I'm Offended. Yup. Mighty Offended.

Surely the Secretary General will denounce this children's television program for being "offensively anti-American." What, no? Sorry, I forgot.

In the West, we are civilized, and held by the world to a high standard of morality and competence. Muslims, on the other hand, are like children, who must be protected and indulged until they can learn to behave like adults. Which might be never. Thus a cartoon excuses murderous rage, while murder of our people justifies nothing. Sorry. I forgot for a moment.

[How come Mr. Bush seems to be wearing boxing gloves? Is this some subtle message that's lost on infidels?]

Memri1
by luvnews

Forget About Answering That Call at 3:00 a.m.

You might want to consider whether Hillary or Obama can best perform this Presidential duty without embarrassing the United States:

Not likely.

We're confident that Hillary, uhmmm, err..., well, that despite her vast experience, she throws like a girl. But that's probably the consequence of her arm being injured by sniper fire, since in college she pitched for the . . . Well, you get the idea.

And Obama is surely more at home with a soccer ball: very transcendent, internationalist, post-post-somethingorother. And besides, Rev. Wright taught him that white folks only invented baseball so there'd be at least one sport they could play better than black folks.

Spring at the Center of the Empire

Lions and Tigers and Fitna . . . .

Oh My!

According to the BBC:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has strongly condemned a controversial film on Islam made by a Dutch politician, calling it "offensively anti-Islamic".

Several Muslim countries have also condemned the film, a 15-minute polemic by the far-right MP Geert Wilder, which was posted online on Thursday.

Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran and Bangladesh were among those to protest.

The film sets verses from the Koran against a background of violent images from terror attacks.

"I condemn, in the strongest terms, the airing of Geert Wilders' offensively anti-Islamic film," Mr Ban said in a statement.

"The right of free expression is not at stake here," he added. "Freedom must always be accompanied by social responsibility."

The EU's Slovenian presidency said the film served no purpose other than "inflaming hatred".

You will not be surprised to learn that the murderous savages whose murderous savagery was depicted in the film threatened . . . . well, more of same to employees of the website that first posted the film online. More HERE. In their world, the fact that they are offended is not merely important, it is the only matter of fact germane to "discussion" of the topic.

Fortunately, we don't live under the rule of Secretary's General, or Islamic Councils. That being the case, you ought perhaps to decide for yourself.

Fitna:



[update] If the emissaries of the Religion of Peace put the arm on YouTube, then Pat Dollard has posted the film, with this introductory commentary:

Bring it, you miserable pedophile-worshipping piglet pukes…we will NEVER bow to your bullshit yappity yapping.

A very rude fellow. He appears to be ignorant of the rules: it's OK to be an anti-Semite; it's OK to insult the Pope; it's OK to make fun of Christianity. But one may never criticize Muslims. I think it has something to do with their self-esteem. Whatever.

[update II] Several correspondents have observed that the above was produced by a stolid, sober Dutchman and, as a consequence, it is . . . well . . . not very upbeat. They remind us of this quintessentially American video, from a couple of years ago:

Blessed are the Meek

A retirement home.
For retired clergy.
Well, actually, for one retired clergyman.
Guess who.

Here in our Self-Help Section

Winner of this year's Bookseller award for the oddest book title, beating out worthy competetors like I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen and Cheese Problems Solved.

Things that . . . .

FAIL.

Is Barack Obama . . .

. . . a typical black person? We don't know. To even inquire in such terms is to put yourself so far beyond the pale that psychological counseling might be mentioned. Ask Larry Summers what happens if you suggest that that there might be traits, habits, beliefs, abilities, proclivities, or predilections more generally found in one sex, race, ethnic or religious group. It's just not done.

That being said, what then does it mean when we have it on no less an authority than Senator Obama his own self that his grandmother -- you know, the white one -- is a "typical white person?"

Obama typical white person
by dollarsandsense123

Is this going to turn out like one of those post-massacre television interviews? You know, where there's been a home invasion by a guy dressed in a Yogi Bear costume, who ties his victims to their kitchen table and bludgeons them to death with a picnic basket? And they interview his neighbors, who uniformly opine that he seemed like such a nice young man, always polite and helpful, and they had no idea he was actually a psychopath.

The Melon Song

Subprime Mortgage Meltdown

What's surprising about THIS PowerPoint slide show is that it's quite accurate.

Obama . . .

. . . is toast.

Metaculturality

From

to

Meta-hat tip to Professor Reynolds.

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510

Happy Pi day.

Pow!

A reader at NRO hits the bulls-eye:

What I would like to see, however, is a politician show up without his wife and say: (1) she wanted to stand here with me; (2) I am grateful for her support; but (3) I told her "no" - I'm the one who failed and I'm the one who should bear the public scorn.

But that would require that one of these knuckleheads was, emotionally, a grown man.

Working Girl Web Designs

No. Really. From Wired:

Internet-based prostitution businesses are easy to find online. They range in size from sole-proprietorships posting on Craigslist to large organized rings allegedly like the Emperors Club. In 2006, federal prosecutors took down a Manhattan-based e-escort service operating as "New York Elites" and "Exotica 2000" that had raked in $13.5 million in revenues in four years.

The industry is robust enough to have its own specialized support sector. The Emperors Club web site was crafted by an all-female web design firm with a Texas phone number called Working Girl Web Designs, which also offers hosting. Working Girl has an impressive resume, crafting the websites for businesses with names like companionescorts.com, YourLittleSecretNJ and VHotGirl.com. For operators in a hurry to get started, the firm offers six turn-key layouts, with templates like the spare "Noir Chic" design and the lush "Parisian."

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

An excellent clip of Denzel Washington as Malcolm X (wait for the end):

And then there's this (at about 3:05):

Before you get all bent out of shape, oh me little droogies, I've always rather admired Malcolm X. And, truth be told, I increasingly wonder if the best pure politicians of my generation, Billy & Hilly, have met their match in Obama, who may be the best pure politician of his. At least in the short run. And what's more important than that?

Time to Retire?

Jim Ogonowski wants to help John Kerry:

Spitzenfreude

John Derbyshire at NRO: "At this point people would normally be saying: 'You have to be a little bit sorry for the guy.' Yet so far I have not heard this, nor seen any sign that anybody does feel sorry for him. It's not just that nobody likes him now; nobody has ever liked him, that I can recall."

Kristen

Well, sure, but she's not 1K/hr cute. More HERE.

Zeus

. . . . for a new age. But we've seen art like that before.

Straight to Firearms

David Mamet explains, in The Village Voice, why he's no longer a "brain-dead liberal":

As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.

These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."

This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

[snip]

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.

Read the whole thing HERE.

Silda Wall Spitzer

The Associated Press speculates that Eliot Spitzer may have spent as much as $80,000 to buy the company and sexual favors of high school dropouts, while the New York Post opines that he may have been sleeping with hookers for as long as a decade. We found this November 10, 2006, profile of Silda Wall Spitzer, his wife of 19 years, in The New York Times, as then-Governor-elect Spitzer prepared to take office as the scourge of Wall Street:

By her own admission, she is an ambivalent political spouse, a high-powered woman in her own right who surrendered certain personal goals for the demands of public life. She was formerly a rising corporate lawyer, first at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and then as in-house counsel for Chase Manhattan Bank, and she makes no bones about the satisfaction she found in the work force.

But as her husband plunged headlong into the political life, she decided to devote herself to their three daughters (now ages 12, 14 and 16) and to starting a philanthropic foundation. In a recent interview, she declared, “It’s not necessarily the way I thought I would be spending my time.”

[snip]

Mr. Spitzer’s circle of close advisers is small, and his wife is among those he trusts most on political matters, friends and aides say. "I can’t imagine he would do anything significant — from appointments he would make to major decisions on policy issues — without full consultation with her," said Lloyd Constantine, a former prosecutor who was the chairman of the transition committee in 1998 as Mr. Spitzer prepared to take office as New York attorney general.

Mr. Spitzer makes no bones about his wife’s influence. "At the end of every day, there’s the inevitable recounting of what I was doing and where we’re heading on different issues," he said. "She pushes me to defend my views where we disagree. If I can’t convince her, I know my thinking needs work."

He cited Ms. Wall Spitzer’s "deeply held sense of ethics" and her intellect as forming the bedrock of her judgment. "I rely on her very much as someone to talk to in order to resolve a tough issue," he added. "What length of sentence to ask for, how severe a fine should be. They come down to questions of what is just and fair."

Article HERE. Silda Wall is of an age to be my younger sister. Were it so, I and a couple of buddies would -- by now -- be in lockup. But Eliot would have tubes up his nose.

No Need to Imagine

Heartwarming Philanthropy

Anonymous Philanthropist Donates 200 Human Kidneys To Hospital

About That Wee-Hours Phone Call

Goose Step, Anyone?

Do we really think that these young ladies are part of the Ukranian Army?

Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and . . .

. . . . John McCain?

Sheesh

We've been getting a fair amount of support for this idea.

I Have Seen the Future . . . .

. . . and it is not much fun. Peggy Noonan:

What the Democrats lost this week was the chance to paint the '08 campaign as a brilliant Napoleonic twinning of strategy and tactics that left history awed. What they have instead is a ticket to Verdun. Trench warfare, and the daily, wearying life of the soldier under siege. The mud, the cold, the dank water rotting the boots, all of it punctuated by mad cries of "Over the top," bayonets fixed.

[snip]

What do I think is the biggest reason Mrs. Clinton came back? She kept her own spirits up to the point of denial and worked it, hard, every day. She is hardy, resilient, tough. She is a train on a track, an Iron Horse. But we must not become carried away with generosity. The very qualities that impress us are the qualities that will make her a painful president. She does not care what you think, she will have what she wants, she will not do the feints, pivots and backoffs that presidents must. She is neither nimble nor agile, and she knows best. She will wear a great nation down.

New Scientology Video

Close enough.

New Poll

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

[Ed. ~ We realize that it's getting hard to distinguish the real clips from the joke clips. But, in our view, it doesn't make any difference.]

Finally, Something We Can Agree On

And Then Mrs. Clinton Shaved My Head

I Dream of Barack:

I was back in College. Barack was a professor. It was Thanksgiving weekend, and Barack was organizing an Orphan's Thanksgiving for all of us who had no where else to go. It became a really huge production. People were abandoning their plans with their families in order to go to Barack's house. I was put in charge of writing thank-you notes and baking the pies (I had explained to Barack how my family always made key lime pie for Thanksgiving). Over dinner, Barack described Illyrian architecture. When I woke, I wondered, Is there such a thing as Illyrian architecture?

It was very strange. Usually I just dream about my teeth falling out.

I Dream of Hillary:

Hillary was at my house, although it didn't look like anywhere I have actually lived. I had her rest on the couch, and her hair turned white like Bill's! I went off to look for my honeymoon photos to show her, and my husband was telling me where they were, except it wasn't my present husband -- it was the voice and body of my first husband. EWW.

Go surf for yourself. There's ever so much more.

If there is sufficient popular demand, we will initiate a web site to which you may submit your dreams of the Gentleman Farmer. Illustrated, if possible. Moving pictures will be accepted.

Mirabile Dictu!

Could it be? Do you suppose! The Holy Koran preserved by the hand of Allah from the death missiles of the Zionist Pigs?!!?

Not so much.

WTF?

Please tell me that THIS is a joke. PLEASE.

Because Inquiring Minds Want to Know

New Auto Security System Will Not Allow Car To Start If Driver Is Nick Nolte

Life of Barack

Senator Obama addresses his worshippers fans groupies posse peeps:

Credits HERE and HERE.

Not Swaying the Electorate One Way or the Other

Nope, no sir. Just giving you the latest news as it comes, with no tilt, explicit or otherwise. Yep, that's your NYT. Still, something strikes me as bizarre about this choice of photo to accompany the afternoon's campaign story, about the primary where Hillary is running against Jesus:

Because We Can

Unaccountably, we must credit Miss Eden, of all people.

Where in the world . . . .

Tampa. Sarasota. Sun City. Land of golf carts.

Is it possible that there is money to be made pimping out walkers? Chrome wheels, racing stripes, flames running up and down the frame?

I object to places that seem very much designed simply as way stations to oblivion. Convenient stopping places after child-rearing, but before hospice. I refer not only to those institutions where we have gathered together the very old; I think the places we've gathered together the middle-aged are considerably scarier.

That, in any event, explains the absence of posting. Howsomeever could the mind be persuaded to contemplate ideas when it is concerned with ordering lunch by the pool?

Just kill me now.