Mr. Natural

We at the Idiom have friends who constantly advocate for all things natural. Natural childbirth, natural health supplements, organic food, etc. They worry about pollution in the air and contaminants in the food supply. This preference for all things natural goes hand in hand with a general credulousness regarding every new all natural healthy, environmentally friendly fad.

Let's set the record straight. Things that are touted as "all natural" generally suck. St. John's wart won't cure bad depression. Fish oil will not cure all your health ills. Natural childbirth hurts, not to mention you can die if you decide to deliver in hot tub with no doctor because it's more natural. You can't improve your vision through eye exercises. The list goes on. Fuck natural. I'll take nuclear power, antibiotics, carbon spewing cars and pain killers any day over an all natural lifestyle. in the state of nature, life is brutal, harsh and short.

So I have never been able to understand why people, educated people, continue to embrace all natural, primitive lifestyle choices as if they were inherently good. Here's an interesting theory I hadn't thought about:

Since socialism had not been able to raise the people of what was then called the "Third World" out of a primitive lifestyle, the New Left declared instead that a primitive lifestyle is the ideal, and that we should try to emulate it here. The centerpiece of that campaign has been environmentalism.

The argument is that then Communism collapsed, instead of accepting ideological defeat, the left redefined its goals as promoting a primitive, anti-capitalist lifestyle. Because above all, the left believes it knows what's good for you and how you should live. It's a very appealing argument. It's fair to say the loudest advocates of the "all natural" and "environmentally friendly" lifestyle are left of center. Hippies, socialists, marxists, democrats and other people I have no use for have embraced all things natural and eco-friendly (and unfortunately it seems to be catching on with millions of other poor critical thinkers in the country unlike Communism). Marxists have been demonstrably wrong about almost everything. Stalin did not unite the workers of the world, he just exterminated a few millions of them. The Rosenbergs weren't innocent, they did pass nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Communism doesn't work, it destroyed the Soviet Union and China has a capitalist economy. The American left was credulous in the past and its credulous now. Only now instead of blindly accepting the tenets of Marxism, the left accepts "all things natural" as a matter of faith.

Now if I could just understand why so many people thought Marxism worked.

Obama's Kool-Aid Tastes Best

Charles Krauthammer may have no neck, but he can sure write a paragraph that beautifully captures the truths that politicians try so hard to obfuscate. Here he is on Obama's recent spate of flip-flops, course corrections, and clarifications:

I have never had any illusions about Obama. I merely note with amazement that his media swooners seem to accept his every policy reversal with an equanimity unseen since the Daily Worker would change the party line overnight -- switching sides in World War II, for example -- whenever the wind from Moscow changed direction.

Brilliant. Most Obama supporters really don't seem to care what he says. They just project their own views on to him. For many, this race has all the gravity of a contest for high school class president. Obama supporters dig Barry because he's just a cooler cat than old John McCain. Hope! Change! Yeah, that's cool! Why can't the Republicans just take a toke and give peace a chance. War is a downer man.

Never mind that Obama pretty much is a communist. If that's too harsh, then a hard-core socialist. What do you expect from a man whose past mentors and friends include actual communists, terrorists, convicted felons, terrorist sympathizers, and people who are just plain anti-American. Not to mention his support of socialized medicine, higher taxes, anti-business policies, and his general attitude that Barry Obama and the government know what's best for you.

Never mind that Obama bills himself as new kind of politician with a message of change, but the only thing that seems to be changing is his position on just about everything. Meetings with Iran without preconditions. Well, not exactly. Jerusalem must be undivided. Well, not exactly. He is going to accept public campaign funds. Well, not exactly.

Never mind that though. Hope! Change! Sounds good! That Barry Obama is one cool cat.

Its gonna be a long four years.

Bush Doctrine Relevant Again

When was it ever irrelevant?

A solution for Zimbabwe's crisis isn't hard to come by: Someone – ideally the British – must remove Mr. Mugabe by force, install Mr. Tsvangirai as president, arm his supporters, prevent any rampages, and leave. "Saving Darfur" is a somewhat different story, but it also involves applying Western military force to whatever degree is necessary to get Khartoum to come to terms with an independent or autonomous Darfur. Burma? Same deal.

International relations theorists, including prominent Obama adviser Susan Rice, justify these sorts of interventions under the rubric of a "Responsibility to Protect" – a concept that comes oddly close to Kipling's White Man's Burden. So close, in fact, that its inherent paternalism has hitherto inhibited many liberals from endorsing the kinds of interventions toward which they are now tip-toeing, thousands of deaths too late.

So let's by all means end the hand-wringing and embrace the responsibility to protect, wherever necessary and feasible. Let's spare the thousands of innocents, punish the wicked, oppose tyrants, and support democrats – both in places where it is now fashionable to do so (Burma) and in places where it is not (Iraq). If that turns out to be Mr. Obama's foreign policy, it will be a worthy one. It does come oddly close to the Bush Doctrine.

Video Games

Kid Various played thousands of hours of Donkey Kong. He has yet sneak into construction sites to chase gorillas.

The idea that video games and explicit media content are a threat to society is demonstrably false. Whatever evidence there might be that violent media content causes violent behavior, or that graphic sexual content stimulates unhealthy sexual behavior, there is a simple test that invariably proves otherwise. Buy the game and then take some time to play it over the next few days or weeks — however long you feel is necessary for a proper test (keep in mind that Grand Theft Auto IV involves at least 25 hours of narrative development, more if you actually decide to play the game instead of just following along with the story).

After you're done, ask yourself a few straightforward questions: Do you want to go outside and steal a car? Do you feel the need to obtain a missile launcher? Do you feel like having sex with a stripper? Or, to more accurately represent the sort of reasoning involved in media-effects claims, do you feel that having sex with a stripper is now a real possibility for you?

It's Not A Purse... It's European!!!!

Kid Various has always wondered why anyone would think that the phrase "that's what they do in Europe" should persuade him to anything...

If anyone suggested that Tiger Woods should try to be more like other golfers, people would question the sanity of whoever made that suggestion.

Why should Tiger Woods try to be more like Phil Mickelson? If Tiger turned around and tried to golf left-handed, like Mickelson, he probably wouldn't be as good as Mickelson, much less as good as he is golfing the way he does right-handed.

Yet there are those who think that the United States should follow policies more like those in Europe, often with no stronger reason than the fact that Europeans follow such policies. For some Americans, it is considered chic to be like Europeans.

Carlin

Kid Various has had a day to reflect on the passing of George Carlin and realizes that he owes much of his own sense of humour to him. The Kid can remember being introduced to Carlin via his dad's copies of Class Clown, Take Offs and Put Ons and Toledo Windowbox. (Remember vinyl???) Spending hours laughing his ass off at Carlin's observations concerning bodily functions and, of course, the 7 words you can never say on television.

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cock-sucker, mother-fucker and tits...

AND TITS DOESN'T EVEN BELONG ON THE LIST!

But as he grew older, the Kid began to appreciate the beauty of Carlin's word-smithing and the understanding that humour most often comes from dark places. Human suffering is the basis of most forms of comedy (as another great comedian, Charles Schulz, once responded when asked why he never let Charlie Brown kick the football - "There's nothing funny about the guy who doesn't slip on the banana peel.")

Lewis Black said yesterday on NPR that Lenny Bruce blazed the trail, and Carlin and Richard Pryor turned it into a superhighway. Very true. The Kid's very personality was in some measure formed in those countless hours listening to those old vinyl albums. He learned that somebody could actually say those things! And more so - that that was someone's job! (Occupation: Foole!)

And as a very amateur stand up, and just general all around wise ass, he owes a whole lot to the the man who passed on the day before yesterday.

Anti-Americanism

Geez, as if there weren't already enough reasons to vote for McCain...

The Pew survey tells us that some foreign precincts show a landslide victory for Barack Obama. France leads the pack; fully 84% of those following the American campaign are confident Mr. Obama will do the right thing in foreign policy, compared with 33% who say that about John McCain. There are similar results in Germany, and a closer margin in Britain. The populations of Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan have scant if any confidence in either candidate.

Thanks George

Christ, he was one of the best.

Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71.

Carlin did have a history of heart problems as he noted in his "competition" with Richard Pryor:

I lead Richard Pryor in heart attacks two to one...

However, Richard leads me one to nothing in burning yourself up.

You see, first Richard had a heart attack, then I had a heart attack. Then Richard burned himself up and I said, "Fuck that - I'm having another heart attack!!!"

Just the best...

Above Empyrean

Everyone should listen to this radio broadcast of the Dennis Prager Show where Prager interviews Bruce Herschensohn from Pepperdine University. Herschensohn was promoting his new book: Above Empyrean, A Novel of the Final Days of the War on Islamic Terrorism.

In the course of discussing his book, Herschensohn uses his wide experience in government and politics to remind us of that which we have lost sight of.

Liberty is above empyrean.

America is above empyrean.

Above the "highest heavens."

He reminds us that we are at WAR, against an enemy that threatens our civilization. And he focuses on the fact that, sadly, we are not serious about it.

Well worth the listen.

Mars, Bringer of War

A little bit from the funniest show on TV.

Henchmen 21 and 24 ROCK!

R. Kelley Acquitted!

Who're ya gonna believe? Me, or your own lying eyes???

Ding Dong

Sadly, the witch is kind of more the undead kind.

Unfortunately, most European leaders regard EU treaties as a chance to parody the principle of monarchy: "The treaty is dead. Long live the treaty." Veterans of these disputes will remember that, when the Danes voted No to Maastricht in 1992, the then (Tory) Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, rushed to the House of Commons to explain that the Danish people had given the wrong answer: they would have to vote again until they gave the right one. In 2001, the Irish rejected the Nice Treaty. They, too, were made to vote again.

More here.

Wasn't AIDS Supposed To Kill Us All By Now?

Kid Various remembers the 80's. And he remembers that an AIDS pandemic was supposed to have been one of the major challenges of the 21st century.

Didn't happen.

Kevin de Cock, who has headed the global battle against Aids, said at the weekend that, outside very poor African countries, Aids is confined to "high-risk groups", including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers. And even in these communities it remains quite rare. "It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in countries [outside sub-Saharan Africa]", he said. In other words? All that hysterical fearmongering about Aids spreading among sexed-up western youth was a pack of lies.

The Kid doesn't want to get down on AIDS research. It's an important thing. But funding and attention on HIV/AIDS for the past 20 years has been way, way out of line with the nature of the threat. In a world of infinite resources - that's fine. But the reality is that HIV/AIDS research eclipsed and drew resources from other areas of health research, specifically more "mundane" forms of disease like cancer and heart disease - which will kill more people this year than AIDS ever will.

The past is past. And like the Kid said, nothing wrong with trying to eliminate AIDS. But it is illustrative of the problem of falling prey to the catastrophist vision of the future.

The dark apocalyptic visions of the catastrophists (or as The Kid likes to call them - the catasophists) appear with studious regularity year after year. Yet their malefic prognostications never seem to pan out. Funny that way.

One may wonder what the global warming and peak oil catasophists will be onto next 20 years hence.

For the "That Makes Us Feel Better File"

Investigators have apparently uncovered documents from the AQ Khan ring (see The Nuclear Jihadist for an excellent history) that demonstrate that Khan was in the business of selling much more advanced weapons designs that previously thought.

The plans appear to closely resemble a nuclear weapon that was built by Pakistan and first tested exactly a decade ago. But when confronted with the design by officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency last year, Pakistani officials insisted that Dr. Khan, who has been lobbying in recent months to be released from the loose house arrest that he has been under since 2004, did not have access to Pakistan’s weapons designs.

From which we can put together two very important conclusions:

1) Someone needs to put a bullet into Dr. Khan's head - because he is going to be released. His "incarceration" is already a joke. And it must be demonstrated that his business of nuclear proliferation is an extremely dangerous one for those involved.

2) The proliferation genie is out of the bottle. And it is pointless to continue to play defense. Aggressive investigations, prosecutions and containment will of course need to be integral parts of the strategy. But playing defense alone is a losing proposition. We have to be changing intentions along with capabilities.

In the Realist model, intentions of states (or other actors) are irrelevant. Only capabilities matter. But ultimately, that's poppycock.

Kid Various has his issues with the French, but he doesn't lose sleep at night because France has the bomb. The customers at AQ Khans nuclear Wal-Mart, however, scare the crap out of him.

But we are not going to indefinitely be able to limit the Enemy's capability. Given that as a truism - if we are to remain secure - we must change his intentions.

If You Don't know, I Can't Tell You

Pajamas Media had a good article yesterday on the re-issue of High Noon on DVD and how, over the years, it has morphed from an allegory about McCarthyism to a story about the importance of standing up to evil.

Mr. Democracy, currently living in Iraq, sent a message concerning how he feels that High Noon has become an allegory for American motivations in foreign policy.

I end up screening High Noon several times a year for people here in Iraq. By coincidence I was showing it yesterday during some downtime at the Governance center. Working in various places across the globe, you run across a lot of non-Americans who think they know what’s what when it comes to Americans and American foreign policy.

I have always told them that they cannot understand American foreign policy until they watch High Noon.

High Noon is essential for understanding the American psyche and how we see ourselves in the world.

Will Kane is, literally, the Hass-ean “reluctant sheriff.” He stands up to evil because a) he knows that if you run from evil it will only follow you and b) it is what he is sworn to do. Kane has a responsibility that he cannot delegate or discharge to anyone else, and he must live up to it – even when no one else expects him to or frankly, wants him to.

He is surrounded by the talkers, the shirkers, the back stabbers, the fair weather friends and the people of good will who are simply to paralyzed by fear to act or refuse to out of principle (Grace Kelly as Kane’s Quaker wife.) But despite being abandoned by the townspeople he is sworn to protect, Kane still has that responsibility, to stand up to the evil that is coming, with allies if possible, alone if necessary – even in the face of near certain death.

But Kane is not the supremely confident swaggering image of the sheriff projected by figures like John Wayne. Wayne famously hated High Noon because he thought Kane was weak. To Wayne, the true American icon of the old west was the supremely confident, competent and stoic character like Tom Doniphon in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

But what makes Will Kane representative of America in the world of talkers, shirkers, back stabbers, et al is precisely the fact that he is insecure. He is frightened. He is frustrated by his inability to recruit anyone to help him. He makes mistakes. One of the great sequences in the movie is when Kane walks through the saloon doors and overhears the bartender taking bets on how long he’ll live after Frank Miller gets into town. Kane walks over to the bartender and cold cocks him. At which point the bartender looks at up him from the floor, holding his jaw and says:

“You carry a badge and a gun, Marshall. There ain’t no call for that…”

To which Kane looks at him ruefully, knowing that he has let his anger tarnish him as an upholder of the law and admits:

“You’re right…” and offers the bartender his hand to help him up.

At the climax of the film, there is this magnificent shot of Kane in the middle of the street, looking around, wringing his hands as the noon train’s whistle blows in the distance. The camera cranes upwards from a close up on the frightened Kane to reveal the whole town – totally empty. He is totally alone.

And yet, he must go meet Miller and his gang to defend the town. It is his responsibility. He cannot escape it.

This is America.

And to my friends who don’t understand, mostly Europeans and Iraqis, I find myself resorting to the words of Kane when his wife asks him why he is doing this.

“If you don’t know, I can’t explain it to you.”

Because to them, there always has to be some ulterior motive, some occulted reason for our actions – some way in which our actions are secretly profiting big business, private individuals, or working towards some grand strategic end on the global chess board. Because that’s the world they live in.

We live in the world of High Noon. We believe that in order to protect the magnificent gains of Enlightenment civilization, evil must be confronted. And for good or for ill, history has placed that heavy burden on us – with allies if possible, alone if necessary.

The defining moment in High Noon is at the very end, after Kane has killed Frank Miller and his gang, after he has saved the town, the townspeople come out and surround him. Kane unpins the tin star from his chest, throws it down into the dirt, and rides off with Grace Kelly.

It is beyond their understanding that, as Americans, our fondest wish is simply to throw our star down into the dirt. If we could, we would simply say “Good luck to you all. We wish you the best. Please don’t bother us.”

But we cannot. Because history has given us the responsibility.

As such, High Noon, which originally was a veiled allegory concerning McCarthyism has completely, in the ensuing years, become a much more “conservative” film. As that article you sent notes, people watching High Noon for the first time today would never make the McCarthy connection. The film works much better as an allegory for America and its place in the world – even if this was not the original intention of the author (although Fred Zinnemann, as a refugee from Europe probably had perspective on that.)

High Noon should definitely be required viewing for every American high school.

Will Kane - exemplar to the world...

Everyone's A Soldier

Just a sprinkling of stories on the same topic i.e. attempts to strip us of our most basic freedoms under threat of bodily harm:

Pakistan to ask EU to amend laws on freedom of expression

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will ask the European Union countries to amend laws regarding freedom of expression in order to prevent offensive incidents such as the printing of blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and the production of an anti-Islam film by a Dutch legislator, sources in the Interior Ministry told Daily Times on Saturday.

Pakistani Ambassador: Cartoons are a terrorist act...

Pakistani ambassador to Norway, Rab Nawaz Khan, fears what will happen when the Norwegian Muhammad caricature published in Adresseavisen reaches the masses in large Muslim countries like Pakistan.

"Muslim societies all over the world will be insulted. Therefore it's a terrorist act," says the ambassador to TV 2.

Pakistanis blame cartoons for violence against Danish embassy

Fauzia Mufti Abbas, Pakistan's ambassador to Denmark, agreed that the Mohammed cartoons, first published in Jyllands-Posten newspaper in October 2005, had incited Muslim anger and were possibly the motivation for the attack, which killed eight and wounded as many as 30.

'It isn't just the people of Pakistan that feel they have been harassed by what your newspaper has begun,' she said. 'I'd like to know if your newspaper is satisfied with what it has done and what it has unleashed?'

We don't know about Jyllands-Posten but we here at The Idiom are most satisfied to unleash Muslim frenzy. Mostly because it just proves our point Ms. Fauzia, you pre-modern primitive.


Because publishing cartoons, contrary to your pre-modern thinking, is not a terrorist act. Killing the artists or publishers is a terrorist act!

It makes no difference in any case. As Kid Various noted in a comment on Mr. Surly's post regarding Fitna, the movie:

It is the duty of every free citizen to refuse to bow to attempts to curtail their basic freedoms, even if it puts their lives, or the lives of their colleagues and families, at risk.

Otherwise the Enemy will win. It is that simple.

People have to understand that we are at war. Everyone is on the front lines. Everyone is a soldier. Even if they don't want to be. To quote a more unsavory character than Franklin, "You may not be interested in war. But war is most certainly interested in you."

It is your DUTY to resist. Duty is not about "I feel like it..." Duty is about what you have to do, what you obligated to do. And if you value Liberty, you are constrained to exercise and defend it - no matter the personal cost.

Kid Various may die - but he will never be a slave.

You can kill us, you can kill our friends, you can kill our families. But we will never submit. Not to a Man, not to a God.

It IS a Small World After All!

"You just spent 31 hours in front of your console to win the national Gears of War championship - what are you going to do now?"

"I'm going to Disney World...virtually!"

Disney World is going virtual. On Thursday, Disney and Google announced Walt Disney World Resort in 3-D.

All four theme parks and more than 20 Disney Resort hotels of the Orlando, Fla., tourist destination have been created and placed on Google Earth. Users, the Disney company said on its Web site, "can zoom down Main Street, USA, fly around Cinderella Castle, explore Spaceship Earth and climb the Tree of Life."

What's Farsi for "Goose" and "Gander?"

One hopes that we're involved. Iran has got to learn that the pendulum swings both ways. They can screw with us in Iraq. We can screw with them in their house.

Iran has said saboteurs opposed to the Islamic revolution were behind a rare car bomb explosion in Tehran two weeks ago that caused no casualties, a press report said on Monday.

The Greatest Moment in Sports

Congrats Detroit!

And this. HAH!

D +1

On this 64th anniversary of D-Day plus one, Roger Kimball gives us a chilling look at what the "great crusade" to liberate humanity from the dark forces of fascism would look like today:

June 6, 1944. -NORMANDY- Three hundred French civilians were killed and thousands more wounded today in the first hours of America’s invasion of continental Europe. Casualties were heaviest among women and children.

Most of the French casualties were the result of the artillery fire from American ships attempting to knock out German fortifications prior to the landing of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops. Reports from a makeshift hospital in the French town of St. Mere Eglise said the carnage was far worse than the French had anticipated and reaction against the American invasion was running high. “We are dying for no reason,” said a Frenchman speaking on condition of anonymity. “Americans can’t even shoot straight. I never thought I’d say this, but life was better under Adolph Hitler.”

The invasion also caused severe environmental damage. American troops, tanks, trucks and machinery destroyed miles of pristine shoreline and thousands of acres of ecologically sensitive wetlands. It was believed that the habitat of the spineless French crab was completely wiped out, threatening the species with extinction.

It'd be funny - except for the fact that we live a world in which probably 70% of college students couldn't tell you who started WWII, or why it was fought. Which is why if the same titanic struggle were to be re-fought today we probably couldn't do it. Hell, at this moment in time, WWII revisionism is taking hold - as noted in this piece by by VDH which overviews Pat Buchanan's new book, the main thesis of which is basically "the Poles were asking for it" and Nicholas Baker's new book which indicts the Allies as war criminals for their campaign of strategic bombing in Germany.

Oh yeah, we bombed civilians in WWII. Not by accident, but as a policy, to demoralize, terrify and degrade German industrial capacity. Because IT IS WAR. And in war you do everything you can to bring it to the swiftest possible conclusion.

Not today. Today FDR would be sitting in The Hague on a war crime rap. Because we have never had to think about the horrors of war. And so we graduate more and more kids from institutions of higher learning who have no concept of history, or what is necessary to preserve freedom. (Or any notion that freedom is something worth preserving - it's just another "value.") So of course they would be duped by people like Buchanan and Baker into thinking that WWII was not an epic struggle to liberate humanity from the dark forces of tyranny - but rather just another "war of choice" by blood-thirsty Americans.

In 20 years, college kids will be walking around with swastikas on their t-shirts along with their "Che" shirts.

Question of the Day

Why does snot form in sheets?

The Kid will feel it flapping around in there like the reed in a clarinet, blow his nose, and it just comes out in this thin, sticky sheet.

What's up with that?

Super Freaking SWEET!

How sweet is this?



Holy crap! Kid Various can't wait to field that! That's like the ultimate command piece!

RUN IN TERROR CHILDREN OF THE LIVING!!!

And Whose Fault Is That?

The New Republic writes of the cyclone induced crisis in Burma:

If this disaster had happened ten years ago--that is, before Iraq--plans would almost certainly be on the table for some form of humanitarian intervention designed to resolve the situation. Maybe we would be talking about deposing the Burmese regime outright; maybe we would be discussing--as Robert Kaplan did in a recent New York Times op-ed--more modest steps, such as sending U.S. Marines on boats to deliver supplies to the hardest-hit areas. But, either way, realistic options would be considered for saving Burmese lives, even if those options involved violating Burmese sovereignty.

Instead, American diplomats in Asia have explicitly avoided direct criticism of the regime. And, even as the USAID brigade waits for visas in Bangkok so that it can enter Burma, the White House has made sure to clarify that no threat of force is on the horizon.

...This is, put simply, an unacceptable abdication of our moral responsibilities.

Kid Various agrees. To which he can only reply, "And whose fault is that?"

Certainly not the dastardly Neoconservatives who could have been counted on for support for overthrowing a despicable regime to free a long suffering people.

No rather what makes intervention in Burma (or Darfur, or any number of God forsaken places where people toil under the lash of miserable despots) unthinkable has been the sad, and unfortunately completely successful, efforts of the Left to demonize President Bush and discredit the United States' policy of regime change to the point that not only can we no longer pre-empt existential threats like a nuclear Iran - but are prevented from intervening to save the lives of thousands of innocents in situations like the Burmese tragedy. All the while supporting the fiction that Burma is a legitimate "state" exactly equal to, say, Italy.

For the Left, the crime of Iraq was not that we intervened - it was that we had actual national security interests there. To the Leftists at the New Republic, the U.S. is morally bound to intervene in situations only where it has absolutely no national interest whatsoever. Which is not only poor policy - but makes absolutely no sense.

Were the Iraqis any less deserving of liberation than the Burmese? Or the Darfur Sudanese? What the Left does not want to admit (with the notable exceptions of some like Christopher Hitchens and Paul Berman) is that the Long War is essentially a progressive war in the pursuit of progressive ideals.

If the Left could get over its irrational hatred of George W. Bush, it might just be able to actually accomplish what it mouths in endless platitudes - the liberation of the dispossessed.

Wigga Pleez!

Father Michael Pfleger was suspended yesterday from his St. Sabina parish on the South Side of Chicago (in the baddest part of town…)

For those not in the know, Pfleger ignited a grand controversy last week with his mocking of Hillary Clinton from the pulpit of the United Trinity Church – Barack Obama’s EX-church.



Pfleger tearfully apologized in a statement a few days ago in which he denied that he was a racist.

The South Side priest whose comments about Hillary Clinton reignited the controversy over Barack Obama's former church stood before his parishioners Sunday and apologized.

Speaking at St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church, the Rev. Michael Pfleger said he isn't racist or sexist and called the past few days "the most painful" of his life.

To which we can only retort “Wait a minute… Isn’t that guy white?”

Because he’s apologizing for being racist towards Hillary Clinton who, despite being married to “the first black President” is herself, white. But this guy is white. But he’s “acting black” so can you be a black racist while being white? The Kid’s head is spinning.

From this, we can learn two things:

One, Kid Various should give up going to the gym and become a pastor because apparently preaching is a better workout than 40 minutes on the treadmill

Two, the secret message of this circus, which has lain dormant in the media, is that when we talk about “race” in this country, we are no longer actually talking about race (defined by ethnicity,) we are talking about “culture.”

The United States is past race as a societal issue. Yes there may be some people out there for whom skin color is a determinant. But the overwhelming majority of the friction in the race problem is not caused by “racism” per se – but rather a clash of cultures. (In this it is like the modern West’s clash with pre-modern Arab traditional culture.)

And this is exemplified by the ability of people to move back and forth over the cultural divide.

Michael Pflegger has essentially become black. If you just heard his ministrations on the radio (which Kid Various first did) you would never in a million years guess that he was white. Similarly, black people who assimilate into the larger American middle class culture are prone to accusations of being “white.” But the cultural argument is still so overshadowed by the concept of race that we can have this ridiculous spectacle of having a white guy stand up in front of the entire country and deny that he is a black racist.

It just keeps getting weirder and weirder.

OMFG!

Oh my FUCKING GOD!

How freaking COOL are these???







Normally, Kid Various doesn't field zombie types (Nothing but bone! NOTHING BUT BONE!)

But these zombie wolves are so sweet he HAS to get them. How to use them though? Pair them with "huntsman" type figures and use them as skirmishers? Don't want to go the WARHAMMER^TM route of fielding units of "dire wolves."

Hmmmm...

Injection Improves Alzheimer's Patients In Minutes

Man, the future's gonna be great!

As We Used To Say On The Playground...

"oooooooh...BURN!!!!"


Mr. Democracy told Kid Various that he actually saw Senator Obama in the DFAC at the Embassy that one time the Senator was in Baghdad way back in 2006.

Mr. Democracy said that, as the DFAC was filled with State Dept. types - the guy was mobbed like he was Mark Hamil at a Sci-Fi convention.

John Kerry? Not so much...

As Long As It Flies

Actually, the car of the future does not have to fly. But it does have to keep morons from slowing down to look at an accident. Just drive by. Don't slow down!

Rubbernecking a thing of the past. The future's gonna be GREAT.

Man, Did He Know Diddley!

Who do you love?

Bo Diddley
1928 - 2008