On Thursday, actress Angelina Jolie published an opinion piece for The Washington Post arguing that U.S. troops should be allowed to stay in Iraq and provide the security necessary for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) to address the humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

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The show is predicated on the old fashioned idea that there is such a thing as excellence. (more…)

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Mike Smith, the lead singer of the Dave Clark Five (it wasn’t Dave Clark), died yesterday as a result of an unfortunate accident that left him paraplegic several years ago. For a time in the mid 1960’s, the DC 5 was second only to the Beatles in popularity of British Invasion groups in America. In fact, Tom Hanks once told a story on the Tonight Show how when he was growing up, he thought the Dave Clark Five and their Tottenham sound would become more popular than the Beatles and the Mersey Beat (there were five of them and they had horns so they must be better was his youthful rationale). Lots of young women felt the same way.

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Most Americans see the meteoric rise of Barack Obama as an indication that “change” sells. Change? Collective amnesia and historical illiteracy is more like it.

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Barack Obama sounds a bit like Richard Nixon.

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As I’ve chronicled a multitude of times, there is a widespread phenomenon of the Dumb Jew. Suicidal to themselves and homicidal to their friends, they lack a sense of history in addition to survival instincts. Recently, I blogged about the Jerusalem Post’s Schmucko Avineri, who had written an open “Letter to a Serbian Friend” explaining how as a Jew struggling to hold on to the only Jewish state, Serbs should understand the Albanians’ desire for two states, and a 53rd Muslim state. Today we bring you a Uri Avnery, whose article last week “Three Cheers for Kosova!” I don’t need to read. All that needs to be known about Avnery is that his pro-”Kosova” piece was published on an Arabic website called Middle East Online.

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[Hebrew University Political Science Professor Shlomo Avineri] noted that any attempt made to draw parallels from the Kosovar situation to other regions in the world is deeply influenced by the “Serb propaganda machine”, which he believes is attempting to make the world forget about the greatest tragedy to befall Europe since World War II.

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On its website Tuesday, ABC News posted a story titled, “Common Misunderstandings About Muslims,” which did its level best to carry water for the radical Islamist, and jihadist, movement in America, going so far as to cite America’s most notorious radical front group, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as the source to define the concept of “jihad.”Take this incredibly problematic passage:

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Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic leader can’t say they haven’t been warned. In fact, you even might say they warned themselves of the dark consequences of allowing the Protect America Act to expire.

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The Prizren League — the famous meeting that set out to combine into a “Greater Albania” all lands where there were large populations of Albanians — took place on June 10, 1878. Once again, here is how its organizers were described, from Andy Wilcoxson’s forthcoming book:

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There is an ongoing controversy and actual “human rights commisson case” in Canada over author Mark Steyn’s warning that Muslim birthrates are outpacing those of women in Westernized, Christian countries. One Scandinavian mullah whom Steyn quotes in his book America Alone cites the statistic that while a Western woman in the EU produces an average of 1.4 children, a Muslim woman in these countries produces 3.5 children.

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I missed this from July, but was captivated enough by the points made in the last two paragraphs:

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(First published in the Vallejo Times-Herald) 

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While I can’t vouch for her expertise, her power to influence popular (read “uninformed”) opinion is surely strong–which is why her carefully worded op-ed in general support of the war in Iraq and the surge is such a welcome surprise: Washington Post:  Staying to Help in Iraq by Angelina Jolie.

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FBI Opens Investigation of Roger Clemens.  Really? Seriously? Is this what we have a Congress for–to investigate baseball players’ training habits? Is this what the House Oversight Committee thinks is a good use of their and the FBI’s time? There’s just no excuse for this, none at all.

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Election 2004:

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     Pundits have come to realize over the past few decades that one of the problems plaguing American youth is the inability to delay gratification.  Children are more hyperactive, less capable of sustained concentration, more prone to early sexual activity and more seduced by computer gadgetry that ironically decreases their reading and math scores.  The constant approbation of minor achievement (”good jobbing” kids for just about anything) has perversely resulted in kids who don’t try to do anything they aren’t assured will result in success.  School violence has increased dramatically in the last generation, an indicator of some sea change in the young population and a marker for broader society trends, namely the dissolution of family and religious structure.  With this as our national scholastic canvas, consider the latest experiment in motivating New York students to perform better -  giving them cellphones and money as inducements to improve behavior and grades.

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America can exhale.  The long-awaited news has just broken:  New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will not run for president.  There goes the pundits’ favorite parlor game.

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Sen. Clinton:You may be thinking that the last advice you need to consider is that of a conservative commentator who has opposed you for years.

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The historic Hillary plunge and Obama surge we are witnessing has several sources, but perhaps none as prominent as the simple fact that Barack Obama inspires people in a way that Hillary Clinton cannot. He is blessed by that incalculable political intangible that a politician either has or has not. And a central component of that intangible is a compelling personal story that people find uplifting—the underdog who rises victorious. Here, by comparison, Hillary is cursed.

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A hero and a friend of mine passed away today.  Bill Buckley was 82.

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There’s a famously funny scene in the 1976 movie “The Pink Panther Strikes Again” in which Peter Sellers’ bumbling Inspector Clouseau eyes a dog sitting near a hotel clerk. The Internet Movie Database cites the exchange as follows:

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From Here, Kansas, my alter ego, Honorary Mayor Wm. Jennings Bryan Oleander has some thoughts at the end of Feburary:

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As the world continues to hem and haw about Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear program, Tehran continues, slowly but surely, to present clues as to its likely true intentions.

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Following the appearance yesterday on the Drudge Report of a photograph of Barack Obama in traditional Somali dress (some lame brained attempt, it would appear, to smear him by associating him with things Muslim), Obama seems to have pulled slightly ahead of Hillary in Texas and her lead in Ohio appears to be narrowing.

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     In Germany and Austria, holocaust denial is a crime.  Germany has assiduously attempted to memorialize that horrific chapter of its history, building museums and monuments and including the holocaust in school syllabi.  The latest example of Austrian guilt is the Academy Award winning film, “The Counterfeiters” which deals with a skilled group of Jewish artists, printers, lithographers and bankers who were imprisoned in a separate unit of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.  They were recruited to create counterfeit pounds and dollars to aid the German war effort by destroying the economies of Great Britain and the U.S.  In exchange for their skill, the Nazis kept them alive and allowed them some meager perks that differentiated them from the rest of the imprisoned population.  The film, directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky is based on a memoir written by Adolf Burger, one of the survivors of this team.  In many ways, precisely because the film does not concentrate on the most brutal tortures that we associate with that era, we identify more with the intrinsic degradations suffered by the Jews.  It is often painful and harrowing to watch this movie, a tribute to the skill of the director and the extraordinary cast of actors.  After watching it, I thought this film should be included in every high school curriculum in Europe and the U.S. to remind us of the deep-seated hatred that animated Nazi policies and the ordinary people who oiled the Nazi machine.

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Since last Thursday, Hillary Clinton has shown four dramatically different personalities:

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Barack Obama is the latest presidential contender to feel the wrath of a crooner — Sam Moore of the legendary R&B duo Sam & Dave, who recently demanded the campaign stop playing their “Hold On, I’m Comin’ ” at rallies, where some fans sang it as “Hold On, Obama’s Coming.”

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I keep thinking that sooner or later I’ll run out of things to criticize the government about. However that does not seem to be the case as about the time I start to work on some column article about life on Mars or the importance of tree bark in our lives, along comes some news blurb out of the blue that I can really sink my teeth into.

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From the Team that raised Projection to an art—-that is, accusing your enemies of what you yourselves are guilty of—-comes this gem.

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In eight years Ralph Nader has gone from gadfly to a man reminiscent of those street corner whackos who seem to be speaking loudly into a cell phone—until you realize they have no cell phone.

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The Nation’s governors attended their annual State Dinner last night in the East Room of The White House hosted by President and Mrs. Bush. It’s a tradition that began with Teddy Roosevelt 100 years ago. The governors dined on Hudson River duck rather than the Maine lobster and Colorado lamb served last year. But that wasn’t the only difference I noticed throughout the evening.

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He has passed no significant legislation, is head of no official movement, has never run a business and, until he gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, barely anyone had ever heard of him.

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Historic levels of snow in North America–time for the global warming worshipers to get busy explaining or ignoring! (I’m betting on “ignoring.”)

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