The Baitles

See Roy for more.

Uighurs

A 24-minute radio documentary about four who have ended up in Bermuda after Guantanamo. Mostly a series of interviews with their translator/angel of mercy.

Waiting for Gaddafi

From The Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiraya we are presented with a PDF called The Development of Education:

The philosophy of education is based on the Jamahiryi system applied in the Great Jamahiriya from the Third World theory formulated by intellectual leader Muammar Gaddafi in the Green Book with its three chapters (political - economic - social). The Green Book defined knowledge as the "natural right of human beings" and described the systems that monopolize knowledge as systems that call for the ignorance and backwardness, and the social element to this theory identified the philosophical framework of general education, where many statements were made on the educational process, such as:

The study is not an end in itself, but the purpose is to create the new model man.

Compulsory education is in fact compulsory ignorance.

Ignorance will end when the reality of everything is revealed.

Why Bother?

Ann Coulter is a big liar of course, but here:

Whatever you think of Palin, her argument for resigning was the opposite of "rambling" and "incoherent."

How does it serve Ann Coulter to prop up Sarah Palin? Surely Coulter is bright and vicious enough to leave Palin to the tabloids and move on to some less embarrassing authoritarian monster.

Genetics

Mitochondrial Eve
Found it hard to believe
That she'd meet the Y-chromosome Adam.
She was right it turned out
For there can be no doubt
That her great × n granddaughter had him.

Via Pharyngula, Brian Kilmeade understands the perils of straying from the bloodline:

Absence of Evidence is Not Evidence of Provenance

News from Israel:

This was supposed to be the happiest day in the life of Sharon Schechter and Roman Buksafon, but on Monday, a day before their wedding, the Chief Rabbinate informed he couple they were not allowed to marry.

"You are adopted and therefore your Jewishness cannot be verified," a rabbi at the Chief Rabbinate told Roman, who denies being adopted and says he has produced all the documents required by the Rabbinate to receive a wedding permit.

The rest of the article details what seems to be a requirement that one prove one is not adopted before a marriage will be performed.

What if the guy was really found among the reeds on a riverbank?

Victoria Jackson's Day

What's Victoria Jackson up to?

I was browsing in a Burbank gift shop yesterday and I asked the store owner how business was doing. She smiled, “Well, you know, hit and miss. I’m sure it will be better soon.” The store was empty.

I apologized for not buying anything. “I’m sorry, but my husband now cringes when I order a Hazelnut Iced Coffee at McDonald’s, so I can’t really buy anything.”

Her smile hardened.

“You know, I’ve been speaking at Tea Parties lately. No one seems to know or care that our country just turned Socialist.”

She stared at me like a deer caught in head lights.

I continued, “I don’t like politics, but we have to do something. I’m writing to my Congressmen and Senators now.”

Her teenage assistants with no customers had frozen smiles and frozen bodies.

“Did you know Obama uses our tax payer dollars to pay for abortions?”

She shook her head no.

“He even supports killing 9 month old babies, in the womb.”

She became a ceramic knick knack.

I continued, “It’s called ‘late-term abortion’. Now he’s going to kill sick people and old people. Did you know that Cap & Trade will allow the government to regulate how long we take a shower? And that the “New Health Plan”, happy, happy, will allow the government to decide who lives and who dies?”

Crickets. Dead crickets.

As I opened the door to leave, she shook herself into reality and said, “Thank you and come again.”

The bell jingled as the door shut.

The future looks good for Victoria as she'll probably be able to afford a custom shopping cart and many many cats.

In any case, she'll be happy:

I got into my fuel efficient economy car, with the leopard seat covers, and the bumper that used to have the “I RESIST SOCIALISM” bumper sticker, until it got smashed, and I drove away thinking, “Ignorance is Bliss.”

This makes me laugh in a surprisingly untroubled way:



I just can't see it as anything but silliness.

Frist!

Fire, Pro and Con

Once there was a little church
Scorched one night while stars did turn
It's left the parish in the lurch:
No place to wish a witch would burn.

The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Hero

Andy McCarthy is objectively pro-communist.

The Wall Street Journal (as flagged in the NRO web briefing) reports on rioting in China by Uighur "students" that has left scores dead and hundreds wounded.

Well, what lover of freedom wouldn't rebel against the heathen Chinese, my good fellow?

The "students," described elsewhere in the story as from a "predominantly Muslim ethnic group

Oh dear. The wrong people are rebelling.

Birds of a Feather

Y'know, I love screenshots.

This Means America Is Not Conservative Enough

The Challenge

VD Hanson:

She's not looking at 2012; but in eight years by 2016 she will be far more savvy, still young, and far more experienced. It matters not all that the Left writes her off as daffy, since they were going to do that whatever she did; the key is whether she convinces conservatives in eight year of travel and reflection that she's a charismatic Margaret Thatcher type heavyweight.

As we know, conservatives are notoriously skeptical so Ms. Palin will have to work hard.

Why You Hate Sarah Palin

Jim Geraghty tells you:

A short while back, Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum suggested, only half-jokingly, that actress Angelina Jolie's "entire Oscar-winning, serial-adopting, Brad Pitt-snagging, plane-piloting, unattainably hot-looking existence makes women around the world feel hopelessly inadequate and therefore unhappy." Perhaps Sarah Palin is the Angelina Jolie of the political world.

In her opponents' minds, Palin's made all the wrong choices, and cannot, they insist, be very bright. Yet she's happy and successful. She is an anomaly that invalidates their worldview, and for that, they attempt to immiserate her — regardless of whether she wishes to run for national office again.

BONUS NITPICK:

Geraghty, July 2nd 2009:

There's no clear sense of her future plans; the near-daily denunciation seems to be just in case she decides to run for national office, a far-from-certain event that would occur, at the earliest, three and a half years from now.

July 3rd 2009:

Sarah Palin will not seek re-election next year, fueling speculation that she will make a 2012 presidential bid.

And Jonah is all about timing.

HOT!

I AM AWARE OF ALL NEWSPAPER READING TRADITIONS.

PELICAN A AIR AM AROUND BADGER BRICK CAT CLAM CUZ DED DOOD DRAG DRINKED DUST EATED FORGOT FUNNY GET GOO HA I IF IT ITS JOKE KIN SHREDS MAH MAKE MUSTASH NO NOO NOW ON OOPS POO POOP POOPS POST SMART TEH TELL U WONT WURDZ RATE FOR
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

The National Review on Revolution

Michael Ledeen gets hard over some reader mail:

Long before the modern rationalizations for the "benign" nanny state, Confucius had given his own vision of the perfectly ordered pyramid with the emperor at the top, talking to God, and most of the rest of us at the bottom, lucky for the privilege to talk to their dog.

The bulk of human experience is tyranny, whereas liberty is the ultimate unprobability, a.k.a., America. Government of the people, for the people, by the people cannot survive unless the people has enough intestinal fortitude to make it work.

Which is so true. Remember it. And fight.

Ledeen's taste in rhetoric aside, I suppose the above explains why the son of a president should not be president and why we are justly suspicious of those who would preserve a moneyed and powerful elite.

Adversity

On the website of a Catholic university in Palestine:

Despite being closed twelve times by Israeli military imposed orders, the longest of which was for three years from October 1987 until October 1990, classes have continually been held on- and off-campus. The curfews, travel restrictions, military checkpoint harassment, and the negative impact of the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, are factors faced by the University’s enrollment of 2,936 students, most of whom are full time, and 10,816 graduates, most of whom are serving the Palestinian society in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in various professions and leadership positions. The University’s story is one of people committed to pursuing their higher education – perseverance and courage in the face of adversity and injustice – working together in hope with an ever widening international circle of colleagues to build a better future.

Disturbing If True

Someone got booted off a reality show and made an assertion:

Everyone is a little bit different on TV. No one is going to go on TV and start farting.

I am reconsidering my plan to pay for more channels.

Mind you this show seems to have done well:



Important update:

Peak Goldberg

You owe it to yourself to check out Thers.

The Cheshirecrat?

Myrna Sokoloff at Big Hollywood is trying to give Obama a nickname. What nickname could suffice for such a monster? Cokesucker? Broke Osama? Commode-in-Chief? Let us misrepresent the order of Myrna's thoughts as she blows the punchline instantly. Also the Nazi party approves of BIG LIES so:

President Obama should have a nickname from our side. Words mean something we are reminded all the time.

I am intrigued. Go on.

If you watch him at “town meetings” when he’s pressing his agenda and making statements that go unchallenged from the adoring crowds, he comes across as calm, reassuring and easy going while he’s attempting to dismantle American capitalism.

The Stealth Obama?

Americans by wide margins do not want to close Guantanamo, are against affirmative action, and against late term abortion. The majority want him to cancel the stimulus and hate the bailouts!

Mr. Funpopular? No, that's not quite right... What does the press think of this blood-soaked infidel?

If they were acting like real journalists they would ask tough questions and do investigative reporting on his proposals and statements. Instead, at so-called press conferences, they ask mushy questions that allow him to pontificate. No one challenges him like they did President Bush.

The E-Vader?

A brave journalist will have to stop acting like a star-struck teenager and ask the hard questions and the hard follow-up questions. Only then, like the fable, will everyone realize that the Emperor has no clothes!

The Empoorinator maybe?

Okay okay, we have a socialist coddler of terrorists and abortionists. WHAT, MYRA, CAN YOU OFFER US?

So I am going to name him “The Smile.”

Missing the Point

Brent Bozell suggests that real life is different from what's on TV:

None of these TV critics would want to end up in the hospital in real life and answer "yes" to the question "Would you like your nurse to be whacked out on Oxycontin?" In real life, we'd want this woman to go to rehab, and then to marriage counseling. But anything approaching the right moral course would completely ruin all the "black comedy" fun Showtime is having.

Also Tom's owner should simply have called the exterminator to get rid of Jerry.