In Politics, Only, Of Course

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
-- H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Human Mirror

Conjunction Junction, What's Your Function (Nostalgia Break)

I still love these!!!

Huntsville, Ontario Makes The Onion

Full story here.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm just treading water," he said. "Then I remember that a beaver near Baysville built a dam that was nearly 12 feet high. There's even one that's almost 200 feet long in Manitoba. I want to build something that I can be proud of."

This marks the third consecutive spring in which Messner has sought to build the perfect dam. Many in the area believe that Messner will fail and resort to burrowing a hole in the muddy ground where he will spend the rest of the season, as he has done the past three years.

F*ck Farc

By FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press Writer 59 minutes ago

Ingrid Betancourt woke up, as always, at 4 a.m., for another numbing day in her seventh year of rebel captivity deep in Colombia's jungle.

The former presidential candidate listened to news of her mother and daughter over the radio then was told to pack by her guerrilla captors — helicopters were coming.

The sound always filled her with dread, but this time she and 14 other hostages — including three U.S. military contractors held since 2003 — were airlifted to freedom in an audaciously "perfect" operation involving military spies who tricked the rebels into handing over their prize hostages without firing a shot.

The stunning caper involved months of intelligence gathering, dozens of helicopters on standby and a strong dose of deceit: The rebels shoved the captives, their hands bound, onto a white unmarked MI-17 helicopter, believing they were being transferred to another guerrilla camp.

Looking at helicopter's crew, some wearing Che Guevara shirts, Betancourt reasoned they weren't aid workers, as she'd expected — but rebels.

This was just another indignity — the helicopter "had no flag, no insignia." Angry and upset, she refused a coat they offered as they told her she was going to a colder climate.

But not long after the group was airborne, Betancourt turned around and saw the local commander, alias Cesar, a man who had tormented her for four years, blindfolded and stripped naked on the floor.

Then came the unbelievable words.

"We're the national army," said one of the crewman. "You're free."

The helicopter crew were soldiers in disguise. Cesar and the other guerrilla aboard had been persuaded to hand over their pistols, then overpowered.

Not a single shot was fired in Wednesday's rescue mission, which snatched from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the four foreigners who were its greatest bargaining chips.

"The helicopter almost fell from the sky because we were jumping up and down, yelling, crying, hugging one another," Betancourt later said.

The operation, which also freed 11 Colombian soldiers and police, "will go into history for its audacity and effectiveness," Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said.

It was the most serious blow ever dealt to the 44-year-old FARC, which is already reeling from the recent deaths of key commanders and thousands of defections after withering pressure from Colombia's U.S.-trained and advised armed forces.

Military intelligence agents had infiltrated the FARC's top ranks — not one but many — in an operation that began last year and developed slowly and with meticulous care, Colombia's top generals said.

Many relatives of hostages have opposed rescue attempts, mindful of a botched 2003 operation in which rebels killed 10 hostages including a former defense minister when they heard helicopters approach.

This time, there were no such mistakes.

Through orders the hostages' handlers believed came from top rebels, they had maneuvered three separate groups of hostages to a rallying point in eastern Colombia's wilds for Wednesday's helicopter pickup.

"The helicopter was on the ground for 22 minutes," said army chief Gen. Mario Montoya, "the longest minutes of my life."

The agents had led Cesar, the local commander overseeing the hostages, to believe he was taking them to Alfonso Cano, the guerrillas' supreme leader to discuss a possible hostage swap.

A French and Swiss envoy were reported in the country seeking a meeting with Cano so the operation's timing was perfect.

"God, this is a miracle," Betancourt said after the freed Colombians landed in Bogota a few hours later. "It was an extraordinary symphony in which everything went perfectly."

She appeared thin but surprisingly healthy as she strode down the stairs of a military plane and held her mother in a long embrace.

A flight carrying the Americans — Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell — landed in Texas late Wednesday after being flown there directly. They were to reunite with their families and undergo tests and treatment at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

Betancourt said she will travel to France on Thursday and meet President Nicolas Sarkozy.

President Alvaro Uribe, in a celebratory news conference flanked by the freed Colombian hostages, said he isn't interested in "spilling blood" that he wants the FARC to know he seeks "a path to peace, total peace."

Although only Colombians were directly involved in the rescue, U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield said "close" American cooperation included intelligence, equipment as well as "training advice." He refused to offer details.

The two rebels overpowered will face justice, officials said. But the 58 others left behind on the ground were allowed to escape as a goodwill gesture, said Gen. Freddy Padilla, the armed forces commander.

"If I had given the order to fire on them they would almost certainly all have been killed," he said. Another 39 helicopters had been standing by, prepared to encircle the rebels and hostages if the rescue failed, Santos said.

Betancourt, 46, was abducted in February 2002. The Americans were captured a year later when their drug surveillance plane went down in rebel-held jungle. Some of the others had been held for a dozen years.

The French-Colombian Betancourt wore a floppy camouflage hat as she arrived in Bogota and hugged her mother, Yolanda Pulecio, and her husband, Juan Carlos LeCompte. Her two children and sister, Astrid, were expected to arrive early Thursday from France, where they live with her ex-husband.

Betancourt broke into tears several times — first on arrival and later at Uribe's side during the news conference.

"They used the pain of our families to pressure the entire world," she said, and appealed to the FARC to release its remaining hostages — about 700 by government count — and make peace.

"The people who stayed behind there, I forgive them," Betancourt said of her rebel captors. "Nobody is at fault."

She thanked Uribe, against whom she was running when she was kidnapped, and said he "has been a very good president."

However, she said, "I continue to aspire to serve Colombia as president."

Before leaving Paris, her son Lorenzo Delloye-Betancourt called her release "the most beautiful news of my life."

Brownfield said the Americans were healthy and "very, very happy" but two suffered from the jungle malady leishmaniasis and were "looking forward to modern medical treatment."

Congratulations swarmed in for Uribe and his military from around the world, including from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had made Betancourt's liberation a priority of state.

Betancourt, a dual French national who grew up in Paris, had become a cause celebre across Europe, where scores of cities had adopted her.

Many Colombians believe the end is near for the FARC, whose ranks are filled with poor peasants resentful of government neglect but who are widely despised for their ransom and political kidnappings and reliance on cocaine trafficking.

FARC battlefield losses and widespread desertions have cut rebel numbers in half to about 9,000 as the United States has poured billions of dollars in military aid into Colombia in support of Uribe.

In March, co-founder leader Manuel Marulanda died of a reported heart attack, and two other top commanders were killed, one by a turncoat bodyguard.

Padilla said the FARC informants who had made the hostages' release possible would be rewarded not with cash but with "liberty."

"They did it so that they and their families can have a better life."

A Short History of the Most Successful Assault Rifle of All Time (Dr, Kalashnikov died penniless. The family is attempting to secure copyright.)

Also Worth Sharing; Glen Gould

Video explains the world's most important 6-sec drum loop

Did I Happen To Mention Windows Home Server Sucks Ass, Big Time? (I should have.)

Don't Mess with the Zohan: Who Wants to See it With Me? (No takers here.)

I'll treat you to hummus after the show!


From The Atlantic.

You Don't Mess With the Zohan is the worst movie I've ever seen, though it was better than Munich.

Okay, I liked it. So what? Who doesn't like a hummus joke? Or 37 hummus jokes? It turns out that Michael Chabon also thought it was the worst movie he's ever seen, and he enjoyed it very much as well. Since we were e-mailing about it anyway, I thought I would send him a series of questions. Here are his answers:

Jeffrey Goldberg: Do you like hummus?

Michael Chabon: I would say that, in fact, I relish hummus.

JG: Isn't hummus really delicious?

MC: Yes, but what I like most about it is that, for all its deliciousness, it has managed to stay humble.

JG: Was Zohan the worst movie you've ever seen?

MC: Certainly in the last two weeks. No, wait, I forgot about Get Smart.

JG: Do you think that Zohan is a 21st century Ari Ben-Canaan? Do people in the 21st century know who Ari Ben-Canaan is?

MC: What a depressing thought. Is there anybody else who feels that it might be best if we just started the 21st century over again? No question that, in retrospect, Zohan suffered from a distinct lack of Eva-Marie Saint.

JG: Are Jews in Hollywood more comfortable now with their Jewishness than they were 30 years ago?

MC: Are there Jews in Hollywood?

JG: And if yes, is this necessarily a good thing?

MC: I am sitting here trying to think of recent Hollywood films that might be seen to reflect their Jewish creators' increased comfort with their Jewishness. What I see is an increased degree of comfort with Jewishiness. That's probably not a bad thing.

I mean, hummus toothpaste, that had me laughing. My wife (born in Israel), and me. Nobody else in the theater (Emeryville, matinee) was really laughing about the hummus toothpaste.

JG: Do you know any Israelis who are obsessed with hacky sack? Because I don't.

MC: You mean apart from Tzabar Regel, gold medalist in hacky sack at the 2005 Maccabiah?

JG: Was Zohan a Zionist movie, or a post-Zionist movie, and, does it really matter?

MC: To the degree that it appears to suggest that Jews and Arabs can never live in peace anywhere but in a mythical neighborhood of downtown New York City, I guess I would definitely be inclined to classify it as "post-Something."

JG: What do you think of tehina in your hummus?

MC: I welcome its presence, as a grace note.

The Gay I Grew Up With

At public school, aside from the '-Ass,' this was the sense of the word 'gay' I grew up with. This is I think the first time I have seen this sense used outside of primary school. All hail The Onion.

School Board Adopts Gay-Ass Uniform Policy
LOS ANGELES—Seeking to reduce incidents of student violence and insubordination, the Los Angeles Unified School District voted 9-3 Monday to institute a gay-ass uniform policy. "We feel these lame uniforms, with their dorky ties and dipwad school crests, will help create a school environment more conducive to learning," said LAUSD board officer Jefferson Crain. "We foresee fewer outbursts when students are forced to walk around in these retardo suits."

Bush Says He Still Believes Iraq War Was The Fun Thing To Do

The Onion has the scoop here.

My Future?

The Rarely Seen Backside of Mount Rushmore

I far prefer the term Knickers in a Twist: Stay Tuned

CD Sales Down, LP Sales Up

CD Sales Down, LP Sales Up

While sales of CDs fell 17 percent between 2006 and 2007, sales of LPs rose 36 percent in the same period. What do you think?
Young Woman

Tammy Parnell,
Loan Officer
"I think at this point people are just fucking with the record industry as a whole."
Young Man

John Bamford,
Building Inspector
"LPs may be nice for the audio tourist, but wax cylinders have a warmer, more natural sound."
Black Man

Carlos Feinglass,
Systems Analyst
"If there's a better format for listening to hissing, popping, and crackling than on a cumbersome yet fragile 12-inch piece of vinyl, I'd love to hear it."

Great Photo for A Blessedly Short Film Festival

Must See!!! The Countefeiters at the Mount Pleasant Cinema

From Wikipedia:

The Counterfeiters (German: Die Fälscher) is an Academy Award winning 2007 Austrian/German film written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. It fictionalizes Operation Bernhard, a secret plan by the Nazis during the Second World War to destabilize the United Kingdom by flooding its economy with forged Bank of England currency. The film centers on a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon Sorowitsch, who is coerced into assisting the Nazi operation at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The film is based on a memoir written by Adolf Burger, a Jewish Slovak typographer who was imprisoned in 1942 for forging baptismal certificates to save Jews from deportation, and later interned at Sachsenhausen to work on Operation Bernhard.[3] It won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 80th Academy Awards in 2008 for Austria.

And the Mount Pleasant Cinema is wheel chair accessible. Just call beforehand. My vote for best flick of last year.

I've Been Missing the Colonel Since He Came Over to the West Side

From the BBC:

Gaddafi attacks Obama on Israel

Libya's leader has strongly criticised US presidential candidate Barack Obama for saying Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel.

Col Muammar Gaddafi said he was either ignorant of the Middle East conflict or lying to boost his campaign.

...

Referring to him as "our Kenyan brother", Col Gaddafi also said Mr Obama might suffer from an inferiority complex because of his African origins.

The issue of race could make Mr Obama's behaviour "more white than white people", Col Gaddafi suggested, rather than acting in solidarity with African and Arab nations.

...

However, Col Gaddafi's defiant and famously politically incorrect rhetoric returned when talking about Mr Obama towards the end of the speech.

"The statements of our Kenyan brother of American nationality Obama on Jerusalem... show that he either ignores international politics and did not study the Middle East conflict or that it is a campaign lie," he said.

"We fear that Obama will feel that, because he is black with an inferiority complex, this will make him behave worse than the whites."

...

In addition, Mr Gaddafi suggested Mr Obama's comments may have been informed by a fear of assassination by Israeli agents, "the same fate as [former US President John F] Kennedy when he promised to look into Israel's nuclear programme".

Big Brown Seen Leaving Belmont Carrying Large Sacks Of Cash

Big Brown Seen Leaving Belmont Carrying Large Sacks Of Cash


NEW YORK—Shortly after finishing in last place in the Belmont Stakes Saturday, Big Brown was reportedly seen leaving through the back exit of the Belmont stable locker rooms carrying several shopping bags stuffed with cash, which the 3-year-old colt placed into the back seat of his Rolls Royce Phantom Coupe. "I could hardly tell it was him because he was wearing sunglasses, a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes, and a long trench coat, but I remember thinking he was so tall he had to be one of the athletes," said horseracing fan Jason Larson. "Still, I didn't figure it out until I saw the 'Big B' vanity plates on his car." According to numerous witnesses, Brown spent five minutes urinating on the windshield of trainer Rick Dutrow's car before driving off erratically at high speed.