Quote of the Day

It isn't so much that people don't like the immigrants or don't think there's a place for them. It's just not that "Leave it to Beaver" era we grew up in.

—Gary Pence, a resident of Crete, Nebraska, in an article on anti-immigrant sentiment in Nebraska. Pence is quoted later in the article on the impact of Hispanic immigrants moving to Crete to work at Farmland, Inc., a meatpacking plant: "I honestly think the only hope for Crete is if Farmland closes up." So much for there being a "place for them", unless he meant a bus back to Mexico.

Afghanistan in Tatters

Much has been made in recent days over the uptick in violence in Afghanistan. To many, it looks like our one "success" story is going to hell in a handbasket just as our confirmed disaster in Iraq gets even worse with news of the Haditha massacre. Andrew Sullivan had a pessimistic post of this flavor yesterday. Unfortunately, this impression is too kind by half.

There has undeniably been more violence in Afghanistan, but the recent Kabul riots made headlines precisely because they happened in Kabul, where the television cameras and reporters are. One of the downsides of the highly centralized federal government we have helped set up in Kabul is that it has an extremely limited reach over the vast hinterland of Afghanistan, where many roads remain unpaved and warlords openly vie for power.

Violence has been the rule in post-war Afghanistan for some time now. By blossoming in Kabul, its only made its prime time debut. Violence has raged in the south of the country for months and more coalition troops have died in 2005 than in the previous two years combined.

This is likely to continue so long as the Afghan government remains isolated in the Pashtun stronghold of Kabul, unable or unwilling to venture further afield. There is grave doubt over whether Afghanistan possesses the infrastructure, let alone the will, to operate as a united nation. Unless these issues are addressed seriously, and soon, we may never get the chance to find out.

Heirborne Contagion

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, "Paris Hilton Plans Reggae, Hip Hop Album."

Millenialists, biblical numerologists and assorted whackjobs are looking to June 6, 2006 (6/6/06) with a mix of anticipation and trepidation, hoping for and/or fearing the End of the World. Well, they're not looking for the right kind of signs. Paris Hilton's forthcoming reggae/hip hop album is the clearest indication we've had yet that God's wrath is upon us. What's worse, the album is said to include a cover version of "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" by Rod Stewart (one of the Four Horsemen, by the way—the pale one). Adding insult to mortal (and quite possibly immortal) injury, "Hilton said she wrote the lyrics to seven of her songs." Seven songs…seven seals. Anybody?

According to the Yahoo/AP story, Hilton had to overcome "shyness" to be able to sing in front of people.

I have always had a voice and always known I could sing, but I was too shy to let it come out. I think that is the hardest thing you can do, to sing in front of people. When I finally let go and did it, I realized it is what I am most talented at and what I love to do the most.

There are a lot of words that come to mind when I think of Paris Hilton—some of them even beginning with the letter "s"—but "shy" isn't one of them. Maybe I was just thrown off by the reality TV series, bootleg porno, Vanity Fair photo spreads, ghost-written books, publicity tours, TV commercials, ostentatious public relationships, non-stop partying and assorted public scandals.

And in case you needed another reason to hate the music industry, her first single, "Stars Are Blind," (not to mention deaf and dumb) will be released this month by Warner Records. Note to Hollywood: Stop feeding Paris Hilton! Maybe she'll just go away.

For the rest of us—people who don't get everything we could ever want handed to us on a silver platter that's been dipped in gold and lined with diamonds that were mined in Eldorado by magic fairies—it's time to repent, for the day of judgment is upon us.

Freedom Rock, Part Deux

John Miller at the National Review has come out with another top-50 list of "conservative" rock songs. By all rights, it's not a sucky as his last list, but it still leaves plenty to be desired.

Miller defensively casts himself as a "New Critic," taking the lyrics out of the context of the band as a whole. It's the only way he can justify most of his choices, after all. If he were dead, Jello Biafra would be spinning in his grave at the inclusion of "Holiday in Cambodia" by the Dead Kennedys. Sure, the song is anti-Khmer Rouge (unlike the wellspring of support for Pol Pot in liberal circles, right?) and it definitely pokes its finger at wannabe hipster yuppie scum. Anyone who knows the Dead Kennedys, however, will know that Jello saw ass-kissing corporate ladder climbers as the ultimate conservatives.

Even from within the confines of the New Criticism, there's just no excuse for including "Give It Revolution" by the Suicidal Tendencies (yes, he did). Miller opportunistically quotes the following lines: "The greatest weapon of the fascist / Is the tolerance of the pacifist / We’ve got to stand up and fight it." Gosh, sounds just like Ronald Reagan. What he didn't quote was this:

The worst evil the world has saw
Were crimes defended by the "law"
Deny our rights and we'll break it
You got to break the chains that hold you down
Crush the tyrants to the ground

Any guess at who made that "law"? Any thoughts on who the "tyrants" might be? Suffice it to say, it's not the Carter administration. And John, the "fascists" aren't who you think, either. It really does stretch credulity to include an open call for revolution in the streets as a conservative song, what with the dim view conservatism takes of revolution in the streets. I need only to draw your attention to "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who, which made it to number one on the first list on the strength of it's counterrevolutionary message.

Of course, Miller takes his New Critical stand with Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks and company precisely because he knows he's on a bit of a bullshit mission. Only by divorcing these songs from their context—in most cases—can the case for "conservatism" be made. My challenge to Miller is this: Give us a list of the top 50 conservative rock and roll artists. See how far you get on that one.

Sweet Dreams for Dems

Robert Novak has a new column on the candidacy of Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, who is running for the Senate in Maryland. Steele's secret weapon? He's black.

If he wins the election, says Novak, "Steele will become the first black Republican elected to the Senate in 32 years. That is the Democrats' worst nightmare." With all due respect to Robert Novak, the Democrats' worst nightmare would be a repeal of the 22nd Amendment. A black Republican in the Senate rates somewhere below that.

Novak's reasoning takes the putatively Democratic line and reduces the black voter pool to a commodity—a commodity over which the Democratic Party has heretofore had a "hammerlock." For Novak, what matters is that this hammerlock be broken. He's apparently uninterested in the prospect of increasing the black Republican membership in the Senate from its current level of zero to an embarrassing one for any reason other than it might piss off the Democrats. He strikes no note of concern over the lack of diversity in his party, nor does he wax philosophical about the possibilities of a racial glasnost in the GOP. All that matters is harnessing the unthinking beast of Maryland's black vote for the Republicans.

Now, a genuine commitment on the part of the Republican Party to be inclusive of racial and cultural minorities (that means gay people, Novak—boo!) would truly be a nightmare for the Democrats. Last I checked, Pelosi and her friends were sleeping like babies.

50% Chance of Snow

John Snow has resigned as treasury secretary. It's not because of the economy or the budget deficit or anything like that. My inside source at the White House says that since Tony Snow got the press secretary job, President Bush has been having a hell of a time keeping things straight during cabinet meetings.

Now, if only there were a rule about people with the same surname occupying the Oval Office...

Turning the Other Cheek for Liberty

A man from Toledo ironically named Art Bollinger has created a statue exposing (if you will) his neighbors and, thanks to Drudge, the rest of the world, to his views on illegal immigration.

Bollinger's statue, which stands in his front yard, is a mock-up of that great enduring symbols of American freedom, the Statue of Liberty, with her skirts hoisted to reveal her underwear-clad ass. She is surrounded by a sea of American flags and a banner emblazoned with the motto "Kiss My American Ass", no doubt taken from a lesser known verse of Emma Lazarus' famous poem:

Give me your tired, your poor,
So I can ship this wretched refuse
back to its own damned teeming shore.
Kiss my American ass and bugger off!

I must tip my hat to Mr. Bollinger for his literary detective skills, because this obscure verse hasn't seen the light of day since it was used, in edited form, in Ronald Reagan's proclamation canceling federal funding for mental health facilities in the early 1980s.

Bollinger's artistic statement tells us a lot about his views on illegal immigration (he opposes it), but it lifts the skirts on his apparently rich fantasy life as well. Lady Liberty is vividly depicted wearing an un-Ladylike pair of black thong panties, although he did not replace her sandals with 5-inch stiletto heels.

So, whence and wherefore Bollinger's animus?

Bollinger says his wife is from Russia and he had to jump through all kinds of hoops and pay for the process of her becoming a US citizen. He feels everyone else should do the same.

"She didn't look half as good as she did in the catalog, either," he continued. God Bless America, from sea to fortified sea!

What a Difference a Year Makes

Headline from May 31, 2005: Iraq insurgency in 'last throes,' Cheney says.

Headline from May 30, 2006: Wave of bombings kills 40 in Iraq.

If things keep improving at this rate, we're in big trouble. Can you even imagine the carnage we'd be seing if this mission hadn't been accomplished back in May, 2003?

In Defense of Minutiae

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a certain dubious advertisement that was running on a certain right-wing blog. A couple of days later, in response to the wailing and gnashing of teeth my post inspired, I wrote another article about another ad, this time on a left-wing site. More displeasure abounded. Here are a few typical comments I got:

Stick to the serious issues, please.

Dude, it's an ad.... I find it interesting that the discussion is all about an ad on a popular liberal blog and not about the blog itself.

Instead of debating them on the numerous issues on which you disagree, you go after them for an ad that appears on their site.

All of this got me thinking about my responsibility as a blogger. My conclusion: I don't really have much. I would never write something I knew to be false (outside of the realm of satire, of course) and I try to be reasonable (when possible), but I don't feel compelled to live up to anything beyond that. It's not like I'm writing for CBS, wait, no, ABC...um, FOX? Well, let's pretend there's a reputable news organization out there. I don't have the same responsibility to the "big picture" as they do.

Let's not forget that the title of this blog is (parenthetical remarks), which implies that I won't be tackling the "big" issues all the time. Sometimes, it's important to get out the microscope and focus on the minutiae. As long as I'm not deliberately misrepresenting facts, I have no special obligation to write the definitive word on any subject. Sometimes it's worthwhile to break things down and look at all the moving parts.

In the mid-90s, I started reading a fanzine called Beer Frame, written by Brooklynite Paul Lukas. I'm not sure if it's still around in print form, but there is a website where you can read some of his work and order back issues. Lukas' particular (and peculiar) obsession is product-packaging design. His magazine was filled with product reviews ranging from strange food items to sturdy industrial garlic presses. He also reviewed CDs. More often than not, his music reviews would focus entirely on the CD packaging or some other ancillary aspect of the product. Sometimes he wouldn't even mention the music at all.

Now, would I rely entirely on a Beer Frame review to decide if I wanted to buy a record? Of course not, but that doesn't take away from the value of what he wrote. His magazine was a celebration of the inconsequential and minute, and it was tremendously fun to read. I hope the same can be said of this blog (on occasion, at least), whether I'm railing against the Bush administration or just picking a nit or two.

Richard Carlson made a career out of telling us not to sweat the small stuff. I always thought that guy was a jerk.

Making History*

Congratulations* to Barry Bonds* for hitting* home run number 715*, passing* Babe Ruth and making him second* on the all-time home run list*. What a banner day* for the sport of baseball!

Ice Cube Melts

Nothing says "Yo! I'm a hard-ass gangsta!" quite like whining about how you can't score a guest appearance on Oprah.

Holla!

Bozell Makes Sense For a Change

L. Brent Bozell III, founder of the right-wing media watchdog Parents Television Council, has written a new article called "Too Much TV for Tots?"

In it, he details a new study that shows that a ridiculously large number of kids age 6 months to 6 years spend tons of time unsupervised in front of the TV. When I started reading, my first thought was, "uh-oh, this is where Bozell says all television must now be suitable 6-month-olds!" I was pleasantly surprised to find out I was wrong:

Regardless of what self-interested TV titans tell parents, there is no V-chip or any other artificial, technological solution to keep your children's television intake safe and reasonable. The solution is human, not technological. It's parental engagement.

That's exactly right! It's just too bad that Bozell doesn't apply this undeniable logic across the board when he goes off trying to get my favorite shows cancelled. Parents are responsible for their kids. Just because there are tons of bad parents out there shouldn't mean the kind of reprehensible crap I like to watch should be bullied off the air. I'm thinking of forming the Television-Watchers Parents Council, which would be a watchdog group dedicated to making sure lazy parents don't foul things up for the rest of us.

Animusic

Here's one of the coolest things I've seen on the Internet in a while (other than my own blog, that is). Amazing animation. Be warned, however, that this is a video clip which may crash an older or less agile computer.

House Backs 'Net Neutrality'

Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill that upholds the principle of Net Neutrality.

What this means is high speed Internet providers will not be allowed to charge companies like Google and Yahoo a premium to get their content to move in a digital fast lane while the Web's minor players, like this humble blog, would be left to languish in a no-frills slow lane. This law would use federal antitrust laws to prevent the ISPs from abusing their dominant market power.

The bill passed 20-13 along vaguely bipartisan lines, although only 6 of 22 Republicans voted in favor. Still, it's a good first step.

The Right Wing Rocks Out

Forget spandex and studded leather cuffs, this is Brooks Brothers rock!

The National Review has compiled a list of the top 50 conservative rock songs. In true conservative fashion, it's not available on their website as they'd rather you pony up the dough to buy a print copy of the magazine. The whole list plus capsule explanations has been reprinted on the New York Times website, which only asks for a free registration so they can track your every move like the NSA.

So what's a conservative rock song, exactly? John Miller explains:

The lyrics must convey a conservative idea or sentiment, such as skepticism of government or support for traditional values. And, to be sure, it must be a great rock song.

As far as I'm concerned, they stumbled right out of the gate. Since when is skepticism of government a conservative value alone? Does that make people who think the Bush administration knew about 9/11 conservatives?

Anyway, on to the list. There are a number of songs that are justifiably included here, including several anti-abortion numbers like "Brick," by Ben Folds Five and "The Icicle Melts," by the Cranberries. Apart from these types of songs, the reasoning gets a bit more tenuous. They included "Taxman, Mr. Thief," by Cheap Trick (number 45) and "Taxman," by the Beatles (number 2) for obvious reasons. But is it really conservative to not want to pay taxes? Nobody wants to pay taxes. The only difference is that liberals want other people to pay taxes.

A huge number of songs on the list made it simply because they express anti-Communist ideas. They include "Sympathy for the Devil" (Satan inspired Bolshevism), "Right Here, Right Now," by Jesus Jones, "Heroes," by David Bowie, "Der Kommissar," by After the Fire (really) and "Wind of Change," by the Scorpions (scandalously left to languish at number 46) amongst others. They even included that notoriously right-wing band Creedence Clearwater Revival for "Who'll Stop the Rain," thanks to a passing reference to 5-year plans and the New Deal. As much as the National Review would like to rewrite history, however, they can't erase the fact that huge numbers of liberals opposed Communism, particularly as expressed in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. Being pro-Communist may well be a left-wing position, but being anti-Communist is by no means an exclusively right-wing ideal.

The number one spot is claimed by the Who for "Won't Get Fooled Again," which deflates the nitrous oxide bubble of hippy idealism. Considering the fact that Townshend and Company have an equally dim view of the alternative, it's not quite fair to call the song conservative. Anti-hippy? Sure, but more nihilistic than conservative. Maybe they were drawn to it because of this line: "I get on my knees and pray." The number 7 slot goes to "Revolution," by the Beatles, both for its anti-Mao sentiment and for its criticism of the 1968 youth protest movements. It beggars belief that the whip smart fellows over at National Review would accuse the author of "Imagine" of being a conservative.

As with any top-whatever list, there are questionable inclusions and glaring omissions. The most noticeable of the former is "Godzilla," by Blue Oyster Cult, which made the list on the strength of the line, "History shows again and again / How nature points up the folly of men." And how does history do this? By unleashing a giant, angry (and no doubt conservative) lizard to destroy Tokyo. Come to think of it, "Godzilla" could just as easily be about global warming. Somebody tell Drudge.

I'm sure there are scores of songs that could easily have made the list, based on the magazine's criteria. There's certainly no excuse for shutting out Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach." She is, after all, keeping the baby. And as far as defending traditional values, why did they omit "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniels Band? It's about a kid who defeats the Devil—with a fiddle! Values don't get much more traditional than that.

There's no Ted Nugent on the list, which is quite surprising, since shooting critters (and hunting buddies) appears to be a conservative value. There's also nothing by extreme right-winger Gary Numan. He's got a bunch of paranoid songs about the government that are more conservative than, say, anything by the Clash ("Rock the Casbah" checks in at number 20).

The number one omission, according to the criteria for this list, would have to be "Who Needs the Peace Corps?," by Frank Zappa. Released in 1967, at the height of the flower-power summer of love nonsense, this song is a scathing indictment of all things hippy, making "Won't Get Fooled Again" look tepid in comparison. Of course the song's not actually conservative, per se, but neither are most of the tracks on this list. But hey, however the National Review guys want to rationalize their record collections—and there appears to be an alarming amount of Rush in there—is fine by me. Rock on, my right-wing brothers!

Update: I reposted this story over at Blogcritics.org and one commenter took it upon himself to list the Top 25 Movies a la National Review. Sample:

The Wizard of Oz: Plucky red-state ingenue learns that "big government" doesn't have all the answers.

Brilliant. Click on over and check out comment number 6.

Quote of the Day

I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner, you know.

—George Bush failing to apply the lesson he says he learned from the Iraq war. On the plus side, now that Bush and Blair have come clean, the President won't be stumped the next time a reporter asks him what mistakes he's made. Maybe.

Galloway's Dangerous Mind

George Galloway, Britain's outspoken anti-war parliamentarian, has proclaimed that a suicide bomber would be morally justified in blowing up Prime Minister Tony Blair. In an interview for GQ, Galloway said such an attack "...would be entirely logical and explicable. And morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq."

Despite the fact that nearly every public statement he makes argues vigorously to the contrary, I'll take what Galloway says seriously. In doing so, I quickly arrive at the conclusion that his reasoning is spectacularly flawed.

First, on the most basic level, it presupposes that murder for the purposes of revenge is itself "moral", a supposition that is disputed by the laws of nearly every state on the face of the earth. His position further requires that suicide bombing, specifically, be considered an acceptable form of revenge.

Second, his argument rests on the notion that Blair deliberately targeted innocent people for death (i.e., the sole purpose of the action was to kill innocent people) instead of ordering military actions that resulted in civilian casualties. Even if one goes so far as to agree with the morality of revenge killing, there could be no other moral justification for using a deliberate act of terrorism except to counter another deliberate act of terrorism. That said, Galloway often refers to the Iraq War as an "illegal war" because it violates the Geneva Conventions. Those same Geneva Conventions expressly forbid acts of "terrorism". You can't have your crumpet and eat it, too. If the war is immoral because of the "terrorist" tactics of the coalition members, how could it possibly be moral to use those same tactics? One could conceivably argue that it would be smart, but certainly never moral.

Third, his justification for the immolation of the Prime Minister is entirely divorced from the effect such a drastic action is likely to have. An act of murder can be moral if it is committed in self-defense. The philosophical basis for this reasoning is that the act of killing the perpetrator protects the victim or intended future victims from harm. Such a thing could never happen in this case. If Tony Blair runs afoul of a few ounces of C-4, the war in Iraq won't stop. The interim administration would most certainly maintain Britain's involvement in the war. Furthermore, the atrocity of assassinating the Prime Minister would likely lead to Britain taking a harder line on the war in Iraq rather than a softer one. There is every reason to believe that the assassination of Blair at the hands of a suicide bomber would actually result in more Iraqi deaths in the long run, not fewer. All other considerations aside, for this reason alone, such an act would be immoral.

George Galloway is not only a moral midget; he's also a fantastic hypocrite. His association with, and admiration for, Saddam Hussein is well documented. Does Galloway also maintain that his Baathist friend deserves assassination? Certainly all of the qualities he attributes to Blair are present in Saddam in abundant quantities. No matter. Galloway is also close with Fidel Castro, whom he called a "lion" in the midst of political "monkeys" only yesterday, before sharing a misty-eyed embrace with El Hefe.

Apparently abysmal human rights records and hands drenched with the blood of innocents only matter when the guilty party is one of Galloway's political enemies. Otherwise, it's just another day spent curled up at the master's feet.

Update: Andrew Sullivan has nominated Galloway for a richly-deserved Michael Moore Award, given for "divisive, bitter and intemperate anti-war rhetoric."

Paper Sorry for Running Taheri Scoop

The National Post has now apologized for running the story on Iran's plans to force Jews and other non-Muslims to wear Holocaust-style badges displaying their religious affiliation.

The AP obtained a copy of the bill in question and confirmed that it had no such stipulations (the law was aimed at discouraging women from wearing Western clothing). Iranian expatriate Amir Taheri, the source of the original story, says he was misquoted by the NP and claims that religious identity badges have been under discussion for some years in Iran. The NP admitted what was obvious to any discerning reader upon the first reading: "we did not exercise sufficient caution and skepticism, and we did not check with enough sources."

Sounds like a good blog, actually.

This episode serves several useful purposes. First, it reminds one that there's a tremendous distance between the "capability" of doing a horrible thing and actually doing it. Second, and this always bears repeating, the Nazis set the bar for evil really, really high. You can be less evil than the Nazis and still be pretty damned awful.

Madonna and the Wrath of Jesus

Madonna has gone on the record defending her mock crucifixion, which is part of the stage show on her new world tour. "I don't think Jesus would be mad at me," the diva said.

And she's probably right about that. Jesus (as a Christian and a Jew) would be much too angry about her introducing so many people to her quasi-spiritual brand of Kabbalah to worry about her imitation of a high school art project.

On a Related Note: Christian officials in the ever-so-tolerant "West", where blasphemy is a-ok, are less than pleased with Madonna's antics. The Church of England released a statement condemning her for promoting herself "by offending so many people".

A spokesman for the Evangelical Alliance, a British religious organization that claims to speak for 1.2 million Christians, accused Madge of "blatant insensitivity" and called her use of imagery "an abuse" and "dangerous". He called for her to drop the act from her show and called on people to "find their own means of expressing their disapproval".

It turns out—surprise, surprise—that blasphemy against Islam is what's ok. Muslims who get upset over a few cartoons are anti-enlightenment troglodytes. Christians who get upset over a pop concert, however, are just defending their faith. Yay.

The System Works

I have renewed faith in America today for two reasons. First, former Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling have been found guilty of being liars, cheaters and life-destroyers. Lay on all 6 charges against him, and Skilling on 19 of 28 counts. This won't get all those pensions back to the Enron employees who got screwed, but at least these people can rest easy knowing that Lay and Skilling will spend their retirements in a federal lockup.

More importantly, however, for the psyche of a bruised nation, Taylor Hicks won American Idol instead of that crappy(-er), fake(-er) Catherine. Maybe voting is worthwhile after all. Too bad he has to sing that song as his first single.

Digging Up the Great American Mystery

It's kind of cool that the Feds might have actually found the body of Teamster chief Jimmy Hoffa, who has been missing since 1975. Folks in New Jersey will be happy if he turns up at a Michigan horse farm since it would mean that he's not buried, as urban legend has it, somewhere beneath Giants Stadium.

That said, there's something disquieting about finding Hoffa as well. We just learned the identity of Deep Throat, and now investigators appear to be on the verge of solving another great American mystery. We're in real danger of losing our collective mystique. Maybe next month they'll find Amelia Earhart's crash site or Al Capone's other vault (the one with actual stuff inside).

So many of the remaining mysteries are simply fodder for conspiracy theorists. What's at Area 51? What really happened in Roswell? Who shot JFK? Did Americans really walk on the moon? The answers to these questions, if we ever find out definitively, are destined to be a letdown for the grassy knoll/missing time crowd. (For what it's worth, the answers are: Not as much as you might have heard. Nothing having to do with aliens. Lee Harvey Oswald. Yes.)

There is a silver lining, however. Despite all our best attempts, there are certain quintessential American mysteries that will never, ever be solved. And I'm not talking about quotidian puzzlers like "point to your home state on a map", I'm talking about the big picture. For instance, why is it that a country of 300 million people can't ever find even two decent people to run for president? You won't find the answer to that on a Michigan horse farm.

Update: Nope. Not a darn thing. Sorry, New Jersey.

Smoke...and Mirrors

I saw a Reuters story last night with this arresting headline: 'Sleeper effect' of cigarettes can last for years. Sounds pretty scary, and it is:

Scientists have discovered that a single cigarette has a "sleeper effect" that can increase a person's vulnerability for three years or more to becoming a regular smoker (emphasis added).

The scientists don't know for sure why a single cigarette can have such an effect, but they hypothesized that "exposure to nicotine could change pathways in the brain which could make children more vulnerable to stress or depression, which can make them more likely to try it again."

All cause for alarm, surely, until you take a closer look at the study itself. The scientists looked at over 2,000 kids between 11 and 16 over a five-year period. Here's what they found:

Of the 260 children who by age 11 had tried one cigarette, 18 percent were regular smokers by the time they reached 14. But only seven percent of 11-year-olds who had never smoked had taken up the habit three years later.

The Reuters write-up says nothing about the scientific evidence for changing pathways in the brain or a physiological predilection to nicotine addiction for kids who have smoked one cigarette. What these scientists discovered, after all is said and done, is that kids who dabble with smoking at a very young age are more likely to become regular smokers than kids who did not dabble. No kidding. How is this even news? What's next for Reuters? "Study Shows One Day Lasts 24 Hours"?

There are a number of reasons why 11-year-olds sneaking a smoke behind the woodshed are more likely to become smokers than kids who don't exhibit this kind of behavior, and they don't have anything to do with brain chemistry. Perhaps the tiny tokers think that smoking is cool while the diminutive do-gooders do not. Maybe the puny puffers have access to smokes while the pristine pre-teens don't. Could it be that the leather-faced lads are just humongous idiots?

The Reuters story makes no mention of any attempt by the scientists to examine the socio-cultural or attitudinal differences between the tobacco tots and smoke-free set. One would think that these issues would loom large in any such study. Thanks to the super-compartmentalization of the academic world, the science science folks and the social science folks probably never cross paths, and Occam's Razor is just left out to rust. So, this is either a case of stupid science or, if Reuters just didn't mention the social science aspect, stupid journalism—quite possibly both.

BBC Caught in a 'Net, Again

There's an excellent article on the BBC News website about the danger posed by plans for a two-tiered Internet—with faster service reserved for websites and online services that pay a royalty. I was glad to read it because I'm fully behind efforts to keep the Internet free and fair, and I'm a supporter of the net neutrality movement.

That said, there is a serious and glaring error in this otherwise well-done piece. The article refers to a speech given by the "inventor" of the Internet, but the BBC erroneously and consistently identifies said inventor as Sir Tim Berners-Lee rather than Al Gore.

First the cabbie flap and now this. The BBC should really consider replacing their Internet beat reporters.

The 'Da Vinci' Overreaction

Christians of the conservative bent have been going apeshit—or ripshit, or batshit crazy, or whatever other crappy metaphor you care to use—over The Da Vinci Code, and the howls of outrage have reached a new decibel thanks to the release of the film version.

Things in India have gotten out of hand. The Mumbai Catholic Council wants the movie banned, and the Catholic Social Forum has announced a "death fast" if showings go on as planned. One Catholic offered a $25,000 reward for the murder of Dan Brown. Read that sentence again.

The Da Vinci Code contends that certain paleo-conservative factions within the Catholic Church engage in assassinations and other devilish plots, a suggestion that offends the sensibilities of some Catholics. So, what better way to prove that the Catholic church has no truck with murderers and criminals than to lay a Rushdie-style fatwa on Dan Brown, right?

The Indian book-burning contingent is all in a lather, condemning the "sheer blasphemy" of The Da Vinci Code and arguing that because it has "deeply upset Christian sentiments", it should therefore be banned. Archbishop Stanislaus Fernandes, secretary general of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, said it "belittles what is at the heart of Christian faith and cherished in Christian life." The Bishops' Conference released a statement saying that "every individual has a right to his religious beliefs and to enjoy the respect to them from the followers of other religions."

For those of you with better than average memories, this might spark a few flashes of recognition. During the Mohammad cartoon crisis, these exact sentiments were used to prove that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with freedom, peace and the West. Hey, guess what? All fundamentalist expressions of religion are incompatible with freedom, peace and the West. Every last one of them.

A note to the book-burners and death-threateners: It's a work of fiction. It's a deeply stupid work of fiction. How fragile is your faith? You need everything to be precision aligned by an ASE-certified mechanic just for your religion to work. Any anomaly, any diversion from the perfect totalitarianism of your inerrant fundamentalism threatens to destroy everything you believe in. Doesn't this tell you anything at all? You guys spend an inordinate amount of time looking for signs from God (horsemen, locust plagues, images of the Virgin Mary in rust stains under highway overpasses, etc.)—well, here's a giant one flashing in your faces. Repent! Repent before it's too late!

Plaudits to Andrew Sullivan for calling a spade a spade.

Material Girl Pisses Off Spiritual Boys

There's a great unintentionally funny headline on Drudge Report right now: CHURCH SLAMS POP STAR ON THE CROSS... Wow! You would think what with the significance of crucifixion to Christianity, the church wouldn't actually engage in the practice themselves. No word on whether they actually went as far as to nail the pop star up there (a turn of phrase that could result in its own hilarious misunderstanding).

The story actually refers to Madonna, who opens one song on her new tour attached to a giant, disco-ball-esque mirrored cross (I originally typed that last word as "crass"—how appropriate). She's classy, yet deep. Maybe all that Kabbalah water she's been drinking has really opened her mind to subtlety in her use of images. Color the boys over at the Vatican unimpressed.

I say, forget about this blasphemy nonsense. The real outrage is that tickets for Madonna's I'm Old But I'm Still Gonna Wear This Leotard World Tour go for as much as $350. I wasn't surprised to learn that the opening night audience included "Kabbalah guru Rabbi Yehuda Berg, socialite Nicole Richie, and gay icon Rosie O'Donnell." Who else can afford to go?

'Frozen Assets' Haunt Dems

Thanks to the likes of Tom DeLay, Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Jack Abramoff, the Democrats have been having a field day portraying the Republican Party as the party of corruption on Capitol Hill. Now we'll see if they have a walk to match the talk.

It is apparent that Democratic Congressman William J. Jefferson of Louisiana has been caught blue-handed, putting his money where his pork chops are. Federal agents searching Jefferson's home found $90,000 in cold cash—literally—stuffed in his freezer. The money is alleged to be the proceeds from a kickback scheme involving telephone and Internet contracts in Nigeria and Ghana.

If the Democrats want to maintain the moral high ground on the corruption issue—which they still have by a lot—they can't make excuses for one of their own. Either they're against corruption or they're not. Now's the time to make that stand.

Iraq: A Many-Sided Problem

The Bush administration has long favored rhetoric that points to "turning the corner" or reaching a "turning point" in the battle for Iraq. The 2004 transfer of sovereignty was a "turning point", according to Bush. As was the January 2005 election. Now, Bush says that the swearing in of the new Iraqi government is "a watershed event" and "a turning in the struggle between freedom and terror."

Just how many sides does this problem have, exactly? How many corners are there yet to turn? The digon of Bush's dreams is fast turning into an enneacontagon—or worse, chiliagon—of his worst nightmares.

Pack enough sides in there and we're basically going around in a circle. Who's to blame for all this? The Pentagon.

The Lie of Progress in Iraq

The right-wing press is full of soft-focus stories of the "things are looking up in Iraq and boy, if only the mainstream media would cover it, maybe Bush's approval numbers wouldn't be so low" variety.

These stories are lies. I have proof. It's not the daily bombings and massacres; it's not the sectarian feuds or even the threat from Iran—it's something much more insidious.

According to ABC News, one of the most popular recording artists in Iraq is Lionel Richie. Yes, my heart sank when I heard it, too. Apparently this story was the subject of an episode of Nightline that I didn't watch (who watches Nightline, anyway?) from Friday. What could be more dangerous to a fragile society than repeatedly having to hear "Dancing on the Ceiling"? Even one viewing of that video is enough to spark a spate of kidnappings and a mosque bombing or two.

Unfortunately, it doesn't stop with Iraq. The article notes that Richie has performed all over the Arab world, including Morocco (site of numerous recent terror bombings) and Libya (I don't even have to tell you). When reached for comment, Richie said, "I'm huge, huge in the Arab world. The answer as to why is, I don't have the slightest idea."

Well, the answer is obvious. Much of the Arab world is hooked on rage and violence. No doubt the jihadists, like hockey players getting psyched up for a game by listening to Metallica, listen to "Say You, Say Me" to whip themselves up into the homicidal frenzy necessary to immolate themselves at a checkpoint or a resort hotel frequented by Jewish tourists.

We should help the Iraqis form a government and rebuild their infrastructure, yes, but perhaps the best thing we can do is send them a boatload of pre-programmed iPods. Lionel is bad enough. If they ever discover Nicole, we're all doomed.

Badges of Dishonor

As I reported in this space on Friday, the story about Iranian plans to make non-Muslims wear identifying badges such as those Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust was fabricated.

Andrew Sullivan confirms this today and names the source of the lie as Amir Taheri, editor of a state-run newspaper from the days of the Shah. The National Post article that broke the 'story' named its sources as multiple "Iranian expatriates living in Canada", implying that Taheri may have been working in concert with other expat regime opponents.

Sullivan takes this as a cautionary tale:

After the Iraq WMD debacle, we need to treat all intelligence from interested parties in the Middle East with a great deal of skepticism.

It should go without saying that this principle extends far beyond the Middle East. Disinterestedness is essential to believable journalism. We took the Iran story with a grain of salt for the same reason we should be wary of news tips that come from the Cuban exile community or any other group with a vested interest in what is portrayed as the truth.

Sullivan writes that the "underlying fact of Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitic extremism is true." This, of course, only makes what Taheri did worse. Fouling up this story (deliberately or not), especially with its overt Holocaust aspect, gives Ahmadinejad and his government an out. When stories of bigotry and outrageous behavior are invented, it lends deniability to the ones that are true. Sullivan holds out hope that Taheri may have been the victim of a "garbled misunderstanding". As unlikely as that may be, there's no excuse for the National Post running with such a tenuously sourced article.

Opponents of the Iranian regime, both in and out of Iran, should be vocal and active. They shouldn't shoot themselves in the collective foot by spreading disinformation, however. When the current Iranian administration is involved, the truth is bad enough.

Drudge Ado About Nothing

Matt Drudge is giving a lot of play to the non-story of how students at Beverly Hills High are getting to see Al Gore's new global warming movie. For free!! (What a travesty!) I suppose he'd be all bent out of shape if they got a free screening of Gandhi, too?

Drudge's own a-scientific bias on the subject is all over this story. In his headline he puts "global warming" in scare quotes just in case you might be laboring under the mistaken notion that it's something other than a fraudulent scare tactic dreamed up by the DNC. He also uses the tried and true "FOX News Special^TM" to smear a science teacher named Sarah Utley (whose photo and bio he links to in case you want to send her Neanderthal hate mail). "Insiders claim that Utley has annoyed some students with her instance [sic] that 'global warming' is a proven science."

Gosh, Matt, who are these "insiders"? You have special sources at Beverly Hills High, or is it the same dork who probably sent you the email announcement in the first place?

Drudge also tries to have his pseudo-science cake and eat it, too, when he complains that "students will be boarding 30 gas-guzzling buses" to go see the film. If he doesn't believe in global warming and in humankind's influence on the global climate, then what is he doing complaining about gas-guzzling busses? All the better and who gives a damn, right? If he's trying to point out some supposed hypocrisy, it's quite obvious that 30 busses would do less environmental harm than the 1,500 cars it would take to get people there individually.

But hey, what are facts to a man like Drudge? He would bend over backwards to "prove" today's not Friday if he thought it might help his right-wing friends.

Iran 'Holocaust' Story May Be False

Canada's National Post ran a story today claiming that the Iranian parliament had passed a law requiring non-Muslims to wear badges or specially-colored clothing to indicate their heathen status. It's been picked up by Drudge, and Andrew Sullivan just posted about the story, too. Here's what he says:

I can remember when many people ridiculed the idea that Islamic dictatorships, like Iran's, should be described as fascist. I think the ridicule should be officially over now.

I read the story and was horrified. Talk about shades of Nazi Germany. When I looked more closely, however, something was troubling. The only sources quoted by National Post are "Iranian expatriates living in Canada". That's odd, considering the amount of press attention focused on Tehran.

I did a little more digging and found a post on Israpundit that suggests the story might be fabricated. That post links to an article on another Canadian site that quotes Meir Javedanfar, a Tehran-born Israeli Middle East expert, as saying the story is "absolutely factually incorrect."

Knowing what we do about Iran's current political rulers, the story is entirely plausible. As to whether it's actually true, we'll just have to watch and wait.

Update: If the story is false, it may point to an effort by expats to undermine the Iranian government, which is probably a good thing. But, why make up a story when the truth is bad enough? The jury's out on this one.

Sunny D-struction

Sunny D, the artist formerly known as Sunny Delight, had a bit of a mishap in Somerset, England. 8,000 liters (I think that's something like 10,000,000 gallons, but don't trust me—Americans don't do metric) of "sub-standard" concentrate was accidentally spilled into a river, turning it bright yellow and killing dozens of fish.

Progress is always being made in the scientific fields. Today, they learned that great taste, Vitamin B1 and a full day's supply of Vitamin C isn't so good for our aquatic friends. Let's just be glad it wasn't Sunny D's Intense Sport Cool Punch. The blood-red river would certainly have sparked some interest among apocalyptic types, and the added electrolytes would probably have set the river on fire.

This probably won't help sales much, either. What mother wants to send her kids to school with a proven fish-killer in their lunchboxes? Apart from Andrea Yates, that is.

Pot Calls Kettle Crazy

In a speech in central Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called opponents of the country's nuclear aims crazy.

Those who get sad at the progress and happiness of others are suffering from mental and psychological problems, so they should find a way to cure themselves.

Ahmadinejad accusing others of mental illness is like Nicole Richie telling someone to eat a sandwich.

In other news, Iran has severely limited access to its "peaceful" nuclear program sites. That's encouraging.

O.C. Kills Coop, Fans Rejoice

Mischa Barton's character on The O.C., Marissa Cooper, got killed in the finale last night. This is great news for anyone who appreciates actors who a) are not disgustingly anorexic, and b) are not more wooden than Noah’s Ark. People with true self-respect, however, should avoid The O.C. altogether.

The AP has their entertainment writer on the case. His name? Sandy Cohen. Really. If you watch The O.C., you'll understand this. If not, you're far better off.

Barton is now working on a film due out in 2007 called Guilty Pleasures. If her work in TV is any indication, you can count on the "guilty" but don't hold your breath for the "pleasures."

The Left Flails Back

Since I've taken a swipe at Power Line for a horrible, misleading ad the conservative blog has been running for Iraqi Dinars (and got swiped back, too), it's only fair that some liberal blogs get their comeuppance.

In general, with the exception of Power Line and Captain's Quarters, the top 10 blogs in the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem are all pretty innocuous as far as ads are concerned. A few Netflix here, a couple hybrid cars there. Plenty of ideological books of dubious worth, but nothing to get too worked up about.

Then I went and checked out number 11, Eschaton, a very popular left-leaning blog. What I saw wasn't so much outrageous as it was thoroughly depressing. One of their main "classified" ads on the right sidebar pretty much sums up why the Democrats, regardless of how inept their Republican opponents might be, could be in serious trouble come November. How do they whip up liberals into a frenzy of open-pocketed idealism? By telling them that it's Al Freakin Franken's birthday and, oh, wouldn't you like to give to a grassroots organization as well. God help us (and if you ask Ann Coulter, he's not going to be much help at all).

Click on the link and you're taken to Franken's Midwest Values PAC, where you're invited to "celebrate Al’s birthday by supporting the progressive values we all share." We're being asked to put our support not behind actual candidates, but behind an increasingly humorless humorist who works for an increasingly invisible liberal radio network. That'll get us real far.

No cheers for Midwest Values PAC, which seems deeply immersed in the stench of its own bathwater, and jeers for Eschaton, which must think we're all a bunch of damned monkeys. And for Al Franken—oh, what's the point?

Disclaimer: People are responsible for the ads they have on their websites. Particularly the "featured" ones that the site owner has right of refusal over. I don't care if they have to make money, dammit.

Fundamentalist Parallels

Andrew Sullivan has been having a fascinating discussion for some time now about what he calls "Christianism"—a movement analogous to Islamism that is currently ascendant in the fundamentalist, Rovian wing of American politics and faith. Today, he responds to a reader who draws specific parallels between Christian acquiescence to the Christianists and the "apparent willingness" of Muslims to allow their religion to be hijacked by hardliners.

Sullivan starts out, rightly, by saying that Muslim extremism far outstrips Christian extremism in its deleterious effects. He also points out that Americans have certain Constitutional guarantees [for now -ed.] that prevent a full-on theocracy. He then concludes on this note:

Ordinary Christians, especially those whose faith is a little less dogmatic and a little more self-effacing than the Christianists', can easily be intimidated into silence or acquiescence. But that silence is slowly ending. As the political project of the Christianists crumbles—as all such political projects inevitably do—we'll see another cycle of withdrawal from politics and concentration on, you know, actual Christianity. That's my hope, at least. And history gives it credence.

My question to Sullivan is: how is this not also true for Islam? If "all such political projects" are doomed by definition, then shouldn't that translate to the Muslim world as well? Certainly the less dogmatic Muslims in places like Iraq and Iran are much more easily intimidated into silence than their Christian counterparts in America. A lopped off head will always motivate behavior more than a disapproving gaze from the pulpit.

If this is so, then it's cause for (eventual) hope in the Muslim world. If not, then the inevitability of the Christianists' "crumble" needs to be better defined. Is it the U.S. Constitution that will protect us from Christianists, or is it a more basic, universal principle? If it is the Constitution, then Christianist efforts to rewrite that document need to be taken far more seriously. After all, once an editor gets started, it's mighty hard to put the red pen away.

Going Nativist on Immigration

The Times of Beaver County and Allegheny has an excellent reminder of our country's heritage of immigration—and opposition to it.

If you're of southern or eastern European descent, if you're Catholic, Jewish or Orthodox, please remember that the sentiments behind what the nativists are saying today are the same as those their predecessors were using against your relatives.

And please remember that for all of the huffing and puffing the nativists did, your ancestors and their descendants turned out to be pretty good Americans—just as many of today's immigrants, legal and illegal, will do if we give them the chance.

Go read the whole thing.

God to Robertson: Shut It!

Pat Robertson likes to talk to God, but he has a selective-listening problem. Apparently he can't hear the Lord telling him to shut the hell up.

Robertson is back in the news again, this time for predicting, predictably, massive destruction for America in 2006.

"If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms," Robertson said May 8. Wednesday, he added, "there well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest."

Hmm, the coasts of America will be lashed with storms. A bold prediction, considering the fact that they are lashed with storms every frickin year. The tsunami claim is a little more risky. I don't think folks in Washington or Oregon should be heading for higher ground quite yet.

It's interesting to note that Pat couches his prediction with the "if I heard the Lord right" caveat. That is undoubtedly because he has heard the Lord dead wrong so many times in the past. Here's a little sampling of press releases and statements available on Pat Robertson's website:

• Robertson Sorry for Stroke Comment
• Robertson Apologizes to Omri Sharon
• Israeli Envoy Accepts Robertson's Apology
• Robertson Spokesperson Addresses Comments Made by Pat Robertson Regarding Ariel Sharon
• Pat Robertson Clarifies His Statement Regarding Hugo Chavez
• Pat Robertson Sets the Record Straight on Stephanopoulos Interview
• State Department Comments Clarified
• Liberia: A Clarification

Not a very good track record when it comes to speaking God's truth. Who to blame for the miscommunication? Ten bucks says Pat goes for the homosexuals.

Vox Confuto

On Tuesday, Andrew Sullivan bestowed a coveted Malkin Award nomination (for shrill, hyperbolic, divisive and intemperate right-wing rhetoric) on Vox Day, a writer for the extreme right-wing WorldNetDaily. WND has found its way onto this page before, in a post I wrote in April criticizing WND editor, Joseph Farah, for a particularly crude anti-immigration article.

Vox got the Sullivan nod for making this obscene comparison:

Not only will [mass deportation] work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

It certainly makes Vox sound like a fascist, and the haircut doesn't help matters any.

Interestingly enough, if you go visit WND now, you will see that Vox's article has been edited to remove the offending passage. Now the paragraph is rendered thus:

It couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society. In fact, the hysterical response to the post-rally enforcement rumors tends to indicate that the mere announcement of a massive deportation program would probably cause a third of that 12 million to depart for points south within a week.

What happened? It seems that Farah, a nutjob in his own right (and past Malkin Award nominee) who described illegal immigrants as "ungrateful human parasites" guilty of "dropping babies in this country", thought Vox took things a little too far.

Luckily for no one, Vox has his own blog, Vox Popoli (that's not a typo), in which he addresses the issue.

WND regularly edits my column, albeit usually before it appears. I actually turned this one in early, so this was clearly on Mr. Farah's orders. I happen to know that he really, really, really didn't like it.

You don't say. I wonder what the problem could have been. Vox, for his part, thinks he did nothing wrong, but, good 'libertarian' that he is, has no dispute with Farah's right to edit his site as he sees fit.

Apart from advocating that the U.S. government emulate Hitler in an effort to rid the country of its illegal immigrants, Vox's article is a bizarre rant against a border fence. Why? "The problem with a fence is that it works both ways," and building it would lead to "a self-imprisoned people". What if we have to flee a tyrannical U.S. government at some point in the future? We don't want no stinking fences in that case.

So, Vox Day appears to be both a fascist sympathizer and a paranoid. Talk about a classic combination! Chocolate and peanut butter don't have anything on Vox.

The Tony Snow Doublethink Award

In George Orwell's 1984, "doublethink" is the ability to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accept both of them. I know poor Tony's only just started, but it looks like this is going to be fun. Here's a morsel from his first White House press briefing on the topic of the most recent NSA domestic spying scandal:

MR. SNOW: .... Again, I would take you back to the USA Today story, simply to give you a little context. Look at the poll that appeared the following day. While there was — part of it said 51 percent of the American people opposed...but something like 64 percent of the polling was not troubled by it. ...

Q: But there are polls that show Americans are very concerned about it.

MR. SNOW: The President — you cannot run a security — you cannot base national security on poll numbers. As the President of the United States you have to make your own judgments about what is in the nation's best interest.

Q: You just brought it up, though.

Check out these favorable poll numbers! What? An unfavorable poll? You can't trust poll numbers. Classic.

And that's not all. During the same exchange, after discussing how Americans are unperturbed by the NSA's activities, Snow made the following mind-numbing utterance:

Having said that, I don't want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program — the alleged program — the existence of which I can neither confirm nor deny.

So, he's willing to comment on how Americans allegedly feel about a program that he can't even confirm the existence of? Another Orwell quote comes to mind, this one from "Politics and the English Language":

Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

A little more evasion and ham-handed nonsense from Tony and he could legitimately run for president. I hope he doesn't, though, because these press briefings look like they're going to be damned entertaining.

Why I Hate Google Ads

Yesterday, I wrote a piece disparaging Power Line blog for hosting an ad for a site called BetonIraq.com. This site is promoting a particularly dubious investment in Iraqi Dinars, an investment scheme that has been called a scam by XE.com, a major currency exchange site, and CNN.com amongst others.

I then proceeded, as I often do with posts that may appeal to a larger audience, to submit the article to Blogcritics.org, a group blog of which I am a member. Now, Blogcritics has those insidious Google ads at the top which are automatically populated with messages based on the text of your article. So, say, you write a post about how Paris Hilton is a skanky ho, you're bound to get ads for her special home video. It's the same concept behind those extraordinarily unappetizing Spam recipe ads that appear whenever you're checking your Gmail spam box. (I just got one for Spam Hashbrown Bake. Serves 8!)

Lo and behold, my article denouncing the dinar scam, as it appears on Blogcritics, has some damned dinar ads at the top of it. Here's how it looks from a recent screenshot:



The gentlemen at Power Line noticed and wrote a little piece making fun of me and Blogcritics. Understandably, of course, because I look like a terrific hypocrite. That's why I hate Google Ads. That's why I don't now and never will have them on my blog.

That said, I still stand behind my article. Website owners are ultimately responsible for what's on their sites, unless they're hacked or something like that. That goes for Power Line, and it goes for Blogcritics as well. As for the Power Line ad, it's not an automatically generated Google Ad that the site owners have no control over. It's a big, honking graphic ad on the sidebar. According to John Hinderaker's post, they have the ability to accept or reject these ads.

As we've said before, we do not censor Blogads based on content. We accept any ad that is not offensive on its face. Once, we even accepted an ad by the Democratic National Committee. We do not endorse the products or services that advertise on our site.

By logic, if they can accept ads that are "not offensive", they can also reject them. I understand that they don't "endorse" their advertisers, but they are responsible for having this ad up there. If, in fact, the ad is promoting a scam, they can't just hide behind the "we have no control" argument. They do have control, and they choose to keep it up there. It's their right to do so. And it's my right to point that out if I want to.

As for Blogcritics, I wish they didn't have those ads and it truly is out of my control. I didn't know they would appear, but now that I do, well, that just plain sucks. It's not the first time I've come off looking like a moron and I can promise it won't be the last.

Beating the Drums of Diplomacy

There goes old Warmonger Hitchens again. His latest Slate article adds to his reckless call for diplomatic overtures to Iran by rashly suggesting Bush make a statement directly to the people of Iran.

Almost everything that went wrong in Iraq went wrong because we postponed the real decisions until it was almost too late. President Bush has a chance to redeem this by speaking directly to the Iranian people and the international community and bypassing the wicked men who have run a noble country into a swamp of beggary, violence, crime, corruption, and disaster.

That bloodthirsty bastard! The left was right about him.

Out-Nutjobbing the Nutjobs

One of Andrew Sullivan's readers remarks that conservative book titles are so extreme as to be beyond parody. With examples like Godless (Ann Coulter), Deliver Us From Evil (Sean Hannity), Party of Death (Ramesh Ponnuru), Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder (Michael Savage), and Treason (Ann Coulter again), it's hard to argue with that logic. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

I could have sworn I saw this book at the local Barnes and Noble last December:



This one is less of a parody as it is a premonition. I mean, where else can Coulter go?



Watch Metallica sue me now.

Desperation at FOX

There's not much the Fair & Balanced^TM anchors on FOX News Channel can do to explain away President Bush's awful poll numbers. They can try to point to Karl Rove's nonsensical statement he gave on the subject yesterday (people like him, they just don't like like him). Or they can do what E.D. Hill did this morning on FOX & Friends: they can go right off the deep end.

Hill's argument was that these polls can't really be taken too seriously. They don't include people who only use cell phones, after all. Let's set aside for a moment the fact that this exact same argument was laughed out of the room by conservatives in 2004 when Kerry supporters claimed their candidate had a better chance than it appeared. It's still a bizarre argument.

According to a wire story on this very subject (and surely the impetus for Hill bringing this up this morning), people "who have only cell phones are significantly different [from landline-lubbers] in many ways — typically younger, less affluent, more likely to be single, and more liberal on many political issues" (emphasis added to show just how right I am). So, even if the poll numbers are skewed by the lack of cell-only voters, they're not skewed in the way a FOX anchor would want. If anything, presidential approval poll numbers are artificially inflated.

Ah, I love the smell of desperation in the morning.

Texas Rainmaker has a very useful post on the annual rite of the "Polls Affected by Cell Phones" story.

Power Line's Dinar Flimflam

Surf on over to Power Line and you'll see an interesting business opportunity tucked in among the sidebar blogads. BetonIraq.com offers the savvy investor a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase the Iraqi Dinar (IQD) at rock-bottom prices and invest in the future of a free and democratic Iraq at the same time.

Sounds like a pretty cool deal, no? Even liberals might be interested, seeing as how it bypasses Rumsfeld's gang and goes right to the struggling nascent democracy itself. The blogad pitch seems convincing, too:

With yet another successful election, time may be running out to buy the New Iraqi Dinar before it hits the open market. It's now unbelievably affordable. The same amount that was once equal to over $82,000 can now be purchased for around $45. But, what happens when the oil really starts to flow?

Hot dog! Click on the BetonIraq link and you get even more information, interspersed with photos of voting Iraqis, Iraqis waving American flags, Iraqis hugging American soldiers—you get the idea.

Before the Gulf War (part one), goes the pitch, the IQD was valued at over $3. Now it has fallen to a fraction of a penny. "Can Iraq's economy achieve, in a free market, what it once achieved under a brutal dictatorship?" Think that's questionable? You need go no further than the right sidebar to a set of "Beyond the Headlines" links. "Is anything good happening in Iraq? Much! Follow these links to see beyond the headlines, and discover the true Iraqi spirit of progress."

The problem? BetonIraq.com is, if not a total scam, at least an incredibly dubious investment. The pre-Gulf War dinar was "worth" $3.22 because that's what Saddam Hussein set its value at in 1982. Like the ruble of Soviet days, the IQD was not traded in free markets, so this previous "value" had no bearing in reality and was never tested on the open market.

XE.com, one of the biggest currency exchange websites, has an entire section devoted to IQD scams, and warns investors that "buying the Iraq Dinar is a high risk investment with a poor outlook."

According to XE, the current value of the IQD is tightly controlled by the Central Bank of Iraq, and for good reason.

They evidently fear that open trading of the IQD would lead to a rout in which the value of the IQD would sink to practically nothing. Consider the situation. Why tightly control the trading of the IQD if it is likely to appreciate in value? If the value of the IQD were to surge, this could be held out as evidence of a surge of confidence in Iraq's economy. So why not open the IQD to free trading? Why would this be done unless the Iraqi Central Bank itself feels that the IQD would decline in value in a free market?

They go on to detail how the oil argument is a canard. Using the example of Venezuela, they show how it's perfectly plausible for the currency of a country rich in oil to plummet, just like the Venezuelan Bolivar has in the past 6 years (it's worth 1/3 of its US Dollar value from 2000). They also show how the Iraqi economy is in no way comparable to that of their Kuwaiti neighbors. XE concludes their examination of the Iraq Dinar scam with this bleak warning:

Ask yourself one question: if the Iraq Dinar is such a hot commodity, why would anyone in the know be willing to sell it to you? If you thought that the IQD was going to multiply in worth by hundreds of thousands of percent, would you sell it? Of course not — you'd be too busy buying as much of it as you could. But if you thought that the IQD was going to go down in value over time, well, then you might start trying to convince people that it was a "great deal" so that you could get rid of all of yours before it nose dives.

So the question remains, what are John Hinderaker and Co. doing pimping a currency scam on their website? I'm aware that blogads are automated to a degree, but the gentlemen at Power Line are ultimately responsible for what they're hawking. The fact that this investment "deal" is clearly designed to take advantage of the kind of "patriotic" Americans who read Power Line only makes it worse.

They say a fool and his money are soon parted. I guess they're counting on the fact that a lot of fools read Power Line.

(Thanks: Jim)

Update: I have posted a response to the Blogcritics.org fallout, for what it's worth.

Rove Blames Moon for Tides

Karl Rove issued a statement today in which he blamed President Bush's low poll numbers on the Iraq war. Oh, really? His lack of popularity is due to the biggest, most glaring instance of poor leadership of his entire tenure in office? You don't say.

Rove also blamed the sometimes harsh light common between the hours of 6 am and 7 pm on the Earth's sun.

The president's advisor was quick to point out that Bush's "likeability" numbers were consistently higher than his "approval" numbers. Translation: Americans might want to throw back a few shots with the president and haze some underclassmen; they just don't want him anywhere near the reins of power. I'm not quite sure why Rove would want to trumpet that fact.

BBC Sets the Standard

A shining golden moment for the BBC last week as they conducted an interview with blogger and Internet expert Guy Kewney about the recent High Court decision in the Apple Records/iPod suit. The only problem? It wasn't Guy Kewney they interviewed. Thanks to an as-yet unexplained mix-up, the BBC put a French cab driver on camera instead.

Full marks to the cabbie who, after overcoming his initial shock at the situation, actually went on to do the interview on a subject he knew little if anything about.

You can read the real Guy's account on his website. His summation is informative, but he's a little too insistent on the fact that he is not a black Frenchman. Strangely enough for a Brit, he seems more upset that people might think he's black than that he's French. It takes all kinds.

Update: Media Orchard has the video. Plus, the "real" Guy updates to say that the other guy is also a "Guy", but not a cabbie. Total pandemonium.

Laura Bush Takes a Break From Reality

Sinking poll numbers? Abysmal approval ratings—even among members of your own party? No matter, says Laura Bush. If I close my eyes and pray real, real hard, all this nastiness is bound to go away.

Yes, the First Lady is taking the tried and true ostrich approach to terrible public opinion numbers.

I don't really believe those polls. I travel around the country. I see people [who are hand picked by burly security guards for the singular privilege of being allowed within shouting distance of me], I see their [sycophantic] responses to my husband. I see their [fawning] response to me.... As I travel around the United States [in my hermetically sealed bubble of denial and wishful thinking], I see a lot of [pre-packaged] appreciation for him [and his cowboy boots]. A lot of people come up to me and say, "Stay the course".

Perhaps the fact that people invariably say that when she's on the road headed out of town should clue her in. Thankfully for Mrs. Bush, she doesn't have to believe the blindingly obvious. One of the greatest appurtenances of this nation's highest office is that you are no longer obliged to live in the world of reality. Lucky for her. Not so much for the rest of us.

When Life Imitates FOX

According to an AP report, the U.S. government is using satellites to spy on Americans. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which normally monitors foreign troop movements and looks for nuclear sites and the like, "has been spending significantly more time watching U.S. soil."

According to the report, "the quality of pictures NGA receives from classified satellites is believed to far exceed the one-meter resolution available commercially," a fact that has privacy advocates worried. The head of the NGA, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, sees his mission in a different way.

"He said the work the agency did after hurricanes Rita and Katrina was the best he'd seen an intelligence agency do in his 42 years in the spy business. 'This was kind of a direct payback to the taxpayers for the investment made in this agency over the years...'" Considering the quality of the job the federal government did after Katrina, this might be "payback" we'd rather do without.

This revelation, coming as it does in the wake of several highly-publicized NSA domestic spying scandals, only underlines the need for a thorough investigation into the government's domestic spying capabilities and practices. According to USA Today, and contrary to previously published reports, a majority of Americans oppose the massive NSA database of telephone records.

It's fun to watch 24, but it's not supposed to be true to life. After all, this season features a duplicitous U.S. president who lies to the American public and uses the threat of terrorism as an excuse for illegal acts. Perhaps I've said too much...

Update: Thanks to Dayv for pointing out this chilling revelation from an ABC News blog:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources. "It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

Andrew Sullivan has blogged about this as well. Where does Bush end and Nixon begin? This administration keeps sinking lower and lower. Pretty soon 30% approval numbers are going to seem like a distant happy memory for Bush and his cronies.

Putin Slights Massacre Anniversary

On May 13, 2005, in Andijan, a city in eastern Uzbekistan, government troops opened fire on a throng of protesters. According to the government, 187 people died, most of whom were "Islamist terrorists." Accounts corroborated by NGOs and human rights agencies put the number at over 800, many of whom were women and children.

Proving that blood in the streets is thicker than water, Russian president Vladimir Putin marked the anniversary of this atrocity by welcoming Uzbek president Islam Karimov to his Black Sea resort to hail friendlier relations between Russia and the energy-rich Central Asian nation.

In the wake of the Andijan massacre, Uzbek-American relations hit the skids because the State Department had the gall to condemn the action and join the UN in a call for an independent investigation. The Karimov regime responded by closing the US military base in Uzbekistan, which had been used as a staging point for missions into neighboring Afghanistan, and kicking out the Peace Corps and other aid groups. They also shut down the BBC's Uzbekistan offices.

Putin cozying up to Karimov is just one in a long string of overtures he has made to former Soviet states, showing that the Kremlin wants to keep its former subjects close—and as far away from democracy as possible. The fact that Central Asia is rich in oil and other natural resources doesn't hurt, either, and overtures from Russia should be seen in the context of Putin's plan to make Russia an "energy superpower".

Apparently, he's willing to achieve that goal regardless of the moral cost, a revelation that should surprise no one. Russia has a beautifully consistent record when it comes to supporting authoritarian regimes in former Soviet states, whether that's in Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Belarus or Georgia. The only solace is that they don't always back the winning side. For the victims of Andijan and the people of Uzbekistan, that's cold comfort indeed.

Vacancy at the Hilton

The girl who puts the "ho" in "hotelier" is back at it again, this time putting her foot (for a change) in her mouth at a video game convention.

What was she doing rubbing her bony elbows with a bunch of game geeks? She was, ostensibly, promoting her new video game, which has the atrocious name "Paris Hilton's Jewel Jam." Perhaps that's why she walked onto the stage and thanked the oily, bespectacled masses for coming out to hail the release of "Diamondquest."

I like to imagine that the bubbly heir-head's slip of the tongue actually points to a nerdy childhood spent in front of the Tandy playing "King's Quest", but that might be stretching credulity a bit.

And just to show that she's not one to shy away from the instruments of her shame, the game was designed to be played on a cell phone. Maybe the super-deluxe version will include a few of her best friends' phone numbers.

No Nukes, No Nonsense on Iran

There's some unsettling news out of Iran today as UN inspectors say they found "traces of near bomb-grade enriched uranium on nuclear equipment."

Iran's no less troubling response, coming from Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi, was this: "These comments lack any importance and do not come from a real source." The source, for sake of argument, is the IAEA.

I am aware that there are a number of my colleagues on the left who are sure that the Bush administration is looking for whatever excuse it can find to declare war on Iran and that a discovery such as this plays right into neo-con hands. I wouldn't say that such a fear is entirely unfounded, but it bears mentioning that the existence of questionable goals on one side in no way precludes the same from the other side.

Nuclear disarmament has long been a goal on the left and our ranks are filled with eloquent advocates of non-proliferation such as Sloane Coffin, Jr. and Jonathan Schell. As the debate over Iran becomes more rancorous in the coming days and weeks, there may be a temptation to conflate a hard line on Iranian nuclear interests with a bellicose, pro-Bush stance. Amidst all the fuss, let's not forget that it would be a big deal for Iran to have a nuclear weapons program. With every nation that joins the nuclear club, the world becomes more perilous. We can shy away from war without shying away from that stark reality.

Chomsky Gets Chummy With Hezbollah

I'm not sure what to make of the flash from yesterday's Drudge Report that detailed a meeting Noam Chomsky had in Beirut with the leader of the Hezbollah. I'm hesitant not because it doesn't sound exactly like Chomsky's drivel, but because the story is not sourced and it doesn't appear elsewhere. Anyway, grain of salt.

Drudge quotes Chomsky as saying Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah "has a reasoned argument and a persuasive argument" for maintaining an armed "deterrent to potential aggression." This aggression would presumably be from Israel, although the article does not state this explicitly. He also refers to the United States as "one of the leading terrorist states."

An alert reader might question Chomsky's anti-terrorism bona-fides, considering his chummy relationship with the leader of a group implicated in countless atrocities, including the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, which killed 241 American marines. For Chomsky, "terrorism" is all a matter of perspective, an attitude that drips with irony considering that in the same interview he derides the U.S. for molding its definition of terrorism entirely to fit U.S. foreign policy goals.

He then goes on to blast the U.S. and Israel for "threatening to attack" Iran, threats which he calls "outright violations [of] international law and of the U.N. charter." He makes no mention whatsoever of Iran's threats to "wipe Israel off the map" (or, to appease Juan Cole, "erase Israel from the page of time"). That would appear to be a violation in its own right. Instead, Chomsky merely states that "Iran is in difficulty" and blames the U.S. for any failure to reach a settlement. Not to accuse him of pandering to nutjobs, but that explanation falls a little short of the mark.

Chomsky is one of the most prolific critics of the United States as a self-serving and duplicitous power. The fact that he is incapable of seeing those exact same traits in his own reasoning speaks volumes about him as a thinker and commentator. It also explains why he's so sure he's right.

The Spy Who Loves Us

After USA Today reported that the NSA has a massive database of domestic telephone call records, President Bush took the podium to defend his administration against charges of violating the right to privacy. Here's part of what he had to say:

First, our international activities strictly target al Qaida and their known affiliates. Al Qaida is our enemy, and we want to know their plans. Second, the government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval. Third, the intelligence activities I authorized are lawful and have been briefed to appropriate members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat. Fourth, the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities.

First, that's swell, but the question at hand is about the purpose of your domestic activities. This tells us nothing. Second, the government certainly does listen to calls in which one end of the conversation is domestic. He can squirm out of this one on a technicality because the new NSA scandal doesn't involve listening to calls, only keeping records of who called whom, when and for how long. Third, this is a highly debatable point. They're lawful to the extent that Bush can legitimately circumvent the law as an extention of his executive power. Fourth, absolute hogwash.

We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on links to al-Qaida and their known affiliates. So far we've been very successful in preventing another attack on our soil.

The government is in fact mining and trolling through the personal lives of millions of Americans—in an effort to root out terrorism, perhaps, but they're doing it nonetheless. This last line is my favorite, though. Cloaked, as their activities are, under a veil of secrecy, we have no way of verifying if what Bush says is true. That information is classified. The only evidence is the absence of an attack, which might be due to the Bush administration's vigilence, and might not. At times like this, it's best to turn to the Simpsons for guidance.

Lisa: Dad, what if I were to tell you that this rock keeps away tigers.
Homer: Uh-huh, and how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work. It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: I see.
Lisa: But you don't see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.

The Spaghetti Incident

Months after Danes were turned off by the ferocity of protests against cartoons of Muhammad that were printed in Jyllands-Posten, young activists have provided an example of a proper Danish protest.

Seven people were arrested after "pouring some 440 pounds of cooked spaghetti and sprinkling tomato sauce on the stairs leading up to the Finance Ministry in the Danish capital." At issue is a proposed cut in state educational funding designed to get university students to stop noodling around and finish their degrees more quickly.

The pasta protest was meant as a "youth buffet" to illustrate that the funding cuts would force students to live below the subsistence level. No word on whether outrage has reached the al dente level, yet, but things are certainly set to boil over.

Flashback: Danish protesters affix a dildo to Copenhagen's Little Mermaid statue to commemorate International Women's Day this past March.

Sexing Up the Muslim Street

Andrew Sullivan helps to ruin workplace productivity by pointing to a new online service called Google Trends, which lets you see what people are searching for on the Internet and where the searches originate.

As Sullivan points out, a Google Trends search for "sex" yields some mighty revealing (so to speak) results. Here's a regional breakdown of the people Googling "sex":



It should come as no surprise to anyone whose ever been to the Bible-belt, the natural habitat of strip clubs and drive-through liquor stores, that there is a strong correlation between religious fundamentalism and illicit debauchery. Seven of the top ten countries listed are majority-Muslim nations. Eight, if you count India, which has a sizeable Muslim population. Poland, one of the most pious countries in Europe, also makes the list and Viet Nam is just there to remind us that nothing's black and white in the world of statistics.

Anyway, worlds of fun can be had with Google Trends. Did you know that an inordinate number of searches for Britney Spears come from Spanish-speaking countries? Now you do. I'm happy to report that the United States easily captures the top spot for the ever-increasing queries for "more cowbell". That proves we're a superior nation.

NSA Domestic Spying, Part Deux

Today there is a report in USA Today that claims the "National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth."

According to one of their sources, this is the "largest database ever assembled in the world." The data are being used, according to another source, to "analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity."

Let's not forget, when the hullabaloo over the NSA domestic spying program started, President Bush said it was only focused on calls going to or coming from international numbers. These new revelations appear to contradict that. This newly disclosed program does not involve actually listening in on conversations, it is only concerned with the call records themselves. The major phone companies say they have not handed over any personal customer data other than phone numbers, which is cold comfort considering the fact that the NSA would have little trouble tying a name to a phone number if they were so inclined.

When I first heard about this new spying program, I was appalled. But then I heard E.D. Hill take a minute out of her immigrant bashing to explain it all away on Fox & Friends this morning. "It's not domestic surveillance," she said, "because they're only looking for terrorist activity." And how are they doing that? Through domestic surveillance!

With all the fuss over the national anthem recently, you'd think more people would be interested in trying to maintain that whole "land of the free" thing. Alas, this is just another argument for going cellular.

It did just occur to me that the whole terrorism angle might be a smokescreen. I saw something on MSNBC last night about whether the voting system for American Idol is fair. Perhaps the NSA—in conjunction with FOX, of course—is doing a little research on the AI voting habits of the nation.

On a Tangentially Related Topic: Here's the best comment I heard about Chris' reaction to getting booted from Idol last night: "He looked like someone just told him Scott Stapp wasn't Jesus."

Deliver Us From Jeb

According to an AFP article today, George W. Bush is bullish on his brother's chances to become the next president of the United States. Bush said his brother, Jeb, is an "'excellent' leader who would make a 'great president' of the United States."

God help us all! Is two members of the Bush family with only a "Herbert" to distinguish them not enough? Come 2008, a Bush family member will have been in office for 12 of the last 20 years. Jeb for President makes perfect sense, however, when seen in light of his brother's amazing attack on transparency and democracy in America. Why not have a ruling family? After all, we're already halfway there.

Just to show I'm not mired in partisanship, allow me to direct your attention to an article I wrote back in October of last year in which I argued against a Hillary Clinton presidential run for much the same reasons.

Is our democracy really so fragile and is the pool of qualified candidates really so shallow that these are the only options we have? This is a great nation with a tremendous wealth of brilliant people. Are Hillary and Jeb the best we can do? I say no to Jeb, no to Hillary and a resounding no to the oligarchy of a few rich families. Let's give someone good a chance for once.

Update: George H.W. Bush, the original kingmaker, is all for a president Jeb, too. Presenting the House of Bush.

Sullivan vs. The Da Vinci Code

Andrew Sullivan mourns the fact that Ron Howard, director of The Da Vinci Code, has declined to succumb to pressure from Opus Dei to put a disclaimer on the film spelling out that it is a work of fiction. Everything Sullivan says about the book/film is true ("It's hack fiction.... it's fictional dreck and Hollywood hooey"), but I wonder at his reasoning behind favoring the disclaimer.

It's particularly puzzling given two topics that Sullivan has had on his radar screen a whole lot lately. First, he rightfully decries attempts from the right and the left to create a "nanny state". Banging people over the head with a disclaimer that lays out what every thinking person should know as a matter of course has a strong whiff of that stale-diaper nanny smell to it. It's a Tom Hanks blockbuster, for chrissakes (so to speak).

Second, he has spoken out in no uncertain terms against attempts by Tom Cruise and the Scientologists to censor and otherwise mess with South Park for its "Trapped in the Closet" episode. But now he sympathizes with another religious organization's efforts to muck about with Hollywood? When Isaac Hayes left South Park, Sullivan excoriated him for the hypocrisy of tolerating affronts to some religions, but not his own. There's something uncomfortably similar about this situation.

Sullivan then sidles into a by now almost obligatory swipe at Islamists, who would never tolerate such a film if it were made about the Koran. This is undoubtedly true, and if such a film ever does appear, one can assume that Sullivan would deal swiftly with any opposition to it or, say, attempts by Muslim groups to put a disclaimer on it.

The Sophist's Revenge

I'm not quite sure what to make of a recent screed against Christopher Hitchens on the BTC News website. I believe it's supposed to be funny, or at least clever, filled as it is with winks and nods at the Hitchens-Juan Cole spat that's been all the rage in Weblogistan. The premise of the article, as its title suggests, is that Hitchens is an "anti-American apologist for terror."

Weldon Berger justifies this claim by relying on this quote from a 2002 Hitchens article:

Terrorism, then, is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.

Here's Berger's exposition:

You'll already have recognized the problem here: the US demanded the impossible from Iraqi society — the installation of a secular, westernized, Israel-friendly democracy — and did so at the points of a great many guns. And Hitchens was behind the adventure all the way.

The fact that Berger half-jokingly replaces "al Qaeda" with "the Bush administration and their supporters" in one of his mock (and mocking) quotes is a clue to where he's coming from. You see, the United States government is an instrument of terror and Hitchens, thanks to his "unambiguous opposition to...critics of the American state", is guilty of supporting terror. To quibble, one might argue that Hitchens joining a lawsuit against the NSA over the domestic spying flap might throw a slight shadow of ambiguity over his opposition to critics of the government.

The context of the Hitchens quote about terrorism is that al Qaeda has no real demands that are achievable (unless we want to wipe ourselves off the planet, say) and, unlike the PLO or the IRA, has no political or state structure to which we could capitulate, if we so desired. That's the "impossibility" to which Hitchens refers. Berger's impossibility is another thing altogether.

First of all, his definition of the American aims in Iraq is slightly self-serving. There is no requirement that Iraq be somehow "westernized" (what exactly does he mean by that term?), but our government would certainly like to see a secular democracy evolve there (as opposed to a secular society, which is a totally different animal, and one that we can't even claim to have here in the States). We've never asked or hoped for an "Israel-friendly" state, per se. Our goal would be an Israel-tolerant state.

Now, Berger, in true Bernard Lewis form, takes his straw man argument and claims the U.S. aims are impossible. I mention Lewis because Berger's argument amounts to little more than crude Orientalism. In what way are Iraqis incapable of democracy? It can't just be that they haven't managed to secure such a government yet, because the argument is not that such an end is unlikely, but that it is impossible. It must be something innate in the Iraqi soul that makes them unfit for enlightened self-government. As for his claims regarding Israel, modern and widely known history makes a fool of him. Doesn't the decades-long detente between Israel and Egypt show that such an arrangement is perfectly plausible (if not exactly easy to achieve)?

Berger seals the deal by accompanying Juan Cole down the lowest road available in debate: the ad hominem attack. He refers to Hitchens at one point as "obviously intoxicated" and makes another faux-deft reference to single malt whiskey, both sneers at Hitchens' alleged alcoholism. Allow me to pose this question to Berger: if Hitchens is a slobbering drunk unfit to hold the pen, then why is it necessary to use the ad hominem attack at all? You should, from your sober and superior vantage, be able to dismember his arguments without bringing out those particular guns.

As it stands, the humor falls flat and the argument is nothing more than sophistry. The ad hominem slight is merely a sideshow to the sordid main event.

Drudge the Bogeyman

Not to say that Matt Drudge is a fear monger, but pictured at right are a couple of stories featured prominently on his website today.

The first relates to an ABC sweeps vehicle that imagines worldwide devastation at the hands of bird flu. I know it's not a giant hurricane, but it still get's Matt's juices flowing. I'm sure he's already prepping the outbreak maps in the event of a real catastophe.

The second story has a great headline ("Flying robot attack 'unstoppable'") so I can't really blame Drudge for running it. It's a nice story in the post-9/11, "you will never be safe again" vein about how terrorists will soon be able to rain death down upon us thanks to remote control aircraft with the accuracy of cruise missiles.

I had a more visceral reaction to the second story because I spent the better part of my childhood getting over my fear of flying robot attacks. Alas, the vigilant soul never sleeps.

Consulto Ergo Sum

AFP has a story this morning about how nearly one in four French people believe that The Da Vinci Code is based on fact. That from the birthplace of the Enlightenment.

There's nothing like a little opinion poll to open a window onto mass delusion. They can be useful for other reasons, as well. When I see a poll like that, it's reassuring. "No matter how stupid I may have become," I'll think, "it really could be worse." They also often provide a strong "there but for the grace of reason go I" feeling which, in turn, reinforces the bloated sense of arrogant exceptionalism that goes hand in hand with blogging. This particular poll also reminds us that the French claim on intellectual superiority is tenuous at best. Take that, Descartes!

A couple favorite polls from the vault:

• According to New York magazine, 49.3% of New York City residents believe that "some of our leaders knew in advance attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and consciously failed to act."
• According to a 2005 CBS poll, 51% of Americans believe in biblical Creationism, and an additional 30% believe in some sort of Intelligent Design. Only 15% of Americans give Darwin a shout-out.

Interesting. A bit creepy, depending on your perspective. If you're looking for a poll with a little less hocus-pocus and a little more rationality, however, allow me to suggest this survey: three out of every four Americans make up 75% of the population.

Blogger Meltdown

Sorry to those of the Hearty Handful who may have been trying to access my wit and wisdom in the last several hours. Blogger had a bit of a meltdown, apparently. What else is new?

Turkey and France Prepare for Battle

Earlier today I wrote about how the Turkish ambassador to Canada was recalled to Ankara after Stephen Harper refered to the Armenian genocide in a recent statement.

Mt. Ararat, sacred to Armenians but located just over the border of modern Turkey, is an evocative symbol of the genocide debate

Murat over at Amerikan Turk noted that similar rumblings can be heard over in France. In fact, as Erkan points out on his blog, things in France are set to get a whole lot worse.

It turns out that the Turkish government has also recalled Osman Koruturk, their ambassador to France. This over proposed legislation in France that would outlaw denial of the Armenian genocide on pain of one year in prison and a €45,000 fine. Holocaust denial is already against the law in France (and much of the rest of western Europe). The bill is scheduled to be voted upon on May 18, and anti-French boycotts and economic punative measures are already in the works.

Seen against the backdrop of Turkey's EU accession talks—and because virtually no one actually denies the Armenian genocide other than the Turks—this legislative action in France is rightly being seen as an obstacle designed to keep Turkey out of the European Union.

Why do such champions of European freedom think that imposing a fine for genocide-denial is a good thing? A few short months ago, France was at the forefront of the Muhammad cartoon debate, arguing forcefully in favor of free speech. Now they're considering passing a law that plainly violates that principle (all to stick it to the Muslims again, a cynical person might say).

To add to the hypocrisy, many in France and elsewhere in Europe have been justifiably horrified at Article 301 of Turkey's criminal code, which outlaws insulting Turkishness amongst other things (and has been used against Turks who talk openly about the Armenian genocide). The problem with Article 301 is that it stops people from expressing certain forbidden opinions. The law now under consideration in France does the same thing. The only difference is in which opinion is forbidden.

I'm against Armenian genocide denial laws for the same reason I'm against Holocaust denial laws: they trample on free speech. Don't believe for a second that this means I deny either the Holocaust or the Armenain genocide. I don't. Both events occurred.

Forcing someone to agree with me as a matter of law, however, is a bad idea for two reasons: 1) it is contrary to freedom of expression and, 2) it implies that arguments for the legally protected assertion are weak and require help from the judiciary. Nothing could be further than the truth. Expose these deniers and their work to the light of day and they disintegrate. Hide them away and they fester.

France has a golden opportunity to back up their rhetoric on the freedom of expression. I'll be genuinely surprised if they take it.

Mission: Unwatchable

Mission: Impossible III mustered a disappointing $48 million for its first weekend, undoubtedly thanks to the fact that star Tom Cruise has spent much of the past year going public with his obsessive-repulsive disorder.

Part two made $57.8 million in 2000 despite lower ticket prices and a more limited release. Plus, Cruise didn't go for the super-psycho promotional blitz last time around.

In true Scientology form, there are reports that the "church" has been buying up blocs of tickets to the film to pad the numbers, just like it is alleged to have done for years to ensure that Dianetics remains on bestsellers lists.

Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan encourages us to keep up the boycott.

Turkey Spanks Canada Over 'Genocide'

Turkey has recalled its ambassador to Canada, Aydemir Erman, after the Canadian prime minister made the unforgivable error of acknowledging the "somber anniversary" of the Armenian genocide.

Stephen Harper can't be arrested and tried under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code—for insulting Turkishness—which is what would have happened to a Turkish citizen, so the Turkish government is doing the next best thing: precipitating an international diplomatic incident. And all to cleanse history of an event that happened almost 100 years ago under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire, which no longer exists and was abolished to make way for the modern Turkish republic.

"For us, this is a serious matter," said Yoney Tezel, a counselor with the Turkish embassy in Canada. "The Armenian claims are a direct attack on our identity, on Turkey's history. We feel it's unfair. That's why when these claims find some recognition we always consider that something negative."

What the Turkish government is unwilling to contemplate (and unwilling to allow its citizens to legally contemplate) is whether this "identity" and this "history" have been falsified. Tezel's statement says nothing about historical accuracy. The Armenian claims are an attack on Turkish identity. Therefore they are bad. It doesn't matter whether they are true.

Thankfully, Turkish identity is deeper and Turkish history is far broader than the Armenian genocide. The sooner the Turkish government realizes that, the better. Once they realize that their past does not need to be idealized into a fairy tale, then they might be ready to join the European Union.

Hannity & Hyperbole

Maybe Sean Hannity is out of sorts thanks to the one-way trip George W. Bush is taking into the gutter. Maybe he drinks waaay too much coffee (or kool-aid?). One thing's for sure: he's a demagogue.

Here's an exchange from his May 3 radio broadcast that has been picked up by Media Matters:

HANNITY: Well, the Palestinians—this could be the beginning of democratization, and liberty and freedom in that part of the world. Do you deny that's a possibility?

CALLER: No, I don't deny it, but they can also vote for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas on the West Bank—

HANNITY: Well, you could vote for Hillary Clinton tomorrow, too, for crying out loud, [caller], but, I mean, does that mean that we sit back and do nothing?

Wow! A bit unhinged. Good thing Colmes wasn't there or he would have hemmed and hawed and—oh, forget it!

Later on in the call, Hannity called 9/11 the "worst attack in history". Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant the worst attack in American history (just so long as we don't count the Civil War).

The PTC Hates Mothers

I got my weekly email from the devil Parents Television Council and, in addition to their usual harangues against broadcast indecency, they have a little blurb about "Great Gift Ideas for Mother's Day" from their online store. Featured prominently amongst the gifts is a DVD of The Greatest Game Ever Played.

According to the IMDB, this film is a "golf drama based on the true story of the 1913 US Open, where 20-year-old Francis Ouimet defeated reigning champion Harry Vardon."

There's only one explanation for suggesting this as a Mother's Day gift: the PTC hates mothers! Contact your state and local representatives. This evil must stop!

Bush's Slippery Slope

A new AP-Ipsos poll has been released that shows President Bush's approval ratings have slipped even further, to 33%—the lowest in his presidency. "In the past six decades, only one president had a lower job approval rating six months before a midterm election—Richard Nixon in May 1974..." We all know what he was up to.

In such a polarized political climate, it's no surprise that large numbers of people vehemently disapprove of Bush. This poll is notable because it shows that the president's support on the right is quickly eroding as well. 45% of conservatives now disapprove of Bush.

Overall, Congress gets an approval rating of 25%, with 65% of conservatives giving the Republican-majority Congress low marks. Here's a statistic that is certain to have Republican strategists shaking in their cowboy boots:

A majority of Americans say they want Democrats rather than Republicans to control Congress (51 percent to 34 percent). That's the largest gap recorded by AP-Ipsos since Bush took office. Even 31 percent of conservatives want Republicans out of power. (my italics)

What's worse, 75% of those polled said the country is heading in the wrong direction, including 60% of conservatives.

The GOP has six months to turn everything around lest they lose control of Congress in November. With the Democrats poised for their own revolution, a word of caution: be careful what you wish for. It's one thing to point out how the other guy's screwing everything up. It's quite another to try to come in and turn everything around. Jusk ask Newt.

Bitch Slapping on the 'Net

There's a full-on web war raging between journalist Christopher Hitchens and blogger and history professor Juan Cole. I'll spare you all the minutiae (which you can read about on Andrew Sullivan's blog), but here's a thumbnail sketch.

Hitchens wrote an article for Slate in which he accuses Cole of sanitizing threats made by Iran's President Ahmadinejad against the state of Israel. What's at issue here, at the risk of oversimplifying, is whether a line in an Ahmadinejad speech calls for Israel to be "wiped off the map" or that it "should vanish from the page of time." Big. Freaking. Deal. It still sounds pretty bad, no?

Cole went ballistic and used his forum at Informed Comment to savage Hitchens for crimes, against humanity and otherwise.

What really blew Cole's gasket was the fact that the evidence Hitchens used to make his case was from an email he wrote in a private email forum that has a no-forwarding, no-publishing rule. Definitely a faux pas for Hitchens to have printed it, although it is not entirely clear that he was aware of the rule (Sullivan was not). Rather than entertain this possibility, Cole alleges that Hitchens "somehow hacked into the site, or joined and lurked, or had a crony pass him things" and later refers to his email as having been "stolen."

A bit heated, but, especially if Hitchens knew the rules, essentially true. What's worse, and Hitchens is certainly on the hook for this, he didn't do the basic journalistic thing and consult Cole for comment or clarification before going to press. Bad on Hitchens. Even worse for Hitch, his article accuses Cole of being something of an apologist for Ahmadinejad, but he failed to quote a passage from the same "purloined letter" that casts doubt on this assertion:

I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies. Nor do I agree that the Israelis have no legitimate claim on any part of Jerusalem. And, I am not exactly a pacifist...

It doesn't get much more clear cut than that. Unfortunately, Cole let his anger do the talking and ended up sullying his own name in the process.

Here is what Cole stooped to:

How to explain this peculiar behavior on the part of someone who was at one time one of our great men of letters? Well, I don't think it is any secret that Hitchens has for some time had a very serious and debilitating drinking problem. He once showed up drunk to a talk I gave and heckled me. I can only imagine that he was deep in his cups when he wrote, or had some far Rightwing think tank write, his current piece of yellow journalism. I am sorry to witness the ruin of a once-fine journalistic mind. But the other reason for Hitchens's piece may be that he has become a warmonger, and it is possible that he wants a US war against Iran.

Ah, the old ad hominem attack, so familiar when it comes to opponents of Hitchens. By taking the low road, Cole cuts his own argument off at the knees and comes off now looking something worse than Hitchens. And in a fight where he seemed to hold all the cards.

To make things worse, Andrew Sullivan can provide a first-hand alibi for Hitchens' sobriety when the article was written and filed since he happened to be with him at the time. The assertion that Hitchens wants war with Iran can easily be disproved by another Slate article by Hitchens from less than two months ago that explicitly calls for a diplomatic solution to the impasse with Iran.

So, in the end, Cole is undone by his own anger. But that's not at all how it's playing on left coast of Weblogistan. Take a moment to read the comments section that follows Cole's screed. It's a combination of readers gleefully piling on the ad hominem attacks against Hitchens and the most unbearable fawning over Cole and his mighty genius and wit. (I have an obvious bias toward Hitchens, but I've never called him a "national treasure" with saliva running down my chin.) AlterNet has joined the fray as well.

There was a time—a distant memory, perhaps—when political discussion was more than mud wrestling and cheerleading. Wasn't there?

Another Reason to Give Up

According to an article in the Daily Mail, roasted vegetables are as bad for your teeth as soda because the method of cooking creates high acidity labels.

Better lay off the ratatouille and grab a double cheeseburger instead. Hold the onions.

US Wins With Moussaoui Verdict

Zacarias Moussaoui has been denied his wish for martydom. The 72 virgins will just have to wait.

Obviously there are mixed emotions from the 9/11 families, some of whom hoped that Moussaoui would get the death penalty. Instead, he will spend the rest of his life in jail with no possibility for parole and no contact with the outside world.

I think this verdict sends a good message to rest of the world, which is nice since we've been sending out a whole lot of rotten ones recently. This jury countered Moussaoui's bloodthirstiness with justice, free from emotion. That's as it should be and it's something worth being proud of.

As for his "America, you lost. ... I won" comment, only a fool would think this is not exactly what he would have said had the verdict come back for death. By showing restraint in this case, America is the clear winner on the moral stage. Gosh, I almost forgot what that feels like.

Boycott M:I:3

Andrew Sullivan leads the charge against Tom Cruise's new movie in retaliation for the Scientologist's role in getting Viacom to censor South Park.

Heck, why stop there? This is far from the first nefarious plot Tom Cruise has had a meticulously manicured hand in.

• He sullied the name of a perfectly good Dawson's Creek star, who now answers to "Kate", no doubt because there's only room for one "I" in that family
• He pissed off Brooke Shields—not to mention just about every other woman who has had or will have a child—by talking smack about post-partum depression, a condition he is unlikely to ever suffer from himself
• He has no sense of humor
• He's responsible for littering the world with yet another juicy but depressing tell-all book written by the trophy child/ex-cult member of a megalomaniacal celebrity (expected 2026)
• Vanilla Sky

So do your part. Boycott Mission: Impossible III. Stop this monster before another couch is ruined!

El Hipócrita

Ah, hypocrisy can be so satisfying.

It appears that George "The National Anthem Ought to Be Sung in English" Bush had no problemo singing nuestro himno en español during his 2000 presidential campaign.

Now, how do you say "pandering" in Spanish?

Strange Bedfellows

A truly bizarre coalition has sprung up to support Save the Internet, a group dedicated to maintaining "Network Neutrality". As has been reported in Newsweek and elsewhere, telephone and cable companies including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner would like to establish a tiered system for the Internet in which priority information delivery would be afforded to websites that pay for the privilege. Sites that don't pony up would be relegated to an Internet "slow lane" and vital sources of information and illumination (such as this here blog) would load like molasses (more so)—assuming it would load at all.

According to SavetheInternet.com, the phone and cable companies are all about the profit.

They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data. They want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video—while slowing down or blocking their competitors.

The principle of Net Neutrality holds that the Internet is for moving information, and no company or companies should have the right to grant special privileges to certain providers of information. Save the Internet says that Net Neutrality is "the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet."

And their support is broad-based. In addition to search engine giants like Google and Yahoo!, supporters of Save the Internet include this motley crew:

• Gun Owners of America
• Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.com
• Super-blogger Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame
• Anti-war rabble-rousers MoveOn.org
• Right-wing media watchdog Parents Television Council
• Citizen advocacy group Common Cause

Very strange bedfellows, indeed. Like they say, I may not want to see sausage being made, but that sure won't stop me from frying up a few succulent links of Internet freedom. With hashbrowns.

Check out SavetheInternet.com for more info on what's at stake and what we can do to preserve freedom on the Internet. They even have a handy one-stop contact-your-senator page taken right out of the PTC playbook.

Skunk's Other Life

On Monday, I wrote a post about the White House Correspondents Dinner in which I wondered what the hell Doobie Brothers guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter was doing in attendance. As far as I was concerned, George Bush was trying to relive his glory days (musically and otherwise).

Then an alert reader suggested I delve a little deeper into what Mr. Baxter is up to these days. I must say I'm flabbergasted, but I certainly know why he was invited now. It turns out that the former Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers ax man is a consultant to the U.S. government on missile defense and terrorist tactics.

The self-described "unapologetic Republican" stumbled into this line of work due to his technical aptitude and a shrewd eye for seeing how existing military hardware could be used in unconventional ways. He ended up writing a brief paper on how the anti-aircraft Aegis missile system might be turned into a missile defense system. The paper found its way into the hands of a friend who happened to be a Republican congressman and soon Baxter was consulting for the Pentagon and other government agencies.

Today he consults for the Department of Defense, NASA and several defense contractors. And that's why he was at the White House Correspondents Dinner this past weekend. That and the moustache. It reminds George Bush of John Bolton.

A Tale of Two Cheneys

According to a Drudge Report flash, Vice President Dick Cheney was super cool when his daughter, Mary, came out to him as a lesbian back when she was in junior high (update: that should say "when she was a junior in high school"). His words "were exactly the ones that I wanted to hear: 'You're my daughter, and I love you, and I just want you to be happy.'"

He went on to add, "just as long as being 'happy' doesn't include silly things like the right to marry or serve in the armed forces—or civil rights. Hey, I wasn't in the army either."

Drudge's article, which previews the forthcoming issue of Vanity Fair, also contains this fascinating and disturbing detail: "Cheney travels with a chemical-biological suit at all times." It's believed that the suit is used to protect the vice president from the stench of hypocrisy that emanates from his public persona.

The Left Gets it Right

In a recent article for the Times of London, Christopher Hitchens wrote of the "horrid mutation of the left into a reactionary and nihilistic force"—one that gives a free pass to dictators and tyrants just so long as they oppose the so-called hegemony of American and other Western interests. He proposes three reasons for this shift:

• Leftists have a "...nostalgia for the vanished 'People's Democracies' of the state socialist era"
• "...the turbulent masses of the Islamic world are at once a reminder of the glory days of 'Third World' revolution, and a hasty substitute for the vanished proletariat of yore"
• "...once you decide that American-led 'globalisation' is the main enemy, then any revolt against it is better than none at all"

Into this camp of mutated leftists Hitchens puts such characters as Ramsey Clark (a member of Saddam's legal defense team), George Galloway (who has had extensive and friendly ties with the Baathist regimes in Iraq and Syria) and Michael Moore (who compared Iraqi insurgents to American revolutionaries circa 1776), amongst others. The ascendancy of these apologists for terror and tyranny on the anti-war left has prompted many pro-democracy leftists (such as Hitchens himself) to disown the movement and cast around for friendlier shores.

Now, a group of leftist thinkers and bloggers (not that the two are mutually exclusive) based in Britain and calling themselves the Euston Group have written a manifesto for those of us on the left who have no interest in siding, whether obliquely or not, with forces of theocracy and authoritarianism (the full text of the manifesto is available as a pdf file). Here is the document's guiding principle:

...the reconfiguration of progressive opinion that we aim for involves drawing a line between the forces of the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values. It involves making common cause with genuine democrats...

What makes the Euston Manifesto unique is that it makes explicit the left's responsibility to support democracy and freedom first and foremost. On this point there can be no wavering:

We decline to make excuses for, to indulgently 'understand', reactionary regimes and movements for which democracy is a hated enemy—regimes that oppress their own peoples and movements that aspire to do so. We draw a firm line between ourselves and those left-liberal voices today quick to offer an apologetic explanation for such political forces.

So much of what drives the mutation of the left in this country and abroad is a reflexive "anti-imperialism" that casts the United States as the world's greatest terrorist power. The Euston Group takes pains to acknowledge America's often uncomfortably close relationship with authoritarian governments, but they reject the relativism that makes all other atrocities pale in comparison to America's misdeeds. In doing so, they are mindful of avoiding the traps that led so many leftists in the 20th Century to become apologists for the Soviet Union.

We must define ourselves against those for whom the entire progressive democratic agenda has been subordinated to a blanket and simplistic 'anti-imperialism' and/or hostility to the current US administration. The values and goals which properly make up that agenda—the values of democracy, human rights, the continuing battle against unjustified privilege and power, solidarity with peoples fighting against tyranny and oppression—are what most enduringly define the shape of any Left worth belonging to.

The basic principles of the Euston Manifesto should be obvious and intrinsic to anyone with an Orwell volume on the bookshelf. What a sign of the times that someone actually had to write it down. It's certainly a relief to finally see some signs of life coming from the left. The issues of democracy and human rights are the birthright of the left; it's up to us to reclaim it.

You can make a start by signing the manifesto.

Malkin Award Nominee?

Andrew Sullivan gives out a series of awards celebrating the high and (very) low points in punditry. One such prize is the Malkin Award, given for "shrill, hyperbolic, divisive and intemperate right-wing rhetoric" (Ann Coulter is ineligible to give others a chance).

I found a blog entry (thanks to the positive play it got on FOX & Friends this morning) that has a real chance at taking the Malkin crown. The text is only one sentence long, but it's sufficiently outrageous to put it in contention. Over at lucianne.com (a site with a bald eagle/American flag logo that would make Stephen Colbert proud), Ms. Goldberg has posted a large photo of the World Trade Center. Under the picture, she has written, "If illegal aliens had stayed home the twin towers would still be standing."

Now, there are many reasons why someone might be against illegal immigration. Usually the low road consists of calling them moochers on the social safety net who pop out babies and drain our resources. Implying that illegal immigrants are terrorists bent on destroying America is several roads lower. Congratulations, Lucianne!

The Truthiness Will Out

There's a lot we can glean from an article in Editor & Publisher about Stephen Colbert's performance at Saturday's White House Correspondents Dinner.

First, unsurprisingly, the President and First Lady are humorless when someone speaks a bit too much "truthiness" about the Bush administration. Second, even more unsurprisingly, the White House correspondents are largely a bunch of timid lapdogs.

The article even recaps a number of Colbert's best jokes from the dinner. Here's my favorite:

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. "This administration is soaring, not sinking," he said. "If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg."

But the E&P article teaches us another valuable lesson as well: read news stories all the way to the end. That's where they try to tie up the odds and ends, and sometimes there are wonderful nuggets of strangeness to be found. Here's the last line of the article:

Among attendees at the black tie event: Morgan Fairchild, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, Justice Antonin Scalia, George Clooney, and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter of the Doobie Brothers—in a kilt. (my italics)

Jeff "Skunk" Baxter? What the hell was he doing at the White House Correspondents Dinner? Was Mark Farner unavailable?

And hey, that kilt might explain why George and Laura looked so upset.

Macho Environmentalism

Thanks to American zoologist Louis Guillette, the world now has its best chance to realize changes environmentalists have been struggling for years to enact. Why? According to Guillette's work, overexposure to pesticides can be linked to decreased penis size in baby boys.

Sure, Prince William Sound was pretty and those spotted owls are a hoot, but Washington has never been a very hospitable place for tree huggers. Move past hugging and endanger something nearer and dearer to the hearts (amongst other places) of politicians and members of the power elite, however, and you'll have each and every one of them standing at attention (so to speak). Expect sweeping anti-pesticide legislation within the year and don't be surprised when a yard full of dandelions becomes a symbol of virility.