of every newscast would be about what these brutal thugs are up to, what they're thinking, what they're desires are. And not just focus on the terrorists, but also the brutality of all the government in the Middle East. No more root causes, no more blind tolerance, no more thinking that religious beliefs that involve violence and oppression should have any cultural respect. Every day the American people and the rest of the world would see how horrible the terrorists and the tyrants are, and everyday they would get madder and madder.

So why can't I have my way?

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers.

At the Cannes Film Festival,
only one film has ever received
a 20 minute standing ovation.

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction.

UPDATE: Spike TV is already running trailers for the movie, using the "Bush playing golf" clip Hitch describes thus:

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm.

UPDATE: Oh, lovely. Moore is now apologizing to Ray Bradbury:

The novel was a futuristic tale about a totalitarian society where books are burned to keep people from thinking independently. The temperature at which paper catches fire is 451 degrees. Moore says his film deals with the temperature at which freedom burns.

Bradbury is demanding an apology for not being asked permission to lift his book title and wants the film property renamed, something that is not likely to happen at this late stage.

"He suddenly realized he's let too much time go by," the author said.

"It has broken my heart," says Moore. "I've called to try and apologize and work it out and he's just ... oh, jeez I don't know what to say."

Moore says he tried to explain to the 83-year-old writer that the film could bring more young readers to his book but apparently no dice. He says if he had called the film The Diary of Michael Moore, surely people wouldn't confuse it with The Diary of Anne Frank.

"There's no confusion here, you know?"

Nope. Of course not.

Encouraging travellers to switch from cars and airlines to inter-city trains brings no benefits for the environment, new research has concluded.

Challenging assumptions about railways' green superiority, the study finds that the weight and fuel requirements of trains have increased to the point where rail could become the least energy-efficient form of transport.

Engineers at Lancaster University said trains had failed to keep up with the motor and aviation industries in reducing fuel needs.

They calculate that expresses between London and Edinburgh consume slightly more fuel per seat (the equivalent of 11.5 litres) than a modern diesel-powered car making the same journey.

The car's superiority rises dramatically when compared with trains travelling at up to 215mph.

South Australia's Court of Criminal Appeal has reduced a jail sentence given to a man who broke into an elderly couple's house because he is Aboriginal.

The Appeal Court ruled that Aborigines are at greater disadvantage in society that whites.

Darren Clarke, 29, broke into the Port Pirie house of a couple in their 70s in November 2002 by smashing the back door.

He ransacked two rooms and stole alcohol and money.

The couple was terrified and traumatised.

Clark was sentenced to three years with a non-parole period of 23 months.

He appealed against that sentence and one of his grounds was that he was Aboriginal.

The Court of Criminal Appeal agreed saying an offender's aboriginality could be relevant.

Is this the horror that will finally undo George Bush's presidency?

• The recent rise of the debate over gay marriage has sent Bush "around the bend"—in Lewis' presentation, Bush said, "Those pesky States think they can just rewrite the rules like this? Well, I'll fix their wagon—I'll write a Constsitutional Amendment!" —conveniently overlooking, it seems, that little thing about 3/4 of the States having to ratify said Amendment;
• Arnold Schwarzenegger being elected Governor is proof that Californians "governed ourselves better when we were all taking drugs" (regardless of the fact that Arnie has, among much else, restored California's good credit rating)—and that if we as a State had decided we wanted to live in a movie, rather than in reality, we ought to lose our statehood;
• The 9/11 Commission announced conclusively that there was no link whatsoever between 9/11 and Saddam (which, even if it were strictly true, which it isn't, is a hideous and wilful misinterpretation of why we fought the war—if people think putting an end to Saddam's regime was about revenge for 9/11, they're shallower thinkers than I've ever given them credit for);
• Condi Rice's testimony before the Commission made less sense than if a miniature Dachshund had gone up on the podium and yapped and crapped and run away;
• All the Administration officials have spent the past three years doing nothing but making hideous, hideous mistakes—and all one can fault the driven-snow-pure Democrats for is not doing a better job of calmly pointing them out;
• The "Osama bin Laden memo" contained actionable information about the upcoming 9/11 attacks, and there was something we realistically could have done (in this world of political correctness and racial-profiling paranoia) to prevent them even if we did have specific information about the plot;
• There weren't ever any Weapons of Mass Destruction—I mean, hey, Lewis knew himself that there weren't any! And all he was doing was sitting there on his couch! How is it that he knows more than the CIA? (Except that he evidently didn't know about the Kay report, except the headlines about it—or, say, the banned missiles showing up in Dutch and Jordanian scrapyards. Don't mention those—they ruin the joke!);
• Instilling democracy in Iraq is impossible—what are we gonna do, give 'em a bunch of Civics books and make 'em take a test? Stupid wogs!
• We never had a plan for how to rebuild Iraq. We just didn't. No, of course Lewis doesn't have any evidence backing up this claim; he just says it, and we all believe it. No plan! Imagine!
• Osama bin Laden is alive and well and, apparently, hiding inside Janet Jackson's right breast;
• We invaded Iraq for oil—not to steal it, mind you, but to create instability in the Middle East so that oil companies like Exxon and Shell and Mobil could have a pretext for jacking up gas prices and making a killing (which we all know has been the Bush/Cheney grand master plan all along). This is actually his most thoughtful and plausible theory of the night, which tells you something about the caliber of material he had to work with.

UPDATE: Then again... even more astonishing, I suppose, is that the FG episode in question aired before the relevant Simpsons episode. About five months before.

Not enough time for it not to be just a bizarre coincidence...

The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.

The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam’s missile and WMD program.

The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.

UNMOVIC acting executive chairman Demetrius Perricos told the council on June 9 that “the only controls at the borders are for the weight of the scrap metal, and to check whether there are any explosive or radioactive materials within the scrap,” Middle East Newsline reported.

“It’s being exported,” Perricos said after the briefing. “It’s being traded out. And there is a large variety of scrap metal from very new to very old, and slowly, it seems the country is depleted of metal.”

“The removal of these materials from Iraq raises concerns with regard to proliferation risks,” Perricos told the council. Perricos also reported that inspectors found Iraqi WMD and missile components shipped abroad that still contained UN inspection tags.

He said the Iraqi facilities were dismantled and sent both to Europe and around the Middle East. at the rate of about 1,000 tons of metal a month. Destionations included Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey.

The UN plans to deal with another complaint against Israel as well, though this one is much older. It concerns Israel’s air raid on Iraq’s atomic reactor no fewer than 23 years ago. The issue had been pushed off from year to year, as had many other long-forgotten issues, and the current rotating president of the UN General Assembly - a Caribbean Islands diplomat - finally decided to place the issue on the table.

. . .

Armed Israeli aggression against the [Osirak] Iraqi nuclear installations and its grave consequences for the established international system concerning the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and international peace and security

At its forty-first session, the General Assembly called upon Israel urgently to place all its nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards in accordance with Security Council resolution 487 (1981); considered that Israel had not yet committed itself not to attack or threaten to attack nuclear facilities in Iraq or elsewhere, including facilities under Agency safeguards; reaffirmed that Iraq was entitled to compensation for the damage it had suffered as a result of the Israeli armed attack on 7 June 1981; and requested the Conference on Disarmament to continue negotiations with a view to reaching an immediate conclusion of the agreement on the prohibition of military attacks on nuclear facilities as a contribution to promoting and ensuring the safe development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes (resolution 41/12).

UPDATE: By the way—"A Caribbean Islands diplomat", huh? <cough>Cuba<cough> Right. Nice of these guys to be so clear about who's demanding what.

U.N.: WMD Equipment Found?
June 10, 2004 1501 GMT

Acting Chief U.N. Inspector Demetrius Perricos told the U.N. Security
Council on June 9 that equipment used for producing weapons of mass
destruction -- including 20 engines from banned Iraqi missiles -- were
found in a Jordanian scrap yard. A similar discovery was recently made in
the Netherlands. U.N. weapons inspectors believe the metal can be used
both for legitimate purposes and for creating banned weapons. Perricos
said, "The only controls at the borders are for the weight of the metal,
and to check whether there are any explosive or radioactive materials
within the scrap." Inspectors do not know whether the items were at the
sites during the Iraq war, or looters sold them as scrap.

Which brings me to my confession. Having grown up in the late '60s and early '70s, I carried some of my generation's prejudices along with me into the Army. While I realized that Jimmy Carter had been an inept president (if a good man), I didn't support Ronald Reagan in 1980. I believed that Carter remained the safer of two mediocrities. I bought into the bigotry of those who mocked Reagan as lacking the intelligence to be president.

And it's doubtless true that he didn't possess the highest IQ ever to enter the White House. That goes directly to what Reagan taught me: As we recently saw with another president, the greatest intelligence isn't a substitute for vision, courage and leadership. Above all, a president needs good instincts, guts and sound values. The world's overstocked with brilliant people who never get anything done.

References to Zarqawi and Abu Nadal are completely removed even though they are examples of a terrorist connection in Iraq. This is important information that needs to be repeated to the American people but is filtered right out of the President's message. Don't tell me that those two sentences were edited out for time constraints either, as they were very short.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi officials declared Tuesday that the interim government has assumed full control of the country's oil industry ahead of the June 30 handover of sovereignty from the U.S.-led occupation administration.

"Today the most important natural resource has been returned to Iraqis to serve all Iraqis," Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said. "I'm pleased to announce that full sovereignty and full control on oil industry has been handed over to the oil ministry today and to the new Iraqi government as of today."

The announcement came as Allawi and Oil Minister Thamir Ghadbhan toured the al-Doura oil refinery in southern Baghdad.

After meeting and shaking hands with the refinery workers, the two ministers thanked oil sector workers.

"We are totally now in control, there are no more advisers," Ghadbhan said. "We are running the show, the oil policies will be implemented 100 percent by Iraqis."

No U.S. president, I expect, will ever appoint a Secretary of the Imagination. But if such a cabinet post ever were created, and Richard Foreman weren’t immediately appointed to it, you’d know that the Republicans were in power. Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Determined to remain elected representatives, House lawmakers on Wednesday rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed governors to name replacements if half the 435-member chamber died in a terrorist attack or other disaster.

Opponents said the House should never abandon direct election. Lawmakers supporting the amendment said that without the succession plan, the House would expose itself to a lengthy period of powerlessness should hundreds of members die at the same time.

"We feel very, very passionately about the need to ensure that no one ever serves in the 'people's house' without having first being elected," said Republican Rep. David Dreier of California, chairman of the House Rules Committee and critic of the amendment.

Rep. Brian Baird wrote the amendment to keep the House functioning with appointees until special elections could be held to restore depleted numbers. `Elections are sacred, but so too is representation," said Baird, D-Washington

His proposal was defeated 353-63, well short of the two-thirds needed to approve a constitutional amendment.

Q Given the perception --

THE PRESIDENT: I'm converting this into a full-blown press conference; it's such a beautiful day. (Laughter.) Do I get credit for it? (Laughter.)

Q Absolutely.

Why, what's that stench?
Can it be one of those French?

Yes, yes, I was born in France;
But please, give me a chance.

. . .

The following things French can never be:
Fries, toast, and Mr. John Kerry.

Who, in 2004, can look at world where some madmen want to shove a crescent down our throats and decide that the most important thing they’re going to do is take the crosses off the city seal?

The crosses represent California’s history - but of course that’s no defense. History, alas, is full of inconvenient details. History can offend. The mere recognition of a historical truth can offend. Apparently that’s the worst thing you can do nowadays: offend. But it has to be a particular kind of offense. Lenny Bruce was celebrated for offending the right people, and this enshrined the act of offending as some sort of brave stance against The Man, The Grey-Flannel Suited Establishment, the whole Ike-Nixon Axis of Medieval, the straights. Gotta offend the straights or you’re not doing your job. The only function the bourgeouise have is to sit there with their mouths open, Shocked. If they’re having a good time, someone’s not doing his job.

"If anybody has a mortarboard, you can move your tassels from right to left, right to left, which is what I hope happened to your politics in the last four years." George Washington University president Stephen Trachtenberg,  at a graduation ceremony

At what point will the Looney Left figure out that insulting people, even when disguised as the "social cognitive theory of moral disengagement," is not a good way to pursuade people to support their views?

Great. It says I need to hang out with highschool students and undergraduates in order to elevate my conciousness about war and killing things. I'm just so manipulable.

Morons. When I was a highschool student my conciousness was elevated to their liking. Then I did something that adolescents all around the world are supposed to do. I grew the *&%^ up.

Israeli Channel Ten television broadcast video footage this week showing armed Palestinians using UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency) ambulances to flee Israeli forces operating in the Gaza Strip.

The television report, filmed in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighborhood on May 11, on the same night the first IDF armored personnel carrier was destroyed, killing six Israeli soldiers, clearly showed armed Palestinians boarding a UN-marked ambulance with a UN flag, and fleeing the scene.

The Channel Ten reporter stressed that this was not a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance, known to have transported armed Palestinians in the past, but rather a supposedly neutral ambulance of the UN.

As matters now stand, Kerry has assured the DLC, "I am not a redistributionist Democrat." That's actually a good start. Using that promise as disinformation, he must now figure out a creative way to become a redistributionist Democrat.

So the aim is to deceive voters about what you want to do. This might be amusing coming from a Dick Morris or a Karl Rove. But didn't Raines spend a year and a half lacerating the Bush administration for, er, lying? And now he thinks it's an essential tool for governance? Not all Bush-haters are as dumb or as crude as Raines. But it's useful to see how decadent the left-liberal mind can be in one of its more prominent exemplars. The American people are stupid, craven greed-hounds; lying is good if you can get away with it; American capitalism is a rotten, hollow promise; and even the Democrats refuse to take the advice of the few enlightened people who can help them, like Howell Raines. Well, that makes one thing to be grateful about.

There was an historical moment in which the character and moral fiber of the French people was defined. After the defeat of the Germans and their retreat from France the American and British had the courtesy to allow General De Gaulle along with his meager troops to enter Paris at the head the triumphal Victory parade.

Nevertheless, very soon afterwards De Gaulle decided to extricate France from the military Pact of the North Atlantic Pact between Western Europe and the United States that secured the peace and freedom in that part of Europe, saving them from falling under the Soviet boot as it happened to the East Europeans countries.

De Gaulle, in a bout typical of French arrogance, or perhaps to appease the Soviet Union and the very powerful French communists in control of much the bureaucracy, demanded the immediate shut down of the American bases in France and the return of the troops to United States.

Eisenhower, with great dignity, responded: " General, it is going to take some time to exhume all our dead soldiers from the soil of France."

żWhat is your opinion on France's scientific research crisis?

H.R.H. Caroline responded: "It is deplorable. There is veritable scarcity. We are witnessing an intelligence flight. That is impoverishing the scientific and intellectual life. Sometimes it is necessary for a scientist to wait three months in order to have access to a microscope in a research laboratory. Those instruments frequently cost near 450,000 euros; so, there is only one per university, or one for almost 1,000 researchers, who are forced to wait in order to proceed with their experiments."

This is the legacy of socialism. This is the famous European socialized medicine. This is France, a country that allowed their old citizens to die without family or government assistance during a heat wave last summer. It was vacation time and the old folks were left behind in their city apartments under searing heat, and their children, doctors and nurses went on vacation to enjoy and relax.

That sacred time could not be interrupted, not even to save the lives of their own parents or to claim the corpses of those who died and were placed in funeral homes and food storage buildings waiting for weeks to be claimed and buried.

A French couple might spend 200 euros for a dinner in a not very luxurious restaurant; but they will not spend 300 euros in an air conditioning unit for making their parents' life more comfortable.

UPDATE: Then again, there's always this (thanks to JMH for reminding me). You know, maybe there is something to this whole "impressionable youth" thing—if it comes down to "making patriotism hip through video games", well, I guess that's what worked for recycling and saving the whales and hating big corporations...

Ted Sampley, a former Green Beret who served two full tours in Vietnam, spotted Kerry and his Secret Service detail at about 9:00 a.m. Monday morning at the Wall. Sampley walked up to Kerry, extended his hand and said, "Senator, I am Ted Sampley, the head of Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, and I am here to escort you away from the Wall because you do not belong here."

At that point a Secret Service officer told Sampley to back away from Kerry. Sampley moved about 6 feet away and opened his jacket to reveal a HANOI JOHN T-shirt.

Kerry then began talking to a group of schoolchildren. Sampley then showed the T-shirt to the children and said, "Kerry does not belong at the Wall because he betrayed the brave soldiers who fought in Vietnam."

Just then Kerry - in front of the school children, other visitors and Secret Service agents - brazenly 'flashed the bird' at Sampley and then yelled out to everyone, "Sampley is a felon!"

As Congress returns from its Memorial Day recess, two senators may need to revise one of their harshest critiques about the Bush administration's actions in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, especially now that Bush critic Richard Clarke has contradicted one of his own key statements.

It turns out that President Bush and other top members of his administration had nothing to do with the decision to let members of Osama bin Laden's family depart the United States in the days immediately after 9/11, despite the suggestions of Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer of California and Charles Schumer of New York.

Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism official and author of a recent book blasting the Bush administration's handling of intelligence leading up to the terrorist attacks, told The Hill newspaper last week that he gave the go-ahead for two members of the bin Laden family and other Saudi nationals to leave the U.S.

"It didn't get any higher than me," Clarke told The Hill. "I take responsibility for it. I don't think it was a mistake, and I'd do it again."

Has anyone noticed that, in the three years since the US homeland suffered its worst attack in history, Hollywood has not produced one single film that advocates the American side in the War On Islamic Fascism?

Samuel Mac, manager of the Denny's in Avon, isn't happy with the response he got from the FBI when he reported that two [al Qaeda suspects] ate at his restaurant Wednesday.

When he called the FBI in Washington, D.C., Mac said the man who answered the telephone said he had to call the Denver office and declined to take down any of the information.

When he called the Denver office, he was shuttled to voice mail because the agents were busy, Mac said. It was five hours before a seemingly uninterested agent called back.

Mac said two men - he subsequently identified them from their photographs as Adnan G. El Shukrijumah and Abderraouf Jdey - came into Denny's, which is just off Interstate 70, about 8 p.m.

One ordered a chicken sandwich and a salad, the other just a salad, Mac said. They were demanding, rude and obnoxious, he said.

They said they were from Iran and were driving from New York to the West Coast.

When the FBI agent called him back, she took a few notes and said she would pass the information along to the field agents, according to Mac.

"'(President Muhammad) Khatami speaks of the dialogue between civilizations, and I have grave doubts about this. It is a dubious idea. We do not want to take over the British Embassy, since they (the British) have already cleared the embassy of documents; we must take over Britain [itself].'

"After [H.A.] harshly attacked Khatami and the reformists, he said in his speech: 'The West sees us as terrorists, and depicts our strategy as terrorism and repression. Had our youth agreed to Khatami's teachings and interpretations, it would never have fought the arrogance, and would never have defended the holy places – because Khatami speaks always of being conciliatory, of patience, and of rejecting terrorism, while we defend [the line of] toughness and war against the enemies of revolutionary Islam. I take pride in my actions that cause anxiety and fear to the Americans.

"'Haven't the Jews and the Christians achieved their progress by means of toughness and repression? We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilizationand for the uprooting of the Americans and the English.

"'Our missiles are now ready to strike at their civilization, and as soon as the instructions arrive from Leader ['Ali Khamenei], we will launch our missiles at their cities and installations. Our motto during the war (in Iraq) was: Karbala, we are coming, Jerusalem, we are coming. And because of Khatami's policies and dialogue between the civilizations, we have been compelled to freeze our plan to liberate the Islamic cities. And now we are [again] about to carry out the program.'

"In his speech, he added: 'The global infidel front is a front against Allah and the Muslims, and we must make use of everything we have at hand to strike at this front, by means of our suicide operations or by means of our missiles. There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack them.'

"In another part of his speech, he emphasized, 'If Israel dares attack the [nuclear] installations at Bushehr, our losses will be very low, because [only] one structure will be destroyed – while we [i.e., Iran] have means of attacking Israel's nuclear facilities and arsenals such that no trace of Israel will remain.'"

Bad cartoons tend to make bad citizens. And my generation suffered from the worst cartoons of all. Pity the poor male children of Generation X: there we sat, on Saturday mornings in the '70s and early '80s, clutching our bowls of Count Chocula and enduring the soul-sucking monotony of ugly Filmation cartoons populated by heroes who fought without actually fighting. You could watch cartoons for hours and never see a superhero actually sock a supervillain in the gut, or a commando pump hot lead into a live non-robot terrorist, or a ranger thrust a pointy-sharp arrow into some dragon's malevolent guts. Preachy mini-sermons abounded, though; the Super Friends couldn't lay a gloved fist on Lex Luthor, but they could sure manhandle those sugary in-between-meals snacks. ("Super Friends," they called them, instead of the Justice League. The difference tells you everything you need to know about the seventies.)

Consequently, we Gen Xers grew up achingly bereft of simulated mayhem and destruction. We turned to cap guns, stick fights, and dodgeball to meet our aggressive needs, but it wasn't the same. We craved red meat, but our cartoons served up tofu.

I always assumed that the threat of litigation had driven violence from Saturday morning. After all, if you show Superman frying a supervillain with his heat vision on Saturday morning, then, sure enough, some idiot kid in Dubuque will fry his little brother with heat vision one fine Saturday afternoon, and then everyone loses except the lawyers. But I was wrong. Federal regulators, rather than nervous trial attorneys, wussified Saturday morning TV in the early seventies. Uncle Sam made our cartoons insipid, in the hope that a nice stiff dose of cultural chloroform would deaden our proto-male violent tendencies and transform us all into prissy poindexters who would eat our vegetables, sit still in our seats, and eventually vote for French-speaking politicians.

* Part of the reason Al Gore gave such an insane tirade yesterday is because a refrigerator magnet was stuck to his head.

UPDATE: This, via CapLion, is an interesting case in point.

UPDATE: Like, for instance, this. Which I saw in the local Safeway. No kidding.

UPDATE: Several people have commented that this could simply be the house of a local high school athletics coach, whose property gets TP'ed as part of the usual traditions around this time of year. Considering that the festooning was left intact all day, with nobody making any attempts to clean it up, I guess that's the more likely explanation. The TP is a flag, in its own way...

After the lecture, attendees filed out of the hall to discover that the protesters had massed so as to allow only a narrow passage between themselves and a retaining wall. In effect, all those leaving the lecture were forced to walk a gauntlet. Some ducked their heads, others set their jaws in anger, squeezing past the dozens of assembled faces chanting "Shame! Shame! Shame!" as fists pumped the air in unison.

A young woman in a kaffiyeh screamed up at a Jewish student significantly larger than herself. Her lips were wet with fury. "If I don't agree with you, then you call it anti-Semitism!" she shouted, as friends arrived to support her. The young man was surrounded. "You call it anti-Semitismmm!" she raged. "Why can't you tolerate anti-Semitismmm?"

"I can tolerate it," the student replied, his voice a low, tired rumble. "I have to. It exists. I just don't have to like it."

• Of the eight states (Alaska, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Oregon and Utah) that currently impose similar taxes, seven let the lawyers eat first (the state takes their share only after attorneys' fees are paid). California would join Indiana in taking its 75% share before the payment of attorneys' fees.

• The article predicts that Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal may succeed if the tax is whittled down to 50% and the lawyers are allowed to eat first.

UPDATE: J Greely sends another example of "progressive architecture" run amok. Sweet merciful crap, I'm beginning to loathe the word progressive...

UPDATE: Keith & Fred send this previous Gehry concoction, which "hangs over the Mississippi, looking like a
derelict car stuck on the bank among the trees".

UPDATE: More thoughts from Sissy Willis, in response to this and Lileks' followup assessment. Yikes—I've never seen a groundswell of crosslinkage like this, around these parts. I guess Gehry wouldn't be too pleased to hear of it.

AFTERTHOUGHT: What do you suppose we'll think of these buildings in, say, twenty or fifty years?

UPDATE: Paul Denton appears willing. Deserves a blogroll link, too.

UPDATE: A response from Alisa in Wonderland.

OUTNUMBERED British soldiers killed 35 Iraqi attackers in the Army’s first bayonet charge since the Falklands War 22 years ago.

The fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stormed rebel positions after being ambushed and pinned down.

Despite being outnumbered five to one, they suffered only three minor wounds in the hand-to-hand fighting near the city of Amara.

The battle erupted after Land Rovers carrying 20 Argylls came under attack on a highway.

After radioing for back-up, they fixed bayonets and charged at 100 rebels using tactics learned in drills.

When the fighting ended bodies lay all over the highway — and more were floating in a nearby river. Nine rebels were captured.

An Army spokesman said: “This was an intense engagement.”

The last bayonet charge was by the Scots Guards and the Paras against Argentinian positions.

• "Daddy, wasn't Saddam in violation of 17 UN resolutions, and repeatedly violating the cease-fire agreement?"
• "Aren't chemical and biological weapons really easy to conceal, and just as easy to store as harmless components?"
• "What about that sarin bomb that blew up on a roadside? Doesn't that count?"
• "Remember Somalia? Isn't there something to be said for being extremely firm, and a little bit overeager, in response to 9/11—because the fact that we retreated whenever we got bloody noses like in Somalia is exactly why 9/11 occurred?"
• "What about Ansar Al-Islam? Haven't there been all kinds of links drawn between al Qaeda and Iraq?"
• "Even if Saddam didn't have any weapons of mass destruction, wasn't it worth getting rid of him for all the crimes he'd already committed, and just in case he decided that if 17 UN resolutions against him weren't going to be enforced, then there was no point in trying to avoid incurring an 18th?"
• "Isn't it a good idea, when the Middle East is exporting Islamic terrorism daily, to make sure that there aren't any avowedly anti-US dictatorships operating in the Middle East, whether they're sponsoring terrorism or not?"
• "How is one of our soldiers making fun of an Iraqi prisoner's wee-wee to get information about terrorists remotely the same thing as Saddam feeding people feet-first into shredders for failing to agree with him?"
• "Daddy, this is Iraq we're talking about! Saddam Hussein! The guy who gassed his own people and killed 300,000 of his citizens! The guy who's been the personification of evil in every sitcom and stand-up routine produced in the 90s! The guy that all America's been aching to get rid of ever since 1991! And now all of a sudden it's a bad thing, because we actually seem to be willing to do it?"

UPDATE: Greg Kihn is having similar thoughts; apparently he's taking all kinds of heat from listeners via e-mail regarding his opinions that he injects between the classic-rock tracks, and he's likening them to his second ex-wife who used to respond to things she didn't want to hear by sticking her fingers in her ears and going LA-LA-LA-LA-LA! "There's no money. We're going bankrupt!" "LA-LA-LA-LA! I can't hear you!"

It's like the airwaves are filled with Rage Addicts...

Barring a miracle, the family as it has been known for more than five millennia will crumble, presaging the fall of Western civilization itself. This is a time for concerted prayer, divine wisdom and greater courage than we have ever been called upon to exercise. For more than 40 years, the homosexual activist movement has sought to implement a master plan that has had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family. The institution of marriage, along with an often weakened and impotent Church, is all that stands in the way of its achievement of every coveted aspiration. Those goals include universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, discrediting of Scriptures that condemn homosexuality, muzzling of the clergy and Christian media, granting of special privileges and rights in the law, overturning laws prohibiting pedophilia, indoctrinating children and future generations through public education, and securing all the legal benefits of marriage for any two or more people who claim to have homosexual tendencies.

UPDATE: Now this is an interesting point.

Kris points out, by the way, that if the scammer were smart and/or ballsy, he'd recognize the street value of the P-P-P-Powerbook!! and put it on Ebay. He'd probably make back the money he lost...

I watched with my partner, Michael, sitting next to me. Michael is a U.S. citizen now, but a native of Syria. He’s an Arab. An Arab-American, in the parlance of hyphenation. And his reaction to the video, described below, is telling.

Michael came to America as an adolescent and learned English with no help from the Los Angeles schools he attended. By the time he and I met, shortly before his graduation from Baylor University, a Baptist institution in Waco, Texas, he had become a fully acculturated American.

When the video ended, Michael and I sat here for awhile in silence. Then he turned to me and asked,

“Baby, are you mad at me?”

No, Habibi (Arabic for ‘my love’), I’m not mad at you. What makes you even ask that?

“I don’t know. Maybe you’ll associate me with that.”

Of course, I do not associate him with that. But Michael, now well-acquainted with the psychology of his fellow Americans, intuitively knows what Mr. Berg’s murderers evidently do not. An act of barbarism against one of our own will shock and hurt and repulse and horrify us. But it will also enrage us. If radical Islamists think this act will induce us to cower, they misjudge the American character. We aren’t the French, or even the Spanish.

Americans can't figure this one out, how to respond. In reality, the whole Moslem world is a tiny threat. Late 20th century media takes what goes on between them and the western world and blows it up a million fold. The video is an example. That's the best they can do. Stop and think about that for a minute. The germans quielty and calmly got the jews and others to queue up in an orderly manner before they gassed them and used their body parts to stuff pillows and make lampshades. Several million people. And the germans would have dominated the world eventually if they hadn't had the audacity to declare war on everyone except the japanese at the same time. The islamist snatch someone here, somewone there and make a video of their murder and put it out and its impact is way beyond the reality of what these people are capable of. 9/11 was their crowning glory.. probably. And even if they set of a nuke or dirty bomb, they won't come within a mile of doing the damage that was done to europe during the second world war or america during the civil war.

UPDATE: Here's a translation of the statement that was read.

"Have you not had your fill of the war of conferences and battle of words? Is it not time for you to take the path of jihad and carry the sword of the Prophet of prophets? We ask you not to condemn what we will do just to please the Americans.

So, I guess, never mind then.

Fallujah native Abdul-Qader Abdul-Rahman al-Ani, his left elbow wrapped in bandages, his right forearm bound in a cast, recounted how he was beaten by soldiers who picked him up last month. The soldiers tied him and two others arrested with him to a tree and sodomized them one after the other, he told journalists.

"I ask President Bush," he said. "Does he agree with this?"

As Ani, 47, repeated his story, he was interrupted by Jabber al-Okaili, a member of one of the human rights groups that organized the gathering. "He's lying," al-Okaili shouted. "He's a liar!"

Al-Ani was rushed to an office, where al-Okaili and others unwound the bandage on his left arm and found the elbow unscarred and healthy. They cut off half of the cast on his forearm, even as al-Ani insisted, "By God, it's true, everything I say is true."

SBS television just showed German news footage of Ani making his disputed claim -- and that's all. No mention of anybody calling him a liar.

UPDATE: What's even more fun is being in the middle of a news story when it happens. As we were passing San Francisco International Airport at about 4500 feet on our way up the peninsula, we happened to be being handled on the same Nor-Cal Approach control frequency that was also handling a minor emergency concerning a Northwest DC-10 jet that had taken off from SFO only minutes before. The pilot of the jet was reporting that he was circling over the ocean off the coast, dumping fuel; he was requesting a special landing clearance on runway 28R, the longest runway at SFO.

Turns out, the jet had blown two tires during takeoff. The runway he had used—28R—was closed at that moment as cleanup crews cleared away the debris from the blown tires, and the runway was still closed as the approach center cleared him into a pattern for a long, soft-field-style approach (using a loooong runway and floating down onto it ever so gently, to protect the remaining tires, after dumping fuel to reduce weight, and knuckling over onto the good landing gear as it comes to a stop) to that runway. He came barrelling in over the peninsula just as we, in our little Cessna, buzzed past; the tower had us descend a thousand feet and shuffle on out of the way while they took care of the near-emergency.

Finally, runway 28R was reopened, just as the jet turned to the base leg of the pattern; by that time, he had switched to the SFO tower frequency, and the airport was far enough behind us that we couldn't watch him land. But after we returned from our trip around Northern California and landed at Reid-Hillview, we turned on the radio and the first news item we heard was: "A Northwest Airlines jet out of SFO en route to Tokyo was forced to return to the airport after two of its tires blew out upon takeoff..."

How cool is that?

Yesterday a friend of mine, who’s also a doctor, visited us. After chatting about old memories, I asked him about his opinions on the current situations in Iraq. I’ve always known this friend to be apathetic when it comes to politics, even if it means what’s happening in Iraq. It was obvious that he hadn’t change and didn’t show any interest in going deep into this conversation. However when I asked him about his opinion on GWB response to the prisoners’ abuse issue, I was surprised to see him show anger and disgust as he said:

In the wake of revelations of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners, John Kerry has launched an important petition calling for President Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld. Getting rid of Secretary Rumsfeld would be a huge step forward for all of us who oppose the Bush war policy, and Kerry needs to hear our support.

Thom T. sends the following comment:

Actually, I think these vermin are even worse than you
suggest, at least if the snipet you posted is
representative of the whole.

What is the implication from this statement? That the
scandal should be used to get rid of Rummy because it
would be a huge step forward, etc., AND NOT BECAUSE IT
WOULD BE THE RIGHT THING TO DO, GIVEN THE SEVERITY OF
RUMMY'S BREACH OF DUTY.

In other words, there is nothing to suggest that
Rumsfeld should be fired simply for his dereliction of
duty, but rather only because it would advance their
cause. Missing from this is any mention of concern
for the Iraqis injured (okay, maybe they don't deserve
it), or any view toward improving how our military
operates. Rather, to them the value in having
Rumsfeld removed is in advancing their own goals, so
what they're advocating is not action to rectify what
has occurred, but rather a cooption of it to in aid of
said advancement. And any attempt to actuaaly correct
the problem and see that it doesn't happen again be
damned.

More and more, the message I get from the Left is the
famous one attributed to Richard Nixon: "Screw the
doomed".

Yeah. The MoveOn.org message is actually quite different from the Kerry statement that it's built upon. Kerry says, "The Pentagon didn't move fast enough; we need to do something decisive to show resolve and good faith." MoveOn says, "It's Rummy! Let's get 'im!"

Now that they've managed to unstick my shopping cart, busted since
the 4.5 update, I went exploring in iTMS again and discovered something
that I shouldn't have been surprised by: Google is indexing links to
the store, correctly.

If, for instance, you search for "William Hung", at the end of the
first page you'll find links to his album on iTMS. This has some
very interesting implications for the future of online music sales.

I won't reach every reader no matter how hard I try. I don't even expect to reach the majority. But if nearly all the mail I get about a specific post is pedantic, then it suggests that I didn't reach hardly anyone. If that goes on and on, post after post, it makes me feel as if I'm not succeeding overall in what I'm trying to do when I write for this site.

That's what gets me down. Perhaps it meant that the forests I've been describing weren't really very important, or weren't there are all. Perhaps I failed to write well enough about them to make them real for my readers, and all they could see was trees. If nearly all the comments I receive about some article are nitpicks, it means that article failed. If that goes on day after day, post after post, then I'm failing as a writer.

Though African Wild Dogs reproduce sexually, packs of dogs reproduce by fission. When a pack grows too large, some members will split off and found a new pack. They'll take with them the learned behavior patterns from their parent pack, so that knowledge passes from the original pack to both of its offspring.

Just look what Den Beste said today:

...Dogs reproduce by fission.

He said it! He did! Right there in black and white! I agree with Philip Shropshire-- who could possibly take this man seriously?!

Bored with the political speechmaking in Harlem's Alhambra Ballroom, 6-year-old Iris Kerry Kaler reached out with both arms for her uncle, Sen. John Kerry, to pick her up.

The Massachusetts senator, however, ignored his niece's entreaty, offering Iris only an awkward pat on the stomach despite the array of television cameras poised to record the potentially precious moment. It was a missed opportunity to demonstrate his warmth by holding the little girl in his arms just days before last month's New York primary.

"This girl lost her mom in the World Trade Center on 9-11."

Bush stopped and turned back.

"He changed from being the leader of the free world to being a father, a husband and a man," Faulkner said. "He looked right at her and said, 'How are you doing?' He reached out with his hand and pulled her into his chest."

Michael Moore is making headlines with his controversial documentary, but one group is targeting the filmmaker for his waistline.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has selected the gadfly filmmaker as one of its “Flab Five” and is treating him to a Veg Eye for the Fat Guy makeover. “Looks like the ‘Downsize This’ author has been doing too much supersizing,” notes PETA.

“We’ll be sending him a nice little care package, a makeover kit filled with health and diet tips, PETA’s vegetarian starter kit, and suggestions on how he might change his lifestyle,” PETA’s Michael McGraw tells The Scoop.

American Idol winner Ruben Studdard is also getting targeted by PETA. “If ‘The Velvet Teddy Bear’ doesn’t want to become known as ‘The Velveeta Teddy Bear,’ he might want to idle his meat and dairy intake,” notes the group.

Now this here's the story about the Rock Island Line
The Rock Island Line she runs down into New Orleans
And just outside of New Orleans is a big toll gate
And all the trains that go through the toll gate
They gotta pay the man some money
But of course, if you got certain things on board
You're okay and you don't have to pay the man nothin
And just now we see a train comin down the line
When you come up to the toll gate
The driver, he shout down to the man
I got pigs, I got horses, I got cows
I got sheep, I got all livestock, I got all livestock
I got aaall liiivestock
The man say, you alright boy just
Get on through, you don't have to pay me nothin
And then the train go through
And when he go through the tollgate
The train gotta have a little bit of steam
And a little bit of speed
And when the driver think he safely on the other side
He shouts back down the line to the man
I fooled you, I fooled you
I got pig iron, I got pig iron
I got aaaall pig iron,
Now I'll tell you where I'm goin boy

UPDATE: Perhaps even more damning, though, would be if Iran developed nuclear weapons even with the UN breathing sternly down its neck. What would that say about just how effective the UN is at dealing with a threat that even it recognizes?

On this date in 1941 (May 5th) a not very well know clash of WWII took place. This event was overshadowed by the much bigger news a couple of weeks later of the sinking of the Bismarck.

After the Germans had captured France they used some of the French fleet for sea raiding of Allied freighters. The British created strike forces to go after these raiders. One French frigate in particular was particularly onerous to run down. The French had named it, for some strange reason, "Water of Mayonnaise", but, that's the French for you. I guess it sounds better in French - "Eau de Mayonnaise".

Finally, with the British, playing catchup, spotted the frigate and gave their battle cry:

"Sink Eau de Mayo!"

Other recent Appointments at the UN:

1. Bill Clinton appointed to head the Commission on Marital Fidelity and Sexual Abstinence.

2. Mike Tyson appointed to head the Commission for the Eradication of Domestic Violence

3. John Gotti appointed to head the Commission for Ethical Business Practices

4. Michael Moore appointed to head the Commission for Truth and Accuracy in Journalism

5. You get the point

Sudan’s delegate immediately shot back that the U.S. delegation was “shedding crocodile tears” and turning a blind eye to atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq against civilians as well as against prisoners.

May 1 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire investor Warren Buffett and Apple Computer Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs are advising Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on economic issues.

Kerry, 60, the four-term Massachusetts senator challenging President George W. Bush, ``reached out to them and they're giving him economic advice about the deficit and job creation,'' said David Wade, Kerry's campaign spokesman.

``Political campaigns are always looking for celebrity endorsements and these are two eminent celebrities in the investment world,'' said James Lucier, a political analyst at Prudential Equity Group LLC. ``But I don't think investors are looking for celebrities, they are looking for policies.''

UPDATE: Particularly as long as I'm guaranteed to be far, far away from Ted Rall.

Two summers ago, I was in Covington, KY and Cincinnati, OH with my son and father for a conference relating to his special needs. Everyone was so nice, and friendly and caring. When they said, I'll be praying for you, they meant it. When they asked how we were doing-they really wanted to hear.

We were checking out of the hotel and the clerk asked me how was my stay. I said it was fine-but that the reason I was there had to do with my son's condition. She smiled and said she knew all about children in hospital. Eight years before her son was born with a fatal heart condition. The doctors said that he was not going to live without a heart transplant. She named him Michael.

She sat at his bedside, praying for her baby. The doctors said that they came up with a risky procedure to use some kind of plastic rod to fix one of the veins, but that he could die in surgery, too. She decided to go ahead with the surgery. They were prepping her infant son when another baby died in the NICU.

The mother of the dead infant walked right over to this lady at her son's bedside and said "My son just died, and I heard your baby needs a heart."

She gave her baby's heart to that woman's child. And you know what that mom's baby was named? Michael.

I said to the clerk that she had been graced by an angel, and we both started crying.

You get it Zephyr??? Americans will give their hearts to you. So piss off.

UPDATE: Sgt. Stryker has given it the first good scouring.

Around one in 10 people in Britain are looking forward to Luvania joining the European Union this weekend. That's right, Luvania.

Telcoms provider One.Tel invited participants in an marketing survey to identify the 10 EU accession nations -- and cheekily added fictional Luvania to the list as a red herring.

Eight percent of all 2,500 respondents plumped for the mythical country -- a proportion that went up to nine percent among Scots, and 11 percent among over-50s.

"People aren't generally aware," One.Tel spokesman Carol Barnes said Thursday. "They're more involved in their day-to-day lives rather than the bigger picture of what is going on in the EU."

Boondocks cartoonist Aaron McGruder doesn’t even draw the strip these days. The street-talkin’ honky-hater just sits around thinking up great jokes which he then hands over to an underling:

He passed the sketching and inking duties to a Boston-based artist, Jennifer Seng, around the time of the Condoleezza Rice flap, last fall. “If something had to give, it was going to be the art,” he told me. “I think I’m a better writer than artist.”

Too close to call, Aaron.

BUSH iZS SToo00p!D!!11``` LOOOOOOL!!!!11~ © 2004 Aaron McGruder

"So you want to know how Take One for the Country started?". McDonough leans back in her chair, "It was back in February of 2003, when a lot of troops were leaving Ft. Benning. My girlfriends and I were partying at a bar frequented by soldiers. At some point one my friend leaves with a young soldier. The next day we questioned her and commented that the soldier didn't seem her 'type'. My friend just shrugged and said, 'Hey, his unit was going to ship out in a few days, so I decided to take one for the country', I knew right then and there that this was an incredible idea, so I started Operation Take One for the Country".

TOFTC has not been able to maintain complete secrecy and word has leaked out. I contacted Annette Spargas of the UC Berkley chapter of NOW and asked if she had ever heard of Operation Take One for the Country. Spargas said that she, in fact, had heard of TOFTC and was working to find and protest the group at the first opportunity. "These women are really sick, they are prostituting themselves", Spargas ranted, "they are objectifying their bodies to the killers of the Bush cabals war machine. They need to examine how men have made prostitutes of women throughout time". McDonough is un-phased by this type of objection, "What a bunch of bay-auches! Those femi-nazis really make me mad. Yeah, we have a TOFTC 'battalion' in Oakland, but nothing else in the bay area. Berkeley girls are too femi-nazi granola and the Stanford girls are too stuck up intellectual. Not to worry though, we're getting some good indications of interest from Sacramento and Amador Counties (outside of San Francisco) and we'll be able to take care of the men of the Pacific Fleet, don't you worry".

Every time something like this is published it drives the wedge between liberal and mainstream America just a little bit deeper. The places that this cartoon appears are the same places that have been severely bleeding audience over the last few years. All it does is help cement the dominance of conservative thought in this country. Ironic, ain't it?

UPDATE: Well, that was pretty much a bust, I guess. Ah well—that'll teach me to try to pretend I know how these guys think. Or to pretend that I'm mean-hearted enough to go undercover there successfully.

Nonetheless, thanks to Sean S. for doing the, er, artificial dissemination.

If by ‘America’ you mean the majority living here now, then I hate America.

If by “America” you mean the vision of the Founding Fathers, then I love America. But it’s hard to keep that vision in front of me when the majority of “Americans” are fundamentalist, fascistic, homophobic, racist, sexist, ignorant, American Idol-loving morons who think Bush is a strong leader. I think that the America I love is beyond retrieval because it would take more than a new President, it would take a re-awakening of a whole group of stupid people who don’t want re-awakening. Bush didn’t destroy America. Americans who had no idea of the wonderful country they were given destroyed America, and will continue to destroy it whether Kerry is elected or not.

This is a massive and difficult undertaking -- it is worth our effort, it is worth our sacrifice, because we know the stakes. The failure of Iraqi democracy would embolden terrorists around the world, increase dangers to the American people, and extinguish the hopes of millions in the region. Iraqi democracy will succeed -- and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation. (Applause.) The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution. (Applause.)

We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We're pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people. (Applause.)

The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq. (Applause.)

Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo. (Applause.)

Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before. And it will yield the same results. As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace. (Applause.)

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

Poll question: Is Bush ahead in the polls because most Americans are racist?

The polls show most Americans support a foreign policy that embraces preemptive strikes outside legal bounds (ie. Iraq).

They are willing to kill foreigners willy-nilly behind a policy that says “all Muslims are a POTENTIAL threat.” Never mind the ramifications of killing innocent people, as long as these attacks hinder terrorists they are justified. After all, in the end us Americans represent the good guys: Christian/Jewish brotherhood, and the Muslims represent the terrorists.
Generalizations like this are what leads to mass genocide. It’s no different than the anti-Jewish propaganda that Hitler promoted as a cover for his brutal imperialism.

Jermaine, also a singer, told Reuters in an interview: "I do not agree with the U.S. government. What they are saying about Muslims and Arabs is all propaganda and brainwashing."

• "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war."

• "Here in the United States our Muslim citizens are making many contributions in business, science and law, medicine and education, and in other fields. Muslim members of our Armed Forces and of my administration are serving their fellow Americans with distinction, upholding our nation's ideals of liberty and justice in a world at peace."

• "The Islam that we know is a faith devoted to the worship of one God, as revealed through The Holy Qur'an. It teaches the value and the importance of charity, mercy, and peace."

• "It should be clear to all that Islam -- the faith of one-fifth of humanity -- is consistent with democratic rule. Democratic progress is found in many predominantly Muslim countries -- in Turkey and Indonesia, and Senegal and Albania, Niger and Sierra Leone. Muslim men and women are good citizens of India and South Africa, of the nations of Western Europe, and of the United States of America."

• "This new enemy seeks to destroy our freedom and impose its views. We value life; the terrorists ruthlessly destroy it. We value education; the terrorists do not believe women should be educated or should have health care, or should leave their homes. We value the right to speak our minds; for the terrorists, free expression can be grounds for execution. We respect people of all faiths and welcome the free practice of religion; our enemy wants to dictate how to think and how to worship even to their fellow Muslims."

• "According to Muslim teachings, God first revealed His word in the Holy Qur'an to the prophet, Muhammad, during the month of Ramadan. That word has guided billions of believers across the centuries, and those believers built a culture of learning and literature and science. All the world continues to benefit from this faith and its achievements."

• "We're taking action against evil people. Because this great nation of many religions understands, our war is not against Islam, or against faith practiced by the Muslim people. Our war is a war against evil. This is clearly a case of good versus evil, and make no mistake about it -- good will prevail."

• "Do you think that Bush has characterized Iraq as an 'imminent' threat to America?"
• "Would you say that Bush has used anti-Muslim rhetoric in his speeches to the country about terrorism?"
• "Did Bush give the impression in his speeches that the war in Iraq would be easy and quickly accomplished?"
• "Do you think Bush has unfairly fomented anti-Muslim sentiment in America in the wake of 9/11?"
• "Would you say that Bush is a racist?"
• "Would you describe the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as being characterized by widespread, reckless destruction of civilian property and lives?"
• "Would you say that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are fundamentally 'racist'?"
• "Do you think Bush's speeches regarding Islam and Muslims post-9/11 are similar to Hitler's speeches regarding the Jews in the 1930s?"

How I love the life I lead
Cannot think and cannot read
Watch our values slip away
play the game of U.S.A!

UPDATE: Sigh. Twice today I've had friends approvingly tell me that in this post, I've very effectively made my case: that most Americans are morons who don't read.

That was the exact opposite of the point I was trying to make. (Is there a theme here?)

What I'm trying to say here is that most Americans are not morons; they're way more in-tune with reality than most of "us" (the self-described Enlightened Elite) are willing to believe. Most people are rational, open-minded, and willing to listen to reasoned discussion from both sides of an argument. I mean, think about ten random acquaintances, and think back on twenty random people you met or saw during the course of the day. How many of them would you describe as clinically stupid? By which I mean, how many of them—driving on the highway, walking past you in the mall, serving you your Arby's sandwich, delivering your package—would you call idiots, people on whom you wouldn't feel comfortable conferring the sacred trust of democracy?

How many would you guess are racists? How many would you guess are ignorant?

DU says "most". Are they right? I don't think so.

The problem I'm trying to highlight is that the Leftists, the DUers, the elitists who are positive that Bush is a Muslim-hating racist and that Americans can't be trusted with sharp scissors because they're actually (gasp!) polling in his favor, are singularly and unusually prone to this behavior. I believe they're worse than the statistical average when it comes to being open-minded about alternate viewpoints. I believe they're (perversely) inured to rational, multifaceted discussion because they're convinced of their own superiority, whereas most everyday folks tend to have a humility about them that lets them accept that they might not be aware of the whole story on a given issue.

A contemptuous lack of faith in the decency, intelligence, and social competence of the majority of Americans is a clear sign of the kind of immaturity that you see concentrated, primarily and almost exclusively, on the Left these days.

And I want no part of it.

EUROPE TO BECOME GIANT THEME PARK!

Member nations of the European Union have announced plans to discontinue their status as individual countries in order to merge into one giant theme park!

The new park will be called EuroWorld and will cover the entire continent of what is now known as Europe. The decision was made by the EU countries in response to their collective realization that no one in Europe has had an innovative idea in well over a century.

With nothing new to offer visitors, the European countries decided to stop pretending they were still relevant, and to start celebrating their colorful pasts.

"Our stagnant continent has been a virtual museum for decades," explains an unnamed EU representative. "Many could argue that we already were nothing more than an amusement park. The decision to legally become a large theme park is really only a formality."

For generations, Democratic candidates and liberal journalists have asserted with impunity that Republicans, by their very nature, hate blacks, gays, children, the poor, the environment, animals, and immigrants.

Al Gore ran as a champion of the "people against the powerful," claiming he cared about Americans more than Bush. His campaign manager declared that Republicans "have no love and no joy. They'd rather take pictures with black children than feed them." Clinton routinely said that the GOP wanted to "punish" children. The organizers of the Million Mom March insisted that "good" moms support gun control.

Again: Why is it fair game to question conservatives' love or loyalty to children or to their fellow man, but beyond the pale to question liberals' love of country?

In fact, I think liberal defensiveness sometimes undermines their case. After all, if I angrily asked, "Are you saying I'm gay?" as often as liberals say, "Are you questioning my patriotism?" a lot of people would think I'm hiding something.

Jermaine, also a singer, told Reuters in an interview: "I do not agree with the U.S. government. What they are saying about Muslims and Arabs is all propaganda and brainwashing."

"As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better," says Abdul Haq, the social worker. "I know it's going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid - I pray for it, I look forward to the day."

"I understand their feelings but do not approve of their methods. Islam is a religion of peace. They are wrong," he said.

"I agree with you, brother," says Abu Yusuf, the earnest-looking financial adviser sitting opposite. "I would like to see the Mujahideen coming into London and killing thousands, whether with nuclear weapons or germ warfare. And if they need a safehouse, they can stay in mine - and if they need some fertiliser [for a bomb], I'll tell them where to get it."

"I don't think it is right for us to go to someone else's country and tell them what to do and how to do it," said Jermaine, who is a guest of the royal court in the pro-Western kingdom, which hosts the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.

According to Sayful, the aim of al-Muhajiroun ("the immigrants") is nothing less than Khilafah - "the worldwide domination of Islam". The way to achieve this, he says, is by Jihad, led by Bin Laden. "I support him 100 per cent."

Does that support extend to violent acts of terrorism in the UK?

"Yes," he replies, unequivocally. "When a bomb attack happens here, I won't be against it, even if it kills my own children. Islam is clear: Muslims living in lands that are occupied have the right to attack their invaders.

"Britain became a legitimate target when it sent troops to Iraq. But it is against Islam for me to engage personally in acts of terrorism in the UK because I live here. According to Islam, I have a covenant of security with the UK, as long as they allow us Muslims to live here in peace."

"I think Muslims have become the new Negroes in America. They are being mistreated at airports, by the Immigration -- everywhere," he said.

But Sayful and his friends laugh at the idea that they are local pariahs. "The mosques say one thing to the public, and something else to us. Let's just say that the face you see and the face we see are two different faces," says Abdul Haq. "Believe me," adds Musa, "behind closed doors, there are no moderate Muslims."

Anybody want to tell me that an evangelical Christian handing out tracts is more dangerous to society than this kind of bile? Guess which one the Left is fighting though.

School shooters tend to act impulsively and attack the targets of their rage: students and faculty. But Harris and Klebold planned for a year and dreamed much bigger. The school served as means to a grander end, to terrorize the entire nation by attacking a symbol of American life. Their slaughter was aimed at students and teachers, but it was not motivated by resentment of them in particular. Students and teachers were just convenient quarry, what Timothy McVeigh described as "collateral damage."

The killers, in fact, laughed at petty school shooters. They bragged about dwarfing the carnage of the Oklahoma City bombing and originally scheduled their bloody performance for its anniversary. Klebold boasted on video about inflicting "the most deaths in U.S. history." Columbine was intended not primarily as a shooting at all, but as a bombing on a massive scale. If they hadn't been so bad at wiring the timers, the propane bombs they set in the cafeteria would have wiped out 600 people. After those bombs went off, they planned to gun down fleeing survivors. An explosive third act would follow, when their cars, packed with still more bombs, would rip through still more crowds, presumably of survivors, rescue workers, and reporters. The climax would be captured on live television. It wasn't just "fame" they were after—Agent Fuselier bristles at that trivializing term—they were gunning for devastating infamy on the historical scale of an Attila the Hun. Their vision was to create a nightmare so devastating and apocalyptic that the entire world would shudder at their power.

Harris and Klebold would have been dismayed that Columbine was dubbed the "worst school shooting in American history." They set their sights on eclipsing the world's greatest mass murderers, but the media never saw past the choice of venue. The school setting drove analysis in precisely the wrong direction.

"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? Cuuuuuuuuhntryyyyyyyyyy music!!!

"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? People who use the same word over and over again! . . . Read a f---in book or two, increase your vo-cab-u-lary f*ck*ng idiots."

"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? STUPID PEOPLE!!! Why must so many people be so stupid!!? . . . YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? When people mispronounce words! and they dont even know it to, like acrosT, or eXspreso, pacific (specific), or 2 pAck. learn to speak correctly you morons.

It rages on for page after page and is repeated in his journal and in the videos he and Klebold made. But Fuselier recognized a far more revealing emotion bursting through, both fueling and overshadowing the hate. What the boy was really expressing was contempt.

He is disgusted with the morons around him. These are not the rantings of an angry young man, picked on by jocks until he's not going to take it anymore. These are the rantings of someone with a messianic-grade superiority complex, out to punish the entire human race for its appalling inferiority. It may look like hate, but "It's more about demeaning other people," says Hare.

Just read the "Fear of God" post. While I normally
simply appreciate your blogging very much, for the
past few days, it seems like either I'm channelling
you, or vice versa. Scary, I know. :)

Anyway, I'd been thinking about precisely this issue
lately, about exactly what it is these cretins don't
get, and it crystallized in my mind when I read the
passage in which you wrote your solution.

What they don't get is that for the majority of the
world, existence on Earth is a pretty crappy
experience from cradle to grave, and for a good
number of those people, existence on Earth is a
horriffic, shitty, really, really, REALLY
unconscionable version of Hell on Earth.

This is not exactly a stunning revelation, obviously.
The vast majority of humanity lived somewhere in
between these two states until 1850 at the earliest
(and that's being generous, time-frame-wise), and we
know this. Why this is important in regard to the
cretins is that they have their history all mixed up:
I have heard, first-hand, several people, most of whom
are friends of mine and who are not extremists, posit
the view that there were so many other, greater,
NON-WHITE civilizations from the past that
accomplished so many great and beautiful things, and
that our civilization is but a crude, cruel, inhuman,
conformist joke on humanity, where the rich prosper,
the poor are crushed, and the rest of us are drones.

What they don't get is that while Michelangelo was a
great sculptor and painter, THAT WASN'T THE MAJORITY
OF ITALY AT THE TIME. That while the Egyptians built
some of the most breathtaking structures, which are
rightly named wonders of the world, THEY WERE BUILT BY
SLAVES. That while the Greeks may have been more
ahead of their time intellectually than any other
civilization before or since, THAT WAS ONLY A FEW VERY
FORTUNATE GUYS. The vast majority of people who lived
during those ages, and during the great ages of China,
Babylon, Persia, Phoenicia, the Almohads, etc., were
either slaves, or one or two steps above, and that
life for them was pretty damn piss-poor.

They see only the greatness, and, combined with their
ideas of multi-culturalism, project the past onto the
present, and see America as this crude infant
stumbling blindly across the world and wrecking all
that is good, and replacing it with Wal-Marts and
McDonalds. Among these people are those who went to
Iraq (remember, this was once Mesopotamia!!) to become
human shields, and were stunned to learn that the
majority of Iraqis really, really wanted freedom more
than anything else.

What they don't get is that the Industrial Revolution
was vastly more important than the Rennaisance. What
they don't get is that Adam Smith's "The Wealth of
Nations" is the most important work in the history of
humankind (outside of the Bible, for me), and not
Joyce's "Ulysses". What they don't get is that the
Cotton Gin was a far more important discovery than oil
paints.

What they really don't get is that personal and
economic freedom are the same thing, and the it was
recognition of such that truly freed the decrepit, and
that, if that didn't happen, they, and we, would be
the decrepit of today. They see themselves as being
the spiritual descendants of the Michelangelos, the
Plutarchs, the Aristotles. Wrong. We're the
descendants of their slaves.

And, finally, it's much simpler than all this, really.
It's freedom OF, or freedom TO, not freedom from.

And if they really want to free people from hunger,
poverty, and oppression, they should stop reading Maya
Angelou, and start reading Adam Smith. The world
outside the West largely sucks. The pagodas should
not be destroyed, but building a few Wal-Marts along
side them would be far more helpful than corrupt
Oil-for-Food programs.

I know something of the history of this legislation. The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps.... [T]he Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers and to thereby reduce the unlawful homicides that were prevalent in turpentine and saw-mill camps and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population.... [I]t is a safe guess to assume that more than 80% of the white men living in the rural sections of Florida have violated this statute.... [T]here has never been, within my knowledge, any effort to enforce the provisions of this statute as to white people, because it has been generally conceded to be in contravention of the Constitution and non-enforceable if contested.[1]

By the way—did anyone else notice, on the Simpsons episode that aired last night (the one where Lisa becomes student body president and gets art and music and athletics cut from the school budget, in a parody of "Evita"), how studiously the animators softened their caricature of Moore for his self-voiced cameo? They slimmed him down by a hundred pounds or more, and gave him a clean shave. Yeah, the line he got was a gentle self-effacing poke at the dubiousness of his statistics, but damn they were flattering on the visuals.

Eton College is to become the first top public school in the country to appoint an imam to help pupils gain an understanding of Islamic culture and thought.

The school, which has taught 18 British prime ministers, is also to offer Arabic as a language for the first time from this September to increase better understanding of the Muslim world.

The appointment of Oxford graduate Monawar Hussain has already been supported by many who say it is a positive initiative on behalf of Eton and a sign that many traditional British institutions are changing.

United Nations (news - web sites) police in Kosovo are holding four Jordanian members of the force following a gunbattle with U.S. police in which two American women prison officers and a Jordanian male were killed.

"Four Jordanians were detained yesterday after the incident and they are in custody," U.N. Police Commissioner Stefan Feller told a news conference in the provincial capital, Pristina.

"We don't know the motive," he said in response to questions about a report that violent emotions over Iraq (news - web sites) was behind the clash. "I cannot say the reasons for the incident," Feller added, calling it a "reckless attack."

Whatever the cause, a lethal firefight is unprecedented between two of the 30 or so national contingents of the Kosovo U.N. law enforcement mission, which numbers some 3,500 officers.

“I have to say, this was a sad day for U.N. peacekeeping,” Feller said. But he said no changes to the mission were planned.

I don't think we need a script or a rehearsal, people - we all know our parts. Let's have the "he was kidding crowd" to our left, please, the "earnest but humorless" group to the right, and our topic is Sen. Kerry's recent quip to a group of 4 and 5 year olds:

Mr. Kerry obliged, but still seemed to have politics on the brain as he narrated the story of the magic wand — "Zoop!" — making things disappear.

"I could go zoop! and Republicans would disappear," he said.

Now, the crowd on the left has it easy - just keep yelling "he was kidding". "Don't we have more important issues to discuss" is also good. Counter-examples of bad Bush behavior are encouraged; lacking that, we are glumly aware of a certain tendency to drift towards personal invective as a substitute for actual argument, and we hope that can be minimized.

The group on the right - be sure to mention press bias. The Note admitted that Sen. Clinton got a pass on her Gandhi joke a while back, so see if anyone makes a similar admission here. Also, we expect you to hit on the probable response if Bush had said this - don't forget Ashcroft, the Patriot Act, stifling of dissent, the importance of our leaders promoting pluralism, etc. Let's see some emotion!

. . .

For a big finish, someone please make a connection to Kerry's "lying, crooked Republicans" comment, and address the question of whether Kerry really wants to be President of all the country, or just half of it.

But what perked up my ears was one of the anthropologist’s assertions that there is no difference between a two-parent / two-sex family and a two-parent / same-sex family. None. He said: Any preference for a traditional mom/dad family was based in a “superstition.” His word: “Superstition.” Because, you see, there was no evidence that two moms were different in any important way than a mom and a dad. Belief in werewolves, belief in the evil eye, belief in the walking undead or the superiority of a mom-dad household: superstition.

In his zeal for a brave new world, this fellow managed to insult and demean everyone. And I mean everyone. Moms? Any guy can do your job. Dads? Your son or daughter doesn’t need to grow up with a male role model in his or her daily life. It’s the sort of pernicious nonsense that thinks gender is an arbitrary social construct. It’s not enough, apparently, to say that gay couples can be great parents. You have to insist that heterosexual couples have no inherent advantages. It’s not enough to say that kids raised by gay couples can grow up well-adjusted. You have to deny the advantages of growing up in a family where the child is exposed to both male and female role models on a molecular level. It’s not enough to support the rights of a lesbian couple to bring life into this world; you have to stifle your own suspicions that having a dad in the house is better than not having one. Otherwise you’re one of those curious old things who lives in a world dominated by superstitions. Quaint, amusing superstitions.

This is what dismays me: no matter how much I may support gay rights, in the final analysis my belief that my daughter needs a dad brands me as a reactionary.